It has been SOOOOOOOoooooooooo busy around here.

Firstly, 2 litters of pigs in 2 days.

Sadly, Trouble died last night. I held her as she did.

In the space of 2 hours (We were feeding them 2 hourly), she went downhill. She was under a lamp, yet losing body heat.

I wrapped her in polar fleece and stuck her under my sweatshirt. She was nice and warm, but I think had a widdle pneumonia (Very common in these situations)

So we are down to the last piglet, Squeaky.

Here is the last photo we took of the piglets together. We saw this and it was so cute, even though we knew Trouble was in trouble, we had to get out the camera.

Squeaky had her trotter around Trouble.  A real awwww moment.

As Trouble was dying, a song popped into my head. Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust.’

And another one gone, and another one gone, another one bites the dust.

We have a painter here at the moment finishing some paint work. I also have the builder finishing some bits and building some pantry doors in the kitchen.

The kitchen is 90% finished. All we need to do is tile and put an extractor fan in.

We still need the wardrobes finished, and two more rooms painted, and then we will be COMPLETED. Then I can focus on the flooring.

We have decided on carpet in the bedrooms, but all the open areas will have fake floorboards. The amount of dirt that is brought in, I think carpet would be trashed in 5 minutes. And this way, if livestock need to come inside, it won’t be such a big deal.

And in latest news, the grandmother we were supporting by doing respite care is going to be keeping her grandchild. CYFS have decided that she can keep her as long as she has more supports in place. They acknowledged that alot of agencies will not work with her and have had very, VERY negative experiences with her, and that she is to comply.

I refused to go to the meeting as I refuse to be in the same room as her. She tried to slander me, and Mr S told her if she continued to speak about me like that, she would be talking to our lawyer. She accused me of a NUMBER of falsehoods. This is why I chose not to go. I could not have rationally answered them. Mr S spoke on our behalf.

The child’s father did not turn up. It became apparent to us that he was unwilling to take her full time.  So I guess she had nowhere to go. So might as well stay where she is. I am thinking that is what was going through CYFS mind anyway.

We had passed on the answerphone messages we had to the authorities. VILE, VILE, VILE, abusive messages. My stomach turns just thinking about them.

I am satisfied we did all we could to support this family. It hurts that things have been twisted to the point where the grandmother tried to do a character assination.  I know I was dealing with an extremely manipulative woman and I am proud of myself in that I didn’t crumble or have the life sucked out of me as I have in the past. Not to say that it has been one big joy ride either. I have been VERY fortunate in that I have had the support of some loving friends and the support of teh friends with, punctuation, issues?

I am also thankful, that for all his foibles, Mr S will not have a bad word spoken about me, whether it be true or not. He takes no prisoners when it comes to people speaking ill of his wife.

We received alot of praise from other areas, so the only person who was buying into the grandmother’s lies was (and to quote Mr S) ’some weird woman who looked like she was single, owned alot of cats, and wasn’t quite right.’  I think I can live with that.

I just want to put this all behind me now, and move forward with my family.

I am meeting a fellow lifestyle blocker today. Someone from a forum I belong to. She lives about 20 minutes away from me.

So that is a brief catch up of what has been happening behind the scenes here.