Picture this

Picture this …

There’s a plumber in my powder room fixing the dodgy piping; there’s a builder on my deck assembling a bathroom cabinet; there’s another builder in the laundry measuring up the shower screen glass; two blokes stagger through the front door with my new velvet sofa; and my friend Mel arrives to do my roots with a DIY kit my hairdresser sold me.

That was my Friday. I sat serenely at my computer throughout it all, writing news stories about alcohol.

At 4.30pm, I dashed to the vet to sort out the rat’s medication, which had dried out in the syringes. The vet supplied us with 28 syringes, each filled with 0.2ml of antibiotic paste, as it’s very tricky to get the dose correct when it’s so small. But her cunning plan was foiled by the elements.

So she gave me a large replacement syringe full of antibiotic paste and showed me how to pump it into the smaller syringes correctly. She emphasised how important it was to get the dose right – she treated a python with pneumonia once and the owners accidentally gave it 5ml of medicine instead of 0.5ml. It cured the python’s pneumonia, but he died of liver failure.

Add that to the long list of unexpected conversations I’ve had in my life: who knew pythons got pneumonia?

While I was waiting for the antibiotics, the builder texted asking for some money to buy the shower screen glass. I told him to meet me at the vet and ran outside with a syringe in one hand and a wad of cash in the other, which I passed through his car window.

It didn’t look like we were doing a drug deal in the Petbarn carpark AT ALL …

That was my Friday. It was all happening.

On Saturday, I went to a Mexican-themed 60th around the corner from DD’s place, where I merrily drank margaritas and Moet.

That may explain why I felt a little bilious on Sunday morning. I woke up thinking I was ravenous, but when the dish pictured below was placed in front of me, my stomach went a bit funny.

I struggled gamely through about half of it because I hate waste and it wasn’t cheap – due to the fancy surroundings and smoked salmon – but I eventually admitted defeat and pushed my plate away.

Mind you, I often find breakfast menus a bit challenging, even when I haven’t mixed margaritas and Moet the night before. Eggs can go either way with me, I can do the occasional bacon and egg roll or breakfast burrito, but I am sooooo not an omelette kind of gal. Roil.

I took my mind off my nausea by going to Kmart, where I bought two custhions that look AWESOME on my new sofa:

Then I resurrected my appetite by having soup dumplings and Diet Coke for lunch with the eldest, before backing up for a chardy and pork roast for dinner with DD at our local.