Everydaystranger

Well it sort of has to be done, doesn’t it?
And yes, this is my decade in review. If you’ve opened a window or read a paper or seen any number of BBC specials running this week about The Noughties, then you know the events of the world.
Let’s see – 2000 started off [...]

Christmas dawned. Santa had been by.

The babies joined us (in our messy room, as we’ve been working on the en suite so our room is the “hold all” for all things) for stockings.

They scored.

But the real party was yet to go on.

It’s hard to keep them from popping the microphone in their [...]

My advent calendar had the last guy put in today.

My advent calendar is from here, as passed on to me by one of my closest friends. It’s a paper doll school nativity mock up and it’s completely brilliant and I’m going to re-use it year after year because I love advent calendars but am [...]

Chicken Little and I have rather a lot in common. Like the little aviary twerp, I am prone to panic and irrational thought when it comes to paranoia. I am a type-A personality who has beaten OCD and anal-retentive behaviors. To say that I am fairly high-strung is like saying Tiger Woods [...]

*Warning! This is very much a “meh” post! Consider yourself waved off!*
Yesterday I had my last session of the year with my Couch Man. Halfway through the session we looked out the window to see massive, thick, “eat-your-face-off” sized snowflakes (because clearly snowflakes have gone mutant here) falling.
“Dude, it’s snowing,” I [...]

1) I protested this year. Truly. I love Christmas with every inch of my skin, but this year I did not send out Christmas cards. I struggle with them, honestly. The majority of Christmas card lists are with people that you only ever speak to once a year, and that is [...]

Things feel happier and brighter. A number of things just seem to be going well. Maybe it’s karma, maybe it’s that time of year, who knows. I give you the following:
1) Our neighbor’s house continues to undergo its renovation. They were due to have moved in to the house by mid-December. [...]

The train station is packed and filled with the hustle and bustle of people on their way to and fro. Offices on one end, couches with soft spots and children and socked-feet perched on the sides of coffee tables. Emails and Power Point slides and a quick sandwich at the shop next door [...]

1) Around the World in 80 Blogs is on Monday. Grab your camera, tells us about where you live? You can comment on this site on Monday, and as the links go up I’ll edit the post to include your site.
2) The unbelievable irony – I should have kept my fucking mouth shut. [...]

Sometimes, you get things wrong.
Particularly when you have been through the IVF track. For those who are fortunate to not have had to have IVF, it goes thus: People peering up your hooch. Needles. Hormones. Extreme crying. More people looking up the passage. More needles. Extra needles. [...]

The lovely Goehde offered up a game last week in which she paired two bloggers together to see if we could expand the ol’ blog world horizons a bit more. I was up for it – A game! With blogs! And people! And expanded horizons, Batman! I could make friends! I never make [...]

When the going gets hard, I rely on top secret Walter Mitty-like dreams to get me through. Sometimes I win a Pulitzer. Sometimes Oprah is on the couch, crying, telling me that my book changed her life. Sometimes I am accepting an Oscar.
Come the holidays, there is only one dream that I [...]

We went to the Midlands this weekend to visit my sort-of-father-in-law and his slightly nervy wife this weekend. I like them both very much, it’s just they’re…well…they’re out of my league, let’s just say that. One of their neighbors is a viscount. Their next door neighbor has put his house on the [...]

Nick and Nora have made leaps and bounds in development. Suddenly they’re putting words together in strings – “Mama shoes there!” and “Another baa there!” (baa is their term for sheep. It wasn’t exhausting hearing that every 20 seconds in Wales or anything.) It coincided with Mama having to make breakfast on [...]

I’ve spent the last five days exhaustively working with the board. It has been hard going and we’ve been closeted away in this massive board room. I was up against some tough negotiators – the two toughest negotiators known to man.

Separately they’re tough cookies. Together, they’re brutal.

It’s been relentless. It starts [...]