I'm feeling very 'meh' tonight.
I've had a busy few days, and I'm back in work tomorrow. I don't want to go, I just want to relax. So 'meh'.

On Tuesday my parents came up and we got the last bit of the decking and garden done. For over a year my parents have been coming up and putting in hours of hard graft building the deck, putting on the railing, clearing the grass off the garden, cutting down the privet, and putting in a lot of plants. I've been there doing it too, but I have to admit my parents have worked far harder than I have. I don't know how many days it's taken in total, but it was a lot. It's been worth it though.

(This isn't the finished one, it's just to give you an idea, it's too dark to take pictures now. I'll update with a proper picture soon. I sometime wish that this picture was a true representation... there are 2 of me.)

Wednesday I decided to paint the bathroom. It was quite a dark blue colour, I loved the colour, but the window is so small, and the neighbours privet is really tall (look at the picture above) meaning we needed a light colour to brighten it up. It's also a problem because we have no windows on the landing and it's really dingy.

I got back from buying the paint to find that the Law of Sod had kicked in, and the neighbours were busy in the garden cutting the privet down. It was about 14ft tall, it's now down to ground level and our house is so much lighter. If only it was still summer, I'd have a sunny garden all day instead of just 1 hour in the morning and 2 at tea time. *sigh*
But I'd bought the paint so decided to carry on.
Except for the glossing, which will have to wait till Sunday, it's all finished...The only problem is, I'm not sure I like the colour. It's a pale blue, but not pale enough, I was wanting something a bit greyer, it's a bit icey. Porl thought I was joking when I told him... I wish I was.

So lesson learnt ALWAYS get tester pots. I'll either learn to live with it, or I'll be buying some tester pots in the next few weeks.

The other thing which happened on Tuesday is that my Dad gave me his camera (for the record, I do know I'm spoilt rotten.) He'd left it here accidentally a few weeks ago, so I'd played with it until the batteries died. It's far better than mine for many reasons, but the most important one for me is that it takes a lithium battery which stayed charged for ages, weeks if you don't use it. My old one took standard AA batteries which didn't last very long when you were using it, and still drained the power when it was turned off. Every time I wanted to take a photo of anything I'd have to go hunting for new batteries. Too much hassle for me, and the reason that most of these blog entries are dull and pictureless. Hopefully things will change now.

Lastly, thanks to my new camera, I have finally got around to taking photos of my charity shop finds from the past couple of weeks. I wish I'd taken part in the $99 thrift challenge
My first lot was from my new favourite shop Emmaus. This was my second visit there, to pick up the things I found on my first trip but could pay for because of a power cut. I skipped the furniture this time (well maybe a brief look) and spent over an hour going through all the books and bric-a-brac.
I got these books,

From the top down "Pope: Poems & Prose", "The Origin of Species", "The Divine Comedy", "The Faerie Queen", "An Inspector Calls", "Little Women" & "Course in General Linguistics".
What I love most is that a lot of these books are quite old editions. I hate new hardback books which are over sized, but I love old hardbacks which are easy to hold, and often have titbits of information about their previous owners.

I also got these great embroidery folders. It looks like a monthly subscription thing. 1 file has all the techniques and a lot of patterns for every time of embroidery you could imagine. The other file is transfers. Lots of transfers. There are 24 parts, each one made up of 2 A2 sheets of paper. I've been getting ideas for embroidery for a while but my drawing skills aren't what they were and new transfers are cheap. I'm a happy bunny.

I picked up some silver leaf shaped decorating transfers too. I won't be decorating with them, they're good for making cards.

All this lot, books, embroidery stuff, and transfers cost me the grand sum of £3.50! I love Emmaus.

Then on Thursday I was on a course in Hyde so during my lunch hour I found these materials.

Total price £2.00

I love the bumble bee fabric. Infact I bought some a few weeks ago in a different colourway which had been made up into covers for patio chairs.

Not very useful as they are, originally I thought of cutting them into patches. Now I have a big piece too I'll have to get my brain working.

The embarrassing mess from my last post is gone... sort of.
I spent that evening putting everything away, dusting, hoovering, and I even defrosted the freezer.
The next morning I came downstairs and decided to paint the rest of my storage drawers, and revamp my pin board. The tidy desk got destroyed, and for the past 2 days the living room floor has been covered in boxes and drawers which are newly painted and drying.
Tomorrow hopefully I'll be able to put everything back and take some pretty pictures of a nice neat desk.

It's days like these that I'm glad we've got no kids. I promise when we do have kids I'll be tidier... I'll have to be. I think getting all these messy jobs now is classed as nesting... I seem to always be nesting...

It's not a good state of affairs when you realise the only way you're going to get the house tidy is by embarrassing yourself into doing it.
I posted these to Craftster thread Share your Mess... Then let's clean it up

That's what happens after a month of illness, 2 weeks of annual leave, and a lot of crafting. Not that it's been like that for a month, it's just been gradually getting worse for a fortnight. I've been saying for 3 days that I'm going to put it all away, but it's not been happening. This isn't even a room I can just shut the door on, it's the craft/dining room end of our kitchen/diner.
Sometimes I wonder if letting Porl have the little bedroom as a music room was a good idea, or whether I'd have been better in there... I'm not allowing myself to start using the spare bedroom as a craft room, that way lies madness...

The embarrasment worked. The dining table is now clear, the bead drawers are organised again, and my desk is clear, I can use the mouse again, and I found my car keys!
I've still got some things I want to sort out, but they involve making a mess again, so I'll let the room be tidy for a night before I start making a mess again.
In the middle of this cleaning frenzy I did also defrost the freezer... that wouldn't have waited till tomorrow :/

I was supposed to be going on an NVQ course tomorrow, the second towards my NVQ II in Care, I've decided not to go though because I'm still on Annual Leave, and not bored enough of being at home yet to crave the real world. Also my bodyclock is totally out of sync, it's 3:19am, and I'm not tired.

My list of things still to do:

• Decoupage Horrid plastic index card box where I keep my family history stuff.
  
• Cover pinboard in some nice material.
  
• Paint rest of drawers white, and put the smarties fronts on.
  
• Finish decoupage on stamp box.
  
• Make filing cabinet less Grey.
  
  
• Build cupboard in corner to hide electric meter, mops ironing board etc, put proper work bench in, put shelves up, paint....
  
• Talk Dad into helping with the last lot :/
  

I'm hoping tomorrow someone will have received some post, so I'll be able to show some pictures of at least some of the things I've been making, if not then I might get around to posting pictures of my Charity Shop haul from a week ago.

Oh and thankyou to everyone who's wished me a speedy recovery from "the cold that will not be beaten". I did go to the doctors, it seems this lingering cold is doing the rounds, I didn't need antibiotics so I've just been on paracetamols and my asthma inhalers. After a month of having a cold I think it might have finally gone (I hope). Now I just have to wait for my irritating asthma cough to go... by which time knowing my luck it'll probably be winter, or flu season...

I'm getting beyond cheesed off now.
I started with a cold about 2 1/2 weeks ago, I was bad for a couple of days, then it seemed to clear up, I had a couple of days of feeling mostly okay, then I started with a stomach bug, then the cold returned with a vengence. I slept a lot and thankfully it seemed to disappear in time for Porl's brother wedding on Saturday.

We had a lovely day, Ste & Karen are a great couple. Karen's family were really friendly, and as they're Scottish there was plenty of whisky being swigged from the early part of the day. It was good to meet some more members of Porl's family too, I'm sure I've met them before, but this time seemed less daunting as there were fewer of them, and I also know Porl's Aunty really well as she used to be my boss.

Porl looked ever so smart in his Usher's outfit, and at some point I'll have a look at the photos and see whether they've turned out. It was 5am by the time we got to bed, thanks to a residents bar in the hotel, Porl having his guitar, and lots of Scottish relatives singing folk songs.

We got back home in the early afternoon on Sunday, we had a quick play with the cats, then went back to bed for a couple of hours. When I woke up the dreaded cold had returned, and this time sleep isn't shifting it.

My sinuses are blocked which means I can't breathe, and I'm getting headaches, it's also slipping onto my chest, so I'm getting out of breathe all the time. This afternon I decided if I pretended to be fine it might go away, so I did weeded and hoed all the back garden (there's a lot of it to do now we've dug up all the grass). The garden looks great now, but I had to keep sitting down while the dizziness passed. I think I can safely say that pretending I was fine didn't work.

I'm on holiday for 2 weeks (well 1 1/2 now) I'm not meant to be ill.
If I'm not feeling significantly better by Friday then I'm going to the doctors.

Post No. 2 of the day. Is this a record?

As I said in the earlier post I woke up yesterday feeling restless and needing air. I decided to follow some advice from Kirsty and I went to find a new charity shop in the hope of finding a TV table. The one we had was a horrible nasty Argos thing which we've had for years. A few weeks after getting it a friend fell over and broke it, but we still lived with it for about 6 years.

The place was huge! I wandered around but couldn't find anything, then realized there was an upstairs. As soon as I got up there I spotted this cabinet.

The front pattern matches the pattern on our welsh dresser, and the coal skuttle/shoe holder which are both in the living room. Quite lucky really considering the dresser is a proper antique, the coal skuttle was made by my Grandad, and this TV cabinet is made from chipboard and plywood. Also lucky because I couldn't have cut a hole in the back of an antique to push wires for the DVD player and video through.

I hurried downstairs to find out how much it was, £25, bargain! I carried on looking round, they have books! At cheaper than charity shop prices! I picked a couple up, then it all went dark, I carried on looking round in the gloom, they have bric-a-brac, clothes, yarn, patterns, a Celeste Heaven basically. Someone found out the whole village was without power as a substation had blown so they were closing the shop.
My disappointment at not being able to look around properly was soon put aside when they told me they couldn't access the tills. I had no change so I got the TV table for £20 instead.

I got home excited by my find, but my earlier restlessness had turned into illness. I felt rotten in ways I won't describe but I had to call in sick for my shift today, apparently I'm not the only one to have got this bug though.

I've spent today sleeping, lounging, and rigging up the TV... so many cables... It's all done now, and looks fantastic, I've even been able to unpack a box of videos which have been sat under the telly for 2 years since we moved here.

One day this house will be sorted.

On Thursday we went up to Liverpool for a tribute gig at the Everyman for Chris our friend who died a few weeks ago. I'm not sure what I was expecting but I found it a lot harder to deal with than I expected. Ever since I found out about his death he's not been far from my thoughts which I've found quite hard to deal with in itself.

Chris was Porl's friend, they were at school together, they were in bands together, infact Porl was the one who first got Chris recording music and persuaded him to get a bass. Porl kept telling Chris he should be doing his own music, which is eventually what he did. When they left school they met new people and didn't see so much of each other. I probably only saw Chris a couple of times a year, usually we'd spend 2-3 days together doing things as a group, then not see each other again for another 6 months. We always did memorable things though, (like my first trip to Bugged Out, or setting off at 3am to walk to someones house 6 miles away, and many other things which a blog isn't the place to mention.)

The first time I met Chris he came up to my halls at uni, he made me laugh so much I ended up hiding under my duvet try to regain my composure so I could at least breathe!
Although Porl has told me he could have very dark periods, I can't think of a time that I met him when he was anything but happy, funny, and the centre of attention.
I think that's why I've found the idea of him committing suicide so hard to deal with.

At the tribute gig there were handout booklets of his Slak Fox cartoons, a donation got you CD's of some of the Monkey music. Also the walls were covered with posters from gigs, reviews up of the band, interviews from fanzines, and lots and lots of photos (especially those with John Peel.)
I was doing okay keeping myself together, but then at the end of the night I was sat next to one of the photo boards, deep breaths were keeping me calm until Porl commented on one of the pictures as being exactly how he remembered Chris, deeper breaths, they started playing a Monkey track and Porl fell apart, then I did.

We didn't get home until about 2am, but neither of us felt like sleep, so we sat up and watched a film together, a very rare occurrence for us, but our emotions were too charged to be able to sleep.

I woke up stupidly early yesterday considering my late night, but couldn't get back to sleep. I felt restless and in need of fresh air, I had a drive round and got a great charity shop find (which I'll do a separate post about). Then I went to a garden centre and bought some yellow Chrysanthemums for the garden. Whenever I picture Chris he's wearing a yellow t-shirt, lots of people at the funeral were wearing yellow, as well as all the flowers being yellow, so I'm pretty sure it was his favourite colour. Also the woman at the garden centre said yellow is for Friendship (I had to explain why I was crying while buying plants.)
I bought Chrysanthemums because the 2nd song Porl and Chris wrote together was called Chrysanthemum. The first was Christina. Apparently Chris hadn't realized the egocentricity of this until Porl suggested the next song should be "Chris is Great, Chris is Great, All Bow Down and Worship Chris."
But he was Great.
Yesterday would have been his 30th birthday.