Where has all the time gone? Omigosh, what a clichéd saying LOL
Here's a pic of Alex - all 5ft 9ins of him wearing the boots he wanted for his birthday, 
a close up of the boots - yes, they're New Rocks! 
There's also a pic of the chocky cake I made mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
Kristen moderates a group on Ravelry that I belong to and she came up with an idea for us each to blog every single day. Sometimes I find it quite hard to think of a subject, then other days there's LOADS I want to say.
But which is better? Stick it all in one great long post, or do a post per subject? Personally I favour the post per subject idea; it would look tidier and be easier to find something later on.
Thoughts?
If you look back, you'll see that that is how I've done it previously. Today, I'm going to go for an all in one post!
This blog every day thing got me thinking - I love my new phone and I think the messenger is great so I put an idea out on the two BlackBerry groups I belong to on Rav but with messenger. The idea is to message someone whose pin you've got but you haven't yet chatted with and have a conversation with them. I have a loathing of contact lists full of people that I don't speak too. It comes from when I was a chatroom addict and everyone who used the same chatroom was on my contact list. I never talked to any of them.
Now I rarely, if ever, sign into AOL and I can't remember what I found so appealing about them…
I've had a very nice conversation with a woman called Pam from California which stretched over most of the evening LOL.
I'm still recovering from our trip to London - blimey, I ache! Every time I get into the car, my hips and lower back protest. I seem to be doing something every day at the moment and all I want to do is curl up in a chair and knit although I know that movement is good and stops me stiffening up too much. Doesn't mean I have to like it though!
Speaking of knitting, MD/AN is coming along nicely. I'm a sixth of a way through the second half which doesn't sound much, but that's about 100 rows in and it grows quite fast. Someone off Ravelry sent me a bag to carry my WIP (Work In Progress) around in which means I can carry the lace safely in a bag with a load of other junk and not worry about it getting tangled and/or ruined!
I made a chocolate cake today and we had Chinese takeaway for dinner as today is Jessica's 14th birthday. I gave her a black sequined top, a new mp3 player and Mum gave her £50 as well as the trip to London.
If any of you have actually had a look at the 'tweets' down the left hand side here somewhere, you will see that today is the one year anniversary since my last cigarette!
Now, I'm not one to blow my own trumpet, but I'm afraid I am going to have to insist this time! I smoked pretty much solidly for 20 years. 20 smokes a day for 20 years is…………a lot!
Then a year ago I decided to quit. I smoked my last cigarette about 10 o'clock at night and before I went to bed, I threw away the empty packet, cleaned the ashtray and put it away and I put away all my lighters as well.
I didn't use patches or gum or anything like that, I just kept telling myself that I didn't want my first cigarette of the day yet. I just kept putting off that first cigarette and before I knew it; a week had gone past!
Unfortunately, I have become the world's worst reformed smoker. It's disgusting! I can't stand the smell of cigarette smoke and being around it gives me a migraine and makes me feel nauseous. Even being around smokers is enough to make my head twinge.
I actually apologised to my children a couple of months after I quit for smelling like that LOL.
I didn't miss it too much and I actually found it a lot easier to give up than it had ever been on my previous attempts! Now a year has passed and I will definitely never smoke again!
It's called a Bubba Keg! Basically it's an insulated mug and it promises to keep my hot drinks hot for up to 3 hours and my cold drinks cold for about 10 hours.
It's GREAT! Much better than my old insulated travel mug which smelled funny and only held 0.4l. My Bubba Keg holds 20oz!
Now I have hot tea and my kids are happier because I'm not constantly begging them to pour away cold tea and make me hot tea :0)
I have two birthdays to drain my pockets this week. Jess will be 14 on Friday and Alex will be 13 on Saturday.
Yesterday I took Jess to London to see Mamma Mia at the Prince of Wales Theatre. It's the first time 
she's been to London and she had a great day. We also got to see the Changing of the Guard which was great as I'd never seen it before.
Here are some pics of the guard, Big Ben, Jess with one of the lions in Piccadilly 
Circus and the audience in the theatre 
during the interval (we weren't allowed to take photos during the performance).
I practically lived on the ParcelForce website checking the status.
It arrived at the hub at 6.10pm on Friday evening and then didn't move ALL WEEKEND!
It finally arrived about 2pm on Monday!
Oh it's LOVELY!
Why do people assume that when I say I sleep on the lounge floor that we must be poor and can't afford to have a house with enough rooms so that I can have my own bedroom with a bed in it?
I live in a five bedroom house! I knocked a wall down between my dining room and kitchen so that I'd have a huge kitchen. I turned the smallest bedroom into a room for all the games consoles to live in. the three boys use the remaining upstairs bedrooms. My daughter sleeps in what used to be my room (all my clothes, my desk and other 'stuff' still live in there). I sleep on the floor in the lounge. why? Because I discovered after camping in Scotland last year that sleeping on the floor is really comfortable! I sleep much better as a result (usually), my back isn't as stiff.
The only drawback is that my kids are getting older and sometimes (due to too much insomnia and sleep finally reasserting itself or medication) I need to go to sleep before some of them do. Well, I just put down my bed (a duvet to sleep on with a pillow and blankets to cover me), Isis and I crawl into my bed and we go to sleep! When the kids have finished watching the TV or using the laptop, they turn everything off and go to bed without disturbing me.
So, I'm not too poor to afford a house big enough, I choose to sleep down there. Yes I'm perfectly comfortable thank you and no, it isn't cold down there, my wooden floor reflects the heat back to me.
See that? That pic over there >That's laundry soap in the big jar and fabric conditioner in the little bottle on top.
I made that!
Yay for me LOL
I'll let you know how it turns out later, first load in now!
First off, I apologise in advance if none of this makes sense, I've had painkillers and I feel very much like I should be in San Francisco during the 60's, ifyaknowwhatimean? ;0)
I suffer from Hyper Mobility Syndrome which used to be called Ehlers Danlos Type III and every now and then I get a bout of pain and it's a baaaaaaaaaaaaaad pain!
My knees hurt. So do my hips, thighs, calves, neck and back.
I've had a hot shower, taken some pills and I think I might just see if the pills have made me stoned enough to sleep lol.
I haven't even got my BlackBerry to distract me *sob*.
Oh! BTW, sometimes someone does something which totally restores ones faith in the human race! A friend of mine has this little bag to carry around her WIP (Work In Progress) which she got free with a magazine. I've coveted it since I saw it.
Today I posted an ad on Ravelry asking if anyone had one. A few hours later someone PM'd me offering me a (unused) one for free! How sweet is that! I told her to include her address so I can send her something as a thank you!
I'm going to go away now and try to sleep, but it's half term and the kids are all still up so it's not very quiet *sigh*
Rrpsavings.co.uk because they're customer care is absolutely crap! I didn't get the call I demanded in an e-mail, nor did I get an answer when I called at midday. It's now 3pm and I decided they could shove it; they've just lost a customer!
I've ordered from play.com and there's a good chance it'll arrive tomorrow!
I hope the guys at rrpsavings don't work on commission!
…is a bitch!
I am sooooooooooooooo bloody tired, but when I go to bed I either can't sleep or I seem to spend all night turning over/going to the toilet/etc. I'm exhausted, I've got a headache and I'm totally fed up with it all.
I'm going to have a drink tonight, see if that helps.
I need to be up early tomorrow because my son is going away on a trip with The Duke of Edinburgh awards for two nights and he needs to be there at something daft like 8am…course, it's the holidays and I haven't had a lie in yet!
…businesses that don't seem eager to do business with you! I contacted rrpsavings today as I've got it into my head that I want a BlackBerry phone and they were the cheapest.
Their business hours are 10am – 7pm. I called at 10.10 and got a bloody answering machine. It was over an hour before someone called me back and then they said they couldn't put my card through because there was a problem with the connection between them and the bank! They said they'd call me back as soon as they could put my order through. I'm a bit baffled how they'd know when the connection is open as they claim they don't keep any customer details on file. I waited…and waited…eventually I called them at 2.30pm and left a message on their voicemail again.
By 6.30pm I was getting extremely PO'd about the whole thing so phoned again and someone actually answered! They said they were still having problems, they can't give me the number of the department they called at my bank and when I asked him to get it from technical support, they said that tech support closed at 5!
I'm beginning to wonder if these guys are actually just one or two guys operating out of their own home. You'd think they'd be eager for business, but they really seem rather blasé about the whole thing.
I've just sent them an e-mail stating that I expect a call first thing tomorrow to complete my order and if they can't complete it I expect to be notified with a number for the bank so that I can sort it out!
If they don't get it sorted by morning, then I shall spend an extra £50 and bloody well go elsewhere!
Hey, when I get it, if anyone wants my pin so they can add me on that BlackBerry messenger just leave a comment here on the blog with a way to contact you and I'll send it :0)
As I didn't have anyone to celebrate with, I decided to do something different! I had a memorial tattoo done for Dad of a purple cancer ribbon - purple is for pancreas cancer - with Dad and his birth date - death date on.I also found a gorgeous little shop which sells loads of gothic clothing, I bought a purple and black top and a full length crushed velvet coat :0)
Woo hoo! I've reached the halfway point on MD/AN and it's looking great. I can't wait until I've finished and blocked it!
Why is it that whenever you want a day to yourself to be as energetic or as lazy as you like, it never goes how you want it to? I seem to have gone out every day this week, so last night I decided that I'd do some catching up on Ravelry and then sit and knit while listening to Harry Potter audio books (I'm up to the actual tournament in Goblet of Fire!).
I knew it'd be quiet; the kids were all doing their own thing today. Alex was game playing upstairs (we moved the games consoles upstairs a few weeks ago), Matt went out with Arnie, Jess went out to the ice rink with Kyle and Ellie. The dog was fed and snoring. Perfect!
I logged in to Rav and spent an hour or two posting on forums and catching up on news. I was just getting ready to sit and knit when the phone rang…it was Kyle. Ellie had taken a tumble on the ice and an ambulance had been called because of her ankle.
I arranged for Alex to watch Isis and I got into the car and drove to the hospital. They weren't there, so I called them only to find out that they were still at the rink waiting for an ambulance. I was so bloody angry that they had been sat waiting, I got back into my car and drove to the rink. Naturally, just as I got there the ambulance arrived.
Thankfully, we weren't at the hospital long, they gave her painkillers and x-rayed it. She's sustained soft tissue damage and has been advised to keep weight off it for a few days.
It's now 8:30pm and I still haven't picked up my needles!
I can see a night of insomnia ahead…
Well, it took me a couple of hours of researching, then I found this site that shows me how to make my own Knitters' Progress Bars (designed by Matthew Harvey)! Absolute genius! Step by step instructions so that you can create your own progress bars in whatever colour you choose and at whatever percentage you choose.
What a great page. Now I can create my own little progress bars so that you can see what I'm working on!
I went to Tesco last week for our usual shopping trip. If there's one thing that really bugs me about supermarkets, it's how people park in the pick-up point -– you know the bit, where you can pull in to pick up other people or quickly load some shopping into the car.
It is NOT a parking space, or a space for old farts to sit reading newspapers while their wives spend 3 hours wandering around the store!
Hampshire Constabulary, please take note!
It grows, quite fast too! I've now finished the second set of charts and I am working on the centre panel…let the beading commence in earnest! Here is my progress so far, I've placed my iPod Shuffle in one of the pics to give you an idea of how big it actually is.
Audio books! What a great invention! I always thought it was a smart idea because it gave blind people a way to enjoy the world of fiction that I have always loved, but I wasn't overly mad about them. Everyone on Ravelry raved about them so I decided to give them another try. They all said to pick books I know reasonably well so it doesn't matter if I get distracted and miss bits…I picked Harry Potter.
I'm not on book 3! They're great! I got so fed up with the TV being on that I needed something else to listen to. With audio books, I don't need to watch as well as listen. I'm listening to the set read by Stephen Fry, although I did start out with the American set read by Dan Gale. Dan Gale did a very good job and I laughed when he fist did Professor Lockheart because that's exactly how I'd imagined him talking. The films (what I've seen of them!) are quite good, but films never show it the way I imagine it. I've only just got the Stephen Fry set so I don't yet know how good he is...took me ages to find the same spot in the new set so that I can just continue flawlessly with Stephen Fry lol.
