Shredding the Night Away

I'm staking out the great big compost heap, which has been there for a year at least and never seems to diminish, it only grows bigger and ever bigger. Looki is staking me out.  I look up and he is at the top of the galvanized metal steps staring at me intently.  As I work he occasionally trots towards me as if to say "Isn't it time for dinner mum?" Looki is always on the make.  Candy is staking out some creature inside the heap.  It moves about a fair bit whatever it is.  I hear ominous rustling from time to time. From her lofty vantage point on the living room terrace Kerry stakes out Candy… and Looki …and me.  She is also staking out every cat within the boundaries of her vision – which is quite far.

The compost heap is the bane of my existence at the moment.  Nothing sees to rot quickly in spite of the heat.  I think it is the lack of moisture.  In Ireland I had the opposite problem.  The lack of heat and copious rain led to a disgusting heap of vile smelling sludge whenever I tried to compost.  To be fair, I think that composting has been the bane of my existence always!  Composting is an art and one I have yet to master. 

Ominous heap (dead centre of picture)

So last year we bought a garden shredder/chipper.  I was all set to shred everything as it came off the trees and shrubs so that I could use the chippings as a mulch.  However there are always a million and one other jobs to do and if the truth be known I am a bit afraid of the shredder. Some years ago I watched the film 'Fargo' and the chipper scene has had rather a lasting effect on me.  Vic did try it out once (the shredder that is, not a scene reenactment!), the last time he was here.  He found it quite difficult to master and advised stout boots, heavy gloves, overalls and a full face-mask.  Needless to say, the shredding did not get very far on that occasion and when I do gird my loins finally it's going to be quite a palaver.

So I have put it off and off until yesterday when I began the big bed clearance.  The compost heap is on the exact spot that I am building another large flowerbed.  It is strategically placed to form a link between the lower and the upper gardens.  I already have little saplings and shrubs and cuttings to put into it, but they are all waiting in buckets and pots or corners of flowerbeds until the bed is cleared and filled with earth.  So now that I have finally finished the lower level terracing (yes, I have!) there is nothing standing in my way of clearing and finishing the bed and getting it planted…except the shredder and the vivid memory of snow and blood.

Lower level terracing complete!  Looks lovely!

Looki has moved to a shady spot close behind me where he lies forlornly in the sand and rubble. He tries to look hungry and I have to look before stepping back so as not to tread on a paw.  Candy has moved to his former spot at the top of the steps and has her head wedged between the top step and the earth, peering intently through a mound of sticky weeds which I will spend the rest of the evening pulling off her fur.  She will still go to bed with a goodly sprinkling of sticky burrs, which will torment her and me the whole night through.  The creature that is now inside the steps teases and tantalises her.  Kerry has disappeared.  I imagine her like the queen bee lying in the coolness of the house on her big floor cushion, snoring gently with her little dolly between her front paws.

Looki puts on his 'hungry' face

Nothing has happened easily in this house, nor the garden and as I peel back layer after layer of dusty, partly decomposed vegetation I get speared and pranged, stung and bitten.  Everything then has to be carried up the steps to the upper part of the garden where the shredder is.  I am taking the opportunity to separate the softer stuff from the branches as there are two functions on our marvelous, state-of-the-art shredder, one for shredding and one for chipping.  I have another reason to be a bit nervous.  The wood which once was supple is now so dry that it is hard as a rock and I am certain that I will blunt the blades on the first go and probably burn the motor out in the process.  But we will have to see.  Perhaps I am only imagining the worst-case scenario to protect me from the slow and tedious work that lies before me.

"Baby steps" I keep reminding myself.  "Slow but sure wins the race" I tell myself. "Just keep on moving forward, one foot in front of the other."  I have all those promotional posters and sayings taped up on the inside of my brain.  My mantras for dealing with the stings and the scratches, the bruised calves and the aching muscles.  I am doggedly determined though and I know I will get there…eventually.

You've got to break eggs to make omelettes.  Things got a bit messy for a while.

Suddenly there is a scuffle and a yelping up top.  I can't see, but know Looki's voice and I know what has happened.  The dog next door started to bark and Kerry has come out all guns blazing.  The other two have also rushed towards the garage door to get closer to the bark and Kerry has thrown her snippy weight about and given Looki a nip and probably Candy too.  I yell from down the bottom and rush up the stairs three at a time.  They are all panicking on the Astroturf lawn and Looki is about to slink away into the house.  I call him kindly.  "Looki, Looki come here."  He starts to come and then shies away and then comes again.  When he is near me I start to tell Kerry off and he starts to shy again, so I have to ignore Kerry and hunker down to give him a good rubbing behind the ears and a firm body stroke.  All the while I am telling him that he is an exceptionally good boy.  Then he goes beserk for a few seconds.  We used to call it his mad five minutes, but it is more like 5 seconds of him rushing around like some mad bat out of hell, up and down the Astroturf taking sharp corners, skidding to a halt, round the column of the old, ruined building and sometimes even jumping up and nipping my sleeve or the bottom of my t-shirt or jumper.  All the while he has that mad, mischievous look in his eye.  It is lovely to see him letting off this energy and every time he lets loose like that I encourage him to find his inner puppy.  I think he is doing it right now because he is a bit embarrassed by the scuffle thing.  Perhaps he wanted to fight Kerry back, but knew that it would be wrong, but now he has to let off that steam in some way?  Dog psychologist me!

Terracing clear again and bed, to the left awaits soil and shredded compost.

And as quickly as it began the storm is passed.  We are all laughing and all friends again.  Nobody bears a grudge in our house.  Life is too short and besides there is still a compost heap to be shredded.

…and candy gets the last word, as always

The Saga of the House Continues….

I look into Looki's eyes sometimes and it takes my breath away when I see the love in them.  It was not always there.  When he first came to live with us he hardly looked me in the eye at all.  He had to learn to trust me first, I guess.  As I rumple his ears I often find myself gazing deep into those lovely brown eyes and saying to him "How did you exist in that yard all on your own for so long?"  I am amazed that he has come out so unscathed.  He was pretty nervous when he first moved in, but over the months and years since we got him he has blossomed into a very chilled, very loving, responsive and usually obedient dog.  I say usually, because there are times that his nose does get the better of him and he will do anything to follow that alluring scent.  There are also times I think that he does not quite understand a command and because my voice sounds angry to him he slinks off under the table or into his little den.  If I move towards him in what he considers to be a menacing manner he goes all submissive and rolls over onto his back.  Usually I am only approaching him with my arms out because I want to pick him up and give him a good cuddle.  If he rolls over I just rub his tummy instead.  I don't mind really.  I just want to make contact and so does he. 

They are all pretty chilled individuals

The girls love me too but I think that they are more self-assured as they came from a loving home.  Candy often looks at me like there is nobody really home at all, bless her little heart, and Kerry has the look of a patient adult, trying to understand her unruly siblings…and me at times too.  Still. I understand that of course they had another mummy and daddy who they loved to bits before and who loved them back.  They do not have the total need in them that Looki has.  Nonetheless, we all have our little moments together, when each of them looks at me and into me and I into them.  Don't tell me that dogs don't have feelings, or a soul.

Of the three of them Looki probably spends most time following me around though Candy is quite the little follower too.  In her own fashion she trots along behind me like the little space cadet she is.  Kerry is the most aloof.  No, not aloof, that is the wrong word.  Just self-contained and self-assured.  She knows that I will come and give her a cuddle in my own time and she also knows that come the nighttime, when we all settle down into bed, she will be the one nestled in the crook of my arm anyway.

I look down now and all three of them are thrown on the floor at my feet as I write.  Candy is under the desk, her chin resting gently on my big toe, and Looki and Kerry, close to my chair, are both keeled over on their flanks.  Kerry on the right, Looki on the left.  Their heads are gently touching.  And I never even noticed them arriving.

I write….

Ever since I bought this house it seems it has ruled my life even though I swore it would not.  From the early days of dreaming about how it would look to the actual nightmare we had getting everything done and now finally to selling it. 

I can't believe that it has come to this.  Slowly the wheels are turning and the documentation is being prepared.  I have little to do with that part of the process at the moment.  All I do is sign the odd permission and letter to the college of architects as they slowly come to a decision on appointing me a new architect to take over the legalization of our extension.  If we were going to stay in the house I know that I would not even have set those wheels in motion.  I would have been content to let the legal aspects just drift on indefinitely while I lived and loved inside these four walls.  But I am actually quite happy that my hand has been forced by circumstances and I like the rigour of getting everything in perfect order.  I glance at my notice board.  My overruling New Year's resolution is still written there at the top.  "Don’t aim for perfection."  I always do.  I want everything to be perfect.  Now I want everything in this house to be perfect before I sell it.

Beneath the resolution is a list.  It says, amongst other things:

Skirting

Solar service

Façade

Ceilings and vent

Railings

Handrail

Garden landscaping

These are some of the things that have still to be done.  Some jobs are for the builder, obviously, but others are things that I can do.  The most important of those is for me to finish terracing, landscaping and planting the garden.  No small task I might say, but the one that I am ordering myself to complete this summer.  I have already begun the great work.

an earlier stage of the terracing

A few weeks back I tackled the weeding. I am always amazed the way the weeds, which are nothing for so long, are suddenly up to my neck.  In the end it did not take that long really as most of them were not deeply rooted.  Once clear I could see what needed to be done and I am now hacking away at the rock and rubble under the terrace.  The terrace is built on piles and as such the earth beneath is not actually supporting the weight of the house….I hope.  So I am taking some of it out to create my levels in the garden and to scrape for mud for my flowerbeds.  At the same time I am clearing a space beneath the terrace that was always destined to be my studio, but now never will be.  Instead it will be an open space which the Estate agent will describe glowingly as "full of potential".  He will assure any would-be purchaser that you would definitely get permission for a plunge pool or Jacuzzi, or it would make a marvelous gymnasium or extra bedroom or even a self-contained flat.  The work is tedious and heavy, a bit like taking off wallpaper, which always seems so easy when you start.  The first sheets seem to lift themselves off, but then you get to the strips of paper that are glued on for all eternity, or so it would seem, and they drive you mad as you pick and scrape.  It is the same with boulders.  Some of the rock crumbles like butter when you hit it with the pickaxe, but then you meet a boulder which turns out to be solid granite and the pickaxe merely bounces off, with the nasty strike reverberating through your arms and making your teeth jangle.  I went to school the other day with a strange buzzing thumb.  The result of just such an encounter.

Profiles change and plants grow.  Yes, that is a Christmas Tree.

To make things more difficult there are of course always one or two Westies close at hand.  If I am going to make a little landslide of rock and rubble I have to check first that no small dogs will get crushed in the process.  I am also trying very hard not to crush any toes either.  You need eyes all around you.  You may think that the dog is over by the front, righthand column, but when you look he has moved silently into a shaft of sunlight, or indeed out of the full sun as he was getting too hot.  Invariably when you start raking the rubble towards you to put into the place where you want it there is a Westie in your path.  Politely I ask him or her to move a bit.  They usually oblige by moving about six inches further along the route that I wish to take.  So it is a slow process.  I am a very patient person.  It is just as well really.  Everything about this house has taken an eternity to complete and now the rest of it is going to do the same. 

Slowly the terraces become permanent fixtures

I suppose I am lucky that I do not have an irate ex-partner breathing down my neck, demanding his pound of flesh.  Victor is a good man and he knows the speed at which things progress here anyway.  The phrase "herding cats" springs to mind and I think he knows that neither I nor Spanish bureaucracy can be rushed in these matters.  Me, because I am only one little woman trying to move mountains right now (add to that, the temperatures hit 40 degrees this week) and the bureaucracy because it only has two speeds, 'slow' and 'stop' and to try to push it would almost certainly make it stop.

Rock has to be broken

The work is slow and often hampered by Westies

While the paperwork (slowly) takes care of itself and my list of jobs for the builder becomes shorter I start to think about my next house.  This was meant to be the last house of my life but plainly life has another plan for me.  I wonder how many more houses I will build and what my next house will look like, apart from having room for a few Westies.  I am assuming that it will be small, yet perfectly formed.  Did I mention that New Year's resolution……?

I Can't Blame the Westies for Everything…

But I spend an inordinate amount of time sitting on the couch buried beneath three adoring and adorable doggies and, except for rubbing Westie heads and tummies, not getting very much else done.  Mind you, on the upside I am totally de-stressed, to the point of being virtually horizontal a lot of the time.  Maybe it's the influence of the three little fluff balls or maybe it is the Spanish way of life slowly seeping into me and rendering me über-relaxed.  

I can't blame them for everything, but one little…...

two little…..

three little cuties, make it very hard to say no!

Unfortunately this leads me to forget some important things – lucky I write lists! 

For example, this morning, I had to go to the Centro de Salud (Health Centre) to give a blood sample.  Why?  Oh I have a lesser-known condition called Prolactinoma.  It affects me hardly at all now that I am older, but was the cause of some sadness when I wanted to have more children.  The tumour, which grows on your pituitary gland, causes your prolactin levels to rise affecting your ability to ovulate.  I did not ovulate or menstruate for twenty years after giving birth to Kate. That is one of the effects.  Another is that I have always maintained a goodly supply of milk.  Useful I suppose if there is anybody looking for a wet nurse and fun for playing fountains at bath-time.  Oddly I started to menstruate again about seven years ago. The effect that concerns me slightly now is the fact that if your tumour grows any bigger it can lead to blindness, as it sits dangerously close to the optic nerve.  So every year, well, now every year and a half, I have to go for a brain scan and blood test and general review of the tumour and my prolactin levels.  In the last three or four years my prolactin levels have gone up and down but the tumour has not grown.  However, irritatingly it is still there.  In my whole life I have only ever met one other person with this condition and nobody else I have spoken to has ever heard of it.

So, this morning, I had to go for a blood extraction.  I had with me my document from the department of endocrinology which I had carefully filed on my whiteboard with my appointment slip.  All good or so I thought, until I walked through the doors of the health centre.  I hate that health centre, it is the raspberry seed in my wisdom tooth, the burr in my pad, the fly in the ointment, my nemesis even, you name it, it gets on my nerves because I have yet to conquer it.  Something always goes wrong when I go there.  When you go initially to make your appointment there are three desks to get passed.  One is usually unmanned so the queue grows ever longer.  You take a number and wait your turn.  There may be one half-decent civil servant behind one of the desks who retains some part of him or her that is still human, but invariably when my number is called I get 'dragon lady' or 'irritable man'.  Immediately my tongue dries in my head, my hands start to sweat and shake and every word of Spanish flies out of my head.  This time it took me two trips just to make the appointment as I had neglected to bring my analysis form from the clinic in Malaga on my first trip.

This morning just as I entered the health centre I remembered my health card.  This little bit of magic that took me five years to acquire was sitting on my desk in the office with my passport and credit card and NIE number, all together in my passport folder.  They were waiting to book my flights to Ireland, but we are all hoping that the fares may drop a bit before pouncing.  So it was not in plain view on the kitchen counter or even in my handbag already, where it usually resides.  I thought of going back home, but that would have rendered me late for my appointment and I could not bear that option either, so I ploughed onward and queued to get my little blood vials and labels.  "Health card" the dragon lady barked at me. "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" I screamed inwardly" "I'm sorry I forgot it at home.  It's with my passport and…" "Passport will do" she said.  "No, I don't have that either, sorry.  I can go home to collect it" I stammered, "I can be back in 15 minutes."  She glared at me and her colleague tapped into her computer.  "Where were you born?" The slightly kinder colleague asked.  "You were born in Ireland" I said, immediately kicking myself for a) forgetting a simple Spanish conjugation and b) telling an untruth.  I was born in England, but am an Irish citizen hence the confusion in my own head at times.  Anyway, sometimes it is just not worth explaining.

I know I left my Health Card here somewhere

So I left the health centre with my usual red face and bad humour.  Inside my head I was repeating all the things I had wanted to say in perfect Spanish.  Easy when you are not put under the pressure of an inquisition.  I was also down a goodly bit of blood, I thought the nurse had been a small bit liberal with his blood letting, so I was very thirsty as well.

I passed several likely bars on the way home, but decided to hurry on and get out of the glare of everybody who surely knew by now what an idiot I had been, yet again, in the health centre.  A cup of tea will be lovely when I get in, I thought.

When I got home I got the usual greeting from the three Westies.  Looki springing up on his hind legs in an attempt to lick my face.  Kerry weaving her way towards me and then past me to get a sneaky sniff of the outdoors through the iron gate at the front of the house, already carefully locked behind me. Candy creeping towards me with her little tongue out and her tail wagging madly as she curls her little body in and out of a sort of 'c' shape much like a fish struggling on a fishing line.  Only she is not struggling she is just overwhelmingly in love with me.

"Let's put the kettle on" I say to them.  Which I do and then adjourn to the living room while I wait for it to boil.  I sit on the couch and three furry doggies pile on top of me.  One to the left, another on the right, propped up on the cushions and the third, without any preamble,  just jumps straight into my lap.  My hands automatically cradle and stroke them and miraculously my tension and stress drift away.

Westies, great for destressing