And the Award goes to....

I feel just like Colin Firth. Slightly bashful and really jolly pleased. Getting through the mid stage of your diet with your dignity and judgment intact can be somewhat precarious, and sometimes all you need is a bit of gentle reassurance. The Stylish Blogger Award might be the only thing that stands between me and a rather large bar of Green & Blacks's Almond chocolate.

So I'd like to thank Mother Hen for that assurance and boosting my morale so that I don't reach for that bar of temptation....Mother Hen you are a star!

The rules are:
a) Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award. b) Share 7 things about yourself. 

c) Award 15 recently discovered (I'm also adding favourite) bloggers. 

d) Contact those bloggers and tell them about the award. 

Seven things: 

1: I can hum and whistle at the same time. Try it it's difficult...

2: I keep piles and piles of sea glass secreted all over my house for no particular reason that I can fathom...

3: I think I am odd which must of course mean that I am possibly the most NORMAL person on the planet because that is the way life works.

4: If I am overly nice to you it means one of two things. Either I really am being nice or I don't trust you once tiny little bit...

5: I swear way too much in real life....

6: I frequently forget things even when I am trying not to...

7: I am ever so slightly addicted to Glee!

15 Bloggers...

http://archers-at-the-larches.blogspot.com/

http://mrsnesbittsspace.blogspot.com/

http://posiesblog.blogspot.com/

http://www.donkeytrousers.com/

http://potty-diaries.blogspot.com/

http://smitoniusandsonata.blogspot.com/

http://notenoughmud.blogspot.com/

http://mitheredmum.blogspot.com/

http://www.pantswithnames.com/

http://veryanniemary.wordpress.com/

http://howilikemycoffee.blogspot.com/

http://exmoorjane.blogspot.com/

http://cj-villagefate.blogspot.com/

http://somemothersdoaveem.blogspot.com/

http://gonnabepublishedoneday.blogspot.com/

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgi0UsYT9bRgHWi5OwmXo2eCMNAki_fMgF6zZRKijwqwcIJYa8doKoJHRnQsScdnikbIiyJzzQ1gHb-rO906UMkHjsDXaNleKK-pVfGC53kOGodkbwY09boBHZtoKzkiddlAQ7RyMbIMS0/s1600/stylishbloggeraward.jpg

Bringing up boys: Maths...

Driving to Bury St Edmunds today the youngest proudly piped up from the back seat: “I can do math Mummy!”

Me: “Marvellous Darling! You are clever.

Bog Boy: “Go on Mummy, tell me a question!”

Me: “Oh! Alright. Well, erm, if you have one apple and I give you one more how any apples will you have?”

Bog Boy with some thought: “Two apples! Now Mummy can I tell you a question…?”

Me: “Go on then..”

Bog Boy: “If you had eleventeen apples…..”

Me: waiting expectantly for the next bit and wondering just how much elventeen is…“Yes, Darling?”

Bog Boy curiously: “…would you be able to eat them all?”

Bringing up boys: Oh the embarrassment!!!!

Oh God I want to curl up and die, I really, really do! I have never been so embarrassed in all my life and I should have known!

It all started with me clearing out my office. I have been clearing and organising since June last year and don’t necessarily feel I am making much headway. But I must be as I have been sorting out all the stuff and other paraphernalia in an old wicker box which has been largely overlooked for the last ten years.

It has been wonderful to find lost goodies from college days: terrible poetry full of a young woman’s angst, as well as letters and even my first ever play slip. And of course there were all the cards and doggerel from my Hen Party, some of it seriously risqué - Thank God my boys cannot read yet!

Anyway I was caught out on the telephone at bedtime and decided to take the call in my office. The boys wanting me to say good night to them lurked around the door, looking with great delight at all the stuff all over the office floor.

I indicated for them to go away with a flick of my hand. They stayed there glued to the door frame. I mouthed: “Bugger off!” and made even more frantic hand signals to them while I carried on my conversation.

But boys being boys have a tendency to peer and prod and poke their noses in where they really shouldn’t be and amid great squeals of delight they scampered off.

Finishing the call I stalked after them to put them to bed unaware that they had run off with a bit of treasure, that is until The Boy admitted he had stolen from my office. I asked what was taken and just as he handed me the small black box, I heard the dogs barking and Bog Boy running down the corridor to the stairs so he could see who it was at the door.

I looked at the box in my hand as The Boy said: I’m sorry Mum I think I have lost what was in it. I think Bog Boy has it….”

At that moment I heard Bog Boy answer the door.

My heart missed a beat and then I flushed from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair…

“Will you help me blow my balloon up?”

As I shot down the corridor as fast as I could I heard the mellifluous tones of my next door neighbour exclaiming what a pretty balloon and Bog Boy’s innocent piping voice adding: “Look, it even glows!”

PS: For reasons of good taste I could not possibly illustrate this post.....

Depression: Hitting the ground running....

There are days, weeks even when the amount of time you are allowed to stand still is negligible; the next few days are like that and I am scared. I am scared I have stretched myself too thin and the whole edifice that is my life will come crashing down with all the familiar detrius that is a depressive episode.
I know that if I get too tired and stressed I am basically gagging for it and yet when are our lives ever not at full tilt. I have two boys, I have school runs, homework, laundry, a house, dogs, chickens, a husband and heck I have work to do as well. How on earth can I slow down?
I expect everyone has the same or at lease variations on a theme. The life of a modern mother/wife is hectic and it rarely lets up.  And sometimes everything happens at once. Such is life.
Today I have had people in doing stuff which has necessitated me running about nodding sagely here, pointing out errors there and advising in my capacity as project manager of three differnt things while making sure that The Boy doesn't get too bored on his enforced day away from school following yet another bout of the vomiting virus. There's been teh hosuework, my work and of course the school runss to fit in as well as a trip to the vet for my ailing cat ( the news was not hopeful). The icing on today's cake happened to be a talk to the WI on my adventures before I decided on the life I now lead.
Tomorrow doesn't look much better with more of the same from a variety of builders and carpenters, the imminent arrival of the chaps doing the hedges (a left over from before the big freeze) and the fact that I have to go to Addenbrooks for an Epilepsy check -up with the Boy subject to him NOT throwing up in the wee hours. I will also have to take his younger brother and I doubt I will be back before 7pm when I have a friend's daughter popping round so I can help her go through her personal statement for University.
Please will someone tell me why I do all this? Shouldn't I have learnt by now? Why is it so difficult to say No?

I've eaten half a pizza and I think I'm going to be sick...

I've eaten half a pizza and I think I'm going to be sick. It's not that I've eaten too much, it's just the enormity of how I did it. I was  like a ravenous dog whose master is just about to come in through the door and catch me at it. I am sure it's not a good thing to bolt food like that.
Now I am trying to work out WHY?
Of late I have been so well controlled about food but today has been one of those days. I had to eat. It started off so well with bacon and eggs but by the time I got back off the school run I had to have 2 stale ginger biscuits (they should be called snaps but  they hardly do that after two weeks in the cookie jar). I love stale ginger biscuits, so much nicer than the fresh crunchy ones, they remind me of cake mixture. I should have restricted myself to 'just the one' but the temptation was just way too strong. I lumbered on until lunchtime when I bolted a small bowl of pasta and pesto left over from the boys' supper the night before with a hunk of bread and again fell into temptation with the last two ginger biscuits
Everything OK until the boys' supper tonight when I was revoltingly like the Wickedest Whippet. I mean I positively growled at the children as we fought over the last peices and I wolfed down all their crusts. The dogs were MOST put out.
To assuage my guilt I ate three clementines.
Now looking back at the amount of food I ate today I see it's really rather lacking in the old green stuff stakes and a tad high on the old carbs but in my defence I needed it, I was hungry and tired, oh and stressed. I gather not a good combo when you are trying to lose weight.
I think I had better start again right now with a relaxing bath and a good book, perhaps I will be calm enough not to eat again when my husband gets in from work. I know he likes me to have supper with him but today he'll have to lump it. I will not sympathy eat just to keep him company.
The piazza keeps repeating itself and I feel kinda bloated...eeew, pardon me, I won't say what happened just then but I feel an awful lot better now.
Off to soak in my bath and dream of celery sticks....

The Wickedest Whippet: Tucker's Luck update...

He's been given the all clear! Tucker has a whomping great big heart that is doing spelndidly. I have called his new owners and they are coming to collect on Saturday - I think it's smiles all round!

The Wickedest Whippet : Tucker’s Luck!

I still have far too many whippets and to be honest I was resigning myself to the fact that I would be two up on this time last year due to the abortive sale of Tucker earlier in December, when on Thursday 31^st December I got a call from an exotically named woman from Essex who very much wanted a whippet and did we have any left…

I didn’t hold out much hope that after the New Year I would get another call but I did and on Monday Menolly Simon and Rhiannon bowled up only getting lost once when I forgot that there is a turning on the straight road I told them about in my meticulous directions on how to get here.

If this story could be accompanied by a score and close up moody shots of the protagonists it would go something like this:

Cue: Significant moody music

Door opening

Tucker our brave and beautiful hound looks over his shoulder (hold shot)

Cut to: Simon tall, blonde and ever so slightly tanned walking through door laughing (hold shot)

Cut to: Tucker leaping up from couch where he has been lying only moments before. Cut to Simon gazing at Tucker in admiration.

Their eyes meet.

Moody music crescendos as both throw themselves joyfully at each other like long lost lovers…

The tarty hound then stayed on Simon’s lap the whole interview, chewing at his coat cuffs, or s else playfully nibbling his ears or licking his lips. It was a blatant pose by the dog but I can safely say that Tucker knew exactly what he was doing. If ever a dog and potential owner could be smitten it was those two. Tucker did play with Rhiannon and of course was delightfully coquettish with Menolly but it was Simon who he looked to.

The only problem was that the family had to go off and see another lot of puppies the far side of Suffolk. It was with great reluctance that Simon and Tucker were parted and I was left nibbling my nails in trepidation that they would all fall in love with another puppy.

I got a call a few hours later could they come and take another look at Tucker. They did and then came the crunch for I had to come clean; at Tuckers first trip to the Vet he had been diagnosed with a heart murmur. The vet assured me it was innocent and more than likely would clear itself up as he got older.

I asked if Tucker came clear would they be interested.

It was a resounding yes!

So now I am crossing fingers like mad that the trip to the Vet tomorrow will go Tucker’s way for Simon, Menolly and Rhiannon are just the best possible owners a pup could have and he will be adored and loved and played with to his heart’s content – I just hope that heart is as sound as a bell…

Bringing up boys: There’s a squirrel dead on the ice…

It struck me today as I watched the tail of a dead squirrel slip below the surface of the melting ice that perhaps there is too much sense and not enough sensibility in my home.

Perhaps this is because I have a male household rather than one full of Sylvanian Families, pink fluffy tutus and Cath Kidson coats with matching wellies. Not that  I would have allowed anything of the sort in my home even if I had had daughters, I can’t stand the colour pink and cute little bunnykin families are a no no and always have been for me. But there is a wistfulness when I go to other people’s homes and see all this girlishness. I think a little bit of pink would not go amiss.

I mean isn’t it rather alarming when your 7 year old and four and a half year old sons decide to name the Christmas dinner Oscar? And proceed to raise a toast to his demise totally unprompted at the Christmas table?

We go to the butchers and they quite happily bounce up to the displays and chatter about the hens we keep and say things like: “Would Mrs Brown look like that if we killed her?” which of course must be alarming to any Mrs Brown’s in the queue behind.

I am not saying my children are unkind in any way they are not but they see things very practically hence their rather gung ho attitude towards the chickens and perhaps towards the squirrel on the ice in the middle of the moat.

None of us had noticed it before and we have no idea how it got there and we would not have noticed it if Bog Boy had not brought it to our attention: “There’s a squirrel, dead on the ice.”

Me: “Really?”

Bog Boy: “Yes, look it’s dead.”

I looked myopically at it lying there quite still, apparently dead.

Me: “Are you sure it’s dead?”

Bog Boy: “Yes, it’s quite dead I saw it get deaded.”

I looked at my youngest incredulously knowing full well that if I had seen a squirrel die in front of me at his age I would have screamed and hollered for someone to save it. Not so my practical son.

Me: “Why didn’t you say so?”

Bog Boy just shrugged: “We don’t like squirrels they eat the baby birds.”

I had a feeling that for my youngest that the death of the squirrel was a kind of retribution for the damage its species wreaks on others.

Bog Boy: “And anyway no one can go in the ice now you said, so it had to die.”

He was quite right the dying squirrel could not have been rescued even if we had wanted to without one of us coming to grief for the ice could not have held anyone’s weight but it got me thinking.

And every time I looked out the window over the past few days and seen the squirrel lying there, I’ve thought more and more: Boys and girls are wired different…

The first day of a New Year…

It’s like writing in a new exercise book at school; ahead of you clear sheets for you to do anything you like. For some that is exciting and wonderful; for others daunting and full of trepidation.

However for a moment there are possibilities, hope. Before your pen starts to scrawl across the page in indelible ink there is excitement as well as that well known twinge of fear, there is anticipation.

But you must know what you are going to write otherwise everything is gobbledygook and will make no sense. You need to have a framework, a plan to go forward. Not aspirations or resolutions but a workable way forward even if that means you stay where you are, for how easy is it to go backwards!

I don’t know what my plan is yet but I know it is forming because of all the things I hate the most about myself is my ability to go backwards so here’s to going in the right direction even if it means I land up right where I am today…