If only all the answers were on signs

I think I may have done too many crunches last night. I’ve got an ache, not a crippling one, but one of those “you over did it” aches. My efforts at getting into better shape do seem to be reaping rewards.

I can’t say I’ve lost a lot of weight, but I’m definitely more toned, and my belts are a couple of notches tighter.

 

It’s helping me stay positive and more focused about what I want. How the reality plays out time will tell.

 

With work being busy I’m not getting too much time to dwell on things, which is probably a good thing.

 

I have a yearning to be mischievous, probably from messing about with the kids last night, which is probably not appropriate in the office. Ah well, losing myself in my work may be the answer.

 

Here’s something that amused me anyway:

 

 

Meme

What curse words do you use most?
I swear far too much. At work I probably use shit and bollocks most. In the car wanker or tosser seem to be my favoured expletives.

Do you own an iPod?
Yes, but only of the dinky shuffle variety. A 1gb memory isn’t exactly all encompassing, but I just put my favourite tracks on and away I go. One of the big boys would have me scrolling through to find my faves.

What time is your alarm clock set to?
Mrs Zilla’s is set for 6.05am. She takes an inordinate amount of time to get ready to go anywhere. As I’m not a heavy sleeper I am invariably woken at that time too. Then I suffer her repeated pressing of the snooze button, at 5 minute intervals until she finally gets up. 

Would you rather take the picture or be in the picture?
Take definitely, my features are best placed behind the camera

What was the last movie you watched?
At the cinema Casino Royale, which thankfully replaced Scooby Doo 2 as most recent. At home? Dumb and Dumber, yes I have that sort of sense of humour.

What CD is currently in your player?
Er, in the car it’s Primal Scream’s Dirty Hits, at home I think it’s The White Room by the KLF, but I wouldn’t swear to that.

Do you prefer regular or chocolate milk?
Depends on my mood at the time in honesty.

Has anyone told you a secret this week? 
No, not yet, ooh, actually yes, there is a secret that I know about work, that relates to my previous problems with an employee. I’ll undoubtedly post about it, if it comes to fruition.

When was the last time you had Starbucks?
Last year sometime, can’t say I’m a fan of theirs.

Can you whistle?
Yes, and hold a tune.

Did you watch cartoons when you were little?
Er, yes, what children don’t? I still love them, except for those annoying Pokemon type ones. Simpsons, Animaniacs and Tom & Jerry are amongst my faves.

Do you own any band t-shirts?
Yes, lots from my younger years, mostly used for wearing while decorating now. I guess it’s a good sign that they still fit.

What will you be doing in an hour?
Working, possibly

What was the last song you heard?
I’m Not Always So Stupid, by The Wedding Present, on my way to work this morning

Last time you cried?
I’ve come close recently, but I can’t recall the last actual time. I try to forget bad times and concentrate on the good 

Desktop or laptop?
Desktop, although I use a laptop for work sometimes 

What’s the weather like?
Windy, mixture of cloud and sun. 

What were you doing an hour ago?
Working 

How many hours of sleep do you need to function?
I can make do with any amount really, but I don’t tend to sleep late. Correction I never used to sleep that late, I don’t get the chance to find out now. 

Do you eat breakfast daily?
No, sometimes I’m very naughty and miss out the most important meal of the day.  

What did you do last night? 
Helped my son with his homework, bathed the kids, read to them, played music and read.  

Do you use sarcasm?
what do you think? 

Do you sleep on your side/back/stomach?
Side mainly I think, but when I’m asleep who really knows?

Do you watch the news? Yes, I try to, but sometimes wish I didn’t 

Do you have any scars?
Yes. One on my forehead where I had stitches as a child. Various nicks and scrapes on my legs, caused by childhood and playing football. Nothing that attention grabbing though. 

Time for reflection

Sorry for the nature of yesterday’s post. I had a rough weekend, and I’ve given myself a lot to think about.

The title of this post seems apt – I need time to reflect, to decide what is right and wrong, and how to make the changes necessary. Not everything is in my control, but I need to start sorting out the things I can.

I did take the time to look at my reflection this morning, and I didn’t like what I saw. Apart from my physical appearance I mean. I feel, and look like, I’ve aged recently.

Anyway, enough of my self pity – the children still have the ability to make me laugh. Last night Godzooky 3 was doing his usual walk along the furniture routine, when he turned to show me the toy he had in his hand. I gestured for him to bring it to me, and for the first time he let go of safety with both hands. The look on his face when he realised was priceless, followed shortly after by a fall onto his backside!

He’s also started copying Godzooky 2 with her Simpsonsesque slap of the forehead accompanied by a “D’oh!”. He can’t manage the “D’oh” but does slap his forehead!

I feel slightly better just thinking about the kids. Maybe there’s hope for me after all…. 

Sorry

not had a good weekend. No post for today.

Lack of sleep, lack of cordial relations with Mrs Zilla and a general feeling of malaise. I feel a need to change things, but not really sure where to start.

If I didn’t have children, I feel the decision would be very easy to make.

But I do have them, and life is complicated.

Normal service may be resumed shortly.

Friday Feeling

Hooray, although this week has flown by.

No ideas spring to mind, so I’m going to do a catch up on what’s happened recently:

Godzooky 3 had his MMR vaccination this week (Measles, Mumps and Rubella) so far, no major reactions to it, and he has retained his jovial character.

Godzooky 2 had another speech therapy appointment, and she is making good progress. She’s started saying a lot more words – and is now like a little echo, trying to repeat the last word used. Our next target is to getting her using words in conjunction with a verb…

 Godzooky 1 seems to be trying to woo a different girl in his class. He’s started drawing pictures for Grace, of our house, our car and a rainbow, all accompanied with lots of drawn kisses. So far Grace seems to be fairly unreceptive to his advances. A harsh lesson in life learnt early!

I’m struggling with my self imposed alcohol ban. I have stopped drinking in an effort to support Mrs Zilla, who has given up as part of a weight loss target. It’s easy at home therefore.

Now the blokes in the office are talking about going for a pint this lunchtime. Harder to resist. It’ll give me a taste for it as well. I will be strong and surf blogs instead, or go and buy a dvd with the money I would have spent. 

Father and Son Bonding

Back to my travelogue from the weekend.

 

Our cross country trip was primarily for me and Godzooky 1 to attend a football match. I thought that it would be nice to take the rest of the family through as well though.

 

Grandma Zilla hadn’t been through to see her sisters and brothers for about six months (they all live in roughly the same area), and none of our relatives had laid actually eyes on Godzooky 3. So that was how we ended up with a car full on the trip.

 

We arrived with enough time to spend visiting a few different relatives before leaving most of the tribe with one of my aunties. She was foregoing her own trip to the football match to savour Grandma Zilla’s and the small children’s presence.

 

This was to be Godzooky 1’s first taste of a home match. Normally the games we attend are close to our home, and there are perhaps at best a couple of thousand fans of our team attending. Of course these tend to be the most vociferous and fanatical supporters, as they are journeying hundreds of miles to watch the game.

 

This time was different: he was amazed by the sheer number of fans supporting “our team”, which this time would be about 30,000. For once we were in the majority!

 

He enjoyed the build up, as several “crowd surfers” came over us, these are huge flags that get passed across the stadium.

 Here’s a picture I managed to get before my phone battery died:

I could was lyrical about the romance of the FA Cup, the oldest Cup competition in the world, where even the smallest team in the land, could in theory, win the Cup.

Instead I’ll mention the great atmosphere in the ground, probably helped by the fact that tickets were so cheap: £10 for adults ($19) and £5 for kids ($9.50).

I love attending matches: you get the wit of the man on the street, with lots of funny heckles and comments coming from all around you. Tirades of abuse greeting mistakes and rival players. Everyone around you is an expert and could do better than the men on the pitch!

The tribal nature of it really comes across – lots of fans wearing their team’s colours and replica shirts, traditional chants and songs being sung. Taunts and jeers passed between the rival supporters groups.

It’s amazing how people are transformed at a match; my cousin was sitting near us, she’s 42, a mother of 2, yet you wouldn’t know that from the way she was acting.

I remember my father finally letting me attend my first match, at a similar age to that Godzooky 1 was when he first went. The memories of that day still stick with me – I’d never experienced such a large crowd before, the atmosphere highly charged, a mixture of optimism and pessimism. The smells and sounds unique to a football ground. The throngs making their way out afterwards, discussing the events and how things should have gone.

My memories are tinged with recollections of making my way back to my Grandma’s house, that was near the ground, feeling a real part of events around me. The rush of words and excitement bubbling out of me when retelling the events of the match.

I have no memory of the result from the first match I attended, but the atmosphere and experience is addictive. Godzooky 1 has also clearly got the addiction, his enthusiasm flowing out when we got back to my auntie’s house.

I always felt closest to my dad at the football match, it was a shared experience, he always looked out for me. He worked a lot, and was away quite often, so I cherished the time I had with him.

I try to be around for my kids more than he was, that’s not a criticism, he had a different type of job to me, but I still value the shared experience that me and Godzooky 1 have when we go to a football match.

Not a lot of people know this

One of life’s great imponderables: why do seemingly trivial injuries cause more discomfort than major ones?

 

You know what I mean: hangnails, you always seem to catch them no matter what you do. Apparently it’s the same for carpet burns on your back.

 

Even I, who has the world’s comfiest bed, found it unpleasant trying to get to sleep last night. I have a new collection of cracking bruises to replace the ones that have faded from my legs.

 

Enough of the whinging and self-pity, it’s not really my style. I am fairly proud of my ability to just get on with things. Of course sometimes it backfires, like last year when I broke that bone in my foot and I didn’t go to hospital until the pain became unbearable at work.

 

Anyway, this prompts me to do one of those “Things you didn’t know about me” style posts:

 

1. I bruise like a peach, no seriously I do. My mother is the same, and at least the first two Godzookies are too. Number 3 hasn’t had any injury for me to determine his status yet. I wonder sometimes if the condition is in some way related to haemophilia, yet I’m not concerned enough to Google it!

  

1.  Another bodily related thing: I have an amazing number of moles, or rather, beauty spots. Except in my case they seem to have the reverse effect and detract from my appearance! I can honestly say that I am safe from dismemberment, because every limb or appendage would have some distinguishing mark to identify me. Of course, whether this would save me from a serial killer is indeterminable at this stage!

  

1. While on the body facts, I seem to be slightly double jointed. My fingers will bend back towards my wrist to an angle of 90 degrees. I never knew this was unusual until Mrs Zilla became freaked out by it one day. Hardly makes me one of the X-Men or anything, but she made me feel like a bit of a mutant that day!

  

1. I do have another body fact, but I think that’s enough of those. In a change of direction: I managed to pass my driving test first time without any “proper” driving lessons. My dad taught me to drive, and it is a memory of him I cherish dearly. Even if he did express incredulity when I passed first time. It was a time when we bonded more than we had before, and it was unfortunate that I never got many more years to develop the new relationship before he died.

 

I was going to write more, but I’m tied up in meeting for most of the rest of the day, so I’m going to post this now. I may return to this another day….

  

Ouch

In my inimitable fashion I have managed to do myself some damage.

 

Whilst getting the kids up this morning Godzooky 2 was proving reluctant to travel downstairs. So being the doting parent, I picked her up and started to descend the stairs. Quicker than I intended too.

 

My foot slipped on the top step and, thanks to gravity, I hurtled downwards.

 

Thankfully our stairs have a dog leg in them, so I only slipped down about 5 steps before I crashed into the wall. I managed to shield Godzooky 2 from harm, although I suspect this may have been at a greater cost to myself.

 

I’ve always preferred sleeping naked, and as a consequence don’t have a lot of clothing on when I arise. Before getting the kids up I usual don a dressing gown, for modesty’s sake. Of course this morning I didn’t.

 

This morning I decided not to put a dressing gown on, but merely boxer shorts. Big mistake.

 

I now have carpet burns all down my back and legs. Yes, not the nice kind of carpet burns. This makes sitting in an office, wearing a suit and tie, more uncomfortable than normal!

 

I can feel the lumps and bumps forming beneath the skin. Tomorrow I’m going to be extremely stiff; again, not in a good way.

 

Further tales of my trip will have to wait until then…

Road Trip

Well it was a tiring, but rewarding weekend. I’ve got to admit that considering how long we spent in the car the kids were pretty well behaved. Today I’m going to concentrate on the road trip aspect, details of the match and visit will come later.

 

Going up to the Lakes on a Friday after work is never the best experience. The rush hour traffic makes sure of that. To be honest I wonder sometimes how the idiots driving manage to hold down jobs, they appear to have little, or no commons sense, at least on the road.

 

The journey cross country wasn’t too bad, and I managed to get there quicker than the internet predicted I would, despite some reduced speed limits for road works.

 

The journey brought back some wonderful memories for me: the times my dad would drive us across to visit my Grandma. The journey takes you across the Pennines, the hills that form the backbone of England. The countryside is spectacular, and there were some stunning views to be had as we travelled over.

 

Unfortunately we forgot our camera, and my mobile phone had little charge in it, so there are no pictures to share. Not that I would be attempting to take pictures whilst driving along at 70mph!

 

We passed the spot where I got my first experience of snow. I still remember it clearly. I was very young, perhaps 2 or 3 and it was the first time I’d seen a lot of snow. My father pulled off the road and we climbed over a fence to get into a huge patch of virgin snow in a field. My mother also remembered it. It was like a huge trip down memory lane, talking about trips across when I was young, comparing how the roads had changed, spotting familiar landmarks along the way.

 

It was a huge buzz as things I’d forgotten came flooding back with each twist and turn in the road.

 

Another buzz was the chance to properly overtake. I’d never fully realised how little overtaking you get to do these days. Dual carriageways and motorways have spoiled us, and the opportunities to overtake on single lane roads are limited due to the volume of traffic around. On Saturday though, there were glorious stretches of straight clear roads where you could zoom past slower moving cars.

 

The drives were really rewarding and fun.

 

Coming back it was dark, so the views were no longer there, but instead there was the fun of driving down roads that twisted and turned, challenging you to predict the next move and maintain concentration.

 

Although there was no scenery to look at, the clear skies gave chance to see many more stars than we normally get to see. Light pollution limits the numbers visible, but out in the middle of nowhere, with literally no lights anywhere the skies were full of twinkling stars.

 

Sometimes it’s the small things that you really appreciate isn’t it?

 It was a long day, we set off at 9am and didn’t get back to Grandma Zilla’s until 9.30pm, but it was a pleasant tiredness that washed over me once we were back.

Running on empty

I’m feeling kind of run down at the moment. I don’t feel ill exactly, just lethargic and slightly down.

 

Trying to pinpoint the cause of this has proved tricky: there are a number of potential suspects.

 

Work is really busy, there are changes afoot that mean an awful lot of extra work. So much so that I am being encouraged to forego the holidays I have left and receive payment in lieu for them. I have a total of 10 days left to take before the end of March. Under our company’s rules I am allowed to “carry over” 5 of these into the next holiday year, so I’ll get paid for the remaining week.

 

If I don’t do this then I’ve got to fit the 5 days into the next month and a half, which is going to prove tricky and ultimately not very rewarding, as it will be the odd day here and there, with nothing really planned.

 

It also means that meeting my deadlines would be a lot tighter. Mentally I have resigned myself to foregoing the holidays and getting the extra cash. It means less mental  pressure regarding the work, and once I get through this next month or so there is light at the end of the tunnel.

 

This weekend is probably slightly playing on my mind too. It’s going to be fairly pressured . Travelling to Grandma Zilla’s tonight, then cross country tomorrow, trying to cram in visiting as many relatives as possible, going to the football match, then back cross country. Then Sunday back home.

 

Ultimately I know that everyone is going to be pleased, so it makes it all worth it. Godzooky 1 is giddy about the match, Mrs Zilla and Grandma Zilla are looking forward to showing off the small Godzookies. Some relatives have never seen Godzooky 3. In truth I’ll probably love the driving too, I’ve always loved a good road trip.

 

Just in case though, here’s a picture that may be seen over the weekend:

You can create your own sign here:

http://atom.smasher.org/highway/?l1=&l2=&l3=&l4=

I know you guys will have the creativity to surpass my effort.

Here’s hoping that a good weekend lifts my mood……and that you all have a great weekend too.