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There's always something to make you smile....

Over again

Today I suspect is not set to be one of my best!

I made very brief mention here a few months back of a fledgling relationship, I didn't blog it beyond that in an effort to give it it's best chance and for reasons of privacy but in short, it didn't quite fledge and for reasons I won't go into, I deemed it necessary to call time on it yesterday.

I'm sad, it hurts but I'll survive.

I think I'll probably have to go through this a few times more before my knight in shining armour shows up so best I learn to get used to it.

Onward....

Ask me anything!

Ok, so this is something that if you 'Facebook' you have probably seen around the last few days but I thought I would modify it some and blog it as a meme. I won't tag anyone in the usual meme manner but if you ask a question, whilst it's not obligatory, I dare you to put this on your blog.

So here goes....

I'LL BE TRUTHFUL FOR 24 HOURS ..... YOU CAN ASK ME ANY ONE QUESTION NO MATTER WHAT IT IS. I WILL ANSWER IN FULL HONESTY THOUGH I RESERVE THE RIGHT TO ANSWER PRIVATELY IN EMAIL IF I DEEM IT NECESSARY!

QUESTIONS CAN BE ASKED IN COMMENTS OR BY MAIL (there is a mailto link at the top of the sidebar).

Maru and the box

I really should actually write something here before too long but right now my brain doesn't seem to have anything resident worth writing, so again, some amusing piffery!

Enjoy!

Some things...

....are so horrible but at the same time just so, so funny!

Stress management

From my inbox, works for me!

Just in case you are having a rough day, here is a stress management technique recommended in all the latest psychological journals. The funny thing is that it really does work and will make you smile...

1. Picture yourself lying on your belly on a warm rock that hangs out over a crystal clear stream..

2. Picture yourself with both your hands dangling in the cool running water.

3. Birds are sweetly singing in the cool mountain air.

4. No one knows your secret place.

5. You are in total seclusion from that hectic place called the world.

6. The soothing sound of a gentle water fall fills the air with a cascade of serenity.

7. The water is so clear that you can easily make out the face of the person you are holding underwater.

See, it works, you are smiling already aren't you? ;)

It's just snow!

I adore all this snow malarkey, this is no secret, I spend every winter wishing for it, but all I seem to have heard this last week is people grumbling about it, so much so that even I begin to wish it would thaw just to stop the negativity.

Perhaps it isn't the snow itself that presents the problem, rather our seemingly complete reliance on that great invention, the car! The moment the roads are difficult to negotiate the whole infrastructure grinds to a halt, we are all so used to travelling distances to work etc. that it becomes impossible to live life 'normally' and many seem either never to have learned even the basics of controlling a vehicle in snow.... or apparently have lost the use of their legs as an alternative.

Minor panic seems to have set in, those who do venture to the supermarkets are buying up stocks of the staples like Armageddon is about to hit us and all around I hear precious little other than whingeing about how 'awful it all is'. Hells bells, it's a bit of snow, not nuclear fall out we are dealing with.

I do however appreciate it doesn't necessarily make life easy from time to time. Having found myself responsible now for my mother, the snow does present something of a new challenge. She can't walk any distance in this , well she thinks she can but all we need right now is a broken arm or hip to add to her misery, so walking has been banned by myself and her quack and the car is the only option for her from where we live.

This is however not an insurmountable problem, as many seem to think it might be. Yes, we need food to be bought etc. just like everyone else but I can walk and I have and do, each day, the two or so miles into town to get anything we need badly, and I have arms, I can and have dug my car out and negotiated the steep hill too and from the house on a few occasions, with the mother in tow to relieve the cabin fever she is beginning to suffer.

It's not all ideal I will readily admit but please, it's beautiful, it won't be here long, it's not an international disaster it's just a bit of snow, and it has it's positives. For those who really can't get out and are seriously inconvenienced by it due to illness or infirmity, there is always that old thing community spirit....which incidentally I have found quite heartwarming.

I have met people this last week who have lived for thirty or more years in the same street as we do and who until now, I never knew existed. We have organised gangs to clear the street, we have called on neighbours and shopped for them, I have had a coffee with someone I hauled off the pavement when he slipped over and I have watched families sledging in the park enjoying one another's company for a day or two, instead of having to spend their time negotiating the rat race.

It's not all bad guys, what is bad is that it brings into sharp focus just how insular we have all become in our day to day lives and how skewed we have our priorities...and I include myself in that!

Redundant!

This sight just amused me on my walk yesterday! ;)

Karma in snow!

So, I spend all winter wishing and hoping for snow and finally I get it. Then I snigger at those who have to go to work, watching them to slip and slide on their way in the early hours, while I sit warm and cosy drinking coffee.

Today I got my comeuppance. I needed a doctors appointment, the only available one was at eight o'clock this morning. Off I trudged in almost a foot of snow, in the dark and at minus six degrees because the car is firmly stuck where I last parked it!

Karma?

It did however give me an opportunity to take a few more pictures....





*More HERE

Wishes do come true!

(Clickable)

I am waiting....

.....with breath baited for what the meteorological guys promise me is going to be a pretty significant snowfall here over the next few days.

Thus far there have only been a few flakes but the 'official' time of commencement isn't until approx. 18:00hrs so I remain ever hopeful!

Quite why I enjoy all this so much I am never entirely sure, there are certainly a few negatives, trying to fight my way through frozen locks to get into my car and home, at 2am this morning in minus 6 degrees, being one of them.

Even I will admit to looking forward to the summer for a moment at that point...but it soon passed!

Beginning again!

At last, I have found a positive in not working!

Today I can snigger madly at the sight and the thought of everyone else shuffling back to work bleary eyed and grumpy after the Christmas holidays! I can stay warm and cosy indoors with no nasty boss to face nor a backlog of work that was cheerfully abandoned in the pre-festivity highs only to be faced this morning. There is a silver lining to every cloud! ;)

However, the sniggering will be short lived because here starts the rest of my life. There are still issues to be addressed at home since the death of my father and things are not all as straightforward as I might like them to be but the job hunting begins again, in earnest, from now.

This is not going to be an easy nut to crack. I've been out of work for one reason or another for getting on for two years now and paid employment still appears to be about as rare as hens teeth (thanks Gordon), but try I must. It's all a bit daunting and scary, I have lived through so many changes and oddities in the two years in question that really I just would like to hide away for a while but that's not an option.

So here starts phase one of trying to re-build my life yet again from the ground up.

You would think I was used to it by now really wouldn't you!


*I may or may not blog the minutiae of the hunt, I'll see how I feel, last time it became too depressing to keep going over one rejection after another!

Foxy fail!

How do people get these shots? Love it! :)

Bring it on!

Well then, so that's 2009 dispatched and not before time and now off we go headlong into 2010.

I don't like to try and foresee what it might bring, trying to plan or organise life appears only to be setting oneself up for failure in my experience and no matter what, the actuality is never even close to the plan!

Neither do I do all the new years resolution codswallop, another recipe for failure.... but I am this year determined to make a few changes and grab a few bulls by the horns.

I need a job and I'm damn well going to find one if it kills me and I need a life and I'm going to start finding one of those too! 2009 was my annus horriblis and enough is enough, I may well fall on my face some more, I will doubtless lose my positivity intermittently and you will certainly, I imagine, have to suffer my whingeing and whining now and again but if there is one thing I learned last year it is that life is too bloody short, way, way too bloody short.

So, onward and upward, throw at me what you will 2010... one way or another, metaphorically speaking, I am going to be in a better place by this time next year!

Bring it on.....