Harvest Season & Peeing Like a Racehorse

Mr Cainer - Your Week Ahead: Here comes a Full Moon in your sign. That's a chance to change your life, if ever there was one. Really, though, it would be a mistake to assume that everything is going to alter dramatically. Sometimes, Full Moons bring immediate, impressive upheaval. More often, though, they force decisions. They bring matters to a head and oblige us to face facts that we might prefer to ignore. They allow us to adjust our ideas and free ourselves from negative beliefs. If, though, you want to rewrite the story of your life, you can begin.

Crikey wonder what the hell this weeks gonna bring. How the hell can you change your life without having the financial ability to do it nowadays and if that isnt the issue then time most certainly is! - still its a positive forecast so we will go with it!

General DIY has come to a head for the moment and other than becoming quite fabulous at impressively launching large bits of wood and chipboard at the tip ive not really got much to share. My to do list is ever increasing though which means frustration is rife and arguments are breaking out over things which should be clearly labelled "S**T" such as the gas fire and the shower ... and the kitchen tap... amongst others.  A visit to the neighbours only ever makes our house look like a nineties throwback and in desperate need of some love. I have the love but not the finances. In a nutshell, I need Nick Knowles.

Creativity has taken a back seat due to time, or lack of it, although we have been productive. Our apple tree and plum tree have given us a wicked crop this year. We made apple pie with our apples and used 2.5kg of plums making plum jam before offloading 90 plums to the neighbours. Theres still more plums to go. After all the sugar yesterday I have spent much of the day peeing like a racehorse and deciding that I need to pose the 4lb I put on. Life Lesson: Plum jam is not good for the diet.
So the positivity thing and Cainers weekly forcast, I'm going to give it a whirl and see if his forcasts are true. I have my reservations... Dave Gorman once tried this with Mystic Meg and wound up financially worse off and grumpy. I hope Cainer is more reliable.

Fannying around vacumn packing the dog

So today we decided to try and attach the flappy bits on the outside of the wall which are connected to what i now know is called an extractor fan. Beforehand this had been a plastic thing with a piece of kitchen roll taped to it. No more! It has been one of them jobs that Dad had wanted to do but now no longer has the strength to do. Knowing that destruction is one of my most loved past times my lovely fella let me loose with a massive hammer and chisel. I cautiously went to work on the brickwork of the side of my house.  This was massive!! Usually ive demolished things like wall tiles (or anything that has met with my short temper). But not actual WALLS, things that hold the house up - the four main components of a house - and I was going to hit it with a hammer. After nearly lynching myself on the washing line, I balanced on the 3rd step off the ladder (an achievement in itself) and stared at the carcass of a rather large house spider formerly known as Fred, now entombed in the house insulation. I knew I put my brave pants on for a reason this morning.
If I don't say so myself, I did a great job, the hole was a nice circle, no one was blind, on their way to hospital or dead and my house was still standing. The flappy bit was attached without drama.
I was later given an explanation as to what the extractor fan actually does... I learned that it basically sucks the air out of a room.  I questioned this extractor thing being a good idea... with Millies bed being in there, were we not, in a sense, vacumn packing the dog?....

Free your inner child

Ive been inspired by my cousin Nigel to get creative with odds and sods in the journals he has. Im a massive Alice in Wonderland fan -it appeals to my childish side which accounts for approximately 80% of my personality.

I frustrate myself at times to get things out of my head and on to paper when it comes to art. After seeing Nigels awesome work I'm going to try and resolve this.  This has been whirring round in my head and be it it in no way resembles my other work.... I am pleased I have got the makings down on paper. Unintentionally the lady in the picture wound up looking suspiciously like my lovely mum who passed away 3 years ago after a long fight with cancer. I guess that too has made this sketch special. X

In other news I have today been failing in the art of stopping my sponge fingers floating to the top of the jelly whilst making a trifle and have learnt that only small amounts of gravy browning are required to improve the colour of your onion gravy.

We Live and We Learn

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did"

So this my first post... blog.... a "bleet" I may call it. A bleet, yes a bleet sounds good to me. Well for my first bleet, I guess I'd best explain the reason behind my choice to write a blog. Well as the title suggests I'm at an important place in my life where I'm having to learn things very quickly. Things that, maybe I should know how to do by now at the grand age of 23 (ok, ok, 29!!) but have always been considered tasks for the "man of the house". Well it seems I'm now pretty much the "man of the house".... with tits.... and a temper.... and a ditzy brain. I'm finding things a bit hard to get my head around. I'm finding that there are more and more great unanswered questions out there and I'm finding that things are frustrating me more and I'm questioning the great theory of being a grumpy old woman.... do you have to be old to be grumpy? I most certainly hope not. I fear I may have prematurely peaked! It's not just that, it's the plain and simple fact that... I am...unquestionably... and remarkably quickly.... turning into a female version of my Dad.

When I was a kid, everything was "when I grow up I want to be....", "damn i wish I was older and then I could do this and do that" and now I am older, "damn I wanna be a kid again!" what ARE all these responsibilities?? what are these bits of paper with things that say "pay me now"!? why does everythng need insurance? Do I really need to keep all these bits of paper safe? Should I believe that letter that says "I AM NOT A CIRCULAR" and what in the living jeepers are my statutory rights and who invented them? perhaps the same person who added gluttony to one of the seven deadly sins list - like hell they never tried Gallo's White Grenache rose with Galaxy Cookie Crumble chocolate!!! - No, I didnt think so.

To date, I've learnt how to tile walls, grout, hang wallpaper, and put a shed roof on. I've had to become (vaguely) more accepting of the eight legged monsters that appear to be everywhere I need to go. I've learned how to use the loft ladders, safely... kind of. And for the first time, this week I mowed the grass... on my own... unsupervised. Perhaps in hindsight this wasnt such a great idea as when i had "finished" i spent the next hour on my hands and knees with the kitchen scissors attempting to trim all the bits I'd missed as well as trying to reattach the large chunks of earth that I'd managed to dig up. Life lesson number 427: Flymo's do not fly over long thick grass. 

I've also learnt that Cuprinol is waterproof... not just for outdoorsy stuff but also that no amount of washing detergent can remove it from your most warmest and comfiest coat. I've learnt that the spikes on pyracantha are thicker than the sole of most boots and that dogs balls with ropes on are really not the most greatest invention.  I know this, as part of my added responsibilities are taking Millie our dog out for her walk every morning and evening, which I enjoy to a point. What I don't enjoy is to be spending every other night marching down the road with a washing line prop, trying to retrieve the ball rope stupid invention from the trees. The other day i managed to get it so stuck, myself and my (thankfully rather understanding) better half ended up taping garden canes and a fishing net to the line prop to get the sodding thing down, only for me to throw it on top of someones house a day or so later. It now lies irretrievable in someones back garden. 

So the blog is basically acknowledging the lessons I've learnt, answering questions that I once never thought I'd know the answer to and sharing my learning curve with anyone who cares to read. Plus a blog is another tick on the old bucket list of things I've tried. I'm also a creative type and an artist so I hope that a blog will encourage me to produce more of my work which I will share on here too.