So much....

....I want to write here but can't (I have to find a solution to that situation somehow) and so little time......

dammit, on both counts!

Cat people will understand!

Remember 'Hammy'?

Those who read here regularly will remember 'Hammy' perhaps?

Well as of yesterday she is no longer, she is deceased, gone to the great hamster cage in the sky :(

I appreciate this isn't on the scale of some of my recent losses but it makes me a little sad nonetheless, despite the fact that she didn't live with me any longer.

When life necessitated that I move to my parents eighteen months ago I couldn't keep her so my brother took her, but she had an eventful little life and after she made a number of escape attempts it was decided she would go to one of his friends. She had narrowly missed a few over enthusiastic 'investigations' by his dog and it was only going to be a matter of time....

The said friend is an animal nut and really wanted her as opposed to just taking her out of kindness so, off she went about a year ago to join the menagerie already resident at her new home.

All was well, she was well cared for, I saw her occasionally and she had as much food and attention as any hamster could wish for.

She died of old age in her sleep but she was a happy little hamster who had more adventures than many.

One of 'those' moments!

Today was dreaded dentist day, those of you who have read here over time will know that me and dentistry do not a happy combination make by any stretch of the imagination! I hate it and nothing on God's green earth seems to prevent me from turning into a useless heap of quivering jelly from about 48 hours prior to any appointment....today wasn't any different and added to that it had a kind of horrible extra significance.

You see, despite my being, um.... a great big useless coward 'forty something,' wherever possible I have taken someone along with me for moral support...and usually that has been my dad over recent years. Given my age and my degree of fear this had become something of a tradition that caused amusement among the reception staff, a fact that was to prove quite difficult on this occasion!

This was to be my first dental visit since my dad died and my first alone for quite some years. The lack of my dad by my side chivvying me along with his unending humour was pretty much on my mind anyway when I walked in alone on very wobbly legs and with somewhat wobbly emotions this afternoon but I was about to get a whole lot worse.

I was greeted with a cheery 'hello' and a smile by the attending receptionist....who then continued by making a joke of my managing to be their alone for once and asking where on earth my dad was this time!

I hesitated for a moment and then without thinking just said "he's dead". I perhaps could have said it with a little more tact but I was taken by such surprise that I just blurted out what came, what followed was one of 'those' seemingly unending silences which spread throughout the reception area, while someone thought what to say next.

Rarely lost for words for long, even if they aren't always entirely appropriate words, it was me who broke the silence with another knee jerk sentence...."I suppose while I'm here then I should ask you to remove him from your list of patients shouldn't I". I don't think it was perhaps my best line but distracted said receptionist from her embarrassment and I shuffled into to the lions den so distracted I forgot to be scared anymore.

Maybe my dad helped me in his absence just the same!

The slightly nuts woman I used to know

Well that was something of a failure!

The blogging from my phone idea didn't appear to be the answer to my lack of posting did it? In my defence however, it had as much to do with the app. I tried to use as it did with my current lack of time and blogging mojo. It worked the once, froze the phone and that was it and a better one seems not to be immediately available either. Hey ho.

So it's back to the trusty old laptop.

My ten days holiday is over and I have to admit that under my current circumstances I am more than a little pleased to get back to work. My home life is very difficult right now and being at work something of a respite. I woke at 5am this morning after only two hours sleep full of beans and ready to go, I am I know something of an oddity!

The holiday was not all a lost cause though I hasten to add. Myself and 'N' managed a few days away, peace and quiet and none of the usual difficulties that have become the norm of late. We had planned on a few days at the coast or something similar but our attempts at finding something suitable at such short notice and for minimal cost were thwarted so finally, having realised that all we wanted was a few days escape from the stress we booked into a local hotel and pretended for a long weekend that real life didn't exist.

Absolute bliss! For four whole days I felt like me again instead of the ragged, anxious, worry wart I seem to have become over the last eighteen months. Me, the slightly very nuts, laughing, life is fun woman I remember from days gone by.

It was fabulous, to do nothing, to worry about nothing, to offload my responsibilities and to give myself permission just not to give a damn about any of it for a few days.....priceless.

Oh....and it really wasn't by design that the hotel we chose had absolutely no cellular coverage at all, but hell it was a bonus! ;)

Test!

So... This is my latest plan to blog more often... Assuming of course it works which seems not to be a given, to blog from my phone perhaps. Lets see if it works....

I am on holiday....

....and I suppose I should be jumping up and down with glee but I'm not, to be completely honest I would rather be at work!

That probably sounds a little odd to most of you and I can remember only too well a time when I couldn't wait for my holidays but right now isn't that time, right now work is my escape and what for the most part what keeps me sane.

I do however have some plans, the first of which is sleep and lots of it and the second of which is facing 'the list'. I have lots of day to day stuff I really need to catch up with, you know, all those chores and official type things you always mean to do but don't really fancy so they get pushed to the bottom of the dreaded 'to-do' list repeatedly. Well this week I am determined to take on my list and if I achieve nothing else at least see that off.

And finally, with a big chunk of luck and a prevailing wind 'N' and I will get to have a few days away somewhere later in the week. At this stage we have absolutely no idea where, or even if he can get the time off but we are gonna try and do something if it kills us!