You weren't hallucinating, Sommer, I knocked the post off when I uploaded my post. I'm afraid it's one of those days, I should have stayed in bed for everyones sake.

++++

I’ve had the day from hell. It started this morning when I had to drop the dogs off at the doggie beauty parlour for their haircuts. I usually park in the Co-op car park just a few yards from Bev's. Unfortunately, the Co-op is closed for 3 days for refurbishment and their car park is being re-tarmacked. So I had to use the main car park in town and then walk half a mile with 3 dogs all trying to go in different directions. Which was a bloody wonderful experience I can tell you - especially as it was raining at the time and I got soaked to the skin.

And being the first working day of the month I also had the pleasure of running the payroll from hell just to cheer me up. Now our bank stopped using the Co-op BPS service and decided to set up their own computerised one. Guess what? Today was the first time we got to use it. The Gods were not smiling on me - I must be a terrible person.

Now I’d spent part of last month setting it up, so it came as a bit of a surprise when it wouldn’t let me in. It kept telling me my password was wrong - of course I didn’t believe it. So I kept right on trying…caps lock on… all lower case only…standing on one leg, with my eyes closed….until it basically told me to piss off and locked me out of the system.

So I then had to ring up and get myself reactivated and that was the first time today that I spoke to Michael, from the BPS help line. At that stage he didn’t have a clue what an idiot he was dealing with and sounded an optimistic sort of person. I’d soon but a stop to that. He kindly reset my password to the one I was convinced I was using anyway and I settled down to start running the payroll.

After the normal run of problems that I encounter each and every month; such as staff that can’t add up, staff who after six months still can’t completed the top sheet even though they have been talked though it countless times. Each time, they all say…Oh, I get it now, when it’s blatantly obvious the next month that they don’t get it at all and of course, there are the staff that don’t bother handing time sheets in at all, you get the idea.

Eventually, after much muttering and swearing under my breath, cursing members of staff and wishing nasty things upon them, I was finally ready to enter the details on BPS and then upload.

Of course it’s never that easy, now is it? So once again I got to chat with Michael, lovely man, it didn’t seem too difficult or at least it didn’t until he put the phone down and the system crashed.

When I rang back, Michael was at lunch and no one else could help. Can you believe it? A multi national bank and only one person can help me? Surely they can't have heard the rumours about me yet? So I had to wait for Michael to ring me back.

He wasn’t sure what I’d done wrong, it hadn’t happened to anyone else (at this point, you lot could at least try and look surprised). At this stage Michael was still managing to appear to be surprised. Well, he doesn’t know me like you, so he was about to be on the receiving end of a very sharp learning curve. After several stops and starts, and I’m sure a fair bit of swearing at his end, he managed to talk me though the process. Halleluiah! Jobs a good ‘un.

At that point Bev rang to say that the dogs were ready whenever I was free to pick them up. So back to the car park and the half mile walk. About half way to Bev’s the sun decided that it was time for its afternoon nap (must be a brat) and disappeared behind a cloud. A large black rain cloud.

By the time I came out of Bev’s it was bucketing down again, it was coming down that hard that it looked like needles dropping. And of course Billy wanted to stop, sniff and cock his leg every hundred yards, whilst the two girls just wanted to carry on as far in front of me as possible. So I’m walking through town alternatively screaming ‘BILLY’ and ‘CLOSE’; whilst being pulled in two. Once again I got soaked to the skin.

I eventually got back to work to the news that one member of staff (known by most as Dipstick, she's not the brightest of sparks - but she's brilliant at running the nail art sessions with the kids) had a new bank account, but hadn’t bothered giving me the details. I'm not even going to try and look surprised.

So could I just change it, as her other account was now closed? Poor Michael, according to the receptionist he was on another call when I rang and would call me back. Personally I thought it more likely that he was hiding under the desk and they had staff trying to talk him out. Probably making him rash promises that I couldn't cause this much trouble next month.

Well, he rang me back and we went through the unauthorising the batch, changing the bank details and then uploading yet again and re authorising. By this Stage Michael and I were on first name terms and he’d told me he was off out tonight with his girlfriend to see Pirates of the Caribbean for a second time, apparently she is a big Johnny Depp fan.


++++

The weekend....


A little mouse with clogs on, there on the....floor in the bathroom. And can we all ignore the fluff bunnies by the side of it, thank you. I'm not the world greatest Housekeeper by any way, stretch or means. Kim and Aggie would no doubt dispair.

I was in the bathroom on Friday when I noticed a movement out of the corner of my eye, when I looked there was a mouse on the floor looking up at me.

Yes, the bloody cat had done it again. Now I am well aware that I talk about the cat and mice antics quite a lot - Tom & Jerry have nothing on this lot - but at 3 in the morning the thought of finding the camera and capturing the moment rarely crosses my mind.

So for all you Doubting Thomases (if that's spelt correctly) out there - here's the proof that the cat brings friends home for breakfast, lunch, dinner or just to spent the night out of the rain. I'd like to say it surprised me, but I'd be lying. I'm way too used to it by now.

++++

We didn't go anywhere this weekend, my Dad's not been well with a kidney infection so we just took the dogs for a run on the common.

It's horrible to have to think this, but Billy isn't as young as he used to be and I've noticed just lately that he's not so good on his back legs. He still enjoys his walks, but he doesn't run around like he used to.

Our old Lab, Sam went the same way and it feels like committing murder when you have to make the decision to put them to sleep. It doesn't matter that you are doing it out of love and to stop the pain.

With a bit of luck, we'll manage to keep Bill going for a while yet.