Random mumbling for a muggy Monday evening...

 Well, that weekend went quickly...

For once there were plans, but like always when there are such things they are not straight forward.

No coffee - rather a lot of chocolate!

A friend and I have been trying to meet up for ages. Now this is where it gets rather ridiculous.... we live in the same city, we're really good friends, we talk via twitter (and text, well until I changed phones and forgot to give her my new number).... and we've not actually seen each other in person for 18 months.

We had plans to go out to Our Cow Molly for hot chocolate and ice cream sampling, but alas the weather was piss poor and we ended up in Costa Coffee instead....... no coffee was consumed though.

As usual our catch up took a good three hours....... and another 30 minutes stood at my car .... we've promised to make much more effort in future!

On Sunday I had a christening to go to, one of the workplace babies.... being predictable, I bought books for his christening present (The Hungry Caterpillar & The Gruffalo) .... it was a nice service, if a little mad given the amount of audience participation required.... it felt rather odd to be in a church.... (not least because pagan festivals are usually held outside... )  Afterwards we went to a local hall where there was a buffet and lots of chattering.......... and children... hundreds of children... actually that's an exaggeration... but it felt like it!

Sometime over the weekend I also decided in my wisdom (!?!?) to strip all the accumulated hair dye from my hair and go au naturelle!  (I blame that stray grey eyebrow hair)....... I duly applied the horrible smelling chemical mush to my hair and waited an hour to shrink the dye molecules (well that's what it said it did) so I could then stand under the shower for 20 minutes  and wash it out......... having done this I got re-dressed (well no, that's a lie, I spent much of Saturday afternoon and evening floating about in my pj's) ... and blew dry my hair.  Shortly after I wondered into the bathroom, where sunlight was streaming through the window.... looked in the mirror and said out loud... "oh my god, I'm ginger!"   Now I have to admit, until I was 3 years old, I was ginger... but it turned boring brown.... it's been rich mahogany, plum or aubergine for the last 20 or so years....... so the fact it is now ginger again was a bit of a shock.

Today I have gone back to work, well it's Monday, and if I don't turn up they'll probably object.  I have a half day on Thursday (dental appointment in the afternoon) and I think I will be finishing early on Friday as the hairdresser can fit me in (and if I don't get it done then it might not be done before the UK Fiction meet... which it needs to be as it's just a mess at present).

I am having an argument with work at present about the cold drinks they have available........ we all have vending machines on each floor, and their is a cafe on the ground floor..... and every single cold drink bar one on sale today had either caffeine, sugar or both in it... well unless I wanted water, again.... so I ended up with Diet Cherry 7up.... which was strangely nice....... apparently they will be sorting me out more choices... but they did look at me strangely when I said I didn't want anything with caffeine in it........ I am sure they think that is the basis of what makes the office run!

Other than that, I still have no idea when my LHNB story will be out... but have set myself a task of reading and commenting on all of the other stories....... which works well and keeps me busy in the evening... kind of too busy for much else really.... which may possibly be a way of hiding from myself (again)........ but we aren't admitting that as I think I may be in a little trouble for insisting to some friends that I was "fine" at the moment....... things are a little screwed up in  my head and possibly not so fine...... but I'll work on that one.....

Brain too fried to think of a title.........

No, I am not still being held captive by the critters..... honest....

Things have been rather painful round here for the last few days, and for once it isn't self inflicted.  A combination of a broken tooth resulting in an abscess (thankfully now draining) and a sudden change in weather making my joints rebel has made the last few days particularly difficult.  Last night was particularly special as I managed about 2 hours sleep.... and when I woke up it felt like my body had been out dancing all night then got hit by a truck on the way home!

little fishy was probably more with it than me today!

I've spent most of today either half asleep or in a pain killer induced trance... and it's quite hard to do any productive work when you've the attention span (and possibly the intelligence) of a goldfish!

We had a massive thunderstorm this evening...... which explains why my joints were so bad today, and thankfully when it was over they started to feel much better.  I'm rather tired now, but trying to hold off going to bed until pumpkin time, if I go earlier I'll be up in the middle of the night to let the dogs out.

As a result of the pain/tiredness combination I've been rather negative about everything for the last few days, so, as a reminder, some positives and things to look forward to ...

- the UK LGBT Fiction meet is now only 5 weeks away - so excited about this!  Mind you, the nerves may get to me nearer the time!

- My LNHB story is going to be coming out soon - I have no idea when, I understand we are being told a few days before so I should have advance warning!

- Ivan's blood tests came back fine and the couple of fits he had are just anomalies and shouldn't be a problem.

- I have some fantastic, caring friends, who put up with my whining and bouts of woe, and occasionally shout at me for doing stupid things (like driving this morning when really I probably shouldn't have been)

- I am meeting up with a friend on Saturday at a local farm shop cafe where they specialise in making their own ice cream.... I intend to empty part of the freezer so I can bring home samples!

Take note.........

Look into my eyes.....

The owner of this blog has been subjected to involuntary hypnotism

by order of The Mob

We might let her back out to play

when she has agreed to feed us on demand not wait until she thinks it's dinner time

Oh and until she's caught up on her sleep

and as a result is considerably less cranky than she has been this weekend

with love

Kammi (I'd look really good as a Bond villain's pet)

on behalf of

The Mob  

Friends, Vodka and Blueberries.....

But not necessarily in that order!  

Well, tis the end of the week... hurrah!!  And it's been an interesting week at that.  

One of the things that this week has taught me is to value who my friends are, and never ever to underestimate them.  Due to an online incident I have had to withdraw from something where I was in regular contact with people from around the world... regular contact is too loose a term really, we chattered daily, we sent messages to each other, we sent real mail and silly gifts to each other........ and on Sunday I worried I would lose contact with some of them... not all, my closest friends on there I was sure I would keep.... but it would be difficult as we'd lost our main point of contact.......... fast forward four day and, if anything, my friendship with them even closer.  They've been everything from fantastic support to light relief, whenever I've needed it one of them has been there.  

It's a truly wonderful feeling to realise that people care.  One of the issues I have is to do with self confidence (or lack of it), and the fact that some days I don't actually like myself very much.  Which always leads me to think that, well, if I don't like myself, why the hell would anyone else like me.... I haven't felt like that for the last few days, and it's down to this group of incredibly special friends.  I fully intend to hang onto them as best I can :)

In other news... the supermarket delivery man came this evening with my order (20 minutes late mind you - which is a cheaper slot than the one I paid for - I've complained, they are refunding the difference)..... usually the dogs are very good and stay shut in the kitchen, but for some reason tonight Hope wasn't having that.  Within seconds of me shutting the door, she'd opened it and hopped over the babygate to come see the delivery man... I dropped her back over and shut the door again........ and she repeated her Houdini act almost straight away......only this time she got past me and went and tarted around the delivery man like a complete floozy until I recaptured her and popped her in a crate for safe keeping.  

Oh yes........ and someone screwed up the delivery.....  I ordered a punnet of blueberries.... I paid for a punnet of blueberries........ for some reason I have 4 punnets of blueberries....... I am not entirely sure what to do with all these blueberries... there was a suggestion I make ice cream from them.... but I am a bit concerned what colour it would turn out.... I have memories from a rather drunken night of cocktail making that the liquidised blueberries were, erm, green, with black bits from the skin.... and a consistency very similar to frogspawn...... not that I've ever eaten frogspawn mind you... 

And finally to the vodka...... now I am pretty used to being in pain......... but to cap everything off I have toothache........ which is worse than any other parts of my body that usually ache... sad to say that the painkillers are not touching the toothache at all.... so I have resorted to vodka...... for purely medicinal purposes of course, I am not enjoying it at all...... hopefully I will get to the stage soon where the pain goes away and I can sleep!!

Random musings ....

Yeah, my mind is all over the place this week.

Blooming lilac tree

The weather here is unusually glorious... I shouldn't be this surprised, it's June after all, but let's face it the last

few years summer here has been a non event.  We've had blue sky and sunshine pretty much the whole week...... in fact, I am sitting at my kitchen table at the moment, and reflected in the screen over my shoulder I can see the rowan tree at the end of the garden, which has lovely white blossoms, against an almost turquoise sky.  Just over the top of my now thigh high grass I can see the first of my roses is now out.  Oh and my lilac is flowering (my lilac is white, because I have to be different like that).

Close up of the lilac blooms

I have today found the number of a potential gardener to come do a mass deforestation and clear up exercise followed by some monthly maintenance visits...... just have to check the bank balance first.

There are a couple of downsides to the lovely warm weather, and very long days.... firstly, the birds get up very early... like seriously, singing their little hearts out at 4.30 am..... which means this is now the time I am getting up in a morning....... The other downside is that the cats are spending a lot of time sunbathing... and I am sure obtaining energy from sunlight... in the winter they hide in the duvet and moan it's too cold, in this weather they lie in patches of sunshine and have regular intervals of rushing around like lunatics.... Because I've had the downstairs windows open I have had the odd fly and moth getting upstairs....... which means come bedtime, when my bedroom light is the only one, the evening game of hunt the insect starts...... and can go on for ages!

Then at about 1 am this morning, I was woken by a very sharp pain in my lip, caused by Gina's claw... I am not sure what she was doing as she disappeared out the room as I yelped and sat up quickly.  Now, I've had numerous cat scratches in my life, but really, straight across the bottom lip has to be the worst ... It's like having a deep paper cut, and you can't smile, or yawn, or even talk properly because it threatens to open up... and when it's not doing that it's throbbing.... oh, and don't get anything acidic near it (as I discovered when trying to eat a nectarine earlier)

For reasons connected to Sunday's post, I've been using my phone to e-mail a lot this week.. including today.. and the battery is nearly flat..... which is not good because I've just managed to melt my phone charger ... it was a little too close to the gas cooker when I switched on the biggest ring to boil water for pasta... oops.......... I wonder how long it will take to get a new one....

The time has come....

... said the Walrus, to talk of many things... oops, no, sorry... that's from Alice in Wonderland.....

try again...

... to admit defeat on a serious issue .........

This morning I found a grey hair...... not an unusual thing I've been going grey since I was about 21.... and having (naturally) boring mid brown hair it is kind of noticeable....... My sister teases me unmercifully about it... or at least she did until about 4 years ago when she started to go grey (and as her hair is darker than mine it's more noticeable).... We both dye our hair, but for some reason my grey hair round my temples just will not dye, and my hair grows so fast I have to do the roots every 4 weeks or so....

Anyway, today, the little grey hair I noticed wasn't on my head......

So this morning, I stumbled through my usual getting ready for work routine after bugger all sleep (well about 3 hours out of a potential 8), did the dog sorting, walking, feeding etc... followed by the very grounding job of cleaning the cat's litter tray and satisfying their noisy demands for sustenance before falling blindly into the shower (no not really, well the blindly bit yes, as I don't wear glasses in the shower, but there was no falling involved this morning... though there was spider removal)... in the height of my disorganisation (put in no doubt by the fact I left my cutlery at home.... cous cous salad is difficult to eat by hand...) I was drying my socks with the hairdryer about the time I should have been leaving for work (the rest of my clothes were stills lightly damp but I could live with that - damp socks I cannot deal with)... so I didn't look in a mirror until I got in the car.......... and there it was......

Mine's a little shorter than this
but I guess will be this colour
in a year or so...

lurking in the middle of my right eyebrow...

a very long, very white, very bloody obvious hair........... eep!!

Suffice to say it didn't last long as I sat at the traffic lights and managed to pluck the damn thing out.

But, if I am going to have miscellaneous white/grey hairs appearing other than on my head (and yes, I am off for a bath in a bit to hunt and make sure there are no more lurking where they shouldn't be)... then I think it is time to admit defeat ......... and time give up on the hair dying and grow old disgracefully........

(that said I've been net searching and found some very beautiful older women with grey hair *grins*)

Some days..........

You really wonder why you bothered getting up in the first place!

Okay, so yesterday didn't go too badly.... I was very anxious before I went over (the birthday party was in Preston, which is just over a two hour drive away) but I drove the scenic route over Snake Pass, which was beautiful in the sunny weather - I was going to stop and take photographs from what feels like being at the top of the world, but I couldn't park the car up safely.  Anyway, I got there shortly after the official start time and, well, I was still quite nervous, but my friend's dad, who I've always got on with, was really pleased to see me and we spent a long time catching up on what I was doing, how his retirement is going etc... I was taken by my friend's sister to examine the latest batch of young spinone and labrador puppies and given lots of hugs.

There was an awkward moment when one of my former friends arrived, but after a while we got talking and went and found a quite corner for a proper catch up - and some setting straight about things.... by the time I had to leave to drive back we'd swopped e-mail address and phone numbers so hopefully that bridge can be rebuilt.

By the time I got home I was pretty kippered, both physically and emotionally, so headed off to bed not long after........... only my head was all over the place and I couldn't sleep... I gave up at about 1 am and went to let the dogs out then read for a bit..... I finally got a couple of hours in but was awake by 4.45 am ... it was light, the birds were singing, the dogs wanted a walk....... so off we went...... When I got back I made the mistake of checking my e-mail, to find an rather long reprimand from a moderator of a forum on a website I use........totally unexpected and out the blue......

Not going into further details here, but the upshot was, once I'd got past the WTF? moment, via a little anger, was that I realised could no longer participate in something I enjoy as I was being asked to essentially censor myself above and beyond a level which would mean participation remained enjoyable.  So I have apologised to anyone I might have offended and withdrawn from further discussion.............. which means that I will probably lose contact with some of my internet friends (not all, and definitely not those closest to me) but it's frustrating and upsetting in any event...more so because the day to day subjects we have been discussing and which have been objected to, we've been talking about for over 18 months without issue......

Emotionally I am not sure which part of the rollercoaster I am on tonight - I want to rant, scream and cry all at the same time...... I may just try going to bed.........