One Woman Goes To ....

So Long 2008

Playing it out with a song I loved listening to this year.

To all my friends and family - Thank you - you all make it better.

For real

The sun is out and we are walking across hard frosty countryside. Occasionally we are joined by an inquisitive robin, bobbing about on the ground beside us or hopping along the low lying branches and twigs to take a better look at us.

We all seem much the better for being liberated. Humans from indoors and Christmas overkill and the robin from the tweeness of being a Christmas card icon.

Open 365 days a year.

Today at 10am the water temperature was 28c ,the air temperature 7c. If I said it was as warming as chestnuts,roasting,open fires.... that wouldn't be strictly true.

However it does have its' very own particular brand of glow making.

And if you didn't quite make it today, well it's open tomorrow morning... and the day after... and the day after that....

Smelling of.....

My hope is that no matter how bad or grim things get that we never have to go back to bath salts. That horrible grit . How could we have thought that was a good thing ?

My favourite fragrance for all things bathroom is Wild-Indigo from Molton Brown. Just a tiny bit just makes the whole world smell so much sweeter.

Winter Mornings

If this happened to me I think I would cry. But as it is this clip just makes me laugh every time.

Something to add....

I love lists. My own or other people's. In fact I think I like other people's even better. Especially those written by people blessed with beautiful handwriting. That's like a To-Do-List with hospital corners.

Other people's messily written lists are good when you find them abandoned under the clip of that little holder on a supermarket trolley. Lots of exclamation marks next to mundane items always intrigues me.

I love that you can sneak a little endorphin rush just by adding something you have already done to a list, in order to have the pleasure of crossing/ticking off ( delete depending on your preference ). My own is a vertical line through the middle of an item when it is done so that when an unbroken line appears down the middle of the page it means the whole list is complete.

So for me and other list lovers there is now a book out which is the best of ...other people's lists! To-Do-List:From Buying Milk To Finding A Soul Mate, What Our Lists Reveal About Us. By Sasha Cagen. A bit like Post Secret it's a fascinating glimpse into someone else's world.

Now where did I put my Moleskine ....

Now that's a cute one.....

Excuse me if I sound a little sniffy on today's subject. It's noses.

Not having discovered mine until I was 12 I have always been a little over sensitive. Yes of course, I knew I had one. But not the one I thought I had. The one I thought I had was the one I saw straight on in the mirror. I had no idea that side on, it might be something entirely different. I was only appraised of this when photos of us each shaking the hand of some official at some school presentation were handed out with the instruction to take our own and pass on. I flicked through, didn't see mine and passed them on. As they moved round the class, the others tried to hand a photo back to me. That's not mine , I insisted. At the end of the class one remained unclaimed and I was still photoless.

I was instructed to take my photo.

Later at home through climbing and balancing on the edge of the bath and angling the bathroom mirror cabinet this way and that, I saw myself in profile. From the angle the photo was taken.

Turns out it was my photo.

So now I am looking at a box of tissues and reading what's written on the side. 'Men's strength'. I think it's normally 'Man Size' but strength or size it suddenly strikes me as odd that tissues get singled out for being trumpeted as especially tailored for the masculine nose. Can there be many everyday objects that are still pink and blue segregated? Or are tissues some left over anachronism like the faded carved stone Boys and Girls above seperate school doorways ?

What is it about mens' noses that requires extra ply and dimension ? Is it size of nose to paper host ratio ? Is it nasal fluid production ?

I may seem to be poking my own nose too far into this matter but I shall always be making up for the time I snubbed it and am not going to let any tissue manufacturer do the same.

As for that photo. It now sits in a silver frame on the bookcase - next to the tissues.

Baa....But no Humbug.....

Am feeling seasonally smug by proxy after shopping success on Saturday.

Off to Squires Garden Centre with my mum so she could do her Christmas shopping and have lunch all under one roof. Everything got ticked off the list. So all that needs doing now is the wrapping and the calendars sending off to penfriends in Canada and the US.

Good choices all round. But one special favourite. For this one we had to untangle a lot of black velour legs, press a lot of tummies for testing and check a lot of eyes for accuracy of expression. We choose our Whistling Shaun the Sheep with care. From the top of his very fluffy head to the tips of his little black toes he is only 9 inches. But he packs a ton of cuteness into that.

I hope my nephew is suitably enamoured when he unwraps him. If not there will be sheep rustling and a tug of wool over rehoming rights.

Brrrrr.........

This winter is beginning to feel like one long children's birthday party.

Dressed in layers and layers of clothes and fleece to keep warm I feel my meals should be a bar of fruit and nut eaten with a knife and fork and at night when I unwrap myself from all my layers - Fruit Salads, Black Jacks and plastic dinosaurs are going to fall out as I play my one woman game of Pass The Parcel.

However for when the mercury really hits low I have a few tricks up my many layered sleeves from American Bloggers who do extreme weather and measures. Plenty of Little House on the Prairie style solutions ( actually just thinking about Little House on the Prairie makes me feel cosy ). Hot potatoes wrapped in flannel and oven heated bricks to warm your bed, through to the more pragmatic what do you do with all those redundant ties when you are laid off. You fill 'em with rice, sew them up and use them as draught excluders of course.

There are also a lot of tips on putting plastic up at windows including bubble wrap. Apparently if you spray mist the window with water and press the bubble wrap up against it some kind of static force will hold it in place. Amazing. However I am not quite sure how I feel about viewing the world through bubble wrap. It's not rose tinted specs, that's for sure.

I am also resisting the much repeated and very sensible suggestion of wearing a hat. I know it's odd to think that vanity might even come into the equation when I am already looking like a mix of Michelin Man meets Care Bear but the thought of having a permanent bad hair day as well is just too much.

Maybe that's the real reason behind the bubble wrap. To make sure no one can peek in and check the bad hair.