So I'm going on holiday?

secrets

I've got a livejournal.

Not a lot of people know this. Some do, but they might as well not because I never write in it anymore and anyway it's 'friends only'. I'm very proud of the little banner I made to announce the start of 'friends only' and also I have deleted all my LJ friends.

But I also have a secret livejournal! One that even I had forgotten about, until I stumbled across some maudlin livejournal community about Sylvia Plath or someone equally nauseating a couple of days ago.

I only made about half a dozen posts in that secret journal, but - and I do say it myself - they were amazing posts. I remember a time when I had the inclination and a reason to take the time to write properly and I haven't done that in so long.

Fittingly, I no longer remember the password to the secret account.

earth mother

This weekend I have made:

1. heart-shaped chocolate orange sponge cake with sprinkles

2. huge enormous treacle rye bread loaf with mixed seeds

3. a massive amount of mushroom, aubergine and pea risotto

4. a second rye loaf, smaller and with golden syrup in place of treacle

I had wanted to make blueberry muffins, but now I fear they'll have to wait until I come back from holiday.

Also I missed an important step in the treacle rye loaf (recipe failed to inform me I would need to activate the yeast with warm water and sugar before adding to flour) which means it's a little heavier than one would like (it's a weapon which I intend to send to Gaza), hence the second try.

I am proud of myself!

But I need an apron. I also need a bigger kitchen but apparently this isn't as easy to come by.

oh god it's happening again

SO every year I get this chuffing birthday, and this year is no exception.

And every year it's the day after Valentine's Day and every year I have to fight with my friends to get them to put me first above their significant others.

This year there is no point whatsoever as the proportion is higher than ever and anyway I have things to do.

This is the list of options I put together at work when I supposed to be working out next year's stock budgets:

1. Going out for lunch with work on the 13th.

2. Can't have a night out for friends on the 13th because of getting people who live far away up to the city after work, and also the next day is Valentine's Day so potentially getting people to put me first might be ego-brusing.

3. Can't have a party on the 14th because it's chuffing Valentine's Day and everyone is doing other things.

4. Can't have a party on the 15th (my birthday) because it's Sunday and people need to get back for work the next day.

5. Can't do anything in the week because this sucks.

6. Could do something Friday 20th (this will encourage work friends to come out because it'll be soon after work) but getting people from Far Away here in time for a meal at 7pm might be difficult.

7. Could do something Saturday 21st, this is indeed the preferred option, but it's not my real birthday and anyway 2 of my better guests won't be able to make it.

Conclusion: not doing anything, going to sit in by myself and eat pot noodle.

broke no more!

So this morning I didn't have a car.

I was all for riding my bike to work, until I woke up and found it was lashing down.

So I thought I'd get the cunning free bus which goes from the tram stop at the end of my road, via the QMC, all the way into the Park and Ride site about half a mile from my work. Then I'd walk to the office. Not too difficult!

No. Difficult. The bus does not, it seems, go from the QMC to the P&R. It just stays at the QMC.

So I had to get off at the QMC and then walk aaaaaall the waaaaaay to my office. In the driving rain. In boots which, apparently, leak. With a wayward umbrella but - luckily - with my MP3 player. I sang out loud all the way there because who the hell can hear you in a howling storm?

I just googlemapped it and it's 3.5 miles. It took me forty-five minutes, which I actually don't think is too shabby? But I got there cold and wet and tired (but pleasingly tousle-haired).

Then this evening my friend Sophie took me to fetch my (repaired) car and I was ecstatically, exultantly happy.

Until I got home and found that, once again, my housemate's boyfriend has come to stay, I can only assume for the whole week.

Am I being unfair and petty to expect some warning before he comes to stay for long periods of time? I choose to live with Zoe and with Donna, not with their boyfriends.

I am very much seriously considering moving out and in with Olly from work.

got 99 problems and four of them are catering

So, my gammy eye means I'm supposed to stay indoors in the dark.

Also my car has been making a funny clunking noise when going round corners, and although this was negated by driving with the clutch in I decided to get it checked out anyway because one can't drive with the clutch in all the time. Turns out there's something wrong with its insides and it's been kidnapped by the garage because it's too dangerous to drive. It's also £200 worth of fixin' and a busride to work on Monday.

This all means that I can't do the things I'd planned this weekend and I am feeling very sorry for myself indeed.

I have got loads of cleaning done, however. Is this a good thing?

solo polo vision

Last night I'd been asleep for all of about twenty minutes when I woke up with grit behind my eyelid. This is annoying but not unusual for a contact-lens-wearer so I took my usual route of 1) sleepy rubbing; 2) annoyed blinking; 3) getting up, bathing my eye with contact lens solution; 4) increased annoyance, turn on main light to see what the problem is; 5) ARGH GOD BLIND; 6) fish contact lens out of eye whilst weeping uncontrollably in pain; 7) try to go back to sleep assuming all will be well in the morning.

However, it never got better, I never got back to sleep and by 4am I was so tired and in so much pain and so worried that I'd scratched my cornea that I donned the pirate eyepatch Donna gave me for Christmas and phoned NHS Direct for advice.

Twenty minutes later I was sitting in the eye casualty ward at the QMC crying quietly because I've not felt so sorry for myself in a long time, and also in my halluncinatory haze I was convinced I was going to lose my eye.

Needless to say, three consults later over a period of eight hours I am not blind, I just have abrasions and an infection and an earful of vitriol about the dangers of all-day all-night contact lens.

I have also got one swollen-shut eye and some serious sleep-deprivation issues.

Change of plans

Due to my ongoing lifestyle of Elizabethan Dandy I cannot afford to go to Dubai.

Instead I am either going to Egypt or Goa or the Canary Islands or nowhere.

I love looking for bargains, it is an all-consuming passion.

FINALLY

I've just invented a way of keeping my digging-and-defecating kitten out of my neglected room-plant.

I've no idea how I'm going to water it, but to be fair, that's an infrequent problem for me, given my complete mistreatment of the poor thing.

Given the chance . . .

. . . would you spend a week in Dubai, just because you could?

Happy New Year!