weekend with the inlaws maximising maiming capabilities, the knob3000 is able to inflict damage on both human parts and clothing with its multidirectional protrusions yes. it DOES shine out of her arse the F word
you know you're doing too much blog hopping when you want to go back and see what happened next - but you can't remember where you were.
I was reading someone who was complaining that a good friend of theirs had moved far far away and they were missing that friend, and that the friend was an amazing person who ran their own daycare group, and that the friend had now started a blog. So i popped on over there to read, and it was warm and funy and positive and sounded like the best daycare ever, with extra added stuff that smells and everything.
Now I can't remember where either of them were. My web history thing's not helping me at all.
Thanks for all suggestions, from baked alaska to kleenex, but knitwear was unrivalled in its application. Cardigans that can wrap you up in the dark, or take you out for a turn around the park in the brisk crunchy autumness.
(I have a new cardigan, two new sweaters, a joyful stripey scarf and some matching gloves. glvoes with really long wristy bits, so I can wave goodbye to the chilly gap between glove and jacket.)
Not sure if it's worse though. since that post this morning about doors and the photographing of same? done nothing but think about the doors in my house. and their handles. and whether thay hang straight. or close. and shit.
So THANKYOU Word Girl, for helping me not work this afternoon so I could get all angsty about doors. Which, I have to say, int he list priorities since moving ito the bloody house two years ago, have not been high on the agenda. What with the three falling down ceilings and floods at wotnot. As of today - forget the damp in the cellar, or that the play/dining/room room really could use a new roof. Forget the planning and the budgetting on those puny projects. I MUST HAVE NEW DOORS. I MUST HAVE THEM NOW.
Our house has some horrible doors. not necessarily horrible in their own right, just inappropriate, possibly. Locationally challenged, lets say. And where we have a lovely door - an old original pine door, for example - the previous owners saw fit to attach to it the Door Handle of Evil. THey stick out too far and try to bite your boob, kick your kidneys and generally maim any part of you they can reach. And this is a house of narrow hallways, which means you're pretty much covered in bruises the whole time. And. Also. they can hook themselves throguh your belt loops, or pockets, or jumper sleeves, causing you to whip around at high speed, smacking your head, dropping whatever you're carrying, ripping holes . . . .
Two years I tell you!! Two years I've been livign with these handles, and only today have they become intolerable.
We have old doors, new doors, dark doors, unstained doors, really skinny doors with high handles, really skinny doors with low no handle holes, a back door we can't use and a cat door.
A bunch of doors in fact. That I can't show you because blogger.com, repulsived by my defficient doors, is having none of this uploading photos business. Grrrrr.
Wordgirl has braved all to show us her welcome. I can almost feel the warmth of it from here, not to mention smell the pumpkins. I love the smiley yellow in the front hall.
Mostly though, I love the idea of the front porch. We don't have those here. We have front door then lobby, or front door then street, or front door then lawn. Seeing pictures of front porches in tv shows, and later as I travelled back and forth, always made me envious. They seem to afford some sort of extra protection from the outside world. A buffer zone. And a place from which to survey your kingdom. If I'm ever in the position to be able to build my own home, that's the bit I'll have designed first.
So, since I'm not dressed, here's the view of our front door from my office window. The little canopy thing is typical of houses round here in this period (1830's) and stand on tall thin legs, which once had twiddly twirly ornamental bits, but, like the rest of the period detail in this little terrace, were stripped away long before we arrived.
The front yard is pretty messy. I demolished half the privet the other day, and the bin is waiting for collection. You can see my neighbours scrunched up garden waste bags on the right. The ladders waiting for the house painters to come back and fetch them, and a bunch of shrubs which are camping out after being displaced by the scaffolding.
From under this canopy on Monday morning, the doorbell rang. I wasn't expecting anyone. I was working and the offspring was at nursery. I heard A mother and child talking, but so close were they to the front door, I couldn't see. I thought maybe we'd left something at someone's house and they were returning it, it's extremely unlikely that anyone would just drop by.
It turned out to be a Jehovah's Witness. Smiling and handing me my "personal copy" of "A Worldwide message: The End of False Religion Is Near!" (well, phew. that's a relief). See usually I have no objections to these and anyone else who wants to stop my ad save my eternal soul. It's pretty thoughtful. I smile and say thanks but no thanks and take it from there. If they start to get pushy, I'm not above shutting the door in their faces. I'm not going to start justifying my choices to anyone, let alone a stranger on the doorstep, despite their good intentions. Most people are not so tolerant.
But this young woman had a 4/5 year old child with her. Presumably her daughter. Had this child been walked up and down the street of our neighbourhood having doors slammed in her face? Even with the most sympathetic householders, has this child spent the day having door upon door clsoed to her? It made me really uncomfortable. I wanted to give her a hug and tell her she could come and play anytime. I wonder how muchshe understands about her morning out with mummy. and what her mummy tells her about all the people who don't want to play.
How to commemorate the anniversary of your official diagnosis. The absolute black and white no more denying it name of the beast. The thing that you spend 70% of all your energy ignoring, cajoling, controlling. you get so good at it, that you successfully stunt the growth and expression of all your feelings. Truss up your truths.
Is there a ribbon for that? Should I have bought balloons? What are the appropriate commemorative foodstuffs?
See, when I said I could conjure this stuff, I wasn't joking. This is the portal I log into for work. It's been portalling along perfectly adequately all morning. I stop awhile to scratch my head, trying to come up with some old investor relations tripe, and whamo, no more access.
Matters of the Heart These are for for Lildb (all jetset and wotnot)to say thankyou for the kind words and the linkage and for pulling me along behind the scenes these last weeks(there's probably only cat hair in, say, every third one!). On behalf of the unsolicited UK branch of the Chicky Chicky Lovefest, I would like to take the opportunity to say, ahem, that one holds you in most high regard and deepest affection. ahem. there.
We've been on a quick camping trip this weekend, so obviously there's been a lot of this
Highlights included the worlds largest mushroom family
These all from camera phone, so apols for kwoliti ishus.
In the spirit of Mrs Chicky's thoughts on Thanksgiving. Because i've only disovered this blogging malarky relatively recently, but already found myself hugely saddened at the prospect of 'losing people'. Which on one hand sounds ridiculous and overdramatic, but on the other, isn't.
Am mulling it all over and will get back on the subject.
What a difference a day makes. Twenty four little hours. This time yesterday I was minus 7. Tonight I’m nearly plus 7. Tonight I think I have the world in my thrall and maybe I don’t need that appointment I made. But I am older and wiser. And I have good friends who are even older and wiser than me. And they know how this song goes. And they can hear it bars and bars before I even notice that I’ve been humming along. Discretely complicit. The lyric change, but the story rarely differs. It calls me to familiar ground. Safe territory that’s anything but. It says you can’t. you’re broken., unfit for purpose. Fraud. It cajoles you into giving life a wide berth. Smug and secure that the bulls horns remain ungrasped. Well, boy, do I have a surprise for you, mr bipolar ballad. Hah! We are no longer on the same page. You can loop yourself around my ears – the most alluring baubles. I may even join in for a verse or two, but I’m no longer in your regular bookable chorus. I quit the choir.
Musical analogies ensue. Feel free to add your own . . .
Compose yourself. Make the most of the music that it yours, til it soars. And something about blending high notes with low notes. Keep ascending, don’t compete, compose. (bit from Follies)
Things you never knew about me. I love show tunes. Love em. Your Rodgers and Hammerstein, your kander and ebb – the lot. (I booked tickets for Wicked as I walked past the theatre tonight – any show that rhymes loathing with clothing, is ok by me!). People wonder why the offspring is so articulate? Try playing Sondheim from the womb and see how yours turn out!
Wish I had my laptop and could post this right now. Then read all the blogs I enjoy to feed my brain some more. Because tonight I’m on fire. Tonight I can hover above the planet and see how everything fits together. Millions and millions of connections. But I am older and wiser. And I know that the exhilaration I feel right now is only part of the picture. What I want to do is go to the nearest bar, the nearest show, the nearest people and to talk and talk and drink and drink and greedily consume the universe and this shiny fabulous city. I would go and go and go and go. But. I am older and wiser and inspired by women I admire. So when I checked into my room, I took all my clothes off. So I would have to pause – not just dump my bag and go out. So I could temper my ardour with the sight of my flab and stretch marks in desperately uncoordinated underwear. Self medicating with a full length mirror.
Because I’m no longer in the choir. I chose a different team. I chose my little baby. And my man. And what ever I can reconcile as myself.
That old familiar feeling. The Monday night feeling. You may know it as the Sunday night feeling. But its worse on Monday nights, because Tuesday morning is the morning I get up in the dark and go to work. I've been earning from my words one way or another since I was 15. I never found the line between my job and my identity. I don't want my job. I don't want myself. I'm sitting here trying to finish up stuff I should have emailed in this morning. But found 1001 excuses not to. Things keep happening to prevent me finishing things. I can't complete anything. I think I wish for them. My phone line down. Problems with work's server meaning I couldn't dial in. 'legitimate' distractions. I think I conjure them. I'm so afraid that I have that twisty pain in my chest. When I was 12 I couldn't finish a creative writing assignment. The teacher extended and extended my deadline. There were 'legitimate' distractions. The morning came when it was expected, but I hadn't been able to finish it. I stole my mothers cash card, bought a train ticket and ran away. I'm 34, I have my own credit card, but there's nowhere to go. I was caught, returned home, and still had to finish the assignment. When I finally tore it out of myself and handed it in, I got an A, but she wrote "as ever, I wish you'd written more." I want to quit my job. I think if I quit my job I'll get really sick again.
I've had to knit myself a new internet connection from unraveled furballs and the pubic hair of telephone 'help' (and I have no idea how to appropriately laden that word with irony. but in my heart I know you know what I mean) operators.
"You can track the progress of your complaint on our website . . . "
HOW? EXACTLY?
two weeks with no phone, fax or internet at home. and since I've only been with the new company around six months, and since they have just had the decency to listen to my grumblings and change my role (note to self: careful what you wish for) it seems a tad churlish to do all my reading and writing of blog on their time.
I've spent days wondering how I was going to catch up with all the reading, and hoping nobody wrote anything too interesting or unnotcommentableon in my absence.
Unfortunately comments had closed on this because I wanted to say "FIGHT IT, HEATHER. FIGHT THE BASTARD" in my most aggressive rallying call uppercase. (but without exclamation points because, you know, she's not keen)
Fortunately, the doors had not slammed shut on my intrusive itchy bloggy fingers over here, where lildb is gnawing away at exorcising the bit of her brain that tries to tell her that stuff's supposed to be a certain way. I'm confident she knows that that part of her brain should shut the fuck up and never persuade her to use the word drivel, even in half laugh faux irony, ever again about anything she writes or thinks. Breathe, woman, Breathe! and also, what's a flokati rug?
As an extra special Welcome Back Bonus, the interweb found me these lovely autumny pictures. Summer has finished here, but nothing has really happened that called be called autumn. it's all grey and damp. conkers and acorns are duly setting off car alarms in the street, but we don't have the lovely crispy air. And it's too cool for tshirt sleeves, but a brisk walk to the nursery in a fleece leaves one 'glowing', as I believe the delicate among us might say. Horrid, awkward inbetweeny. Or is that just me?
"When it came to housework, 45% of women and 57% of men reported sharing household chores equally. "
From a survey by Womans Hour about relationships, work, parenting etc.
Actually the discrepency not as high as you might have imagined. It goes along with "boy measuring" (2 boy inches for every girl inch) "boy looking" (can't find broom in broom cupboard) and "boy listening".
Recently reclaimed by PR industry after more recent background in lobbying and, before that, business journalism. From London and working part time in city but living in sticks. Trying not to pass on to my daughter all that my mother kindly left me. Raging against inevitability. Getting better at it. or not. NEED to rewrite this to say i'm not working at the moment and that there's all kinds of neds stuff going on, but to do that seems really official and final, so a postscript will have to do.
THey stick out too far and try to bite your boob, kick your kidneys and generally maim any part of you they can reach. And this is a house of narrow hallways, which means you're pretty much covered in bruises the whole time. And. Also. they can hook themselves throguh your belt loops, or pockets, or jumper sleeves, causing you to whip around at high speed, smacking your head, dropping whatever you're carrying, ripping holes . . . . 
