Thursday, February 22, 2007

Cryptic Time Again...

Sorry Max, this is for the time being my last bizarre rant on here!!

Can I just say....

I'm H-A-P-P-Y, I'm H-A-P-P-Y, I know I am, I'm sure I am, I'm H-A-P-P-Y.

Zip-ah-dee-do-dah, zip-ah-dee-ay, my oh my what a wonderful day, plenty of sunshine heading my way, zip-ah-de-do-dah, zip-ah-dee-ay.

Oh come on now, why ain't you singing with me? You know you want to!! What do you mean you don't want to sing with me? Have I embarrassed you? Is that why you won't sing with me?Well I'll sing alone then, it's a good way of conveying emotions. I am happy today ergo I will sing.

Now if you'll excuse me I'm off to see the wizard...I mean shopping.

Jenny xx

Monday, February 19, 2007

It's Not Long Now...

Until I can officially regain my Blog. Yes I know this makes no sense (unless you're Ross to whom this will make perfect sense as he knows what I'm on about!) but trust me, it will all become very clear in the next few days.

Jenny xx

Who Knew?...

So today Better Half and I went to view a house I'd seen on t'interweb that had caught my eye.

It was an old Lodge house that would once upon a time have belonged to some wealthy land owner and would have been home to one of his employees no doubt. It was a nice looking property with 5 bedrooms, 2 en suites, a family bathroom, a kitchen, dining room, huge lounge and bizarrely a sauna..and I do mean a proper, pined with benches, sauna, within the house. It also had gorgeous grounds outside with a large drive and loads of mature plants, a lawn area and a nice patio area with original outdoor cooking area from way back when...now used as a decorative patio heater.

So we head down today to have a look about...the house is in a remote spot surrounded by fields and woods to the rear. A man is waiting to meet us and basically opens the door and says to go and have a look and leaves us to it. First thing I notice when I get in is that it's not been lived in for a while, there are huge spiders crawling about and the place is freezing. We head into bedroom 1 and I'm thinking "what the ???" there's a raised platform to one trimmed with a mirror edging (which I'm thinking probably used to have a bed on it) and one wall houses a mirror from floor to ceiling. "It's like a bloody dance floor" says Better Half.

Bedroom 2 passes me by as there's nothing much of intrest, intresting decor and double white leather edged bed stripped to the mattress are all that I pick up.

We head into the houses main hallway where I spot a big spider and freak out and almost miss the fact that the hall carpet is a black and white zebra print...nice! Further in we come to the kitchen which is a pleasant room, clean and quite modern. Moving through we hit bedroom number 3...to one side is a door through to a w.c and bang in front of you in the main bedroom is a sunken in jacuzzi bath, along one wall are windows and along the other are move floor to ceiling mirrors. Bizarre I think to myself but there's no accounting for taste. Bedroom 4 comes next and is smaller than the others and has wall to ceiling units to one wall...a jumbled mismatch of woods and colours and bang in the middle is a black wooden set of drawers all built into the wall and in each drawer is a key and on the wall is what looks like a board on which the keys were once hung. It's almost like it was once some sort of office. Next room down is the main bathroom which again features huge mirrors and a shower cubicle.

We come to an area I can only describe as a recess/hallway type thing. The floor is black tile with a star design to the centre and again one wall is covered in mirror...by now I'm thinking whoever lived here must have pure loved themselves to have all these mirrors. We head on into what the estate agents have called the lounge which is in fact a large room on two levels housed in an extension part of the main building. It's a long room (about 35ft) and when we walk to the other end we come to yet another small dead space/recess/hallway which has 2 doors leading from it, one goes into the sauna...a full pine clad, benched swedish style sauna like you find in any gym, again the hallway/recess/dead space has mirrors along one wall and I'm thinking "80's aerobic studio going on in here once" as I glance up at the sunken in lights and down to the wooden floors. The second door leads to bedroom number 5 which strangely has two kitchen units in it at the door with a sink and a door which leads into yet another shower room/w.c. It again has a large mirrored area and downlighters in the ceiling and I notice the bulbs are red in at least 4 of them...I'm now thinking "whoever lived here had very bad taste"....red light bulbs, zebra print carpet, toilets a plenty, mirrors everywhere and horrid 80's decor in every room...I'm thinking it used to be some 80's lovin, kids from fame watching, aerobics mad, saturday night fever fan but I was wrong...

The man who had met us at the house wanders in to see how we're getting on. Better Half makes a comment about how big the place is and how it's a bit like a maze with all the different rooms and bits and pieces. The guy agrees and he and Better Half get into a conversation about how the place has loads of potential (which it does) and how you might want to knock this wall down and build a new one here and so on. I'm saying nothing much at this point...way too busy eyeing up incy wincy spider up in the corner of the room. "It's not really what you'd call a lounge" I hear the guy say. "No it's not, you couldn't really use it as one" says Better Half about the room we're in "This extensions a bit dodgy really, it's not been desgined for family living". "Yeah you're right, still it probably served it's purpose given what it was used for" he continues. My ears prick up as I'm thinking I'm about to find out about my 80's lovin' kids from fame watchin', aerobics mad, saturday night fever fan...The man continues..."Aye the place used to be a busy brothel until business got slack and it was repossessed".

Better Half manages to get words together quicker than me for the first time ever and says "Well that explains all the bloody mirrors and a few other things!" Oh it did indeed! All of a sudden the mirrors, dodgy decor, baths in bedrooms, sauna, red light bulbs and locked drawers made sense!

We headed out to look at the grounds and the man locked up and left us to wander as he headed of in his car into the wilderness around us. We peered in the window of what had been bedroom 1 with it's raised platform and Better Half's words about it looking like a dance floor came into both our heads and he said "all that's missing is the pole". We left the house and got in the car to head home.

I don't think we'll head back again...not because of what it used to be but it's the wrong location.

Jenny xx

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Hankering After The Good Old Days?....

My good pal Ross wrote an intresting piece on his Blog the other day which you can read here. It's a glance backwards to life as it was once upon in time. Back in the days when everything seemed carefree and the only real worry you seemed to have was what time you were due to be out with your mates or whether any of them had bought the neccessary items for the evening ahead.

In my opinion this is an example of Ross writing at his best. A rambling post which begins in one direction before rattling you away in another, taking a few twists and throwing in some random observations along the way but all the time keeping you reading and waiting for the conclusion.

Having read both the post and the comments I got to thinking...

We all look back sometimes don't we? Like every generation before us we get to that age/point in life where we can look back and think "they were good times". We start to say it like we've heard our Mothers, Fathers or Grandparents say it a hundred times before...we get a bit nostaligic for the days when we only had to please ourselves and when mortgages, commitments and the daily grind were all nothing to us and pension plans and politics were for old folk to worry about. Sometimes we wish to be able to jump in the car with our mates again, cruise the streets, get off our faces on whatever method we preferred be it drugs, cheap booze or both, to while away hours doing nothing but standing around in parks, shop doorways, street corners or if you were lucky getting indoors because someone had a "free hoose"...which normally came around because some trusting parent went to the costa's and left their teenager at home...only to return to find their favourite vase broken and hot rock marks in their sofa! We look back fondly, at least we do in my case, to nights spent in huge venues or fields or good clubs where there was a good vibe and you danced from nightfall and were still there to see the sun rise the next day. When hangovers and groggy mornings mattered not a jot because you were young and nothing seemed to affect you, you could bounce back on 3 hours sleep and have enough energy to do it all again the next night. Good days indeed.

Or where they? Is it just the nostalgic way we look back that makes us think so?

I am the epitomy of how life "happens" to you when you're not looking. I have the mortgage, the bills, the responsibilities, the kids, the commitments and the pension. I looked in the mirror the other day and minutes later I was at my head with a pair of tweezers extracting a grey, nay pure white, hair from the front of my hairline...granted it was alone, but it was there. I am no longer that young girl from the early 90's, the one who danced all night, the one who drunk her weekly limits in a few hours...but would I want to be? In a word no.

When I cast my thoughts to those who were back then my fellow "team mates" I am able to remove my rose tinted nostaligic glasses and be contented that I am no longer that girl. Some of those I hung round with back then are still there...still living life as they did back when we were the youths of the day...and to be frank it's not a pretty picture. We're all in our thrities now ranging between 31 and 36. Some have never held down a job for longer than a few weeks, incapable of doing so because it interferes with their social life too much. Some are still at home with Mum and Dad having never gotten to grips with independent life beyond a mental age of 19. Some are scarred physically by their hedonistic lives, the result of wreckless accidents while under the influence of some stimulant or another. Some are scarred mentally, paranoid, depressed, and unable to handle life. Some are in prison having taking the fun of random pranks to a new level. Some are drunks who spend their lives propping up a bar with men twice their age for company. Some are sadly dead, lives cut short by overdose, lack of awareness, violence or suicide. What do they all have in common? The inability to let go of their youths and realise that there comes a time when we need to step aside and let a new generation take the reigns as today's youth...just like Mum and Dad and Granny did before us.

Of course some of us did that...whether we realised we were or not at the time. Some went on to university, some met partners and settled down, some got jobs and some just fell into something randomly such as an uplanned pregnancy and realised there was more to life than all night raves, recreational drugs and cheap drink. These are the ones who are now living life...the ones who have created new memories to look back on instead of losing 15 years trying to remain the same.

I wouldn't change the days of old I had. I've filed them all under "experience" whether they were good ones or not. Fact is I'm an adult now. I'm all grown up...I am in the words of my Mum "all the woman I'll ever be". I enjoyed my youth and hopefully some of what I learnt through it will come in handy as I face life ahead with two teenagers of my own and maybe, just maybe, I'll have had a bit of experience to help guide them through those years.

So I'm older, maybe wiser and no longer as carefree as I once was but I still feel 19 inside. My youth has gone but my mind hasn't and neither has my life....and while you've got a life and you live that life and remember that while anything may not always be possible something always is you come to realise that growing up ain't so bad.

Jenny xx

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Out On A Date...

I've got a date this week. I'm meeting another man for lunch while Better Half is at work.

I'm quite looking forward to it as I know there'll be nice conversation, he'll no doubt make me laugh and he's good company.

Better Half is ok with my planned rendezvous, he knows this is something I would do with or without his approval. After all he knows I am a woman with needs. He realises I sometimes just have to spend time with men who are not him. He is aware that other men hold a place in my life, he's very liberal like that....

He knows that I would never pass up the opportunity to sit down for a natter with my pal Ross, put the world to rights, discuss his love life, laugh, give out my own brand of advice and chill for a few hours!

He also knows Ross and I are proof supreme that a boy and girl can be just friends!

See ya tomorrow Rossco...I'll toot for ya...right then I've an exam to sit in a few hours..must dash!

Jenny xx

A Day Of Love...

So yesterday was Valentine's Day.

I got a card from Better Half which he obviously took great care over choosing as it had lovely words. It read...

"The way that I feel
When I'm with you
Is exciting and sexy
On the back of my neck
The hairs stand up
Not to mention my willy"

Who says romance is dead???

Still I did get flowers and my dinner cooked so I mustn't grumble!

Jenny xx

Monday, February 12, 2007

Karma...

What goes around comes around and all that.

Bad things you do come back to haunt you.

Piss on someone and expect to be pissed upon yourself.

Stick the knife in someone elses back and prepare to feel the blade yourself.

It's all down to Karma you see.

We were friends once, were part of a good team, had a laugh together but you got so busy trying to keep in with those you felt were important that you turned your back on me and hung me out to dry. Seems that while your back was turned the Karma I knew would one day head your way came up and bit you on the ass.

While you were busy lying to try and cover the mess you made with me to those you thought would protect you, someone else was waiting in the wings watching you and looking for the opportunity to move you aside. You were silly, you were always on the ficticious list of wrong doers and trouble makers, you just never knew it. Now might be a good time to say I told you so...in fact maybe it should be we told you so...but I won't. I'll just sit here with the knowledge that you got yours. Of course it's a damn shame I never got to reveal the facts that prove you were a liar or to bring out the things I know you'd rather have kept hidden especially when it was so close to coming out but c'est la vie.

Last laugh? It was more a smug chuckle.

I'll see you around.

Jenny xx

Friday, February 09, 2007

New Tattoo...

So on Monday I headed back into town with Better Half to go and get the drawing done for his new tattoo, the one I had IOU'd him at Christmas.


He had a rough idea of what he wanted the tattoo to have in it but hadn't seen anything in the style of what he wanted while we'd been looking. Luckily for us, well for Better Half really, we came across Studio XIII while on our jaunt out with the kids last Friday.


They had agreed to draw up exactly what Better Half was looking for and so we headed up on Monday so Better Half could get his drawing done with the plan then being to return later in the week to get the actual tattoo. As luck would have it though Tomasz, the artist doing the work, was free to get on with it there and then. An hour and 45 minutes later and the job was complete.


So here's the end result...starting to dry out and scab nicely! The nautical star in the middle represents Better Half, the other two represent the kids...he chose nautical star's as they guide you home. There's a J and a C which are the kids initials and the 13 is there because it's the day on which Better Half was born and it's his lucky number (bizarrely in tattooing 13 is very popular as it is considered to represent good luck or not having a fear of bad luck). There are flames up either side which you can't see properly here which Tomasz drew freehand. Better Half is well pleased with it and I have to say it does look good...it fills in a gap area on an arm which now sports 4 different tattoo's!

I've also struck lucky as I've found the very thing I was looking for for my own tattoo. While browsing through the artwork in the shop I came across exactly the sort fo angel I'd been looking for...male, strong looking, detailed and livable with for the next lifetime! ...in answer to your question then Steve...no I've not had mine yet! It looks like Tomasz will again be doing the work and hopefully in the next month or so I'll have my new guardian angel sitting on my shoulder carrying the words "watch over me and protect me". I know my guardian angel does just that anyway and I know he's always on my shoulder so it's pretty fitting. I'll be getting a bit of Royal Blue put into the design...my guardian angel had a fondness for the colour!

Jenny xx

Chasing Cars...

Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars. If you haven't heard this song then you obviously live in a cave somewhere remote with no internet access!

I've had a few wee debates with people over this song in the last few days. Many are of the opinion that it's over rated, commercialised crap while others think it's a masterpiece.

Personally I like Snow Patrol...I don't think Chasing Cars is their best work but for what it's worth I like it. Why? The words that's why. It is just a gorgeous love song and one that sounds even better when it's played loud.

Oh and they use it in the trailers for Grey's Anatomy and there's always a shot of McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey) in the trailer somewhere looking lush!

Jenny xx

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Stop The World, England Have Snow...

I can exclusively reveal that the world, well at least Britain, has apparently come to a complete standstill today. The reason for this is that we've has some snow...well when I say we I mean England. That's right, shock horror, England has snow.

All morning I've been hearing about airport's in choas because of closures, roads in a similar state of mayhem becuase of hazardous conditions and yet more closures, the hundreds of schools in England that have been closed and the impact of all this on life in general over the border. One woman was on tv this morning telling us how she's not had snow outside her door for 10 years!

Shame. I've nothing against the English...well except when I watch Braveheart and I hate them all...but dearie me all this fuss over a bit of snow. Granted Scotland isn't much better at dealing with snow but bizarrely when we get it...which we do more than our southern cousins...your lucky if it gets even a passing nod in the news!

We do have snow today. A small sprinkling of white, hardly enough to warrant dragging out the wellies, so it's business as usual where I am.

What really made me sit up and realise we're dealing with a national disaster though was my phone call to BT this morning. I rang them to make a payment to my Broadband account and was met with the message "Due to severe weather our contact centre has been severely affected, like many of our customers. As a result you will experience extensive delays in our answering your call with current waiting times of approximatley 75 minutes. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause and advise that you may wish to try calling back at a less busy time or use our website for your query"

Why not just put a message on saying "Due to severe weather most of our staff have rung in to say they can't make it into work. This is probably lies and they decided just to head back to their warm beds and take advantage of the fact there's snow. We apologise for any inconvenience and would ask you to call back once the snow turns to slush and they all come back to work"

That'd do for me.

Jenny xx

Sunday, February 04, 2007

Wednesday & Saturday...

Were days of despair in my hoose. I'll tell you for why.

On Wednesday, the sexiest man in maroon Paul Hartley left Hearts FC to head to Darkheid and play for Celtic. Gutted, not just because he was still one of our most influencial players or because he went to one of the Infirm but because I will never again see the vision that was him looking hot, sweaty and damn fit running around Tynie in a maroon jersey. I was inconsolable on Wednesday...but I'm over it now after seeing the wee bugger in his new Hoops top playing for his new team today!


Saturday brought yet more unhappiness in Jamboland. It was Scottish Cup weekend. We had Dunfermline. Aye it was an away game but they are rooted to the bottom of the SPL. Aye they beat Rangers in the last round but Rangers are gash. To be honest I wasn't confident going into this one for some wierd reason and turns out I was right to feel that way. We lost 1-0. A late goal and by late I mean very, stomach churningly, seconds away from a replay at home late. Jammy bastards. Still I can now book my holidays for May!

Jenny xx

In The Last Week...

I've...

Been to the funeral of a 42 year old man who died from the evil that is cancer. An intresting funeral is was too with no hymns and no life story about the deceased. Instead we got The Doors playing (amongst other bands) and letters written to him by his friends and family which was nice.

Been catching up with friends on the phone that I've been neglecting...Mrs F if you read this I've found the book I got you back in December but couldn't find!

Been doing a bit of interior redecoration, following the lounge getting it's new coat of paint, I've been out and bought some new pictures for the walls...arty black and white scenes of New York which I am liking a lot and I've had Better Half change all the plug sockets and the light switch from boring white to chrome. I've also bought a ridiculously cheap light fitting which looks ridiculously more expensive than it was...a chrome and glass chandelier type which is lovely to finish off the room.

Bought paint for 10 year old's room which Better Half is under instruction to have put on the walls in the next 2 days! Along with that I bought her a ridiculously cheap light fitting which looks ridiculously more expensive than it was...a red velvet and red glass chandelier type which is pure glam and will fit in with her new "grown up" bedroom..no more lilac, fairies and pink things!

Been discussing with my clan ideas for our holidays this year and bizarrely the kids fancy New York...I bizarrely enough fancy Florida...Better Half fancies both!

Been phoning builders and architects to get the plans and prices for my extension which will hopefully get underway by late spring/early summer.

Made room for some family time and headed into the city centre with the kids and Better Half for a wander...we decided to do Edinburgh tourist style...a dry run for a possible trip to NYC and because we've never done it before! We took the car to the park and ride and got the bus into town, we walked from Lothian Road, up Castle Terrace and right down to the bottom of the Royal Mile stopping to read the wall plaques marking historical spots, visiting St Giles Cathedral, spitting on the Heart of Midlothian for luck, visiting the Museum Of Childhood, stopping at Starbucks for a coffee and a lounge about, browsing in a tattoo shop we came across before heading down Jeffrey Street, up past the Waverley, across Princes Street and into George Street to get dinner at the Hard Rock and then back down into Princes Street and on the bus back to the park and ride. It was a great day out, the kids walked the whole way without once complaining, ate all their dinner for once, got loads of fresh air and had smiles on their faces all day...a good dry run for any potential trip to NYC given it's a lot of walking and sightseeing!

All in all it's been a busy week...and this one doesn't look like being any quieter...Better Half is dragging me back to the tattoo shop we saw while we were on our wander tomorrow to get his new tattoo!

Jenny xx