Dog Days Of Summer #13

MONDAY
Stomach virus for two days now...ugh, just what I needed! I'm better now though. I had a feel sorry for myself day and bought myself a couple of books...well, you sort of have to, to support authors and publishers and stuff! That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. All this buying is all well and good but I need to start reading more and making a dent in the pile! 

Just to get the week off to a great start, I've had to report three packages missing to Amazon, each of them over a week beyond the end of the expected delivery period. It's frustrating as I now have to deal with sellers to beg for replacements and refunds and also Amazon's bloody  interrogation bots that don't understand plain english or simple sentences. It's going to be one of those weeks I think as I also chipped a piece off a fourth tooth!

TUESDAY
My dad and I have been busy doing more tidying in the living room and hall. I don't exactly feel up to it but I need to get on with it. We have plenty stuff that we want to get to the charity shop but because the shops were closed through the lockdown, the ones we use have been deluged with donations since they opened and aren't accepting any donations for two months at least. This impacts our ability to clear the stuff out of our house and my uncle's house. And to add insult to injury, the local rubbish dump is queued out every day and only accepting the waste that normally goes into our bins, meaning we can't get rid of stuff there either. It's really frustrating to have bags and boxes of stuff I want rid of taking up every spare corner of the house. 

I am about to have a book crisis. I found some ebooks that I haven't put onto my Goodreads total so these new additions are going to hammer my TBR this week. Well doesn't that just fit with my grumpy mood!!! I might just do an add on post to show the damage. That and not feeling up to reading this week are total bummers! (see Pandemic Fun post)

WEDNESDAY
We continued with the clearup today but with the problems I highlighted yesterday, it doesn't look that much better because I can still see 'stuff'! I am also fed up with the arrangements at my GP service. They changed physical appointments to telephone consultations, meaning you phone in and they can send out prescriptions for mild issues and only see the patients who really need it. That works well. But last week I got a letter saying the GP wanted to do a phone consultation concerning my medication (WHY do new doctors want to change EVERYTHING instead of just leaving you alone???) She told me to phone the surgery to book a phone appointment to talk about it. I have phoned four times, each time being told she isn't available, call another time. I'm getting a bit pissed now.

SHE has my bloody phone number so why am I having to do all this phoning? I'm self isolating so I'm always home and they know this! Today the receptionist phoned me to say they are withholding my medicine until the doctor clears me to keep taking it and told me I had to phone tomorrow morning to book a phone consultation for the afternoon. When I said why can't you just add me to the list of calls the doctor has to make tomorrow as I'm on the phone now with you, I was told that no, we can't do that, you have to phone tomorrow. You know what? SOD THEM! I'm sick of being messed around and I'd rather do without the bloody pills than have this caper. I have a book about natural remedies and I'll find a replacement in that if I have to. I've always wanted to have a herb garden so maybe I'll just do that! Anyone know good alternatives to anti depressants?

Man I'm so irritated that I just want to go and have a mega book splurge on Amazon...

THURSDAY
The mega book splurge was cancelled and I did a day of clearing up to focus the mind! And what did I find? A bag of paperbacks and hardbacks I don't remember getting and of course they aren't on the TBR. Well I guess that counts as my mega book splurge! Added to the ebooks I found earlier this week, in total that is FORTY books to add to the TBR!!! That is really depressing! But no point in whining about it! I re-jigged my TBR total and goal and we'll just start over. I still want to hit that 1450 target ASAP but first I need to get some reading done.

The good news is that I have a lot of horror novellas and kids books to read and I can get through one a night of them and get the pile dented reasonably quickly. I should be back to where I was by the end of September with any luck. I'll be targeting Enid Blyton, Walter Farley, Anne Digby, Michael Bond and Jon Athan to begin with. The good news is that this has refocused me and I picked up a book and read over 100 pages, the first reading I've done all week. This weekend I'll be getting stuck in! 

I also tried another Simply Cook recipe and being Chuckles, I went against my instinct and used the whole lot of the southern spice mix to marinate the king prawns and when I was cooking and tasting, the heat nearly blew my face off! I had to dump a pile of creme fresh in it (yes I know I spelt it wrong but I don't care coz I'm lazy!) However it was still a successful Louisiana Linguine, made with King Prawns instead of chicken! (I forgot to get chicken in!)

FRIDAY
I've been avoiding the news today and will do so until these US conventions are over as I don't need to keep hearing the same speeches over and over (we generally have CNN on now as it is more interesting than the bias on BBC and Sky News) I like seeing more of the international news anyway. 

I was busy again on the computer, sorting out more files most of the day. For the weekend I'll be following the football scores on Twitter on Saturday so I might see you guys there from 3pm to 5pm UK time. I think that's 10am to 12pm ET? I'll be doing comment and blog visit catchup and getting on with blog posts for the coming week. Doing it this way with blogging mainly at weekends with short daily catchup sessions midweek seem to be working ok. 

Have a good weekend!