Gardening is complete!

Seeing as my polishing mops have neglected to arrive, my jewellery polishing will have to be postponed til Sunday now. Stupid Royal Mail!!

But still, it means I have another free day to do other things that need doing. I have taken my window box off my shed, fixed it, and reattached it. I can now put my plants actually in the window box. Hurray!!

Now, seeing as it's only dinner time, I will embark upon my many other tasks that i need to do. My guinea pig desperately needs trimming, so I think that will be one of my next jobs. She really doesn't like it, but it's necessary to stop her becoming a matted ball. Fun times!

*EDIT*

My guinea pig is not a happy guinea pig. Well, she will be for the lack of matted hair near her bum, but she wasn't pleased with the whole trimming process.

Admittedly, she does look cuter like this

And she seems to be enjoying the camera attention, and showing off the lovely fur that isn't all matted.

But as you can see here:

There is nothing but hate in that beady eye.

Look at the pounds of fur she's lost!

I mean, she's very good and doesn't bite me or anything, but she squeaks and jumps about so i know she's not having the best time. But she will feel better not having to lug all that damp hair about. Though she might feel chilly for a bit. Poor little blighter. Who's idea was it to breed a rodent with unmanagably long hair that gets dirty within about four seconds? Guinea pig show people, that's who. Mad people that have nothing better to do than put guinea pigs in rollers and brush them endlessly. Some folk.

Gardening According to Pigeon

I don't know a great deal about gardening. I've managed to grow a few sunflowers in my time, and planted some seeds in my mother's rockery when i was little which then promptly took over the entire patch, but that's about as far as my expertise goes. So when i decided to embark upon planting my window box on my shed, i can't say i had great expectations. Massive hopes and excitement, but not expectations. Still, I poddled off to B&Q, to see what took my fancy.

I came away with a rather nice selection of evergreens, heathers and a tray of violas. This, added to the mass of bulbs i bought from Wilkinsons the other week, i was good to go.

First, I had to locate the tubs that fit into my window box that my mum had planted up a few years ago. They were suitably overgrown and spider infested.

Please don't be alarmed by the rather disturbing looking man sat on the bench. It's only Arthur. I am mostly creeped out by him since my mum brought him from my Grandad's garden, but seeing as he hasn't as yet jumped off the bench and hidden behind something and jumped out to scare me, I am slowly demoting him from ''creepy-ass'' to just ''odd''. I think I'll end up inheriting him at some point.

Anyway, after the trays had been purged of their weed-esque contents, i gave them a rinse with the new ultra-slick hose gun. They aren't sparkly clean, but as I'm just going to dump more dirt in them, I didn't feel it was a sensible use of my time and resources to go mad with the cleaning.

Then i did a bit of setting out and the briefest amount of thinking about where things would go.

Then came the hard part. Retrieving the bag of compost from a years worth of grime and spider encrustation. I fended off at least four spiders and a harvestman (weird spider that is technically all legs) before getting my mum to pull the bag out.

I then had the unenviable job of getting close enough to the spider infested bag to cut open the top and extract the compost. Scary times, but eventually I emerged triumphant....

With a shiny red bucket full of dirt. I am commander of all things peaty!

I then set about putting my plants in, randomly putting bulbs in along the way. Come spring i should have snowdrops, crocuses (croci?), grape hyacinth, bluebells, dark purple tulips, some poofy blue things and probably something else i can't remember. Seeing as i have no idea when it comes to gardening, i don't know whether I've spaced them correctly or anything, I've just bunged a load in and hope they grow.

Check out my mini conifer! Its a lemon scented....something or other. Apparently they grow to about 30ft, but if i keep trimming it, I'm sure i can keep it mini. I haven't named him yet, but he shall come in very handy as an exterior Krimble tree.

And there it is.

I know it doesn't look much at the moment, but the little evergreen bushes will grow, and in spring all the bulbs will come up, and i plan on putting some daisies in at some point. I thought the tiny evergreen shrub in the top right corner was the cutest little plant ever. My mum thought i was barmy, but sometimes you have to feel these things in order to tend to them properly.

I also bought some rosemary, as i do like it on potatoes. I put it in a nice square pot, with more bulbs hidden underneath.

I also had some heathers left over, so I made a heather tub, with a couple of bonus bulbs in.

I also discovered, while creating my flowery tubs of magic, that i had also succeeded in creating quite a large mess.

I did buy some gardening gloves, as you can see, but they are suspiciously clean because after initially handling the spidery compost bag, i quickly dispensed with them and just plunged my hands into the dirt. Plus side is that now my hands smell of rosemary. Downside is that now I need industrial cleaner to get the stuff out from under my nails.

Tomorrow, hopefully my polishing mops will come and i can finish my jewellery, but i also need to fix my window box so i can put my tubs in, and it will all be glorious. At the moment it is falling off my shed cuz the people who built it only nailed it in, so I'll need to screw it on properly, then the magic can be realised. Woo! After about four years of having the shed and windowbox, I'm finally putting something in it! Huzzah!

Good Effort, Could Do Better

Well, so much for my post-a-day attempt. Though having said that, 11 posts this month is a vast improvement on last month. I think i shall award myself a tick.

That's nice.

I had a nice week sans parents, not counting going to work. Had some lovely relaxing evenings, apart from when my brother randomly decided to come home, even though he has moved out. Pain in the arse. Went to a par-tay on Saturday night, which mostly involved drinking and talking rubbish while watching various televisual programmes. Oooh, and speaking of televisual programmes, Ross Noble is on tonight, with a series of him touring round Australia. If it's half as good as his DVD extras, it should be a treat! And the final series of Supernatural is finally out on DVD!! I missed the last few episodes, so now i can finally find out whether they stopped the Apocalypse! I'm guessing yes, unless it had one hell of a twist where the world did actually end. But probably not. Oh Dean, lovely Dean, I have missed you.

Have spent today powering through my Valentine jewellery. I've made all the pieces, I just have to polish them up and make the stoppers for the poison rings. I would still be doing it now, but when i got out my polishing mop tin, i noticed that i only had two calico polishing mops left, and i need about one per item, and I've got ten things to polish, so I've come in, ordered some off the net, and settled down for a quick blog.

Got quite a bit to do these next few days. Got to polish up the jewellery, make J a ring, possibly make my mum some earrings, tax my car, plant my window box, finish my Halloween costume, plan out some paintings, plus the various day to day things of tidying, washing clothes, cleaning out piggies and so on so forth. When did my life become so packed with things to do? I think it's cuz I'm a creative type, i always have stuff to do that isn't going to work and household chores. I remember when all i had to do what i got home from school was watch The Simpsons and perhaps go to my friends house. Now it's all crept up on me, and if i do get a spare minute, I'm always thinking ''What could i be doing that's more productive?''. Not that I would then go and do it, but it would be nice to have guilt free relaxing!

Going to go and write tomorrow's to do list. Yay!

A boring post, to counteract any excitement you are feeling

I know it's been nearly a week since my last post, but i am terribly busy and important. Had things to do, and some stuff, and more things..... jam packed, my schedule is! Well, most of the time it has been taken up with going to work, eating, indulging in passive aggressive road rage and considering tidying up, but still, it leaves little time for bloggage.

I'm going well on the jewellery making, though i still need to get a piece finished by the end of the month. Might have to have a sneaky day off work and really knuckle down. You see, my rents have gone away for the week, so this week will be a week of bliss with J coming round in the evenings, so there will be scant time for jewellery making and/or blogging.

Plus i really don't have much to blog about, as it's been a pretty standard week. So here i am, blogging about not blogging. Maybe something slightly more interesing will happen next week.

We can but hope, people!

Redundant Garments - A New Edition

Yes, well, we've all wondered at the point of the trouser skirt, and pondered just what the point of a sleeveless woolly jumper is, but I have noticed a new trend of pointless garment clogging up the racks of all of the women's clothes shops (and don't get me started on the annoying cloneyness of women's clothes shops. Doesn't matter what name is above the door, they all have the same stuff). That trend is the ''Boyfriend Shirt''.

Basically, it is a baggy, unflattering shirt, with short sleeves with fake roll ups, made to look like you are just casually wearing your boyfriend's shirt. Let me start with the crippling tragicness of that concept. You want to wear your boyfriend's shirt but find yourself sans boyfriend? Well just buy your own shirt and pretend you have casually borrowed it from your non-existent boyfriend (or even worse, your imaginary boyfriend. He's probably called Travis and is rugged and sensitive at the same time.) Why stop at shirts? Why not buy those 'boyfriend cut' jeans and step out imagining you look like you have cutely borrowed your boyfriend's clothes, whereas in fact you look like a lesbian? Or why not buy a hooker so you can walk in on her and your fake boyfriend and have an intense imaginary break up. It's a slippery slope.

But let's ignore the extreme tragicness of buying such an item, and focus on the pointlessness, shall we? Why not just buy a man's shirt, and then wear it with the sleeves rolled up? Or, for full authenticity, JUST BORROW ONE OF YOUR BOYFRIEND'S SHIRTS?? The ''Boyfriend shirt'' that they are selling in these shops is actually LESS useful than a normal shirt, as the sleeves will not roll down when you feel a bit chilly. The rolled up look is just a lie! Plus they are producing them with very girly patterns and designs, which means although they are supposed to look like you have worn your boyfriend's shirt, everyone will see it for the lie that it is because no self respecting man would every buy a purple tartan shirt with a silver thread trim. At least make them in masculine designs to keep up the farce.

But i suppose it fits with the fashion designer mentality. They have pointless hair cuts and have pointless little dogs and design their clothes for pointless people like Paris Hilton, so why not make actual pointless clothes? I think I've made my point.

Poor Frank

Another day, another doddering old idiot wrecking my car. Seriously, do we have to have them culled when they reach a certain age?

You may think I'm being harsh, but i do have my reasons.

I was at work on Saturday, when a woman comes into the shop wanting to know if anyone had a little red car. I said that i had. Apparently what had happened was that a stupid old woman on a mobility scooter had come barrelling down the pavement, narrowly missed her and then crashed into my front bumper and then got wedged underneath. Bearing in mind that she was on the PAVEMENT and my car was STATIONARY on the ROAD, she must have been going too fast. Then after getting her scooter wedged under my bumper and gouging massive scrapes out of the paintwork, a van with four men in it stop to 'help'. Without trying to find out whose car it was, they lift it up, pull out the scooter (bending my bumper at the same time), and send the dithering old twat on her way, before similarly scarpering. If it weren't for the woman that she nearly hit going round knocking on doors trying to find who owned the car, I wouldn't have known til i went to go home and found my bumper fucked up. Clearly if she can't control it and won't take responsibility for what she damages, she shouldn't have the scooter. They don't have insurance or anything, they just blunder about regardless. And if that means that she can't get out and about, well, thats probably for the best if thats what she is going to do while she's out. NowI'm stuck with the inconvenience of getting it sorted and the bill of getting it sorted.

To add insult to injury, she went up the road past the neighbouring shop, and as the woman that runs it came out, she said ''It was that car that got me!'', like it leaped onto the pavement and forced her to break my bumper. STUPID. OLD. WOMAN.

Add to that the fact that my first Micra was written off by a confused old man that shouldn't have even been allowed to drive and pulled out in front of me, and you see my reasons why i think that old people shouldn't be allowed to drive ANYTHING. If they can't get up from a chair without three hours, a stick and a helper or can't step off the curb without falling over and breaking their hip, then I very much doubt they have the ability, reaction speed or strength to control any sort of vehicle.

Plus, the four blokes in the van probably drove off merrily, thinking they had done a good deed for the day, not stopping to think about the car they wrenched the bumper off. The thought of them with their stupid grubby mitts touching my car and lifting it up makes me want to hit them. Tossers.

OK, i think it's time i had a little time out in the corner, I'm on the verge of a tantrum.

More Midnight Battles

Well, did you all have an exciting time at 9.09am, on 09-09-09? I bet you did. There was a brief moment that was magical and special as the cosmos aligned, and then it ticked over to ten past, and the world seemed a little less special. Still a bit special, cuz its 09-09-09, but not AS special.

I've just got off my dinner break, and I could just curl up and fall asleep under my desk. We had a bit of rogue sunshine and no wind, so as i sat outside on the bench in the garden, it was toasty warm and sunny. Now I'm full and warm, and my little eyes want to close. Well, as full as i can be on my salad that i had for dinner. I feel a bit bloated and technically 'full', but its not what I'd call the satisfied feeling that you get after a good hearty meal. But I'll have to get used to it, its the way its going to be from now on.

I'm also pretty tired because it was another sleepless night due to the Great English Insect Invasion. This time it was a moth. I'm not actually scared of moths. In fact, with a couple of drinks inside me i have been known to capture one in my bare hands and spirit it away outside. I don't like them fluttering round my face, but i was quite happy to sleep in the room without feeling the need to get rid of it. They aren't exactly going to cause much trouble with their paper like wings and their proboscis. So I settled down to sleep with the moth happily bumbling around on the ceiling. The problem was, I am still in a jumpy spider mood, so as i was dropping off and my grip on reality started to drift away, the flutterings of the moth transformed into the scrabblings of a spider under my bed. Quite a few times I snapped into a semi-consciousness, where i knew i was awake, but i still believed my dreams to be real. So i was checking under my bed, convinced there was a spider under there, and at one point, i thought that a giant one was in my wardrobe because ''that's where they kept them and that's what happened when there were moths.''. Very odd and vague dream. So eventually i had to get rid of the moth, not because it was a moth, but because it was playing havoc with my paranoia with its relentless buffeting of the ceiling. I was a massive one too, so it was making quite a racket. I tried to capture it under a glass, but it was too high and fluttery, and i was still jumpy. So i resorted to spraying it with an aerosol. Sure Anti-perspirant, to be precise. All that did was seem to make it panic and spaz about even more erratically. Eventually, it disappeared somewhere, and didn't reappear, and i could get back to my now-bound-to-be disjointed and broken sleep. This morning I found in sleeping in a pile of clothes, so i scooped it up and put it out of the window to beeee freee. See how kind i am when it doesn't sneak about then jump out on me??

Off to J's tonight to watch some TV, and relax before doing three days at the shop. Probably should do some work now. Yes. Definitely should do that.