Culture

It was a grey and wet weekend so I suggested we take the kids to the local museum to show them the treasure on display.
Thoroughly mesmerised with innocent, wide eyes, full of wonder and intrigue, other peoples children were. My two had their first fight.  Right there in the middle of the maritime artifacts and in front of the other good children.
This is them...

If you're into 'magic' & crystals etc

http://www.woodlandwands.com/

MONKEY NUM NUMS !

Do you do anything that others find weird?  I can’t think of anything I do that may be construed as ‘not the norm’…but then again, if it’s ok with me, then I suppose it wouldn’t register to me that it was odd.

Did any of you watch a programme called, ‘My Monkey Baby’ on telly last night?  It was on Ch4, or More 4, one of those channels. 

They followed three different American households who had, for various reasons, decided to keep monkeys as pets…well, I say pets but this is where the strangeness occurs.  They raised these monkeys like very spoiled, pampered babies, wearing nappies, clothes etc having birthday parties with balloons and cakes with multi coloured icing.  Taking them to toy shops, where one monkey freaked out after having it’s owner shove various dolls/cuddly toys in it’s face and whilst cradling it the owner went, ‘aww you got dirrrty britches? That’s okaaaaay, you been wearin’ ‘em for a looooong tiiiiime’!  All this was made even more sickly as they all spoke in baby voices, ‘aww Her like da ice cweeeeeam’, cooed one owner whilst spooning large mouthfuls of strawberry sauce into the hyperactive beasts gob.

Ah, I’ve just remembered that I once (before becoming a mum, if that counts) dressed my English Bull Terrier up in antlers, with reigns and made a snow scene whilst I dressed as Mrs Christmas and took eight photo’s of my dog, in various poses (all fit for family viewing haha) and made a Christmas card for my Irish pal, featuring me driving a sleigh with 8 reign-dogs.  This, along with the Barbie Christmas sack filled with £££’s worth of dog toys could be pushing me slightly more towards the realms of ‘weirdo’.  

                                                                            

I nearly got a tacky ‘little sister’pendant for her dog collar too….this was meant to be a joke thing to make my mum go, ‘OH NOOO, JOHN, LOOK WHAT SHE’S DONE NOW’! but I actually liked the idea. 

Oh and we used to go to novelty dog shows, (Tess won prettiest b*tch – remarkable for a Bully) and I dressed her as a mermaid, making my, at the time new boyfriend, (yes Him) sit in with me on a Friday night, cutting out silver scales to stick on the mermaid tail, ready for the mornings event… she wore a long blond curly wig but only came third, (ripped off).  

Some people are just more inclined to be OTT with their pets…

My friend ‘Justina – (PUP), has warned her mum that if anything should happen to her, her sister is not allowed to adopt her cat Leo.  According to Pup, her sister gets over excited and squeezes the poor thing…the sister is 26 yrs and training to be a nurse! Let’s hope she doesn’t find any of her patients ‘weally weally cute’!

I remember my cool friend Sarah baking & decorating birthday cakes for her dobermans.
                                                

I’ve just been on facebook and seen my sensible friend Kelly has uploaded a pic of her dog Ruby, dressed as Randy Crawford, complete with wet look bubble perm.

My young male colleague Joe has just professed that his fiancé Kirsty has two dogs. A boxer and ‘some small thing’.  The boxer is allowed to be a dog but the ‘small thing’ is dressed up, spoken to in baby talk and fed from a fork.  It’s paws barely touch the ground as she cuddles and carries it all the time too.

My partner told me once that when they were younger, his step dad, a gruff leather clad biker, found his Jack Russell unable to move his arm, which was stuck rigid, under his chin as though he’d suffered a stroke, or was having a seizure.  In a state of panic and crying his eyes out, he rushed the mutt to the vets and bellowed, ‘QUICK, you’ve gotta do something, I think he’s dying”!   The vet calmly unhooked the dogs front leg from his collar and gave him back.

I asked my other colleague, the delicious Janet, a pagan and a cat owner, (the two go hand in hand in my opinion) if she was ever ‘OTT’ with her cats.  She stared back and in her best Margot from the Good Life voice asked, ‘over the top’?  I elaborated, ‘Yes, for example, do your cats ever eat with you at the dinner table’?  “Of course not", she replied…………………………"but we have eaten with them on the floor………..to make them feel more at home”.

Come to think of it, maybe the Monkey People aren't so mental after all.

    

Fill My Face!

Had botox for Christmas, (I did request this, it wasn't suggested by the other half) and I've just come back from having my 'top up', all done by the lovely Kelly - http://www.fillyourface.co.uk/
It's amazing how doing something completely for yourself and having an hour away from the kids to just chat about being a woman, with someone who knows all about it, can make you feel like you've had a proper mini break.

On the drive back, I had my home made mix CD of 'singalong songs' turned up full blast and sang sang sang.

I am very happy but hopefully , when the stuff takes effect, you won't be able to tell ahahaa

Hallo ich hoffe, du bist lächelnd

Moving in Together - decorating

The main difference you’ll notice when you decide to take the plunge and move in with your other half is attitude to decorating.

This will become most apparent when you see the male reaction to the scented candle.

Six years ago I took that plunge.  It was his idea to go shopping the Saturday after pay day, to deck out our humble abode.

Difference no. 1 – Location.

Upsettingly, he took me to Ramsgate.  And do you know which shop he took me to?  Have a guess………………………..

Difference no. 2 – Argos.

Argos is where you’d by kids presents from at Christmas, not a cutting edge boutique for interior design.

We had an argument, our first, because he couldn’t understand why ‘ANY DINNER SET WILL NOT DO – THEY ARE NOT JUST PLATES’! He also couldn’t understand the importance of rim thickness on your mug, (back off perverts) I like a thin rim.

I refused to buy any old ironing board cover and he ‘didn’t get’ that there was a selection of different designs and I wouldn’t, ‘just get the stripy one’.

Then, on our way to the cashiers, I stopped at the scented candles. Picking one vanilla and one orange candle up, I held them under his nose and enthusiastically asked, ‘which one do you like’?

His face changed.  It looked almost happy before, relieved to be on it’s way to the end of our shopping trip but now, it looked stunned.

‘WHAT’? he shouted, in a high pitched bark. ‘Smell them’ I said, ‘one is orange, this one’s vanil….’

‘NO! I, THEY’RE CANDLES, I…I’VE GOTTA GO OUTSIDE’! and visibly shaken by the extreme unfamiliarity of the object, ran, (yes ran) outside and sat on a bench to recover!

Now that’s just not normal is it?  Women don’t even have that ‘mode’ do they? That was proper disturbed male behaviour at it’s peak.

Anyway, years on and we’re both still sharing the same home, (soul mates &  all that) and we’re both BOOTFAIRTASTIC and sometimes, he gets over confident and makes purchases without remembering to check my facial expression first.

His last boot fair treasure was four dinner plates. Dinner plates so ugly that they were obviously kicked out of the set by the rest of the crockery.  Who buys just four plates? They match each other but nothing else.  Oh and he bought two cheap nasty bedside lamps with corrugated plastic shades.  I had to put my foot down and told him that they were never going to be used.  For a month they made a pathetic stand of defiance by the fruit bowl – (he purchased that as well but panicked and bought plain white = safe). He threw them away in the end.

After watching Kirsty Allsops Homemade Home, I toyed with the idea of rummaging for odd plates and cups from Portabello Rd but His eyes lit up, as though he was going to join in and possibly already had a few in mind, so I ditched that idea sharpish.

Why is the average man so sh*t at basic home decorating?  Why do women even want to drag them round IKEA , cooing over badly made, mass produced tat?  I love the idea of building our nest together but I don’t really listen to his opinions on duvet covers, so why am I so upset when he chooses the worst possible rug in the entire range?

There are just some jobs that women do better and others that are simply more suited to men.  So, he can stick to the ironing, cooking and washing up but just please,  leave the scatter cushions to me.

Tavi

Just checked out the blog Style Rookie.  It belongs to a 14 yr old girl called Tavi who somehow manages to sit on the front rows at major fashion shows... her dress sense is 'space granny'??? Sorry tavi if i've interpreted you wrong but that's what sprang to mind.  I think it's amazing and scary ... take a look
 Weird or what?! (I'm old and I just don't get it)

All movements go too far.

Bertrand Russell British author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872 - 1970)

HAHA

Dilemma

You've been invited to something that under normal circumstances would be a really happy event and something you could look forward to getting the outfit for & buying a present & catching up with friendly faces etc etc but, due to certain people also attending, you feel sick at the thought of going...what do you do? 
You'll look bad and be even more of an outsider if you don't go but then again, if these people have proved not to be friends anyway, does it matter? 
You want to put on a brave face for the person you care about most, who will be attending.
You really don't want to let a very small number of people down but if you went, you'd be thrust together with people you despise..... and you feel like you've had enough of them already, without adding alcohol into the equation.  What would you do?

Peter Paul & Mary - These times they are a-changing

Rastamouse, Irie?

Sor, erryone dem talkin' bout de mouse nem o Raaaaasta, seen? Cbeebies must think everything is IRIE!

What's the big deal? He's a crime fighting rodent; it's all been done before with the fantastic Dangermouse right? The trouble is that this time the hero is, DUN DUN DUUUUUUUUUUUUH Jamaican! Shiiiiiiiiiiiiat!

I remember the fury over the Teletubbies when they appeared on the screen. The worried parents believing their babies would lose all control of their tongues and only be able to mutter EH OH! whilst eating custard from a hoover and carrying a handbag.  Then came the rumours that the programme was written ON ACID (probably all purchased from the same dealer who supplied The Magic Roundabout) and that Tinky Winky was a perve, ( possibly in cahoots with the depraved Captain Pugwash crew). 

I hated Teletubbies. I found their voices really, really annoying.  That was until I became a parent and my son took to them like no other programme.  I realised that actually, they are educational (for their target audience) and innocent and lovely.  Waagwaaaan!

I must say that I find In The Night Garden so unbelievably boring but that seems to have offended no one.  Maybe that speaks volumes! You have to be dull to get by 'un-Daily Mailed'!

Anyhoo, back to Rastamouse.  I don't think the Yardie's are using this to recuit our young just as I don't think it's a vicious stereo type by the NF to portray the black man as a rat. 

My kids have watched it and last time I checked, they were still all-white, (ooh there's a comedy sketch right there! Kids gradually turning into the characters they're watching)! Same as Teletubbies hasn't made my son effeminate and I didn't turn into a benefits fraudster after watching Mungo, Mary & Midge, (they lived in a tower block - this concerned my mum). 

Bob Dylan wrote,
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticise
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Basically, anytime anything a bit different comes out, we panic.  It all looks different to the younger generation and even more so to our elders.  Just lets all get on with it and have a laugh as it all amounts to sh*t in the end.  I think we should just kick off our flip flops, feel the sand in our toes, take a nice fat swig of wood rum and chill man.