I AM AWAKE.....

THE LAST LEAF

CATHAYS CEMETERY IN WINTER

BUT BEAUTY IS STILL ASLEEP!
It is still her fault though that I am awake, my neck is really aching still from dragging her through ASDA. Beauty is getting to be quite a big girl.
Pain is such a strange thing, I have been bleating on for weeks about my neck hurting from over doing it from carrying bags that were too heavy but that pain has totally gone overnight to be replaced by a different type of neck pain. However, the Pollyanna in me says that I should be glad because it is a different type of pain and nowhere near as bad as the 'carrying bags' pain.
One of the sad realities of being a humanist is that I can no longer look forward to a 'next-life' where I will have a perfect body and be pain free, emotionally I can see how religion can be a comfort in many ways. Perhaps I am not really a humanist after all because if I could prove that GOD and JESUS were real I would be back there in a heartbeat. I think I am really stuck in the middle as an Agnostic rather than a Theist or an Atheist.
My comfort is that I live my life as best that I can and as I have said before,using Aslan talking to the Telmarine soldier in THE FINAL BATTLE as an example, (in my words of course) you lived a good life and lived it as if you were worshiping me, surely that should be enough.
Now that is definitely way too deep for a Sunday morning!
I am definitely not eating enough chocolate.

CATHAYS CEMETERY IN WINTER

I am so glad that I am not a rugby supporter as I could not cope with the stress!

Wales survived a brutal Australian fightback in the final minutes to claim their third success over a Tri-Nations opposition since rugby turned professional in 1995.

I slept through the match but awoke to watch the last 5 minutes and almost had a heart attack from stress as the gap from Wales' lead was narrowed and narrowed.
Beauty went out with the child minder yesterday and I enjoyed 3 Beauty free hours and it was wonderful



Roy wood said he wished it could be Christmas everyday but make it 'child minder day' every day and I would be a very happy bunny.That is why I love Beauty going to school and the wonderful thing is that she loves it too!

I love this little cutie to bits but she is so exhausting.




Don't you just love this story?
Imagine the conversation with Beauty and Pirate Patch?

'Mummy, can I phone the pirates?'

One of the biggest frustrations facing journalists is being unable to get through to people on the phone. But as Mary Harper discovered, contacting the Somali pirates on the Sirius Star turned out to be child's play.

The pirates on the Sirius Star put the phone down on the BBC

It was a cold, dark, wet and miserable Sunday afternoon. I was in my car, driving my 12-year-old daughter and her friend back from a birthday party. I was tired and fed up from being in the car.

"Mummy, mummy," trilled a voice from the back. "I want to phone the pirates."

My daughter had heard me repeatedly trying to get through to the Somali pirates on board the Sirius Star.

They usually picked up the phone but put it down again when I said I was from the BBC. My obsession with getting through to them had reached the point that I had even saved their number on my mobile phone.

"Mummy, mummy, please can I phone the pirates for you?"

"No."

"Pleeeeez."

By this time, with rain battering my windscreen and cars jamming the road, I was at the end of my tether.

"OK", I said, tossing the phone into the back of the car.

"They are under P for pirates."

Giggling with pirates

"Hello. Please can I talk to the pirates," said my daughter in her obviously childish voice.

I could hear someone replying and a bizarre conversation ensued which eventually ended when my daughter collapsed in giggles.

Our last resource is the sea, and foreign trawlers are plundering our fish Daybad, Somali priate

This was a breakthrough. Dialogue had been established.

The next day, I went to the crowded office in Bush House in London where the BBC Somali Service is based. I told them the story.

"Let's try now," said producer Said Musa, who, dare I say it, looks a bit like a pirate himself. He has a wild look about him with flashing eyes and a swashbuckling saunter.

He dialled the number. A pirate answered. "I'm sorry," he barked in Somali, "the boss pirate is sleeping. He was very busy last night keeping watch for possible attackers, night time, you know, is the busiest time for us. Call back in two hours."

PICTURES FROM HOME

BEAUTY IN PIZZA HUT WEARING THE CHRISTMAS HAT THAT I KNITTED HER

HOLLY THE CLOWN

MY LATEST SCARVES

MELTDOWN!

My little sweetheart!

Yesterday, Beauty had a meltdown of the most amazing kind.It took maybe 20 minutes plus to drag her from the tills in ASDA in The Bay to the car parked in the disability bay which would normally take 1 minute if we ran(if I could run!). And the problem?
Beauty and I had just taken my sister who was visiting from Sussex to Pizza hut and when the meal was over and we were leaving the waitress gave Beauty a balloon which I tied to her wrist.The string remained tied to her wrist but the balloon came loose and floated away(helium filled) to the ceiling of the shop and ASDA has very high ceilings. Well Beauty refused to leave her balloon and I had to drag her inch by inch to the car park, I now feel as if I have dislocated my shoulder AND my back. I was soaked with perspiration by the end of it and it was nothing to do with my age. I have also lost 2 pounds in weight since yesterday and that is not a joke.
My joints also went into their own personal meltdown and the only way I can describe it is the way that your mouth feels when you have a dentist injection BUT in all your joints.Even today my hands and neck and back are still asleep.
As a result I now have another duffel coat( the pink one) that has to go to the dry cleaners due to the fact that the car park floor was very wet!
Who would be a mother?
I need a holiday.

I feel a bit like the people in history who brought their animals in for the winter, the pigs and the rabbits are now happily ensconced in the front porch. I know they have their own fur coats but the front garden where they live is very exposed(even with a 6 feet high fence) .....OK ,I'm a sap I admit it.
For all you Guinea pig lovers out there,we visited IKEA yesterday and IKEA has a new toy .....a guinea pig, so Beauty insisted on buying one.
I also saw Simba last night and he was thrilled to see me, I haven' seen that cat in ages but he definitely remembered me and wanted lots of fuss. You will have to go and check him out when you come home for Christmas Anastasia.
Anastasia and I brought Simba home as a kitten, his mother was a wild cat who lived in Town behind the Park Hotel,we used to waitress there.He now lives with Pianoman.

MY TOES ARE COLD!

I know here in Cardiff it is no where near as cold as Vienna which is 2 degrees (today it is warmer in Voronzeh than Vienna Anastasia at 3 degrees)but it certainly feels like it(.I wish it was as warm as Panama City in Florida which is 21 degrees or Damascus in Syria which is 18 degrees today.My skin would burn in that kind of heat!
This morning I am dressed like Whoopie Goldberg in Jumpin Jack Flash when her central heating isn't working. I am wearing socks, leg warmers,tracksuit bottoms, t shirt, my huge beige jumper(which is now 13 years old and has been worn every winter and by everybody) and my mothers large polar bear dressing gown. I am keeping the heating on during the day at the moment because Beauty is not well with a really bad cold and so she is home from school, my bill will be sky high in January as usually when I am home on my own in the day it is only on for short bursts. It must be really awful for older people and people on very limited incomes ,especially with the financial situation.

IT`S A BARBIE WORLD!

It happened!
Beauty went from being a doll HATER to a doll LOVER over night and now I am busy,busy,busy knitting Barbie a wardrobe of clothes.
And why do I knit them and not sew them?
A question asked by Fiona.....because Beauty is such a vandal and anything sewn would be destroyed within seconds.
I am presently knitting a pepto bismol coloured ball gown.
Next on my list is a sparkly midnight blue evening dress for an Anastasia doll.
Well all this knitting should keep me out of trouble!

This is what I want the dress to look like.




And as we are on the subject of toys.....Stretch Scooby has to be the strangest toy ever!
Beauty loves Scooby Doo but she calls him Scooby dog and when we were in ASDA last she INSISTED that I buy her a Stretch Scooby.The consistency of the material used to make a Stretch Scooby is like very warm old fashioned plasticine but how somebody invented that I do not know. Bizarre!