After a long day of working, and then panicking because I realized the supermarket was closing early, and I had no food in my cupboards after being away for a week with my family, I am ready to relax and rest up.
My plans for the next few hours are to finish my ironing, have a shower and put on some cosy pyjamas and then put earplugs in my ears so that I can block out the noise of fireworks and have an early night’s sleep. I have big plans for tomorrow so I need my sleep tonight.
You may be one of the many who are heading out to a party tonight, or maybe you are opting for a more peaceful and sedate way of saying Sayonara Monday 2018, Bienvenue Tuesday 2019.
However, I am a party girl and so I could not resist dropping by this party! Did you know you are invited too? Head on over and say hello and remember to include a link to your blog or a favourite post. Don’t be shy. It is a wonderful way to meet new bloggers (and so far it’s been like visiting a party with complete strangers – a bunch of bloggers who I have never come across before are being super friendly).
https://phoebemd.com/2018/12/31/lets-have-a-blog-party/
If you are opting for a cosy evening and a great sleep before you face January 2019 – why not say hello at this blogging party?
Even more fun than a Minion’s party! Well…maybe I am exaggerating. What could be more fun than a Minion’s party?
I guess I am a Day Pirate on the whole.
Being allowed to choose what to have for my own dinner – although to be fair once I was ten years old I started cooking dinner for me and my sisters (Mum had started work when Milly, the youngest started school).
A big gang of us going out to play together, climbing trees and having races and playing hide and seek in the woods.
I can cope with a certain matter of clutter. I keep things very clean though and once a week I have a really good tidy and put everything back where it should be. Then I can cope with things being out of place until the following week when I do the big tidy up again.
Why is blue not an option? I am guessing because so many of us would choose blue? Well, if I can’t choose blue, I suppose I would choose green…bluey green especially. Everything at that end of the rainbow.
I was six years old when I became a vegetarian.
I don’t mind it. I have a silk knit twinset. It is so pretty. It has a gorgeous scent to it. More so than the feel of it, I like the scent especially after you clean silk with special silk cleaning products.
There are two gifts that came into my mind, but both of the givers know about this blogsite, so I am reluctant to mention them as I don’t want to hurt the givers! I was quite taken aback by the bizarre gifts they gave me. I didn’t keep them.
Not so literally nutty, but perhaps a bit of an odd gift was to a guy who I met when I was 17. I had a brief romance with him years later and then some time after that he moved to the town I was living in, and then after a few months of following me round like a lost puppy, asked me to marry him. Now when I first met him, he used to have panic attacks and had some other difficulties with interacting socially. I believe he had ADHD, but I am not sure. He was diagnosed with something, and was prescribed some kind of medication to try to help him with his concentration. He was phwwwwoarrrh kind of gorgeous. He was always tanned because he loved the outdoors. He knew everything about nature, birds, animals, trees, plants, rock formations. He only had one of his nuts, if you catch my meaning. He was always losing things – his wallet, his keys, his bosses keys for work, he lost a brand new camera on a train – never got it back of course.
When I first knew him he was a bit shy and awkward around girls. We teased him ruthlessly. He admitted he had never kissed anyone. I would have been more than happy to help him out in that regard, but instead I travelled all the way to Blackpool on a Saturday afternoon to buy him a “Kiss Me Quick” hat. (I also had a very close friendship which brewed into a courtship with my teenage sweetheart James, so kissing other boys was not on the cards.)
I have been trying to guess what the theme would be for Helen Vahdati’s SONG-LYRIC-SUNDAY. However, all my guesses were wrong!
I already know he is going to be an abysmal penpal – I made him promise that at least once every six months he will send me a line to let me know he is alive! But in truth, I am longing to hear from him more often. Longing! Longing to hear a little about his time with his parents and siblings during the holidays, his move back into his house – which he will have to share with some of his tenants – and his new job.
I also want to know about how he his spending his Australian summer. Is he out walking along the Sturt Gorge? Is he taking photographs? Will he send me some pictures so I can picture him?
Is he meeting pretty women and inviting them out for a drink? Has he heard from other friends in England as often or more often as he is hearing from me? Does he have a car yet? Did he buy crystal for his sister as a Christmas gift? Did she give him cheese?
I have also been asked by my ex if I will meet him for lunch after the holidays (a short and sweet relationship that did not work because he lives for money and all it buys and I don’t…he only liked me for physical reasons and I was not happy, he made me very uncomfortable actually). I think I might go for lunch with him, because I know nothing is going to stir up any feelings for him within me. He is the polar opposite of the kind of man who makes me feel nice inside. But he has always been fairly good with practical advice. He has a very sharp mind.
But I don’t want to be a burden to him – ever. That’s one of the reasons why I didn’t beg him to stay. Because I would have become a burden to him with my head injuries.
After five years of belonging to a man I adored, between the ages of nineteen and twenty-four – we had peacefully decided to bring the romance part of our friendship to an end – we both had good reasons and felt right about the decision. We have remained friends ever since. I will tell you about my teenage sweetheart sometime. His name was James, everyone called him Jamie as a child. He struggled to say that and told everyone his name was Jammy. So that’s the name that stuck. My teenage sweetheart was called Jammy.
He was the man that I should never have got together with, but when two teenagers are like best friends, well…I don’t believe in platonic friendships. Hormones distort everything. Of course we were going to find our familiarity after a couple of years of close friendship and constant communication turned to attraction. In a way I am glad he was the one who I was besotted with during the bloom of my youth. He was safe, smart, lovely and wholesome. But something changed his personality and emotionally we became like chalk and cheese. I don’t mean that to sound critical. But there were differences that meant we could not continue our romantic relationship. That is an entirely different story…perhaps I will write that novel one day…all about my first love and what a friend he has been to me throughout my life.
card to play in my interactions with men. I belonged to another man. What a protection. I have realized that already being in a relationship makes life immensely more simple when you are interacting with other grown men. It means it’s easier to engage is other human interaction whether it be professional or social or any other area of life.
There are of course some men who don’t find that significant and think it is alright to flirt and whatever else with a woman already spoken for. I won’t express my opinion on other people’s choices. But to make it clear where I stood I learnt that if a man was not listening and getting the point, I would just keep talking about how wonderful my man was and eventually a persistent male would tire out and back off.
Within the company I had been employed by for some time, I had remained within the same role. I was aware that after such a long stint in the same role I had become very proficient at my work. I didn’t need anyone to tell me. I knew the job inside and out. I was writing the manual on my job because nobody else seemed to understand the role like I did. I knew I was consistently performing well and achieving time after time. All that job was to me was a means to earn “my bread and butter” but it was nice to be in a job that was such a walk in the park. It almost frightened me that someone else might notice how incredibly comfortable I had become in my role. (That’s when others try to make crazy decisions for you like transferring you, giving you more responsibility etc which I would always like to avoid…being great believer that stress tends to bring on premature ageing.)
So…there was a man in the office. He was senior in age and responsibility to me. He was a handsome man, sparkly teeth, always smart, eloquent if not charming and in receipt of a generous salary (and apparently fairly well-off it was reported). I had learnt not to be over-awed by things that are not that substantial. So I was not nervous in his presence. I appreciated though that he was well-mannered and gallant – with everyone.
So excited was I, that I picked out my most flattering midnight blue dress, my sleekest jewellery, battled with my hair until it looked as sensational as I knew how (which in reality is not that special), doused myself with my most expensive perfume. When he saw me his words were along the lines of “may I say – you do scrub up well” which because I was so excited, I was very pleased with and flattered by.
OK…so now I was uncomfortable, really uncomfortable! While we were sitting at the table my eyes were seeing the menu I was buried in but my brain was not registering the words. My feelings were disturbed. The result was that during that meal I embarrassed myself before I had heard a word about the subjects he had hoped to discuss. Very early on I proceeded to include within our conversation that I would not consider becoming involved with a married man. I was actually very restrained and managed to infer this in a relatively gracious manner which is my only saving grace.
comfortable in my current role. I had already received positive feedback time and time again whilst at work and very direct comments during my appraisals indicating the training opportunities and roles I was being encouraged to apply for.
I think that my lack of enthusiasm in appraisals about promotions or broadening my uses to the company had made me appear rather disrespectful. (He and other senior personnel did not seem aware of other projects outside of work I was involved in.) I don’t think they could understand that my heart was in the work I was doing as a volunteer. Working for money was just a necessary evil. I just wanted a part time job – I would fulfil all the requirements of that job exactly, but I did not want to let that job encroach on my life. He was there to sweet talk me…the company wanted hard-working, committed individuals to step up etc etc…I won’t bore you.
I know this. It doesn’t necessarily mean I am going to remain at the same company. I don’t view my contract with my employer in the same as way as I would view a marriage vow. I have a very healthy appreciation of the importance of striking the right work / life balance….I am not a farm animal….work is work and life is well, life outside of work is frankly quite wonderful. Only if you don’t have a great life can I see any reason why you would want to bury your soul in work.
Lessons learnt: most men are not only after one thing (although some of them might be). And it is better not to presume there is a romantic motivation from a man who is kind to you until he makes it very very clear. And the majority of men I have dealt with know how to make it clear if they are feeling any kind of romantic leaning to you. I needed to keep an eye on myself. I had totally misinterpreted his conduct I had let my feelings race way ahead of me and jumped to conclusions. I must hold myself back and learn to keep a cool head…if i don’t want to make an utter fool of myself and embarrass someone else.
As far as I see it, I am being paid at a pretty good hourly rate to drink tea and keep myself from falling asleep today.
How long will I love you? How long will I love Goldfinch? Aaaah sigh! The answer my friend is best answered with the delicious melodic tones in Kristina Train’s voice.
Oooooh, lots of places, so hard to choose one…here is a favourite I don’t think I have mentioned before.
Probably I would say a natural landscape.
Within one hour’s drive…
I might check out the movie options to see if there is anything I would enjoy. There might be one.
I apologise if my answers are becoming rather predictable, but surely it is fairly obvious who I would like to be sitting next to.
Anywhere I could go to see whales.
I am not going to put any money on it!
I think the International Space Station must have happened sometime during the ten years I did not have a television and I was busy travelling in connection with various volunteer projects. I only heard of it around a year ago.
Staying home sounds rather appealing. Well, not stuck indoors all day, But home as in, my home planet Earth, I would love to explore every inch of it!
I don’t think I have ever seen “Lost In Space”.
Caramel 