HOUSE SITTING

So, house sitting comes to the end of the second week. I do it willingly and with love for my best friend and her family while they holiday in Portugal. But OMG the stress of running someone else's home!

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First there are the dogs - which I talked about on day 2 of my house sit. Remember? The ghastly neighbour who complained the dogs were barking (shock! horror! dogs bark??!!) Well  a couple of mornings later she came to tell me she had not slept a wink that night because the dogs had barked non-stop from 11.30 p.m. to 4.00 in the morning. NO WAY!!! I would have heard them and anyway they are locked up so cant get out to bark. I found myself smiling sweetly at the old bag and saying how sorry I was she hadn't had any sleep but, seriously, it couldn't have been my dogs. It then transpired that she called my friend's husband on his mobile at 2.00 a.m. to complain. Thank God he had it turned off. So I then found myself having to justify my working practices to them!


Because hunting is banned (and there's another blog in itself!) there are plenty of foxes around here and I often go to wake the chickens up (fortunately penned in to their chicken
coup) to find the mutilated remains of pigeons. 



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I hate birds, let alone having to remove a dead corpse of one. On Sunday the cat didn't appear. Nor Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.  Just typical, I thought, on MY watch the cat has been eaten by a fox - or run over. I fretted about it all the time when, suddenly, in yesterday's pouring rain, the cat walks nonchalantly back into the house asking for food without a care in the world. I didn't know whether to hug it or smack it!!

I continue to do daily chemical tests on the pool... sciences were never a strong point in my education. So, I see what the chlorine reading is and the PH level.  And now what?? How much do I add to make it better - or worse?  





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This morning I put the hose in as the water was below "the line" and promptly forgot about it so now the pool is so full it's about to burst its banks.


So, with the husband back tomorrow, I was beginning to start packing my stuff up to return to the peaceful tranquility of my little cottage when I get a phone call telling me that my friend's mother is being discharged from hospital tomorrow following a hip replacement. She is being sent here because there is a ground floor bedroom and I am to look after her for another week. Cue me frantically clearing out their son's room which he left upside down and inside out as he ran out of the door last week to go round the world for 3 months, trying to find bed linen, towels, measuring bed and loo heights so she can have adjustable fittings to make it easier to sit down!! So, in addition to three dogs, a cat, two chickens, a pool, a large house, thousands of tubs of plants that need watering, a greenhouse full of tomatoes that also need watering, I now have granny to stay.  





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Oh and did I mention the freezer leaks all over the kitchen floor..........!!!

Yours, stressed and exhausted,


fastandluce
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