What Christmas means....

This is Christmas -

Unwrapping presents.

Family visits.

Christmas cake and Christmas pudding.

'Exotic' drinks.

Silly clothing (Oops - those are Jo's normal socks on the left!).

Satsumas and dates, nuts and chestnuts.

Playing games - old and new.

Too many sweets.

Christmas cards - home-made, full of memories, funny and beautiful.

Christmas crackers.

The smell of candles and incense.

Getting out the old family crockery.

Christmas dinner.

Decorations.

The Tree.

Serious presents.

Lots of new books.

Silly presents (the one on the right is a steel and striker for lighting camp fires).

Little piles of opened presents in odd corners.

Robins on the bird table.

What does Christmas mean to you?

It's Christmas Eve

Happy Christmas

Firstly may I thank everyone for their good wishes after my recent yucky spell. Apart from my eyes I am much better now and really looking forward to Christmas.

Because of the hiatus we haven’t bought a proper Christmas tree this year – we lashed out £15 on an artificial tree. It’s excellent quality for the price. Six feet tall and with plenty of realistic branches- only the scent and irregularity of the branches are missing.

It even dropped some ‘needles’ while being erected!

We decided to spare Emma Gertrude for another year and are having lamb and chicken for Christmas Day. Richard is making the gravy and he had a practice run yesterday – it’s excellent stuff.


We have yet to do the shopping and Jo is still working until Thursday but at least we are getting into the Christmas spirit.

I hope you all have a super time and our very best wishes to you all.

Happy Holiday Season

Wishing you a holiday season filled with stress, cold, and angry shopping episodes. Okay, so that isn't pretty. But at least it's pretty realistic.

And if you are looking for the ideal present - at the end of the day don't forget a hug is the perfect gift; one size fits all, and nobody minds if you exchange it.

Happy Monday

TOP 10 SIGNS THAT YOU KNOW IT'S TIME TO JOIN E-MAILERS ANONYMOUS

10, You wake up at 3 a.m. to go to the bathroom, and check your email on the way back to bed.
9. Your firstborn is named dot com.
S. You turn off your modem and are suddenly filled with a feeling of emptiness, as if you just pulled the plug on a loved one.
7. You spend half of a plane trip with your laptop on your hip... and your child in the overhead compartment,
6. You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two, just for the free Internet access. 5. You find yourself typing "com" after every full stop.com
4. You refer to going to the bathroom as downloading.
3. You move into a new home and decide to netscape before you landscape.
2. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. :)
DRUM ROLL PLEASE
AND THE NO. 1 SIGN THAT YOU KNOW ITS TIME TO JOIN E-MAILERS ANON.
1. Immediately after reading this list, you email it to someone.

Who are you looking at?

Are you looking for a fight?

At the moment I'm still feeling as if I'd been butted by one of these but the main reason I'm not blogging much is beacuse one of the horns poked my eye out and I can't see properly.  I have eight sets of spectacles, one of which, according to how my eyes are focussing / double-visioning, usually works.  None are working at the moment so I'm managing without any.  If you can manage without any why do you bother, I hear you ask?  The answer is because I  have to have my eyes two inches from the screen / keyboard.  Looks a bit weird to put it mildly.  Back when all my bits are working better....

The Loft

I still have a few boxes to put back in the loft but I thought it was about time I told you of a success story so here it is. With illustrations.

After a few months of lugging boxes down from the loft, sorting them, cataloguing their contents and heaving them back up again we have a tidy loft with accessible contents whose whereabouts are known. How wonderful is that? The result may not look much tidier than the original photos but I assure you it is.

And there are nine boxes less than there were. I still worry a bit about the weight that’s being put on the loft flooring but at the moment I’m more worried about the 80 mph gales that have just ripped out a piece of fencing and sent it across the car park of the Doctors’ surgery next door. Plant pots are skidding around the patio, spilling their contents and colliding with patio furniture and a host of other objects only half of which I recognise – suggesting the other half have made it over the fence from a neighbour’s. If anyone thinks I’m mad enough to go and investigate in this wind/rain/hail they’ve got another think coming, especially since the local traffic reports are full of blocked roads as trees come down all over the place.

But back to the loft…

This, believe it or not, is the most important part of the loft – a six foot by four foot space next to the access hatch. At long last I can climb in and out without having to negotiate loads of rubbish stored items.

I haven’t been well enough to check that the roof is still on but, assuming it is, the loft is FINISHED for a few months at least. What I need now is the discipline to make sure that when I change the location of anything in there I make a note of it on the catalogue of contents.

Tired

I had decided not to bore you with my health issues but then I thought – blow it, I’ve suffered, why shouldn’t you!

I’ve been in bed for the last two weeks – with the occasional exception of an hour or so - as a result of a fourteen day non-stop migraine (a record even for me) of which ten days were excruciating. Just to ice the cake I had a facial infection and the doctor has now identified that I’ve also got Temporomandibular Joint Disorder (TMJ). I’m sure that there is as board-room – or a bored-room - somewhere to which a group of medics retire after a boozy lunch to dream up this week’s new names for medical disorders. Yesterday I had my first migraine free day (it having eased off at 3 a.m.) for two weeks but sadly it’s back this morning though, thankfully, at a lower pain level. It remains to be seen how I get on over the next few days. If it all gradually goes away I shall be back blogging again. If not, please cancel Christmas and check back in the New Year….

I’m tired and I want to go to bed. That would make a good song, wouldn’t it…

Just about

Just abiut well enought to check my comments before |i go to the Dotcor's again this morning and find that I seem to have been around for a couple of days now - the miracles of scheduled postings...

Hopefully I'll be better aqian soon and will bore you all with the gory details. (Inclusing why I can'r see to type properly - remond me to tell you abnout the wonder's of Kinde and increasing font size when you can't see...)

That old Christmas card list

Do you ever find an old Christmas card list – the one you wrote out in order to write your cards and make sure you didn’t forget Auntie Marje? Occasionally I come across one as I throw out more rubbish that has accumulated over the years and I’m horrified to realise that the list can be about equally divided into:-

Those who have since died;
those who have changed partner;
those who I’ve lost touch with;
those who I still send a card to; and
those whose names mean absolutely nothing to me nowadays.

Who were Michelle and Eddie????

Alphabet Wednesday - T is for Tiger

T is for Tiger. Sadly they are becoming ever more rare.

Siberian Tiger -

Amur Tiger -

Bengal Tiger -

Sumatran Tigers -

For a lot more interpretations of the letter T please visit the ABC linksite.