The Days’ Seem to be Blending into One Another.

I really need to get myself a ‘proper’ job! With work at the university slowly ‘drying up,’ I find myself with more and more time on my hands, and am I working on my novel? No! I am not! I am wasting my days lounging in bed, listening to music and dreaming away! The only time I get out of the bed covers is to grab lunch or to do a quick 30 minutes exercise on the treadmill!

I need to get myself a life!

Gardening news and the flowers on my Aquilegia have begun to open. They are of a very subtle pink. The purple seems to have been bred out of the strain.

My Flame of the Forest seems to be going from strength to strength too!

Broken Bones, New Friends and Anniversaries!

I haven’t written a blog in a while.

Life has been mainly about work and life back home, doing lots of cooking and writing the new novel. 🙂

This week saw the eighth anniversary of the first meeting of David and I… time passes so quickly! For our anniversary David bought two Gouldian Finches (males). I named them Spectrum (Purple and yellow chest) and Aura (white and yellow chest). I love them, though Chocolate and Romeo have not accepted them into the new aviary as yet! Time will tell!

For our dinner we ordered in a Saffron curry. We both had a Shahi, but as David had chicken I had the vegetarian option. We are both very full now.

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I have been doing a lot of treadmill exercises since David and I have moved into the new house. Everyday, for 20-30 minutes I have been sweating buckets! I have been eating healthily, lots of salad and I think I have lost weight. My work trousers have indeed become looser. I do not stand on the scales for fear I will revert back to my obsessive teenage years!! (It is so easily done.) Though having the curry tonight (we have not had one in a while) and a nice glass of wine, I am feeling rather swollen lol, and add to the fact that I will not be able to do too much exercise this week, due to me having dislocated/broken my little toe, I fear I will start to put back the pounds I have lost!

Dislocated/broken your toe? I hear you asking! Well it seemed quite innocuous at the time. I was getting ready for bed on a Sunday, it was almost 12 am! I was preparing myself for the working week ahead and since we have a mattress that likes to shift from time to time, I went to shift it back again. This act was fine and the mattress fitted into place and then I went to walk around the bed to my side and *bang!* my foot caught one of David’s shoes under the bed! I smarted at the impact, bent down and looked at my little toe, it seemed queer, out of place. So my instinctual action was to bend it back into place. It clicked, so hopefully it is in its correct alignment! I did not think much at the time, save for the pain and then ‘popping’ it back into place! I hope I have not done any lasting damage? I complained to David and then went to bed with a red, hot and swollen toe! I wanted more comfort! 😦

Monday came too quickly and I had work all day, I had to go otherwise I would’t get paid! The bruising seemed to get worse as time went on! (Sorry for the not so well manicured toes!)

😦 Sadly and licking my wounds. I tottered to work with a bandaged toe. I have had broken toes before so know what it’s like, but it doesn’t make it any easier when you have to walk 10 minutes to the bus stop, fight your way onto the bus and then more walking to the university buildings the lectures are in!

I have managed two days of going to work with a limp but thankfully Wednesday is my day off and I expect to just rest up! I will probably listen to more Hans Zimmer and try and continue some more novel writing! I have written 27,000 words already but most of it is the plan!! I am excited to progress but there is a lot of research and planning to do for some of the scenes, so it will probably be painstakingly slow!

One for Sorrow…

Well the news on David’s car just kept getting better and better!!

Thursday evening, David faced a garage bill of over £1000!! It was not only something to do with the car’s exhaust but the flange that joins both parts of the exhaust together???? Meaning having to replace the whole exhaust system!! My advice never buy a Fiat!

I had had a really nice day on Thursday at work with my student Rachel, revising for her exam on Friday. However coming home to David’s news and a letter from the University of Liverpool saying the course I had enrolled on to become Excel proficient was cancelled, really ‘ground my gears!’ (Line from Family Guy!) How am I to get ahead in the workplace when I can’t even get on an academic course is beyond me? The only good thing is that they are refunding me… Looks likely I’ll be teaching myself!

*sigh*

I only need one more bad thing to happen and that makes three!!

Friday, however was a much better day. David took the car from Quick Fit (why he took it there I don’t know!) and took it to the mechanic he usually goes to (though on Thursday he thought that he was closed!).

The car will remain at the garage over the weekend as the mechanic tries to bring it back to life!

Shopping was a funny affair on Saturday, as David for years has been saying we should walk to the shops as the supermarket is just down the road! However I think he now realises that lugging loads of bags back home is another matter. Burning biceps and cut fingers from where the plastic bags have dug into the skin is no fun!

This weekend was the RSPB’s ‘Big Garden Watch’ 2014. I went into mum’s house next door (as she still has all the feeders) and sat for an hour and counted the birds. Before my count there were lots of Starlings visiting the fat balls, but when I sat for the hour not a single Starling came. All I saw was 9 Goldfinches, 12 Pigeons and 2 Blue Tits. Very sparse this year!

To cheer myself up after all the upset over the car. I decided to cook a salmon teriyaki and vegetable rice for dinner on Saturday. (Thanks to my student Rachel for making me think of this recipe!) I was surprised at how easy it was to make. Boil the rice and then add vegetables, marinate the salmon with the teriyaki sauce and cook for 20 minutes! Voilà! 🙂

A Date is Set and Some Musings….

The date for moving into the new house has been set…  I made an executive decision (as David and I were humming and aahhing for hours!), to name the date for moving in to be the 27th December 2013! I did not want the upheaval over Christmas, so I have chosen a date afterwards.

Other news: I am overjoyed to have successfully booked seats for the forthcoming ‘Twelfth Night‘ at the new Liverpool Everyman Theatre!

http://www.everymanplayhouse.com/show/Twelfth_Night/1031.aspx

I managed to even get front row stalls! I was amazed as I thought that people in the city would have been snapping up the seats readily! I can’t wait to see the new theatre and this production of my favourite Shakespeare play!

Work wise: I did not find myself unemployed for long. Well it was exactly two days! I got a call not long after finishing work at the Royal Hospital from the agency informing me that my student from last year had asked if I could go back to work with her and help with her studies. So that is what I have been doing these past few weeks. There are only two weeks remaining of the University term and then I am looking forward to a nice long holiday over Christmas. A rest is much needed!

Animal matters: There have been many wild birds visiting the garden feeders as the autumn temperatures start to plummet and the dark nights draw in. There have been the usual numerous Goldfinches, Starlings and Pigeons and they have been joined by two Blue Tits and even a shy Robin! But there has been too much activity for the poor Robin to forage at his own pace! I even thought I had seen a brief visitation of the Dunnock, but I could have been mistaken!

My Border Collie Riley has been worrying me a bit today. He has seemed very quiet, has not eaten his evening meal and looks so sad. 😦 I hope he is not sickening for something? He still goes on his walks and wants to play, he just seems under the weather today. Let’s just hope it is just a phase and he is back to his wild, energetic self tomorrow!

Well I Didn’t Expect that to Happen!

About two weeks ago, I  got an email from Randstad about an Access to Work booking for a client who worked in the Royal Liverpool Hospital. The work entailed reading and replying to emails, taking minutes in meetings and general admin duties for their client. I was umming and ahhing about the post for about a week before I sent in my CV. ‘What the hell’ I thought, ‘it’d be better than going on the dole!’

Then last Wednesday I had a meeting with the lady in the Trust whom the work was to be for and she seemed nice. You can imagine my surprise when about two hours after the ‘interview’ I got an email saying I was successful and the lady wanted me to start the following week!

I have now had my first three days of work in the Royal and I have thoroughly enjoyed it! It has been diverse, different from the work at the University, but ultimately I still get to meet and work with lots of people. I have been working from 8.30 in the morning ’til 2.30 of an afternoon, so beating the rush hour! I hope that the work continues to keep me occupied over the summer!

I am now sitting back and relaxing, enjoying a nice glass of pinot grigio and looking forward to a restful day tomorrow, then wallpapering in the dining room over the weekend, in the final push to get the house ‘ship shape’ before we move in!

During dinner time this evening I noticed six Goldfinch adults at the sunflower heart feeders in the yard and amongst them there was a baby Goldfinch! My first of 2013! I have not been seeing many Goldfinches lately so maybe now they have weaned their young they are starting to show them the feeders? See below for a video of the newcomer!

 

The Jailer.

I was just sitting enjoying my cappuccino from Costa in a very quiet university study area as most students have all gone home for the summer. I was recharging my batteries before the second dentistry exam I was to invigilate in the afternoon. (I had a three hour one in the morning.)

When breaking the quietness of the room came the jangle of keys as someone walked past. It brought to my mind the poem by Sylvia Plath, the Jailer. Though not my favourite of hers, I thought I would post it here for you all to read.

Christine x

The Jailer by Sylvia Plath.

My night sweats grease his breakfast plate.
The same placard of blue fog is wheeled into position
With the same trees and headstones.
Is that all he can come up with,
The rattler of keys?

I have been drugged and raped.
Seven hours knocked out of my right mind
Into a black sack
Where I relax, foetus or cat,
Lever of his wet dreams.

Something is gone.
My sleeping capsule, my red and blue zeppelin
Drops me from a terrible altitude.
Carapace smashed,
I spread to the beaks of birds.

O little gimlets—
What holes this papery day is already full of!
He his been burning me with cigarettes,
Pretending I am a negress with pink paws.
I am myself. That is not enough.

The fever trickles and stiffens in my hair.
My ribs show. What have I eaten?
Lies and smiles.
Surely the sky is not that colour,
Surely the grass should be rippling.

All day, gluing my church of burnt matchsticks,
I dream of someone else entirely.
And he, for this subversion,
Hurts me, he
With his armor of fakery,

His high cold masks of amnesia.
How did I get here?
Indeterminate criminal,
I die with variety—
Hung, starved, burned, hooked.

I imagine him
Impotent as distant thunder,
In whose shadow I have eaten my ghost ration.
I wish him dead or away.
That, it seems, is the impossibility.

That being free. What would the dark
Do without fevers to eat?
What would the light
Do without eyes to knife, what would he
Do, do, do without me?