The joy of earplugs

I finally gave in to increasing levels of sleep deprivation, closed all the doors in the house, put in earplugs and let foster Ruggie just bark to himself downstairs last night.  (Ruggie cannot or will not walk up stairs, and disapproves of everyone but the cats vanishing upstairs for the entire night.)

Even with earplugs in I can still just about hear him, but  I feel SO MUCH MORE HUMAN for having slept a full night in bed.  I don't think he barked the whole night, and when I came down, he seemed excited but not hugely distressed.  I would never let a sighthound bark on and on like that, but I can't imagine a sighthound randomly barking for hours without being severely distressed, whereas it almost seems like Ruggie's default state is either asleep or barking!  ( I don't think anyone outside the house can hear him, it's doubleglazed and our neighbours are not right next to us. )  Also, I could probably carry a sighthound upstairs if I needed to.  Though now I think of it, foster Bob didn't like being upstairs and we had a bed for him in the hall.  He didn't bark all night though!

Ruggie's off to his new home on Monday, barring any last-minute glitches. New owners have a bungalow and their other golden retrievers sleep in the bedroom, so they are used to it! 

The middles of picture frame card mounts

A few months back I was at the recycling centre with some boxes, and happened to notice that the cardboard recycling skip was full of large rectangular pieces of what looked like cardboard picture mounts - ie, the middle bit that gets cut out of the mount when you have something framed.    I became enamoured of them and grabbed a huge pile of them out of the skip (what?  I put other cardboard in the skip!  The Cardboard-eating Skip Monster does not go hungry on my account!)

Anyway, I have been drawing on these cardboard rectangles, and they are excellent.  You don't have the bits of paper flopping about like with a sketchbook, they are light, and yet quite rigid so you don't need to put them on top of anything to support them, you can draw with one on your lap.  They aren't all quite the same size and proportions, but that's fine, I don't mind.  They have the odd pencil squiggle on them, but I can rub that out, and they take paint well so I can also overpaint them.

I don't even know what these things are called, let alone how to get more of them.  I'm wondering if I called a picture framing shop and asked if they had any middles, they'd think I was mad.

In other news, I hate writing proposals, and will apparently do almost anything to avoid finishing this one.  Writing proposals is THE WORST.