Here's a picture of a Sparrowhawk (least I think it is) which kindly landed just outside the window yesterday. Quick as a flash I grabbed my camera thinking it would be well gone by the time I switched it on and faffed about. It was still there though and I managed to get a couple of shots before I knocked on the window to scare it off. If you click on the photo and then again it magnifies the pictures quite well. Couldn't get very clear shots through the window though because it was streaming with rain and also there was dog saliva all over the window cos our dogs spend their lives sat there.

In that hedge live loads of sparrows. They pop their little heads out through the top and sides when it stops raining or in the evenings when they're looking to see if there's anything yummy on the bird table. In the spring when the blackbirds have had their babies you can often here the parents alarmed calls and the whole of bird life goes silent. Usually it's one of these sparrowhawks that's caused all the trouble. I've seen them land in our garden with their prey and rip the babies to bits - it's so sad.

Well kind of wishing I'd never started the tale now. So to cut a very long story very short, basically the courtesy car saga went on most of the afternoon with far too many fingers in the pie and no one communicating with each other. Conflicting messages suggested that at one point two cars may well arrive at once and all this with a Job interview on the horizon at 4.00pm.

At 3.30pm my daughter had a mini breakdown. She could cope no more. With racking sobs she told the agency that she couldn't possibly attend an interview after such a bummer of a day, to which the reply came "which do you want, a job or a car". So she put on a smile just one more time and off we went to the interview. Which was good cos it went really well and she would love the job, the money is good and it's not too far from home. So fingers crossed. She also mentioned just bye the way that she had a quick game of table tennis whilst she was there Don't Ask!! Just like Bridget Jones - always living on the edge of reason.

Little Mut spent well over an hour hanging around waiting at the vets. She perked up a bit while she was there and passed the time by chewing on the string that held the door shut on the box of a cat. Luckily she was noticed before she erm let the cat out of the bag so to speak. She has certainly made up for everything today. She's starving hungry, has drunk like a fish and now seems to have no control over her bladder whatsoever. Hope this soon improves as otherwise my house is going to smell like a zoo. Well I'm off to work on Monday - for a well earned rest.

OMG. Do you ever get up totally oblivious to what lurks, hiding just around the corner. You creep out of bed, shuffle downstairs expecting today to be just like any other - WOW, HOW WRONG CAN YOU BE. Today I and more so my daughter have had a day from hell. It can never be said that life is ooh um, unchallenging in this house. This could be long.. at times confusing....... so hang on in there.

Ok, so gets up this morning around 7.00ish with the idea that I'll nip back to bed for half an hour and read my book then get up and do the VAT. Little Mut didn't get up to say hello. She looked at me dolefully from her bed. I made a drink, she didn't come in to wait for her breakfast. I had a ciggie. Then she got up and wee'd in the kitchen. Eek, it was full of blood. I let her out and she squatted some more. More blood. OMG my little baby is poorly. She went back to bed looking very sorry for herself. I was worried now. Decided to stay up and get dressed etc. There was no way I could work. After I got dressed she went out again for another wee, again full of blood. So instead of working I trailed around angst ridden and scared. My baby! Have her kidneys packed up, will she...die? . I read my book a bit but couldn't concentrate it was only 8.30am and the vets didn't open til 10.00. So I washed some clothes.

My daughter came home at 10.30. She had the day off work for a very tight schedule of going to a Physio appointment from when she injured her knee the other week, a job interview, as she is redundant as from Tuesday next week. She was having her car picked up for repair from the accident she had the other week and was supposed to be having a courtesy car delivered at 12.00. I told her about my poorly dog. She gave her a cuddle and then Little Mut got up and promptly wee'd again, really bloody!!! So I ran around again headless chicken style, desperately trying to ring the vets who were supposed to open at 10.00 but were failing to answer the phone. I finally got through at 11.00. I told the receptionist and she said it was probably cystitis. I felt a little relieved when she said she would be fine to wait until an appointment at 5.00pm. (she obviously didn't share my view that Little Mut was about to ahem, sshh..... die) She laughed as she said a 'sample' would be really helpful if we could manage to catch one. So I went off to the Doctors to pick up my prescription and to lie to the receptionist about needing a sample container for a hospital appointment next week. Well, what else was I supposed to use.

When I got back my daughter said she had just lain on her bed. She wouldn't drink anything. She had not had a drink all morning and she kept bleeding and I was scared that she would get dehydrated and have to go on a drip. I realised just how much I love that bloody dog. (oops pardon the pun, it wasn't meant to be).

Anyways it got to 12.30pm and no sign of any courtesy car, nor any sign of anyone picking up my daughters car. She was pondering what she was gonna do. If I took her to her physio appointment then they might come to pick up her car and there would be no one in. (Plus I thought, I would have to leave my baby at home all poorly sick and alone). She rang the insurance to ask where her car was. They replied that until the garage picked up her damaged car she couldn't have the courtesy car because she is not allowed to have them both in her possession at the same time.

"So why did the person I spoke to promise me a car for 12.00" she asked. I don't know that came the reply. It wasn't me you spoke to. Her phone then went off. Each and every conversation on that mobile today have been cut short cos it's a dodgy phone. There have been many, many calls throughout the day. It was a cast off phone she borrowed from her boyfriend. Her own phone she dropped down the toilet last week when she was out on the town!!!. She didn't know it was down the toilet until she realised she didn't have it with her. She went back in the toilets to look for it and found it there in the bowl staring up at her - drowned and dead. She then read the insurance policy she had been paying £10 per month for to find it had a £50 excess on it. Bloody cheek. Fancy putting an excess on phone insurance.

Y'know I'm going to continue this tomorrow, cos I don't know about you but I'm getting quite bored now. So until tomorrow........

Not much to say of late. Last comments on the thyroid front, now feeling so much better. Don't know whether it's the thyroid tablets or the beta blockers but I have a spring in my step again. No more elephant legs. I even stomped back to the car from work today without even noticing it's all up hill. I was supposed to do something at work and I chickened out. I was so annoyed with myself that I just marched up the hill and was at the car lightening fast.

Currently reading Simply Heaven by Serena Mackesy. Highly recommend it, it's a real page turner. It's about an Australian who marries an English aristocrat, only she doesn't know that when she marries him. She goes to live at his ancient family home, where his Mother and Grandmother rule the roost. It's funny in many parts but with a dark, creepy undertone. I read The Temp also by Serena Mackesy about a year ago and loved that too.

Oh well I'm off to bed now to carry on reading.

Here is a picture of our pup, snuggling up in her lovely new bed. It's a bit big but I'm sure she'll grow into it.

However.........when the cats away so to speak, well why not test it out. It takes two baby.....

So here we go then, my diet. I've been losing weight effortlessly this last few weeks, the only good thing about this thyroid problem - the weight has just dropped off me - yay!! I'm not quite sure how much but at some point late last year I remember weighing myself and leaping off the scales in horror never to go near them again. I have definitely dropped down a dress size. I only wear trousers for work, the rest of the time I slob around in jeans. Each week I'd put on my trousers for work and they seemed to have got bigger from the previous week. This went on for about 3 weeks when they then just looked ridiculous and I had to keep pulling them up.

I am still losing weight, around two or three pounds every week, sadly though I'm now on tablets to right my thyroid, sometime soon they're going to kick in and stabilise my metabolism. Which means my body will soon notice that I don't actually go running a marathon every day but instead spend most of my time sat on my bum. So as I now weigh less than I have for a very long time, I decided to curb my eating and try to eat sensibly, go to the gym maybe. So - what have I eaten today then?

Breakfast consists of a few branflakes to line the bottom of my bowl, add a good sprinkling of fruit and nut mini shreddies, top off with a sprinkling of bran (the worm like cereal), throw a few sultanas on top, splash with lots of cold milk (semi-skimmed of course), and a half teaspoon of sugar chucked on top - mmm yummy.

Already probably the 500 calories used up to become a size zero. Never mind.

10.30am'ish had a slice of granary bread with spread. Handful of grapes.

12.30- Lunch - half a can of beans on one piece of granary bread toast, plus a granary bread piece of bread.

1.30 Husband appears with easter egg which he had hidden from the prying fingers of my two kids. Want half a twix? he coaxed. Oh go on then - why not? I would usually have eaten both fingers of twix.

3.00 - bored - chomped on a few more grapes.

5.00pm - Erm Fish in breadcrumbs, um a few oven chips with a few spiced wedges thrown in and tin peas. Oh and a stray piece of granary bread left over from lunch that was looking ever so lonely.

9.00pm. Decisions, Decisions. What shall I have - one gorgeous chunky chocolate chip cookie, or a Penguin, or a Muller Lite or a piece of toast (nooo, already eaten far too much bread today) or some tin fruit with any naughty syrup drained off. I went for the fruit, so my husband joined me which meant he opened a can of evaporated milk - ohhh yummy, yummy I lurve Evap. Milk. So I ended up with one pineapple ring, a third of a can of fruit salad and oooh naughty but nice - just a quick drip from the evap. can.

So how many calories do you reckon? Don't ask me - I haven't a clue but I have definitely cut down on my eating - honest. I would have had the biscuit and a piece of toast and possibly a penguin too. I would have had lots of evap milk on my fruit instead of the tiny drop I had. I would have drunk all the syrup from the can instead of throwing it away.
Breakfast though? I have mixed my cereal ever since the kids were little and all the bits used to get left in the bottom of the boxes. I chucked them all in a dish one day cos they were driving me mad and have never been able to eat just one cereal on it's own ever since. So I cannot give up my breakfasts, mornings just wouldn't be the same without them.

Any one watch Superslim Me on BBC 3 tonight? Dawn Porter, a really bubbly, funny character decided to try to get from a size 12 to size 0 or size 4 in the UK. Her aim - to achieve this in just 8 weeks, and lets face it there is many a celeb in this country who has dramatically slimmed down in a short space of time after having babies.

In order to do this she had to survive on just 500 calories a day and go through some tortuous exercise routines. As she desperately tried to lose this weight and stuck steadfastly to the diet she interviewed sylists, model agencies and designers to try to persuade them that girls who do this are putting their health at serious risk. None of them were interested though, they tried to make out that no one asks the models to starve themselves, on the other hand they seem to do little about it when they do.

Dawn never did make it quite to zero, proving just how much young women put themselves through who do manage to achieve it. She reminded me very much of my daughter in her personality apart from Dawn was happy in her skin and happy to be a size 12. I wish my daughter had the confidence to recognise that she is perfect as she is, although she does agree that Victoria Beckham in her skeletal form is not something to aspire to.

If you want to catch this program again, then you'll have to set your video recorder unless you burn the midnight oil, it's repeated on BBC3 in a few hours at 00.45 and again on 15 March at 03.25.

Tomorrow I'll tell you about my diet which relative to the above could probably be classed as binge eating.

My daughter makes me laugh. She asked if any one of us would be in all morning until 1.00pm tomorrow. Yes I'll be in I said. Why?

She said she was having something delivered from Argos and it would arrive tomorrow. Oh OK, I thought intrigued. "What you getting then?"

"some earrings!!"

"You're having earrings delivered" I said incredulously. I had a picture in my mind of a big Argos delivery van arriving tomorrow with a man getting out his little parcel truck and placing a tiny little box on it.

"Yes I need some earrings" she said showing me the three empty holes in each ear - "urgently".

I asked her why she was having them delivered and she did point out that she wasn't able to get out over the weekend. On Wednesday she was going running with her boyfriend when she crashed her car on the way there. Not to be deterred, once she'd exchanged insurance details, she carried on to her boyfriends. They went out running together where she dislocated her dodgy knee momentarily, but enough to bruise and tear all the ligaments surrounding it, so she was hobbling round on crutches all weekend. And the missing earrings? - all lost apart from one pair which turned her ears black.

Well I'd hardly say it was the cutest really, so it wouldn't have won by my standards. A Giant Schnauzer. And I noticed it had a docked tail . Some one told me that it is now illegal to dock puppies tails. Whether this is true or not I don't know, but I think it's wrong. I know the dog gets over it, but imagine just being born and then some one whips your tail off - ouch -, it's not very nice is it and for what? to fit in with some farty Kennel Clubs rules. Puppy dogs are meant to have tails.

The dogs have been checking out the competition tonight watching Crufts. Tess found it very interesting :

Loved it even more when she saw a dog who she thought looked just like her.

While I was taking the photos she thought it would be a good idea to attract the dogs attention and started clawing at the TV. Not good when it's an LCD. She's not a Manchester Terrier but she isn't turning out to look much like a Rottweiler either.

As for Crufts, well I'm starting to lose the will to live, I just wanna know who wins and I've been watching the bloody thing since it came on. It's dead easy to judge - a dog is either cute or it's not, all you've got to do is pick the cutest. No need to bore us all senseless for hours on end.