Family Circle could have chosen a better verb

I'm sitting here trying to type while Doug admires the cover of the xmas edition of Family Circle (bought only because I don't have a "proper" wifey bone in my body and don't know how to do things like xmas dinners, stuff a turkey or artfully arrange the table with plastic baubles and bullshit my kids will only throw around the room like ammunition later anyway). So he likes the Mini Oozing Chocolate Puddings. Maybe it's just my background of working in administration in the hospital/medical field but from where I'm sitting, anything that oozes is never, ever good. So they like oozing as a verb for their puddings but all I can think of are the ghastly descriptive adjectives that usually accompany that word - things like festering, purulent, gangrenous, infected, eroded, eaten away, rotting.....I'm sure you get the picture (sorry about the bucket moment but it has to be said). To clarify a little more, I work for a group of gastroenterologists and when you spend all day hearing about what goes on down people's throats and up their bums, well quite frankly, oozing has never turned out to be a bonus in anybody's diagnosis yet.

So thanks Family Circle for completely putting me off your mini puddings with a poor choice of verb. I could have handled gooey, sauce-filled, surprise or even molten chocolate centre but NOOOOOOO you have to go and use that other word.

Maybe I can use a liquid paper pen to make that word disappear so I can focus on the "mini", "chocolate" and "puddings" that I was interested in to begin with!

Yellow Wiggle hands over the skivvy

Doug just rang to tell me that Greg Page, the yellow Wiggle, has just announced his retirement from the group due to what I found out a little later in the conversation was a chronic heart problem which is not life threatening but means that he will have to cut back on strenuous activity to manage the symptoms of.

The pants-wettingly funny explanation Doug gave me was "he's had to stop being a Wiggle because when he dances and sings he passes out". PMSL!!!!! I laughed so hard for a minute I couldn't even answer him. There was this ridiculous soundtrack running through my mind of "Wake Up Greg" as he lies pole-axed on the stage and small children look on in horror while the other Wiggles just laugh and smile and call for the Big Red Ambulance!!!!

It is one of those horrible moments where your brain just laughs at the absurdity of something, not that having a chronic heart condition is by any means amusing, I think it was just the context Doug delivered it in.

I've discovered that there are some things in this life that you have to have a good cackle about because they are so depressing, awful, ghastly or gross and if you couldn't find a funny side to life these days then you'd probably be needing medication for some kind of depressive disorder.

Depressing - I want to go on a holiday but we really can't even afford to stay in a caravan park for a week and I bet if I asked if we could just bring our own cardboard box then we wouldn't be able to afford the site fee!

Awful - the fact that the lougeroom is a tip again after only cleaning it yesterday. Someone said that trying to keep a clean house while you have kids is like trying to shovel snow while it's still snowing (so true!)

Ghastly - Her Royal Highness having the biggest screaming, dribbling, snotting, crawling around on the floor, head-banging, coughing, vomiting tantrum of her entire life because her Dad had to take her to the Men's toilet (Yes Redbank Shopping Centre 2nd floor - shame on you for only having a "mothers room" in the Ladies toilets) and - wait for it - he would not let her stand at the trough and wee standing up!!! Tantrum lasted for an hour overall and she still WOULD NOT WEE in protest so at least I've learnt she has better bladder control than she is letting on!

Gross - Mr James using the bathroom for number two's and after hearing much grunting I come in to ask if he is okay only to be told in a completely calm and rational five year old's voice "Yeah I'm fine Mum, this is just what I do to make the poo come out. You should try it some time. You squeeze your tummy. It hurts a little bit but it works for me" After a moment I quietly leave the bathroom and vow never again to ask how he's going whilst using the facilities.......

See, you have to laugh......you know, that same laugh people have as they're carried away to the NUT HOUSE!!!!! lol

Still behind the 8 ball and weird light outside

Didn't get much at all done yesterday afternoon as storms moved through and disrupted power to the remote server I get my work from. That wasn't fixed until 10pm last night so suffice to day I didn't feel like typing then!

I optimistically thought I'd get up at 4.00am and start work but there are some very weird meteorological things going on outside - the light outside is very yellow and I'm finding it a little disturbing! Apparently the moon is still up if you can see it behind the clouds and it is red. Now THAT'S even more disturbing. Cass has taken some pics so I will try to borrow and upload one later.

So all in all a weird day where I still have to get more typing done in the day than I actually have hours to complete it so I'll off.

Have a great day whatever you are doing!

Uninspired page calls

There have been some really great page calls lately from SM, FK and SC but the new ones are doing nothing for me. I've never been very big on punches and I guess I don't really love the traditional categories like Mother's Day although SM have accepted one I did about my mother which I don't really love. The one I did love about my experience of motherhood didn't make the grade - too much journalling I'm guessing and the pic is a tiny bit out of focus but I wanted it that way - but it's still my favourite anyway out of the two. I can't post the one that got accepted but suffice to say it will be in SM in April (?) maybe, in time for Mother's Day. I'll happily post the loser here though. Maybe I love it because it's such a striking picture of Her Royal Highness and it brings out all the warm fuzzy mama love feelings when I look at it. Lord knows I need as much of that as I can muster to love her through each new destructive day!!!

FK want multiple pics and I haven't really gotten the hang of that either. I'm most definitely the "hero picture" scrapper, and that's what virtually all of my layouts are about. I very rarely use more than one picture unless I'm really forcing myself for a particular reason (see "The Beach Is Calling" layout above) and then I think it doesn't leave me enough room to embellish the way I want to so I'm never entirely pleased with the result. This one's also a no-go from the big three so off to an album it goes....

I took some very good advice from Lusi Austin (amazing and very talented and most importantly totally original scrapper) to get into the habit of submitting everything and so that's what I've done. Admittedly it has brought more success than just focusing on the page calls alone and pages have been picked up for categories that I haven't even seen advertised as page calls yet, or they have made it into sections like Final Encore, Quick Grabs, etc that don't require a particular theme. There is a cute blinkie somewhere that says "Just Keep Submitting!" and it's absolutely true. You have to perservere and just keep plugging away at it. Be prepared for the mags to take some layouts you don't really love as much as others, and brace yourself for them to reject pages you truly love and think are amazing. Funny business this getting published, you never know what to expect! I'll mutter something here about nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!!!

And keeps getting better.....

And then she pulled a crossbar from my mother's antique rocking chair which is now in pieces, AND THEN, she threw a cup of cordial all over her brother, AND THEN she tipped a vase of flowers all over my side of the bed, soaking it all the way through to the mattress and throwing the flowers all over the floor, AND THEN she tipped a socket set all over the hallway floor that she had gotten out of Daddy's toolbox (which is never locked but should be) and then she decided her baby dolls were all naughty so put them in time out all around the house for me to have to gather up and return to her bedroom and she threw a footstool at her other brother, and threw water all over the bathroom floor during her bath, and over Daddy too by the way!

AND THEN GOD FINALLY DECIDED WE'D HAD ENOUGH PUNISHMENT FOR ONE DAY AND SHE FELL ASLEEP!

See I told you the night was young!

Just to add to the joy of the evening Her Royal Highness has thrown the world's biggest box of cotton buds all over the hallway floor because playing with her dolls wasn't nearly as exciting!

Here's the damn tree finally!

Took a few weeks but we're finally done, and by 1 December too I might add!

Get Real Challenge (unknowingly providing myself with a topic!!)

Well I vowed to get a topic up today and inspiration hit at 4pm after what has not been much of a good day here.

I've had Her Royal Highness throwing wobblies all morning over a stray can of lemonade chockers with preservative she found in the fridge and wanted to drink (it may have been quieter and less wobbly if I'd just given it to her and let kindy deal with the fall out!), my 9 yo left his bag at home and thus had to ring his Dad at school to organise him some lunch, I sat down to work today to the equivalent of an entire week's worth of work already and it's only Tuesday morning, the dictation system wasn't working AGAIN today so was late with all my procedures up until about 10.30am, discovered that Her Royal Highness had pulled the toilet seat off before she left for kindy, revealing some kind of germ theme park going on underneath so that was a pleasure to deal with, phone call from school because the 11yo is sick and needs to be picked up so DH has to leave work early (which will end up being unpaid) to collect him, the MIL has her hand out for petrol money cos she pissed her last $20 up against the wall at bingo, she's now coming over for dinner, I haven't had a chance to do any house cleaning at all today, I did claim a precious 15 minutes to finish decorating my christmas tree (finally and pics will be up shortly) and now I'm going to drag something from the frosty depths of my chest freezer for dinner that DH can whack in the oven, I'm going to pour myself a Jack Daniels and Coke Zero and I'm going to get stuck into all that bloody typing!!!!

I'll get to actually doing the layout for the challenge when I get just a little bit of breathing space, probably at mightnight! lol Besides, don't want to jump in too soon because after all, it's only 4 o'clock and so much could go to shit by the time I get time enough to get the scrappin stash out!!! Trust me, I am laughing as I relay all of this because what else is there to do? Don't get me wrong, I didn't design the Get Real challenge to depress people because while my life is continuously busy, stressful and lurching from one disaster to another, I actualy really love my life. After all, I haven't seen a comedy/tragedy as good on TV yet!!!!

Well it's a start I guess!

I've been watching some blogs every now and then for a while and thought about how much fun they looked. It only occurred to me in the last week or so that I could make my own blog. I usually have a million things going on in my head and I figure that if I have somewhere to "download" all the junk flying around in there I might actually be LESS scatterbrained for it! So consider it empiric therapy - for the brain, for the soul, for me as a whole. I'm going to assume I send you a link, dear reader, dear friend, if you're having a look at this welcome note, but if you stumbled across me by accident, I promise it will get better!!! It, like me I guess, is a work in progress and considering that I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, so I guess I don't know what my wee blog will grow up to be!

Thanks for dropping by, I'm glad you've come for a looksee!