2 in the morning

I was having trouble sleeping last night. Having just dozed off suddenly I awoke to this loud noise.
I lay for a couple of seconds trying to work out what the noise was before realising it was the doorbell.
I jumped out of bed grabbed my glasses and went to look at the video screen. I couldn't see anything but the bell was ringing again so i ran down the stairs and looked through the spy hole.
There on my doorstep were 2 Police officers.
So what does it mean when police come to your door in the middle of the night?

My heart started beating really fast and thumped through my body. I opened the door just a bit and could hardly talk as I was dreading what they had come to tell me.
You won't believe how relived I was when they said they were looking for someone else. Apparently this person has been reported missing and my home was their last known address. PHEW! I know it is sad that this person has disappeared but you couldn't imagine what was going through my head.

They apologised for getting me up and left.
I couldn't sleep the rest of the night though. I just kept tossing and turning.

Is it that time of year again already?

I have had quite a good weekend.
OK not including the football scores.
Saturday was a really lazy slob about day where I didn't even get dressed until about 1.30 and that was to go across to a Christmas fayre that was all packed up by the time I got there.
DS was staying at his mate's and left about 3pm and DD was in town.

So I just made jacket wedges for tea for me and DD and we sat with them on our laps while we watched the footie.

In the evening it was the normal TV routine of Robin Hood then Casualty and then we watched the last half an hour of Celebrity jungle. After we saw that Chef guy evicted I put on this weeks episode of Heroes.
I went to bed and watched the season finale of Eureka and episode 8 of Bones.

Sunday was the annual visit of Ange's Godmother Wendy and her husband Charlie. They do just 1 weekend to travel round and visit everyone whilst delivering Christmas presents.

Things haven't been particularly good this year between me and my 2 sisters so it was nice that I was invited along to Ange's house. Wendy said beforehand that if it was too awkward they would have come to mine but I had a really good day. It was nice being with my family. My nephew was very playful and I loved that he wanted to play with me. Even my niece seemed relatively pleased to see me. When I left I even managed kisses from both of them too.

Wendy has recently lost 11 stone after having weight loss surgery and so has a lot of clothes that no longer fit. She has very kindly passed them on to me...All 4 bags of them. So a big chunk of the afternoon was taken up by my sorting through them. I actually brought 3 black bags home with me.

After the guests has left Debz and I stayed for a bit and watched some X-factor until Debz called a taxi to go back home. I would have walked had I not had the 3 black bags of stuff.

When I got home I spent the rest of the day watching Christmas movies with the children.

My poorly finger - an Update

Here is what it looks like now

A Pleasant morning

I had a great morning today, one that brought back my faith in Freecycle.

A few days ago I offered a box of books that belonged to DD that she had read and were no longer wanted. It was a whole series of books called Point Horror and I really didn't know how best else to get rid of them.

I had an email from a lady called Julie who wanted them for her son to try and get him into reading. When I spoke to her on the phone she offered to come on the bus but I thought it might be a lot easier to to meet in town so that she didn't have to mess around.

We met outside Sainsbury's at 11.30am and Julie suggested going for a coffee. We ended up going to one of the new coffee places in the Westfield and staying for over an hour chatting. It turned out we had a lot in common. Her daughter is 15 and her son is 13 and she too is a lone parent like me having trouble getting back into the working environment. It was 1.15pm when we finally went our separate ways and then I had to go do my shopping before getting home for lunch at about 2.30pm

I am hoping that we can meet up again at some point as It is nice to meet someone I have so much in common with and who can relate to the problems that I have had.

The hills have eyes 2

I watched this today and was well disappointed. It isn't half as good as the first movie and i found myself clock-watching the whole way through.

With the first HHE I was riveted to the seat and there were many hiding behind the fingers moments but in the second movie there was nothing to make me wince, even as the female soldier stuck her fingers into the mutants brain and pulled out bits of it, I still yawned.

I am so glad that I have just borrowed this and didn't buy it myself. It is a total waste of a sequel. They should have just left it at the first movie and be done with!

Oh and just wanted to add that the special features on the DVD are pants too

Today I will mostly be maiming myself

Having got really fed up of DS' carpet in the way all the time I set to fitting it in his room even though I haven't been able to finish the painting yet. The kids cleared the room first and then I got to work.
Despite several warnings from DD to be careful I still manage to slice a huge gash in my little finger. It hurt like bloody hell but didn't bleed that much. The pain was so intense that I was sick. I went all light headed and my knees went all wibbly. DD went into crisis mood and ordered DS to get changed cos we were going to the hospital. Well I really didn't want to go to hospital, it was pouring down with rain outside and had been all day. It would be a long painful walk to the hospital and I didn't even know if I could make it without passing out. So I took a few painkillers and DD put a plaster on for me.

I sat for half an hour with my hand elevated above my head and then got back and finished the laying of the carpet. I had to finish before it got too late because of the banging.

I will go to the doctors tomorrow just to get it checked out but the bleeding stopped before it soaked though the plaster so it must be OK.

My injury did make certain things impossible. I couldn't open the frozen veg and I haven't been able to wash the dishes so they will have to wait - I might stick a carrier bag on to do that tomorrow.

OK Now I am really Fucked off!!

For the 3rd time I have been to the Post office Passport Check and Send service and come home still with the form in my bag.

This time the teacher has filled in the form wrong and I have had to fetch a new form and get her to do it again!!!
If only I actually knew someone else capable of countersigning for me!!!

I swear to god that DS better enjoy this bloody trip to France because it is turning into the biggest farce EVER!!!

(Sorry for the overbearing exclamation marks in this post!!!)

See my sparkly feet

Do you like my new sparkly trainers?



Only thing is I am leaving a trail of glitter everywhere ROFL!!!

No Live Streaming??

Is the reality TV phenomenon dying already?

I always look forward to the Celebrity reality shows for the Live streaming as I like to see the unedited behaviour of the celebs in their foreign environment but this year it seems like Endemol are denying us that right I guess so that it is easier for them to create their perfect scenario with clever editing techniques.


First of all Scissorhands return sans live streaming which means all we get is 1 hour of Steve Strange in the evenings instead of being able to see Aled (Haydn Jones) and Lil Chris at work during the day. They may as well call it the Steve Strange show as that is all we get in the 1 hour slot in the evenings. Just like last year. It was such a great few days when he was off ill when we got to see the work of all the other celebs.



Now we have the new series of Celebrity Jungle. I don't much care for the evening shows and the Bush tucker trials but I do enjoy the evening live streaming mostly because as it is in Australia, it is day-time there so they are at their most active. However, No live streaming for us night Owls. This is totally ruining the concept of the show for me. I guess it will make it a lot easier now for them to edit in the favour of their chosen winner and edit unfavourably the contestant they have chosen to be this years baddie...namely Janice Dickinson.

I think if the live stream is being cut altogether these shows will dry up pretty quickly...It will be interesting to see what happens with Big Brother when that returns.

Bloody Passport service

I am supposed to be saving ready for our holiday now but instead I am shelling out cash left right and centre.

Way back in October I agreed for DS to sign up for a trip to to France with school on December 19th. I thought it would be great and he already has a passport so no hassles there - WRONG!! when I finally found his passport the other day I found it had expired! So got the renewal form and took him into town on Sunday to have the photos taken then today I took the form into the main post office for the check and send service.

She told me that the photos (Which I paid £4 for!) were unacceptable because he has his glasses on. She informed me that it states very clearly on the notes that no spectacles are to be worn....
She also said that because he is over 12 the photo does have to be countersigned because he has aged.

ARGH!! so I have to fork out another £4 for more photos and who the hell can I get to countersign? The last time we got passports I asked our Reverend friend Phil but he lives in Burton now and I haven't seen them in ages. I am not taking it to the doctors as they charge a fortune for the service just to sign a bloody photo and form.

This trip to France is turning out to be more trouble than it's worth and if I hadn't already paid the deposit I would tell Bret that it won't be possible but the deposit is non-refundable.

Incompetance

I am not quite sure whether I should make a complaint about this as I am also at fault.

In the half term holidays I took DS to Vision Express for an eye appointment as he was struggling and getting headaches. Although the optician said that his eyesight hadn't changed much, she said he could order some new glasses anyway and then he would be able to keep his present glasses as back-ups. So we went through the rigmarole of picking a new pair.
Unfortunately he is passed the children's frames now so he has to choose from the adult men's pairs. This leaves us with not much choice as we only have £29 which is the value of his NHS voucher. Yes I know I could pay the extra but I don't see why I should as he is a child.

Anyway he chose a pair he liked the style of and they said they could order in a different colour as he didn't like the light blue colour. So we filled in all the forms and they said they would phone us when they are ready.

Last week I got a card from Vision Express telling me the glasses are ready but because of DS' paper round after school we weren't able to get down there until Saturday.

So Saturday afternoon DS and I went to VE to collect his new glasses. We sat there half an hour while she went to look for them and then finally she came back and said she couldn't find any record of us ordering any glasses at all. She asked for my receipt but I hadn't thought to bring it with me (STUPID) so she showed us the computer page for DS so we could see there was nothing on there about ordering a new pair of specs. So how could I have gotten sent a card if there were no glasses???

So the woman said the only thing I could do is come back the next day with the receipt.

I searched everywhere for that bugger and can't find it anywhere!! It is like some evil force is at large and they have wiped out any record of the glasses as well as stealing my receipt. I thought the best thing to do was to ring up and again was told there was no record of us having ordered any but I was told that we could go in and see if they could make him up a new pair of specs as they did have the lenses ready.

So this afternoon we have been back up to Vision Express and luckily we managed to get a pair of new glasses for DS. The frames are the ones that we had ordered so I reckon they just got put in with the new stock instead of being sent to be fitted.
The whole system seems flawed though. When new frames come in they should go in an inbox preferably in alphabetical order so ours should go in the M draw...instead of them having to search through every single draw in the place - It would make much more sense.

The Bionic Woman

I just watched the pilot episode of The Bionic Woman and To be honest I was very surprised.
In case you haven't heard, this is a new remake of the old Bionic woman starring ex-EastEnder Michelle Ryan (Zoe Slater) in the lead role. You wouldn't think it was her though with her newly acquired American accent and she has definitely had a few more acting lessons since leaving the soap.



I was well impressed both with the acting and the show as a whole. The effects were good and it wasn't far in to the opening episode before we saw the Bionic powers unleashed.
It is a bit corny that Jamie is dating a college lecturer who also happens to work on a secret project for the government capable of improving humans with specialized nanites. They just happen to be out together (Just after she has told him she is pregnant) when a juggernaut plows into the side of the car. The boyfriend is hardly touched but Jamie loses her legs an arm as well as use of an eye and ear.

I am looking forward to seeing the rest of the series.

Also this week I watched the pilot episode of Reaper.

It is a bit like The Collector in that it is about a guy who works for The Devil collecting souls but where the Collector was quite dark, this is very much lighter with your 2 comedy side-kicks and a lot of gags. I enjoyed it though and will be continuing with it.

OK, who abducted all the people of Derby?

I went into town today which I usually don't like on a Thursday but the place was almost deserted. Well that was an exaggeration but it felt like it was deserted. I went in Poundland and usually it is rammed and the queues are all the way up the shop but it was half empty and the assistants were fighting over the customers.

It was the same in the Market. I thought maybe it was cos everyone was in the Westfield but it wasn't very busy in there either. The ultimate was when I ran for the bus in the pouring rain - Usually they are queueing down the street for our bus but there was no queue and only 5 people on it as it left the stop.
I don't know what was happening today but someone forgot to pass me the email...

We have Wireless

My brand new Wireless router arrived this morning HALLELUJAH!!!!
It has been a complete nightmare these past few weeks since our netplug system broke. Back to the old days of everyone fighting to get onto the PC.

So I purchased a cheap router from Amazon and I have been awaiting it's arrival with nervous excitement - Seriously that is how exciting my life is!

Of course when it arrived all did not so smoothly. First of all it didn't come with a network cable so I had to go into town and pay £5 at Maplins for one (Incidentally I found out yesterday they have them at IC for £1 D'OH)
Then when I finally got home and set it all up it wouldn't work first time and I got severely aerated with the whole thing but eventually I got it all up and running and now it is Thunderbirds are go!! I can get online wirelessly from my laptop and my PSP and DS can get online with his Wii and his DS and most importantly really DD can get online on her laptop meaning the end to all arguments. (Except when we both want to download from MU but that is neither here nor there)

By the way I am posting this from the main PC cos I have left my laptop in my bedroom LOL!

A brilliant weekend away

After all that's been happening for the last couple of months I took great delight in visiting My dear friend Brian in Notts for the Weekend.

I left home about 12 and caught the 12.50 express bus through that stops right in the Victoria centre where Bri resides. We met outside Tesco and I nipped in to get us some wine and cake treats before we got the lift up to the 19th floor.

I love Brian's little flat. It is so homely and inviting and the first thing I did was get comfy on the armchair with the huge furry cushion. I am sure that Brian must have thought I was a cheeky bugger just throwing myself down and making myself at home like that.

We spent the first half of Saturday watching DVDs I took with me...Episode 9 of Skins; some more episodes of Blackpool and some random video of David Tennant's previous TV appearances. All whilst scoffing Roses and drinking coffee. Then Bri made tea which was an absolutely yummy curry with rice accompanied by some gorgeous tomato bread. I can't stress enough how fantastic this curry was and I would go to Brian's every weekend for his cooking alone. It is always lovely to be waited on don't you think.

After tea it was time for X Factor. I wasn't particularly looking forward to this part of the evening as I gave up these kind of shows years ago but I confess I enjoyed it. I got right into it and gave my critique on every act. I even got a bit nervous as we sat back down to watch the results show and did actually feel like hiding behind the cushion. I probably won't be watching anymore of the show but I have to add that although there is some considerable talent in the show, I think the only act that has any career miles is the girl band "Hope" They have the ability not just for singing but for performing too and I think that they could well give Girls Aloud a run for their money.

The rest of the evening we enjoyed the many many firework displays from all over the East Midlands as can be seen from Brian's window.

(OK so you can't see the fieworks but the view is fantastic)

Bri asked if I wanted to watch a DVD and I chose The Pursuit of Happyness starring Will Smith and his son Jaden. This is the most incredibly sad movie I have ever seen. Only right at the end do you get to breath out again as it finally happens for the family. I had a huge lump in my throat all the way through.

After the movie I was showing Bri how to use his Statcounter account by looking up stats and recording IP addresses etc...

I think we retired to bed about 1am.

On Sunday we planned to go to the cinema to see Death at a funeral .We got up at about 10ish and tried to set up Brian's VCR. Ha there's me saying it would be so easy yet the darned thing wouldn't play ball. He managed to get it tuned into the TV so he could play videos on it but I just couldn't tune in the Freeview box. Now I know you are supposed to view it through the Scart but it should also be possible to tune into it through the aerial. I gave up before I chucked the bloody remote at it. It is obvious that TVs now need to be made with at least 4 scart sockets on the back.
You can see the movie theatre from Bri's window so although the film started at 12.40, we didn't leave until 12.30. I have never been to a Cineworld before. It is more expensive than Showcase and the actual theatre was tiny. The seats are like aeroplane seats.
The film was excellent. I don't usually like these kind of farce movies but it was an English film and it starred Kris Marshall. It was hilarious! I don't think I have laughed out loud so much in the cinema ever. It was real belly laugh stuff. The dialogue as well as the action was very funny and kept you sniggering the whole way through.

After the film it was back to Brian's for an hour or so before I had to get my bus back home and back to being mum.

I got home about 4.30pm. DS was at Ange's and staying there for tea and DD was here with her friend doing computer stuff. So I could just relax on the sofa before getting tea for me and DD.

Will this decorating ever stop?

Today I planned to stay home all day and finish painting DS' room. My sister Debz said she would come round and help and boy did I need it.
I have lived in a lot of houses in my time and I have painted and papered a lot of rooms so why am I suddenly so bad at it? I guess it might be because I haven't done any in 13 years but I just can't believe how awful my attempts have been.

Debz on the other hand seems to be able to turn her hand to anything and has been a star for me in this move.
When she turned up I was on my umpteenth break because my hand was seizing up and I was in some considerable pain. She was fearful that the paint left in the tin wasn't going to cover what was left of the room but she got stuck in anyway. While she rollered, I got the brush and did the cutting in (around the skirting boards and door frames) She managed to squeeze a lot more out and I reckon if she had been there from the start then I would have got the whole room done but before long we were clean out of paint. There is 1 wall and about a quarter left to do which will now have to wait for me to get a new tin.

We took a break for some lunch then we set to putting the border up in the front room. It is a good job I had Debz as we still struggled a bit so there would have been no way I could have done that on my own. It took us about half and hour and now it looks fab!


So still to do is finishing DS' room and then I need to paint the Toilet (chosen a bright yellow for that) Then I may paint my bedroom a nice bright Pink *g*