Purple Dragon

I went to the hairdresser yesterday to get my roots done, and the mad fairy bonked me on the head with her wand.
I now have bright pink streaks in with the blonde.
I totally love it.
Wish I had more!

Well, last evening I decided that enough was enough, and I took No2Child to the GP to have her blisters looked at.

He said is was 'classic Giant Hogweed'.

Well, she is always picking weeds and bringing them home for me as bunches of 'flowers' and I guess this was one of them. I tell her and tell her not to pick the plants, that the flowers will die, and that she should let the flowers live and blossom where they are, but she likes to give me flowers.

I think she will think twice now.

Phew! So much better than H,F&M!

The littlest one is still in lots of pain with her neck. I was up with her most of the night and just now she is sitting in the chair, propped up with cushions, teddy on lap, vegging in front of the box. Trouble is, she is holding it stiff, which will make it not only more sore but it will be longer to get better. Can't tell her though. Sigh.

No2Child has a blister on her thumb that appeared from nowhere yesterday. It grew and grew and got really inflamed.

She also has a small cluster of three on her wrist, same hand. These are slowly growing too.

Nipped into the pharmacist this afternoon, after taking No3Child to the hospital to get her neck looked at (official diagnosis : a crick in the neck. Apply cold compress and give painkillers for 2/3 days).

So it looks like No2Child might have hand, foot and mouth.

Which means I will have to cancel the weeks holiday with her Auntie that supposed to start on Sunday, and that she has been looking forward to all year. AND it means that she will still be contagious so Butlins is out too.

Fukkit

You know how they say bad things happen in threes?

Well, this morning I was rushing to get the kids to school .. last day of school, major assembly for the P7s leaving, certificates handing out etc.

Bombing down the stairs, stepped over the cat (who has made a reappearance after a week of coming in for food but not actually saying hello) and I fell down the rest of the stairs. I was laid on the bottom few steps, spreadeagled, unable to speak or move. The kids were crowded round me in a panic. I hurt my ankle, knee, hip, back, shoulder and arm on my left side. Fortunately the left because my car is automatic, so once I was able to haul my sorry ass off the deck, I was still able to drive sprogs to school.

Anyway, after the assembly (during which I thought I would pass out from the combination of heat and pain), I did some stretching and gave myself some Reiki, and I am loads better.

So, second thing. No2Child was running about in the garden and the next thing, there she is screaming the place down. I dunno what she's done but she's cricked her neck a good one. She is currently laying on the couch with a hot teddy*, a dose of ibuprofen, and refusing to let me touch her. She can't move her neck. Hopefully the teddy will loosen up the muscles.

So, I am awaiting the third thing with dread. Himself is driving home tonight and has to drive thru the only section of the UK that has a MetOffice Severe Weather Warning issued. Grreat.

*NO! NOT hot TODDY! - one of those teddybears you can heat up in the microwave and use instead of a hot water bottle .. a BeddyBear.

Oh
My
God

I have found the perfect trainers.

I placed a question on Ask or Answer the other day about trainers, and ended up investing in a pair of Asics Gel-Track. I say 'investing' rather than 'buying' because they cost a bloody fortune.

I've never had 'real' trainers before. All of my trainers have been purchased from good old George or Cherokee in the past (fine designer names, I grant you).

These are amazing. How can one wax poetic about trainers? Well, try a pair on, and then come back and ask the same question.

AND they're purple!

And yet ... it is too hot to even walk anywhere today, let alone run.

For the last three weeks, our white hen has been sitting on five eggs.

Yesterday I went to the coop to check up on her and one was hatched, but dead (and what a nasty, smelly mess that was!); one egg was missing completely - no shell, no chick, nothing; and one was hatched - the chick was still damp. The other two eggs were pipping.

I decided that I wanted the family in a more secure enclosure. Some psychic sense made the crows from the nearby trees (the evil ones from gosling-killing fame) alight already on the coop roof.

I made up a cage and box for Mum and her new baby, and her two pipping eggs and left them to it. The eggs were cheeping when I moved them

Anyway, this morning, we now have three cute little fluffy yellow baby chickens. So cute! I shall give them a week or so in the nursery coop and then move them back into the big one.

Well, everyone else has an opinion on the death of Michael Jackson, and because I would sit here all night commenting on what everyone else has said, I thought I would add my thoughts, here, in my own space.

Michael Jackson's music was pretty much the soundtrack to my mis-spent youth. I remember visiting a nightclub (the one where they used to exterior for the shots of outside Fawlty Towers) for the First Big Showing of the Thriller video. I was a bit disappointed but hype gets me like that.

I remember the nightclubs where I was a regular Thursday, Friday and Saturday night customer, playing his songs, dancing away to them. My friend Charlotte knew all the words to all the songs, and all the dances too.

Yes, he turned right freaky eventually. But which one of us doesn't have hang ups about some portion of their anatomy that they may well change if they had all his money?

Yes, he took the plastic surgery way too far. But how many people have that syndrome, where they are addicted to surgery and because they aren't in the public eye, no one says anything.

Does anyone else remember the picture of him in the oxygen tank - where the media claimed he was in there to live a longer life? Or the time Elizabeth Taylor visited him at Neverland and he gave her an elephant as a gift? Eccentric ... or bonkers?

The paedophile thing was never proven. Were the folk hitting on him because he was rich and famous? Did he pay the first lot off because he couldn't take the pressure and just wanted it to stop? Or was he really a pervert? We will never know the truth and we can speculate till we are blue in the face.

I thought he was a sad, lonely man who didn't really understand the world he lived in, perhaps didn't even want to understand it. An eccentric, definately.

He was hugely talented in his heyday, perhaps the court frights he had made him less able in the later years, his ill health and lack of understanding, but when I was younger, he was The Man! There are very few acts I can name nowadays that can put on a show like he used to! Britney flippin Spears can't even sing live!

I think it is a loss to the music world. He might have managed his comeback concerts, began selling albums again - we will never know.

But to die at 50 - that is only 5 and a bit years older than me - that is a waste of anyone's life.

Oh, and a footnote - I am reading a book right now that says "...for ours is an age without passion... [Kierkegaard]. How many show-folk are there now that can stir such passion? Where are The Beatles of our age? The Elvis Presleys? And - yes - the Michael Jacksons? Will this be remembered as a passionless century?