Another multiple post

Not another bridge, crowd, paint and gloomy

Free Choice

Well hello everyone... Remember me? Vlad My human had one of those days so I thought its be as good a time as any to come back and say hi! I managed to distract the human by giving her some string and a hooky thing and look how clever she is! Apparently this contraption is called a "tree skirt" ... Where I come from trees don't wear clothes but whatever she's obviously gone a special kind of mad!

Anyway here I am trying on the skirt

Blogging on a phone

Is a lot quicker and easier than doing it on the pc ... No need for HTML or formatting and I can put the photos up straight from Instagram

Books

I've already covered the book story so I won't bore you all again and you've seen my kindle and tablet so here is my rather sorry looking book collection.

Playful
The most willing and obvious subject for this matter: the cooperoo in action! Here he just got ready to pounce on his ball

Another bulk blog

Ok I think I can cope with this until the end of the year! Bulk blogging from my iPhone is the way to go!

Thoughtful:
I tend to over think everything but didn't fancy another photo of me so here is a book full of (scary) thoughts and ideas. No, I haven't had the courage to wreck it yet!

Nostalgic:
The past holds too many painful memories for me so I avoid thinking about it like the plague. This is a little biscuit tin with nostalgic toys on the front.

Uplifting:
A text message dh sent me

Fence:
I actually revisited the dilapedated fence for you all ... It looks much better now!

Maybe I cope better with bulk blogging

So here are my last four photos for November:

Ponder, warm, memories and refreshing.

Determination

Days 310 - 313

Bright, Dotty, Creature and Domestic



This has got to be a first (and most likely last)! We are almost at the end of the 366 challenge and i have only missed ONE day (way back when the prompt was daybreak and i fell asleep before i could snap a picture).. i am now determined to see this through, if only to have ONE single, solitary thing in my life that i can say i finished! Im usually a quitter on all fronts but somehow i have managed to keep taking my photo.. i learned that i hate blogging and that i should have known better than to put so many personal things on this blog.. i have learned many other things too, but mainly i will at the end of my days have at least this one thing that i stuck with to the end :)

up to date blogging

Well, this is strange... im up to date with the blogging again. I think, if i do another 365 challenge in 2013, ill just blog once a week.. anyway, peace and quiet has been restored to the household and i find myself being able to breath again, the emotional after effects of mother's visit will linger for some time, but that will also fade with time.

Fear, Tree, Primary Colour, Group


Fear: An odd one for many of you, but my mother is the one human on this planet who causes me more fear than anything or anybody else, for a number of reasons.

Tree: This is the little tree in our backgarden that has been snapped a few times during this challenge.

Primary Colours: Okay, this is cheating again, but i like this table cloth as it makes the room so cheerful.. and if you look closely, there IS a primary colour in there!

Group: My boys yesterday at the fireworks in Himley, all huddled up and grouped together.




Paper

At first i thought of showing you all my rather small paper collection, but changed my mind at the last minute! I had just put away these little paper baskets to keep when i figured, a photo would be more enduring and less bulky to remember these by. My grandmother taught me how to make these when i was a toddler and this time, my mother taught Dd and Ds2 how to make them during her stay here. Hopefully, the tradition of teaching our littlies these baskets will now continue with Dd teaching her children and/or grandchildren.

Catching up and looking back on October

Door, Cement, Public Transport, Pipes

Door: my freshly painted door and our front door

Cement: I think this one is cheating, its actually made of marble but it looks like cement to me

Public Transport: Dd's bus pass has been a life saver to us

Pipes: As hidden in dd's airing cupboard, they are now nicely boxed in




Black and White

Landscape: Wolverhampton

Portrait: Mother and Me

Pattern: another one of my zentangles

Close Up




Family Portrait, Free Choice, Heart warming, orange


Family Portrait: Mother, parents in law and my gang (though natty and dom seem to have disappeared from the square photo :D

Free Choice: Mother and Dom at work

Heart Warming: Candle light

orange: my little halloween plant




Crooked, quirky, dark, statue


Dd giving me a crooked smile

A quirky painting we discovered in the art gallery

Its getting dark early now... i like it

The same statue that already came to my rescue for the word "bronze" this time its the actual statue rather than the plaque




And here is an overview of all the photos i took in october:

Day 287 - 288

Street Scene

Oh goodness, this caused me actual pain to take, so i waited until clearing up time before venturing to the bottom of the high street and catching the market traders packing up their stalls. I cant wait to get words again that i can take from the comfort of my own home :)



Chimneys

Phew, this one was an easier one :) i only had to walk across the road to snap a photo of our victorian terraced houses. One nice thing about these old type of buildings are the still preserved original features, especially the chimneys.



Work is still going like mad here, trying to get all the jobs done before mother's arrival. I have lost heart and just know it wont all be ready, leaving me wide open for criticism. I dont even understand this need to "see" people... we talk on the phone several times a week, why is it so important to "see" me? im just a lot older, fatter and uglier than i was when you last saw me 10 yrs ago.. it is so frustrating! i feel so embarrassed about myself as it is, so to have to be on show and dressed up at ALL times and hair done, makeup done every day, it just is not me.. the pressure of this visit is definitely taking its toll on me... plus i will be expected to "go places", i dont like being outside, i dont like being away from my home.. its just not something i like to do... im just so frustrated with everything at the moment...

A recap of september and October so far...

Ive turned this post upside down, to spare all of you who dont really have an interest in my personal life the boring bits :) here are the missing photos:

September

I didnt blog at all during September, so here is a summary of the photos i took.



Wall, Free choice, above and below, asymmetrical

Pretty self explanatory really, a bit of our housewall, the paint cans that have been my best friends and worst enemies these last few weeks, the fireplace and lights and my little plant that has managed to survive me so far.



Local landmark, peak/valley, natural frame and overgrown

I chose the clock in our market square for the landmark, the peak and valley was interesting to take as i stopped on the way home from dropping the kids to school, one photo was taken from the bottom of the hill and the other from the top, looking on to the urban forest. The natural frame came from my favourite, still alive, flowering plant and the overgrown bush is right in front of where i park the car.



Sky, barren, distant and architecture

I caught the sky looking very ominous and menacing, it is not even touched up or photoshopped! The flower baskets at the front of the house are now very barren. Distant caused some hilarity with me and the boys, trying different things until we came up with playing with DH's tape measures, as a carpet fitter, he has some very long tape measures and some not so long ones.. here are the longest and shortest next to each other. Architecture was an easy one as well, we went looking for dd's new carpet today and happened to come past ds's college, i love that building! when you are inside it is all open plan and lots of glass to light everything up, so different to the old, old buildings i attended when i was at uni!



I am just sitting down, for the first time in over 12 days, with nothing left to do for the moment. Well, that is strictly speaking not true, there is some laundry i should attend to, there is a ton of cleaning i should be doing and there is still more decorating to be done (i'll explain that in a bit). The last weeks of my life have been taken up by painting, painting, painting, some more painting and then some errr painting!

Emotionally i am a wreck and on the brink of a nervous breakdown i think.. so much has happened over the last 5 weeks, it would take forever and bore everyone to tears to tell everything.

Things are delicate here and have become more so since my MOTHER has announced a royal visit, with the arrival scheduled for 0700 hrs sharp in london! She is travelling by bus as she finds airports too scary, such a shame as she could be here within an hour and it would only take me 20 minutes to pick her up, rather than the 4 hrs round trip to london. My mother is your typical german Hausfrau, so everything has to be just so... clean is NOT clean enough, tidy is NOT tidy enough. Living with 4 people who couldn't care less, i am in a total panic and totally overwhelmed with the sheer amount of work im having to do.

Despite all of that, i have taken 5 minutes each morning to check the "word of the day" and then tried to find something to fit. The other

One thing i am sad about is having to make do without my iphone 4s, after i was attacked during a minor car crash, i could not ring 999 because they could not hear me. That had been a problem since the day i got it, but when we rang apple to ask about this, they fobbed us off with the "update to the latest firmware", it wasnt until that incident that we did some research and this is in fact a HARDWARE problem with the iphone 4s, well known and widely discussed. I rang apple back, their solution, for a very expensive contract phone, either drive to your apple store and see if they will replace it (well, no i do not think that i should have to waste an entire day driving to birmingham because of a fault that they are aware of), have it sent off for repair (this should take around 6 weeks to fix, again on an expensive contract, that is not good enough) or pay them £569 as a safety deposit and receive a replacement! Huh? if you do not trust your courier company, dont make me pay for it.. i am already paying for this useless piece of equipment, i am not also giving you £569 just in case to have it put right. NEVER EVER will i be giving apple any of my money again. I used to love my idevices, but since this lack of customer service, i have totally gone off apple and will look to android phones as soon as i can.