One Year On

So, I’ve had this blog for a year now, pretty much. I began in September 2007 with the vague plan that I felt like chattering into this void called the internet, and that if anybody felt like reading along then so much the better.

It’s been fun. I have enjoyed casting words into the void. I get the appeal of this blogging phenomenon. But a year later, I’ve decided to retire gracefully. There are a few reasons why. I find the concept that anybody I know could be reading what I write here to be quite stifling. It’s one thing to chatter away about your life to strangers, but quite another to chatter only about things you wouldn’t mind your 94-year-old Grandad reading (he is disturbingly internet-savvy for a nonagenarian), or your Mum (hi Mum!) or your boss. 

And I also find that the busier I get, the harder it is to find time to write the requisite three worthwhile posts a week. But when I’m not busy, I don’t have anything to write three posts about. It’s a perplexing problem, and I salute those of you out there who have managed to overcome it.

Ultimately though, what it comes down to is that this just isn’t fun anymore. I started out loving the freedom to just rabbit on about whatever was in my head, but over the last few months, blogging has started to feel less like an outlet and more like an obligation.

If you care to read what I’m writing, or more accurately, if you care about my thoughts on the latest BBC reality-TV abomination, I’ll still be reviewing British telly in my regularly scheduled spot over on Pop Vultures. And I hope to expand the work I do for Marcia over there in the next six months or so.

And more importantly, I’ll still be reading all of your blogs as avidly as ever.

For those of you who came along for the year, and for those of you who dropped in occasionally, and even for those of you who ended up here accidentally after Googling ‘blue gym knickers’ (STILL generating a terrifying average 50 hits a day people), I thank you. I have loved having your company and getting to know you.

But it’s time to go.

Cheesy Photo Montage

J and I get married three months today. I vacillate between feeling wildly excited and utterly terrified. I’m not terrified of marriage, you understand. It’s not life-long commitment worries. It’s more the worry that the florist will screw up the table centrepieces, or the DJ won’t turn up. You know, the truly scary stuff.

And, in a totally different vein. I made a cheesy photo montage! I know, I know, how ridiculously vain of me. I’m sorry. And you can feel free to ignore me entirely. The other night I was looking through photos of the last four years and it occurred to me that J and I have worn a truly glorious selection of utterly ridiculous outfits over the years. I mean, there are some spectacularly unfortunate clothes in here. And they really needed collecting together for posterity. But then I had to intersperse them with some nicer pictures too, just, you know, for balance. And when I put everything together, I realised how much fun we’ve had over the years, how gleeful we look, even when wearing those hideous full-body lifejackets for whale watching. And lo, a cheesy photo montage was born.

Lizzie and John – 4 Years of Glee

Random Roundup

Five things make a post…

1) After several weeks of being undecided, I’ve made up my mind: I like my new job. Yes telecoms is and always will be relentlessly dull. But I’m starting to find my niche, and I’m always happy when I feel useful. Also, they have a tradition known only as ‘pizza fridays’, of which I very much approve.

2) Molly’s blood tests came back positive for hyperthyroidism. She has a small tumor on one of her thyroid glands. (Cats have two thyroid glands!) The tumor is benign, but chucking out lots of extra thyroxine, which is speeding up her metabolism and causing her to be both skinny and constantly freaked out. Poor little stressy furrball. So, she’s on pills for two weeks to reduce the symptoms, after which she has to have surgery to remove the tumor. And then she will be all better. And I will be hitting up the pet insurance people for a big payout.

3) RSVPs are starting to come back for our wedding! (OMG only 96 DAYS TO GO.) This pleases me enormously, because it means I get to make entries on my Spreadsheet of Unusual Dietary Requirements. Honestly, you never met a bunch of people with more varied eating habits than our wedding guest list. Not only vegetarians, but a pescatarian (I had to look that one up) and my bridesmaid Liz, who describes herself as a ‘flexitarian’, which basically means she’s veggie but she eats salami because it’s too nice not to eat. Also one woman just wrote ‘I am pregnant’, which is nice for her, but not very helpful. So what? Do we need to cater to pregnancy cravings or are you just asking us not to serve shellfish? Anyway, I am just putting it all on my Spreadsheet of Unusual Dietary Requirements and giving it to the hotel for them to deal with.

4) We watched the Olympic closing ceremony yesterday. I was enormously pleased that during the ‘handover to London’ segment with the red London bus, the bus stop they used was a real London bus stop. That’s what they actually look like! Little details like that always delight me. J was very disappointed that when Leona Lewis sang Whole Lotta Love with Jimmy Page, she omitted the lines ‘I’m gonna give you every inch of my love’ and ‘I wanna be your backdoor man’.

5) We went for a picnic this afternoon in Richmond Park, because it is a bank holiday Monday, and going for a picnic is what one does. It was cold and windy and we took umbrellas just in case, but we had a lovely time anyway, and scoffed lots of cheese.

That’s it! I am going to go and have a nap before the pub quiz. Hurrah for long weekends!

Molly Update

The only thing that stops Molly crying when she’s in the cat box is the sound of my voice. Which is sweet and flattering, but likely to make people think I’m a crazy lady. This evening I walked through our neighbourhood, the cat box under my arm, muttering multiplication tables through the grille to a panicking cat. It was all I could think of! I was actually quite proud of myself though. I got as far as seven sevens before I had to pause and count in my head. And Molly was (relatively) placated.

So, the vet thinks that feline hyperthyroidism is at the root of all Molly’s troubles. But, before a firm diagnosis can be made we have to get a urine sample and some blood tests.

Hahahahahaha. I know, right? A urine sample from a cat? From a cat who pees exclusively outdoors and in areas of the garden unknown to me? SIMPLE! I had visions of having to follow Molly around for a day with a plastic cup on a stick, so that I could stick it under her any time she looked kind of pee-y.

But the pee issue pales in comparison to the blood test issue. Because Molly can’t eat anything for eight hours before the sample is taken. This is the cat who wakes me up by scratching my closed eyelids when she wants her breakfast. AT FIVE IN THE MORNING. Saying that Molly will not take kindly to no breakfast is to flirt with the very extremes of understatement. SHE MIGHT ACTUALLY LITERALLY SCRATCH MY EYES OUT.

So, the bad news is: No breakfast for Molly tomorrow. We’re taking her to the vet at 8.30am, leaving her there all day for tests, and picking her up in the evening. The good news is, the vet said she’d take care of gathering the urine sample while Molly was with her. So, well, that’s one less thing. BUT OH HOLY CRAP there is not going to be any sleeping going on in this flat after 5am tomorrow. And I can only imagine the wailing that will be unleashed when we have the temerity to feed Milly, while starving Molly. STARVING HER! OH THE HUMANITY FELINITY! It will not be pretty.

But she is going to be OK. This condition is eminently treatable. Expensive (but of course) and a pain in the arse (pills, oh my God we have to give her pills – even the VET can’t get Molly to take pills), but ultimately treatable. So thank goodness for that.

Poorly Pet

I am taking Molly to the vet this evening. She has gone from being a slightly over-weight cat to suddenly so skinny that you can feel all her bones when you stroke her. This has happened very rapidly, just over the last month, and since we noticed it we’ve been feeding her a lot more – basically whenever she asked for food – but she’s still getting skinnier. I am concerned.

The only reason we’ve waited a month to take action is that apart from the sudden skinniness she seems fine – glossy coat, bright eyes, eating and sleeping normally. But then in the last week she has started to act a lot more agitated. She never seems to relax anymore, but flops around the flat looking despondent and gloomy. And, although she’s always woken me up at the crack of dawn demanding breakfast, she has recently got into the habit of coming back five minutes after being fed, and waking me up again with yowls and nudges. But when I walk back into the kitchen with her, there’s still food in her bowl, and I can’t imagine what else she could want. She has food, she has water, she has easy access to toilet facilities via the cat-flap, and she is regularly played with and stroked. She’s a cat – what else is there? WHY ARE YOU STILL MIAOWING AT ME? It is baffling.

So, yep, vet for Molly tonight. She is going to HATE me. I really hope it is something easily fixable, like we just need to change what we feed her or something. Worry worry worry.

A Very Footy Day Out

Yesterday J and I went on a 400-mile round trip to see Manchester United play their opening game of the season at Old Trafford. J has been a Man U fan since he was four. I grew up in Yorkshire, where you were expected to spit whenever you heard the name Manchester United. When we first got together, even though I’ve never really cared about football, the fact that J was a Man U fan was a really difficult mental block for me. It felt so WRONG to even be friends with such a creature. Anyway, I am over it now.

The first thing we had to do was set the automatic cat-feeders so that the little furry bastards would get their dinner on time. We call these the robo-Cathys, because before we had them we used to get J’s ex-wife Cathy to come over and feed the cats while we were away. But now we’ve replaced her with a simple gadget.

I tell Molly they’re like the Terminator. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are FED. She is not amused.

And then we hit the road.

(J is actually in the car, I am just a rubbish photographer, and he was rushing me.)

And before long, we stopped at the motorway services,

For snacks!

(Also, hello, my feet!)

Hula-Hoop silliness ensued…

Where are we going? Oh, THE NORTH.

It rains a lot in THE NORTH.

To distract ourselves from the horrid weather, we put Radio 4 on, where we found a documentary, I kid you not, about different varieties of strawberries. For some reason we found this hysterical. I mean, who knew there was so much information out there about strawberries! There are BREEDS of them. Cue hilarity:

When we got to Manchester, we stopped for a healthy and nutritionally-balanced lunch.

Om nom nom.

Nom nom…

And then we went and parked the car, and put our strips on.

It was raining really heavily as we walked to the stadium.

I took a very hasty and damp photo of J outside the stadium which he and fellow fans laughably refer to as ‘The Theatre of Dreams’. He does not thank me for pointing out that that would only be true if you only dreamed of football matches. It’s not like it’s ever a stadium of people embarrassed to discover they have come to school in their underwear, or you know, clowns on unicycles, or anything.

I was delighted when we got to our seats to discover that we hadn’t missed the warm-up. My favourite part of going to the football with J is watching grown men skip together in a circle. It’s a joy.

And then they kicked off.

It was, unfortunately, a very dull match. Newcastle scored, Man U equalised, and then nothing else happened for a really long time. BORING. I kept myself amused listening to the new chants the fans had made up over the summer, almost all of which were extremely sweary.

On the way out, we stopped to admire a police horse.

And then we walked back to the car to begin the long trip home. We stopped at another motorway service station for dinner. (KFC this time.)

And, many hours later, got home to two grouchy cats, and two successfully-deployed robo-Cathys.

J gave Milly a little celebratory pick-up. She wasn’t pleased.

And then we went to bed.

Post Office Woe

The thing I dislike the most about my new job is the lack of a good post office nearby. It sounds like a stupid thing to say, but I like having a post office I can rely on. Near my old job there was a really big, efficient one where everything ran smoothly and nothing ever went astray.

The post office nearest my new office has been closed down, for reasons unknown. This being the sort of area which is populated by lots of yummy mummies with time on their hands, there is all sorts of protesting of the ’save our post office’ variety going on. Mostly this takes the form of politely-worded posters in shop windows. Yummy mummies aren’t the type to protest loudly or messily, or in any way that might interfere with their morning coffee routines.

So, no nearby post office. Which is a big pain, because I send a lot of stuff abroad. I have junk food exchanges going on with various Americans (how else can I keep myself well-stocked with Goldfish Crackers?) and I need somewhere to dispatch my reciprocal boxes of Dairy Milk and HobNobs.

Also, on Monday, I had wedding invitations to send to parts foreign. So I headed off on my lunch break to walk to the much-further-away post office that hadn’t closed down. When I arrived, the man behind the counter resolutely ignored me for a good five minutes. I was the only customer, and I stood there gawping at him through the glass as he shuffled around putting packages into mail sacks, and then taking them out again at random, stamping bits of paper, putting things into drawers, and generally doing whatever he could to avoid making eye contact with me.

Eventually, I overcame my inner restrained-Brit, and said ‘Excuse me, can you serve me please?’
The man squinted at me, and muttered ‘I am performing a duty.’
And, when he spoke, I was suddenly overwhelmed with waves, waves, of whiskey fumes from his breath. He was completely pissed! At lunchtime on a Monday while in sole charge of a post office!

Disgusted, I marched out of there clutching my un-mailed wedding invitations. I am so upset! All I want is a nice reliable soberly-staffed post office! Why is that too much to ask?

Patchwork Renaissance

Years ago, I taught myself how to make patchwork, based on a few scraps of a patchwork quilt that my Grandma had been working on when she died. She patchworked using the English method, where you tack the fabric onto cardboard templates, sew the pieces into place, and then take the cardboard out. Until recently I thought that was how all patchwork was made, but apparently it’s quite an unusual technique.

Anyway, I’ve been feeling in the mood for a new project. I like having something to do with my hands in front of the TV, or something to do not in front of the TV, when J is monopolising it playing on the Playstation. So I decided to have another bash at patchworking.

It’s an ambitious project. I’m trying to make a quilt for our spare bed, and I don’t have a sewing machine, so it all has to be done by hand. Patchworking and quilting a double-bed-sized piece of work is a huge undertaking – we’re talking at least a year’s worth of idle hands in front of the telly. But I’m excited to give it a try.

I’m using the same technique my Grandma used – the English method – and cannibalising lots of old postcards and birthday cards in the process. And, since starting on Saturday afternoon, this is how far I’ve got:

I have a long, long way to go. But I don’t hate it yet. So there’s hope.

Work and Wedding Nonsense

My favourite thing about my new job:

This is what I get to wear to work every day.

My least favourite thing about my new job:

ADSL, MPLS, WAN, LAN, LLU DSL, MBPS…

What does it all mean? And more importantly, how am I ever going to bring myself to care? Woe.

In other, weddingy news, I appear to have arranged everything. This is freaking me out something chronic, because I keep panicking that I have forgotten some major aspect of wedding planning, and two days before the big day somebody will say to me something like ‘oh, what are you doing for X?’ and I will be all, ‘X! X? I FORGOT ALL ABOUT X!’

As Teabelly so accurately summed it up the other day, ‘you’re worrying about the fact that you have nothing left to worry about.’ Yes, exactly. Welcome to my brain.

Not long now though, only 113 days to go! Holy CRAP. That is not a lot of days. In between worrying that I have forgotten all about some entirely essential wedding day item, I am also having small freakouts that OMG I am getting married FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE! (And have I slept with enough men? Maybe not. This whole fidelity-until-you-die thing is MINDBLOWING.)

So it’s lucky really, that I have the gentling influence of ADSL, MPLS, WAN, LAN, LLU DSL, and MBPS to keep me grounded. Nothing calms the mind like trying to fathom what on earth telecoms acronyms stand for.

Spoddery and Snottery

Hello internet! I am not dead! I have merely been nursing an evil cold of doom, and producing epic amounts of snot. It hasn’t been pretty. But the cold is finally on the wane now, apart from a hacking cough that makes me sound like a twenty-a-day smoker. 

This weekend, as well as establishing myself as a one-woman mucus factory, I plumbed new depths of nerdiness over the release of the new X Files movie. I went to see it on Friday with the saintly Teabelly, who tolerated my feverish fangirly ramblings and runny nose like only a true friend would. And then I went to see the movie again on Sunday evening with a gaggle (what is the appropriate collective noun here? A flail, perhaps?) of X Files fans from all over Europe, who had gathered in London specifically to torment cinema-goers across the capital with barely-contained squee.

It was lots of fun, sitting in a darkened theatre with twenty other similarly-enchanted fans, although I did feel bad for the other people in the cinema for all the shrieking at the good parts. I will go again, I think, partly because I want to take it in one last time before waiting the inevitable six months for the DVD release. But also just because J derives so much satisfaction from teasing me about my deep and abiding spoddery, and I wouldn’t want to deprive him.

So, that has been my weekend. Nineties-throwback fangirling and snot. Lots and lots of snot. Good times!