All or Nothing

So why is it that life is either so dull you need to breath onto a mirror to prove to yourself you are still alive , or so hectic theres no time to breath anyway?
My dh prefers that my life state is the latter as this gives me less time to interfere in his life - cos he prefers to jog quietly along whilst I tend to ramraid my way through life leaving trails of destruction in my wake.
When we go for a walk my mouth and feet work together in perfect harmony. As he has a birth defect (he was born male) and cannot multi task he can only do one or the other. The result of this is that I am often talking to myself as I power walk my way along the shore. So I double back to chivvy him along, he then starts to repeat his story about whatever bird or amazing snippet of natural history has excited him and because I am out to power walk and expect to be in the process of losing at least half a stone of excess body I am not impressed. A good suggestion would be that we dont walk together, but as we have almost completely opposite approaches to most things in life it might make more sense to just get a divorce!

Had a lovely day yesterday playing in my craftroom all day with Andrea. Oh the feeling of power that overwhelmed me when I realised I was in the company of a crafter marginally less able than myself!! Naturally I allowed this emotion to overwhelm me and enjoyed several hours of being king pin and asked for advice about all sorts of grown up important things like whether to use perga or double sided tape. I was really starting to believe I knew what I was talking about when my dream was shattered - a voice on the end of the phone asked if she could call for coffee.
This caused a situation which could only be described as total panic in my little room as Andrea and I quickly set about trying to look as if we were in control and, much more importantly, had actually produced a piece of work worthy of inspection by our head girl. The chaos was not helped by the fact we were giggling hysterically - caused by nervous excitement (fear) that we were soon to be judged and were sure we would be found lacking in several key areas, the main one being that we hadnt really achieved much at all, unless you count drinking several lattes,slurping bowls of soup, munching cheese scones and eating chunks of cake an achievement!! Anyway Julie and Helen duly arrived, drank coffee,inspected our work,then departed, and really must have given us the jolt we needed as we became very productive after that. I cut up several pieces of paper and Andrea finished 8 giftbags and a Layout!
She had also brought me a lovely present from her husband - a wooden drawer to put in the bottom of my AMM tote to keep it all upright and smart. I am very touched by this kindness as I have never even met her husband, but clearly he understands that I am a woman of the world as he has put it altogether with gold screw/tack thingys (this is a technical term), not just nails or everyday screws. He obviously shares my philosophy in life that a good screw should always be shiny.

Discipline

Myself that is, as in I must get my bum into gear and discipline myself to do oh at least a hundred things, all in the space of a day, the result of which will be that I look 20 years younger, have lost 5stone and have a beautiful impeccably well presented home.
My family will also have benefited from my discipline and be perfect examples of supreme offspringdom. My husband will start to arrange romantic candlelit dinners for us to enjoy together. He will also have learnt the art of conversation - ie I will learn to shut up for a minute in order to give him chance to speak.

So, thats the unattainable dream sorted then. The reality at the moment is that I dont have a kitchen sink or water as himself is in the middle of fitting new worktops etc.The lounge is full of boxes of pots,pans and dishes along with a dishwasher and a new fridge that has almost become a permanent fixture. As I trudge round with my bowl of pots and pans looking for water I tell myself it could be worse and I could live in a third world country and have to walk to the river to wash up everyday. Then I realise that in such a country I would not have been cooking 3 course meals in the mayhem anyway!
He is running the risk of becoming a refuge himself if I dont get a sink soon as he doesn't know that I know he is planning to go shooting tomorrow. If he doesn't get a move on with my water supply he may find he is one cartridge short in his box.....

Blogging

Now, I have a problem with all this malarkey here. When I asked my friend Julie what on earth I should find to write about on a blog she said "just ramble on like you do in real life".What do you mean - just ramble on- for years I've been under the impression she valued my input into certain situations and now she says I should just ramble on like I do in real life!!
This has done my fragile confidence no good whatsoever. I shall have to arrange therapy for myself at the very least - or even a stay at the Priory. Come to think of it, maybe I'm just what some of those self absorbed people at the Priory really need.........
Think when I've finished here I'll just wap a quick email off to them offering a course in how to remove your head from up your own backside before you suffocate. Think this could be quite informative for some of the inmates - I'll be in OK or Hello magazine before you can blink.

"Jools - therapist to the stars". Has a certain ring to it doesnt it?

Ramble on indeed.

Direction

I dont do direction. Full stop, simple as that, I just dont do direction. On foot or in a car - all the same to me, dont get it. Even on a train I have been known to get on one going the opposite way to my intended destination. It is a constant source of amazement to me that people know which direction to travel in to arrive where they want to be.
Not that I let this affliction limit me in any way - oh no, I just ask my husband to write out the directions in large letters on a piece of paper for me to follow. Return journey has to be written out as well cos I cant understand it in reverse. No good asking him for directions - that is an even bigger nightmare.
Scenario usually goes something like this:
me: How do I get to X
him: Take the M6 to Jwhatever. Stay in left hand lane, take second left. You'll see a pub on your right, think its called the dog and duck, seats outside, very pretty.
me: Yes, yes yes, so do I turn right here?
him: no, carry straight on and you'll come to a set of traffic lights. If you turn right there you go to X and straight on takes you to Y. Turn left.....
You get the picture, and this is how it goes on and on and on. Not that any of it matters cos I'm completely lost after the totally irrelevant pub or factory or shop or whatever else he has decided to throw into the mix to confuse me.

He is used to me phoning him at odd times of the day or night from sides of roads ( usually the wrong roads) demanding to know where I am and why I am in the wrong place. One of the most memorable was when, after a series of 3 roundabouts where I had to keep making choices - after travelling round them all at least twice, hyperventilating all the time before randomly choosing an exit I realised this could not possibly be the right road. So I phoned him at home 200 miles away and demanded to know where I was.
me: I'm lost, where am I?
him: what can you see?
me: a house and a field
him: no, I mean what did the last signpost say?
me: signpost???
him: What did the sign say?
me: I dont know I didnt see a signpost
him: You must have seen a signpost
me:(almost hysterical by this point) If I'd seen a sign post I wouldnt be lost would I (this is an arguable point actually) oh, you're no use at all, all I want to know is where I am. And I slammed the phone down.

I once took a friend for a quick 45minute circular walk in the New Forest near to my daughters home. 4 hours later she had to get us back using all sorts of clever things like where the sun was in the sky and which side of some power cables we were now etc etc. We werent actually dressed for a 5 hour march and we hadnt had lunch either......
She is still a friend, but oddly enough she always decides the route when we go for a walk now.

Mothers

"He's got an infernal comflux" says my mother. I have to think about this one for a minute - I'd thought we were talking about one of my brothers last time I was listening. "Right" I answer, playing for time. "Yes, he always thinks everyone is against him" Ah, so she means inferiority complex! My mothers interpretation of the English language causes the rest of the family a lot of confusion. She once said to me that my nephew couldn't learn to drive "with him being annalexic" "Anorexic?" I said "Well, I know I dont see him very often but when I do he always looks well enough and eats normally". So she says " does it affect their eating as well then? I thought it was just reading" So, now dyslexia is known in this family as annalexia - and he has learnt to drive now, so all you annalexics out there need not worry!
Travelling in a car with her giving directions is something you arguably have to be certified insane to do. "Follow that red car - oh he's going the wrong way" is one of her favourites. Now, my very calm stable husband never used to believe that she was as bad as I said. Used to blame me as I don't do direction or maps or stuff like that - so I let him drive with her to find her solicitors office, whilst I sat in the back. Wish I could have recorded the journey. "Turn left at the end of this road" I felt compelled to offer the information it was a one way street going the other way. "no its not, you go down there and we should come out on the road where the office is" To cut a nightmare of a journey short of course he couldnt go down the road. Her explanation for this was that they'd moved all the roads since she had last been. It just got worse and worse, but suffice to say he now believes me!
Talking about mixed up words - well, I know no one else is, but this just popped into my head - reminds me of the time I answere the phone to the voice on the other end saying "lassanger""Pardon?" I said to my agitated father in law. "You know, lassanger that stuff I bought the other day - what do I do with it?" "Dad, what are you talking about?" "That stuff, lassanger, how do I cook it?""Oh you mean lasagne" "Yes, that's what I said, lassanger, now how do I cook it?" From that day forward lasagne has been known as lassanger in this house!

Wonder if this will work

The mice have eaten all the wiring in the kitchen behind the units. Bit annoying really and very selfish of them seeing as they had taken a liking to Imperial Leather soap in the bathroom cupboard and eaten a bar of that already. Think it was the trap that did it, they realised I was on the case and found a way behind the walls or something (I dont do house geography) and decided to sabotage the wiring in the kitchen as a form of revenge. I was hoping they would at least have electrocuted themselves, but the electrician tells me this is a common problem in very old houses and he has never yet seen one where they eat the live red wire. I have asked him if we could experiment and chalk ink the red wire black to see if they would eat it before he comes next week to charge me the cost of a new house to replace about ten miles of wiring, but he thought I was joking.

Mmmm, Jools of Wisdom. Sounds very grand and grown up doesn't it? It's all Anita's fault of course. That's Anita Mundt, celebrity scrapbooker, lovely lady, celebrity scrapbooker, brilliant photographer (evidence at top of this blog - I dont look anything like that in real life),celebrity scrapbooker and oh, did I mention she is a celebrity scrapbooker??? You can tell that I dont allow things like being aquainted with celebs to go to my head - oh goodness me no. I mean a couple of weeks ago I was chatting to Tracy from the Artz Girls, Michele Charles and Tim Holtz to name just a few, but as I said to Emily - thats Emily Adams not Falconbridge,(saw her last year) oh, lost me thread now, forgot what I was going to tell you.

So, Anita thinks that it would be a good idea for me to have a blog. There are a few pretty major drawbacks to this though - not least of which is that I dont do techy. So she decided to set it all up for me and probably,when I press whichever button I find to press in a minute, the last half an hour of typing will disappear into cyber space never to be seen again.
Which is why on this, my very first entry, there are no points to ponder - I mean, after all, if you are never going to read it there doesnt seem any point in typing it does there?

photo

testing

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