Those eagle eyed bloggers will have spotted from MT’s Twitter micro blog that we’re back home and have been for a few days.  Yes, we’re back to our home sweet home but I had so much blogging time to catch up I’ve skipped a few days of real time blogging.  Normal service will be resumed now as I am able to clear my head and have cleared the decks of the most pressing of things around the house and home.

First up I want to say thanks for all the messages and emails about the trip blog posts.  It’s always nice to know people are out there reading and using this blog as a means to keep track of what’s happening in our lives.  It is lovely to be home.  However great it is to be on holiday and spending time in exotic places and with people you love there is nothing quite like your own place.  It’s been a bit of a whirlwind in a slow motion kind of way this week.  Lots happening and progress hampered by sleep deprivation and a miscellany of other setbacks.  Hope you are sitting comfortably.

We arrived home shattered with no sleep on the flight – literally no sleep.  We were seated two rows behind 4 babies and 2 toddlers who seemed to cry one after the other making it a challenging ride home.  We travelled out from New Zealand with two babies close by but they hardly made a noise at all whereas the homeward journey was a symphony of wails and screams.  But hey, it was only 11 hours we had to listen to it, their parents have to live with it all the time!

Despite the sleep deprivation we were determined to go and fetch our fur family from their vacation home.  Fortnum and Mason were certainly very excited to see us and squeaked loudly as they came bounding over and wanted lots of love and pats.  That lasted about 30 seconds before Fortnum went off to beat up the lambs.  Mason was however a little more welcoming and stuck to us like a limpet.

Bringing them to the house was wonderful and it didn’t take them long to get reacquainted with their home.  More specifically for them to be demanding their blanket be placed on the sofa so that they could settle down for a sleep.  After 24 hour canine alert for 5 weeks these hounds were dog tired and had some serious sleeping to catch up with.  We knew how they felt!

It was only a short while after we noticed that perhaps Mason was not quite his old self.  It turns out that he has either dislocated or broken his tail.  Probably as a result of a nasty fight the two boys had (they have cuts and bruises too).  It’s a worry that they were fighting so hard which is completely out of character but Mason definitely came off worse and has been unable to wag his tail.  That is like cutting out the tongue of a talkative person.  His tail is his form of expression and he wags it a lot.  And, I mean heaps.  You only need to mention his name or walk by and it starts twitching.  Needless to say rest didn’t put it right so a check up at the vets and some drugs has eased his pain and he seems like he might recover fully.

As if poorly bassets weren’t enough I’ve got Beep – one of the Beep, Beep chickens – sick with an injured leg.  Heavens knows how it happened.  I found her lying on her back in the chicken house unable to move.  After consulting with our chicken keeping neighbour we’ve put her in the barn for rest for a few days and see how she goes.  She’s still eating and drinking and hopefully she’ll recover – it doesn’t look broken but probably muscular or ligament damage.  Hopefully she’ll make a full recovery or learn to hobble OK.

Our main desktop PC has refused to work too.  This has been a particular problem as it’s what I use for work.  Luckily I was able to manage accessing work emails and information using my laptop and able to coach for two days and then with some jiggery pokery with my new phone carry on trading albeit a little more slowly.  Luckily we have everything backed up on the separate hard drive so if it’s a terminal problem we will be able to get up and running again eventually.

The vegetable garden is completely overgrown with weeds although we did enjoy a wonderful cauliflower soup with cauliflower from the potager. I’ll report more fully on the pros and cons of leaving your vegetable growing to go on holiday in a post in the next couple of days.  The garden generally is coming into life.  It will be nice to share progress – or not – with you when I can get out with the camera and snap away.

In between work, tending for sick animals, washing, ironing and generally getting up and running again I’ve not had much spare time.  Hopefully we’ll have enough time over the weekend to really rest and relax.  I need all the energy for next week which is going to be full on work wise – the downside of taking 5 weeks off unpaid!

I’ll save the moaning about the weather and say simply that we’re still using the heating and I don’t need to water the garden.  Apart from that, life at Domestic Executive HQ is as normal as ever.  Hopefully the blogging service might achieve such lofty heights over the coming days too.