Random Events

It's been a strange year so far, one that I'm looking forward to seeing the back of. The past few months have been especially trying, consisting of a series of annoying events that have pretty much knackered me out.

Firstly there was the seemingly never ending heatwave. Now I know I'm in a minority here, but I hate hot weather. I hate being sweaty, feeling constantly dirty and as though I'm basically being cooked, because that's how it felt.

I suffered wearing as little as I could so imagine our Persian girl with her long floofy coat on. It affected her really badly and she's not been right since. We've had a series of worrying episodes with her.


So that's been a constant worry other than a few days here and there. Next was the mystery insect bite, a mystery no more it seems. I've written about my allergy to bites and stings, I'm very familiar with the reactions, this one was totally different.

It had crossed my mind that it may have been a spider bite but it seemed unlikely to me, still, I had no idea of what else it could have been. Then on Saturday I saw a news report about someone being bitten in their sleep, posting the wound to instagram and being told in comments that it was a false widow spider bite.

At this stage I hadn't seen the bite for myself - I was trapped in a rage about water coming through our ceiling for the umpteenth time, not much focus for anything else - but it seemed more and more plausible that I had a spider bite.

That evening when I had calmed down somewhat (from the leaking), I did a search for false widow bite - which I consider to have been quite brave in doing bearing in mind the results - and sure enough, the wound itself, minus the infected areas which is where it gets really nasty, was identical.

As I began writing about this I did a search for the story I had seen on Saturday and sure enough, a photo was included and as a fresh bite it was identical to mine.

I then went on to reluctantly read about amputations and all sorts of nasties from the fangs of these beasts, 50p sized beasts surprisingly. But it isn't the venom that causes such things, it's infections and bugs that do it, horrific injuries sustained that are life threatening.

If I hadn't of had such an exhausting stress-filled 24 hours from the numerous leaks in our ceiling, I think I definitely would have freaked the f*&% out.

Instead I considered how lucky I'd been and thanked the stars for my mania of natural remedies that are always close to hand; In this case Propolis which kept the wound clean and allowed it to heal without incident.

I still have a scar and I've felt severely under the weather since it happened but I'm mostly intact. Doing a Twitter search for false widow spider was an eye opener, common as muck it seems. Wonderful thought.

So after a bit of an Amazon search The Glutenite has armed us with this:

Spider Spray

At first glance it doesn't instill one with much confidence but it's got rave reviews. 

Web For Sale

So far so good, now we just need a 'neighbours flooding us repellent'.

I've been SO angry. 

I don't know what the time frame has been but since we've lived here we've had numerous drips through our ceiling. Big drips. Friday before last it happened again, in the early hours, always over our bed. The leaks eventually stopped the next morning and upstairs claim that it's nothing to do with them.

This has been complained about on numerous occasions.

So we're settling in to watch Gogglebox this Friday just gone and 10 minutes in, *drip* *drip*. To quote to the marvellous - OMG it's coming back!!!!!!!!!! Twin Peaks - It is happening again.

So The Glutenite goes upstairs and is invited in to show him that there's no water on the floor, in the cupboards etc. Well that's ok then, huh? #noitbloodyisnt

They did say they had used their sink though.

A couple of hours later the water stops coming through but I'm adamant that something has to be done this time, it's obviously coming from upstairs - I say obvious, once a guy came in to take a look and asked - whilst under the leaking ceiling - if it was coming from upstairs. Quite often people infuriate me.

So the next morning it starts again *drip* *drip*. In numerous places including the closet.

SIX hours later it finally stops. It's quite apparent to me that if this isn't sorted out right now that at some stage we're going to be totally flooded.

The weekend was spent contacting people, asking people to contact people because we can't have their numbers and constantly worrying that it was going to start up again.

Middle of last week between the numerous large drips, our toilet stopped flushing. Can you see a theme? Luckily we managed to get a plumber quickly to sort that problem but that was a close call which would likely have caused issues for downstairs. Water is definitely an issue here.

And not only here, my parents have been partially flooded 2 days running over the weekend so has my Aunt, just once though 'luckily' for her. 

To the best of my knowledge, a plumber still hasn't been called to the neighbours upstairs so I'm still constantly hearing paranoid drips in my head and waiting for it to start up again. If not seen to it definitely will.

Oh I've been angry. Furious.

On Saturday a list of rage filled expletives so large filled my head that I thought it was going to burst. 

So that's what has been going on here. I've probably forgotten other stuff that's happened but I think this is quite enough for one post.

I still haven't heard back from the tennis club.

But once again Yay! For the Twin Peaks news. Can't quite believe it's been 25 years since that opening episode *Cancels all birthdays forevermore*.

and *bows to Neptune hoping for a truce*.

More soon...