Melodies for the midweek ....

Or something like that!

This week's bands are brought to you by the letter "V".  Both of them are on my current writing playlist.

First up, Villagers.. who I saw support Elbow back in March... they were very good but not quite ready for an arena size tour even in support, friends who went with us wanted to take them home and mother them for a while...

And secondly, The Vaccines, who I am hoping to go see in the near future...

Bah Humbug.....

Ah, it is the season..... for the annual appearance of my inner Grinch!

Not even the end of November and the Christmas spirit is a little frayed around the edges.... don't get me wrong, I love Christmas.... in December though..  preferably say, from about the 14th onwards...

Today I have seen lots of Christmas lights, I have heard carols, I have been told how many posting days, buying days, delivery days etc till Christmas.  I know who in the office has written their cards, finished their shopping (yeah, so not helped by the fact that I am a last minute organiser - hey I get there in the end though!)

Added to which I have had to choose what I want for my Christmas dinner thing at work... I've avoided going every year so far, but no excuse this time, apparently... though the vegetarian option isn't really an option yet again...

They are threatening to trim up the office next week...... which I steadfastly refuse to get involved in.. hell I am easily distracted in a sort of "ooh pretty" way by stuff I already have on my desk (ok, well phone and internet).. put sparkly tinsel and stuff up and I'm doomed to do no work at all!

I shall do festive, eventually...maybe with the help of the Spirit of Christmas... which in my case is Vodka, large one....

Being thankful for rainbows

I wasn't up super early this morning, it was only just after 5 am when we stumbled back in from a brief limp round the park (hip improving rapidly thank goodness - bruise now purple and green - pretty!)... and I was half listening to the radio 45 minutes later when "pause for thought" - which is a multi faith 5 minutes of reflective time - came on.

The Liberal Rabbi was speaking about how although in the UK we don't celebrate Thanks Giving we should remember to be thankful for what we had.  One of the things she mentioned was that in Judaism there is a brief prayer of thanks or blessing for when you see a rainbow.

Now, this struck a chord, not in terms of seeing a physical rainbow, which always makes me smile, but rather reminded me that I am thankful for my own rainbow... or rather the rainbow friends I am lucky enough to share my life with.  These people help me understand more about myself, they help me to learn and grow, to accept and to love.


So, whether you are a friend in real life or a more distant cyber friend, thank you, for helping to make my life complete

The label game again

Well, after last night's adventures I am feeling a little stiff and sore, and have a lovely purple bruise the shape (and feels like size, but no really, not that big) of Africa on my right hip...

As I am feeling a little more coherent I thought I'd clear my mind a bit and get out of my system the post I was planning last night.

So I know full well what NSFW means, but sometimes my hand eye co-ordination isn't so good and I accidentally hit the wrong link when I'm surfing, no huge issue, unless you hit a NSFW thread, whilst you're at work, with a colleague standing behind you....  Now some of my colleagues know I read M/M books, after all they've made the mistake of asking what I'm reading at lunch time, to which I will just hand them the book.... but the person standing behind me a week or so back was a lovely lad who has slight autism and on occasion will say the first thing that comes into his head.

The picture that he saw on my screen was of an obviously male naked backside... could have been worse :o)... and his first comment was....."but I thought you were a lesbian".....

Now my initial reaction was to just say that yes, I am a lesbian, and that it was just a picture... but then he started asking all sorts of questions as to why I would look at pictures of naked men if I liked women.... luckily lunch finished then and I got out of answering the awkward questions.....at least to him, in my mind they've been nagging at me for a while.


I've mentioned before that I never really had to come out thanks to my upbringing and having the most fantastic open minded parents who taught my sister and I (and anyone else they came into contact with) that so long as you loved it didn't matter who or what.  I've also been extremely lucky never to have been on the receiving end of any homophobic bullying or harassment ...... hum, ok, one comment maybe does spring to mind now I think about it... which was that I only said I was a lesbian because I was too fat to find a boyfriend... which I think was more about size than sexuality... and was definitely more to do with their ignorance

Ok, so as far as looking at pictures goes, I am a big fan of the human body in any form, humans in general are beautiful... I can look at pictures of either sex and find them attractive, I particularly like muscle structure and eyes in humans....but pictures actually do very little for me in a whole getting physically turned on kind of sense.  (Now I think about it put a picture of a large cat, or a wolf in front of me and I can appreciate that too.... not sure what that says about me!).  Maybe I just appreciate a good photograph?

Now I'm not a big fan of labels, and yes, I'll admit that I label myself as a lesbian, but am I actually being honest with myself? Or perhaps I do this for convenience... after all a lot of lesbian's have real issue as those who identify as Bi (erroneously so in my opinion, - no not the identification, the having an issue with it - but then again, they are not me and the only person I have a right to label is myself)

Now I fully subscribe to the theory that the basis of physical attraction is at least in part a matter more of pheromones than anything else.  I am about 90% certain that if I ever risk another relationship it will be with a woman, it's what I feel more comfortable with. it's what I first think when asked to consider the future.  There is however that small part of me that refuses to rule out that any future relationship wouldn't be with a man.  I can't actually feel that there is anything wrong with this either.

I know I am attracted to males as well as females... my early relationships (by which I mean longer than a week or so) were all with men, but in the last 12 years or so all my relationships have been with women.
Interestingly I like females to be definitely female and males to be definitely male...... Mind you, I am a complete sucker for either sex if they happen to have longish brown hair, green eyes and lots of eyelashes......

I think maybe I just shouldn't worry about it... like oh, probably 80% of those that ever read this post I should just label myself as "human"................... (the other 20% being spambots, cats who've learnt to use the pc to check up on what their owners are doing and possibly the odd alien or two....)

A not what I planned post....

I have been having some thoughts swirling around my head recently about physical attraction and my own sexuality, which I was going to try to put down in words this evening

However, I mopped the floor when I came in from work, then fed the dogs, went upstairs, fed the cats, got changed, came downstairs and, erm, forgot how slippery the kitchen floor gets...... until I slid across it and crashed into the dog bed, then fell, hitting my shoulder on the radiator on the way down and landing, incredibly inelegantly on my right hip...

After clawing my way to my feet again I have applied Arnica, tablets and gel, followed by taking my pain meds slightly early and reclining on the sofa with a book.  When that wasn't really working after an hour I added an ice pack (well a packet of frozen peas) and a couple or three glasses of medicinal vodka.

Not in quite as much pain now, but am definitely not coherent enough to put down in words what I am trying to get out my head.

So now I shall go lie on the bed and curse that of all the hips I had to land on (no really, there was only a choice of two) it's the one on the same side as my back injury.....

Friendship contracts.........

For the last couple of nights my friend MrsHobbitWife (no obviously not her real name, but if you follow me on twitter, then yes, the name will be familiar) and I have been companion writing… that is to say, she is trying to do her assignment for her OU course, whereas I am scribbling fiction…

We then exchange what we’ve been writing and comment on it….. she is my main beta reader, editor and cheerleader (and handily has kids in the YA range who will also read for me)…. I still think she’s the better writer out of the two of us, she disagrees. 

Last night, having rounded up rent-a-mob and forced them into their crates … I swear they develop new tricks on a nightly basis to avoid going to bed...  I’d moseyed off upstairs and ended up on MSN talking to MrsHW about, well, absolutely everything and anything… though for some reasons our conversations whilst they start off pretty sane and normal seem to always descend quite swiftly to somewhere below gutter level… (last night we ended up with discussing where the fetish gear was safely kept and the real reason for thornless roses being developed….. apparently it’s less painful than the thorned versions when your being whipped with them and has the bonus that the petals fall off and float about like a cheesy 70’s port movie…….. yes, I know, just don’t ask!)

Anyway, at one point one of my cats leapt on my shoulder and missed, scratching all down one shoulder on her way back to the floor.  I typed my cursing in reaction and got back *snigger*,,, and so the conversation continued along the lines of I moaned that it wasn’t nice of her to laugh, to which she said it was okay for her to do this as it was in the contract…. Which started a whole string of comments about what was and wasn’t in the small print of the friendship contract we had….(turned out it wasn’t the friendship contract she was reading but the washing machine instructions… no I’ve never studied the small print on that one either…)

So, after I’d read for a bit, tried to sleep, and then given up I started thinking about the concept of friendship contracts… as you do at 1.00 am with mounting dread that the dogs will be going off in a little over 3 hours and you’ve work in the morning….the thing I came up with is that yes, we do have a friendship contract, hell everyone I am friends with there is some sort of friendship contract… friendship being offered and accepted much like a contract… and while the terms of no two friendships contracts are the same, they also change over time as friendships develop, or in some cases fall away… yes sometimes one party will be in breach of contract (see my inner lawyer appear)….but as a general rule for me at least none of my contracts are one sided, friendship is a two way street ...... as for the small print, that’s up to each friend to work out the limits on it for themselves.

middle of the week... must be the music post..

Having been having a rather grim time at work, where my earphones are constantly in, I've been playing a lot of these two singers/bands.. bands by name, but both fronted by seriously strong female singers... both of which are, in my humble opinion, also rather nice to look at too...

Right, off to indulge myself with pizza and some writing......