Friday Smiles 2024 #Week 20

Another week of ups and downs but I will try to put a post together. I am typing slowly as I have somehow managed to 'sprain' my left thumb and it is very painful and makes the hand useless. I have no idea what I did. It just happened during a very disturbed night. It has eased a little since this morning but the thumb pad is still very swollen. I have just taken the first of some very strong anti-inflamatory pills that the doctor has given me so hopefully it will calm down soon.

In the meantime I have had a busy week with trips to the dentist and hospital, which is just far enough away to make it nearly a day's outing. I have a repaired denture which is good but have been warned it is not as strong and may break again any time, but at the end of the month I am having my last two teeth (fangs!) removed and implants fitted in my lower jaw. When that has all settled down, in 3-4 months time, I will be having a new top and bottom plate. Happy days!

To approve the dentistry work I needed a special X-ray that meant a trip to their bigger surgey in Garrucha. Afterwards we strolled along the front, enjoying the stiff breeze and sunshine. The gulls were gathered in large groups along the shoreline, perhaps hoping the incoming tide would bring them some titbits. Across the water we could also watch all the activity over at the port with the lorries constantly unloading and loading, and what looks like little toy lorries from a distance, keeping all the gravel piles tidy and prepared.

On Tuesday I had my appointment at Torrecadenas Hospital in Almeria city. We took out interpreter along and I am glad we did as she is more used to the layout of the hospital, and I would have struggled to follow all the information I was given. You have probably guessed by now that the biopsy I had done on my hand showed some shallow carcegenic cells so it was agreed that these would be cut away. The site is quite spread out so I will need a skin graft but it will all be done in the day surgery. Now I have to wait for a an apointment from the anaesthetist who will do blood and ECG tests and check I am well enough, and soon after that I should get a date for the operation. So it is all progress.

Parking at the hospital is a nightmare with long queues of cars waiting to get a space. But recently they opened a new innitiative where you can park for free at a new shopping mall and catch a shuttle bus, also free, up to the hospital. Because our interpreter was familiar with all this we were able to do it and it saved a lot of time and frayed tempers. The car park was full to the brim even though we had the almost the first appointment of the day in our department. There was also a long row of parked motorbikes and I guessed that was how the medical staff managed to get to work on time. The hospital is set high on a hill, (Strange choice for a hospital site I feel!), and from up there you can look out over the whole of the city, and in the distance you can see the sea. Almeria is the capital city of our province.

While the painters were in last week, a cupboard they moved off the wall they were painting, accidently fell against the end pole of my washing line and forced it off the wall it was fixed to. So Chris has fixed it again and it is much stornger now, and we went to the ferreteria to buy new line. It has four ten foot lines so it is quite a task to restring it, but it is all down now and I am very happy, and grateful to Chris for his work.

While we were out we popped into the garden centre just opposite the shop, because for ages I have wanted a yellow rose. I bought one once from Lidls and it turned out to be a dark red rose with a thin yellow streak on its inner petals! In the end we found one. It is a small floribunda rather than the tea rose we were looking for, but it is lovely all the same. 

While we were there I also chose this very pretty orange one. It turns to a pale apricot colour as it open out, and it has been planted in one of the big boxes at the corner of the side yard.

I sometimes wonder what Tolly gets up to at night because he is always in the kitchen waiting for his breakfast when I get up, and then he takes up this pose on our settee and doen't move a muscle until lunch time. Even my cleaner can hoover around him without him stirring.

But I know what someone got up to on Sunday night. I don't know which one it was but have my suspicions it was Leo. It is natural for them to hunt but I wish they didn't feel compelled to give me their catch as a gift. However when I got up on Monday, this little fellow was on the kitchen floor. He was dead which was a blessing really, as had he been alive, as soon as I tried to move him he would have shot under the fridge, and I would have spent all day trying to find him. He is a very juvenile horshoe whip snake. They are not venemous and don't bother me at all. In fact I think he is rather beautful, but I know many of you would freak out at such a 'gift'. 

One day this week I ran out of bread for our tea so I decided to make a batch of drop scones. They are a simple batter very similar to ordinary pancakes but with one or two additions. I usually cook them on my old griddle, but I thought they must work just as well on a flat-bottomed frying pan. Wrong! They would not cook and before long I gave up and fetched out my griddle. They cook perfectly on there but you have to be quick. The secret is to turn them over before the bubbles on the surface break, which is why I only have five or six on the go at the time. They made a nice change and we thoroughly enjoyed them. They always bring back memories of my mum. She lived with us for her last ten years aged 80-90, and she loved it when I made these little soft bites for our Sunday tea.

I have spent a lot of time this week chatting to one or other of my boys. They are very good and keep calling to see if there is any progress in my various problems, and now at last I can tell them there is.

So now I will close and prepare to link up with Annie's Friday Smiles in the morning.