Lists, Lists, beautiful lists

As I am very forgetful I make lists, lists on my iPhone, lists on Outlook, and I bought a really useful mouse mat thingy that you write to do lists on for 5 days a week and then rip off a page at the end of the week and start again.  At least this way I have a chance of remembering what I need to do, though don't tell anyone but I am very good at forgetting to look at my iPhone to do list.  So maybe, I should write down every time I walk into something and where I banged my body and then when I next get a bruise and Hubby pokes it and says 'How did that happen?' I can refer to my trusty brain dump and tell him?

Talking of really useful mousepad thingy - in finding the link for you guys I came across these handy pads that I would find more than handy......

Passive-Aggressive note-pad  - you would never have to verbally tell your kids/colleagues/minions off again.

Make a decision pad - Useful for Hubby and I when deciding what to have for dinner.

Self-therapy pad - cannot afford a real therapist?  Well all your problems are solved!

What I ate pad - personally, I would need a bigger pad, something along the size of A1.

Crap Pad - A to do list but for crap, or things you think are crap.

Shit List Pad - Someone offended you, note what they did and plan your revenge. Probably not the best thing to have if you are a mafia boss.

And here come some of my favourites.....

Nag Note - absolve yourself of all responsiblity for nagging to your husband in person.

Apology Note - For those that have been nagged at and have difficulty apologising verbally

How to make me happy - so you nag to your other half, they apologise and you tell them what to do to make you happy and be forgiven.  Brilliant!

Do your chores - one for the kids

Okay, honestly I could do this forever; I am in heaven right now.

I just need a cleaning list pad then I would die happy.  I think I might write to Knock Knock and suggest one.....

 

What I learned this week

Hrumpf - today I received 3 letters in the post and they annoyed the hell out of me.  It would be a horrible start to the day if it wasn't for such glorious sunshine outside.  Not that I can sit in it mind, because I am working but still it warms my heart.

• Apparently, when you get a pet policy that covers your dog for life or up to £12,000 you may need to pay the excess at the beginning of each year.  It was somewhere in the fine print apparently....
• Despite promising to remove the old suite, that the sofa insurance company have finally agreed to replace after 18 months, a letter will still arrive confirming the order of the replacement suite but remind you that they will not infact remove the old suite.
• It may be a very good idea that I have somebody that works in a solicitors, in fact, two of them one of which is a bona fide solicitor, as I may be using them soon.
• Ringing the company that managed to blow some of the rendering on the front of my house while completing cavity wall insulation for the millionth time to complain about not only the mess but the fact that even their head office cannot be bothered responding to a complaint results in me being given a complaint line to call that has been set up - something tells me that they are receiving a lot of complaints - cue the family solicitor again.
• Receiving a text from the pet insurance company asking me if I liked their service and would recommend them again made me laugh out loud because I disagree even if the error was mine for not reading the small print.  Purely on principle if you buy a lifetime policy and claim for the same illness another excess should not, in my opinion, apply!
• If you do not power wash the block paving in the front garden all winter it may take nearly 2 hours to do it come the summer.  
• Even getting covered in gunk I find power washing very theraputic and my heart sings when I walk up a beautifully clean path day after day.
• Having plants outside the office window makes me want to take a huge pair of secateurs and tidy them up, especially on a beautiful day.
• In fact, I won't feel like working at all when I know it is already nearly 30 degrees outside and its not even midday.  And I may try and find a way of saving all required documents on the desktop and take the laptop outside.  Or I would if I didn't need access to my email during the day.
• When Hubby told me he had a doctors appointment at 4.15 today, a tiny part of me thought it it would eat into my sunbathing time between 4 and 6pm (after which the sun moves behind the house) and therefore I might decide to take a longer lunch in the sun and return to work after 6pm.
• Working after 6pm has come to be a somewhat regular thing since this mini heatwave started and seen as Hubby has told me that it is set to continue for a couple of weeks it continuing.
• Opening a sweet and the wrapper not coming off in one piece gets on one of my nerves especially if a tiny bit of the wrapper stays stuck to the sweet.
• I will discover that one of the girlie fluffs in led on one of the dining room (office) chairs when I open a sweet wrapper.

 So what did you guys learn this week?

 Usual rules apply - see below. I would love to hear from you if you also leave comments on my blog.To join in Julie's What I Learned This Week carnival, simply follow these steps:

1. Any time this week, publish your What I Learned This Week post on your blog and comment on my blog hyper linking to your blog.

2. Then go and visit Julie’s blog at From Inmates to Playdates, find her latest “What I learned this week” and link up with the Mr. Linky form at the bottom of the post. Please put the link to your POST, not the front page of your blog.

3. Then visit the other participants and see what they learned this week.

So what did you guys learn this week?

Bruises....what causes them?

Well of course, I know, burst capilliaries and such - I did rather well at biology but I am asking in a much broader sense.  Because (and I start the sentance with 'because' because now they teach, in bona fide schools, that you can start a sentance with 'because'), I have woken up this morning to 4 bruises about my person.

I cheating a little because when I returned from Sheffield last night, and decided it was too hot to lie under the duvet and after having checked that Beautiful B's boyfriend was not staying overnight decided to sleep in as little underwear as possible with a fan blasting warm air at me, Hubby decided to poke a new bruise he saw on my leg and said 'How did that happen?'

Now that was a stupid thing to say and do for at least 2 reasons; firstly, poking a bruise is going to do it a lot of good, isn't it, and secondly Hubby knows that I randomly find bruises and have no idea how I have got them.  Beg's the question then why even ask because he knew I was going to say 'Haven't got a clue'.  Which I did say but after he had rudely and non-sensibly poked a bruise, I pointed, note pointed, out 2 further bruises that I had no idea how I got.

So I already knew about 2 of the bruises. This morning I have found another two.  One of them is on my arm so having been on a train yesterday I am likely to have banged it on the edge of a chair trying to find my seat when walking down the carriage or, and more likely, rested my arm against the edge of the table.  Apparently it is easier to bruise as you age so I will accept that rather than question whether I am get clumsier as I age.

And yes, we will ignore the time that I momentarily blacked out and fell, hitting my head on the security pass post and breaking a finger. 

Why Hubby thought I could tell him where the bruise on my leg came from I have no idea because I never can.  I can go to bed without a bruise in sight and wake up looking like I have been to bed with Mr Grey of 50 Shades fame.  And no, although I am not helping by making reference to Mr Grey, don't be smutty. 

I am restless at night at the best of times, let alone in the heat we are experiencing now and randomly wander back and forth to the bathroom 4-5 times a night.  Alas, as much as I love her to pieces and meeces, I blame my mother.  Because (there we go again with starting a sentance with 'because' because...well I can) when I was young enough to be going through toilet training, if I woke at night and wandered in her room to snuggle up in bed with her and dad she took me to the bathroom in my half asleep state and then took me back to bed where I merrily and happily went back to sleep.  So now, 40 years later I am basically conditioned to go to the bathroom every time I wake up.  My brain thinks I need to pee and so I pee.  Basically, I am a Fredster dog who is now conditioned to want to go out in the garden every time I give him the slightest thing to eat because that is the way I house trained him.  Thanks mum.

So what was that painfully long paragraph about because it seems as though I went off on a tangent and those that know me in real life would agree that you have to be quick to follow my conversations because I go off on tangents more than a trigonometary teacher?  Except I didn't!  Because what I am getting at is that it is highly likely that in my moonlit wanderings I have walked into the laundry basket or the bannister post at the top of the stairs.  After all, I know where my bed is but ever since we got a bed with an edge around the mattress area I walk into that corner more often than not - I swear that bed moves during the night!

My bruises have moved usual locations though as I work from home mostly so I obviously walked into a lot of desks when I worked at the office and then randomly forgot I had walked into them because I was forever finding bruises and now I don't find as many on that part of my legs.  As the dining-room is my office walking into this table corner leaves bruises on my hips.

As you know I make lists to remember things; maybe I should start listing knocks every time they occur so when a bruise appears I know where it has come from?

The Leaking Pipe

Having reported the leak in our pipes at home to the insurance company, I thought I would need to call the insurance company back and tell them that the promised telephone call, within the hour, from a plumber to arrange a visit to fix the leak did not occur. 

I obviously would not tell them:

• that the promise resulted in me staying in the house instead of shopping for lingerie and picking up of a wedding ring for fear of missing the call. 
• Or that I then had to leave Hubby in the car while I shopped for lingerie, after I collected him from work, so he could man my mobile in case the promised call within the hour actually happened.
• Or that Hubby insisted I did not need to leave the car running for the air conditioning as he had put his car window down. 
• Or that when I returned to the car Hubby explained that he had made a mistake because it was boiling outside and inside the car!  As I expected!
• Or that I did an inside snigger at his error and for not listening to me…..bad Ribena, bad.

I was ready to call the insurance company this morning at 9am, as we were still waiting for a call from the plumber, and ask whether they could chase the plumber up when my mobile rang.  Said plumber explained he would be with me in 5 – 10 minutes!

• Cue me shooing the fluff bags in the bedroom so they didn’t lick him to death.  Cue me randomly throwing towels and blankets in the bath and emptying the cupboard of Hubby’s DIY tools that he does not know how, nor has the inclination, to use. 
• Cue me picking up the weighing scales and putting them elsewhere – anywhere except where I could accidentally stand on them and have a heart attack.
• Cue me lighting candles with my scented beady things so that the house smelled less of dog.
• Cue me washing up.

The plumber was here for less than 20 minutes – no more leak.

Email train with Hubby went like this:

Me:      Plumber will be here in 5-10 minutes so I will be fine to pick you up from work at 4pm.

Hubby: That was quick after your rant with the insurance company.

Me:      I didn’t call the insurance company; the plumber called me before I called the insurance company.

Me:      Leak fixed; here less than 20 minutes.

And here is where it gets slightly interesting:

Hubby: Did he find anything?

Me:      Yes!  A leak!

REALLY?! Did he find anything?  Of course he did!  I reported a leak because we had a leaking pipe.  Sometimes I despair.  Hubby obviously left his brain at home this morning.

The downfalls of incedibly hot and sunny days in the UK

As we seem to be in the middle of a very rare mini heatwave I thought I would dedicate a post to my thoughts about it. Of course, we all know that I love the sun and given the choice would live in a hot, sunny climate so I'm not going to harp on about that.  Instead, I am going to write what may turn out to be a very short list of what the downfalls are.

• Obviously, the UK, specifically the North of the UK does not have enough of sunny warm days and therefore not enough opportunity for BBQs...oh yes and sunbathing
• On the upside Hubby doesn't bankrupt us by cooking enough meat to feed the street on many occassions
• When we do get the sun the world and his wife tend to be out in it
• Invariably we always get sunny hot days on work days when we stare wistfully out of the window wishing to be anywhere but where we are
• Our production at work suffers because a) it is too hot and b) we don't want to be there
• We spend our days saying 'Ooooh what a lovely day!' because we all know that the UK population cannot seem to resist talking about the weather
• The housework may suffer as those sun-loving of us spend all our time between work, sleep and chores soaking up rays
• We get sunburnt a lot because in the excitement of what could possibly be only one day of sun and heat we sit out in it too long
• It is that long since we last saw sun our skin burns on the first rays impact
• We all wish for larger back gardens so that the sun does not move behind the house and leave us in the shade earlier than we would like
• We all scramble to take annual leave from work at the same time
• We all moan it is far too hot, especially on a train
• Some of us spend the time popping headache pills
• All the little fluff bags have to go out at the crack of dawn to avoid melting on a walk 
• The electricity bills soar as electric fans are left on 24 hours a day - of course, that is only for those of us lucky enough to get to the shops before they all sold out of fans
• Hubby will feel it is too hot to ride to work on his bike, much like he says it is too windy to ride to work on his bike amazingly
• Hubby, who is very warm in the middle of winter, won't be able to cope and will come out in hives and be, understandably, miserable
• she who drinks room temperature Pepsi Max and Diet Coke will put her drinks in the fridge (I KNOW!)
• she will also spend most of her time trying to find reasons to drive through the McDonald's Drive-thru for Peach and Passionfruit Smoothies and Crunchie McFlurry's (though I am trying to convince myself that it isn't a bad thing)
• and, if you are me as you spend your life taking Hubby to and picking him up from work and losing some of the 2 hours of sunbathing you have set aside for yourself at the end of the work day you may just sit out in it for an hour at lunch time, ignore the fact that it has to be over 30 degrees centigrade because it is as hot as it was on your honeymoon in Morrocco and come in with a pinkish face after only an hour....and be slightly grateful that the same time the next day you will be on a train and not able to sunbathe.

So what do you love, or not love, about Summer sun and the occasional heat wave?

The things I do for my best friend!

I have just realised that today is my 400th post.  I don't think I have ever done 400 of anything unless you could drink cans of pop or eating chocolate bars.....

It is only fitting therefore that today's post was is one I wrote that week and scheduled and just happens to be about one of my best friends.  The fact that it is about Angel is just by pure chance - that and the fact that she has a huge birthday coming up.

One of my best friends, Angel, who I have known since I was 12 years old is 40 in August.  When she was asked by her Hubby what she wanted to do for her birthday she said that she wanted to spend it with those that she loved and that loved her.

Her Hubby sent out a text message explaining what she wanted to 38 of her closest family and friends telling us that he had booked and paid for a lodge big enough for us all to spend the weekend and celebrate Angel’s birthday with her – yes, she is that loved, wonderful in every way that she has 38 people who love her.  I certainly could not make such a list for myself.

Anyhoo, Angel’s Hubby surprised her with his plan and since then she and her family have been planning what the weekend will consist of.  She told me that the Saturday night will be devoted to a fancy dress party.

My heart sank!  For me and for my Hubby.  I am very much an introvert and the idea of having to dress up is terrifying and more so because I am at my biggest weight ever.  I somehow had in my head that the theme was ‘What you wanted to be when you grew up’ so that was easy – nursing scrubs for me and football shorts for Hubby as a) he is obsessed with football and b) he already has Lord knows how many football shirts.  Unfortunately, I think the theme was just wishful thinking on my part!

When the finalised plans were sent out I discovered that the theme is ‘Stars of stage and screen.’  Great, so I had to find a fat role and no idea what for Hubby.

Eventually, I discovered that I could go as the Scream character as I could get an outfit in my size and it would hide it somewhat.  Hubby could go as Bruce Willis in Die Hard; that way he could still where his jeans and all I had to get was a white vest and muddy it up a bit.  I thought that would mean he was as comfortable as he could be.

However, Hubby appears to have blanked the fancy dress out of his mind considering it too terrifying to recall.  I am convinced he was nearly in tears when I told him what the theme was and what I thought we could go as.

I felt so sorry for him because he hates fancy dress as I do, he would prefer to blend in with people and hates calling any attention to himself.  Regardless of the fact that everyone else will be in fancy dress he will still feel that too much attention is on him.  I feel the same way but unlike me, the only people he knows are Angel, her Hubby and her kids.  At least I will know, even if on a very small measure, about 10 people there. 

So Hubby told me to leave it with him.  He knows he can’t refuse to go and he knows that he cannot refuse to do fancy dress as that would call even more attention to him and he would not dream of refusing Angel’s request. 

Two days later, in the car on the way to work, he said that he had been thinking about it and thought it better for he and I to go as a linked theme.  When he said that he thought that I could go as a minion and he could go as the main male character I nearly crashed the car!

So, wait!  Instead of just having to wear a dirty white vest he thinks that it would be better for me to have to go out and find him a black jacket and a scarf and a top?!  Hubby didn’t even wear a jacket for our wedding! 

I’m confused.  Angel thinks it is a brilliant idea especially because she thinks I am crazy enough to be a minion and therefore it suits my character.  I would prefer the Scream fancy dress as I can hide.  There is no hiding as a minion.

Shopping for the required clothing is going to be a damn nightmare!  I don't think they do the outfit in my size.

Shopping will also include the acquisition of a lot of vodka and beer so that we can get drunk very quickly in the hopes that we won’t care what we are dressed as.

I wonder if I could get yellow body paint anywhere……

Why you should never ask for more work.....

You know when you have a fit of conscience and you sit there worrying about how your team mates suddenly appear to have more than you to do so you offer to take on some more work?

DON'T!!!

Because you may find yourself feeling overwhelmed as you have bids coming for evaluation from all quarters, specifications to QA, other peoples pricing proposal and guidances to do a fine comb walk through and QA, a complete new tender to add to the ones you are currently doing, conference calls coming out of your ears and travelling all over the country to do.

Oops......

What I learned this week

This week has been a week of sun, rain and wind.  In fact, we went from a 30o sunny, glorious day to a flat out storm!  All I can say is that I am glad I had not fallen asleep on a sunlounger outside.

This weeks lessons include:

• Not being able to put the degree where it should go in that top sentance makes me want to find a new blog provider because it is driving me slightly insane.
  When you switch from drinking Pepsi Max to Diet Coke it isn't too bad a switch; however switching back makes the Pepsi Max taste very odd;
• I learnt that Hubby loves golf even more than I thought he did.  On discovering Hubby awake in the middle of the night and after asking if he was okay I got this response: 'Yes, but I can't sleep because I am so EXCITED.'  OMG!
• Parrot plants do not like being drowned by the rain when I accidently leave them outside.  One of only two plants I have managed to keep alive I have murdered basically.
• When my computer starts making strange whirring sounds and the screen goes completely white my heart will be in my mouth until the screen reappears.  At which point I will hit the 'SAVE' button repeatedly.
• The dining room office door will open and slowly tap the catch repeatedly enough that I will eventually buy an actual doorstop instead of using a half empty bottle of car windscreen washer.
• I experience an inner state of calmness after I have made the bed back up once Hubby has left it for the last time in the morning.  I say me because he would never think to make the bed.
• I came to a slow realisation that there will be some mentoring of the Hubby once Beautiful B moves out so that he eventually thinks he decided voluntarily to do more around the house so that it is always clean and tidy.
• Apparently, if I listen to Hubby and actually put some suncream on before going outside to read in the sun the clouds will appear and cover the WHOLE DAMN SKY.
• When you wish your mum a happy 65th birthday she will ask you kindly not to remind her how old she is getting.
• Trying to collect a pre-ordered item from Next when the sale is in full force is not the easiest thing I have done; akin to trying to find your way through a jungle without a machete essentially.
• Watching Supernatural from the beginning reminds me just how much I miss it since Sky have deemed that it should not be aired in the UK this year.
• I am going to have to find an online US store that sells Supernatural Season 9 in whatever region is needed to make it playable in the UK and buy it and get it shipped to me at whatever cost.
• Strangely enough when I ask Hubby if he will buy me SIMS 4 for my birthday and he says no for the good of my health I won't feel upset or angry. I will live, breathe and eat SIMS for weeks by which time my already disabled hands will surrender.
• His request to tell him what I want for my birthday will leave me completely stumped.
• His offer to buy me an exercise bike for my birthday just goes to show that he has absolutely no idea how much they cost.
• The idea of an exercise bike in what will be the spare room come September is a great idea but I would need a TV and DVD player to go along with it to stop me getting bored and ensuring there is any hope that I will stick to riding that bike.
• I am going to have to stop calling the dining room the dining room because the only time it gets used for it's purpose is Christmas and it is now basically my office.
• Along with the word 'brewery' I apparently cannot pronouce the word 'demure' easily either.

So what did you guys learn this week?

Usual rules apply - see below. I would love to hear from you if you also leave comments on my blog.To join in Julie's What I Learned This Week carnival, simply follow these steps:

1. Any time this week, publish your What I Learned This Week post on your blog and comment on my blog hyper linking to your blog.

2. Then go and visit Julie’s blog at From Inmates to Playdates, find her latest “What I learned this week” and link up with the Mr. Linky form at the bottom of the post. Please put the link to your POST, not the front page of your blog.

3. Then visit the other participants and see what they learned this week.



This Human of Worth - Brittany Herself

I read a lot of blogs, probably less than other bloggers do, but none the less I have a list of my favourites.  I found Brittany maybe 18 months or so and I not only love the way she writes but also the topics that she choses to write about.  She is a much better blogger than I will ever be.  Her blog Brittany Herself can be found here.

Today I read Brittany's post and was so very touched by it.  Everything she said in it hit a nerve and it was like she was reading my mind.  She has written a blog post that should go viral because of it's importance and because it has the capacity to help others undertsand how overweight people feel.

This topic has always been important to be me because my weight has yo-yo'ed for years.  I have been super thin (though could not see that at the time - numpty), thin, overweight, and obese.  Now I would be categorised as morbidly obese.  I am the biggest I have ever been and I hate myself for it and yet I continue to eat.

Half of the problem is that I seem to be an all or nothing person when it comes to weight loss.  When I lose a lot it is because I have flipped a switch, a switch that determines that I will succeed at weight loss.  The first time I lost a lot of weight was after divorcing my first husband; I went from 14 stone 6 to 9 stone 2 and now I can look at the few photos I have and think that I looked amazing; such a pity I did not see it at the time.  I put that weight back on....and more.

I lost weight again and met my second husband but my weight ballooned again during our marriage; he controlled what he ate and drank and I used to sneak food and hide Coca Cola in the wardrobes as a way of defying him.

I lost weight again during the divorce and met my now husband.  He met me thin, he saw me thinner, he saw me gain weight and eventually I reached 16 stone 8 and I hated myself.  Hubby told me every day he loved me (and he still does) but I couldn't see why.  I flipped that switch and dropped 79 lbs and I felt amazing!  I knew I would look great for our wedding.  Yet by the time our wedding arrived i weighed near to 13 stone.  Now you can add over 5 stone on top of that; I hate myself and yet I still eat.

So yes, Brittany's post is important.  Because people only see the exterior and yet they form their opinion of that person on that exterior and they comment to others and make jokes and they do not see that an overweight person may well already hate themselves.  More jokes and comments hurt more and so we eat more and so the everlasting circle continues.

I urge any one reading this blog - please visit Brittany Herself!  I commented because I felt compelled to; in the hope that one person who has formed opinions on an overweight person without getting to know them should at least be able to read how it makes people feel.

Grey or white

This month has been harsh financial wise.  Excuse me a mo, the baby dog is crying at my feet - probably for a cuddle......

Back - dinner time apparently as she was joined by her mum and gran.....  I am ignoring them as they set their clocks forward an hour...again!

Anyhoo, where was I?  Oh yes, tightening belts.  So, as I was saying, I am looking to save funds where I can as I have a 40th birthday trip weekend to fund in August for Hubby and I to attend for one of my best friends. Hubby has a habit of making holes in his jeans pockets and only so many repairs can be done by his mum before they can be repaired no more.

Yes, I said his mum.  My home economics teacher tried everything and then gave up telling my parents she despaired of me because I am incapable of sewing anything.  Sewing to me is what calculas is to everyone else.

So, we bought Hubby new jeans, we have funded a family BBQ which always costs too much because Hubby makes enough food to feed the 5,000 and we have funded 2 birthdays.  So the need to colour my hair has remained a need.

Last month I told my hairdresser that I did not like the base coat on my hair - we had to go a darker blonde the month before as my grey hair was becoming resistent to lighter colours.  I now hated the mousey blonde/brown colour.  The hairdresser was not happy but she put a lightish brown on as the base colour and I am not kidding you, within a week I had a stripe down the top of my head.  My own fault, she did warn me and I thought she was exaggerating but I had clearly forgotten that we were now 3 years down the line since I had a darker base coat.

Now my badger stripe is easily over a centimetre wide.  I found myself parting my hair this morning and lifting sections up to see just how much grey there was to dark brown and instead found myself trying to decide if it was mostly grey or mostly white.  My Nannies hair was white, pure white and given the choice I would prefer that to grey.  But really?!  At 41 years old?!  I don't think so.  For a start it is distracting when I am plucking my eye brows as my eyes are drawn to said badger stripe in the mirror.  If I was a dog or a Gremlin I would be called Stripe. And I would be no good as a Gremlin as I would find it far too difficult to refrain from eating after midnight.

So it will need to be coloured again next month on payday and lets all keep our fingers crossed that she can lighten it so that I don't look like Flower from Bambi again by the 15th August.  Any more belt tightening will have to be as a result of me drinking water instead of Pepsi Max and not buying Murrey Mints and any chocolate bar I set my eyes on.

Out of Sorts

Today is one of those days where I had work to do and was merrily doing it ready to finish work at 2pm, an early finish for me, and nip to town to pick up my wedding ring which is having the inscriptions put back inside the band (long...ish story).  That is, until I had to report a water leak in one of my pipes.

Luckily, the leaking pipes appears to be one that feeds the shower so to avoid stopping the entire household from washing because 1. Eeeew and 2. None of us take baths (in my humble opinion, and yes I know it is stupid, I feel like I am wallowing in my own dirt), I have wrapped some putty like stuff around the leak provided by Dad (thanks Dad, working but not so well) and surrounded that by a load of beach towels.  That are now wet.....

I can, and am, thanking small mercies that it is an intermittent leak and I can control it (unless Beautiful B and her boyfriend both shower, and no not together! because they take ages).  However, now I am waiting for a call from the plumber to tell me what time he will be here - apparently within the next 24 hours so again a good job it isn't gushing all over the bathroom.  Except he hasn't rang and so I am inside because he may ring while I am driving or wandering around town seeking my ring much as Gollum does in Lord of the Rings.

On top of that, the sun is shining outside and I am not completing work that I can do without an internet connection so cannot sit in garden.  The girlie fluff bags keep intermittently running into the dining room office and crying at me to tell me it must be nearly tea time.  Earlier today, in protest of being shut out of the dining room office because I was on a conference call, I was subjected to a barrage of high pitched barking at the door.  Apparently for no reason other than to run around my legs barking when I opened the door to see what was wrong.  

Why they protested I have no idea; the patio doors were open so they could sunbathe.  No, that is not a joke...they really do sunbathe.  They may have been protesting at not being able to rip the post as soon as the postman shoved it through the letterbox - clearly he was giving me a day off from delivering bills.

So back to the feeling; am I bored?  Restless?  Anxious? Overwhelmed? and more to add to the list....

Bored?  Possibly, even though I have a to do list which has more ticked off than normal for a change.

Restless?  Probably, because I actually want to be in town putting my wedding ring back where it belongs (and no, Hubby did not notice it was missing - AGAIN!)

Anxious?  Not really, I do feel a little bit but cannot put my finger on anything that could be causing it.  So that means it is the idea of Beautiful B leaving home.

Overwhelmed? Always rofl.

As an update: Beautiful B, Ry and I did not get to see the house they will be renting on Monday evening as the current tenant was not available - and so the fun starts getting her to move out at the end of her 4 week notice.....

Beautiful B was fuming, especially as she had already spent the weekend with 'ants in her pants' and randomly repeating that she wanted to see the house NOW.  She has the shortest patience threshold I know. Luckily, she was out with Ry when she got the news that they could not see the house on Monday evening so I didn't have to listen to her rant and rave other than in 2 text messages. Yay!

They have slept in today until midday!  Middday!  What a waste of a day, and when they did wake up they merely wet the towels wrapped around the pipe some more before quickly telling me they were going out.  So I won't see them until tomorrow because they rarely return before the witching hour.

No jobs done, dirty pots left by the side of the sink, and I would put money on the sock she dropped last night still being on the stairs handrail by her room where I left it for her when she was sleeping this morning.  It took her 3 days to move the diet coke I bought for her Saturday and that was only because I took it upstairs and left it in front of her bedroom door to find when she arrived hoome last night.

Oh to be a teenager again!

What I learned this week

Well, another week has rushed by and my first back at work.  It is such a good job that I have 60 hours in credit because it was just too sunny to work past 4pm every night has week.  Hubby told me I would get burnt in the sun; something to do with falling asleep on the sun lounger....

So along with learning that I still insist, at 41, that I do not burn easily in the sun and that I may be wrong about that what else did I learn?

• Your face is likely to get sunburnt before your arms, or at least mine does if you sit in the sun.
• My arms are a lovely brown so those early work finishes relaxing and falling asleep reading a book in the garden were worth it.
• I get distracted even quicker when I return to work after 2 weeks on sick leave.
• If the weather indicates that the heavens will open at about 4pm believe it; do not assume that the weather woman is wrong because it is still sunny at 3pm.
• If  I make a suggestion to bring the garden table into the large back room in case of rain I should actually do it!
• Despite you telling him that he BBQs enough meat to feed the street Hubby may continue to ignore you and you will eat meat for 2 full days after the BBQ.
• Picking up the baby dog to give her a quick cuddle during my working day is not a great idea - because it will become a habit and a crying dog is not so good in the middle of a conference call.
• Listening to Beautiful B open up all the things I bought her for her new home warmed my heart; she sounded so young and excited; just like I did at her age.  Well, technically younger than her because I was pregnant with Beautiful B at her age.
• By the time you read this I will have been to visit the house they will be renting with her boyfriend in 6 weeks.  I hope it is everything she wants right now and that I do not walk around it and think that my Beautiful B deserves better.
• Beautiful B's boyfriend told me on Sunday that he is looking forward to taking Lily dog as well as Fredster when he and Beautiful B move in together.  It is lovely to see him so affectionate with Lily who is little Miss Independant Top Dog.
• If I am going to tell Hubby that I have been doing some accounts when I collect him from work then I should at least move the folders around.....or not put them back where they were.  In other words, leave the dining room table my desk untidy which may just get on my last nerve as I sit in the sitting room itching to tidy it.
• I think Hubby is blind to dog hair on the carpets.

So what did you learn this week?

Usual rules apply - see below. I would love to hear from you if you also leave comments on my blog.To join in Julie's What I Learned This Week carnival, simply follow these steps: 

1. Any time this week, publish your What I Learned This Week post on your blog and comment on my blog hyper linking to your blog.

2. Then go and visit Julie’s blog at From Inmates to Playdates, find her latest “What I learned this week” and link up with the Mr. Linky form at the bottom of the post. Please put the link to your POST, not the front page of your blog.

3. Then visit the other participants and see what they learned this week.

Another round of the weirdest and interesting facts....

It is that time again folks primarily because the weekend has been pretty uneventful they are just plain weird or interesting.

• The skin is the largest organ in the human body, covering about twenty square feet in an adult male.  it also constantly regenerates; a person sheds around forty pouds of skin in his lifetime 
• Great, so I actually put on more weight than I already think I do....
• One pound of peanut butter can contain up to 150 bug fragments and 5 rodent hairs
• Another great reason not to like the stuff
• Rachel; I hope you didn't like this stuff because if you did; now you don't
• In the Satere-Mawe tribe in South America, a boy being initiated into manhood is forced to wear gloves woven with hundreds of bullet ants, whose sting is considered the most painful of any insect.  The ants sting the boy until he passes out from pain, if he can be revived, he is considered to be a true man
• At least the pain of his future wife crushing his hand while she gives birth will be nothing compared that
• You should never carry concealed weapons longer than six feet in the state of Kentucky as the offence is punishable by law
• Impossible for me to conceal the whole weapon as I am only 5 ft 2 inches.
• Cruel treatment of slaves was forbid in ancient Babylon by the Code of Hammurabi, but the code also commanded the slaves to be branded on the forehead and forbidden to hide their mark
• Clearly equality was unheard of in ancient Babylon
• Ancient Romans used human urine as an ingredient in their toothpaste
• Makes you wonder if that is why mint flavoured toothpaste was invented....
• Exploding head syndrome is a rare phenomenon in which a person approaching deep sleep experience a loud bang in his head that sounds like a bomb exploding or a similarly loud noise.  Though the event seems to originate from inside the head, it is an illusion and does no physical damage to the victim
• This fact is stating the obvious in the last sentance
• Electric eel cells can generate and release pulses of more than 500 volts.  
• Ancient custom in Fiji dictated that when a man died, his wives, slaves, and friends should be strangled.
• It is a wonder that population remained in Fiji then; I'd have thought that no man had friends let alone a wife.
• In 1908, an explosion 1,000 stronge than the bombing of Hiroshima occurred near the Tunguska River in Russia most likely caused by a meteor or comet fragment that burst prior to hitting Earth.  The blast leveled 80 million trees in seconds.
• It is illegal for unmarried women to parachute in Florida on Sundays; violators can be arrested.
• The acid in your stomach is so powerful that it can dissolve a razor blade in less than a week
• No wonder my throat feels like it is being sandpapered from the inside out when I have heartburn!
• In 2005, two former gorilla caretakers requested of $1m worth of damages in a wrongful termination and sexual discrimination suit against the Gorilla Foundation in Woodside, California.  The suit claimed the two women were pressured to comply with famed gorilla koko's alleged sign-language requst that they display their breasts.  When they refused, the two were fired.
• Speechless; just speechless.
• Among some North American Indian Groups, a husband has the right to bite or cut off the nose of an adulterous wife.

I don't know about you but the weird and wonderful facts are so much more interesting than the others.

Happy Monday everyone!

 

Teachers shouldn't have the right to strike.....

....or so says some mother according to the radio yesterday morning. 

 

 

Returning from dropping Hubby off at work yesterday morning I was listening to the news headlines purely because I was being too lazy to turn the radio channel over.  The one person who reads this blog regularly may know that I don't really like listening to the news as it annoys or upsets me (if she read it yesterday when I was having a rant) and yesterday's news was no exception.

 

Yesterday some of the public services were striking for a pay rise (any would do as we haven't had one for 3 out of 4 years and by pay rise I mean more than 1% which is way below the rate of inflation), to stop the erosion of the pension they work damn hard for, better work conditions etc etc.  Among them was the Government Department I work for and our eucation system.

 

Now I am not a teacher and have never been one primarily because they have to teach people like me when I was a kid and I was pretty good compared to many at that time.  Nowadays society norms have dictated that our children can get away with more and more bad behaviour without punishment.  By punishment I mean almost anything that constitutes more than a stern word.  In fact, suspension or even expulsion from school is considered to be something to be proud of these days.

 

As more and more people have been unable to find work and dare I say some quarters do not feel the need to work we find our children can and do sometimes grow up with those same values.  Little excuse, therefore, for the children to want to learn or have any respect for those wonderful people in our society who do want to stand in a room full of 30 or more of our kids and try to teach them not only the syllabus but also moral standards.

 

I have always said that teaching is a vocation; if you go into teaching for a just a wage you risk learning to eventually hate going to work.  I believe you have to love the work and more so, love making a difference even if it is just to one child.  That is not me and I more than admire anyone who wants to take such a hard and sometimes unthankful role in life as a career.

 

I get annoyed, therefore, when I hear people saying that teachers should not have the right to strike.  For a start; everyone should have a right to strike.  Like me, most of us cannot afford to but that is besides the point.  Without the recourse to strike what power does the workforce have? And trust me I am using the word 'power' in the loosest of terms.

 

Today a mother spoke to a local radio station explaining that she radio felt that she shouldn't be in a postion where she has to look after her child at home when they should be in school and her comment '...if they don't like the wage they should not have taken the job' had me ranting at the radio, you know, because she could obviously hear me telling her what a narrow minded individual I thought she was.

 

Now before anyone berates me for calling them narrow minded I am not using that as a blanket term for all that feel that teachers should not be allowed to strike, of course I am not.  Merely, that this woman was annoyed that she had to look after her child for more than 2 days a week.  She did not seem to have any understanding that it is her role to look after the child she gave birth to and that eachers are more than underpaid for the job they do let alone the difference they can and do make to an individuals life as well as societies. 

 

Without teachers we would be in a state of anarchy, we would not have most of the technicological, medical and all sorts of other ...ical advancements we do in most of the world.  Our children would not have been motivated to investigate and motivate, to want to strive to be better people, to be useful membera of society and all sorts of other wonderful things.  Yes, as parents we do a lot of that but teachers support us in teaching our children those morals and I don't know about you but I may have a more than average IQ but there is so much that I could not teach my child that I have relied on teachers to do.

 

Personally, I do not think our school system has enough powers to reprimand our children and I do think that as a society we are making teachers roles in helping to bring our children up more and more difficult.  And here is where I sound old:  25 years ago I would not have dared to speak to any of my teachers the way that children do now; I would not have dared to get to the stage where the school had to contact my parents about my behavioiur; I wanted to be a productive member of society when I grew up; the idea of not working as an adult was completely alien to me; I believed and still believe that you have to work for your money; I wanted to make my parents proud of my achievements; I was brought up to and did respect my teachers and even then I knew what they did for me and every other child was invaluable.  I also had enough respect for my parents to not want to disappoint them and I dare to think that a lot of parental powers have been stripped away too in the last 25 years.  Without the ability to discipline from both teachers and parents then what do the children of today have to be scared of?

 

I, unlike teachers, do not have to go to work and gain the respect of children so that they not only sit quietly but want to listen and learn from what I say; I do not have to put up with foul mouthed language, violence, disrespect, and some parents that are as abusive as their children, etc.  I know that if I had to cope with that each day that it would wear me down and chip away at my spirit and that eventually I would hate my job.  It takes a special person and one with a vocation to teach to be able to cope with what can be 5 difficult days out of 7.

 

Therefore, when someone says to me that a person should not have a right to strike because they have to take a day off to look after their own child while that teacher exercises their right my response is that if you only wanted to look after your child for two days a week then maybe you shouldn't have had children in the first place!  Those teachers provide us parents with a gift - the gift of knowledge and I would defy many people in society to be able to impart the same level of knowledge to their child.  Our role as parents is also to support the teachers in teaching our young.  If wages continue to stay as they are in the teaching arena it becomes harder to attract teachers, let alone good quality ones - then where will our children be?  Where will society be?

 

Rant over and I will say flippantly - this is why I do not listen to the news often....