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.

Blogger's Block

I have had a bit of blogger's block for the last couple of days, caused mainly by logging on to t'internet, surfing, reading other amazing blogs and coming to an uninspired dead end. I have decided to post before surfing the night away. I heard a quotation on TV the other day

Better to write for yourself with no audience than to write for the audience with no self.

I am sure I got the words wrong but the sentiment is a good one to remember.

Who are you? (woo-hoo woo-hoo)

I thought it was time to put a little post about how I came up with my blog name. It is quite simple really. I love gherkins! I have loved pickled things all my life - my mum tells the story of how I once ate half a jar of pickled onions while she pushed me in a trolley around Tesco when I was about 1. Give me anything pickled and I am happy - onions, cabbage, chillies, eggs, cucumber, mussels, ginger, herring, whatever. Give me a jar of anything in vinegar and I am happy. Except for walnuts, but I am working on them!

Anyway I have a thing about gherkins and can eat a jar whilst watching TV or working, like others might eat their way though a packet of crisps. I love how you can get tiny sharp little French cornichons and big soft sweet American dill pickles and everything else in between. Mum made some home-made ones once and they rocked and took the roof off my mouth. I found an amazing jar of firm, chewy, salty ones in my in-laws' house about 10 years ago and have never found the same type since. Every year my best mate buys me a jar of them for Christmas and they never make it to Boxing Day.

OK so I like my gherkins and many people really dislike them - why on earth would anyone take one out of a burger? Why? They make the burger! Whilst I was pregnant with my first I would snack on gherkins in work and it really brought the lovers and the haters out of the woodwork. I'd get the lovers sidling up to me to confess their guilty gherkin passion, and then the haters would be bemoaning the foul stench and questioning my hormonal balancing, not knowing it was not just a pregnancy thing!

So gherkins are a dirty little passion for me so I chose the gherkin as my little symbol and as this blog is about my little life in my family in our house, where do gherkins live? In The Gherkin Jar of course! So I am Gherkin (aka Jen), I am married to Mr Gherkin (aka Jon) and we have 2 beautiful little gherkins, Cornichon (aka Dylan) is nearly 4 and Little Pickle (aka Rhys) is nearly 2. More on the contents of The Gherkin Jar on a later post.

So there are my reasons for being a Gherkin. Why do you call yourself what you call yourself?

Too much information

I love the internet. It is pretty good. I have been sat at my computer now for about and hour and a half, intending to write this blog entry but managing to just have a look at this site and mooching about this one and had the obligatory squiz at Facebook and then a trawl around my blogger reading list which is so full of inspiration I often wonder why I bother to look at such beautiful crafty things from such amazing people and don't just get my box of bits out and create something, take a pic of it then sling it on my blog and amaze other people at how clever I am.

Or I could just go to bed. Before my brain melts through my tearducts. Bugger it.

It's getting better all the time....

I managed to download some pics today! I said I would didn't I? Today's pic is of my boys doing what they do best - messing about.

They love chasing and running around and fortunately today's little session after tea did not end up with one of them crying! Ha! Bonus! More fun to watch too!

It's doing my head in positioning these pics. I have a lot to learn about blogging and making it interesting. I guess this is a bit better than it used to be what with pics and all but it is not quite right. My brain hurts. Nighty night!

Pictures

I have decided to take a picture every day for 2010. I have to admit I am not very good at taking pictures and my subjects are not all keen to be pictured and my equipment is not always available or very good. That said, no excuses, I will use this project as way of practicing my photography and getting better at being good at it! I have yet 2 pics to publish here for today and yesterday but they have been taken, just not downloaded yet, another ting that needs to be practiced!

Fear not - my blog will get better in 2010!

To resolve, or not to resolve ...

Here we are -Day 3 of the new Year and already I am on my third blog post! How long will it last? Who can tell? I'm not saying I made a resolution to blog every day.... but I am going to blog whenever I can. Even if I have nothing to say. Like today.

Oh I think I lost about 5 lbs since yesterday! woo hoo! I went back to Weightwatchers with a fervour yesterday, determined to stop bingeing like I had been doing for the month of December. I weighed 11 stone 1 lb which meant I managed to put on 6.5 lbs in 2 weeks! And about 5 in December anyway. I felt gross. I have been super good since yesterday (apart from going out for a meal and getting drunk last night which was NOT planned. I have paid for it today though and been very virtuous. Yay me! I weighed this morning in the bathroom and seemed to have lost 5 lbs! Yay again! We'll see what the official scales say next week though!

post damnit!

In the spirit of trying to blog more frequently here is another entry. I have nothing to report. But I am still here and pleased about it. I have just made friends on facebook with someone I thought I knew from school but I am really not sure about him. He kinda looks like Dai but I am not 100%. It has been about 20 years since I last saw him so I am guessing he has changed a bit and probably grown a bit but the guy in the pics only looks like him a little bit and has the wrong date of birth. He wants to be my friend though! I hope he does not turn into a stalker. Or that I don't turn into one either!

One week to go until Gareth's wedding. I should book the hotel I guess...

Undecided - to pre-plan or not to pre-plan

Would it be better to post blog entries after planning them or should I do them off the cuff?  I have no plan for today's.  I may sit on this thought and ponder a little.

*comes back after surfing a while*

Nope.  Can't get brain into gear.  Going to bed to think.  Of stuff.  And then blog about it.  Tomorrow.