It happens every year ...

Every year around this time. I get introspective.  I think about the year just gone and the year yet to come. I make lists.  I make plans.  I may start these lists and plans.  I may carry them out for a week or two.  I certainly lose focus on them.  I certainly lose my grip. I definitely forget them, maybe for a moment, maybe for a month.  I come back to them and bemoan my inability to follow things through.  I hate myself for a while.  I get introspective.  I write another list.  I hate this journey.  I want to get off.

Seven more sleeps!

We track the countdown to Christmas through the number of sleeps that are left.  My eldest, Cornichon has been counting (on and off) since 364 sleeps.  There are now seven left and that magical night is all the more'touchable' now!  We celebrated the countdown today by watching Christmas films.  We went to the cinema to see Arthur Christmas and really enjoyed it.  I love the way the whole Father Christmas story is depicted as a massive NASA-style operation!  We then found a new episode of Prep and Landing Naughty Vs Nice.  It was good but not quite as awesome as the first one which is a constant Christmas reminder all-year round in our house.  My two boys were wide-eyed during the films and totally stoked for Christmas!  1 more day for Little Pickle and 2 more for Cornichon and then Christmas Holidays!  Whoopee!

So I'm being naughty but I just don't care

4 weeks ago my friend gave me a Christmas present in 2 parts. One in a box and one to be kept in the fridge. Obviously I guessed they would be foodie gifts and tonight I opened them.

I am looking after the kids whilst Mr Gherkin is out on a Christmas night out and I just had to open the box (posh black olive crackers, cornichons-she knows me well, chutney) and the packet (3 flavoured cheddars). Well the crackers ORDERED me to serve with white wine. So I did. I am smashing my way through all of the above and have given up on a shit Catherine Zeta Jones film after 19 mins and have put on the Royal Variety Performance.

Get in! Be naughty!

Blog Clear Out

Just had a clear out of 20 blogs that I don't read any more and have got my subs down to a more manageable 132. I will try to get to 100 in the new year. This cleaning lark is cathartic! Books to read lined up for next year, blogs reduced by 14%, lets see if I can use up my fabric stash some time soon too!

To Be Read 2012

I have shelves full of books in my house many of which I have read but many of which I have had on my To Be Read list for years. I saw this challenge for 2012 and thought it was right up my street.

Here is my pile

31 Songs - Nick Hornby

Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel García Marquez

Paula - Isabel Allende

Big Stone Gap - Adriana Trigiani (oops picked up the wrong book for the pic)

The Resurrectionist - James Bradley

Birdsong - Sebastian Faulkes

Dylan Thomas - Andrew Lychett

Eating Children - Jill Tweedie

The Christmas Books - Charles Dickens

Birds Without Wings - Louis de Bernières

Shakespeare - Bill Bryson

Quiet Moments in a War - The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir

1940-1963

Tess of the D'Urbevilles - Thomas Hardy

Insomnia - Stephen King

In no particular order I have to read 12 of the TBR pile in 2012 (with 2 spares in case 2 are no-goes). The challenge starts on 1st January 2012 and ends on 31st December 2012 by which time all the books will have been read and reviewed here. I think it is a fab challenge and hope it makes a big space on my groaning bookshelves in 2012!

:(

I am not happy with my life right now.

That sounds awful, but it is not that dramatic. I have a penchant for the dramatic sentence. To clarify, I mean to say that there are things about me that I hate, not so much about my life, that make me unhappy.

There are things that I want to go but never get around to doing. I am currently trying to apply for Olympic tickets with 51 minutes to spare before the 5,000,000 day deadline is up. I could not motivate myself to apply for something I have been wanting to get for years. There are thousands of other people trying to do the same thing and causing the website to crash. I actually set up a ticket account this afternoon which was awfully foresighted of me. Not foresighted enough to actually get the bloody things though. What an idiot.

I have no energy or get-up-and-go and I can't control my eating.

I can't even be bothered to finish this post. 23.23

23.41 I have just come back from the Olympic website after trying for an hour, and managed to request 4 tickets for the night of the men's 100m final! Whoop whoop! I did it! If ever there was a time to pull one out of the bag that was it! Ok, so I don't have them quite in the bag yet, but at least I applied for the ambition! I am so pleased with myself I just want to apply for jobs now!

Reasons to be cheerful 1, 2, 3

My family is safe and well and home.

We should be enjoying a glass of local Spanish wine on the desk of a large cruise ship, about to set sail from Tenerife with the warm breeze on our faces and a belly full of good food. Instead I am at home, at my desk drinking a cold glass of sauvignon blanc and looking on the bright side of life. Thos morning at the airport before we check in our baggage, Little Pickle took a tumble from Mr Gherkin's shoulders and landed on his head. He cried and puked and we rushed him to hospital in an ambulance and abandoned all plans for our well-planned, much-looked-foreward-to cruise holiday with the in-laws whilst they looked after Cornichon at our house. He was wobbly in the ambulance and then fell asleep and then was fine in the Emergency Room and bright as a button as we waited for a bed on the ward and positively bouncing when we stayed on the ward for 6 hours. Whilst we were doing all of the above the in-laws were phoning round trying to work out a way of carrying on with our holiday despite missing the flight. We came home at 4 and have a plan in place. We catch the cruise up on their next stop tomorrow, flying from a different airport further away from home.

Taxi is booked, boys are sleeping, wine is in hand, waiting to start out holiday all over again tomorrow!