Things I like and dislike this week

I haven't had the best of weeks this week and thought I would compile some lists for you of things I like and dislike (this will obviously be subject to change and more or less only relevant to this week).

Dislikes

• Waiting lists
• Paying £85 for a filling
• Not being able to chew properly because my filling hasn't settled yet
• Children (mainly the boy next door, but I'm sure there are other children I dislike)
• Not being able to find what I want in the supermarket
• Decorating (I don't want to do it myself)
• Untidiness (this is a result of the decorating)
• The fact that my two weeks off are nearly over
• Poor service in restaurants
• Buying a pack of Yum Yums and not finding out that they are apple flavour until I get home
• Having about 46 million spots on my face when I normally don't get any
• The smell of tea tree oil (for my spots)
• It being so bloody cold

Likes

• Books
• The rain (this means that I will have less work to go back to, nobody wants a drought!)
• Beetroot
• Sue Townsend
• Spending time with friends
• Wine (it doesn't involve chewing)
• A £30 voucher for a restaurant
• Bruce (my cat)
• My duvet
• Steve (I suppose he should be on here!)

So that just about sums up the things I like and dislike this week. I think the dislikes outweigh the likes at the moment!

Words of wonderment and a water update

Well, I thought last week was bad. I've been off baddy sick this week with what I thought was a virus, but was actually an infection so am feeling very sorry for myself!

I have spent the week reading, sleeping and watching crap TV. I have watched a lot of old sitcoms on Gold and have just watched a Carry On film, but I draw the line at anything with Noel Edwards. He's been out of favour with me since he stopped doing Noel's House Party. Although I am now watching Wedi 7, just because there is nothing else on and I can't be arsed to get up and put a DVD on (or make my lunch to be honest). Although I have just rediscovered the Welsh word for forward slash - blaen sleis. It always makes me giggle. Perhaps you have to be here though.

I have a couple of book reviews to publish, once I've had my lunch and Bruce stops trying to attack my Um Bongo (for vitamin C to make me feel better, although the antibiotics might do a better job).

One thing I have been thinking about from my sick bed (apart from how fed up I am!) is how many words there are out there that frankly don't get enough use in this day and age.

Canoodling being one. The words you hear being used these days are so much more vulgar and less innocent.

Hoot, as in he is a complete hoot. Noone uses hoot enough for my liking. I try to bring it back into conversation but it usually results in someone taking the piss out of me.

Kerfuffle. Why is this not used more? There are all sorts of kerfuffles happening these days. Like those riots last year where loads of kids broke into sports shops to get new daps. They caused a bit of a kerfuffle.

Wondorous. What wondorous weather we are having this fine day. What a fine and wondorous cover is upon that book. A fine and wondorous word indeed.

These are just a few of the underused words I can think of. Maybe we should just start using the less used words more rather than adding new ones to the dictionary. Maybe that would save the country some money on printing new dictionarys and signs. Maybe I will put this idea forward.

Anyway, I went off on a bit of a tangent there. I think it might be the cold getting to me. You might remember my water related issues of last week. Well they were solved when we found that the stop cock (yes I said it!) that was under our sink only seemed like it wasn't working for one reason. It was the wrong effing one!!! We have found that we have two stop cocks, one for the outside tap and one for the water supply to the house. So the reason the water wasn't going off when the "plumber" (who might as well have shouted yee-hah and rode off into the sunset on the back of his trusty steed) was turning the stopcock was that it was the wrong bloody one!! And the stupid twonk (another good word) didn't even think of testing it!!!

So, since this enlightening discovery of the correct stop cock which wasn't fully open, hence the pressure issues, we have had no heating. We have water, and indeed hot water, but no heating. And the bloody boiler is leaking. And our normal plumber is on holiday until Monday. So I have been half freezing to death, as well as suffering with my illness (noone can call me a drama queen) with only a convector heater and a grumpy cat to keep me warm.

But on the plus side I have read loads and am on the mend! Yay!! Anyway, enough of my ramblings (for now!) I am off to make some lunch and watch either Dudley ar Daith (the Welsh Gordon Ramsay, but with less effing and jeffing) or I might put a dvd on and carry on reading Rob Brydon's autobiography!!

Random cat cuteness

If you love cats you need to check out this link!

I could relate with a lot of the positions as Bruce enjoys sleeping in the smallest/most awkward spaces he can, especially in the cold weather!

Enjoy the cuteness!

It's snow time!

Today has given us some proper snow in Cardiff. None of the pseudo-snow of earlier in the week, but proper white stuff that is sticking and turning everything white!

Here are some pics I took a few hours ago, although it has got heavier and a little deeper since then.

You can just about see Bruce in this one, before he went to hide in the hedge.

This was when I first let Bruce out in the snow and he wasn't very sure of it. Last time we had snow, it was so deep you couldn't see his legs when he went outside.

This is Bruce when he returned from his snowy adventure and needed a nap in the blanket to warm up a bit!







I'm hoping that the snow won't last as where we live gets cut off in the snow as the council forgets to grit, resulting in it being too dangerous to drive and the bus company refusing to come through.

On the down side today, the washer in the tap in our bathroom sink has broken, meaning we either have water coming out of the tap constantly or it sounds like a whistling kettle, which by the way is particularly annoying! As you know, the DIY skills in our house are somewhat lacking, so even if we could get to the shop to get a new washer, we don't actually know what to do with it because we have a bit of a fancy tap. Not that we would know what to do if we didn't have a fancy tap!

I'm a rugby widow today as the 6 nations rugby has started. I hate sport, I can't be bothered with it. I don't mind watching the Bluebirds live or going to the odd rugby national, but I just don't understand the sports obsession and why it is so exciting. Not great when Steve loves all sports and plays quite often. Each to their own I suppose!

Lazing on a saturday afternoon

I have had a nightmare of a week this week. Work has been really stressful and I've had to work some long hours and I started off the week being ill, so it hasn't been great.

I have decided that today is the day of me and am not going to do the housework I should be doing, but instead I am going to make the most of my Saturday football widow time and do things that I want to do!

So far I have spent some time over on Goodreads, catching up with discussions and book reviews. I also had a nice lunch and a cup of tea and read the latest story of a certain Welsh sportsman who can't keep it in his pants!

My plan for the rest of the afternoon is to cwtch up on the sofa with Bruce and a duvet as it's freezing and watch a DVD and read some of my book.

A friend of mine in work has lent me the DVD of The King's Speech so I am going to watch this. Steve won't want to watch it as it has no guns in it and isn't a comedy so I'm going to make the most of this opportunity! I also have an episode of Midsomer to catch up on as I was too tired to watch it when it was on the TV on Wednesday, so I need to fit that in at some point this weekend too.

I hope you all have a great weekend and take this opportunity to be lazy and have a rest if you need to like me!

Happy 2012!

Happy New Year!! I hope everyone enjoyed whatever they were doing last night to welcome 2012.

We stay in on NYE and have done for the last few days as it's just so expensive to go out and we find that we have more fun at home on our own. Last night we got dolled up (to stay in!) and had a little buffet of yummy food, listened to music, played on the Wii and had a few drinks. When midnight came we watched Big Ben chiming on BBC, cracked open a bottle of bubbly and then lit some sparklers in the garden and watched our neighbours fireworks and lanterns!

We had a lovely evening and I didn't have a bad head when I woke up this morning and that's always a bonus! We had a bit of a mammoth lie in as I wanted to read my book When God was a rabbit by Sarah Winman as I was desperate to know more, so I left Steve sleep for a while and Bruce was wandering round and coming for a cwtch when he decided I deserved one!

I have high hopes for 2012 and really want it to be a good year. I've had a lot of crap ones and feel like this could be the one to be better! I have some things I want to do that are not resolutions as such, more hopes for the year ahead (this may be the same thing, but I'm never sure exactly what a resolution is!).

I really want to go on my first holiday this year and carry on doing new things and achieving things I never thought I was good enough to do. I managed to get over a lot of fears in 2011 and do things I thought I never would, even though they were all small things to other people. They were huge achievements for me though and I want to keep going on this!

I also want to carry on being myself and to stop worrying about whether other people think I am normal or not. I want to do things I enjoy and make the best of my life to do what I want to do.

Basically, I need to learn to be more selfish and look after myself more to avoid getting really ill again and to learn to control the way I think about myself.

So, 2012 is going to be all about me!!!

Ok, me and books. And maybe chocolate. And Steve and my friends. And Bruce.

Maybe I need to work on this all about me thing! 

Tales of Christmas and the days that followed

I may be a little bit late but have some pictures from Christmas to share and tales of what we did!

On Christmas Eve Father Christmas paid a special visit to Cardiff to drop off all of our presents and even fill a little cat sized stocking for Bruce.

We then had a special Christmas eve dinner of hot dogs and watched lots of Only Fools and Horses!

Christmas Day is always a bit of a mad rush for us as we open our presents in our house in the morning and then go to my mum's for lunch in Cardiff and then up to visit my other half's family in Aberdare.

This is what Father Christmas bought me to read and watch.

Father Christmas also brought me Bridesmaids on DVD, the obligatory Beano and Dandy annuals and Brendan Sheerin's autobiography (which I am currently reading!).

We had a hearty breakfast of bacon sandwiches and then set off on our journeys laden down with presents. It was just Steve, my mum and I for Christmas dinner this year as my nanna wasn't very well and mum cooked us a big turkey dinner. The downside to this was that I don't like roast turkey, so I had mainly a vegetable and gravy based dinner to get over this one! It was the first time that mum had bought turkey for about 15 years as dad didn't like it either, so I couldn't really complain!

After pudding we started making the long journey up the A470 to Aberdare via Hirwaun. We spent some time with Steve's parents (his dad had drunk a few too many in the traditional morning pub visit in the village so was particularly chatty and pretty funny too!). We then went down to Steve's grans. When we arrived, his aunty and uncle decided we hadn't quite travelled enough that day and that we should all decamp to their house! By this point we were pretty tired so stayed just long enough to be polite and then I had the pleasure of the long, drizzly and dark drive back down!

We got back in our house about 8pm and I don't know what Bruce had been doing all day as this was how he ended up after about half hour of us being home!

This picture is a little bit like where's Brucie as we hadn't had time to tidy up our presents and quite frankly by the time we got home couldn't be bothered!

We had our more relaxed Christmas Day at home on Boxing Day. I cooked us a big chicken dinner (I like roast chicken and so do Steve and Bruce!) and we had a toffee pudding for afters.

We then watched one of Steve's action films from Santa and I read my book. We had a few drinks though the day and it was really relaxed and lovely. And I didn't have to leave the house apart from to take the bins out!!!

On Tuesday I defected to the dark side. I bought a Kindle with my Christmas money. Some of you may have read my post about e-books and be a bit shocked at this or think I'm going back on my word, but hear me out. I have recently got back into reading and after reading some of my friends reviews on Goodreads felt I was missing out on the big world of free books and cheap e-books. Also, as the money was a gift, it wasn't my money so was the perfect opportunity to satisfy my curiosity. (This is my excuse and I'm sticking to it!).

Things didn't go as well as planned from here. I went to my local large electrical superstore and bought a Kindle there so I could have it straight away and my experience started badly as the shop assistants weren't interested in me. As I was only spending £89 on an e-reader and not £3billiion on a 70ft LED 3D television, it took me ages to ask a few questions and then got greeted by them trying to sell me a Kindle cover for £40. No thank you!

I eventually got out of the shop with my purchase in hand (I had forgotten my bag for life and wasn't going to pay 5p for a bag when I have a large reserve of them under my stairs!).

I got home and unpacked the Kindle (frustration free packaging, my ar*e!) it took both of us around 45 minutes to switch the thing on! I thought there was something fishy with this, but put it down to me being technologically inept. When Steve eventually got it working, I was so pleased (after wanting to throw it through the window!) but my joy was short lived. About 5 minutes later the device froze! This carried on happening until it decided to not let me reset it anymore and Kindle sadly died.

I returned to said large electrical superstore chain yesterday morning and informed them that the device was broken and that I would require a new one. To my surprise, they were obliging and friendly (this came as a shock to me!). I checked it before leaving the store just in case and, hurrah, it turned on within seconds! I wasn't as technologically inept as I thought! This was yesterday morning and it's still working so it's going well!

I am enjoying the (free and cheap) e-book experience and have also downloaded an electronic version of one of my self help books so I can read it on the go without anyone knowing. I promise to stay faithful to hard copy print though and still love the feel of real books and would love to have a library in my house one day. For now, I'm just aiming for a comfy armchair in my study though (there are two bookcases and a desk in there so nearly a library!) and am planning to buy one this year IF I get my promotion on a permanent basis.

So this is what I am doing today.

This is what I will be watching.

And this is what I am wearing.

Xmas fun!

We had our proper Christmas day yesterday as we had to do so much travelling on the real Christmas day to really enjoy it. Here is a picture of the mini remote control car I bought Steve and also a picture of Bruce trying to play with it!

More to come on Christmas soon!