Oops

Well there's no point with the usual "i'vebeeneversobusy"spiel, I'm clearly pretty useless when it comes to updating anything.

So we'll just get straight to the point.

Molly is still around, but her training is (still) on hold. I'm the person to blame, just haven't found the energy/time/effort/motivation/time/patience/time. I feel like I've lost the contact, she doesn't respond to my calls (=yells) and I have less patience for her tricks. I seem to be out of the house a lot more, as well, which means I'm not the boss of her anymore. P only has to look at Molly and she's sitting, lying down, baking a cake and cleaning the toilet. All I get is a cheeky glance and a view of a small tail disappearing into the woods. I do think I could get her back if I just had the time. But by the time I get home, I've got two kids screaming for attention so the poor pup is left with nothing.

And as I've mentioned a million times, for a dog of her age, she is brilliant.

We went away for ten days so we had to find a carer for Molly. The care was divided between two places. With the first lot of people, I thought it was going to be nightmarish, Molly wouldn't stop barking when ever they came to our house. But eventually, she surprised me and behaved. It was nice to hear that Molly and the two-year old boy had become best friends, napping on the sofa together.
For the remaining holiday, Molly stayed with people she knew, very well so that went smoothly. Now whether any of the humans slept with her pestering is another matter (she wouldn't sleep alone and made this very clear) but she seemed happy and made herself quite at home, completely taking over the balcony. It was a relief to be able to leave her with familiar people, a dog hotel would have destroyed the tiny amount of courage and confidence she has been able to muster in the last few months.

Tiredness and exhaustion have very much been the issue lately and there has been no time for grooming. To be honest, I don't even brush the kids hair, let alone the dog's. Molly's fine puppy hair was just beginning to change into thicker, proper coat as we left her, and she was already a tangled mess. So coming back to a matted lump was hardly a surprise. What followed was four hours of painstaking trimming, the thick mat of hair was like felt in some places, and I had to cut it off hair by hair. Now she looks like a cancer patient, even though I did try to cut it shorter everywhere else, too. No photos here, it wouldn't be fair.

And yes, I know, you're not supposed to trim Havaneses, but she is not a show dog, nor will she ever be, with her bulldog underbite and crappy owners. So comfort and ease came first. Her new horrendous hairdo coincided with the hottest summer ever, so I'm sure she was happy enough to get rid of her blanket. And as an added bonus, it's a lot easier to notice any critters or creepy crawlies hanging onto her. She's already been attacked by ticks several times and they've had a chance to grow to disgusting dimensions before I spotted them. I hate unscrewing them from the skin and watching them claw the air with their horrible little feet. The idea alone makes me itchy.

So what else. Eli. The trip went well, it was the first proper holiday after the big D diagnosis. I got a fantastic pouch to keep the insulin cool (by Frio, shameless product placement here. Unpaid, may I add.), and stocked up on the needles, cartridges, strips, the lot.
I also brought about four thousand documents with us, just to make sure there would be no problems with the sacks of needles we had to carry in our hand luggage. But no one wanted to see them, they could have not cared less about the super sharp spare syringes I unloaded onto the x-ray trays. They did insist on strip searching both of my children, made them take their shoes off and everything.

We only travelled to the UK and the Isle of Man, so finding suitable snacks and foods wasn't exactly difficult. Heinz does similar fruit pouches we use at home for night time hypos so even that was sorted. Eli was quite upset that you can't get the same range of glucose tablets in crappy old Finland as you do in the UK.
Being there reminded me how different it can be, to be actually treated like a human being: Finnish people could be called sullen, short or plain rude.
I also miss the chemists in the UK, it was great being able to take Mae to the nearest pharmacist and ask for help when her eye got infected. The pharmacist spoke to her for a couple of minutes (and she replied!), gave me some eye drops with instructions and a chocolate for Mae, after she'd promised not to rub the eye. In Finland, to get the drops (only available on prescription) would have required four hours of queuing at the health centre with a bunch of coughing, spluttering, vomiting, ill people, a grumpy nod from a doctor, who would have prescribed the eye drops without looking at the girl and some more queuing with our ill friends from the health centre, but this time at the chemist's.

Eli's diabetes is now at a stage where it makes absolutely no sense. I suppose it  never does. But all the changes with the insulins, and the fact he is a growing boy, are making it impossible to estimate anything anymore. Hypos, hypers, whatever we do. NovoRapid seems to cause weird energy peaks, he has five-minute spells of ADHD. Our boy is normally extremely calm so it's a tad scary when he goes on a ten minute trash-and-run after every meal/insulin dose.

The MiniMed was great as it helped us to estimate where the levels were going. So it was possible to prevent most extremes. Eli loved it too, he's five and into gadgets, after all. He was proudly showing it off to people and wore the meter everywhere, including strapped around his head ninja style. Here he is leaving the clinic with all the stuff. It's a shame he couldn't keep it, but we'll definitely keep begging for one so maybe, one day...