Having had a poorly 3 and 8 year old off school today on the one day I had the car (oh the plans I had), I am tres grumpy and to be honest am already on my second glass of wine as I intend to drown myself in oblivion and wake up with a sore head but at least a reason for it.

Misses E and M are ok but full of evil ‘back to school’ green stuff that pours from their nostrils every other minute and made their tea taste all funny. (That’s mu excuse and I’m sticking to it.) I wore a black top today – not a good idea, but I think if they get a good night I’ll send ‘em back to school and nursery tomorrow and maybe get 5 minutes peace.

So without further ado…

1. Where was I 10 years ago?

10 years ago I was 23 and living with Mr B in a small rented property in Mansfield. We had a very strange next door neighbour who padlocked his wheelie bin, painted his garden gnomes yellow one night which gave us a bit of a shock when we let the cat out next morning, and who once shared with me the concern that his new ceramic fox might frighten our chocolate brown stink hound. It didn’t.

Having realized that it was unlikely I would ever make my fortune from working as a kennel manageress and dog groomer Canine Beautician, I was just about to return to education in the form of a degree in English (which I loved) and was working part time at a local bar where I was regularly harassed and occasionally groped by drunken old men. Ahhh such a picture I paint.

Lucky for me I was also about to attend an interview for the position of ‘Sinline Operator’ at Slimming World HQ, a job which got me through the first 2 years of my degree, marriage and pregnancy as I worked up to Miss E’s due date in July 2000.

2. What’s on my to do list today?

Hmmm, it’s 8.20pm, but the plans I had this morning, oh the plans. I had the car so the idea was to take Miss E to school, Miss M to nursery, then maybe wander round the shops. Then I would have been picking up Miss M, taking her to her swimming lesson, coming home for lunch and a play, then picking Miss E up after basketball at 4.30pm.

But alas, snot took away my freedom, sighhh, and instead I stayed home with two grumpy little buggers, folded clothes, sorted washing, tidied, entertained and made tea, while the car sat angry and pouting on the drive. My plans tonight are to drink my nice wine and read.

3. What if I was a billionaire?

Erm, new house with swimming pool, lots of family time, dog and donkey sanctuary, personal trainer and travel. And I’d get a Mac, or maybe 10.

4. Five Places I have lived

Mansfield (parents, 3 houses)
Salford (1 student house)
Mansfield (2 rented, 2 bought, not all at the same time.)

5. Snacks I like

Houmous
Chocolate
McCoys Crisps
Carrots

7. Who am I tagging?

Hmmm, anyone else who has been blighted by the lergy this week and wants to play.

Mwah

Oh, and I’ve decided to continue with the gerbil ball but to use it only when they seem awake and ready to interact and to take them out if ever they seem distressed. It’s a hard thing being a responsible pet owner but I think we can give them a good life and they will be very much loved. I know freedom is better but I think we can make them happy. I hope so. Thanks for all your feedback.

The creative and fabulous Gattina is our Fun Monday host today and her request is that we show her our blogging space.

I’d love to say that I spend my writing and reading time here…

Or that my view as I blog away to my little heart’s content is this,

..or maybe this.

But let’s face it, that would be a big lie.

No, when I blog, I’m in my kitchen at the family PC surrounded by a ton of, well, stuff.

Proof that I took this this very morning is the fact you can see my muesli bowl, the toys that have been played with so much this holiday (I have given up keeping them tidy), and the empty tank, home of our deceased gerbil, Laura/Flora who passed away on Friday.

I know it looks mad but it works well for me and means I am close to my family and always surrounded by noise and colour.

Oh, and the view from my blogging place is usually kind of special too.

Have a fab day folks and check out all the other Fun Monday blogging spaces over at Writer Cramps. You know you want to, I mean who doesn’t like peeping into other people’s homes?

1. Spider monkeys are not actually spiders or monkeys, but are in fact large hairy space lizards.

2. Spider monkeys seldom make their own breakfast. They have an aversion to toasters and cannot handle spoons before 10am so are fed intravenously by small robotic dogs.

3. Spider monkeys love musicals and audition for West End and Broadway shows about twice a year up until the age of 43. Rumour has it that in 1985 a young black head spider monkey named Marigold was up against Sarah Brightman for a part in Phantom of the Opera but lost out on the female lead as she was unable to balance a large piece of marzipan on her head.

4. Spider monkeys cannot taste anything green.

5. Spider monkeys are unable to hitch hike as they have no thumbs .

6. Spider monkeys love gossip and are not averse to spreading rumours just for the fun of it.

As part of this meme I have to tag 6 others, which I will do, but again in a Beaufoix stylee.

So Holl, Mie, Kimberly, Leendaluu, Lilac Specs and Momo, I want 6 random things about pygmy elks please ladies.

Go on, surprise and delight me, you know you want to.

Fun Monday today comes from the wild and wonderous IamwhoIam at Dungarees Ablaze (Hope those adjectives are ok. )

She says;

“..lets hear about your favorite “Birthday”, it needn’t be your actual birthday just a birthday celebration. You can use one you planned, one you attended, one you crashed, just a fun time for this FUN MONDAY’S assignment, and of course you can use one of your very own Birthdays.”

Oooooh, I love this topic, you see I adore birthdays. I’m one of those kind of cheesy people who still gets excited about their birthday even though I am 33 and should probably know better. Picking a favourite birthday is a toughie though.

In the past two years we have celebrated both my parents 60th birthdays which were brilliant as we had family weekends at Center Parcs and having enjoyed it so much that we’ve turned it into a family tradition, in that we’re going again next year and plan to do it every year.

My favourite birthday celebration though??

Could it be my 17th which was the first year I had a boyfriend on my birthday so I got presents from a cute boy and felt all special and grown up?

Or maybe my dad’s 40th when his mates arranged for some of the local football team to come along for a drink and a chat??

Or was it my sister’s 8th birthday, when she decided to be wonderwoman and cut her head open during a dramatic spin just before the party began?? (Why was this good? Well, you see, little 6 year old me got to greet all her guests and play with the big kids while she got to sit in Casualty for a few hours waiting for her head to be steri-stripped. Bad Jo.)

Or maybe my recent blogaversary which was kind of special. ;D

Sighhh, so many happy memories.

But you know, I think my best birthday was my 30th.

Some of you are thinking that’s weird right? But my 30th was early February 2005, and I gave birth to a tiny Miss M in late January 2005, so while many of my friends spent the weeks up to and including their 30th mourning the supposed demise of their youth, I spent mine cocooned by family and friends in that first mad rush of new-babyhood. I cared not about my wibbly bits, I mean, come on, I’d just had a kid. I did not need to drown my sorrows as I was so happy with my new little girl. I could have had a drink as Miss M’s attempts at breast feeding were epic fail due to an ‘immature valve’, but I did not need alcohol to raise my spirits as I was already high on her sweet baby smell, her tiny toes, how my 4 year old Miss E gently stroked her sister’s cheek and how Mr B stared in awe at his new baby.

30 passed by gently, a background milestone, barely acknowledged. Whether or not 40 will be as easy I’m not so sure but I have another 7 years to get used to the idea of that one, and who knows, I might not have any wobbly bits by then… Snort.

Now, you’ll find more birthday tales to delight and disturb here. Have a fabulous Monday, and if it’s your birthday then have a good ‘un.

Blimey.

So my post today is a little idea I grabbed from lovely Groovy Mom. It’s a question and answer type thing where the answers are pictures. Here’s what you do…

1. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
2. Using only the first page, pick an image.
3. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into this mosaic maker.

My Answers:

1. What is your first name? Jo
2. What is your favorite food? Risotto
3. What high school did you go to? All Saints
4. What is your favorite color? Brown
5. Who is your celebrity crush? David Tennant
6. Favorite drink? Vodka and Lemonade
7. Dream vacation? The Galapagos Islands
8. Favorite dessert? Anything chocolatey
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Healthy
10. What do you love most in life? My family
11. One Word to describe you. Silly
12. Your (blog) name. Jo Beaufoix (Like Kate Moss but Not)
(On #12, if you have a Flickr name, use that one instead of your blog name.)

I’ll be back with a proper post tomorrow after I have slept. I NEED SLEEEEEEEEEP.

Spare a thought for Holl as she is travelling home at this moment and it took her about 5 hours to get here yesterday as traffic was bad. Let’s sll put our heads together and think ‘clear road ahead.’

Oh, and I tag, erm, the first 7 people who leave a comment and who want to do it.

Holl says:

“the UU must list the three things your husband (or wife) (or significant other!) (could be a pet, in lieu of all of the above.) (no pet? got a plant?) (if you have none of the above, you should go get one.) knows about you.”

Okay? Good.

The fabulous and inspirational Lisa from Lisa’s Chaos is our host today, and she wants us to talk about how weird we all are. She says:

“A quirk is defined as a peculiarity of action, behaviour, or personality: mannerism. We are all unique individuals, having quirks that help make us who we are. I would like to know what your quirks are. Confess to one confess to ten, you decide. Just come back Monday ready to spill the beans, the rest of the world may look at you like you are from Mars, but you’re among friends here. We won’t laugh, in fact that eccentricity just may endear you to us more.”

This is so hard as I think I was much quirkier as a kid than I am now. I was a weird kid at times.

Anyway, we’re off…
1. I sometimes treat inanimate objects as if they are, erm, real. For example, if I eat a blue smartie, I make sure I eat another blue smartie afterwards in case the first blue smartie gets lonely. Or if I’m throwing away some leftovers, I worry that the family of one of the uneaten peas may have been eaten first and therefore, because I haven’t finished my meal, I have doomed this pea to a life of loneliness, searching for its lost family who have erm, ended up in the sewers instead of, well, landfill.

Hmmm, maybe I should have made this the last one right? But I suppose it’s this internal narrative that often fills my head that leads to creativity right? I mean, I don’t really believe it, I promise. No, don’t go, come back…

Cough, ok, I’ll carry on.

2. When ever I say goodnight to my girls I have to say, ‘See you in the morning’ too. This stems from childhood when my mum always said, “Night night, God bless, see you in the morning.” If at anytime she didn’t say it I would say it to her, and if she still didn’t, I would shout it again so that she had to reply. It was just something I needed to hear. I had this fear that if she didn’t say “See you in the morning” then maybe I wouldn’t.

3. I love being up at night when all the house is quiet. I read, I blog, I watch late night re-runs of ‘Sex and the City’, or ‘Friends’ or “Two and a half men.” I just love the quiet, the not being responsible for or answerable to anyone. It feels like I’ve stolen some time that people aren’t meant to have and I like that.

4. I have weird dreams, more so in the last year or so. Last night I dreamt that Jack Black was my husband/bloke/man and that we had a farm. On the farm were lots of geese but that was all. We farmed geese. What do geese do? Not a lot right, but these rode little bikes?? Why?

5. I talk to our gerbil. Her tank is next to the pc and we have little conversations sometimes. She’s sitting in her food bowl looking at me right now.

6. I have a third arm.

Please note, one of these is made up as I couldn’t think of anything else quirky. I think the way I ‘think’ is a little quirky sometimes, but maybe it’s not and you can’t really describe thought processes can you??

Fantastically this post also fits with a meme I was tagged for by my wise, wonderful and witty friend, Belle, at Diary of a Housewife. She has asked me to name six of my quirks so that is what I aimed for.
I also have to tag six people but I figure there’s enough quirkiness around today so I’ll send you in their direction. Go read the Fun Monday dudes and dudettes people, and go see Belle too, now she is quirky.

It’s dark outside. My big sister is asleep, her soft breathing sending soothing ripples across the room.
If mum and dad come in now I know there’s a chance I’ll be in trouble, because you have to be asleep. He won’t come in you’re not asleep. But, well, if you’re asleep then you don’t see him right? And I so want to see him.

I shiver a little and wrap my fleecey dressing gown around my knees, adjusting my slippers on the desk. If I move too fast it will creak and give away the fact that not only am I not asleep, dreaming of bright coloured paper and turkey and crackers, but that I’m not even in bed, tucked up, waiting.

But I’m almost eight years old, on the verge of not believing and I so want to believe, so I’m waiting and watching and hoping.

Outside, the frost twinkles in the silver shadows cast by streetlights on the frozen ground. The sky is dark and inky blue. White clouds shimmer across the moon and all is still, silent, expectant. Then I hear it, or I think I hear it, the faint sweet song of sleigh bells, and maybe just maybe there’s a hint of something dark and familiar in the clouds against the moon.

I strain my ears to hear more but there is nothing. My eyes ache from looking. I sit a moment longer and think, “Could it be? Was that him? I think it was.”

And part of me wants more, a tiny part of me wants reindeer, and a sleigh and a big red man in gaudy technicolour, but a bigger part of me is happy. A bigger part of me says, “You’re lucky he gave you that much. Nobody ever sees him, but you did. You got a glimpse, that’s enough.”

So I climb down from my perch on the window sill, tugging the curtain back into place. I push my slippers under my bed and dive beneath the covers wriggling around to warm the cool sheets and exorcise the cold air that gripped my skin when I took off my dressing gown. Then I lay still, listening to the beat of my heart as it settles into a calm comfortable gentle de-dum, de-dum, de-dum. And as I drift off to sleep another sound blends prettily with my resting heart.

I’m sure when my mum and dad came to tuck me in at some dark hour there must have been a smile on my face, because that night I went to sleep truly happy, in my warm bed, my family close by, and a faraway tinkling of sleigh bells in my ear.

This post was written in response to lovely Molly’s Fun Monday theme, “Tell us about a happy memory form your childhood.” I can’t wait to read them all.

If I LOVE you I am more likely to forgive you, to find motives for your actions, reasons for the hurt, or the thoughtlessness or the misunderstanding.

If I LIKE you I might be a little pi**ed off with you for a bit, but generally after a while I’ll be ready to move on. It is very rare that you will know this, the me being mad at you, as I hide stuff. I’m a bit crappy at showing that I’m angry, unless I’m married to you or I gave birth to you, then I can lay it all on the table.

But if I DON’T LIKE you *, or if I don’t know you and you hurt me when you have no idea who I am, when there is no fathomable reason for your actions apart from being a generally unpleasant human being, then I don’t forgive very easily. I dwell, I fester, I give it far too much time and thought. I run conversations through my head about what I should have said/what I would would like to say/what I hope somebody else will say to you. I become indignant and angry and irascible, and then I get even more annoyed because you have caused these feelings in me and I do not want them.

I know these feelings are mine really. I own them, I nurture them. I have to find a way to let them go. I am working on it.

So I have learnt something about me in writing this. I don’t forgive easily. Not when I feel there has been injustice.

And I never forget.**

* There aren’t many people I don’t like. Honest. I like most people unless they give me real reason not too. Like if they throw raspberries at small defenseless sparrows, or go round spreading rumours about muskrats. I would not like people who did that.

** That sounds really bad doesn’t it? I suppose I mean I never forget if you really hurt me. I will be wary. But that’s normal right?

*** Please note, I am using the Holl style of referencing. She won’t mind because I gave her ice cream.

This post was written in response to fabulous David’s question, “Do you believe in forgive and forget.” If you want to join in, link to David’s blog so he can come over and say hi. You won’t regret it.

Lovely Alison, RDH Mom is our fabulous host this week. Go and see her and read her adoption series, it’s fab, nsightful, exciting, heart breaking and wonderful. And check out all the other gorgeous participants while you’re there. You know you want to.

Alison says:

“Vacations (that’s holidays if you’re a Brit like me, JB)…this is the time of year when most of us go on vacations. Show us and/or tell us about your favourite vacation – where you went, what you did, etc. Pictures would be great. Let’s all take a trip around the world via our FM friends!!”

My kids are aged 3 and 7 (nearly 8).

A perfect holiday is anywhere with them.

While I would love to do Disneyland, or take them skiing or exploring other cultures across the world, I feel there’s time for that later when they’re bigger…and we’re richer.

But we still manage to have our perfect holiday every year as long as there is a beach, space to play and somewhere to swim. This is what I was brought up on, and while in my teenage years we travelled a little further afield and often holidayed in France, I will never forget the pure excitement of building something fabulous with my bucket and spade, buying little packs of flags from the local shop to decorate my architectural triumphs, and learning the song, “Who’s Pigs are these?” at a local folk festival in the village hall in Port Eynon, South Wales. In fact, my dad and mum started us off in a round if it when they were taking me and the girls for a day out a couple of weeks ago.

The words are;

“Who’s pigs are these?
Who’s pigs are these?
They are John Potts
I can tell ‘em by their spots
And I found them in the vicarage garden.”

Sighhh, you’re so glad I shared that aren’t you?

We used to sing ‘liquorice’ garden when we were little, but only learned recently the real word. I prefer liquorice myself, I mean, a liquorice garden would be so cool.

Port Eynon is a tiny village on the Gower Peninsula. Every year we met up with the same group of people and stayed in a small area of a beach side campsite. I often wonder what Jackie, Deanne, Eleri And Carowyn are doing now. We had some really good times together. I still have a picture of myself and Jackie with tennis balls down our swimming costumes trying to look all grown up and erm, busty.

The lady in the village post office always remembered the four of us and commented on how we’d grown each year. The local people were always friendly and helpful and warm and there was always enough room on the beach for everyone.

It was here I learned the true meaning of the word ’sand’-wiches, and that I rock-pooled for the first time and floated in a rubber dinghy for the first time and probably really appreciated being part of a big family for maybe the first time.

We’d go on amazing cliff walks, and my dad would tell us stories of pirates and smugglers and buried treasure, a big part of Port Eynon’s history.

And on our first night every year my mum would cook us tomato soup and hotdogs as we set up our bunk beds and rolled out our sleep bags and it really felt like home.

The Gower is a beautiful part of the world and I hope to one day explore it with my little monkeys.

But for now I am happy to share it with all of you.