February's reading material

February is a short month, so the list this time is a little shorter (okay, so not much).... that might also have had something to do with the amount of knitting I've been doing.

Stand out book for me this month, and, shock horror, it's a shifter book.... which given my persnickertiness about the sub genre is rather surprising.  The book is The Tameness of the Wolf by Kendall McKenna.... where everyone knows about wolves, they make up a substantial part of the armed forces (a job in which they excel) and for once the dominant partner is the human.

The other favourite this month is Screwing the System by Josephine Myles.... an author whose work I generally enjoy, but this had the added D/s twist without the uber-rich Dom, the club setting or that everyone in the entire book was in the scene.

Now to the rest of the list...

1. Second Hand – Marie Sexton
2. Dirty Laundry – Heidi Cullinan
3. Acquainted with the Night – Tymber Dalton – this surprised me, it is an M-preg sci-fi story which whilst it does have repetitive sex scenes throughout kicked me in the gut at the ending.

4. Widdershins – Jordan L. Hawk
5. By the Creek – Geoff Laughton – YA (Andrew Grey’s alter ego)
6. A Volatile Rang – Andrew Grey – the whole story was totally ruined by really bad formatting on the Kindle which meant no full stop was followed by a space before the next sentence, words were run into each other and spelling and grammatical errors ran through the text.

7. He Speaks Dead – Adrienne Wilder – (pick it for me book for February) – not my usual thing, but a fairly good read

8. Sub-mission – Sage Marlowe
9. Re- Submission – Sage Marlowe – I quite enjoyed these two fairly light D/s novels which are set in the UK (must pick up the third)

10. The Tameness of the Wolf – Kendall McKenna (see above)
11. Social Skills – Sara Alva
12. Screwing the System – Josephine Myles (see above)
13. Once a Brat – Kim Dare
14. Blood Games – Faye Kellerman (not M/M) – great addition to a long running series of crime fiction books I’ve been reading since about 1992

15. Redemption by Fire – Andrew Grey (r)
16. Strengthened by Fire – Andrew Grey
17. Burnished by Fire – Andrew Grey
18. Rough Edges – Jane Davitt (short free story on Archive of Our Own – was in Toybox: Paddles originally)

19. Winter Wolf: A Werewolf Romance on Snow – S.P. Wayne – erm, major issues with this behaviour of the so called “lone wolf” behaving like a domestic dog rather than a wolf....

20. Dead in LA – Lou Harper – 2 kind of quirky paranormal detective stories which I enjoyed – I hope she continues with the series

21. Out of the Fire – Ariel Tachna (r)
22. Stroke Rate – L.M. Somerton – previously a free read online but now published, not much changed from the free version. Some issues for me about the portrayal of the D/s relationship

23. Once in a Lifetime – Ariel Tachna – nice story with no angst, drama or big misunderstanding told in the format of a diary

24. Hard Fall – James Buchanan (r)
25. Spin Out – James Buchanan (r)

I've also been dipping in and out of some reference books I bought - and looking at maps..... and sometime early next week I get to go visit the police station... okay that's not research, I got pulled over for having a break light out earlier this evening and need to go and prove I've had it fixed....

In the meantime, it's definitely bed time as I appear to be struggling to fight off the office stomach bug that's going round.... only rather than just being stomach crampy and feeling sick, my immune system has gone into overdrive and I have a stonking temperature that means I am either shivering enough to make my teeth ache or roasting...... joy!

I love my critters.... but....

Sometimes, I really don't want to have to get up at just after midnight to let the dogs out, or to have to get up at 5.30 am every morning.... I'd love to actually see if I could work out what this mysterious thing that other people call a "lie in" actually is....

I'd like to be able to get my clothes dry without the cats knocking things off the clothes airer, or pulling them off the hangers

I'd like not to feel like the mop is surgically attached to my hand, to be able to vacuum the lounge without having to empty the hoover at least five times. I'd like for some of my clothes not to actually have a dog hair on them...

I'd like to be able to leave things on the kitchen table, or on the coffee table, and not having to worry that as soon as my back was turned it would be swiped or destroyed

I'd like my books to stay on the shelves, not to have to guard my legs from the cat's claws


Then again

There is nothing like the sound of contented purring from the cat sitting on my lap, or shoulder, or curled up in the middle of my back when I lie in bed to read

There is nothing like the expression on the dogs faces when I come home from work, or when I go down to them first thing in the morning.  They will never not be pleased to see me.



I'd never part with them despite the negatives......... they are after all, when the really bad days happen, the reason I get up in a morning and carry on.

March Reading Madness.....

Every month I budged carefully put aside a small number of pennies to purchase books..... I also have a tendency to troll the interwebs looking for freebies .... as a result of which I now have 92 books currently sitting on my Kindle which have not been read.

These books are a mixture of books I've bought, chosen myself as freebies from either Amazon or the publishers site, or won in a give-away... but for some reason I have just not got round to reading them before buying more books which in my mind are newer and shinier... (I am sure they aren't really!)

So, in an effort to reduce this number I am decreeing that next month shall be......

The March Madness Book Reduction Month

In which:

1. I will not buy any new e-books (this starts from 27th Feb which is when I get paid and would usually go book shopping) - with the exception of what ever is picked for me as my March "pick it for me" challenge book in the M/M group.

2. I will allow myself to re-read up to five books from my Kindle archive

3. I will be allowed to download books that are free on Amazon or which I win in giveaways.  I will not go hunting for books to download for free on other sites when I can't decide which book to read next.

4. I will try and organise my GR bookshelves a little more accurately - including creating a favourites file.

5. If I am struggling to chose the next book to read I will ask for someone to pick for me from the "lurking-in-Kindleland" shelf I've created


Right, I need to find my willpower to do this..... and turn off the "one-click" button on Amazon....... for some reason I can see my knitting productivity increasing substantially with this challenge........

(betting on how long I last before I give in and buy something is allowed...)

Sparkles, herding blackberries and other weekend things...

This weekend I have been busy, well kind of....

Friday night, as usual, was a crash on the sofa and unwind evening... in which I had intended to knit but my fingers were stupidly cold so I elected to hide under the blankets and read.

Yesterday was supposed to start with a trip to the supermarket (fail!) and then housework (partial fail!) as I just couldn't find any motivation.... So I cleaned the bathroom, downstairs loo and kitchen ... and then made almond shortbread biscuits... before going off to meet up with the family for lunch.

Now I hate being late, really really hate it, it's the one thing that is almost guaranteed to wind me up to the state of tears or trantrums...... We were meant to be meeting up at 1pm, so I set off from mine at 12.20 pm... which should have been plenty of time...... only I got stuck behind some stupid person who refused to go above 30 mph, despite the speed limit being 50 and 60 mph.  Now this is out in the wilds of the White Peak (part of Derbyshire) and unfortunately the roads are too twisty for overtaking....(there might have been some rude words uttered about the other driver).... by the time it got to the point where the car in front finally turned off it was almost 1pm and I still had another 8 or so miles to go....

I eventually got there about 10 minutes late.... by which time my sister had texted me to say where was I? .... Only by there I mean that I'd made it as far as the car park.... which was full... I sat a fumed for a while till a space came free and then went to meet everyone.... by which time I was somewhat frazzled.

A nice lunch helped me calm back down.......my mother was on fine form with the inappropriate comments and lunch conversations....  luckily we are used to her... We looked at the bookshop on the way out after lunch, and I must have looked quite needy as my sister pulled the book I'd been looking at back off the shelf and bought it for me :)

Today I have been to the yarn shop (which is a dangerous thing and should only be done at this end of the month, just before pay day, so that I can't go too mad)... I actually only bought one ball of shaded grey yarn, some pipe cleaners and some toy stuffing...... so I can continue with the current mystery project (which now had it's head, body and one leg (i've not knitted the other one yet) stuffed, oh and it's ears sewn on)

After stroking yarn I was mean to go round to a friend's for lunch, but when I got there she said she didn't feel like cooking so we ended up going out....... and had a lovely meal although the service was a bit slow....... in fact at one point, whilst waiting for the apple and blackberry crumble we'd ordered for pudding to finally arrive we decided that in fact the chef had had to go and herd the blackberries from the field where they were running wild (being free range blackberries of course)... we then decided that herding blackberries could only be done by cats (dog's being too over enthusiastic and prone to squishing the blackberries) and that the chef had to be in formal kitchen whites..... I am not sure what the table next to us was thinking as we moved on after that to wondering things like... exactly how do they milk almonds (I mean, have you ever seen teats on an almond) and rice for non dairy milk.... after I suggested that child labour in China produced the rice milk because children have small enough hands to attach each grain of rice to the milking machine that it all got a bit silly......okay, well sillier....

I blame this on the fact that not being allowed caffeine I had chosen to drink "Sparkleberry" juice..... which was dark red and swirled with gold glitter (it tasted of cherries) .... sadly it did not make me sparkle when I drank it, which was very disappointing.......

All this frivolity and yet I still managed to remember to pick up some cat food on the way home so that I wasn't gnawed on by starving critters in the night........ didn't make the supermarket though which might be an issue when it comes to making my lunch tomorrow....... oh well.....

Paddling in ice water........

This evening in my kitchen we have had a small demonstration of how to build your own miniature inside lake.....

It goes like this.... a couple of days ago I noticed that there was a suspicious wet patch by the kitchen bin when I got home from work but thought nothing much about it, well apart from to glare at Ivan whilst mopping it up.  Same again last night...... and tonight..... only there appeared to be a bit more to mop tonight.....

So I puttered about in the kitchen when I got home from work, did the washing up, emptied the bin, fed the dogs, fed me, read for a bit, but before 6pm the temperatures were plummeting and I wanted the warmth generated by my gas fire so the dogs and I shuffled through to the lounge armed with kindle, phone and knitting.... and there we stayed till just after 8pm when Hope requested access to the outside world (namely by barking at me, leaping about like a loon and finally landing in my lap)

So off we went to the kitchen.........

to discover that the area by the back door was coated in about a centimetre of extremely cold water...... time to investigate further.  After checking under the sink and finding nothing amiss I realised I'd have to check behind the old washing machine (yes I have one, it's still in my kitchen, it hasn't worked for four years and I really should do something about it...... but well, yes, one day....)

It's quite heavy and a sodding awkward shape to move

but I managed.... to discover the valve on the cold water inlet pipe was bust and water was spraying out the valve in a mini water fall effect.... with some assistance of a spanner I managed to turn the valve so it was shut off and the water stopped.... I then used the amazing theory of "duct tape fixed everything" to cover the whole valve until I can get a plumber out to look at it..... I've put the washing machine back.... well if I didn't the dogs would only try getting behind it and get themselves stuck or something silly...... and the floor is now covered in old towels in case I have to get up in the night to let the dogs out as knowing my luck I'd end up going over and landing on my backside on a freezing cold damp floor at 2 am!

What once was free....

It may just be me, but it is bothering me.....

I used to read a lot of online m/m fiction - through sites such as Literotica and nifty - now fair enough there is an awful lot of crap out there, but there were some genuinely good stories, some of which hung around online to be read for several years but which have now disappeared.

Now whilst I appreciate there has been some problems with people stealing these works and passing them off as their own when they self publish them, and I understand that any author would want to protect their work, but I am finding more and more stories that I liked are being pulled and then appearing as soon to be published books (well novellas some aren't very long) on Goodreads.

Don't get me wrong, some of these stories are good enough to be published and do deserve a wider audience..... some of these are stories I've read and enjoyed and in some cases gone back to re-read ....but do I really want to pay for a copy now?

Caveat here - there is one story that was free online that I know the author is in the process of editing and re-working for submission and I will be buying that if it gets picked up as it was one of my all time favourites and comfort reads.

I respect the right of the author to do what they want with their story...... but I also reserve the right not to pay £3 - £4 for something that I've read before for free.  Okay, so if the author has made changes from the original free version before publishing I might be tempted to buy it - but if it's exactly the same story??  Trouble is, I can usually only find this out when I've bought it and then it's not returnable.

I also wonder if this sort of thing, particularly when the stories haven't been reviewed and edited (and there are certain publishers accepting these stories that I will be avoiding), is contributing towards the decline in the standard of M/M books being put out generally?

Goodness.... almost a social life!

Sunday night has rolled round again...... and for once I've actually had a weekend involving being social!

Friday night admittedly was a bit of a wash out as 15 minutes before I was due to leave work the fire alarms sounded and we all got evacuated... only I wasn't on the 1st floor where I usually live, but on the 5th...... which meant having to walk down 10 flights of stairs.... because it wasn't a drill (the coffee shop had set something alight!) I couldn't stay in the muster point on the stair well, which I would usually do in a drill if I wasn't on my own floor, instead I had to evacuate...... 10 flights of stairs, standing outside in the freezing cold for 20 minutes then getting back upstairs (thankfully only 2 flights) and coming down again so I could go home for the weekend resulted in my arthritis kicking me in the backside...... resulting in a joyous pain reaction when I unceremoniously threw up in the corner of the car park as I got to my car.... suffice to say Friday night was a bit of a wash out involving rather heavy pain killers and lying flat.

Thankfully the weather has improved and it's been bright and more importantly dry for a few days so by Saturday morning though a bit stiff I didn't feel too bad.  I did the supermarket run first thing - with mother, which is always fun.  I decided the home deliveries whilst easy were costing me too much and resulting in me buying things I didn't eat so ended up throwing out.

Shopping safely away and I got to head out into Derbyshire to have lunch and spend the afternoon with a friend, who was also in need of getting out the house for the day.  It's amazing how long lunch can last when you start talking .... thankfully the cafe we went to weren't bothered by us taking up a table for so long.  The cafe is attached to a bookshop, so we had to have a short browse before leaving.... and I seem to have accidentally purchased real books..... 3 of them are reference books and only 1 a novel so I count this as reasonable on the grounds that the majority are for research.  After lunch we went off to play in the local craft shops where she got carried away looking at pretty fabrics for patchwork and I stroked yarn, but refrained from buying anything.

Today I went for Sunday lunch with the family at my sisters...... which involved much merriment and discovering that if you unexpectedly poke Mavis the cat when she's sleeping she makes the cutest noise ever... poor cat got a bit pissed off with us by the 5th time....

I also received late Christmas presents this weekend.... some of my favourite salted caramel chocolates and some fancy cup cake cases from my friend yesterday (and had to apologise profusely because I am disorganised and haven't bought her present yet).  Then today my sister, who last weekend took her partner to meet my dad for the first time, handed me a mug that dad's other half had bought for me, well had made, which appears black, but when you put a hot drink in it pictures show up.... mine has pictures of the evil naked cats on it (mum and sister got mugs with their cats on).... I shall take it to work tomorrow to frighten everyone with the ugly cats.

I suppose I should go get organised for tomorrow....... though I have made my lunch already.... after last week I decided to avoid the sharp knives at dawn fiasco I would be organised this week and make my lunch whilst I was awake!

An accidental kind of day....

Well today didn't get off to a good start when at 4 am the dog over the road started to bark hysterically... which of course meant that the mob decreed there must be at least a hoard of Viking raiders attacking the street and joined in with the attempts to see them off.  After pacification with stern words and biscuits I retired to the sofa with them till it was time to get up properly.....

By 6 am I had given up sleeping and was faffing about chopping veg to go into my pasta salad when I accidentally mistook the end of my finger for the red pepper I was cutting and, erm, sliced a chunk off the end of my finger...... luckily my kitchen knives are very sharp (erm, no this is a good thing really) and it was a clean fast cut, which didn't hurt till after I realised that my salad was no longer vegetarian!....after applying pressure with a wad of tissue and hopping around the kitchen whilst swearing quite creatively I realised it wasn't going to stop bleeding ..... I located plasters in the third first aid box I came to (what can I say, I know myself well enough to have first aid kits liberally spread around the house and car) after which I spent a creative 10 minutes applying plasters and micro-pore tape.... yep it looks stupid, but it's padded and there is no sign of it bleeding through the plaster....

Work wasn't sympathetic to my plight........ after said finger tried to join in with the typing of it's own accord there was further minor expletives ... followed by my team leader saying that I should try not to bleed into the keyboard!

I wanted to take the plaster off earlier to check how it was doing (and not to poke at it at all, honest) but the feeling passed when work insisted I go home early as we'd had rather a heavy snow fall and it was very icy underfoot (work bless em are a bit paranoid about me falling and hurting my leg.... though I think it's more to do with the fact that it might mean I couldn't come into work than about me actually being injured!)

This evening I was actually meant to be having a bit of a social life and going out for tea (or dinner/supper call it what you will) but alas I couldn't get the car back out the drive.... instead I have listened to my new CD's which arrived today (and copied them to my MP3 player - after a minor disagreement with the computer!) and then helped my friend whelp a litter of puppies over the phone ... all pups safely arrived and doing well.

And now I shall go cat wrangle in an attempt to be allowed access to some of my own duvet!

I am a valentines grinch........

Despite the fact that at heart I am in incurable romantic who loves nothing more than a happily ever after and wishes that all her friends could find that......... I hate valentines day.....

Today I have been subjected to 4 hours worth of radio programmes which were described as "valentines specials", not to mention being bombarded for adverts on TV this evening for special cards, flowers, gifts...... and then there are the e-mails that have arrived in my in box this weekend with special last minute "valentines offers" on them - which can be anything from chocolates to sex toys....(erm... this is no reflection on the usual e-mails I receive!)

Mother's free loader.... I mean lodger.....calmly told me (in her incredibly superior and knowledgeable voice) this morning as I was having a small rant about gross commercialisation of the day in question...... that it was just because I was single and if I had a boyfriend (at which point mother snorted loudly and muttered that that wasn't going to happen as I was a lesbian) then I would think differently about it and make a special effort for someone I loved ......... erm no....... even on the occasions when I was partnered on valentines day I didn't like it and most times the day passed by un-remarked upon

For me it shouldn't take a special day for you to tell someone you love them, to make it all about one dramatic act or gesture. It shouldn't mean spending a tonne of money on worthless crap that you will either shove in a draw and forget, eat, or in the case of that one off bunch of expensive flowers, chuck out a week later when they die....

So suffice to say.... I have had enough of the cheap pink plastic hearts and flowers for this year!

Surely if you love someone then you show it every day in the things you do and the things you say, from simple acts and gestures, spending time together, offering to help or to simply be there to listen and support and to receive the same in return.

Weekend waffling.....

Welcome, to another boring weekend in my so called life!

Last night was it's usual Friday night wash out of being far too tired after the working week to do anything remotely exciting except curl up on the sofa and read.

Today, I had to go out and do things..... because in a fit of optimism during the week I decided that I was spending far too much on doing my shopping on line and having it delivered, plus I wasn't actually eating half the stuff I ordered, so I could just take myself to the supermarket and do the shopping...... which in theory was fine!

I wandered round to mother's first thing... okay, well about 10.30 am by the time I'd got my arse into gear and stopped faffing about.... so that I could do laundry and catch up on her gossip..... she's very good at gossip!  I was subjected to answering the questions in the standard crossword and the general knowledge quiz in her newspaper as I sat at the table and got on with my knitting....... though she refuses to do the suduko whilst I am there as apparently it's not helpful to have someone calling out random numbers as she's trying to think......

I did discover that I come by my inability to complete things genetically... and for once not from my father (from whom most of my strange traits come from).....  Earlier in the week I'd asked if she had any buttons as I needed some for a baby jumper I am meant to be knitting (said baby safely arrived today).... anyway, this caused her to tidy out her sewing box (mum, my sister and I all have the same boxes, they belonged to my grandma and her sisters.... whilst mum and sister actually have sewing stuff in theirs, mine is full of yarn.... oh and old photos for some reason).  Anyway, she brought out a couple of tapestry things she'd done and was going to get framed for some of her fairly young nieces........ and then she produced a table cloth she was embroidering..... and proceeded to explain that she'd started it when she was 18 but never finished it........ I've suggested she should try to finish it within the next 3 years....... as then it will at least have only taken her 60 years to complete.......... At this point I was informed I was a cheeky baggage ......

Anyway, after I'd run out of excuses not to leave and go shopping I went to the big supermarket... and drove round the car park...... and out of it....... having been struck by a complete feeling of "nope, not happening".  Now I know that I do get stressed out by busy large supermarkets - particularly when there are lots of kids, long queues and the cashiers are obviously in a hurry and throw things down the check outs....... but I just couldn't face it....... so I went to the much smaller (and in fact a lot cheaper) little supermarket (well hardly super) and managed to get just about everything I needed ....... though they don't do cat food that their imperial felinities find acceptable so I had to trog round to the pet shop afterwards.

Shopping was unpacked with only minor incident when I knocked over an open box of dog biscuits, which poured into the fruit bowl, over the side and down the gap between the cupboard and the cooker........ at which point I had to disconnect said cooker to pull it out and remove the biscuits, before the mob went through the front of it!  Yes, I switched off the gas first and did it very sensibly!

Tonight I have finished the scarf I was knitting for a Christmas present..... okay, so I didn't actually buy the yarn till the new year, but it's done now and only 6 weeks late... I shall send it with the postal fairies early next week and hopefully the recipient will get some use of it before spring arrives!   I should really get on with new baby's jumper..... though the last time I promised to do a baby jumper for a new born was just over four years ago...... and the "baby" is still waiting......

I think it is time to retire with a book now....... and then tomorrow I have a short story to write and housework to tackle before apparently the snow returns..... but as it's nothing like the people in parts of the US and Canada have at present I shall refrain from being typically British and moaning about the weather!

Wednesday witterings.....

So, I am no longer lost in the ether - work found me..... alas..... though I was locked out my user area and needed a password re-set....... which apparently can't just be done by the IT team, oh no, your team leader/supervisor has to e-mail them to tell them that you genuinely do need a new password.... yeah, cos someone else would like to break into my area and do my work... wouldn't they? Please??  Anyway, due to sudden blizzards (no really) my team leader wasn't able to get into the office.... and the head of the team was stuck in traffic somewhere ..... the IT teams solution........... I should wander to their part of the building and present myself and they would verify I was who I said I was....... I haven't got a clue how that works, I just turned up said "hi" and they said, okay and re-set the password...... I could have been anyone....... I sometimes wonder if you have to be a complete  muppet to work in IT.

Today started as usual..... though my morning routine has a new element to it...... It has been decreed that there will be at least 5 minutes of cat worshipping time...... no matter how rushed of my feet I am trying to get organised.... Basically I come out the shower, drape myself in towels and Gina promptly runs up them to demand attention....... I currently have an impressive array of scratches on my right thigh, stomach and right shoulder ..... I have now given up arguing with her and will just give her the attention.

Tonight there was, erm, a small amount of chaos at home..... My kitchen cupboards, save for the one where I keep mugs, glasses and tea making paraphernalia, are all under the work top cupboards......which is fine..... until I have "help" in getting something out from them.... As  I was reaching in to find some chilli flakes a small helpful critter (who was possibly called Gretchen) was nosing around in the bottom of the cupboard, where I keep the cake making ingredients...... she found the caster sugar...... and pulled it out, spilling it liberally over the floor..... I got to the sugar with the mop about 8 seconds after it fell..... but alas this was too late and the three evil ones had managed to lap up most of it....... the sugar high hit them about 30 minutes later after which they barked at everything and nothing, ran around like loons, beat each other up (in a playful way) and generally made a nuisance of themselves....... They were starting to crash by the time I put them to bed thankfully..... I wonder if they get post sugar high headaches, cos if so I am going to have three very grumpy critters come morning.

Anyway, I finally finished the book I was reading - it's a Dreamspinner published book and the formatting is terrible.... there are no spaces after any of the full stops and on nearly every page there are words which run into each other making it bloody difficult to read..... Oh and there are areas which could have done with much tighter editing......... I actually feel sorry for the author that his book as been put out like this.....

And now it is bed time...... oh no.... now it is time for more cat worship apparently.......

Lost in the ether....

I no longer exist!!

This morning I arrived at work nice and early (well the roads were quiet) and traipsed up to my desk, fell into my seat and switched on the computer..... and then tried to log in......... "user and or password not recognised".... Eh..... so I check my log in id and re-type my password (which is stupidly long but not that complicated - my former dogs pedigree names combined with birth dates are very useful sometimes) ... and nothing... so I log a call to IT..... eventually, apparently no one answers the phone till 9 am in IT... never mind that I start at 8.30 am.... only to be told they have a major server/network issue and some users are finding it difficult to log on .... no really?  Oh IT bods, you do surprise me with your intellect sometimes!

Roll forward an hour..... by which time I am bored out my tiny mind having had to resort to filing *shudder*..... and I phone the IT team back....... oh yes, we are fixing the problem, they tell me, only you don't exist....... eep!!

Was I fired and no one told me? Or more seriously, am I lost in the ether, condemned to roam around the broken and frayed ends of decaying networks, amid the scraps of data and lost bits of virtual memory for ever more??....... Thanks to the power of my smart phone I was able to connect with the usual subjects, who were willing to send out a virtual search party to find me........ I am not sure why they automatically thought the best place to look would be the gutter though?? Though something about me being a collector of dinted halos, mistress of the hell hounds, hunter of pocket demons and collector of smut had something to do with it...... I don't know where people get these ideas about me from!

Alas, as far as work goes, I tried to persuade the powers that be that I should have the say off..... but instead was handed a Dictaphone machine and told to get on with my work........ 

Hopefully by tomorrow normal service will have resumed and I will in fact exist once more!

Going cold turkey on the shower gel.....

Is there anything quite so nice as getting into a freshly made bed, with nice laundered and ironed (thanks mum!) bedding having had a nice long hot shower?

Nope, I don't think so..... which is how I am about to go round off my weekend very shortly as for once after stripping the bed I actually put on the new bedding rather than leaving it till I was stupidly tired and the cats were far too awake to make life easy!  I even got the new bedding on without either crippling myself or ending up in the king size duvet cover....  I should add, that thankfully my fingers are now out of their strapping and not really that painful (unless they get knocked.... thank you Gretchen!....) they are still a lovely shade of lavender.....

Anyway, there is now a down side to my showering plans .... in fact to all future showers......for alas my shower gel addiction has hit a snag..... due to the problems with my leg I have been left with stupidly sensitive skin and one of the things I've been advised (read told!) is that from henceforth I will not use highly scented soaps and shower gels.... I should only be using (preferably unscented) moisturising shower gel or natural soaps!!  This does not bode well for someone whose idea of stress relief is to go spend a long time sniffing shower gels, buying them and then glorying in long showers with lots of bubbles........ moisturising shower gels are, for the most part, really really boring........

Another huge down side is that shower gel purchasing and use makes me happy.  It also stops me going out and impulse buying things that aren't good for me (or things that cost far more money than I should be spending), particularly when I am either pissed off or depressed.......

I also have to decide what to do with the, erm, *counts* 12 bottles of unopened shower gel that are waiting in line at the end of the bath.......stupid as it sounds, I can't throw them away.... and I don't think I could give them away either...... maybe if I used them in very small quantities...... perhaps with a plastic bag over my leg........ Usually I have to just go cold turkey when giving up things (like caffeine, and bread.... and all other yeasty products...) but I really don't think I can do it this time......

Oh sod it, I am going for my shower, and using the rich chocolate shower gel for at least one last time....