As the Sparks have been to Washington and been home for a long time now, it seemed appropriate to make a new beginning.
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Thursday 14 July 2011
Tuesday 8 March 2011
What time is it? Geesh I need a coffee to wake me up...
The coffee capsules that I order for our whizzy machine arrived today. Considering it was free 72 hour delivery and I only ordered them on Sunday afternoon I was very pleased with the great service. I was slightly less pleased that they chose to deliver them at 07:15 this morning though!! I suppose them phoning us to say they were outside was better than taking them to some impossible to find depot in the middle of nowhere (or Kidderminster) and making us come and get them. But still....07:15....CRUELLY EARLY!!
Tuesday 1 March 2011
I'm feeling better!
YAY! I'm finally feeling almost human...and that is saying a lot considering how I've been feeling the past few days. My shoulder is still hurting - but that is the least of the problems. My blood tests came back clear too, so we're all good. Well, good in that they're normal, but not good in that my spots and spouting facial hair isn't explained away by me having PCOS. I guess I'm just hairy and spotty!! I'll just have to embrace it and turn the epilator to "turbo"!
I was back at the doctors office this morning for that most dreaded of appointments. Nothing about this appointment is good. The preparation we do is stringent. The waiting is stressful. The exam is uncomfortable. There is something quite distrubing about having a woman with a torch peering up your...yes well. It wasn't fun! I hope she appreciated the new lingerie! But maybe the stick on crystal decorations were a bit too much... "Give 'em the ol' vajazzle dazzle...vajazzle dazzle 'em"...!!!
Okay, so I didn't...but vajazzling is apparantly a growing trend. Not sure it'll catch on round here too soon though. If I start finding crystals on the floor of the ladies in work I'll know I've been proved wrong!!
I was wrong about fish pedicures. I remember watching Ugly Betty years ago and thinking "Yeough, that'll never catch on" and now you can go dunk your feet into a tank of fish and have them nibble off the dead skin in the middle of the shopping malls of Glasgow. (Malvern may take a while to catch up!) I was looking at this and thinking "not for me" - I don't think I'd like the sensation of them nibbling my tootsies, and it did cross my mind that it may not be terribly hygenic - but then I am a little bit OCD!! Now I see that health experts have raised the possibility of infections being spread, and yet others point out that its a widely used technique in the Far East - I wonder who is right and how long it'll be before I'm paying a pound a minute to stick my feet in a fish tank! (Have just checked Wikipedia and found out that the first place to offer fish pedicures in the US was Alexandria, VA in 2008! I wonder where? I was totally unaware of that when we lived there!)
I was back at the doctors office this morning for that most dreaded of appointments. Nothing about this appointment is good. The preparation we do is stringent. The waiting is stressful. The exam is uncomfortable. There is something quite distrubing about having a woman with a torch peering up your...yes well. It wasn't fun! I hope she appreciated the new lingerie! But maybe the stick on crystal decorations were a bit too much... "Give 'em the ol' vajazzle dazzle...vajazzle dazzle 'em"...!!!
Okay, so I didn't...but vajazzling is apparantly a growing trend. Not sure it'll catch on round here too soon though. If I start finding crystals on the floor of the ladies in work I'll know I've been proved wrong!!
I was wrong about fish pedicures. I remember watching Ugly Betty years ago and thinking "Yeough, that'll never catch on" and now you can go dunk your feet into a tank of fish and have them nibble off the dead skin in the middle of the shopping malls of Glasgow. (Malvern may take a while to catch up!) I was looking at this and thinking "not for me" - I don't think I'd like the sensation of them nibbling my tootsies, and it did cross my mind that it may not be terribly hygenic - but then I am a little bit OCD!! Now I see that health experts have raised the possibility of infections being spread, and yet others point out that its a widely used technique in the Far East - I wonder who is right and how long it'll be before I'm paying a pound a minute to stick my feet in a fish tank! (Have just checked Wikipedia and found out that the first place to offer fish pedicures in the US was Alexandria, VA in 2008! I wonder where? I was totally unaware of that when we lived there!)
Sunday 27 February 2011
Poor me
I mentioned my enormous spot on my Twitter postings. It truly was enormous - half of my nose swelled dramatically and it was positively purple on Tuesday! It had, of course, begun to swell on Saturday so I was busy with make-up and when that failed, resorted to standing behind taller people in the wedding photos!
I also picked up a head cold when I was in Scotland. It was messy!! I couldn't be more than 4 inches from a box of tissues for fear of sneezing and...I won't go into details. It is sufficient to say it was messy!!!! I was concerned enough about the nose thing to actually go to the Doctors on Wednesday. It turns out I have the remains of a chest infection (which I didn't know I had), a red, inflamed throat (which I did know I had!) and swollen glands. Oh, and the spot was more of an abscess. I was prescribed antibiotics and booked in for blood tests to try and get to the bottom of my spots which have flared again.
Since starting the antibiotics I have been on the Erythromycin diet! I have never, ever felt so nauseous EVER. I felt pretty bad on Thursday. During Thursday night I couldn't move as moving triggered overwhelming waves of nausea. I couldn't get out of bed on Friday and managed to eat a whole digestive biscuit in 36 hours. The nausea passed (mostly) by Saturday afternoon, but now the little I'm managing to eat is turbo charged. Also, my slightly achy shoulder is now causing pain. JOY! My body has turned against me!!! I am a delight to behold! I tell you - I feel so much more sympathetic for pregnant women now. If that is what morning sickness is like then, phew - hats off to you amazing ladies!!
I also picked up a head cold when I was in Scotland. It was messy!! I couldn't be more than 4 inches from a box of tissues for fear of sneezing and...I won't go into details. It is sufficient to say it was messy!!!! I was concerned enough about the nose thing to actually go to the Doctors on Wednesday. It turns out I have the remains of a chest infection (which I didn't know I had), a red, inflamed throat (which I did know I had!) and swollen glands. Oh, and the spot was more of an abscess. I was prescribed antibiotics and booked in for blood tests to try and get to the bottom of my spots which have flared again.
Since starting the antibiotics I have been on the Erythromycin diet! I have never, ever felt so nauseous EVER. I felt pretty bad on Thursday. During Thursday night I couldn't move as moving triggered overwhelming waves of nausea. I couldn't get out of bed on Friday and managed to eat a whole digestive biscuit in 36 hours. The nausea passed (mostly) by Saturday afternoon, but now the little I'm managing to eat is turbo charged. Also, my slightly achy shoulder is now causing pain. JOY! My body has turned against me!!! I am a delight to behold! I tell you - I feel so much more sympathetic for pregnant women now. If that is what morning sickness is like then, phew - hats off to you amazing ladies!!
A wee trip to Scotland
Poor Stephen wasn't very well last week. He came down with a cold just a few days before we were due to drive to Scotland, which caused us a little debate about when we should drive up. Fully expecting to abandon the original plan to travel on Thursday afternoon we did no packing, until Stephen announced around noon that we may as well get it over with as there was no guarantee that he'd feel any better on the Friday. We had looked out what clothes we were taking and this was quickly and neatly packed, but we ended up throwing shoes, phone chargers, hair straighteners etc (ie all the odds and sods) into carrier bags. I was like a bag lady taking all my possessions out to the car! Must remember for next time that we do have holdalls for that sort of thing - it would certainly have made dragging the stuff in and out the car at each location much easier!!
The first stop of the Sparks go to Scotland tour was to East Kilbride to see Stephen's family. It was something of a whistlestop tour - compressed by Stephen's need for a 2 hour nap on Friday after taking far too much out of himself going to the driving range. This rather squashed the time available to get round everyone, but we made it!
The second stop was Loch Lomond, via the Romanian Orthodox Church in Glasgow, for Monica and Adrian's wedding. What a fabulous wedding it was! It was the first time at an Orthodox ceremony for most of the people there and I, for one, was quite fascinated by the ceremony and the priests singing the responses. Monica was telling us the next day that the priest was shaking as he doesn't normally have to conduct any part of the ceremony in English. I did have a smile when he welcomed us to the "weeding".
I had to work hard to suppress giggles, thanks to the small children behind us. In a bid to keep 3 young children amused during the ceremony their daddy was very quietly going through a picture book with them.
"Horse" said dad
"Horse" came the reply
"mumble" said dad
"SHITE" came the rather loud response
"Cow" said dad
"SHIIIITE" was the plaintive wail
By this time I was having to dig my nails into my palms to stop the giggles!!
Stephen had already bonded with Kenny (Adrian's brother in law) who was taking the photos and who had even more camera equipment than Stephen. I can only feel sorry for Elaine his wife, if she - like me, gets to carry it about! Stephen was taking loads of photos too, and between them they got a lovely set of photos. Kenny and Elaine were also exceedingly useful in a "follow that car" kind of way when it came from getting from the church onto the M8 to get to Ross Priory!!
The reception was wonderful. It was so good to catch up with all the Strathclyde University folks whom Stephen used to work with. Its too easy to forget that it was 17 years ago we left!! I was shocked to find that Helen's cute little daughter was now 21 years old!! Scottish water must be good for the skin as Helen doesn't look in any way old enough to have a 21 year old! She has barely changed at all.
The band were excellent too. It was ceildh, but now as you'd normally know it! They did all the traditional dances, but mixed in very modern music. So, for example, there would be Iron Maiden during the Virginia Reel (but not in a head-banging way). Very, very clever musicians indeed. (Have just googled The Big Shoogle - check out their My Space page for some music clips.)
To add a little frisson of excitement, Stephen managed to misplace his car keys. Hopefully this will teach him a lesson about putting things down behind him.... When the bridal car arrived at Ross Priory he'd dumped all his keys and camera equipment on a table at the top of the steps to the entrance in order to take photos. Someone helpfully swept everything up and took it inside...but they must have shoved his keys in a sporran or pocket - out of sight, out of mind! Thankfully I had my set of keys so we were okay, and thankfully Adrian got a call in the morning to say they'd turned up, and by a convoluted route we got them back to Stephen's mum so all we had to do was detour back to EK to collect them on our way home on Tuesday.
Our third stop was bonny Edinburgh to see even bonnier baby Leo....and the rest of the family too, of course! Poor Eve was loaded with the cold, so we were a fairly sorry lot coughing and sneezing away! It was funny as I'd had a dream that Leo was talking (in sentences no less!) and he is talking - just not in a language that we understand as yet! He chatters away quite the thing! Chad had taken a video of him chattering and we showed it to him. Leo's face was screwed up intently watching himself, then suddenly he burst into smiles and giggles. He was obviously telling jokes!! This was borne out by the fact that, from the video, we could hear Chad saying "You sure can deliver a punchline little fella". How funny!!
The first stop of the Sparks go to Scotland tour was to East Kilbride to see Stephen's family. It was something of a whistlestop tour - compressed by Stephen's need for a 2 hour nap on Friday after taking far too much out of himself going to the driving range. This rather squashed the time available to get round everyone, but we made it!
The second stop was Loch Lomond, via the Romanian Orthodox Church in Glasgow, for Monica and Adrian's wedding. What a fabulous wedding it was! It was the first time at an Orthodox ceremony for most of the people there and I, for one, was quite fascinated by the ceremony and the priests singing the responses. Monica was telling us the next day that the priest was shaking as he doesn't normally have to conduct any part of the ceremony in English. I did have a smile when he welcomed us to the "weeding".
I had to work hard to suppress giggles, thanks to the small children behind us. In a bid to keep 3 young children amused during the ceremony their daddy was very quietly going through a picture book with them.
"Horse" said dad
"Horse" came the reply
"mumble" said dad
"SHITE" came the rather loud response
"Cow" said dad
"SHIIIITE" was the plaintive wail
By this time I was having to dig my nails into my palms to stop the giggles!!
Stephen had already bonded with Kenny (Adrian's brother in law) who was taking the photos and who had even more camera equipment than Stephen. I can only feel sorry for Elaine his wife, if she - like me, gets to carry it about! Stephen was taking loads of photos too, and between them they got a lovely set of photos. Kenny and Elaine were also exceedingly useful in a "follow that car" kind of way when it came from getting from the church onto the M8 to get to Ross Priory!!
The reception was wonderful. It was so good to catch up with all the Strathclyde University folks whom Stephen used to work with. Its too easy to forget that it was 17 years ago we left!! I was shocked to find that Helen's cute little daughter was now 21 years old!! Scottish water must be good for the skin as Helen doesn't look in any way old enough to have a 21 year old! She has barely changed at all.
The band were excellent too. It was ceildh, but now as you'd normally know it! They did all the traditional dances, but mixed in very modern music. So, for example, there would be Iron Maiden during the Virginia Reel (but not in a head-banging way). Very, very clever musicians indeed. (Have just googled The Big Shoogle - check out their My Space page for some music clips.)
To add a little frisson of excitement, Stephen managed to misplace his car keys. Hopefully this will teach him a lesson about putting things down behind him.... When the bridal car arrived at Ross Priory he'd dumped all his keys and camera equipment on a table at the top of the steps to the entrance in order to take photos. Someone helpfully swept everything up and took it inside...but they must have shoved his keys in a sporran or pocket - out of sight, out of mind! Thankfully I had my set of keys so we were okay, and thankfully Adrian got a call in the morning to say they'd turned up, and by a convoluted route we got them back to Stephen's mum so all we had to do was detour back to EK to collect them on our way home on Tuesday.
Our third stop was bonny Edinburgh to see even bonnier baby Leo....and the rest of the family too, of course! Poor Eve was loaded with the cold, so we were a fairly sorry lot coughing and sneezing away! It was funny as I'd had a dream that Leo was talking (in sentences no less!) and he is talking - just not in a language that we understand as yet! He chatters away quite the thing! Chad had taken a video of him chattering and we showed it to him. Leo's face was screwed up intently watching himself, then suddenly he burst into smiles and giggles. He was obviously telling jokes!! This was borne out by the fact that, from the video, we could hear Chad saying "You sure can deliver a punchline little fella". How funny!!
 |
| The very happy couple |
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| The wee cutie (and Leo!) |
Wednesday 16 February 2011
My first twitter follower
How funny! I got my first follower on Twitter this morning...and its Michael McIntyre. Yes THE Michael McIntyre - King of Comedy!!!
Obviously he has recognised my genius and wants to read my pearls of wisdom every day....or it could just be an automated reciprocal arrangement because I follow him. But still....Michael McIntyre!!!! My very first twitter follower!!!! How many people can say that???!!!!!
Tuesday 15 February 2011
Tweet tweet
Just because I can.... I've signed up to Twitter and linked the feed to my blog page - for on the hoof updates! Goodness knows if this will work. Might be a bit advanced for me!!!!
What is it they say? Follow me on Twitter @sparksgoto
:-)
What is it they say? Follow me on Twitter @sparksgoto
:-)
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