Purple Dragon

Happy birthday, Gilraen. Hope you've had a lovely day!

Today, I bought myself some multi coloured Post-It notes (yello, orange, pink, pink, and green) and I have been trying to think of messages to put about the place.

I also bought some Post It flags (you know the little ones you put in books to mark things you want to remember?) and my fingers are itching to go thru my bookcase and mark pages.

I am a sad, sad individual, and probably need help.

So, having dumped tow of my kids with one of my pals, I took the third one (No2Child) to her ENT appointment in Aberdeen.

One the way there, she starts getting a tummy ache. This is not unusual as she often gets a bit car sick. By the time we got there, she decided she needed to empty herself, so we hot-footed it to the loos, where the world proceeded to fall out of her backside. Not good. After she was (presumably) empty, she decided she wanted a glass of water, so we went to the cafe, where she threw up, copiously, loudly and thoroughly. She's had scrambled eggs for lunch. Nice. There were a few lunches not bought in that cafe this afternoon, I can tell you.

She felt a bit better (again) so we toodled off to the waiting room, where she seemed to come to herself a little bit more, then vomited again. Having perked up again, she got her hearing test, then went in to see the Consultant, and collapsed. He sent her to A&E for assessment, as he was quite worried, but it turns out to be gastroenteritis, which she will get over soon hopefully.

She vomited again in the car on the way home, and is now laying on the couch watching the gogglebox and feeling rotten. Poor wee tote.

In other news, No3Child nearly got run over by a motorbike. Fortunately, the woman who was watching her has quick reflexes, and she pulled her out from the wheels of disaster.

And my final news is that I got a new rug for the living room. It is 10'x10' and is horrid. I got it off FreeCycle because my living room carpet is vile. Horrid is only just better than vile, but there you go.

I dunno if any of you have ever seen the Pokemon animated kids thing that is on the telly. There are loads of merchandising opportunities etc and you have probably heard of Pikachu if you haven't heard of Pokemon.

I was sitting while my kids were watching it, and it suddenly dawned on me that it is the modern version of the good old spectator sport - cock fighting.

Basically, you have one kid who fights their Pokemon against another kids Pokemon. Just like you used to get one bloke pitting his cockerel against another blokes cockerel.

I don't think they shall be watching too much of that in future.

So, me and my man were weighing ourselves this morning, discussing weight and fitness and so on.

I got on the scales and was bemused to realise that I weigh exactly two stone more than I did when we got together.

It was a bit scary really. Not that I have gained two stone, but that I was ever two stone lighter. Man, I must've been skinny. Like sick skinny. We couldn't actually pinpoint where I was keeping an extra two stone! Ten pounds, maybe ... 24 pounds? No way.

I guess I am more at home in my body now than I was way back when.

I recently attended a lunch for a friend. During the lunch, one of the women there started talking about having her daughters ears pierced. The daughter is 5, and has decided the time is ripe, and has been nagging her Mum to let her have it done. Her Mum is reluctant, but is slowing caving in under the constant barrage of "Pleeeease Mummy".

As I have a daughter the same age, she asked me what I thought, and I told her about how I want to save such things and use them as Rites of Passage for my daughters. I bemoaned how our culture has no such Rites, how our children drift from age to age, from puberty to adulthood, with no recognition or celebration of those special moments in theirs lives, apart from the massive piss-up when they turn 21. (Who can drink the most before they either throw up or pass out?)

I said I wanted to keep things like ear piercing for when my daughters start menstruating, to use it as a celebration of their passage from childhood into womanhood.

Well, you could have dropped a pin and heard it in the restaurant. I was met with appalled silence, soon followed by scoffing and looks of derision and I know, I just know that my 'strange ideas' will be discussed and discarded as worthless with no real thought of depth of consideration.

It annoys me. It not only annoys me that we allow our kids to drift, but also that, because my ideas and beliefs aren't mainstream, they are considered worthless or strange. At best weird.

Yes, Carol is weird because she co-slept with her children, because she advocates home birth, extended breastfeeding (not breastfeeding, surely not?), carried her kids in a sling until her back couldn't cope anymore. That I don't sweat the small stuff. That I don't force feed my kids their 5-a-day. That I like to walk barefoot in the grass.

Why don't we have Rites of Passage for our children? Why do we have to celebrate their events and milestones with piss-ups instead of something wholesome? The Amerindians celebrated their sons with vision quests and sweat lodges. Character builidng stuff.

Humpf.

I know this is a bit OCD, but I can't help myself getting a wee bittie annoyed.

In my laundry room, I have a system. Two systems actually.

System one is for the laundry. I have five laundry baskets, lined up in a row. One is for whites, one for reds, one for dark colours, one for light colours and the last for stuff that has just been folded and needs taken upstairs to be put away.

This is not difficult. Particularly as there is generally something sitting in each basket - I am rarely, if ever, completely up to date on my laundry.

But can people put the right colours in the right baskets. No. They can't.

The second system is for my recycling. One bin for cardboard, one for plastic bottles, one for tins, a bag for paper and another box for stuff that needs shredded.

You know what I'm gonna say, don't you. I'm not even going to grace that with a question mark, because it really is a statement.

Why can't folk sort things properly? How hard can it be??

This afternoon, in consultation with the vet, we let Wookie go.

There was no progress on his condition - he remained the same, but he was becoming more and more distressed in himself, and was unable to control his head and mouth enough to eat or drink. He was losing weight and becoming very scared and upset, and we decided that it would be for the best.

I just wanted to thank everyone for their kind thoughts and wishes while he has been poorly.

I had a girlfriend come round last night. We sat and (half) watched The King and I. Yul Brynner and Debra Kerr. So romantic. Ahh.

Anyway, drank waaayy to much vodka and didn't get to my bed till 3.30 this morning, so today I am feeling rather fragile.

In other news, I signed up to Bebo. I am not quite sure what the heck I am doing, but I am trying to drag myself in to the 21st century. You never know

Mum comes tomorrow. She arrives in Aberdeen about 8.30am and will be here till the 29th, so you might not see too much of me. Depends on how much online time she decided she wants, and considering how addicted she is, that will probably be quite a lot! ROFL

I am passing this on to you because it definitely worked for me and we all could use more calm in our lives.

By following the simple advice I heard on a Medical TV show, I have finally found inner peace. A Doctor proclaimed the way to achieve inner peace is to finish all the things you have started.

So I looked around my house to see things I'd started and hadn't finished and, before leaving the house this morning, I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of shhhardonay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of vocka, a pockage of Prunglies , tha mainder of bot Prozic and Valum scriptins, the res of the Chesescke an a box a chocolets.

Yu haf no idr who fkin gud I fel. Peas sen dis orn to dem yu fee ar in ned ov inr pece.

I nicked this meme off Meno

Use seven words to describe your weekend. It is actually harder than you think.

driving

chatting

forest

cooking

laundry

ironing

friends

In five words or less, describe how does this differ from any other weekend?

Out more than in.

Laura, crying :"No one loves me"

Me : " I love you honey"

Laura, still crying "You have to love me. No one else loves me"

Rachel (aged 3) "But I love you Laura. I love you lots"

Then Rachel goes up to Laura, and gives her a massive hug.

Wookie came home yesterday. The vet doesn't know what is wrong/ has been wrong with him, but we are hoping that he was poisoned or toxic-ed in some way, because that is what we have been treating him for.

He still has the jittery eyes, and if he gets stressed or excited his head and then whole body jitter about. He can't walk properly, is very weak and has lost weight, and he can't jump - he falls rather than jumps.

So. We have him in a big dog cage in the living room, with a litter tray, food, water and cushion. He gets to see everything going on, but he can't be 'got at' by any of the other animals. We think he might be in the cage for certainly a week, maybe two, but if he hasn't gotten to a point where we are confident that, given freedom, he won't hurt himself, then we will have to rethink whether keeping him going is not the best course of action after all. He can't live the rest of his life in a cage.

He is quite happy, friendly, cuddly, wants strokes, is eating and drinking no bother, but neurologically, he's a bit of a mess.

It hurts to watch him try to do what he is used to doing, and failing.

I am on our local FreeCycle group

We often have requests that make me sit back and think "grasping git" but today's request takes the biscuit. Actually, it takes the Wii because that is what they were asking for. Yep - someone put a request on FreeCycle for a Wii!

Oh, yeah, someone is going to be chucking one of them out sure enough!