Taffiness Takes You Places

Oi oi clarts! I gorra do this yer blog in Taff Speak today fer a very speshal reason. You see, I've only gone and bin given a bluddy award, like innit? Itz the Strange Blog Award, which is like totally bangin', and woz given to me by the Watery Tart, like innit. Now, Tami gave me the award, like, and she gorrit from this clart called Steve (who I don't know at all, like, but thort it waz only decent to menshun him, like innit, speshally coz I iz using the award piccy, which I stole from Tami, who in turn stole it from this Steve clart, who I fink actually stole it from the clit wot started the whole shebang). Anywayz, parrently this award makez you eligable fer entry to a compatishun like (you can find the goss on it yer like, innit), and this compatishun is run by this clit called Cate Gardner, who iz the orfur ov this book ov short stories called Strange Men In Pinstripe Suits.

Anywayz, all you ave to do to enter this compatishun is, well, notalot really, ifyouknowzwhatimean.  The main fing iz that you ave to be strange. Well, thatz like, obvious, right, coz itz the Strange Blog Award.  Parrenty I qualified coz of me Taffing, but I'm not so shore. I mean, what's so odd about Taff Speak, it's like, perfectly normal - youknowzitmakezsense! Anyway, apart for the being strange fingy, there's a cupple of ovver fings you ave to do to enter this compatishun. Like, first ov all you ave to be given the Strange Blog Award - which is wicked like, coz one, itz a really bangin' award to get like, and two, you iz like half way to being entered into a compatishun already like, and you aint done nuffin yet! Anywayz, when you gets the award, like, you needs to like pass it alon to a few ovver strange clarts (or clits az the case may be like, innit - youknowzitmakezsense!), and let the clit called Cate know that you've done it like. Simple, easy peasy annallat.

Only the trubble iz, all ov the clarts and clits that I would ave passed itonto ave already ad it like (and the award too, parrently), so I iz gonna have to cheat alirrlebi, and just sort ov accept the award for now, and p'raps try and find sum ovver worvy clarts and clits atalater date like, innit? Itz a sad state of fairs like, that I dunt know alotov strange peeps. Well, actually I do, itz just that all ov them are so strange (and well wicked too, in the non-evil wicked way, ifyouknowzwhatimean) that they've bin reconized already. Obviously I needs to like widen my circle of clarts and clits, like innit. So anywayz, no compatishun entry for me at the moment, but thatz cool, coz I is more than chuffed at the Strange Blog Award anwayz.

Anywayz, thatsabouri fer now, partly becoz my power has gone like free times tonight (which is a right ducking nightmare) and I iz a lirrlebi scared that I'll lose the entire post, but mostly itz becoz my brain is more spongey than normal owing to the fact that itz now midnight and I've been awake since four o-ducking clock, so I can't fink of anyfink else to type like.

Fanks again to Tami, who gave me the award like, she's like the best clit evah!

Manic Mumbles. Or Mumbles About Being Manic. Or Something.

Manic-ness, that's what it is. Complete and utter manic-ness. For those of you without those pesky things we parents call 'ankle-biters', I'm talking about the summer holidays. Those almost-seven weeks of stress-inducing, hair-pulling, voice-going-because-we're-constantly-yelling-at-our-kids, school-free days. I can never understand why Britain keeps the overly-long summer break going. I mean, it's not as if we have lovely weather between the end of July and the beginning of September. Sure, we have a few odd days of sunshine here and there. but mostly it's just so-much-rain-we-can't-leave-the-house-without-an-emergency-boat-and-a-flare-gun (I seem to be having a hyphen day today, don't mind me). Unless you have a car (which I don't) and/or lots of money (which I most definitely don't), then you're basically screwed.

The kids are either bored or almost killing each other. That's when they're not avoiding being strangled by their mum. *shifty* I swear, if I hear 'Mum, can we go somewhere today, pleeeeeeease?' one more time I will definitely be up on a murder charge.

Then there's the other kids. In other words, my kitties. Since joining the household around a month ago, little kitty Angel has ruined my curtains, bullied the other kitty (*lights candle for Belle*), given me countless heart attacks when she decides to disappear for a few hours, only to turn up in the sock drawer, behind the freezer, in the (closed) crisps box, or the tumble dryer, and is probably costing me more to feed that the two of my (real) kids put together.

And then we have The Job. If the lottery machine is going to die, it will be on my shift. If the milk delivery is going to turn up with ten leaking bottles of milk which subsequently leave a series of puddles all over the floor AND cover the rest of the delivered stock in milky messiness, it will be on my shift. If the newspapers are delivered late causing a bunch of Angry Old Men to shake their fists at you and bend your ear about What A Sad State of Affairs It Is When You Can't Even Get A Paper At 6:01am, then it. Will. Be. On. My. Shift.

*screams*

On a happier note,  I am now fitting into a size twelve in the trouser department, the tax people have finally sorted out my tax credits (so that I actually have some money now, imagine that!), and I've found two people who are willing to babysit for me (I almost fainted with shock at that one - honestly, two people who are willing to watch over my monst- er, kids? Wow!), and because of this I now have a social life. Who'd have thunk, eh?

Now, if I could just get to blogging a bit more often, and finish editing that novel that's knocking around on my hard drive, then I could maybe call 2010 The Year of Yayness. Or maybe The-Year-That-Started-Off-Lamely-Then-Gradually-Improved-Around-Midway-Then-Really-Got-Better-By-The-End. But's that's not nearly so catchy....

Moxing my wards is fin!

It's boon a finny ald doy. I've boon rishing aroind loke a nonny fer the list twolve hoars, bit nithong sooms ti hive getton dine! I dribbled a lottle, and moneged ti funush the dribble thot wis soppised ti hove boon dine a faw doys agu. Elwoys funushong thongs list munute, thot's mu. *rells ayas*

Thon I cloaned the hoase, whoch in itsilf wis a bot of a noghtmure, whit wath the pissy cots gittong endor my fuut all the tome. I swair, yuo wint ti try cloanung the hoase woth a pear of pissy cots ronnung aboat, it's ni pocnoc!

I pisted my blig pist on my wrotor's blig - thaegh ti be fear, I'd wrotten it yosterdoy, so I dodn't actailly DE anythong tidoy. Stoll, it's a blig, roght?

Anywoy, I'm only pisting thos on thus blig tidoy becoise I hevant dine si fer a whule. I primose to pist semothong half docint seen, but on the moantome, I'm geong to sut bick and wendir whothir anyune woll andirstund anythong thot I hive typud, or if thay woll gevu op bifere thoy gut ti the und if thus pist.

Byu byu!

That Was The Year That Was....

Today is the last day of my thirty-third year, and what a year it has been! I think that the last year has probably had the most life-changing events for me personally than any other in the past (barring the birth of my children, that is). There has been  a fair few ups and downs this past year, and most of them have contributed to the person that I am now on this, the eve of my thirty-fourth birthday. Sure, events from every year of our lives shape the people that we are today - experiences alter our view of things, mistakes help us to learn to do better, and successes help drive us forward - but it sometimes happens that some years are almost non-eventful, while others have a spate of occurrences that somehow wake you up from the Plodding Through Life slumber.  My thirty-third year definitely falls into the latter category.

July 2009

My birthday falls on the 24th, so technically I can't include all of July in my recap of the last year, but the last week of July in 2009 can definitely be mentioned. I remember waking up in a mixed mood. I was feeling a bit down because my husband was starting his annual two weeks of working away from home that day, so I only got to see him for an hour or so - not the best start to my birthday. But then I logged into Facebook and was bombarded with lots and lots of lovely birthday messages, which cheered me up no end. I saw my husband off and spent the day opening cards and gifts, then finished it with a few friends sharing a celebratory drink with me. Lovely!

August 2009

August can best be described as a blur of madness. Most days were spent trying to entertain my kids in the limbo that is The Summer Holidays. *cringes* All would be well and good if we actually had decent weather and plentiful funds, but when most of the days are rainy and miserable, and finances are tight, entertaining two highly active children for almost seven weeks is exhausting. Yup, August was a bit of a blur.

September 2009

Back to school joy-ness! Soon to be followed by back to school annoy-ness. *snort* Schools tend to hit you with purse-emptying events in the first month of the academic year. As if being skintified by the Buying School Uniform Gloominess wasn't enough, we are bombarded by school photos, school trips and 'fund raising' events in the very first few weeks of term. Still, at least we don't have to worry about entertaining the kids so much now, eh?

October 2009

I started blogging! The first big 'up' of the last year.*grins* I never thought I would ever start blogging - it's not really something that a procrastinator does because blogging generally means commitment. I did really well in my first month, and blogged every day. I made a few new friends, had a ball writing the daily blogs, and discovered that my personal brand of craziness was mostly accepted by the blogging community. Awesome!

November 2009

I wrote a novel! Seriously, I did! *faints* NaNoWriMo sucked me in for the first time ever, and not only did I finish my 50,000 word novel, I also blogged every day too (well, I missed one day, but I don't hold it against myself *winks*). I introduced requests to my blog this month too, and also let loose on the general public the loony-ness that is Taff. Best month ever, November. *nods*

December 2009

December passed swiftly, what with the Christmas build-up and the general busy-ness that it brings, and the extra excitement added from the daughter because her birthday falls so close to the festive season. Mostly a good month, but with some underlying tension which was a prelude to what was to come....

January through March 2010

Dire, very dire. New Year's day brought with it a change in my personal circumstances, and this change led to a very big dip in my well-being. I've always been prone to periods of depression throughout my adult life, but usually I pulled out of them all by myself. This time it took my GP to pull me back from the abyss. After several attempts, my doctor finally found the right medication for me, but it wasn't until the end of March that I started to feel more like myself. Although the first quarter of 2010 were the worst months of my life, they actually caused me to take a step back and reconsider a lot of things. I finally lost the bulk of the weight that had literally been bogging me down for the last seven years. Okay, the first twenty pounds fell off me with no effort at all - not eating or sleeping properly for a month will do that for you - but the next twenty pounds came away through sheer doggedness and refusal to slip back into bad habits. Coupled with the new determination to look my best was a change of attitude in general. After too many years of plodding along through life, I finally took charge and allowed myself to be heard. I let myself speak up for the things that I wanted, and for the first time in a long time I didn't always put everyone else first. I'll never say that I am grateful for the circumstances that started this chain of events, but I can honestly say that I would probably still be stuck in a rut if they hadn't have happened. It's funny how the worst things in life sometimes lead to the best things. Maybe there is a God up there after all, and maybe He does work in mysterious ways.

April/May 2010

I really started to get back to my usual self around about here, which could be taken two ways. For the good, I no longer turned into a cry-baby on a regular basis, so the episodic depression was thankfully under control. Unfortunately, the return of my normal self brought with it the return of the Procrastination Princess, so while it was nice to be in control of my feelings, the downside was knowing that my bad habits were slowly but surely creeping back into my life. But do you know what? Despite the fact that procrastination isn't really something to be proud of, I actually like being like this. I think if I became this organised person who did everything properly and kept to deadlines and what-not, I wouldn't be me. And for the first time ever, I am happy with who I am, procrastinator or not.

June 2010

The epic fail of BuNoWriMo should really have put me back into the Pit Of Doom, but thanks to the new-found acceptance of myself, I wasn't bothered that I didn't manage to complete my second WriMo. Oh, I felt disappointment in myself, sure, but it wasn't the kind of disappointment that sucked me into LaLa-Land and made me want to crawl into a corner and hide. I was able to shrug off the failure and see it for what it was - a blip in the general plan, but not something that would affect the rest of my life. I also started back at my old job this month, which in spite of the impact it will have on my writing, is actually a good thing. Getting out of the house for a few hours every week is actually fantastic for getting you out of a rut, and although I was feeling better in a lot of ways, I was still stuck in the Waste Time Just Because I Can zone. Now that my days are structured according to whether I am working or not, I have to fit things in as and when I can. Gone is the There's Always Tomorrow attitude, and it has been replaced with the Acckkk!! I Have To Do It Now Or Else It Will Never Be Done attitude. So despite having to get up at stupid o'clock three days a week, and having to deal with snarky customers and figures that don't always balance, going back to work was a good thing.

July 2010

Arriving back at my birthday again, in summary I would say that although the badness of last year probably outweighed the goodness, I am still in a much better place than I was on the eve of my thirty-third birthday. I'm healthier (dropping 40lbs was the best thing ever), I'm happier, both with myself and with my life in general, I've written a freaking novel - ! - and although far from being Blogger of the Year, I have mostly stuck with it and not delegated this blog to the Abandoned Projects pile (which is precariously teetering on the brink of collapsing owing to the size of it).

So that was the year that was.

Timeslip

Why is it that the older you get, the faster time seems to pass? This is a puzzle that has made me think a lot over the last few years, with each year passing making me puzzle over it more. As a child, the time between birthdays and Christmas etc seemed eternal, whereas even though we are now only midway through July, already I am panicking about Christmas 2010. I know, it's five months away for crying out loud, but from experience I know that those five months will soon be behind me and the joy (stress) of the festive season will be upon me. Its nuts! I have a birthday coming up (unfortunately), and it honestly doesn't seem like it has been a year since my last one. Looking back on it is like looking back at a day from a couple of weeks ago. What's up with that?

I noticed that time seemed to speed up when I hit thirty.  I mean, sure, the years went a little more swiftly in my twenties when compared to my childhood, but a year still felt like a relatively long time. But when I reached thirty, suddenly a year felt about half as long as it should be. And it also seems that time appears to go faster when you have things to do. Back in February (I think it was February anyway, it may have been last week for all I know), I made a five month plan with regards to my NaNo novel. I fully intended to edit  the messy bits and add another ten thousand words so that by the end of this month I would be ready to start trying to sell it.

Now, I have made decent progress on it considering how much of a procrastinator I am, but it is far from done. Of course, I can take off a couple of months because I was back on forth on different meds for my depression, and most days I didn't know whether I was coming or going. Definitely not the right frame of mind to be in when you want to edit a novel. But I was finally given meds that worked, and over the last three months I have gradually got better, and although I know I am not completely back to normal, I am not nearly as bad as I was.  So allowing for adjustments due to the meds thing, I guess I could say that the last ten weeks or so should have seen a lot of work done on my novel.

Well, I have worked on it, but not nearly as much as I should have. I keep thinking to myself that it is only March or April, and then stop short when I realise that we are now in July. Logically I know it is July, but it just doesn't feel like it is. The time going faster as we get older thing is definitely part of that, but the whole Being Out Of My Tree for the first third of this year has also added to the problem.

I'm still determined to get Cardiffella edited and ready for submission by September though. I have this funny feeling that September should be a good month to do it, and being a bit of a stickler for 'funny feelings', I want to go with my instinct.  I just hope that September doesn't arrive before next week or something, because at the rate time is slipping by me this year, it really wouldn't surprise me....

Drabbling

To coincide with the drabble challenge over on my writer's group blog (Burrowers, Books & Balderdash - *coughshamelessplugcough*), and also because I know I won't have time to blog tomorrow (er, today), I thought I'd schedule a post for you.

The Burrow (which you should know by now is my writer's group) has been drabbling to images for over two years now, and we've published our projects online at our showcase website www.the-burrow.org/ since December 2008.  Put simply, a drabble is a story told in exactly one hundred words. Technically they aren't really stories - telling a complete and cohesive story in a mere hundred words is nigh on impossible - but it is amazing what you can convey in such a short piece of text. It is also amazing how many different ideas spring forth from our imaginations when we have a word or an image as a prompt. The weekly challenge over on Burrowers, Books & Balderdash is very simple. We, The Burrow, will post an image every Sunday, and we'll invite each and every one of you to submit your very own drabble inspired from that image. Every Burrower will take a turn at 'judging' and picking the best of the weekly entries, and these will then be published on our blog the following Saturday. No prizes as such, except for the bragging opportunity of being published on the fantastically brilliant Burrower Blog (*coughs*).

And to get you in a drabbling mood, here's a drabble that I wrote for last year's Easter project.

That's right, go ahead. There's plenty of grass, there's no need to worry. Don't hang around waiting for me; I can get my fill right here. Off you go, don't you fret. I'll look for you every minute, and in my mind's eye I'll see you eating your fill. I'll try not to picture where you really are; I'll try not to imagine you being somebody else's grass.

Next year I'll say goodbye to another of my lambs, and I'll wish that I could have been taken the same way. When they slaughter, it's not only the lambs who suffer.

Image courtesy of Petr Kratochvil.

Pussies Galore!

Last evening the hubby and I took the kids to a friend's house for a few hours of socialising. Nothing special, just a few drinks in the backyard and a little tarot reading from yours truly. The kids had a whale of a time because our friends have a dog, two lizards, two cats and last, but by no means least, four little kitties. The dog had great fun attempting to hump my daughter *shifty* (we told her that he wanted to cuddle her), the kids enjoyed handling the lizards, and everyone, whether they were cat lovers or not, thoroughly enjoyed watching the kittens frolicking on the grass.

Of course, I am a BIG cat lover, having grown up with them and almost always having one for a pet. Hubby is not the biggest fan of cats (he generally loathes them actually), but even he can't ignore the cuteness of kittens. Anyway, despite the fact that we already have a cat - and one that the hubby is actually quite fond of - I was floored when just before we left to come home, I was informed that one of the kitties was coming home with us. *faints* Hubby had arranged it weeks ago and kept it quiet, bless him. The most shocking thing of all is that my eight year old knew of the surprise, and had kept her lips sealed for the past three weeks! *faints* Now, my daughter is not known for keeping her mouth shut, so the fact that she kept it from both me AND her brother was a huge surprise, almost as big a shock as being told I was taking a kitty home with me.

We smuggled the kitty (who has been named 'Angel' by the daughter) into a taxi and arrived home faced with the task of introducing the new baby to the old baby. Now, the old baby is called Belle, and isn't really 'old' as such, but she's almost three now and is used to being the baby of the family. Much hissing and fur-on-ending happened, and Belle gave a good impression of the Puss-in-Boots eyes thing  from Shrek (at one point her pupils were so large it looked like she had completely black eyes). Kitty was relegated to the bathroom for the night and Belle was fussed over - well, about as fussed over that is possible when she was hissing and scratching at me - before we settled for the night.

So today we are progressing a little. Belle is swinging between the glaring and ignoring strategies, while Angel is happily making herself at home by avoiding her own food and stealing Belle's, ignoring her bed and taking over the sofa, and growling at Belle (well, squeaking more than growling really) when she catches her glaring at her. It's all fun.