28th Jan

 Sleep schedule is fucked. As per usual. How fucked ?

So yesterday I stayed up until just after midday.

First thing in the morning me and Athena had a nice walk around Mousehold. I dropped her off, picked up her meds and did a small amount of groceries.

Came back, fed Athena, fed me, chilled and went to sleep for a nap....

And woke up 12 hours later. 00.45 AM.

Sigh. Ok. Whatever.

Despite the fuckery, yesterday was an alright day.

I was going to head out to the vets pick up the meds and do some groceries. But Athena was happy and bouncy and wanted to come with me. So. Change of plans. I took her for a walk first.

We don't typically do bright and early morning walks. Pretty rare in our 13 years of travels together. So we're not part of the morning scene. Yesterday I decided we'd go to mousehold.

Oh boy.

So many dog walkers. So many people. The place was packed. I got the last spot in the car park.

It didn't help that as I turned up, a larping group were assembling. At least, what I took to be a larping group. I was curious. One middle aged dude was on his own out the back of his car with what was clearly the most enormous goddamn shield I had ever seen. I asked him if he was larping. Yes he said ! Do you do it yourself ? And we had a nice chat about it. It was cool, and good for my soul as I've been pretty much not talking to anyone of late. As we left the larpers were still there getting ready - an hour later ( yikes ! ). This time they were pretty much all in their gear. Some of it was hella fancy. One girl had a lovely set of layered leather armour, fancy black hair and fairly convincing elf ears on. Swoon. 5 minutes after leaving the car park I debated whether I should have told her she looked awesome. I probably should have. But didn't.

The dude I had been talking to had a full on set of metal plate armour. Holy crap. Impressive. And expensive. Serious larping. He looked awesome too. But. Perhaps just a tad over the top. But then, that's just probably my aesthetics, I imagine more grunge than bling. It crossed my mind that as cool as they all looked, they as a unit all looked too clean, too well dressed, too immaculately put together. Some mud, a few holes, a tear, and some ragged stitching would have broken it all up into a smear of more medieval out in the fields type gear. But again. Just my aesthetics. I am not one for the bright and shiny perfect high fantasy malarkey.

We also met a metric tonne of doggos on our walk. So many puppies. More than one gleefully bounced up to Athena and proceeded the play with me dance. Athena for her part was just, huh, yeah, no. Friendly. But no bouncing. She was the biggest dog on the heath, so many smaller doggos. No problems. One minor yappy little un that yapped at everything going past. But. All very well behaved mutts other than that. Much mutual sniffing was had. Athena is like the perfect senior citizen. Patient. Doesn't react to barks. Chilled. Good for littluns to practice their social skills on.

I had a few chats with fellow dog owners. One woman gushed about older dogs and was amazed at Athena doing so well.

You meet a lot of friendly people in the doggo community. And people are inclined to just stop and chat. Dogs. As it turns out. Are high order ice breakers.

So the walk was lovely overall. Freezing. But lovely.