A year living with a bitch.

(yes, that's another Penny post but I promise it will be the last one for some time)

Around this time of the year, last year, I agreed with JJ to completely change our lives and introduce a new four legged member to our family! After a couple of visits to the Battersea dog and cats home, while I was at work, JJ brought home, our little Penny. Oh, no. Don’t get it wrong. Both of us had met Penny beforehand, just on the day of her ‘release’ I was at work.

 

I can’t say I completely knew what I was getting myself into back then. The first couple of nights I didn’t sleep at all. I was worried about her and kept stressing out on every little noise heard from the room where her bed is. The first morning I had to leave her alone to go to work, I felt so bad for abandoning her in the new strange house.

Since then, lots of things have changed. We are now all used to a new weekly routine. Penny being (mostly) a Jack Russell, she’s full of energy and requires more than 2 walks a day. It’s really not easy to make that dog tired, I’m telling you. It’s a good exercise for us as well though. At least we have a really nice massive park close by, that we can easily visit.

We’ve also found and successfully tested places for her to stay over while we’re away on holiday. There’s a couple that JJ knows through work that have a dog (Penny’s boyfriend). We look after him when they are away and vice versa. The dogs really get along so well! There’s also a ‘dog hotel’ we found with a couple looking after a small number of dogs in their own house. It’s much better than kennels. Being able to go away on holidays was something that worried me and I’m happy we’ve sorted it out.

In general, Penny makes both me and JJ so happy. It’s so great having a dog that is always so happy to see you and our bond is getting stronger by the day. 

New beginnings?

I’m not really sure where to start. I can’t even remember where I left it off. So, bear with me till I figure this out. This is the fourth or fifth attempt at beginning to write this. I have even finished two other posts during the last month that I didn’t upload. I don’t really know why. At one hand, I miss writing. At another, I don’t want to write a couple of posts and then fail to continue. Anyway, I will keep on writing and see where this leads.

 Please? Give me a treat or take me for a walk! Anything will do

The thought crossed my mind of leaving blogger and moving to another platform. I could really start fresh and create a site on either tumblr or wordpress. From what I can see though, tumblr is mostly used to share things (images, videos, gifs) and for small posts. I think it’s very easy to use but it has a ‘tweeter’ and pinterest feel to it. Wordpress is something I’d like to investigate. My main problem is of course continuity. I wouldn't like to lose my previous posts and being able to refer to them. Yes, I can simply create simple links to blogger from wordpress, but I’d like to ask you whether there is a way to do something better? Have any of you moved from blogger to wordpress?

Having a coffee with the acropolis as our background.

Generally, we’re all doing great. I started a new job a bit more than a month ago in the City that I really enjoy. I managed to find something that pays better, but demands less. I’m not managing a team anymore which is weird because I kind of miss being part of the decision making team and mentoring people. But I lead a far less stressful life. I no longer spend my working days in long meaningless meetings but still stay long hours and work weekends to keep up with demanding projects. And talking about being underpaid; the role I am now is in theory more junior, but still pays better than before.

JJ was the one that commented the difference the change of jobs did to me. We were in a coffee place where the service wasn't the best and the food we were served was slightly burnt. I didn’t really make a fuss about it. I got slightly annoyed but got over it quite quickly. JJ said that if the same incident happened a couple of weeks earlier, it would have annoyed me much more. I don’t think I had anger management issues, but a stressful work life is definitely reflected on someone’s everyday life. I’m happy to say that I’m in a much happier place now. I feel a bit sorry for JJ having to put up with me, really.

Speaking of which, JJ is doing very well, so does our little Penny. Next month, it will be a whole year that she will be living with us and it’s been amazing. She’s the best dog in the world (yes, the whole world). She’s been so much easier than I feared she would be. We even managed to sort her out during some small holidays we had earlier this year.

hablas español ? ελληνικά?

Apart from all the construction works, the barking and coming and going of people, there’s a weird notion going on in my house. Both JJ and I are in the process of studying a new foreign language! JJ decided to study Greek and I decided to study Spanish! Between the two of us, we speak 5 languages! Fine, we have English in common, but I don’t think we’re doing badly. After the courses, we’ll be able to communicate in (alphabetic order) Afrikaans, English, Greek, French and Spanish.

JJ wanted to learn to speak Greek for some time now. At first he started a Rosetta Stone course some years ago. But he had some issues with his laptop and the whole we-need-to-buy-a-house malarkey happened and he stopped it. This time around he found a course in the London Hellenic centre. Most of his colleagues are people who are in relationship with a Greek and want to meet the family!

Unfortunately for him, Greek is not an easy language. The alphabet and the phonemes are different and can be complicated. The only good thing is that after you’ve learnt them, you can read any given word. In Greek what you see, is what you can read. A bit like Italian, although a bit more complicated. The bad thing is that even if you can read a word, it doesn’t mean you can easily find its meaning. I can help him though (duh).

For me the decision to learn Spanish was a bit out of the blue. A very good friend of mine found some discount vouchers for foreign languages courses. It could have been Italian, French, German or Spanish. She knows German and I know French, so the logical option was Spanish. I don’t have anything against Italian, but between the two, Spanish sounds to me a little bit nicer and more useful.

Since there are discount vouchers included in the deal, to be honest, I don’t have tremendous high expectations for the quality of the course. My only hope is that they’d like to do a good job, so that we stay for the next level and pay the full price then. But in any case, I’ll try to enjoy the experience. The last time I studied a foreign language in a classroom was the year before my university graduation, more than a decade ago, for my DALF (iplôme approfondi de langue française) which I enjoyed tremendously.

Do you think Penny will be even more confused if we spoke to her in 5 languages?

She's bored already...