We have a moth problem... Got some moth balls yesterday and hoping that will put pay to the little terrors! Hate moths, hard word I know, but really I do! Hate moths!!  They were hiding out up stairs in our bedroom, and as our wardrobe is of the open space variety not sure how our clothing will have withstood the little blighters hunger!!

The bees we were having trouble with out back have gone, we hung another brown paper bag stuffed with plastic, pretending to be a bees next and put off and new bees coming to visit!!

Work has been busy, holidays for some so extra work for who is left, one day off today after five on, and no whole days off again until next Friday! So a full seven days without a break... hey ho!

I am in a strange mood today, I feel that I have lots to do, but can't think what it is, should really turn this off but can't put it down! lol..

Find a photo?

Not difficult, our gorgeous grand daughter...  What a wonderful amazing little girl she is too... I just love her, love love love her... she makes my heart sing and my soul soar through the clouds... and explode into a million trillion zillion stars to light the galaxies...

And talking of stars.... a photo I took from work the other evening.... two suns setting over Neath.... Well........

TTFN
Marian

DC - Something from the Ocean

I am bringing to the table of our Drawing Challenge from Veronica this week of Something from the Ocean...  please visit her page for links to all challenged!

It is a wonderful view from a small peninsula just down from Cardiff a small seaside resort of Barry Island... slices of natures own rock formation...

As usual I feel I must do better next time!  Grimaces of school reports rattle through my mind and memories, no excuses except work and lots around the house, I will slap my own wrists, and see what else I can come up with, I did take my camera with me this week to Barry for the exact purpose of the DC....

Okay amigos, just had a play with a photo I took a few weeks ago down at Llansteffan, one of the jelly fish...

Now he really does look like an alien!

TTFN
Marian

Giraffe! Seriously?

Beautiful day today, visited Ikea first in Cardiff, wonderful breakfast, less than £3.00 for a full English!  Including coffee! Not bad at all!  A good rekky around the store, chose a few items we want, no purchases today, but notes taken and plans made...

We then went to Barry Island, I know!  28 years it took me to get there again, then twice this year already! Who'd have guessed eh!

After walk along the small peninsula, coffee and pastry, we made our way up to 'Pleasure Park'... sort of open but nothing really moving as such, although it is school time I guess, we went into an arcade and swapped a pound for 2p pieces and played the 2 penny drop machines!  Franco won a whole bunch of ticket things, I went to the office to exchange and a guy told me to come back when I had just a few more... I felt about 5 years old!!!  So, I did anyway, after swapping yet another pound for 2p pieces [last of the big spenders eh!!]  And I got a bag of sweeties and a small jelly tub thing, I think he felt sorry for me... I asked if I had enough wining tickets for a minion.. but alas no, I only had 58 and 2000 were needed, so I think that's why he threw in the jelly pot!  It could have at least been alcoholic! lol

This jolly giraffe and 'his keeper' were hanging about as school bus-fulls of niblets went on their way back to their schools!

The poor guy in the giraffe outfit must have been roasting!  stilts on both legs and arms to enable him to walk so high, his little face peering through a piece of gauze half way up the neck!!

The county of Somerset beyond over the Bristol Channel... it was only a couple of weeks ago I was in Weston Super Mare looking over here...

TTFN
Marian

Random picture of mom and I in Cadiz as taken by Tony! Yes it was hot!

I have watched the whole series of Frasier too many times to count,on TV on DVD... When I was feeling bad last week I started watching on DVD where the mornings episode had finished that morning, and today the last episode... Which is why, again, I quote the famous last lines from his show... Well almost, for the first time I realised the flight he is taking lands him in Chicago!  The job he was going for was in San Francisco... the lady he had fallen for was in Chicago... After all these years of its ending I just need a follow up episode please, I guess he is going to see her, that's the risk he is taking...

The poem Frasier quotes in this episode is a shortened version of Alfred Lord Tennyson's 'Ulysses'.

"It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;

It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And though we are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are -
[Scene shifts to Frasier's KACL booth from his lounge.]
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will;

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

I've been thinking about that poem a lot lately.  And I think what it says is that, while it's tempting to play it safe, the more we're willing to risk, the more alive we are.  In the end, what we regret most are the chances we never took.  And I hope that explains, at least a little, this journey on which I am about to embark.  I have loved every minute with my KACL family, and all of you.  For eleven years you've heard me say, "I'm listening."  Well, you were listening, too.  And for that I am eternally grateful.  Goodnight Seattle.


TTFN
Marian

DC: Move

Drawing challenge this week is 'Move' thank you Katrin :-)

I was going to do stuff with this photo I caught of my son a few years ago, but I think to be honest it says it all! He was moving... and fast!! Avoiding my lens, just back from a run!

Alternatively it could have been packing boxes! Just before the men came to our house when we last moved, I took a very sad shot of the roomful of boxes!  I think I will delete that actually!

Do you remember when packing boxes were made of wood, and of course called crates!  Sharp around the metal edges, they weighed a tonne already! Splinters in hands and just too big!  Then suddenly they turned to cardboard, possible to purchase almost anywhere! And so very much easier to fill and carry in so many sizes for all needs!

I am rambling a bit today and feeling either too hot or too cold... I have had a part shift this morning, now back to relax, eat, relax... this and that, relax!!! Before back to work for afternoon/night shift, and tomorrow morning shift!  But I seem to be feeling a bit hyper, and my right eye is feeling really weird, its being effected by my cold thing, it hurts painfully when I cough and stuff and seems to be leaking... I must try that 'milk out through the eye' trick, I actually think I might be able to do that now!!  Too much information? Sorry amigos! Your probably right!!
TTFN
Marian

Paris September 2009

Why Paris, why today...
When I was about to leave the house for work day before yesterday, a pink receipt caught my eye at the bottom of the cloth bag I use for my over night shift food, I pulled it out opened it and read it... It was from when mom and I were in Paris back in 2009, dated September 9th 2009 to be exact...

The bag has only been in my possession for six months, used washed emptied a million times... and there is this receipt from when we had coffee opposite the opera house... How the Heck???

I got back to the house yesterday afternoon, and walking past the torch I use in the dark to go up into the garden with Pip, placed as usual handle up on a counter near the back kitchen door... the light coming from it caught my eye, it was on... Only I use it, and I haven't for weeks...

When mom passed away, having to clear her home, a friend and I were sitting in my mom's kitchen talking, when I noticed a flashing light coming from beneath the sink, it was my mom's torch flashing on and off... as it did again a week later from beneath Tonys kitchen sink in the early morning darkness as we were heading off back to Spain, after mom's service... I'd transferred torch and stuff there the week before... and again as before, opened the cupboard and switched the torch on and off, and set it back down, both then and yesterday...

TTFN
Marian

Came back today from a long haul at work... and wanted to grab my camera, my friend who I was walkabout with last week got me very jealous talking about hers!  Mine is pretty good, but does not do enough for me now!

I took a bunch of photos yesterday and today worked on one of those of leaves... and above is the result after some work... I kind of think it looks okay...

Drawing challenge this weekend I have already prepared, although in 'edit' to save for the day, not sure where it will pop up on my Blog, so mentioning it here in case it follows this for some reason!

But before I go and rest for the remainder of the evening, Franco did a real good job on the garden today!  A real great job!  So prior warning, the much awaited for, and aforementioned on my Blog, Hydrangea will not be blooming this year for me!  The very one that I had cut back for two years in the hedgerow, thinking it a weed, then last year being away working, it got its chance to thrive and bloom and show its beautiful face to me... and this year so far it was growing gloriously, lots of prospective blooms in progress, filling up a wonderful space to the side of the path... slaughtered, along with a thousand Venus Crocosmia... and a shrub planted last autumn... Here is my glum face :-/

Still the garden otherwise is very neat and tidy, just the life has gone, so that's that! El fin!
TTFN
Marian

Blah!

Some more shots taken in Ilfracombe a couple of weeks ago... Beautiful flowers near the little chapel on Lantern Hill...

Good thing the weather was not like it is today!  The last couple of days has been wind rain and more wind! High winds, last night the wind came down our road like a train, you could hear it whistling, thundering and then whoosh... down and past it came!  Taking who knows what with it!  It was straining at the windows!

Anyway... back to the calm Lantern Hill... pretty view above from the doorway, to take the path back down..

And this shots from inside the chapel...

Today is a bit of a recovery day for me, typos being cleared up on as I go...

I got hit by a virus, sore throat to start, a day only, then woke up at work last Thursday feeling decidedly iffy... Did a couple of hours Friday morning and visited family after, probably not the best move, spreading the dreaded virus, or possibly three different ones!  I have been so lucky with colds, sometimes one starts to come and its gone in a few hours, I seem to cast them off, the last bad one was the flu, over two years ago... We had to pop out very first thing Saturday morning, straight back by ten am, and I just slept on the sofa, went to bed late afternoon and didn't get up until yesterday morning, everything had hit me.  I determinedly got up yesterday morning early and told my brain I had to get over this, still doing this today, but am better, have to be by tomorrow, back to work!

Okay, moaning over!  Time to get on, well watch more episodes of Fraisier... he is keeping me going, and laughing, inside quietly...

TTFN
Marian