Random thoughts

Blest has recently illustrated how it is perfectly possible to string together seemingly random thoughts in the order they occur to the writer and have it work as a blog post, so this is what I'm trying today. This is since trying to string together one sentence a a time that makes sense is hard today, and trying to create perfectly formed paragraphs would totally defeat me.

I'm having problems stringing sentences together because I didn't get to bed until two this morning. This was because I was out babysitting for a longer evening that I had originally foreseen. In fact if I had foreseen it would be that long, I would have said no to the babysitting from the beginning. It was a long evening and I don't want to talk about it anymore. I also don't want to talk about screaming babies or incidents with candles and pieces of paper.

Today was a fun day at school. Otherwise translated as a non-curriculum day. I spent my morning in a room with Knights, Ladies and Dragons, and got to sew lots of pairs of wings onto children's dragon sock puppets. This afternoon I got to line dance in the rain and dance a dance with the year 5 children that had been significantly altered since I had last had to step in for a missing children. However, it was great fun and I managed to stay awake for the whole day.

Memorable moments include a slip of the tongue by the 'caller' when we were singing. Basically each class got to perform a dance that they had learnt, and in the in between sorting out children bits we sang songs like 'what shall we do with the drunken sailor?' and 'She'll be coming round the mountain'. The poor caller started one of the verses "She'll have to sleep with Grandpa when she comes" and the headteacher had to run over to correct him "She'll have to sleep with Grandma when she comes". It mostly funny to see the may Miss M ran across the playground as fast as she could (we were all outside as that's the only place we could fit everyone and still have space to dance in the middle). It was also fun line-dancing in the rain, taking lots of photos and watching Miss M join in with some of the dances.

So having said I was going to write lots of random chunks I'm realising that this isn't turning out much different from many of my normal posts.

The other day I walked home from the post office and wrote a little post in my head telling you all about how I had given my sandals a new lease of life. I never got round to actually writing that post, but perhaps this will whet your appetite for another time.

I would love to tell you something else exciting about lorries, but I think I've exhausted my knowledge for the time being. Maybe next time I'm at a party I'll have a chance to learn something new (that was how I got to find out about those wheels that they can put down for extra grip) although please don't let me put you off ever going to a party with me. I do make interesting small talk usually, or at least sometimes, probably.

I have to go and pick up HP from the station. YAY! She is coming home tonight. Tomorrow we are going to my cousin David's wedding. Also my Grandparents and my Uncle are on their way here and will being staying with us overnight and driving with us to the wedding tomorrow. We will see Bekki there, but she will then come back with us and stay over until Sunday. So lots of fun family time :-)

This is taken looking down at J asleep in my arms. Why can't I have the opportunity to fall asleep like this? Although I might look a little strange with a dummy in my mouth.

Let the internets sing and jump for joy

after all, that's good exercise, it's fun, and I've found my tweezers.

Last week I know I had them in my jeans pocket, can't remember why, but know they were there. However, by the end of the day they were gone. Having looked everywhere I could think of I concluded they must have come out and got lost at school, and decided to just buy myself some more. On Saturday I went into Boots and got some tweezers. The problem was that since I refuse to pay ten pounds or some such sum for a pair of tweezers that might easily get lost I was stuck with buying the straight forward Boots own brand ones. Except they only had slanted end ones. In the end I got them, because you never know when you might want your tweezers and slanted end ones are better than nothing.

I prefer the straight edged ones because I am fairly ambidextrous and have this thing of twirling my tweezers when I'm just holding them. If they have a straight end it doesn't matter which hand they're in or which way they end up, but if they've got a slanted edge they always seem to end up being the wrong way around and really awkward. (Do bear with my Steve, I know this is a fairly girly post, but I've got something for you in a minute!)

Anyway, fast forward to today. I am looking after little J and have brought him back to my house because there are a couple of things I want to get done here. Talking of J, why is it small children want to pull out every single wipe from the packet if they get the chance? But back to the tweezers. I was just outside hanging out the washing and pulled another handful of pegs out of the bag to peg up my sheep socks (socks with sheep on, not socks for sheep). I noticed something flying out of the peg bag with the pegs. I picked it up, and lo and behold it was my missing pair of tweezers. Back on Friday I must have brought in the washing and put the pegs in my pocket until I could put them away in the bag, and then the tweezers got mixed with the pegs and ended up in the bag.

Now my tweezers, my lovely straight edged tweezers are found again. That calls for a celebration :-) Right then J, what shall we have for lunch? I know fridge magnets, plastic lids and washing balls are exciting to play with, but they're not so good for eating...

(I hope you saw the bit I put in for you Steve, and it was even true - I didn't have to manipulate the story in any way. It was as I pulled out a handful of pegs to hang out the socks that it happened. How cool is that!)

(And I still can't get my phone to talk to the computer. Maybe I need to reinstall the software or something. Or just wait until they're both having a good day. Who knows! So here's a picture of J from a while back.)

new clothes

I did get something to wear at the wedding. Would show you but my phone and computer are not on talking terms right now, so can't transfer the picture. Really must get myself a proper digital camera, although I do like using my phone.

Will try again with the transferring tomorrow cos I'm off to bed now. Night all :-)

The wedding outfit

Next Saturday my cousin David is marrying Vicky. Since the skirt I wore to a wedding last summer is now at the chartiy shop next door (or possibly even with a new owner) due to it's tendancy to fall down if I put it on, tomorrow is the day I go shopping for a new outfit. Since I'm not exactly sure what I'm looking for it may be a long day, but here's to finding something! (I don't really have any other time to go shopping, unless I take the little one with me on Tuesday or J on Wednesday, or try to fit in in after school on one of the other days!) HP and I last summer.
I do currently still have the top in my wardrobe, but I think I need to admit to myself that yes, that needs to move on too as it's just too big. I just sometimes take a bit of time adjusting!

Milking it for all it's worth

This was probably one of the few times Little One ventured close to the cow.

Therefore you'll be able to tell that this is my hand 'milking' the cow.

Hang on a minute little one, did you see that cow moooove?

Little one was captivated by this model cow when we went to the farm a few weeks back. There was a stool you could sit on, and rubber udders that you could squeeze out 'milk' into a bucket. I had a go at that, but he wasn't too sure. Every time we walked past it he looked at it as though it might move and get him if he wasn't careful. He seemed to be psyching himself to see just how close he could get it it without it noticing!

Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're gonna get

I like writing lists. Shopping lists, packing lists, to-do lists, the list is endless. But lately it's felt like there are too many things on the list, and not enough time to think about them, let alone do them. It's about balancing the little things and the big things too, and getting stuff done in the right order so you don't have to do it again a second time.

I haven't really used my diary recently to keep a track of what's happening when, although I am supposed to be using it to keep my self-employed record in (for tax return purposes, so I know what I worked when). I started the year writing in a journal a little bit about each day, but I think I gave up on that around March or April, and that was after having several concerted efforts to fill in the several weeks worth of empty pages. I started off this month blogging every day over all my other blog about the June Challenge we're doing over at OWOA, and yet somehow managed to not find time to write it after about a week. Why am I finding it so hard to keep my resolve about things like this? Why does time keep slipping through my fingers, water running under the bridge and other similar sentiments?

How do I get these two sides of myself to meet on middle ground? What would the middle ground be? I think part of the problem is that it's come to the time of the year (again) when I'm not quite sure what's coming next. Like this time last year I'm leaving my current job at the end of the school year, and things aren't 100% certain after that. I'm better off in some ways because I have an amazing job offer on the table, one which I have accepted, but I'm not totally sure what it will mean as it plays out. Life as know it will not be the same. I'm scared out of my mind, and yet so so excited, oh and the bit of me that likes writing lists is very excited, because there will be a fair few lists needing to be written before I move to take up my new post.
I'm sorry, it's not fair hinting and not saying, and maybe that's why I've been away from my blog for a while. Ok, so I've posted lots of pretty pictures, but don't feel like I've written content for a while. One day soon I may be able to tell...

Oh, and the lorry thing I promised a while back. Basically they have an extra set of wheels so that if they have been driving on soft ground, for example on grass, and the ground has got chewed up and they can't move, they can put down the extra set of wheels to get a grip on some untouched ground, and hopefully be able to move themselves back to solid ground. That sentence was very long and not very clear, but hopefully it will satisfy HP's curiosity.

It's things like this that I don't like right now.

Ok, so they look pretty. BUT they make me sneeze. And I am sneezing muchly. Therefore, I do not like flowers right now.

Note to self: Consider one day thinking about posting on blog before you become too tired to have any brain power

This week has gone past so quickly it's like a blur [hence excuse to pick this photo ;-)]. I had to work in school on Tuesday, but that means I have the day off tomorrow. Yay! I have to go shopping for a wedding outfit. No idea what I want, so it may be a long day...

Too young to start driving?

Getting a little perspective, or trying to remember what day it is today

I'm working at school tomorrow, which is a little confusing because I have been looking after the little one on a Tuesday. He is away (with his family, he hasn't gone away by himself), and the headteacher of the school has asked me if I could go in tomorrow so that the person who might take over my job next year can shadow me for a day. Oh, and by the way, I gave my resignation in to school just before half term.

I have some plans that are currently being incubated (and coming up to hatching) to do with what I might be doing in the autumn, but I'm afraid nothing that I can share with you all as yet. Some of you already know what those plans are, and will understand why I can't share them yet. Others will not have a clue what I'm on about, but remember, ignorance is bliss ;-)

NEWS

Everyone go over and read Kathleen's exciting news

Giant Trucks and all that jazz

This is the giant truck that had to be manoeuvred into the cul de sac where my friends who have now moved up to Scotland used to live. I somehow came at that sentence from the wrong way and it doesn't sound quite right, but I'm going to leave it just for the comic effect.
It took some doing. In fact the mother of the family had just managed to get the keys for that van that's in the way, and was about to get into it to move it (woman in white top, black trousers walking towards little van).

And all this talk of lorries reminds me, I discovered why lorries have those extra wheels at the front which during normal driving conditions aren't used. I would link back o my original post about lorries, but it would take too long going through the archives. And anyway, it's too long a reason to write while at my current state of tiredness. But at least that's something I could write in a post at some point, instead of just putting up photos. Although if I talk too much about lorries people might start requesting that I just put up posts with only photos ;-)

If I haven't totally confused you by now, then it's not my fault. You're obviously not easily confused today. Over and out.

You decide the caption

Cos I don't have the brainpower

Just hanging around (Wordless Wednesday)

The beautiful Little Flower

Baby sister of The Little One
Isn't she gorgeous? :-)

My triangle mouth lives on

I don't know how I mangaged to look quite so gormless in this picture, especially since I took it. But it does illustrate how my mouth goes into this sort of triangle shape when I'm not making it do something else (for example, smiling). And J does look pretty cute, he might even be showing a faint glimmer of a smile, or at least interest in what's going on in front of him (I was holding my phone out with my arm to take the picture).

New links and a big sigh of relief

I just added several new links to my sidebar, unfortunately in the process I managed to totally screw up the layout and template of my blog. Fortunately I have two blogs, and thanks to tabbed browsing on Firefox I was able to flip between the two and replace the bits of html that I appeared to have deleted by mistake. so big sigh of relief, I think it's sorted out again, but let me know if you notice anything odd!

We had a lovely time up London, I was able to buy myself a new swimming costume, which I desperately needed as my old one is getting a bit see-through in places! I also got a couple of tops and a pair of sandals. My Mum got an outfit to wear to my cousins wedding at the end of June, so she is happy too. Then we went to Nandos for dinner.Yes, so anyway, I've added some new people to my sidebar. Mostly people whose blogs I've been reading for a while, and got fed up of remembering how to get to them everytime - at least if there's a link to them from my blog it'll be easier to find them each time. Feel free to wander over and browse some of them at your leisure :-)HP and Dave (the cousin who's getting married) playing with a remote control car.

Dave deciding to pose for the camera :-)

Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?

... I've been up to London to visit the Queen.

Well actually I haven't gone yet, but this afternoon I am going up London. But it's unlikely I'll see the Queen. Instead I will see Bekki and my Uncle Jon (and my Mum is coming too). Actually I'm tagging along with them. They are going to the theatre tonight, but I will spend the afternoon with them, perhaps doing a bit of shopping and sight-seeing.

This is the Little one 'loving' his cat. Actually since his baby sister was born Boots has moved to live with the people in the flat below. Little's parents decided that looking after 2 children and a cat was going to be too much hard work, and it would be fairer on Boots to live elsewhere. However, Boots does still pop in through the cat flap for visits.

Duet

The only thing is you have to remind B to only use two fingers at a time, otherwise the noise reaches a crescendo a little too soon.