A blog post!

It has been a very long time since I last wrote anything on this blog. When the last of our ratties, Nyssa, died in May 2019, the focus of the blog went with her and I’ve never worked out what I want to share here instead.

I have been quite busy over on my other blog sharing all the arty crafty things I make — Crafty Rat has over a thousand posts now — but here was always about the ratties with a bit of random ranting thrown in for a change. And it’s not only here, I have no idea what to do with the various social media sites I’m signed up to either.

Back in 2020 I could have easily turned this into a health-focused blog — two diagnoses in one year would have provided ample content — but even now neither of those are widely known outside of family and I haven’t decided whether blogging about it is something I want to do.

So, what to do.

The simplest thing would be to start sharing photos here on a regular basis. Just a single image a week to start with, maybe using the Wordless Wednesday tag as motivation. I have a lot of photos, even when you ignore the ratty and crafty ones, and it would be nice to browse back through them and pick ones to share rather than leave them all languishing on my computer.

And maybe, once I’ve got into the habit of posting here again, other things will come to mind.

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Catching up

This is hard to write. I have utterly failed to keep this blog up-to-date — it was just too hard to keep writing ratty obituaries and going through photos and I felt I had to do everything in the proper order — so now we have lost our gorgeous ratty Smoak before I even introduced her to you. And both Molly and Ivy have passed on, one from a lump and the other from old age.

Over the next few days, I am going to catch up. That will mean one “Meet the Rats” and three obituaries, which is so sad, but at least there will be cute ratty pictures to help make up for it.

Right now we are left with just one ratty — Nyssa — she has a lump and is quite feisty, so I am wary of introducing new rats. We will have to find a new source anyway; the place we got our girls from no longer has ratties and the local(ish) rescue that I was thinking of going to has just relocated to Ireland. I’d rather not go on GumTree and while I feel sorry for the rats in Pets At Home, I can’t bring myself to buy from there, but I have no relationship with any breeders, so I’m not sure what we’ll do in the future.

For now, we’ll just look after Nyssa (whose photo is at the top of this post), the ratty who always insists on being the centre of attention.

Time to catch up

The first half of last year was horrible for ratty losses. The overnight decline of Rocket followed by Yori’s sudden and completely unexpected death three months later hit me hard, so when old age caught up with Rommie a month or so later I really couldn’t bring myself to write yet another obituary. And of course, until that was written, I couldn’t put out the happier news of two new arrivals — Molly and Ivy — to keep our lone survivor Quorra company.

But today I have had to make the last visit to the vet with Quorra, so it’s time to spend a few days getting caught up with the overdue posts and updating the ratties page so that all the mischief, past and present, is properly represented here.

To do list

There’s too much on my to do list and I’m pretty sure there’s other stuff that needs doing that hasn’t made it on to my to do list and my brain is so busy trying to remember what those things might be that I can’t actually focus on doing any of the things that are on there in case there are more important things that I should be doing instead.

And don’t get me started on the things that have been on my to do list for so long that they are verging on being embarrassing to actually do now. (Like the mischief status that is months overdue here!)

Catch-up

Wow… Far too long since I posted here. Longer than I thought it was. In my (partial) defence, I have been busy creating another blog for my cardmaking endeavours and that took far more time than I might have hoped. Still, it’s done now and, as much for my reference as for anyone else, I now have an archive of all the cards I made in the last eight months.

Add in much bouncing around the health service, followed by the general stress of Christmas and the New Year (not my favourite time of year) and I have completely failed to get focused enough to give you an update on Rocket and Rommie, and I’ve not even mentioned the new littlies: Quorra and Yori. So that’s two blog posts I shall be working on. And I really must take the time to try and get some decent photos of the girls as well. And update the ratties page. And…

Too easy to stop

Where did November go? And most of December while we’re at it?

And why is it so ridiculously easy to get out of the habit of writing blog posts? All I did was go visit my mum for a few days for her birthday at the start of November and that was it.

When it got to the start of December I was going to do a November catch up, but there was always something else that needed doing, and writing requires more of my attention and time than I managed to get around to committing to it.

So rather than try to put together a long catch-up post, I’m quickly writing this one instead, so that my blog has no longer been dormant for nearly two months. The equivalent of scribbling on a blank piece of paper to allow more meaningful words to flow. I hope.

New blog home

When, on 12 March last year, Posterous announced the big news that it had been acquired by Twitter, I expected the worst. The assurance that “Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption” was decidedly tempered by them saying that they would have a backup tool ready “in the coming weeks” for anyone wishing to move to another service.

However, the “coming weeks” turned into months with no updates, until on 27 December, Spaces export arrived and, although I had no immediate plan to move my blog away from Posterous, I made a backup.

Out of curiosity more than anything, I imported the backup into a WordPress blog I had never got around to using. And then, as an exercise in procrastination, faffed around with it, sorting out the tags and categories.

Which all turned out to be quite convenient really, given yesterday’s announcement that Posterous will disappear on 30 April.

So, from now on, this will be the new home for my occasional blog posts.