Dance With The Rabbit

Peh. You know how some people with depression get all super-creative and whatnot when it gets bad? Well, that is not me. I get all mumpy and boring. And I irritate myself. You think I'm annoying now? Try living in the same head as me!

Anyway, I had this ghastly stomach virus thing which led to me not absorbing my anti-mental pills for a couple of weeks, and now I'm having to put up with the stupid brain chemicals until the meds start working again. Fun, fun.

The virus has also left me with short-term lactose intolerance, which is bloody awful, as it means I can't eat cheese without a lot of pain. And you guys know how much I love cheese. We were in a supermarket cafe yesterday, and I came thisclose to breaking through the clear barrier and licking the macaroni cheese. *sigh*

Mind you, it gives me an excuse to google new recipes (like I need an excuse), and prompted me to make Thai chilli sauce from scratch last night, so that's good, I guess? Silver lining?

Whatever. I want cheese.

So, new year. New EXCITING year, as we've booked our time off work to go and see Nettie and Christian! Yeah, it's not until October, but that's only nine months away now, and therefore it is easily near enough for Nettie and I to start being intolerably excited. Nettie's already posted a list of things we're planning to do, so I won't recreate that here, but you can see from her blog that it's going to be AMAZING. We love Perth, and we love Nettie and Christian, and now I'm working myself up into a state of incomprehensible excitement (again), so I'll stop typing about that.

Other than that, nothing particularly of note has been happening over the last couple of weeks. Work, sleep, books, food, N64. That's about it. So have some pictures from over the festive period (not of my stomach virus, though. You should thank me for that). Many of them are of Zeph and Belle, so if you are uninterested in toddlers and dogs, now would be the time to stop looking at this post. Seriously. Close your eyes. Try and navigate away from the page using only your own innate power of internets.

This is either Dave reading to Zeph, or Zeph reading to Dave. I'm not sure which.

The look of awe on a nephew's face as he sees all the Christmas presents for the first time!

On the way back from (my only annual visit to) church, Huw and I found this. I was all "Look! That rust! It's a rabbit doing a dance! Dance with the rabbit!", so he did.

Matt and Rowenna were the Dingbat Winners. To the relief of everyone, because that meant the game was finished (it's a madly annoying game, yet we still always play it).

Once Thomas joined the cage match, it was all over bar the screaming.

Sometimes Belle is just so mad that even the two-year-old notices. Here, she's staring at the wall to see if her friends (light reflections) are going to come and visit.

Zeph LOVED his little motorbike.

Cutest dog in the world.

I played around on Photoscape with this one. I like it. It's very 70s.

A walk round the loch at New Year. It sleeted. And Zeph gave up on the way back.

Swans!

Zeph!

I love this one of my dad, Rowenna and Zeph taking a shortcut.

Awwww... Huw and Kirsty, looking handsome and pretty, respectively.

Travelling in style.

Odd stuff seen on holiday.

Found in our room the first evening.

Flying dog!

Allegedly, Zeph drew this. I suspect it might largely have been my brothers.


Dave is a dhole.




The scariest children's ride I've ever seen.

Wholesale Destruction

We went to Matt's parents house to knock down their porch thingy. The glass was already out of it, but there were concrete block walls and timbering to take out, as well as plastic roofing.
Safety was vital. Well, in as far as we took turns at wearing the protective helmet.

Matt started on the timbers at the back on Friday evening.

Matt and his father: "How do we get the roof to come down now we've taken out the woodwork and some of the brickwork?"
Me: "Hey, why don't we sort of pull this bit and smack it with a sledgehammer?"
It worked, too. I am a sexy, shoeless God of War.
Next morning we finished off the bit round the back.

And then we had to tackle the front. This comes up to the second storey at its peak, and the roofing was bolted onto the beams. So we went up on the roof (I know! I went on the ROOF!) to have a look from above. Turned out we could only get some of the bolts out without plummeting to our deaths, so we climbed back down.
Our technique was 'hit the wooden bits with the big sledgehammer until they catapult across the garden', which proved quite effective.

Also hauling. Lots of hauling.

Whack whack whack the timbering!

Pause for thoughtful staring. The roof, at this point, was only held on by one large beam along the top. We tried to work out how to bring it down.

Culminating in John's best idea yet. Hooray! Hit the roof with a ladder!

Then we knocked down the wall. My proudest moment - I'd been hammering away at a block, and the wall split so that a piece made up of four concrete bricks came off all in one lump. Matt and his dad were just saying that they didn't think it was going to split into individual blocks, and that we'd have to deal with it as a massive piece, when I gave it one more thump and it neatly divided into the four bricks. Muahaha. Total fluke, but still...

Matt's mum was in charge of feeding the starving troops.

And that's the culmination of our hard work - no porch thingy, and a massive pile of concrete blocks!

It was a lot of fun, and the worst injury that happened was when I was driving a wedge through the doorframe and the head flew off the small steel sledgehammer, bounced off the floor, and cracked me in the shin.
All my muscles hurt now, but it was worth it, as it seemed to kick my blues into touch, if only temporarily.

Streams of consciousness.

Yeah, you might have guessed that I'm in a dry spell, writing-wise.

I can't make any of the large amorphous ideas crystalise, and that leaves me at a bit of a loose end when it comes to writing posts, I'm afraid.

So, instead of lapsing (too much) into non-blogging, I'm just going to try and carry on. Putting up random pictures, and random links. The writing will come back sooner or later.



Because I was tagging my photos of the shelves, I was reading up on Fluorite this morning. Wiki says "The word fluorite is derived from the Latin root fluo, meaning "to flow" because the mineral is used to increase the fluidity of slags used in smelting flux." This is fascinating (I love learning new things), and the description also sparks other memories for me.

It reminds me of Wierdale (where we no longer go, as it was somewhere we went from my granny and grandad's house). And the reason it sparks memories is because when you wandered back down the valley at dusk, you could see the tiny crystals of fluorite glowing in the stream, there being more (although 'more' is a tricky word to use here) UV at dusk. So, yeah. Flowing streams and fluidity in general. Isn't it funny how your brain works?

Speaking of brains, does anyone else ever get a weird freaked out feeling when they suddenly realise that their eyes are just light-receiving holes for their brain to peer out of? No? Just me?

On that awkward note, I'll just throw some random photos up here.

Whole monkfish! The fishmonger said that it's expensive because 2/3 of the fish is wasted. I'm guessing most of that is head. Terrifying head.

Secret allotments! They are at the entrance to an industrial estate. I'd never have guessed they were there had we not had to go to the Post Office depot.

I like the Royal Mail logo. This one had the name in Gaelic.

Nah, pal.

Sword! (STILL not hung from the wall, as the stupid rawl plugs are flimsy and rubbish).

Dangermouse bag, ring, and ripped jeans. Yeah, I'm so cool.

Lovely belt, and ribcage t-shirt.

There are a few more photos up at Small Things, too. First post there in eight months!

Dresden's not been well, but seems to be responding to her antibiotics, which is a relief. And in a while we're off to listen to a talk about zombies as part of the science festival. It should be fun! This weekend's pretty good, all in all.

Picture the scene... (A Post About Sledging)

It's Christmas. The family is all together - from grandparents...


... to a baby and a dog.

It's your typical Christmas. Gifts are given and received, much food is eaten, silly paper hats are worn.
Seeing as it's snowy out, a snowman is built.
Well, sort of.

All clear in your mind, yeah?
Well. Matt and I, along with my two brothers, decided we wanted to go sledging. The snow wasn't very deep, and it was pretty icy by this point. Oh, and we couldn't find the sledge in the garage. So we improvised.
First up was an old skateboard from which Huw had spent some time removing the wheels. Unfortunately, the snow was somewhat lumpy, so Dave had to do a bit of smoothing with a spade.

So we moved to a different slope around the corner, where I managed to get a few action shots.



The plan here was that Matt and Dave would pretend to run behind Huw in order that Huw would look like he was moving a lot faster than he was. I think it makes it look like Huw is being pursued by the undead.

For some reason, pretty much EVERY photo I took of Dave makes him look like the undead, actually. Especially this next one.

And now a break from sledging photos in order to show you an adorable dog. Belle's gorgeous, but mad.

And we're back.
The next day, we decided we'd have to change our approach if we wanted to successfully sledge. Dave had hauled home a couple of road signs a while back, after a drunken night out, and we thought Hey! With the sharp edges and rusty patches, these will be ideal! Spoiler: No-one injured themselves beyond the odd bruise, weirdly enough.

We set up a ramp made out of one of the signs and some bricks (I know - this is sounding more and more sensible and safe by the minute, isn't it?)



And then there were races. The picture(s) below are chronologically left to right, top to bottom.

And what you're seeing here is a race between Matt and Huw. As they start out, Huw shoots into the lead. He's taunting Matt. Then tragedy strikes, and Huw comes flying off his sledge. He's determined to win, and attempts to rugby tackle Matt from his sledge. Luckily for Matt, he misses, and ends up face down in the snow as Matt glides to victory. Poor sportsmanship!
(But lots of fun.)