It's curtains for me

This may look suspiciously like yesterday's blip, but it isn't the same at all. What it is though, is another demonstration of how far my purpliciousness extends; i.e. all the way to the hall. Lady Marchmont is in part to blame for this shot - or rather, her amusement at my admission yesterday had encouraged me to stop putting this task off & finally take out a needle & thread to hem this curtain. I'd like to blame my tardiness on cognitive damage, & I can't deny that my problems with concentration & distractibility have made it significantly harder for me to knuckle down to things, but in truth I had long ago refined the art of procrastination & am renowned for my inability to 'follow through'; I'm great at starting projects, but absolutely terrible at finishing them off - a classic example (& one which it took me a while to live down) being the curtains-before-last in the lounge at our old place: these were full-length curtains which I made a decade or so ago, but never 'quite' got around to finishing the hems on; then, when they were taken down for washing, we found that the pins had rusted into the material!

With this in mind, I was determined that the same fate was not going to befall our new front door curtain - not least because the fabric was so flaming expensive; and so rather than risk pinning the hem & then running out of energy/losing interest until the pins had gone rusty, I decided to go for the 'artful drape' look, which basically meant about a foot of surplus material trailing across the floor waiting to trip up unwary callers. And that's how it's been for the past 3½ months; I did wonder if Jack might have prompted me into prematurely (for me) finishing off the curtain, but whenever he goes near the front door he's usually too busy barking to notice any trailing threads. But, much as I didn't relish hemming the curtain, it was a marginally more appealing task than the dreaded 'sorting the craft stuff', & had therefore been bumped up the list as one of the things I could/should do before tackling that; I am gradually running out of excuses not to do it (even the filing had taken precedence), but, Lady M, with one more job ticked off the list, it shouldn't be much longer before I am blipping those craft boxes ;-)

Things we've learned about Jack:
He's almost (but not quite) as stubborn & determined as hubby & I can be. We're still having a problem with his anxiety/jealousy whenever we show any affection to one another, & frankly, it's beginning to get a bit wearing. I suppose we're partly at fault for not being firmer with him from the outset, but instead - in order to avoid conflict with Jack - our cuddle ration has gone down; we may grab a quick hug, but as soon as Jack moves in on the action we've simply been moving apart. But this situation couldn't continue, & so today, when we sat down together on the sofa, we were armed with a pocketful of training treats, & a determination that Jack was not going to get in on what little action there was. He knew there were some treats to be had, but couldn't quite work out what he had to do in order to earn one, & in any case kept getting distracted by seeing us move closer together, at which point he tried his utmost to join us (or rather, to part us). First he'd try to climb up on my lap, then when I pushed him down he would try hubby's lap, & when that didn't work he decided to approach us by climbing up on the other end of the sofa; so we put the coffee table against the sofa so he couldn't climb up that end, & he tried wriggling underneath it, & then sat at the far end of the table with his chin resting on it, giving us his most appealing look. And when his soulful eyes didn't do the trick, back he would come to my side. This went on for a good twenty minutes, with both of us using our sternest voices to order him "Down", whilst at the same time trying to stifle our giggles at the many ruses he came up with to try & join us. In the end I think he must have got bored, because he did finally stop pestering, & simply sat down beside the sofa, at which point he was given a treat. And being food motivated, he then thought that all he had to do was to walk around a bit, come back & sit beside us, & each time he did this he would get another treat. Nice try Jack! But we are feeling vaguely confident that we may have made a breakthrough with that particular problem.