Marching On

So sad

It was a lazy day last summer, when the sun was beating down and the scent of warm strawberries filled the air, that I first realised something was missing.

A very small Lila was snoozing by my feet, and I was idly watching the butterflies in my herb patch. I was completely contented and yet not. I couldn’t put my finger on it. I sat and puzzled, trying to make sense of that strange feeling. And then it hit me.

It wasn’t something that was missing. It was someone.

That was the first time that I was hit by the strength of my desire to have children. The power of that feeling shocked me. I knew I wanted to have children eventually, but until that moment, I didn’t realise just how much I wanted to.

The garden looked lovely that day, with the plants growing almost in front of my eyes. But it would look even lovelier with a little child playing in a paddling pool. A little child with curly dark hair and light eyes, laughing and splashing the dog so carefully guarding the pool.

That was a year ago. I remember thinking on that day, a year ago, that by next summer that dream would be real. Next year seemed like a lifetime away, but it felt close enough to touch. I could almost see the paddling pool. I could certainly see the dog…

The Baron and I talked about it, of course, and we did try briefly. Of course, then we decided to get married, and plans were put on hold. We decided we would start trying again after our wedding.

We’ve tried, on and off. Things kept popping up that meant we had to put it off a month here, a month there. Out of eighteen cycles, we have managed to try on eight of them.

And now the Baron has cold feet. He doesn’t want to continue trying right now. He can’t explain why. He won't explain why.

It is another summer now. The harvest is in already. The heat wave has broken and now it is cold and raining. It doesn’t feel like we’ve moved forward at all. That dream seems just as far as away as it did last summer. There will be no small child playing in our back garden this year, or next.

I think you can imagine how I feel right now.

Worst Weekend Ever

I present the evidence. 

1.   My tyres were slashed by a fuckwit unknown.  So were the tyres of eight of my neighbours.

2.  The technican who put my spare on lost my wheel locking nut thingy, which means that my spare can't actually be taken off now.  He has now replaced it, but I can't get a new tyre until tomorrow.

3.  My spare is a space saver.  My car looks like a pansy.

4.   I walked into the patio door. I have broken both my nose and my glasses, and I have panda eyes.

5.  I was not drunk at the time.  I am now, however :)

Case closed.

Seriously pissed off

Bloody bloody work.

I was asked to attend an evening meeting at one of my clients tonight.  Fine.  I don't usually attend such meetings, but my manager was unable to and asked me to cover.  Not a problem.

He gave me the wrong bloody address.  I remember clarifying exactly where it was to be held, because we joked about the logistics of holding it in a small office with no air conditioning, whilst in the midst of a heatwave.  I laughed, and inwardly grimaced.

I turned up to find no-one there, save an out of hours contractor painting the offices.

Bloody great.

I called my sister and asked her to open my e-mail.  Absolutely nothing.  Nothing that would indicate just where the bloody meeting was.

So I feel like a complete tit. 

Piss.

Bloody clients

Work is a complete disaster at the moment.

I just typed out the whole sorry saga, realised how depressing it is and how stressed it is making me, and deleted it so I don't have to look at it.  Take my word for it......it has gone completely tits up.

And the sad thing is that on one level, I really don't give a damn.  I'm tired.

Not physically, but mentally.  The problems have been dragging on for a while and probably will carry on.  It is a struggle to make myself get work done these days.

I need to get myself motivated to do a better job. 

Not good at this

I am still around.

Things haven't been brilliant around here, and I needed a little break from the computer.  Things aren't any better, but I miss the internet too much.

One of these days I'll get round to posting my pictures from my trip to France.

More blech

The computer is still buggered.  Lila chewed through the power cable and that somehow blew the motherboard.   Not to mention the fact that it gave her a nice little shock :)

Seriously, she looked like Jar Jar bloody Binks, running around with her tongue poking out.  Stupid dog.

I'm on the mend from the food poisoning.  Unfortunately, I got brave and went back to work, where I managed to pick up a nasty viral thing on my first day back.  I've found that people aren't pleased to see an auditor at the best of time, let alone one clearly infected with the Lurgy, and so work isn't really an option until I shift this.

So I am off again, with glands the size of golf balls, a barking cough and a crazy dog with a newfound phobia of power cables.  And I am supposed to relax and get better?!

 

Blech

I have food poisoning and the computer has blown up.

See you in the spring.

My Cats Hate Me

Well, most of them.  They really do.  Despite the fact I feed them, adore them on demand and keep them in the ham to which they have become accustomed to.

Why?

Because I keep electrocuting them.  I've always been a static person, but the last week has been something else.  The sparks fly from my hand to their fur and the crack signals the retreat of a very pissed off cat.

Willow will not allow me to touch her at all.  Charlie looks warily at my hand before I touch him and Holly is camping out in the spare bedroom until the danger passes.  Frank and Oz are a little more relaxed but to be honest, they live in their own bizarre little world and probably don't notice that much.

Ellie, on the other paw, has worked out that if she rubs up against the computer monitor she can get enough static in her own fur to get her own back.  Which she does repeatedly, and usually throws in a couple of sharp nips for good measure.

Just charming.

I am a fucking idiot.

I was driving home this evening and I saw a dead fox in the road. He looked a little like Charlie, and I thought about how glad I was that my cats are now indoor only. Losing Harvey was so painful, and I can't allow any other of my cats to die on the road. 

So I got in, fed the dog and whipped her out for a walk. She was pulling a little as I was running late and she clearly needed to go. So I didn't check the front door that thoroughly.

I got back with Lila to find my front door WIDE OPEN. Frankie was sat in the doorway looking really bemused (not too much of a stretch from his normal state of affairs) but Ellie, our little adventuress was nowhere to be seen.

I ran around the house like a madwoman doing a head count. Charlie and Oz were on the stairs, and Holly was sat in her usual spot in our bedroom. I couldn't find Willy but then spied a tail poking out from under the quilt. STILL no Ellie.

Naturally I'm getting frantic. It is pitch black outside (there are no lights in our village) and Ellie is not easy to bring in if she isn't ready.

Then I hear a feeble miaow. I looked around, assuming that it was coming from outside.

Turns out that when I left the house, I accidently shut Ellie in the conservatory, where she had spent the last couple of hours whilst I was out . The heating doesn't work in there and she had no water. I checked before I shut the window, but she must have been hiding in the Christmas tree again.

I am such an irresponsible idiot.

Just. Fuck.

Remember the Fucking Scarlet Hair?  And the Return of the Fucking Scarlet Hair?

I think we have established beyond a doubt that my hair does not take kindly to dyeing. So what the fuck is wrong with me that I try to dye my hair again?  15 days before the wedding.

In my defence, a crop of grey hairs have made a very unwelcome appearance around my temples and I have become acutely aware of them.  No-one else can see them, or so they claim (methinks people are lying so as to not incur my wrath) but since I KNOW that they are there, action is essential.  I refuse to have wedding photo's with any grey hairs in them. 

I must plead temporary insanity because I used L'Oreal yet again.  I'm drugged up to the eyeballs so I imagine the plea will hold.  Again I took the word of some dimwitted assistant who swore blind that my hair really would be the colour on the box.  Why, I believed her, I don't know.  Wishful bloody thinking.

At least I didn't try buggering about with multi tonal highlights again...

I selected a nice dark brown colour.  Slightly darker than my natural colour, since going much darker doesn't really suit me. I wanted to look nice and natural.

Dark brown, my fucking arse!

People.  I have black hair.  We are back in fucking Goth territory here.  OK, there is no grey and the weird blonde streak I picked up after a day at the beach is gone, and I admit that my hair also looks rather shiny, but my hair is now darker than the darkest night.

Shit.  Fucking bollocking bastard hair.

I had black hair many years ago.  I also wore black velvet jackets and very dark eye makeup at that time, and it is a period of my life, whilst fun, I have bugger all desire to revisit now.

So.

I daren't try to rectify the colour with more colour since I think my track record proves that this might not be a great idea.  Knowing my current run of luck, I'll be bald by my wedding day (which is another look I've sported before, but again, don't really want to sport right now).  I've worked out that I have several options:

1.  Wash my hair several times an hour to try and fade the colour.

2.  Get married looking scary.

3.  Pay an obscene amount of money to have my hair professionally returned to a more natural looking colour. 

15 days to go.  Guess where I am going next week....

I've also managed to get hair dye all over the bathroom, but really, that is just par the course when hair dyeing.  The Baron is probably going to moan, but I plan on feigning deafness.  That is my excuse for not answering the phone when I see certain numbers flashing up.

Not that my phone is working at the moment anyway. 

I have also killed my mobile phone.  Somehow the screen took in a small ocean of water (in the middle of the night whilst on my bedstand - proof positive that things take on a life of their own after dark) and now the fucker won't work.  Typically, the Baron's phone has proved itself insdestructible, having survived an economy cycle and has also survived a mauling by Darth Lila. 

Darth Lila isn't having a good time of things either.

Missy has managed to catch wet dermatitis from her uncle.  Just what I need right now.

Sam and I went to the vet yesterday, and came out with a bald head and a lightshade.  Strike that.  He came out with a bald head and a lightshade, and I came out and paid for the shaving and the lightshade.  To add injury to insult and injury, a tiny puppy leapt from his owners arms and bit his nose.  Sam was helpless because:

1) he tends to allow puppies to take enormous liberties anyway; and

2) he was muzzled and lightshaded.  He isn't bad at all, but when he is unwell, he has been known to snap at male vets (and I suspect if someone I had just met tried to ram a thermometer up my arse, I'd snap too).  He's a ladies man, is our lad.

The ignorant and quite frankly, complete arsehole of a puppy owner then had the cheek to ask us to remove Sam from the vet's IMMEDIATELY because Sam had the nerve to LEAN on his leg whilst crying and trying to extricate his poor nose nose from the needle sharp teeth hanging on for dear life.  This made Sam a clear and present danger to society that needs to be dealt with.

It was highly enjoyable ripping him a new one.  Fucking twat. 

The experience was made even more fun by the fact that Sam does not like men shouting at me, and he has a particularly menacing way of showing his displeasure.  I admit, he looks more comical than menacing when he has no fur on half of his head and a large lightshade round his neck, but I think it is fair to say that Sam and I made a point. 

Or not.  It is hard to argue (with a straight face) that your dog is not a menace to society when he is straining and snarling.  But if you are stupid enough to stand and argue with someone with a rottweiler in a lightshade, then you probably will get everything you deserve.

And I'm not talking about a squashed leg.

Darth Lila is not a happy bunny.  Being that she is a dog, that is.  She too has to to submit to a steroid cream regime and the humiliation of a lightshade.  Is it any wonder that the vet surgery love me?  They get rather a lot of my cash.

Since I am poor in cash (but not in cats) I have to wait for the sales before updating my knicker drawer.  My knicker collection has started to look decidedly tatty, and with my current run of luck, would be exposed as such after being hit by a bus. 

My favourite store currently has a sale on in the undie department.  Wayhay!  Time to get some natty new knickers!

Despite the Boy's love of boobies, he wasn't too enamoured with the undie sale.  The little git knew I wanted to go to the ladies after looking at the sale stuff, and slipped off yelling that he would meet me there because he was so BORED that his brains would MELT.  I took off after him, but he wasn't there when I arrived.

Cue a frantic search of the store, involving me, some rather nice security guards and a slightly mad old lady who overheard my request for help.  I turned a corner to find him standing with my mother moaning that I still hadn't been to the toilet.

You've got to love a small child.  He had waited for me in the GENTS. 

I can't wait for my holiday.