Sorry if you called by my blog in the last few days and found it wasn’t there. The server, Blue Host, went down unexpectedly and for a long time mid-week, so Chris decided it was a good moment to transfer operations to another server, Lunar Pages. He took care of all that yesterday. So now there should be no more sudden blog disappearances.

The kitties not long after we found them back in June, using Caiti as a bed

That was one disruption to the week. The second was the kitties. They had their necessary ops this week so that we won’t be disappearing in a sea of cats in the near future. That was on Tuesday. Because they mustn’t eat in the 24 hours run up to the event, we’d kept them inside. This included over night. By now the three kitties were a little peckish and definitely grumpy. They spent a good part of the night bouncing around bad temperedly on our bed and hungrily biting our toes. I wasn’t that sorry in the end to shut them in the cage and cart them off to the vet. Ruadhri and I picked them up on Tuesday night. There was a definite air of self-pity about them. But not for long. We thought we’d better keep them indoors for another night since they must be sore and dopey. Not a bit of it. Within an hour or so of coming home, they had perked up considerably. And so we began another night of bouncing on the bed and bitten toes. This time we took action and put the three hooligans outside. They were clearly in fine form. And still are. Despite walking oddly for a day, Voltaire, the male, is fully recovered, and the girls never seemed to even notice their surgery. I wish I was that tough.

Disruption number three is the weather. Summer has suddenly stopped. We were swimming and sunbathing on Sunday, but in gloves and woollies on Thursday, with our first fire lit on Friday. It’s not good enough! I want the warmth back. I’m not ready for winter yet. I was enjoying our daily rides and my footballer’s wife dips in the pool. Now all our planned activities suddenly become weather dependant. The cycling season will finish soon, certainly by mid-November, when it gets just too cold, and we’ll begin the long, long tramps to Nouzerines and back with Rors on school days.

The fourth disruption is set for Monday. Another school-related strike means that the internat, the boarding facilities at lycée, will be closed on Monday night. Caits will have to come home that evening, and I will have to go and fetch her since there isn’t a co-operative bus to bring her back. And it will also mean two early mornings in a row for runs to the bus-stop, and you know my feelings about that. Still, at least there is a bus on the Tuesday so I don’t have to drag my sorry butt all the way down to Gueret to deliever her to school. And we will have to feed a hungry teen an extra meal.  Last year we got a rebate of €6,85 for each night the internat was closed due to strikes. That seems surprisingly little considering we’re losing out on an evening meal and a night’s board and lodging. It doesn’t even cover the petrol cost for collecting stranded kids, let alone their victuals. Oh well. We get an extra night of our cherished ones’ company during which the internet slows to a crawl as huge amounts of bandwidth are sucked away in a teenward direction! And quite how all this disruption to our household will influence the outcome of the strike is a mystery to me. Sadly I have no say in sorting out whatever this particular grève is all about.

Life isn’t meant to run smoothly. I have occasional longings to live an organised, predictable existence, in which tidying-up gets done and schedules are stuck to. But where’s the fun in that?

And a quick PS. My latest free book, The Witch’s Dog, is up on Smashwords for grabs here. It’s a fun, non-nightmare-inducing halloweeny tale for kids. And the cover features our very own Nessie!