Our Guests Have Gone

26th October

Happy 3rd Birthday Lawrence XXX

We were up at 6.00a.m. to take Debbie and David to the station in Fundao, we left the house at 6.50 to catch a train at 7.50 (the journey usually takes 40 minutes), putting Looby in the shed (she didn't want to come in the truck, we tried but she was not comfortable) took a few minutes and then it was foggy - we missed the train by 30 seconds, we know this because Rich (the pig man) had just put Nicky on the train and he was just getting into his car, he suggested we try to catch the train at Castelo Branco, it left there at 8.24 ....... 30 minutes to travel  38 kilometres - we took the toll road!!! And arrived at the station at the same time as the train (phew), then Brett told me we'd travelled most of the way on fumes, we were completely out of diesel (phew x 2)!

We went home and buried Tess, we put her under the olive tree just down from the house.

Brett cemented in the flue, so we should be able to light the stove in a couple of days, which means that I might be able to dry some washing - even though it got quite sunny today the washing hardly dried (perhaps I need to wring it out more?).

We were invited to Pastor Allen's wife's (Barbara's) surprise birthday party today but we didn't feel in the mood to go, P&M came round afterwards (it was a lunch party) with some cake.

27th October

We ran out of gas last night, so I had to wait for Brett to get up before I could have coffee (so that he could drive to get more gas, as I still can't see properly to drive on the real roads!) and of course the clocks went back last night so I had to wait for the shop to open too. Not a great start to the day!

I officially HATE our vacuum cleaner; why do they make them nowadays so that can't you turn off the beater bar? When I'm using the accessories it just spurts dust all over the place as the beaters rub up the concrete floor (hopefully it will be better when it's tiled), so I have to carry around a piece of plywood to stand it on, how annoying/ridiculous is that? Not having a good day!!!!

We've brought our gold sofa (which is what I was trying to clean with the vacuum's tubes and brushes) into the living room, so that we can put our small leather sofa in front of the stove - we won't know where to sit, so much choice!

We were invited to Mark's (by his builders) for a celebration barbeque (on completion of his wall rendering) this lunchtime, but we were just not in the mood for socialising; a shame as we had been looking forward to it earlier in the week and it would have been good practise for our Portuguese.

In fact today wasn't that bad a day (the weather was fabulous, we had full electricity and the house is getting more and more comfortable), so it would have been pretty good if we'd still got both our dogs, but as we didn't it was miserable.

This evening we lit our stove; heated water for our showers on top of it, cooked a roast dinner in it and sat on our sofa in front of it!!!

28th October

Showers and rain today, but the solar is full so we should be OK.

We are training Looby to 'sit', 'stay', 'come' etc; we have a few dog biscuits in our pockets as rewards. However Looby thinks is training us to give her treats when she sits, she comes up to us, sits and looks expectant!!!! She goes into her shed, where we leave her if we go out in the truck (it's big with a chicken wired open front, so she gets lots of fresh air and can see outside), quite happily and sits waiting for her reward, she doesn't enjoy going in the truck.

Chris and Di came for dinner; we mulled some of our last year's wine, it was very tasty. They said they will look after Looby when we go to class tomorrow, which is great for ....... us, as we won't have to worry about her ..... Lobby, as she won't be locked in the shed ....... Chris and Di, as they'll have a dog to take for a walk - so everyone's a winner.

There was a beautiful sunset tonight ...........

29th October

Hoorah Tuesday is language class!!!! We dropped Looby off with Chris and Di, she seemed quite happy to be left with them which was good.

Language class was fine, Pastor Allen had obviously prepared a lesson plan and we had a worthwhile lesson.

After class we went to the rescue centre to pick up the dog's documents and tell them about Tess - they said Looby could be vaccinated against seven different types of gastroenteritis, so we're bringing her in tomorrow. They then offered us a free dog!!! They couldn't understand that we were still mourning Tess.

Looby had a wonderful time with Chris and Di, they had taken her for a mammoth walk, she was shattered! But she voluntarily got into the truck when we were leaving them, she wanted to come home with us, bless her.

I found some pickling onions in jumbo today (quite expensive 1.49€ for 500g), but I bought some anyway so that we could have pickled onions at Christmas (they're a must on Boxing day!). You can't get malt vinegar here so I spiced up some Balsamic vinegar to pickle them in.

30th October

Brett chain sawed for the third day running; he's getting a good pile of wood in the shed, he's very pleased with the saw horse he and Dave made.

While I made bunting, out of doilies, for the window in the living room (we've temporarily put a piece of Perspex in it, so we can have the shutters open without a draught)

 and the cupboard bed

 - it looks very pretty (Brett doesn't approve!).

We took Looby into CB for her injection and she was sick in the truck! By the time we got home she was looking quite sorry for herself and of course we didn't know if she was feeling queasy because she was car sick or if she was coming down with what Tess had. She didn't want to eat her tea and she just lay on the floor looking ill, so I gave her a digestive biscuit (dry biscuits are good for nausea!), she ended up eating nine, a handful of crisps and some of her tea!!!! So we're praying that she was feeling ill because she was car sick, it's going t be a long night.

On our way home from CB we popped in to see Mark, his rendering id absolutely fantastic. It's internal rendering (it's not going to be plastered over) the top coat is made with soft sand, cement and hydraulic lime; it's really smooth and the colour is lovely, a kind of soft mushroom - Brett is considering using it for the outside of our house (shed), which means we might not even need to paint it.

It's the end of the month and we still have internet; this is probably because we only have one working computer between us so we are sharing it. Tomorrow I will post my blog, I don't want our allowance to go to waste!