bass notes...

Dd2 wants to learn to play bass guitar. Cool! That's alright cos we already have one, and a small practice amp. If they still work. Been several years since I touched them, and I never really played properly. I got them before I got pregnant, thinking I could pick it up fairly easily as I played double bass in school, but I just didn't get round to playing. It will be really nice to see them get some use, if she follows through. I'm going to try to play the piano more too, it needs tuning again. I'm a bit puzzled though, I watched a couple of youtube piano lesson videos yesterday and our piano was way out from the one on the videos, like a good couple of tones out, does that mean it was badly done before? Or that there's some weirdness going on with the puter? Hm, answers on a postcard...

blergh

I feel like a worn-out dishrag today. Not that I actually know what a worn-out dishrag feels like, but hopefully you get the idea. I got woken up in the middle of a dream, which I can't remember apart from the vague idea that there was a man I didn't know in it, by a delivery dude. He had the order of two new mice and a new dvd drive for the kids' puter, which hopefully should reduce the level of frustration in the house somewhat, but banging on the door when I'm sound asleep hasn't helped me at all. It's probably not the only cause of my malaise today, period day 3 is most likely more to do with it. But there's something about that kind of disturbance-induced brainfog that's hard to shift.

The end result though is that I'm lurking in my room (again) hoping that I'll get left alone with my blergh. Vain hope.

I've had more of a go at my fanfic, I think I need to pull it to bits and start again somewhat though *sigh* as I've managed to contradict myself and I hate that. It's not flowing all that well but I'm not expecting it to really, the subject matter isn't one that I know that much about other than from tv and films and I'm not throwing myself into research for this! Though the little bits I have googled have been interesting... My playlist is just right though I think, if I can add a few more tracks it will help set the tone for when I do have the headspace for writing.

Think I need to make one or two for work now, lol. Not sure what works best for writing about baby stuff, or for pulling website code to pieces, or for doing accounts...

a bit more on watching the Twilight DVD...

Dh sat at the table while dd1, dd2 and I watched the film. He was internetting, watching baseball on his laptop (big ups for MLB's updated online tv service, btw, it's awesomely smooth and clear even over wifi and though we haven't tried streaming it to the tv yet I'm pretty sure it won't be pixelly at all) and I didn't know if he was really watching the film or not. He's had to live with my obsession for the past few months, dd2 and I sharing quips and quotes and laughing at in-jokes, and I suspect he thinks a bit of my recent weirdness is down to a Rob Pattinson/Edward Cullen crush (he's not entirely wrong but I think that's more about things being thrown into sharp relief, as the saying goes, by immersing myself in romance-driven fiction, than me actually fantasising about being with another person. And even if I were, Edward's not my favourite Cullen, lol.)

So I had a feeling he was prejudging it, sneering at it. Of course with him not sitting where I could see his face or hear him I couldn't be sure. And really I shouldn't make assumptions about what he's thinking because that old saw about assuming making an ass out of u and me is quite often true when I think I know what he's thinking. And more so when I think he knows what I'm thinking. But it did add to my unease while watching it and may have stopped me getting sucked in like I would have liked to. I think I was right though, when it finished he said the action sequences were poor...

...and that the love story was just like Buffy and Angel. The three of us on the sofa turned round and exclaimed 'What?!' at him. I'm not sure why it feels so different though. His argument was the group of geeky friends and he's a vampire and she's a human. Except that Bella has no supernatural powers and their relationship doesn't have any massive repercussions in the supernatural world, they're not on a hellmouth, there aren't any demons... The language and settings, beyond the high school part, is much different. Their motivations are also different, though Buffy and Bella are newcomers to their towns when their stories begin.

But if anyone is actually reading this who is familiar with both , I'd love to hear what you think on this point.

The commentary on the DVD is fun, by the way.

once again I'm doing a 'long time no blog' post...

So. Hm...

Well see it's like this. I'm writing a piece of fanfic. Which isn't something I've ever done before. I do write quite a lot but it's mostly chat, forum posts, facebook and the like. Sometimes I write for work. Actually I need to do a lot more of that than I have been, but maybe this whole process will help with that too. Anyway I was sort of in the mood for writing but not really in the right place mentally for my fanfic thing, it doesn't really go with tennis on the tv and I don't have headphones for my themed playlist right now, so I thought that maybe if I come and blog I might get more into the habit of writing stuff.

I had a thought about blogging, a week or so ago, that I'm grasping at the remnants of right now. It was about how I've never really got into it, because even with regular commenters and that kind of feedback it's pretty narcissistic (clicks spellcheck, yeah that's right) if you see it as *publishing* yourself, I'm not even much of a thread-starter on forums, but perhaps if I see it as just having a space to write stuff down it might go a bit better. And as long as I don't expect anyone else to be reading it and then get disappointed when I don't get comments, lol.

But hm, what am I blogging about? See this is my other problem. Do I rabbit on about the kids and dh, essentially invading their privacy unless I write solely about my thoughts about them, which is still exposing them in a way? I'm not going to write about business stuff here, I have another blog for that, and I'm woefully underblogging there too. I have a few minor niggles that I could share... I might go there later. I could go for the entertainment review thing, but anyone who has me as a friend on facebook or reads CosyNostra will know I'm pretty much obsessed with the Twilight saga right now, in fact I'm rereading Twilight for the 5th time. So that could get a little bit tedious... Oh hang on, I'm not blogging for you am I? I'm blogging for me.

Well let's go with that then.

Twilight, for anyone who doesn't know, is a romance. With a twist. If you aren't aware of it at all (oh come on who am I kidding? How can you be on the internet and not be aware, somehow, of Twilight? I'll ditch that thought then. Hm but then how much do I say about the plot? Oh well, it'll work out I guess.) So, scratch that.

OK so if you don't know already it's utterly incredible but it's a romance between a human and a vampire. The vampire happens to be part of a family who don't hunt humans, and has an extra talent, he can read minds. The girl is a normal human girl, ridiculously clumsy (really, I'm surprised no-one mentions dyspraxia in the books) and the only person who the vampire can't mind-read in any way. She is also the most delicious thing he's ever smelled, to the verge of breaking his fast, so to speak. So it's a classic 'boy meets girl, boy runs away to avoid killing girl, boy comes back but avoids girl, boy and girl obsess over each other without the other knowing, boy rescues girl, they figure out they're in love, things get a bit hairy...' type story.

I saw the film first, with fairly low expectations as I was taking dd2 and her friends to see it for dd2's birthday treat. And was completely blown away by it. It's an atmospheric production, the two leads are intense, the vampires are beautiful, the story is powerful... It all added up, possibly along with the pre-teen oestrogen hit, to an intense overwhelming slam of emotion. I was dragged along with the intrigue, the tension, the power of the first love/lust thing. And then we went shopping, a couple of weeks later, and dd2 bought the books with her Christmas/birthday money. Oh and the soundtrack album.

So I read the first one, and as is usually the case with books, and why I generally prefer to see the film or tv production first, there was so much more in the book than the film. Certain pertinent points were in different places but I wasn't so bothered about that. I read it again. And played the soundtrack lots and lots. And we went to see the film again, and for some reason I wasn't quite so taken with it, not so swept away of a wave of emotion. Well fair enough, the timing might have been off, and maybe I underestimated the power of 5 10 to 13 year olds in an enclosed space beforehand, and though I'd tried to not compare the book to the film I couldn't help myself. And, of course, I knew how it was going to work out.

I had thought I might not read the rest of the series until after those films came out. I really should have known better, lol. I picked New Moon up while at a loose end and rattled through it, and then the next one. And then I had to wait for the last instalment, Breaking Dawn. Dh gave it to me for Valentine's Day, bless him. I spent the evening and the next day reading, finishing this humongous monster of a book in around 18 reading hours I think. Damaged my hand in the process. And like I said, I'm rereading Twilight for the 5th time, I've read the others 3 times each, and the partial draft of Midnight Sun, which is Twilight from the boy's side (it's written in first person so you really only see what Bella sees. Midnight Sun fleshes the whole thing out so much more, I really hope it gets finished, properly and in the spirit of Twilight.)

Anyway... So I know the books pretty much inside and out. I've done a bit of the fangirl thing, facebook quizzes, the odd youtube vid, listening to the same music as the author, finding the soundtrack artists on last.fm... and pre-ordering the dvd. Which is officially released here tomorrow, but arrived here yesterday. I enjoyed the 'making-of' bits and the music vids, haven't quite watched all the extras yet. And I hustled dd3 and 4 upstairs after tea so that we could watch it before they had supper, I figured I had a better chance of watching it uninterrupted that way than later going by recent form. But dh was a bit oblivious to what I was doing, and for one reason or another I'm a bit lacking patience for repeatedly explaining myself to him right now, so I was narked by the time we got round to watching.

So I don't know if that was it, if it was too light outside, if I'm going to have to be really in the mood (or ovulating!) to really 'get' the film or what but I was pretty disappointed. I wasn't gripped, the tension didn't get to me, some of it seemed pretty cheesy, some of the effects looked lame... I don't know. Perhaps it just has too much to live up to now. When I read the book I see and hear the actors and some of the locations, so I basically have the film playing in my head, but more of it. And I really love the books, they don't fail to make my breath catch, my eyes start, my heart race and my lips lift at the corners in all the right place whenever I read them.

I'm glad I saw the film, I might not have got so sucked in to this wonderful alternate reality otherwise. But I don't know when I'll be able to watch it again now without this disappointment and sense of lacking.

One of those days...

well, evenings really...

Nice day at home-ed group, despite feeling rather 'oh do I have to?' about going, lol. But a bit of sunshine and good company is handy.

On getting home, I checked my emails for orders and enquiries and refreshed the online tracking for my inbound parcels, as I tend to obsessively do when I've got an order on the way. There are two boxes, with consecutive tracking numbers. One is currently in Sweden, the other in Finland. :-| A day after being despatched and they've already got separated. Last time, one package arrived as normal and the other almost a week later, in a very dishevilled state. Am I going to get a piece of cardboard with a tracking label on it this time?!

Nipped out to the supermarket for stuff for today and tomorrow with dd2. We got lamb burgers and potatoes for making into wedges/oven chips for tonight, chicken and mushroom slices for tomorrow's lunch, mince for chilli for tomorrow's tea and own-brand filled ice-cream cones for the fun of it, and loaded them into two shopping bags and took a bag each back to the car. I put my bag in the back seat and dd2 put hers in the middle front, where I dumped my handbag. Called at the petrol station, used the wrong side of the pumps again (are there really that many cars with the filler cap on the right side???) and went home. Got out of the car and took the bag from the middle seat. And not the one from the back. So I have lamb burgers and ice-creams, but no potatoes, mince or chicken and mushroom slices.

DOH!!!

Laying down the smack

It seems I've been a bit feisty in interwebbyland the past week or so. There's a troll at work on one forum, hopefully the cronies who she bleats to about how harsh and nasty I am (yeah I know this happens) will realise from this latest bout just what kind of damaged goods she is. I can be picked on. I can front up and deal and yeah I sometimes have a gob big enough to put my size 7s in. But when you start having a go at two of the nicest people that I know over something that is completely not your business and of so little consequence in the big scheme of things then you are showing yourself up as a twonk.

Such a shame that someone with such energy and doggedness couldn't find something more worthwhile to do with her time. Wouldn't be surprised if she watches The Jeremy Kyle Show too.

In other areas, there was a post looking for support in finding contacts who might model what I consider to be biologically appropriate parenting behaviour so that her daughter might not be quite so obsessed with putting her dolls in cots and giving them dummies. The only reply, before I read the post, was 'why are you so bothered?' and a long ramble about the lack of research proving any health benefits in co-sleeping or avoiding dummy use. I won't go into the 'she said/she said' nature of the ensuing exchange of emails but I would like to restate my point again.

Mammals cosleep. Mammal babies have their mother's milk, and sometimes that of other herd members (thinking about elephants here.) Apes carry their babies around until the babies stop wanting to be carried or until they can keep up with the family group as they move around their territory. These are the default behaviours, this is how it is, the baseline. If you want to convince me that not following any of these patterns is equivalent to or healthier than, you will have to provide me with the research. I do not think the same should be true in the opposite direction. Anyway, despite protestations to the contrary, the evidence is there already, I could outline it but that would take too long and isn't the point. And when it comes down to it, what we do as parents is down to what we believe, which really doesn't always have to be grounded in research. Sometimes it's just about what feels right.

And really both of these situations could so easily boil down to Thumper's rule: "If you cayn't say anythin' naice, don't say nuthin' at awl."

Very very belated holiday blog...

So the last saved draft of this was at the end of July. I am such a slack blogger that I've only just got round to finishing this! Oh well. I'm trying to get more of a pattern to my life so hopefully I'll be able to slot in a regular bit of blogging...

So, picking up as of 20somethingth of July...

We've been away, and back a couple of weeks now, but due to complications which I will most likely go into later, I've only just got round to blogging. We went up to Scotland, house sitting for Lucy while they went to France. So here's a bit of travelogue and pics...

I'll start with a bit of a rant (rant? moi? never...) about online train ticket booking. I'd thought about dh and I travelling separately, like we've done before to Filey, one of us driving and the other on the train with the children. SO... I looked up ticket prices on a couple of sites and discovered that there was an 'advance' ticket available. But it wasn't showing me the advance price when I selected more than 1 traveller at a time. Being Yorkshire born and bred ;-) I didn't want to have to pay 4 booking fees, also I didn't want to have to faff around with getting the seat reservations and being the proud owner of the Family Railcard from the special offer in the Daily Mail (must get the follow-up offer sorted out actually) I looked up the conditions on Advance tickets and Family and Friends Railcard discounts are applied. So I think 'right, I'll ring up and see what I can do' and of course by the time I ring up the advance tickets are all gone.

All because the online systems don't work in accordance with the ticketing rules. Twonks.

Anyway... so we drove up together on the Saturday (because £90 was too much extra) and actually it was really nice, even though we were late setting off due to the usual faffery with laundry and packing. Stopped at the services outside Durham as we'd checked it out and there was a Costa, lol. Ooo'd at the Angel of the North, waved at Ikea, drove into Alnwick seeking somewhere reasonable and family-friendly-looking to have tea and drove out again. Wandered off the A1 into Belford where we found The Belford which despite being a golf club (sorry, dh's prejudice is seeping through) was family-friendly without being patronising and reasonably priced. We were forewarned that they were busy and we might be waiting a while, and we were, but when the food came it was top quality and very well cooked (as in they'd done a good job, not a euphemism for burnt, lol.) Definitely recommended.

Got to Lucy's to find out that her 3 bedroom house woud fit at least 1 and a half of my 3-bed house in it. It's just as full of stuff though, lol.

So on to the pics :-) They're all taken on dh's or my phone because I hadn't, and still haven't, got round to getting my camera sorted out.

Taken at some point by someone who had been given my phone to take pictures with to keep them occupied in the car. It worked, for the most part. That and playing Worms on it...


The Forth Bridges. Thanks so much to Jayne (mummybuttons) for hunting online for a postcode for a Pizza Hut so that we could find a relatively child-friendly and reliable place for a very late tea after our trip into Edinburgh. We didn't take many photos as really we were there shopping. And bizarre (and saddening really) as it is that there are so many mobile phone shops, and 3 branches of Boots, on the same road, we didn't really feel the need to record it.



Hermit crabs at North Berwick



North Berwick is a lovely place and would be fab for a seaside holiday, nice little town centre, nice sandy beach...



with fab rockpools...

Oh phooey I thought I'd taken more photos of the rockpools. Oh well, this one gives you an idea...



and this nifty man-made lagoon thingummy...



The rockpools were well populated with hermit crabs, fish and shrimps, which was cool. We picked a really nice day to go and the two ice-cream vans by the beach were doing well, the bigger, flasher 'whippy' van got more trade than the small, old, less ornate local icecream van (M Luca of Musselbrough) so I figured I'd give the local dairy some trade, it was really nice. Not quite a Dixon's Milk Ice but still good. The one thing I was surprised I didn't find was the kind of beach tat shop that Filey has several of, with flipflops and buckets and spades and hats and kites and cheap, naff sunglasses and bats and balls and all that, I ended up buying buckets and spades from the RNLI shop, which is fine of course, it's a very good cause and I'm happy to support them, but there wasn't much choice and it's not the same. But then we were there on a beautiful day in the middle of the first week of Scottish schools' Summer holidays and it was surprisingly not-busy so maybe there just isn't the trade to sustain it. But then where do people go? Were they all abroad? Or just not gone to the beach that day?

East Link Family Park was fun (and sunny, am glad all mine are old enough now to say 'you stay here' to one and 'you watch these' to another, lol, while I dash back to the car for hats and suncream...) Lots and lots of photos on flickr of this so I'll just post a couple here:





What else did we do while we were away? We mooched round the local shops in Dunbar, which apparently has the most sunshine hours in the UK. It lived up to it that week, we did get rained on but not as much as the rest of the country I think! There's a PYO strawberries place (with the strawbs in growbags on stilts, very odd but much easier on the back!) and a smokehouse just off the A1 outside Dunbar so we went there, oh and we had locally-caught langoustines bought in Dunbar for tea one day. When Lucy's cooker decided to cook them for us. On the Saturday, before coming home on Sunday, we drove to Bamburgh to look at the castle (and found a nice little deli, impressive range for such a tiny shop!) then to Lindisfarne for the fun of driving over the causeway and back, though it was too early to watch the tide rise over it. And then to Berwick-upon-Tweed where we got totally soaked and didn't find a replacement for dd2's worn-out-at-the-sleeve-cuffs zip-up hoodie but still felt like we'd had a good day.

Home the next day via Alnwick to look at the castle, where, in case there was anyone who wasn't aware, some scenes in the early Harry Potter films were filmed.




From there we went straight home apart from calling at Durham services again, for Costa and a 'win every time' £1 teddypicker machine that dd3 had been promised a go on if we didn't find another while we were away. Which we didn't.

Never did get round to sorting out that half price railcard offer.