Forgive me, JD, but your blog is a gift at times like these, and I hope you won’t mind me borrowing your theme.

I wanted to let you all know that quite a lot of the last two days is a complete blank to me, because I had that thing up there: transient global amnesia* – at least, that’s the temporary diagnosis until the neurologist gets his turn with me**. It’s a very interesting and amusing disorder, if it’s not you that’s experiencing it. You should look it up on the Interamanetweb thingy and check it out!

Seems I got out of the shower on Wednesday morning and came downstairs to find OH, and I was panicking and saying things over and over and over again. Things like ‘why is my hair wet’ and ‘why is there toffee?’ and ‘I can’t remember anything!’ and ‘is it nearly Christmas?’. Understandably he was a bit rattled and called an ambulance which took me to the hospital where I was parked on the Acute Assessment Unit. Once there, I continued to ask the same questions over and over again till everyone was ready to tear their hair out – though they were all very patient with me, bless them. Even the other patients in the ward forgave me and smiled at me when I started to come out of it … or maybe that was relief rather than forgiveness?

That piece of paper up there is the list of answers which OH wrote out for me after he’d endured some hours of this, and it was incredibly helpful. To both of us.

So, because my brain is still rather fuzzy, this is a very short post, just to let you all know why I haven’t been able to visit and answer comments.

Hopefully, normal service will be resumed soon, and during the next few days, I will do my best to catch up with the ABC Wednesday comments. Meanwhile, thank you for your patience.

Um. Have I had my tea yet?

* I’ve taken the unusual step of editing this post, because I discovered I’d remembered the name of this thing wrong. Which is quite amusing really, when you think about it!

** I’m now waiting for a consult with a neurologist, a gastroenterologist, and some guy who wants to slice my shoulder open.

For ABC Wednesday this week, we’ll begin with beautiful Sid, balancing on three legs wearing his blue collar and lead set, with matching blue tag collar.  There’s a little boy riding his bicycle over the bumps in the background, but since he’s not a greyhound, we won’t dwell on him.   Lots of ‘B’s in that picture, huh?

It’s actually quite surprising you have a picture of Sid upright, because like most greyhounds, he sleeps a lot.  Sometimes, when he sleeps, his nose bends on the carpet.

It doesn’t seem to bother him at all, though it does tend to make him snore!  I expect what it is, is that he gets worn out with the busy life he leads.

He has to keep his stuffies in line, for one thing.  Here he is on his blue camouflage pattern bed, happily biting his purple lips.

Yep, that’s what that toy is, a set of purple fluffy lips – I think he’s saving the black sheep for later.  And look at the muscles bulging on that front leg!  Could they be his biceps?  I think they might be! 

Sid believes he’s our official food taster.  He loves to benefit from bits of our lunch, which he samples from bowls on the floor.

He’s a good boy, and doesn’t beg, so we don’t mind letting him help out. He just looks at us beseechingly with those big, brown eyes and somehow we seem to give him things.

Of course he does get his own food, though you wouldn’t think it to look at him sometimes.  Occasionally, for a treat, I give him breakfast in bed.

That’s a piece of raw lamb rib, complete with bone.  It’s very good for him to chew on that, and helps to keep his mouth clean too.  But it’s messy, which is why I don’t put them in his bowl. If I did, he’d only drag them out onto the carpet, so I lay an old towel down in front of his bed, and make him lie down before I hand them over, and he’ll eat them there, nice and tidily.

Also, there’s the product testing.   These are his new black boots, especially made for greyhounds, and he’s still getting used to them.

By the time he does so the winter will be over, and then we’ll have to go through the whole process again next year, but we’re still working on it.  I have to take it slowly with Sid you see, because I can’t have him panicking and falling over.  On the other hand, these things were meant to help him to stay upright! Oh, he doesn’t mind wearing them, he just doesn’t want to walk in them.

Did you notice the lovely view of his backbone in that picture?

Anyway.  By the end of the day, Sid is ready for sleep, despite having spent half the day snoozing.  And because I sleep with the window open and the radiator turned down, the poor dog needs pyjamas.  Yes, he really does, or he keeps getting up and staring at me pathetically.  So here is the lovely Sid, in his blue pyjamas.

He does love this bolster bed, but he’ll abandon it the minute I retire, and come and join me in the bedroom. 

Bless him.

Ooh, do I have a good one for you today!

I took this a little while ago, and found it this morning while sorting through my picture files.   I thought it was a fun and rather pretty picture …  But what is it?

This one was not taken inside the house. In fact, I was walking Sid when I saw it and thought it appealling enough to take a few pictures.  I only had my little point-and-shoot Panasonic Lumix with me, but it did a pretty good job, didn’t it?

Looking at it now, as a picture standing on its own, rather than a part of my visual world, I think it’s rather beautiful.  It’s something which is quite common in our towns and villages, and even in a few places outside them.  Not something you can plan for, it just happens.

Mysterious?  No, not at all.  It’s really rather ordinary.

As always, if you return here tomorrow, you’ll find the answer added to the bottom of the post, and also in the comments.  And as always, tiresome though it is, if you want to see the full sized version you’ll have to click on this picture, and then click again on the picture on the next screen.

Oops, I nearly forgot to add the link for Macro Monday!

Well, here we are on Tuesday and DBM is bugging me for the answer! Tee hee. OK, I’ll take pity on you all. Go here, and see for yourself what it is. I’ve kindly put a little square around the part of the picture you should be looking at. It is, after all, a macro, and the new picture is taken from several feet away. In case you still can’t see it, I’ve made a little close up of part of that section.

Oh, and congratulations to Squirrel Queen, the only person to guess correctly this week. Well done, you!  And commendations go to Heather P and Maria, both of whom were pretty darned close.

Despite the rumours circulating all over the internet, the lovely Johnny Depp is not dead. He did not die in a car crash just outside Bordeaux.  He is still with us. OK? Hold the commiseration emails etc., they’re not needed.

What apparently happened was that someone altered a legitimate CNN news page* to include the ‘Johnny Depp is Dead’ story, but not terribly well because the Depp story (complete with a picture of a very nasty car wreck) runs straight into the bottom half of a story about a diving expedition.  I suppose they thought everyone would start wailing after a paragraph or two and not bother to read to the end.  But you’d think they’d have thought to alter the date, wouldn’t you?  No, it was dated March 2004. And people picked it up eagerly and passed it along.

Here’s a tip for people like Buzzy Bloggers.  If you want your rumours to be taken seriously, take a crash course in literacy and journalism.  Amateurish writing is a dead give-away, and conjures up a spotty fifteen-year-old sitting in front of his computer amid mouldy coffee cups, dirty dinner plates and smelly underwear.

It might be the most talked about item on the Depp blog feeds today, but it’s been well and truly refuted.  I rather liked this report from ‘toptodaynews.com’:

… the person on the leading edge of the Johnny-Depp-is-still-alive confirmation was an unlikely one: Crispin Glover. Glover whipped out his cell phone and called Depp, who answered:

“Not dead, in France.�

Nicely laconic, and reminds me of that famous Cary Grant quote.

But seriously, it must be a very uncomfortable feeling, don’t you think?  Imagine opening up a web page or a newspaper and seeing your name there.  Imagine reading that you’re supposed to have died in a horrific car crash.

Worse, imagine having your children read that you’re dead!  I think I’d want to smack someone.

* I’m not going to link to that page and give them even more hits. If you really want to find it, it should be easy enough on a Google search.