(Sunday, 12 April 2020)
Jack seems to be experiencing some of the aforementioned side effects to his new meds and so tonight I will be again sleeping downstairs. There are 8 bedrooms in this house and Iām sleeping on the floor in the sitting room!! Oh, the irony!!! š
I could use a guest room, but since we are a pet free accommodation (and as a result, sometimes get people here with severe allergies), it involves a disproportionate amount of cleaning to rid the rooms of pet hair.
Some of you will probably remember that we once had someone sneak in two huskies… in full spring moult and didnāt know about it until after theyād checked out and left. Donāt ask me how on earth they managed that! šÆ It took over 3 hours to clean it afterwards, every bit of furniture moved out and cleaned to remove the room of any allergens. Our dogs are not allowed in the guest areas of the house, so thatās never an issue, but using one of the rooms will only add extra work thatās not necessary.
The temperatures have dropped considerably over night.. notable by the fact that as we were finally making our way to bed, all sleepy and relaxed, we noticed that the heating wasnāt on. It hadnāt been all day, but then it was hot in the day, so we wouldnāt expect it to. My shower wasnāt as steamy hot as it could have been, but we hadnāt really paid that much attention.
Mark checked the boiler, whose control panel would be worthy of Apollo 13 and discovered that it had actually gone off yesterday afternoon at around 4pm with some āfire bed sensorā failure. Nope, we are none the wiser either. š¤·āāļø On the scale of āunderstandableā, itās right up there with the time we got the ālambda probe failureā message, the last time it went on strike. That was terminal and required a nice man to come out from the manufacturer and fit a new one.
But itās Easter Sunday and 10.30pm, we have zero option but to āturn it off and on againā in a Microsoft Windows stylee and hope for the best. Sadly, even this option is not the simplest. It is a wood pellet fuelled boiler and restarting it is something of an epic event. I donāt even know how to do it, but Mark valiantly toddled up and down the stairs at various intervals to push buttons and stuff. Having to wait inbetween times for it to perform various functions, ember burn out, de-ashing, refilling the hopper and other completely alien processes. The first attempt to restart it failed, but the second resulted in some chuntering noises and then the welcome sound of the pellets being funnelled into the hopper, which it usually does at 7pm every evening.
Itās one of those comforting noises that has become part of daily life, we hear it start pumping the pellets through and listen for it to finish, if itās quick – just a couple of minutes – then this is a good thing. If it goes on for more than 5 minutes, then it was an expensive day. On a bad day, it can use up to 45kgs of pellets. You can literally hear how much your heating costs! š± Neither of us had noticed that it had missed pumping for two sessions! š©
Today had been a much more relaxed affair and more fitting of a sunny Sunday and especially a sunny Easter Sunday. We did a few silly little jobs in the morning and then decided that since it was the last of the really hot days, it was high time the boys had a bath! They were starting to moult, but not quick enough and still had the majority of their winter coats. Jack, particularly, was finding the heat a bit uncomfortable. His coat is much thicker than Atenās anyway and having a good bath usually kick starts the process of shedding quite spectacularly. They are both pretty good at being bathed despite it not being one of their all time favourite pastimes! But thereās no feeling quite like their fur, all freshly washed, smelling sweetly and soooo soft. Needless to say they get a lot more cuddles when their fur feels like soft velvet! š š
After that, we did nothing all afternoon, laying in the sunshine (inspecting the back of eyelids in my case) and just enjoyed a lovely relaxing few hours. See? We can do sitting still! š š
Stay safe everyone xx
