Up The Farway Tree

I am so glad it's the weekend - I don't think I have quite caught up with lost sleep from last weekend yet!  It's been a fairly busy week as I am still taking a PBL group on my two days off at the moment.  I am enjoying it though and it gives me a nice contrast to psychiatry work.  I just got my students feedback from the last group I facilitated and I was really pleased with the comments and ratings.  Everything is rated on a 1-5 scale and they all gave me an overall 5 for facilitating and some really nice comments.  The only negative comment was that as a group they tended to rely on me too much, so I have taken that on board for this group and am trying to sit back more  - although I suspect they will then say that I don't help them enough! 

Seb seems to have forgiven me now for leaving him again last weekend.   He apparently spent most of the weekend lying in the hall looking at the front door.  Poor wee man!  To be fair he should appreciate me though - I mean, I saved his life last week.  I had to do the Heimlich manoeuvre on him.  Seriously.  He was getting wired into his dinner at high speed and I was in the kitchen with music playing.  I then became aware of this spluttering noise and realised he was choking on his dinner (which is dry dog food).   I gave him a couple of sharp slaps between the shoulder blades first but he continued to choke, so I turned him upside down and pressed sharply upwards on his stomach towards his ribcage - with that a big clump of dried dog food shot out his mouth!!   He looked a bit dazed for a moment but then went straight back to his dinner and started munching away again  - not even a thank you for saving his life!   I had read that you could do the Heimlich on dogs (was researching this after he nearly choked on a pigs ear once) but didn't really think it would work.   I think Seb is more like a cat with nine lives..

This weekend we can hopefully plant some vegetables in the garden.  Andrew spent all last weekend clearing up in the garden and digging the beds but he didn't plant anything because there was a frost forecast.   I can't believe it is May and we still had frost!  Today has been really sunny but it was still only 11c!  All the plants in the garden are lagging behind this year and quite a few don't seem to have survived the long winter so I really hope it starts getting warmer soon.  Having a taste of sunshine in Florida has made me even more impatient for summer coming round :-)