Valentine's Day

I think it is fair to say that looking at this photograph you can see that Charlie is unwell - particularly as the left side of his face (right in this picture) is his 'good' side but his eye is half closed and his mouth is open and his tongue is poking out - this is how we found him when we returned from Mum's on Saturday so you can see why we rushed him to the vets.  It is also fair to say that last night was very fraught because when we brought him back he was only partially awake from being sedated but awake enough that he wanted to do all the things he would normally do but his legs weren't working so he was like he was drunk.  We had to keep him quiet and on the floor and not feed him but he had other ideas - wobbly ones but he is so stubborn and willful.  Eventually he wore himself out and fell asleep and we carried him onto our bed and he slept there for the remainder of the night.  I am not sure that John or 1 slept much but we were exhausted and stressed.

We were grateful that we had been to mum's yesterday and that she was having lunch with her lovely friend Lilian today - we had organised this in advance because it was Valentine's day and originally John had planned a lovely romantic day with him cooking.  As it turned out we were so exhausted we didn't get up very early and spent most of the morning monitoring Charlie who was subdued and very quiet but gradually began to show signs of his more normal self.

It was a glorious day and eventually we felt a little more like celebrating so John got out the bubbly and we had a lovely drink sat outside in the garden.  We had showered and put on some decent clothes - not something we have much reason to do at the moment - and when I got out of the shower I noticed my legs and told John I was suffering from "Hikers' Knees" - he was a bit concerned but what I meant was that I had a distinct line where the legs of my walking shorts come and below that quite a bit of a tan!!!

John was true to his word and cooked our whole evening meal and it was lovely save for the fact that there was a breakdown in communication so I thought he was using one cooking method and he thought he was using another and so I ended up with a pan with a rather burnt bottom which I will rectify - I did warn him it had a hot spot!!!

Our menu for this evening was influenced by the fabulous take-aways we have had from the Farmyard in Kathikas - I did warn Rachel to be on standby around 7pm in case we had a disaster darling but apart from the brown bottom pan all went well.

We had a fabulous take on Crispy Honeyed Chilli Beef with stir-fried vegetables served on a bed of jeweled brown rice.  There were all sorts of fabulous flavours going on and although we thought we would have some left over we both really enjoyed it and so polished off the lot!!!  This is certainly a recipe we will be doing again.  I say "we" but his is going to be John's baby for sure - he already has ideas about improving it and I hope that spot welding the sauce to my pan is not included a second time!

I think we were both so relieved when Charlie ate a proper meal, took himself off out to the loo and returned and then decided he was going to lie in front of the fire with Boo just before supper that it made the meal all the more fabulous because we felt we were returning to some sort of normality.

We had such plans to watch a few programmes on the television after eating but in reality we were both knackered and felt like someone had removed our batteries.  

Halfway through a complicated gothic horror film which I had chosen I looked at John and he looked at me and we decided to call it a day and watch the remainder another time!!!

We picked up Charlie and took him to bed with us putting him on the bottom corner so that I could feel him with my foot and would be aware if he seemed to be in any sort of difficulty - fortunately he slept right through until 4.30am when I heard the familiar scraping of his paws on our bedroom door because he was feeling hungry.  At that point I got up, fed him and then got some decent sleep for the first time in several days.