I missed you and I missed coffee last weekend. I was still busily working on my exegesis to give to my supervisor and my life stopped in order to meet my deadline of Monday and yeah! I did it. I handed it in Monday at 4-15pm. Not quite finished but all the written work done. I have three graphs to complete and being a bit of a dinosaur I am trying to do something that is simply not possible to do, by me at any rate. I will have to come up with an alternative and do it in the next few days. To all extents and purposes though it is now done.
If we were having coffee I’d tell you that I am now worried that my work is far too long. Why didn’t I know that beforehand but how can you write a memoir of 30,000 words. Mine is around 84,000. The thesis for a masters is supposed to be between 40 -60,000. In total mine is more than double that. I’ll see what my supervisor says when it comes back. I have to get it to the examiners by the beginning of April at the latest so I haven’t got much leeway now. Lots of form filling and organising to get everything in the correct order for submission. But right now I am having a rest and enjoying what remains of my sister and brother -in -laws trip to Australia.
The other thing I would tell you if we were having coffee is that Bundy, our old dog is not well. We had an x-ray on Tuesday and the news was not good. His lungs show chronic obstructive airways problems and the right side of his heart is enlarged. We went because we had not been able to get on top of his eyes and he had developed a cough whilst at rest. He had always had a cough and we thought it was a collapsing oesphagus, common in cocker spaniels. Apart from this cough at rest he had no other symptoms and we are hoping that cortisone will help his lungs and give his heart less work to do. However, the worrying thing is that his trachea has deviated from the midline at a place where there is a lymph node. This could be just that the node is working overtime or it could be sinister. The treatment if it is a lymphoma is steroids so we are not going to subject him to further tests but wait and hope like crazy that he gets better. Roger is going to be inconsolable if something happens as they shadow each other.
On a brighter note we took BILL and SILS bat watching. First to where they sleep.
On Friday we went to the marina to listen to some music and had a bit of surprise. These are not the bats from the trees we looked at but from elsewhere. We had never seen so many in our entire lives.
For those of you who wish to participate this week is your last opportunity to respond to the Times Past prompt which will finish on the 29th February. For more details https://irenewaters19.com/2016/02/02/times-past-prompt-2-womens-work/
Just a great week. Hope you had a wonderful week as well.
Hope to see you all as I return to some normality although that won’t happen fully probably until September. Thanks for sharing coffee and thanks to Diana for hosting our coffee mornings. Have a good week.
Reflections and Nightmares- Irene A Waters (writer and memoirist) 
Ok. So much here. I’m happy for you and so sorry for you. 💗 Hugs from the other side of the world.
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Thanks Sarah. We are being positive about it and he has improved since we started the cortisone.
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Good luck with your exegesis and getting your papers done. We see bats sometimes around mostly in the evenings. Thanks for sharing the pictures.
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You are welcome Betty Louise. Ours are visible of an evening as well otherwise you have to find where they sleep. Thanks for the good luck – I may need it.
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It’s great you’re almost done with your project. I know you’ve been talking about it for a few weeks so I’m sure you’re very happy to be seeing the end of it.
I’m sorry about Bundy. We had a Shih Tzu that had a similar issue. She was coughing for quite a while and we had it check and it turned out to be a swollen heart.
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Thanks. I am happy I am finally seeing the light at what has been a very long though interesting tunnel.
We are being positive with Bundy as he has no clinical symptoms we are hoping we can hold him at bay – as long as nothing sinister is happening but I’m not even going there.
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If Bundy does start showing symptoms there might be things you can do. Our vet talked about different meds and even surgery for our Shih Tzu, Sushi, but we didn’t do anything. Only a couple of months after the diagnoses we lost our Boxer Elliot for unrelated reasons and that was just too much for Sushi – I think she died of a broken heart, not a swollen heart.
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Yes Bundy was suffering from a broken heart which is why we got Muffin but I think once its broken it can be hard to mend.
I’ll keep in mind other treatments but at his age we wouldn’t have surgery either.
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Oh boy, I do hope Bundy is OK! One of our old dogs hit the skids a couple of weeks ago, but then recovered quite nicely…I hope that’s the case for you, too!
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I hope so too Melissa. Keeping the fingers crossed.
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Good golly! What’s with all the bats! I think I would have run indoors. I hope you poor Bundy improves. It so hard when pets start showing age. It’s so difficult to know how much to do for them to keep them comfortable and not suffering. Sending Positive thoughts.
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I don’t know whether we are in bat season or whether they are like that all the time. I had never seen anything like it.
At the moment we are being positive about Bundy’s outcome but we will not put him through the extra testing that the vet wanted to do in order to find out exactly what is happening with his trachea. He is an old dog and we wouldn’t contemplate surgery so we are just keeping our fingers crossed. Thanks for sending those positive thoughts this way.
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I’ve fallen in love with Bundy and hope he recovers quickly. As for your memoir – should you have experienced less? Or remembered only a little of what you did and witnessed? The bats – they creep me out and I try to remember Janell Cannon’s story Stellaluna. Of course, Stellaluna was a lost baby fruit bat. Those in the trees look like hanging bears.
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You and me both so keeping positive at this stage. He has improved already with treatment so we’re hoping.
I may have to chop my life up into bite size lumps – too late to forget it. I’m over it any way but it would be an awful shame to faulter at the last hurdle. Janelle Cannon I have never heard of so I will have to visit Mr Google. It was probably one you read to your kids.Love the name Stella Lunar. They look as though they have been wrapped up in shrink wrap.
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Stellaluna is a children’s picture book about a baby fruit bat that gets lost in a storm and is taken in by a bird family. Eventually she finds her way back to her mother. It’s about friendship and sharing but still being true to yourself. Very popular in the states. The art is gorgeous, and I think Cannon created the art as well as the story.
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That sounds like a gorgeous story. I’ll keep an eye out at the bookshop for it. I can enjoy it and then give it to a friend with a grandchild.
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Oh dear, poor old dog. What was wrong with his eyes? I do hope he is okay. My dog is nearing 15 and I think the worst every time she lies too still for a while. They become such loved parts of the family. As for your thesis, I would and did have the same problem…. too many words. It is so difficult to condense, and everything seems important.
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Bundy had a discharge that initially we treated as conjunctivitis but when it didn’t clear the vet told us it was allergies and put him on antihistamine drops. Worked for a bit and got worse again and started treating for infection again but with no results. A new vet tells us it is indeed allergy and brought out the big guns – cyclosporin eye drops. Cleared overnight. wish the rest was that easy.
Did you manage to get your word numbers down? I am going to present a case as to why mine needs to be longer. I will prune the exegesis as much as possible but it will be impossible to get it to nothing. As the thesis is made up of creative artefact ( a book length memoir) which immediately puts me over.
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Yes, I did. One thing that helped was putting information in a table. Many less words to illustrate information although this won’t be much good in a memoir, unless it is a very creative table! My old girl dog Tiffany, recently had conjunctivitis too and that is why I asked. She has been in the bushes hunting the scent of a possum, and we think that has caused it. We had to fence off part of the garden to keep her out of there. I am hoping that has solved the problem.
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Hope Tiffany’s eyes have been helped by the fencing. Bundy seems to have a new lease of life on these pills and hopefully for some time to come.
Tables are a great idea for the exegesis. I’m just stuck with the length of the memoir but hopefully that is a guide only as a science masters, for example, is going to be quite different to a creative writing masters.
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Good luck with finishing up the writing and getting ready to hand it in.
Sorry to hear that Bundy is so under the weather. Hoping for the best for you guys. ❤
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Thanks Diana. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel finally. We’re keeping our fingers crossed for Bundy.
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So happy for you Irene, that is great news about your submission, almost there, well done! I hope you can really enjoy the rest of the time with your visitors. Those bats are amazing, what a surprise! But so sorry about Bundy 😦 I hope he is improving. Lovely to catch up with you, at long last. I’ve been on a blogging go slow too. I’m planning on getting my Times Past post up on Friday, hope that’s okay… big hugs to you my friend and wishing Bundy a full recovery 🙂 ❤
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Lovely to see you whenever you are around Sherri. I know the go slow — as you can see I am myself a bit slow at the moment. I still have heaps of work to do but at least I can see daylight at the end of it. Bundy is doing well at the moment on his new medications and hopefully will stay that way for some time. Friday is fine. I will be doing the next one on the 1st March. Lots of love. 🙂
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I’m hoping Bundy responds to the steroids. I understand how Roger feels. Todd would be beside himself if either of his “babies” were not well.
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Yes I am a bit fearful for roger should the worse occur. Hopefully Todd will not have to go through it anytime soon.
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Hoping that Bundy gets better. It is so sad when pets get old. It will be sad, as you mentioned for his buddy, Roger.
Irene, good luck on thinning the memoir. I admire all the pages you completed and your exegesis.
My son has always told me that bats have gentle spirits. In Mammoth Cave and other caves in Kentucky the bats have white nose syndrome. They say the disease came from humans. This saddens me. ~ Robin
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Bundy is still plodding slowly behind us. We have to keep a good eye on him now as he is becoming blind and doesn’t hear that well. His nose works overtime to know where we are but if he loses the scent he becomes quite disoriented. But he is happy and Roger is happy so I am happy.
I’ve not heard of white nose syndrome. I don’t think we have it here and I’ll keep the fingers crossed it doesn’t come. Our bats here have a virus which they transmit to humans. disease in animals is always sad as so many have limited places to live and their numbers are dropping.
A few revisions to go and I am finished my thesis.
Thanks for popping by Robin.
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