Ten on Tuesday

1. Today is Tuesday, My little tyke has just decided that she can say 'Toosday' It's very sweet, and if you ask her what day of the week it is, on any day, she will tell you it's 'Toosday' kind of while she nods her head in a matter of fact way. I love her.


2. My friend gave us this just after Willow was born, and this week it is the favourite book of the moment..... A wonderful story poem thingy, with gorgeous illustrations. 

3. We have just ran out of Fabric conditioner, and I am slightly ashamed to say I feel quite excited that I get to buy a new one and try out a new smell !!  


4. I Watched a bit of 'live in hackney' concert which radio 1 put on at the weekend. Jack White was playing, the crowd were bouncing, made me nostalgic for my mosh pit days. It's been too long since I've been to a gig and need to rectify this imbalance one day when the energy fairy comes to visit.


5. I've read some really interesting blogs recently, about peoples lives very different from mine, inspiring and humbling what people live with, find joy in, and experience. My world is small, I like to look out of if and see what else is going on. If you fancy a read here is one of them.


6. I discovered the deliciousness of dried mango about 8 years ago, I have rekindled this eating habit this week. LOVE IT. If you haven't ever tried it, you really should. 


7.  On my seventh birthday I went to a holiday club thing, they sang happy birthday to me, but sang the verse 'squash tomatoes and stew, bread and butter in the gutter....' I have never forgotten it.


8. Sorted out a kitchen cupboard this week, see this post and you'll see why for me, this was a great thing.


9. Little Tyke helping her Daddy do some sawing.......never to young to start learning DIY. I spent years of my childhood building things and making woodwork creations with my Dad, I think girls should be able to use a drill, saw things and put up shelves.

10. I will leave you with this....... 

I felt a little scared just looking at it !

See it Snap it, love it.

Peace and Quiet

I try to take a photo each week on the theme, and for this week, my peace and quiet has been the view from my bed, this is what I see.......

There are sleeping babies, and lakes, and seasides and peaceful gardens, bath times and cups of tea but this week, this view has been my 'Peace and quiet'. A mirror I bought from a charity shop and painted which now has pride of place on the cupboard in our room, and in the reflection I see folded towels on the bookcase. Folded towels to me are a sign that something is going right in the Deane house. I like a folded towel, brings me some sense of inner peace. 

Travelling memories

I have no idea why, but yesterday evening while lying in bed listening to a random mix of 'desert island disks' on the radio, while periodically flicking on the TV to check on England's progress in the quarter final of the european cup, I started thinking about a random evening in my life about 8 years ago. So thought i'd share......


I was nearing the end of a 6 weeks trip in Thailand and Loas. I had spent some of it visiting some churches in various places, and some time on a beach in the beautiful Island Ko Samui and Ko Tao. My friend had been with me on the last leg of my journey, the beach part....oh the beautiful beach part. She had flown home the day before, and I had about 5 days left before travelling back alone. It's weird when I think about it, cos now, most of the time people know where I am pretty much constantly. But then, no one did. I was staying at a beach resort on an island, on my own. It was great. So the first night I was alone, I headed to a local bar on the beach, a quite out of the way kind of place, we weren't staying on the main 'strip', not a fan of places like that, so this place was a quite backpacker type restaurant on the beach, looking out at palm trees and crystal waters. They showed films occasionally- so I went there, lemonade in hand, and sat down ready to watch 'The Gladiator'. There was a couple in the bar doing a similar thing to me, kind of killing time, kind of watching the film. No one else was there so we got chatting. 
A few days before I had seen that John Lee hooker's daughter was playing at a bar in the town that night, (maybe that's why I thought of this story as one of the desert island disks was J L Hooker) I was planning on going, so they hopped in a taxi with me and the three of us, complete strangers but with enough in common for that moment, headed out for what seemed to be an evening together. I already had Chronic Fatigue at this point, so wasn't planning on being out for long, as I was needing to sleep. We arrived at this Blues bar, it was bustling. Zekhiah hooker turned up, and started playing some beautiful gritty music, It was lovely. 


Then things started to get a little, well, strange. Myself and my newly found companions had kind of exhausted all the usual topics of conversation one persues in these circumstances. Then, in walks this man with what seemed to be a small entourage of friends with him. I recognised him as the guy driving down the main street on a harley with bizarre white blonde flowing hair, he was a hard face to forget. He asked if he could join our table. So he, his thai girlfriend ( albeit one he was paying ) and about four other people kind of sat with us, introduced themselves and proceeded to chat and talk to us like we'd all know each other for years. Now, don't get me wrong, I can get someone's life story out of them in no time at all, I am fairly handy at talking to people I don't know, but this gaggle of people took it to the next level. The guy with the blonde hair - crazy harley guy was ordering drinks for everyone like the bar was about to close ( it was infact about 9pm ), seriously he just ordered bottles and bottles of beer, masses of shots and when he asked me what I was drinking and I replied 'lemonade' he looked a little bewildered but ordered me four. I'm not sure if he was on 'something', or was in the middle of a manic episode of some type, but this guy new how to 'party' as the cool kids say. The couple I was with were a bit younger than me, impoverished back packers,  and thought it was Christmas ! - loving the free booze, and that we had been enveloped into the party of some slightly crazed american guy. As the time passed it just got more surreal....we were invited on a speedboat to go jet skiing the following day, and I was asked if I would meet up with him in London when he visited and showed him around.....how did I explain that I did intact live in liverpool, and had barely been out to the good clubs there, how I was going to show him where to go in London was another matter entirely. So I kind of smiled and replied some half hearted response. He told stories, everyone around him listened and drank the drinks he paid for with bizarre lavish outpouring. Now thankfully, although only 24 at the time I have never been too naive, innocent maybe, but not naive, so decided that maybe it was a safe time to part company with this slightly crazed gathering I had been part of, it had been fun, but felt that maybe everyone else had sufficiently passed me on the sober - drunk scale, and seeing as I actually knew none of them, it's never great being around drunk people when your sober and you know them, but when you don't it's even more strange. So I said I had to go as I was leaving for Bangkok in the morning ( which was true), Crazy Harley guy stood up and INSISTED that he gave me a lift back to my beach hut on his harley, which was sitting outside the bar. I politely declined, although would have loved a ride on it ( I have always wanted a motorbike) but he wasn't taking any of it, so I, made up a story about having to pop to the local shops first to get some gifts for my family to take back with me first. ( this bit was a lie - and I very rarely lie, I am no good at it). So I then had to walk in the opposite direction to enforce my tale of going to the shops. Then when out of sight hop in a taxi and duck as we passed the bar. I got home safe, and realised that yes I'd had a very enjoyable, abeit slightly unusual evening, but was pleased to be safe in my beach hut, locked the door and put my heavy suitcase up against it, went to bed, and prayed for God to keep me safe !!! 


I was slightly worried for my backpacking friends, that they may have been sucked into some slightly crazed orgie, or ended up trafficking drugs or some other weird thing. But I escaped unharmed, and with a very weird memory of my last night on the beautiful Island of Ko Samui. The next morning I got on a boat, then the overnight train, that was another interesting experience, but i'll share that another time.


I love travelling.


One day I hope to do it some more.

Week in pictures

I visit this site most weeks -  Week in pictures.  Not only are there some wonderful photos on there. They also provide an interesting perspective into world events, politics and general life out side out of our bubble.


Here are my comfortable, unaffected by war, slavery or natural disaster photos.........

Trip on the carousel on a rainy June day

The little dead bee we found in the garden....beautiful wings.

All about the girl......

Just a few photos this week, as things got a bit hectic, so the camera stayed in it's little case. Hopefully next week there'll be some better light and some more interesting photos ! 

Bedtime story boycott

She's a sweetie pie.

Today she woke at an earlier hour than I would have liked, and remained energetic throughout the day. Just like a toddler should really, I have no complaints. By bedtime however, I was ready for her to be packed off safely in her little white cage we call a cot. There was no bedtime story, not cos she was naughty but just because I had had enough of stories, one night without one won't hurt and sometimes, just sometimes I think we can all be a bit too laboured about bedtime !

Ten on Tuesday

Wow, it's Tuesday again I'm told. So here we go with another Ten............


1. This little fella died in our grass the other week, he gets stroked and pointed at frequently. Can't quite bring myself to throw him out.....If I had a better lens you would see that he has his little front leg things over his face like he's hiding his eyes, quite cute in a weird kind of insect way.

2. The bin men watching continues..........they  now wave to her every week. Gives us something to do on a Monday as we have 3 separate collections. Council tax well spent !

3. We have started going to Jo Jingles, It's a singing and making noise kind of session for kids, a lovely enthusiastic lady runs it and produces all kinds of soft animals, bubbles, things to hit and make noise with. It is kind of weird going, as my more energetic self would probably be doing something similar to this as a job, so it's odd being on the receiving end of the over enthusiastic interaction with Children !


4. All the furniture in our house apart from our bed and one chest of drawers has been given to us. We are really thankful for this as money has always been pretty tight. It does however mean that things don't match too well, and the truth is, I like things to match. My solution to this problem has been to paint most of said furniture white. I like painted White furniture, but mostly do it so it matches. There have been a few items which haven't yet had this treatment, but we are slowly getting there. I'm hoping that our house won't look like somewhere the ice queen might live by the time we've finished. But it's got to be better than the 90's yellow pine effect surely ?


5. As you may recall there was much curtain purchasing debacle not so long ago, well the poles are up, and soon, they shall be actually hanging at the window - better late than never.

6. I have been playing with a photo editing kind of website thingy recently, here is the product of my brief attempt. A snappidy snap of my girl and her Daddy.

Doesn't it look flashy - Curved edges and text too......whatever next !  


7. We're trying to plan things for the Summer holidays, Husbando gets 6 weeks off so hoping to visit some family in various parts of the UK. Petrol prices have got so flipping ridiculous, not sure we'll get much further than Birmingham at this rate.


8. To tweet or not to tweet that is the question?


9. Having had CFS for approaching 9 years I have tried many weird and wonderful diets and remedies to try to alleviate the symptoms. My latest thing is to try the Gluten free diet. So we'll see how that goes. Avoiding Gluten is defiantly easier than all sugars (which I did for a whole year) Cos sugar tastes nice, Gluten however does not.


10. I have finally had to take my wedding ring off. A fierce argument ? Unable to take the toilet seat being up anymore? No, my fingers are just now quite a bit fatter than they were when we got married 6 years ago. Well to be fair there wasn't any fat on them at all when we got married, now they are just normal, but anyhow, I can't wear any rings - feels VERY weird. But the checkout guy in tesco did try to chat me up, so that was fun! ( more weird than fun if the truth be told )

Linking in with a few other blogging ladies who often do a 10 too ! 
theadventuresofbobbyandgeorge
apartyofseven
yeastandwest

See it snap it love it - MESSY !

This week's theme is 'messy'. So I got my camera ready while my little tyke was eating her breakfast to capture a cute 'child covered in mess' moment, then I turned and looked at the real mess - left from yesterday cos It was Daddy's day off house jobs being fathers day and all..... this is what I saw....

I am coming out the messy closet people......This is where the real mess is at.....!!