Friday 3rd July

Just made it to morning after a bad night with Maggie. Not that she was poorly, but it was so hot and stuffy, even with the windows slightly open, she was panting. I let her out at 3.15 and she did a huge wee, then we went back to bed and I put the fan on. It seemed to help, but I got chilled, so had to turn it off after an hour. She settled beside me closest to the window and slept until almost 7. Hubby was already up so let her out and I went back to sleep until 9.30!!

I’ve had a shower and washed my hair, turning the pressure up and letting the hot water pummel my back. It seems better today. I’ve creamed it and will take the painkillers again today as they did help. We won’t be doing very much though.
We’re just about to take Maggie for her first walk of the day (11.35!!) as there’s a gap in the rain and we might just make it without getting wet!

Lunch today is fish for me, but after the last two pieces, Hubby isn’t keen so I shall do something else to go with his wedges and peas.

Keep safe everyone.

Fibbing Friday responses for 3rd July

Below are the 10 book titles I gave you earlier.
How did you do with your descriptions?

Here are mine. Would you pick any of them up?

1. War and Peace
A love story that goes horribly wrong when the parents clash and try to break the newlyweds up. Dirty tricks come out of the woodwork, but will our happy couple rise above it all or give in to family pressure?
2. The Green Mile
It was a prime piece of land, perfect for development. Suspects galore, but no-one could have predicted who was responsible for the sabotage of the construction site and machinery.
3. Dances with Wolves
Her ancestry dated back to the myths and legends of werewolves and vampires. There was something about Tobias that she couldn’t quite put her finger on, that was until the night of the Blood Moon when it became blatantly apparent they had both lied.
4. Jaws
A laugh a minute tale about mother in laws who never give their child’s spouse a break. From finding dentures in the wedding cake to threes a crowd on the honeymoon, you’ll be reaching for the tissues to mop up the tears of laughter.
5. The Wind in the Willows
A polite way of dealing with flatulence without causing offense. Ned and his wife are old and a bit on the whiffy side. Not that they notice, but their friends and family do and it’s a case of something your best friend won’t tell you and who draws the short straw to get the matter sorted.  The suggestions and remedies may be far fetched, but at the end of the day, who will come up smelling of roses?
6. The Deserter
This is actually a classic typo and is all about pudding recipes using basic as well as exotic ingredients.
7. One Shot
Mark has just one shot to make a name for himself or disappear into oblivion. The story revolves around how he got where he is against all the odds, then having to choose between fame and fortune or true love.
8. It
No-one has seen anything like It before. It materialised out of the blue and caused havoc everywhere It went. Lost for a means to describe the phenomenon, the authorities refer to it as It. Never in the history of mankind have two letters ever instilled such fear.
9. Independence Day
A Coming of Age reminiscence from the memories of a ninety year old spinster who has the chance to change one thing from her past. Come with us as she goes through a process of elimination to determine her choice.
10. The Count of Monte Cristo
Embezzlement and fraud run rife as auditors are called in to investigate the financial collapse of royalty. Unofficial offspring keep turning up and when it is discovered that one of the investigating experts has a claim to the throne, it opens a whole new can of worms in the world of their Dynasty.

Take Seven: 3rd July

It’s Friday!

Welcome to my Take Seven compilation which incorporates all 21 words (or derivatives) from the Three Things Challenge for the past week.
You are most welcome to join in using as many or all of the words too. Just pingback to this post and then leave a link to your post in the comments so that I can see it and respond directly.
As always, have fun, and I hope you enjoy this week’s effort.

Our words were:
any, auctioned, brief, colour, conversations, determine, each, finally, garden, inside, lot, loved, name, perfection, permission, printed, put, restful, suddenly, unusual, won

She had always loved roses. It didn’t matter what colour, or even if they had little if any fragrance.
It was just the perfection of the bloom, the uniqueness and variety that she found so appealing and restful.
Anyone watching might have thought it unusual the way she would suddenly stop, take out her camera and take pictures of someone’s garden. If they were there, she always asked permission as she passed the time of day, but most times it was from the other side of the wall or hedge as she would never dream to go inside uninvited.
Few people actually knew her name, but mention The Rose Lady, and everyone knew who they were talking about.
It was hard to determine her age, but from conversations had, she’d led quite an eventful life, and most would put her in her 70s.
She loved animals and birds, nature in all its forms, but roses won her heart every time.
Finally a picture she’d taken was printed in the local press accompanying her obituary.
She had no family or pets, but she had a lot of friends. The street was lined with them as the hearse drove by, each holding a rose from their own gardens in tribute.
The service was brief, but beautiful, celebrating a life of colour and vibrancy, and the chapel full of her photographs which were to be auctioned off for charity.
Her name was Rose Eden and she was 83.

Photo: Our Peace rose June 2018

Fibbing Friday 3rd July 2020

This week it’s my turn to host the Fibbing Friday challenge as I alternate with PCGuyIV.
https://pcguyiv.wordpress.com/
As regular readers know, between us we have kept the Fibbing Friday challenge going and thank you all for your continued support and participation.
The last couple of weeks have been Movie Quotes, so this time I’m going with book titles.
I’ll give you the title of 10 books, and let’s see what you can come with for what they’re about in two or three sentences.
The idea remember is to fib a little, a lot, tell whoppers, be inventive, silly or even outrageous, in your response and evade the truth.

Write a post with your answers and tag it “Fibbing Friday” or #FibbingFriday, then link back to this post so that others can enjoy your answers and maybe join in too!
If you use WordPress, pingbacks are enabled, so as long as you link to this post, it should show up.
Bear in mind though that they are usually approved manually, so don’t be surprised if the link doesn’t show up immediately. You can also leave a link to your post in the comments.

Ready? Let’s re-write the history books:

1. War and Peace
2. The Green Mile
3. Dances with Wolves
4. Jaws
5. The Wind in the Willows
6. The Deserter
7. One Shot
8. It
9. Independence Day
10. The Count of Monte Cristo

 

Three Things Challenge #285

Welcome to The Three Things Challenge.
For those of you unfamiliar with the challenge, every day I list three things that may, or may not, be related.
You don’t have to use them all if you don’t want to, simply read the prompt and see where your creativity takes you. There are no restrictions regarding length, style, or genre apart from keeping it family friendly.
You can use the 3TC, #threethingschallenge or TTC as a tag and the logo if you wish.
Have some fun with the words and invite us along by creating a pingback to this post. Don’t forget to leave your link in the comments so that other people can read your writings and I’ll see it to respond to you directly. While you’re there, why not check out some of the other posts too!

I schedule the challenge to go out around 6.30am UK time, so as pingbacks have to be approved manually, they might not show immediately if I’m late accessing my blog or due to time differences. I will get there though, I promise!
Your support has been amazing, so many thanks to all of you for taking part.

Our final three things this week are:

PUT
WON
AUCTIONED

Thursday photo prompt: Dream #writephoto

This week’s writephoto is another glorious picture from Sue Vincent.

For visually challenged writers, the image shows a pale pathway meandering through a field of purple heather towards the green of distant hills.

The colour beckons, drawing me in along the sandy path where lizards and slow worms idle in the sun.
Armed with my bottle of lemonade and sugar sandwich, I walk towards the trees, knowing the pool awaits and birdsong will serenade me.
Curled up inside the border are vipers, snoozing in the heat but ready to strike if disturbed.
I know this path so well. As long as I keep to it, I will come to no harm.
The pool is shallow, clear and cool against my bare feet. No more than a few feet in diameter, orange bellied newts swim contentedly, their webbed feet resting on pebbles worn smooth by the water that feeds it from a small hillock and natural source.
Frogs nestle in the reeds out of sight of predators.
This paradise is Nature’s Garden, but when I awaken, I know it is only a dream.
The reality is 4000 dwellings, three industrial estates, two supermarkets and umpteen retail units housing eateries, clothing or empty.
Gone is the colour and clear unpolluted skies, the habitat long since developed and those creatures that fascinated me as a child no more than dust on a forgotten track leading nowhere.

 

 

Dinner and more cards

I had an early start to the day so got in a couple of posts before lunch.
We had a lazy dinner today with leftover veg aka tatty cake, baked beans, and spam.
Surprisingly, that wasn’t a ‘bad’ meal, as the veg and beans are considered free, and 100g of chopped ham and pork (which is what we had) attracts 8.5 syns for 100g.  I used half of a 340g tin for the two of us, so that was 85g each which equated to around 7.2 syns, so I’ve allowed 7½, well within my 15 allowance.

Spam dinner today

This afternoon I settled down to play with some of the stuff I bought the other day.
My first effort was a total disaster as it was something I hadn’t noticed and a picture in three panels. I used a gate card and some backing paper to fill it out, but I hadn’t lined things up properly and it looked AWFUL! There was no way I could salvage any of it, so it got thrown in the bin and I settled on something simple!
These were on the same sheet but are only single toppers, so it was just a case of using sticky tape, though I added a backing paper to the one on the left.
I made three (the other is the same size card but turned 90º as the picture was taller)

I dug around in my box and found some decoupage sheets I bought ages ago. I made two almost identical cards from each set using parts 1, 3 and 5 on one and 2, 4, and 6 on the other.
One of each design

But this is the biggy!
And I mean BIG, as I’d seen the kits last week but my cards were too small, so I bit the bullet and bought some 7 x 7 cards so that I could use them. I only made one today, and the other in this pack is the same picture, but in red.
I added the backing paper and ‘jewels’ on her headdress and arm band to finish it off.
I’m going to go back on Saturday to get some more because they are rather nice.

New Start…….. where and how?

Michael’s challenge this week is to write a response in which you discuss the notion of a ‘New Start’.
No-one gets a second chance to make a first impression, but most of us have been lucky in being able to make a new start one way or another.
But what determines ‘a new start’? Is it a change of location, change of partner, change of lifestyle and a chance to put something right, or is wiping away the past and beginning again?
Moving away from the parental home and county of birth to start a new life with a ready made family after my divorce was a new start for me. I left behind everything and everyone I knew to a place where I knew no-one and no-one knew me. It wasn’t that I was running away from my problems (I’m a firm believer that you can’t and just delay them so face mine head on), but I took a chance, which although backfired in the end, a lot of good actually came out of it.
I learned a lot about me, and after the shit hit the fan, I was given the opportunity to rebuild my life.

A year later, I was strong enough to leave the relationship and return to my roots thanks to Bro and SIL offering me a base until I could sort myself out.
It was another new start, my home town was different and I’d lost contact with my pre-move friends bar one, who as it turned out had changed from the friend I remembered that when we met up, I don’t know who was the most embarrassed.
I was out of work for two days, and threw myself into my new job, not knowing at the time where it would lead and ended up having a career for the first time in my life.

I met Hubby a few months afterwards, and the rest of our story is familiar to my readers.
In 1989, both of us made a new start. Our history started that very first day.
There was nothing we could do to change what had happened previously, so we started from scratch.  There was no ulterior motive, no hidden agenda, we were honest and from that first meeting trusted and liked each other, becoming friends and then so much more.
We both have memories of our former life, but the ones that matter most are those we have made together.

Thought for today, 2nd July

Had my first marriage lasted, I would have been celebrating my 43rd Wedding Anniversary today. Looking back on that, I could not see it having lasted anyway, which is why I appreciate everything Hubby and I have now.

My back still hurts, something in common with that first marriage all those years ago, so I have relented and taken one of the mega painkillers prescribed by the doc last time. I’m waiting for it to kick in.
As Hubby walked the dog, I got the hoover out, which is the catalyst for this post (how sad I am you might think, but I don’t mind!).
Ladies (and gents, because Hubby is not afraid of the sucking machine in the cupboard), when you hoover, where do you start?
Is it in the room where you initially plug in and work your way round, or do you have a set routine?

Three Things Challenge #284

Welcome to The Three Things Challenge.
For those of you unfamiliar with the challenge, every day I list three things that may, or may not, be related.
You don’t have to use them all if you don’t want to, simply read the prompt and see where your creativity takes you. There are no restrictions regarding length, style, or genre apart from keeping it family friendly.
You can use the 3TC, #threethingschallenge or TTC as a tag and the logo if you wish.
Have some fun with the words and invite us along by creating a pingback to this post. Don’t forget to leave your link in the comments so that other people can read your writings and I’ll see it to respond to you directly. While you’re there, why not check out some of the other posts too!

I schedule the challenge to go out around 6.30am UK time, so as pingbacks have to be approved manually, they might not show immediately if I’m late accessing my blog or due to time differences. I will get there though, I promise!
Your support has been amazing, so many thanks to all of you for taking part.

Your three things today are:

ANY
BRIEF
EACH