My Life In Numbers

7: hours spent gardening over the weekend
29: number of plants still sitting in pots that need to go into the garden
4: limbs currently aching
2: Blogs I want to update
96: number of unread items currently in my Google Reader (down from 134)
6: number of things I need to make appointments with the doctor about (none of them serious, before you ask)
3: loads of washing waiting to be ironed
5: other things on my "critical to-do" list
8: number of times I have fiddled with my curtains in order to try and get optimal light level

The Gallery - A Celebration

Bear with me here, I think I'm going to need to explain this one...

This week's Gallery topic is "A Celebration". Now, I could have posted lovely photos of weddings, birthdays, Christmas including lots of happy smiley faces. This left me with a dilemma. Whilst I have been known to share the odd photo or two on the blog, I do generally try and avoid them, and I don't really want to post pictures of friends and family without their knowledge/consent.

Of course, we had the ideal opportunity at the weekend. As I mentioned in my previous post, we spent the weekend at the 40th birthday party of an old friend. Much food, laughter and merriment* ensued. I may or may not have posted a picture on Twitter of myself drinking white wine straight from the bottle. Ahem.

I don't know about you, but there is something about too much alcohol that causes everyone I know to randomly start taking photos of inanimate objects. In the "olden days", i.e. pre-digital, this was the ultimate practical joke. You could guarantee that someone would have pinched your camera during the course of the evening, and you would never quite be sure what you would pick up from the developer (bread rolls, random feet, nostrils...). With digital such photos can easily be erased, which does take some of the fun out of things.

So in the spirit of nostalgia for parties past, this, ladies and gentlemen, is my photo for A Celebration.

I give you - Disco Balls:

Exhibit 1: Drunk Photo

*OK, I mean copious amounts of booze

Naughty Step

The lovely Pants with names has tagged me in the Naughty Step Meme. To be fair - she has probably forgotten this by now; not because she is pregnant, but purely because it is such a terribly LONG TIME AGO - a lifetime in blogging terms. (What can I say - this little baby has been neglected recently in favour of my newborn - I have been a fickle mummy of late. Must. Try. Harder).

So basically I have to tell you who I would like to put on the Naughty Step until they feel suitably chastened and regret their behaviour.

We spent the weekend at the 40th birthday party of an old (literally and figuratively - ha!) friend, and a wonderful time was had by all (more of that some other time, perhaps). We are lucky in that we have a close group of friends that have stuck around for a long time. However, this does mean we seem to spend weekends trundling around the highways and byways from one end of the country to another. Whilst heading "up north" on a motorway this weekend, I was therefore reminded of who I would like to put on the Naughty Step, namely:

Middle-lane hoggers.

There is always one, isn't there? Sitting there in the middle lane, despite the fact that all other lanes are clear ...

I don't understand it. I can only assume that they fall into one of three categories - either:
1) Elderly drivers, deaf, blind and completely oblivious to other people's pain and frustration
2) Total egomaniacs who think the world (and therefore the roads) revolve around them, or
3) American tourists who don't understand that undertaking is not allowed round these parts.

The last group is the only group I will vaguely consider to have a legitimate excuse. So, unless your name is Randy and Jolene from Little Rock, Arkansas - move over!

As this meme has been hanging around for such a long time, I won't pass it on to anyone - if you haven't done it yet, but would like to, consider yourself tagged, and tell us who you'd like to see on the Naughty Step?

Arthritis in Childhood

I was approached by Arthritis Research UK to see if I would mind writing a blog post to help raise awareness about Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA, or arthritis in childhood). I agreed mainly due to the very simple fact that my grandmother and other family members suffered quite badly from rheumatoid arthritis and I had (somewhat naively, perhaps) associated the condition with the elderly.


Of course it is not quite as simple as that - juvenile arthritis is the not same as rheumatoid arthritis, and having the former does not necessarily mean you will get the latter. There is also not one single type, but it appears that the most common type is most prevalent in young girls. Thankfully most children will grow out of the condition, but in a small number pain and discomfort will be severe. The most common symptoms include:


- pain and swelling of joints
- morning stiffness
- in very young children, it could cause difficulty in learning to walk. 
-of course as any parent knows, as very young child will not necessarily be able to tell a parent where the pain is coming from, so they might be generally moody and difficult.


however, rarer types might also include symptoms more usually associated with other illnesses (fevers, rashes etc).


If you think your child might be affected, your first step should of course be to contact your GP, but you can also find out more information by checking out the Arthritis Research UK website. 

The Gallery - One Day in August

29th August, 2010 - Glückstadt, Germany - Probably as far away from Bangladesh as you could imagine.

This post is for this week's Gallery.