all five horizons

I am sorry for my rather sporadic posting of late. Life has gone and decided to get all REAL and it has knocked the stuffing out of me somewhat. The good news is that the metaphorical clouds seem to be clearing and a spot of sunshine is creeping through. Of course, the literal clouds are still very much in abundance - the weather is pretty miserable. I will not let that dampen my rather good mood, though. So just to catch you up, this is what I have been up to:

Reading:

Atonement by Ian McEwan.  I will tell you all about it when the deed is done.

Watching:

Fringe. JJ Abrams (the genius behind Alias and Lost) + Joshua Jackson (the cuteypatootie who played Pacey in Dawson’s Creek) = more TV heaven.  Look out for a new Square Eyes post about this fantastic show soon!

Waiting:

For my Open University Creative Writing assignment to be marked. Just one of the things that has distracted me of late, I had to write a short story (or piece of life writing) and having decided that I much prefer the Life Writing thang, I marched on writing about somethign so personal and scary that it rather shook me up - I ended up scrapping it all and on the advice of ricardo, wrote a real life true story about a girl being abducted from the caravan park where I was staying with a friend and her parent in 1990.

Buying:

A new purse! I love Cath Kidson and when we wandered through Selfridges the other day, I could not resist. I have been wanting a new purse for ages but had not found the right one. This one sang out to be as I walked past.

Choosing:

A new company car. I am such a lucky girl - I was allowed to pick out what car I wanted.   I have gone for a white Suzuki Swift and it arrives on Friday so I will be sure to take some piccies.

Listening:

To Stephen Fry’s Podgrams.  I love Stephen Fry. He is even on Twitter now and he is following me too! I am also enjoying his series on America.

Crafting:

Some lovely Christmas decorations, the kits for which I bought from Posie Gets Cozy.  Well, I haven’t started them yet but I will do, I promise.  As Bart Simpson says: ‘I’ll do it this afternooooon.’  Or maybe this weekend. Hopefully before Christmas, in any case.  I will let you know how I get on.

Ricardo and I spoke for the first time. We were on an excursion to see King Minos’s Palace near Malia, Crete. We sat over the aisle from each other on the coach on the way back and I can still remember the butterflies (cue Rich’s retching when he reads this). He was with his girlfriend on holiday. I was with my best friend. It was all very innocent. At least, it was while we were there.

We were engaged within three months so I suppose it can’t have been TOTALLY innocent.

I have realised lately that I have had less and less to say here and it is odd. I think Twitter has a lot to answer for - the ease of short, snappy comments and the constant stream of ideas and thoughts is quite enticing. It also has something to do with the fact that more people I actually know read this so I suppose it has made me more careful. I have said before that I am this massive paradox and even my closet friends and family rarely know it. I may be confident and happy but I am also neurotic and desolate. That is such a good word for how I feel so much of the time lately. Dictionary.com defines ‘desolate’ as:

• barren or laid waste; devastated
• deprived or destitute of inhabitants; deserted; uninhabited.
• solitary; lonely
• having the feeling of being abandoned by friends or by hope; forlorn.
• dreary; dismal; gloomy

I love it when one word can say so much. Anyway, right now I am going to snuggle up under the covers watching Juno and enjoying the early night. And hopefully tomorrow I can find some other words which say so much but are less likely to bum you the eff out.

Yesterday I was in full-on strop mode.  I left work early (thanks to my lovely boss aka Dad) in order to pick up my new glasses.  I was really looking forward to putting something new on my face on a daily basis and when I went in to collect them, I was still really pleased with my choice.

As the lady at Vision Express was checking the fit on my peanut of a head, she realised they needed some adjustment.  Off she toddled to do whatever it is they do and then after a short while returned looking sheepish.  Apparently, my £300 glasses had snapped in her hand.  Of course, she was going to replace them.  Of course, she was sorry.  But I didn’t have my new glasses so I was officially pissed off.  She told me she would call to let me know how long it would be (she didn’t).  When I called to find out today, they didn’t know and said they would call back (they didn’t).  When I called AGAIN, they told me that the manager was on the phone ‘as we speak’ (code for ‘oh crap, we forgot to phone around’) and she would call me back (she did!).  When she called back, I was told that the glasses are not to be found at any of the nine stores she tried (a) they have over a hundred and b) how do they not have a cetnral database of stock?).

Anyway, long/tedious story short, they have to order them from Dolce & Gabanna overseas so it will be 7 - 10 working days at least.  I asked for a refund in the meantime (which she seemed shocked about but I want to have the £300 in my account for the next two weeks, not in theirs - is this so wrong?!).

After this disappointment, I slurged on the Prison Break boxset seasons 1-3 only to get home and realise there was a disk missing.  Not the disk we were up to (thank god) but the next one meaning no Prison Break when I get home tonight.  And so the foul mood accelerated into a full-blown strop.  Thankfully, this has now been rectified for our uninterrupted viewing pleasure.  Heads would have rolled otherwise.  I am not normally a moody or stroppy person but man, I was in a foul mood last night.  Not pretty.

When I was little, my parents always called large spiders in our house ‘Charlie’. I don’t know why they picked this name but by making the name cute, it made spiders less scary. I was never afraid of spiders and I think this is a direct result of this game we used to play. Spotting a Charlie was fun and instead of running away, we used to chase it to try to catch it (not to kill but to relocate outside). I am so grateful to my parents for this. I think it is really clear that parents’ fears transfer to children. Since my parents are not afraid of much (heights, spiders or any of the usual phobias), I am not either.

My lack of fear for spiders has developed over the years into a real fondness.  I think they are adorable!  My ex-boyfriend used to have a pet tarantula called Bob and he was a complete cutie.  I used to handle him with no problems although I had to be careful of his spiney knees.

Not being afraid of spiders can come in very handy, for example when you are climbing into the loft (aka filing archive) at work and this little chap has made a home right by the light switch, it means you don’t fall off the ladder!

This is a true Charlie – quite chunky and very big (this one has a leg span of about 4 inches with its legs flat). We haven’t moved it – we don’t mind sharing our office with it.

I have been wanting to write something about the power of girl friendships for a while and just lately, the subject has come up within my own group of friends so I guess now is as good a time as any. Despite always having a big groups of friends at various points in my life, I have found that as life has taken be to different parts of this Fair Isle, I have successfully managed to keep in touch with only my closest friends (for which I am very grateful to Facebook and email!). And whilst I love these women (and men), they all tend to be at least an hour away which means I get to see them at best, once a month and then with husband in tow. I would not want to lose these get-togethers because I am lucky that my friends and my husband all get along so well and we have such a blast but every now and then, it is nice to have some quality girl time.

I often complain to my husband that I have no local friends and recently, while at a friend’s BBQ, I heard a familiar complaint from some of the girls there. Despite the fact that I have been with my husband for 6 years and despite the fact that I consider the friends I have made through him to be dear friends, we have never really done the ‘girls night out’ thing. In fact, it took one of them to get married for us to have a hen night to remember which started the thought ‘we really should do this more often’.

Realising that a lot of us felt the same way – we had no-one we could confide in or go to chick-flicks with or go dancing to crap cheesy music with – we finally started doing something about it. Thanks to the powers of Facebook, we had our inaugural girlie event. Low-key and certainly not ‘girls go wild’, we met for Sunday brunch / coffee and spent two hours gassing. It was a blast. Plans quickly followed to see Mamma Mia (something we knew our respective other-halves would sooner put out their eyes than do). Wednesday night, a few of us managed to get together (despite technical faults at the cinema of choice) and see this ridiculous, cheesy but immensely entertaining flick (I plan on writing more about the film here soon). I have not laughed like that in a cinema ever and the bonding experience (that phrase makes me feel queasy but it’s exactly what it was) was just what I needed.

I am determined that our girlie outings continue (we are taking it a step further next time by introducing alcohol and possible dancing – oh lordy!). What we give to each other and what we take from the time together is essential - whether it is a collective bitching session to salve some hurt feelings, sharing a problem that is secretly making you crazy or just finding common ground when, love him as you do, your bloke just doesn’t get it. Now, I just need to think of a name for our new gang…

I have been singing this to myself lately:

Created using Wordle thanks to Miss Attitude.

After a lot of faffing around with stylesheets (ooh still so much to learn about CSS), plugins, webhosts, ftp and all manner of other bits and pieces which are all new to me, I am finally in a position to start blogging again here in my new blog home. Things still don’t look exactly as I would like but I am pretty pleased with what I have got so far. So, let me show you around!

The home page will be not contain any original material but will act as an introduction to me and a taster of all five blogs. The welcome page will change perdiocally. You can see new posts from all five horizons on the home page’s right sidebar.

This Journal blog is pretty self-explanatory. I will be blogging about stuff that happens, funny things I see, anything I want to share that does not fit into the other, more specific categories. My ‘New Things’ page started on my old blog is back and I am pleased that I am on track to trounce my last year’s list of 36 (ish) new things.

Square Eyes is my TV and movie blog (which used to be here) and will be my place to be frivolous and low-brow. Do not expect any arthouse or world cinema (although I wouldn’t rule it out completely) – I am more like to moan about Dawson or Vaughn dying (I will be blogging about old TV as well as new due to my extensive boxset collection!).

Spinning Infinity is my music blog (which used to live here). It was the addition of this third blog (well, fourth if you count my photoblog) which made me question having so many separate sites. I wanted to bring everything together so that someone reading my TV blog would realise I also wrote about other junk. Anyway, I will post about CDs, gigs and music in general here.

Caged Birds and Mockingbirds is where I get just a little bit intellectual. For the past 4 years, I have been studying for a Literature degree in my spare time. Reading is important to me and my love of books is profound. With this new book blog, I will be sharing this love.

Finally(!), Patchwork and Pins is my craft blog. There are two main reasons for wanting a separate craft blog: a) some people, quite shockingly, are not interested in the crap I make and so they can choose to ignore this entirely and b) if I have a dedicated blog, the older the previous post gets, the more I will feel pressured to make something. I desperately want to improve, make more things and I always work better with a deadline!

So that is about it! Should you want to subscribe using a feed reader, the rss feeds for each individual blog are at the top. The feed for all five blogs together is here (and also at the top of the home page). If you want to subscribe to a couple of the blogs and combine them into one feed, use Feedblendr! I hope you will stop by and leave me some encouraging comments so that I don’t think this has all been a colossal waste of my time!!!

I have not been very chatty lately, mainly due to the fact that I have been über-busy and also I have an essay to write, due Friday (dun-dun DUUUN).

I fully intend to write about all the cool stuff we have been up to (2 weddings, a Christening, an anniversary, a 60th birthday celebration to give you some idea) but right now I should be working on my essay so no dice.  Well, actually, since it is the middle of the day, I should be working so I am off to do that now and will catch you all later.  In the meantime, during a trip to my favourite city, Manchester, after a family funeral (oh yes, I have been to one of those too), my parents and I were walking back to the car in the city centre after having colelcted the will from the solicitors and Dad noticed this unassuming little pub. 

It was where Mum and Dad first got together, some 40 years ago.  28th June will be their 39th wedding anniversary.

Today is our 5th wedding anniversary.  I can’t believe it has already been five years - time flies when you’re having fun, I suppose!  Here’s a couple of photos from our big day:

You will have to excuse the quality - our wedding was pre-widespread digital photography use!! Can you believe that?!  Our official wedding photos were digital but we weren’t given digital copies, so these are scans of ones taken by friends or captures from our wedding DVD.

My cousin very kindly sent me some marital advice, which as someone about to get married herself, I hope she heeds (click for a larger view):