Blue hues.

Royal blue

Indian teal

Powder blue

Sky blue

Reds and greens - which is better?

I still can't see the difference...

Unfrumping the unfrumpable

I have joined an online plan to unfrump myself this year.  It started here and I hesitated about joining in at first because I still have children of "constantly sticky" age, but then I thought "if not now, when?" and joined.

My first task is to figure out what colours I like best on me.  I have no idea how to do this.  Colour-season website things tell me I'm an Autum; other people tell me to hold different colours up to my face and look in the mirror.  I cannot tell when I look better or worse, I just look a bit shit most of the time.

With this in mind, I am enlisting the help of a friend and we're going to try every basic colour from the rainbow out on me and then some, and post the pictures here to see what other people think I look best in.

Watch this space...

Lullaby for a woolly mammoth

WOOLLY MAMMOTH!  I am laid up with a bad back and my Mum sent me this, so here's your blog post for the week.  Normality will resume eventually.

Lullaby for a Woolly Mammoth 

Woolly Mammoth! 

Hear me sing.

Go to sleep you hairy thing.

You can snooze outside my door,

just as long as you don’t snore. 

Come on Shaggy, shut  your eyes.

 Now it’s time for beddy-byes

(sing to tune of Twinkle Twinkle)

(this is by James Carter who originally had it laid out to look like a woolly mammoth, I wrecked it to make it readable)

Dust if you must...

The Christmas Letter

I have not been sending out a Christmas letter these last couple of years.  Mainly because everyone I know is either on Facebook, or has a relative on Facebook who will pass news on.  I recently got a Christmas letter from a friend who is NOT on Facebook and from whom we had not heard for a while, it was lovely to hear her news and catch up, so I am going to attempt to organise myself into doing a Christmas or New Year letter from 2012 onwards.

For now, here’s a short Christmas letter for all you wonderful people out there:

Dear Family, Friends and people I met once and added on Facebook but who’s status update gets lost amidst all the Farmville requests,

This year has been an exciting one for us, since our chickens learned to mow the lawn, and Tareka can now spend a lot more time working on perpetual motion machines.  The children are growing fast, Mapera has been reading James Joyce and understanding it, Kaitereo has been training to be a human cannonball and Hakopa has been learning how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing.

The house and land continue to thrive, we are growing an entirely new hybrid of tomato, cheese & breadfruit plant, so we can pick fresh sandwiches all through the spring.  The cows continue to be an endless source of entertainment, and one of them does a passably good impression of Eddie Izzard which kept me and some friends amused for hours one evening.

My parents, as most of you know, are heading to the Moon for their holidays, Mum will love the cold, and Dad is looking forward to some diving in the Sea of Tranquility.  My brother continues to mystify us by appearing in various shampoo commercials.

Tareka’s family is all good too, digging their way to London in time for the Olympics as we speak.  Looks like it will be quiet down here next year, hope you all have a wonderful Giftmas and begin the New Year with a series of unrealistic resolutions.

All our love and best wishes

Louise and the clan

xxx

Making a committment to committees

I have Helium Hand syndrome, I tend to volunteer far too much for things when I really ought not to.  I have been trying very hard to scale back my volunteering since I had child number 3, but I still managed to get myself on a local committee last year.  The AGM is looming, so I have made a decision to step down from the committee and hand the responsibilities to another poor soul worthy person, but I still feel a bit guilty, like I haven't done enough.

If I apply my Wise Brain to this problem, I can point out all the things I have done, all the events I have helped with, the fundraising I have done, the administration and the leg-work.  I know rationally that I have helped a lot more that some people and a lot less than others, and that is nothing to be ashamed of, but I also know that if I step down, the workload is likely to fall back onto someone who is already overloaded.

Herein lies the problems of committees.  The people who care enough to join a committee and make an effort are always the same people in any community, so you end up with half a dozen people trying to fundraise and work for a hundred committees while the rest of the community sit back and go "ooh I don't know how you have time!"

I am also getting to a stage of my life when there I just cannot be bothered with cliques, snippy comments and bitchy behaviour. I've worked hard through therapy to be able to speak my mind in a calm and reasonable way without feeling guilty or worrying about offending people, and I'll be damned if I am going to get caught up in catfights between grown adults who ought to know better.  If anyone reading this blog thinks I am writing about them, then more fool them.  If I have a problem with someone, I try to sort it out with them directly.  This post is a general rant about crappy behaviour in adults I know both online and in real life.

This is where social media can be a real problem too.  Internet message boards, Facebook, Twitter and their ilk are all too easy to post in without giving yourself time to calm down, think things through and behave like a rational adult.  Even if you immediately regret and delete your words, someone out there will have read them and got the hump about it.

I read in one of my internet cubby holes that before you post something when you're feeling angry or upset you should Think, Wait, Answer, Tenderly.
  Sooo, if you're angry about something, before you post online for the world to see, just take a moment and T.W.A.T. it.