myth

I love advertiser mythology ;)
Of course, since this tea is in my cupboard, I've bought it; hook, line & sinker...
It's lovely tea, honestly. But I can multitask. I can throw a hissy fit while sipping!

directions

"Hey mister Snowman! Good to see you! But what are you doing here? You weren't here before!"

"Oh man, you're a little lost! If you go out the gate and through the alley, up the 3 steps, cross the square, roughly that-a-way, there's a supermarket right there that has a frozen foods section!"

"What's that? Oh, no worries, mister Snowman! Good to see you! Just you go and enjoy your pizza!"

update

She's doing well. Her head's still on. And the strawberries are coming along nicely, too.
Also, we're fine here, all of us. We're house-hunting and have some tough decisions to make, so - apparently - I haven't got a lot of headspace for much of anything else. I don't seem to notice the little and big things in quite as much colour as I normally do. Life keeps throwing me quirky balls and other mostly inanimate objects - of course - but I'm catching them and putting them away with Squirt's toys before bed at the moment.

This 'moment' won't last forever - I'll be back from this holiday-of-sorts soon enough. I really, really appreciate that there are still people out there popping in to see if anything new is up in this here corner! And I'm really sorry I haven't got much to show for myself... If only I could take snapshot pictures of the mayhem & chaos in my head! But then again - I'm not sure that would really entertain anyone but me (sort of. I'm sort of entertained. But mostly I'm basically going slightly mad, trying just to BE...) right here and now... ;)

Hope you're enjoying a beautiful Summer, wherever you are! I'm reading all the blogs for a vicarious holiday; a little time off, out of my head :)

opinions

In my flu-addled brain, something from my reminders post kept swimming in and out of vision. Caught it, just now. Where I'm boldly stating that 'care not for the opinion of others...' so speaks to me. Because it does, but not exactly like that. Other people's opinions matter to me. Keri Smith might feel differently. At least she doesn't have a comment option on her blog. So maybe she really doesn't care. Quite possible.

But what I need to learn, to put it more accurately, is not to put too much emphasis on other people's opinions. And if I'm really, really being honest? I only mean that when it comes to unfavourable opinions. Opinions that make me question myself, my output and my choices.

One thing Shannon's (amazing!) e-course and Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way made abundantly clear to me? How much easier it is to criticise and rediculate (not a word, is it?) yourself than it is to praise and be positive about your own undertakings, whatever they are.
Affirmations really sound too inane for words. I know. I'm still an absolute beginner. But when you really think about it: why is it so much more uncomfortable to be a little-over-the-top nice to yourself than it is to - equally over the top! - undermine?!

So what I meant to say before, is that I'm trying to take special care to appreciate favourable opinions, while not putting too much stock into the ones that (unwittingly) harm. Which on first glance probably reads as crazy as any good affirmation does. But in the end, we sort of shape our own world by choosing what to believe. Apparently, it's easier to believe the bad and worse.
So I'm going to live on the edge. I consciously urge myself, from now on, to believe what I like :-)

maintenance

I am offline for an unscheduled update.
Eloquence v2.0 is in the mail. Will install upon receipt.
I'll be back as soon as my system has rebooted.

homely

I'm drinking lemon scented tea... I'm wearing a scarf! And eventhough it is freezing outside, I'm enjoying the tea, and the scarf is - horror! - purely for decorational purposes!
OMG! I'm turning into an actual, real-life mother!

long time...

... no blog!
But when you know your two-and-a-half readers have other things on their minds (and rightly so), and you go on a little holiday of sorts yourself, there isn't much pressure to put out.
Added to that the fact that I want to do too many things in too little time, blogging takes a serious backseat, and I prove to myself once again that I'm not sure this is my scene...

But I'm here now :-D Let's see if it sticks ;-)

wuss

That whole giant ant-wasp-beetle-thing story cut deeper than you'd think!
This morning, I forgot to take the black elastic band out of my hair before taking off my shirt, and it got tangled to the side of my face. From the corner of my eye I saw this Huge Black Thing swinging from my hair, and I actually - almost - screamed!

what I made

But I was going to show what I made when my sewing machine broke down & got fixed.
Because I said I would... Not because I'm particularly proud, nor because I want you to tell me I should be. Making things myself is not something I do a lot. Ah, I should say "I didn't do a lot of that", because I have only just re-invented being creative, a little, and I have at least the intention to do some more art-ish-tics - *no fixed time frame* ;-)
What I'm trying to say is, I don't have a lot of experience (unlike so many intimidatingly talented people out there! ), which doesn't quite mesh with being a perfectionist ;-) I find it very hard to be proud of something I made, especially when it's kind of cute - and definitely well-intentioned (always that!) - but not quite perfect...
Anyway, here are the pictures:


Baby Boy loves his store-bought heart-with-labels, and he loves to run his nails over the letters I appliqued on the covers of the wicker baskets a week ago, so I decided a combination of those two favourites might make a good baby gift for Man's second cousin's new baby (breathe! complicated compound sentence finished!).
But I imagined it a lot nicer than it turned out... And if there is one thing I find harder than to enjoy something my-own-hands-made, it's giving it away to someone I don't know that well really. Okay, face it, I find it hard to give away something I made myself even when I'm happy with the result, even to someone I know well. Because I think the recipient might think I'm too cheap to buy a gift... That they'll see the tag, which says 'handmade' (yes, the tag too...), and they'll say "that's a bit on the unnecessary side of things, honey, we can tell it's handmade just by looking at it"...
Suffice to finish with, I'm not sure this particular handmade heart will make it to that particular new-born. And that I'll keep practising. And that I really don't know why I posted this log, apart from the fact that I said I would!

OMG

I have no moral objections against people having a sex life. Honestly, no problem with a little action between two consenting (almost-) adults whatsoever. But back when I was an au pair - which is longer ago than I care to put a price tag on! - I did have a bit of an issue with something I never mentioned to the people involved: the dear mom & dad in my guest family had their (monthly? weekly? don't remember - and be fair; should I?!) bit of fun with their door open, and loud enough for me, and who knows who else, to hear! Squirm! I never knew where to look at breakfast the next morning ;-)

Okay, you've got to be wondering where I'm going with this after all those years, right? Well... When Baby Boy does his newly mastered belly crawl, he sounds just like dear old Mrs K. on a roll in the marital hay! I kid you not! OMG, I swear he sounds exactly like her riding the horse to the finish line :-D

Oh, this is a terrible story - but it's too true & had to be told :-D
Now I don't have to fear that Mrs K. will ever come across this little piece of information, lost touch with the family years ago (although I can find assorted members on Facebook, and my-oh-my have they grown up!!). But if she would read this (or any of the au pairs moving in before and after me - I doubt she started all this when I was there, or that she stopped when I left, LOL), I'm telling you, she doesn't need to meet my beautiful Baby Boy - she would know exactly what the little tyke sounds like on his exploring missions around the house ;-)

P.S. to perverts! Don't even go there! This only clicked a week ago! Little old attic trapdoor in my brain, much like playing Trivial Pursuit; Mrs. K. has not been ringing in my ear ever since way back when!

update

I slept magnificently last night!
A solid 8 hours: 9 to 5 - like a civil servant on the night-shift!
I felt so much on top of the world this morning, I even cut my finger nails!
I knew you wanted to know!
;-)

all about nothing

... she is trying to wrestle the knive away from the movie star she fantasizes about - who is possibly invisible, probably imaginary - trying to stop him from killing himself because he thinks that might wake him from the coma he is apparently in, lying in a hospital in New Zealand. Still following? Next shot is her brother, seeing only her (and obviously not the suicidal idol), standing there like a desperate housewife wielding a knive into thin air, in the kitchen of her English suburban home... A scene from 'Bonkers', British dramatic comedy, if that's a genre.
I laughed so hard I nearly cried, and it's probably not even a case of "I guess you had to be there"! It's because I'm so tired, I could fall asleep onto the keyboard! Baby Boy keeping me up all hours as included in the copy of Baby's Rights he came with? No, can't even claim that for pity! It was little old me trying to deconstruct the secrets of Sleep. Okay, it was a little too warm in the bedroom last night, that too. But I was lying there, and every single time I started drifting off, my thoughts becoming more disintegrated, I was wondering "is this it? Am I falling asleep now?" - focussing my thoughts again, drifting right back up into consciousness again... That went on till around 01.30. I woke at 05.30 this morning - and that was it. Baby Boy needed attention at this unusual hour, so I got up and - sort of - stayed up. Till I just laughed my head off at something normally probably mildly amusing, signalling it's High Time to go find that bale of hay again and hope for better nights...

It's something like the fact that I have been thinking for the past two weeks I really need to cut my fingernails. And I still haven't. Because I keep on thinking it's a waste of precious time, clipping nails. It's like that. And also, it's something completely different...

Bed! ...bed...