The bright afternoon (and I think the last few hours of the morning weren't that dull) seemed to enthuse me to do more than just laying around reading. Before I could get down to do anything too distracting I had two parcels to be taken in when delivered. The first was a spare microwave oven. That arrived around midday. I didn't even unpack it. I just put the unopened box in the cupboard under the stairs. I realise that this is not a normal thing that most people do, but I guess I am still influenced by my days working in the public telecommunications industry where back up systems, and even hot backups, ready to go in less than a second, were the normal thing. I don't fancy being without a microwave oven for any more than 20 minutes if my current one breaks.

  The second parcel/box arrived at about 1.30pm, and earlier than I expected. I have to admit it was close to a impulsive buy, but not entirely. It was something I've been thinking about for some time, but I guess it was a impulsive buy while looking online for the microwave oven.  It is a tabletop fridge/drinks chiller. I wanted it for beer because I am a little bit fed up with having my fridge stuffed full of beer twice a week, and having to shuffle it around to get other stuff out. The only trouble is that I am not sure where to keep it. At the moment it is sitting on a spare chair in the dining room where it is keeping a big selection of beer nice and cold.

  Once I was relieved of the task of keeping an ear and eye on the front door to make sure I didn't miss my deliveries, I had the urge to do some work in the garden. I didn't seem to do much, and yet I was dripping with sweat by the time I had finished working. Somehow I had chosen a time when the sun was out a lot, and that sun felt hot ! I am still trying to tidy all the damage done by the foxes, and I got to the point when I finished the worst of it - at least in terms of my lawn. The flower beds come later.

  The main job was raking yet more little, pebbles, rock and other detritus out of the lawn, and then use the strimmer to cut it a lot shorter. I also raked up some of the bald patches and sowed grass seed on the. It was one time when I hoped it would rain today as yesterday's forecast for today insisted would happen. I think there was some rain in the night that will probably have done more good than the two pints of water I used to water the biggest area.
  This is how my garden looks this morning. It is a poor picture because it was rather dull outside, and the camera insisted on a long exposure. I couldn't keep the camera still enough to avoid a little bit of camera shake. As gardens go it doesn't look very good, but the theory is that i have no brought it back to baseline, like every gardener would have done mid winter instead of mid summer. I am now half a year behind, but maybe I can coax a few plants to grow, and hopefully add some colour once I start work on the flower beds. The only bugbear is all the logs that are still piled up on the periphery. The big one, seen on the left of the picture is the worst one. It is very heavy. If it were lighter it could end up in the skip up the road !

  I didn't mention it yesterday, but the night before yesterday I sneaked the remains of a couple of old chairs, and the remains of an ironing board stand, into that skip up the road. I felt a bit guilty about it, but I shouldn't have. During the night I noticed a few bits of furniture had been taken by persons unknown. Then in the afternoon a dodgy looking geezer in his long white van turned up. He went through the while skip taking out any metal he could find. I am not sure if he took all three items I put in there, but I know he took one. When he had finished there was quite a bit less in the skip than after it's official hirers had stopped filling it.

  There was one other task I did before I could relax, and have my dinner. It concerned my latest rodent problem - hopefully just one mouse ! I used some filler to plug the hole behind the toilet bowl where I am sure it was getting out. That does mean that it could still be under the floorboards, and getting up there via the pipes in the kitchen directly underneath the bathroom. It is not nice having a mouse in the kitchen, but at least it doesn't disturb my sleep ! I also sealed the bottom of the door into my old workshop. It is possible the mouse ran under the door when we met face to face in the bathroom late in the night. Finally I set two traps, baited with a half peanut each, on the left and right of the door into my bedroom. This morning both half peanuts are untouched. I really hope this mean the mouse is unable to roam upstairs now.

  The only thing I ate during the day was a can of soup. I used my new microwave to heat it. That was the first time I had tested it, and I am happy to say it worked perfectly. By dinner time I wasn't actually feeling hungry, but I did feel a strong urge to eat - the latter from my brain, and the former  from my stomach. It probably sums up my eating problems through life. After all my hard work I felt I probably deserved a nice dinner, and I treated myself to a takeaway.

  My blood glucose had been very high in the morning, and it was still higher than I would like just before dinner. The obvious choice for a low sugar meal was the tried and tested shish kebab. Just grilled meat and salad (with the pitta bread thrown away). I tried somewhere new again last night. I hope I can remember who they were the next time I need a kebab because their kebabs were rather nice. Last night I had a lamb shish, and the meat was very tender, and it tasted like it had been grilled on charcoal. I also had a lamb kofta kebab, and that was very nice too. The only thing I didn't touch was the little tubs of chilli sauce. I opened one and it smelled disgusting. I used my own chilli sauce instead.

  Once again an excess of chilli made me feel very hot and sticky for a while.  Fortunately I had cooled off by the time I went to bed. I wore ear plugs in bed last night, and I have no idea if I was visited by the mouse. I got quite a good sleep last night. Like recent nights, I woke up feeling a bit cool around 4am, and turned the heater on low while I was up to go for a wee. I do remember a bit of one dream. Most of it was quite bland, but I had been driven to somewhere in or around Croydon, and i didn't want to wait hours for a lift back home. I knew I couldn't get on any buses or trains without a mask, and so I was trying to work out how to get home using Google maps on my phone, but it couldn't give me a location fix closer than about a 2 mile radius. That was not helpful, and I was happy to wake up for that pee at 4am.

  This morning I was expecting bad weather, and so naturally I felt a bit depressed. My depression lifted a lot when the latest weather forecast didn't look that bad (and later revisions improved on that). I was also very happy to see my blood glucose had dropped to 7.9mmol/l. That is an acceptable reading, but as always, lower would be better still.  I'm not sure what I'll be doing today. I still ought to get some exercise in, but In think if I burn any calories today it might be working in the garden.