Day 3 of the three weeks started off without any incidence of significance. Well technically the "day" on the Jewish calendar begins and ends at sunset, so starting from sunset last night the day began with no significant incidents. We had dinner, changed Sally's bandages as usual, attended to her other needs without too much fuss, and went to bed.... woke up this morning and well there was a minor incidence. I wake up 5AM to get ready for work, and at this time of year it is dark, indeed it stays dark until about 7AM when I normally arrive at work. Anyway I try to wake up Sally so I can get her brekkie, help with any bandages and other things, making sure she has her lunch ready in the cooler bag, and etc, before I go to work.  Sometimes it is difficult to wake her up, sometimes kicks up a lot of fuss about being woken up, but I had always managed to wake her up with time to spare for me to get to work on time. However this morning for the first time since the start of the health issues I could not wake her up! Nothing I did woke her up, at times opening her eyes only to close them again...... so in the end I gave up, and I was late for work. But being school holidays it wasn't such a big deal, and we do have flexi-time so can arrive at work between 7AM and 9:30AM, as long as we work an average of 7.5 hours each day. So being late for work this morning was nothing more than a minor inconvenience and would hardly count as an "incidence". I mentioned this only because this is the first time it happened.

And so the day went reasonably well, nothing much happening due to school holidays, so enjoyed a quiet day. So I thought day 3 was an uneventful day - until I pulled into my driveway after driving home from work only to discover that I had forgotten my bag of sweets - chocolates, cookies, and other treats that I nibble on through the day. This is the first time I had forgotten it, and since I had left it at work I can pretty well kiss it goodbye, cos when I arrive at work tomorrow morning, I will find that the rats will have helped themselves to a free meal overnight at my expense!! We never leave our food at work. On occasion I had left perhaps a bar of chocolate at work, or a packet of cookies, and always by the next day the rats had helped themselves to it, even when the packet is unopened - the rats always find a way to chew through the packaging and to get to the food. This happens nomatter where I leave them, the rats will always find a way to get to them. So for the past few months I have two of the recycle shopping bags, one containing various items for work, the other containing my sweets. I take them to work each day, and I bring both home from work each day.

But today for the first time ever, and for unexplained reasons, in spite of the fact that the two bags are always kept together, I had picked up only the work bag and not the sweets bag. And I was blissfully unaware of this lapse in concentrating even as I took the bag out to the car, and I drove on home with the bag next to me. It was not until I had gotten home and went to pick up the bag that it struck me I had left the sweets bag at work containing about $20 worth of goodies. So I now accept that I can kiss those goodies goodbye as the rats will have overnight helped themselves to $20 worth of goodies.

So it goes to prove that nothing can be done about the curse of the three weeks. It will always hit you one way or the other even when we thought we had escaped from it.