8: do you consider your childhood a happy one?

i think overall it could have been better. but i cannae imagine that there is anyone that had every single perfect thing ever happen to them.

i was generally happy as a child. there are obvious flaws that stick out, like my mum being disabled and therefore thrusting me into the limelight of the one man caring show. if i am being honest though, i could not have imagined anything else. i love the childhood i was given. i had a mum who gave me everything she could and loved me huge amounts. i had two sisters who, despite their ages, hung out with me and took me to waterworld at least two times every summer. and i had pets. oh my god i had pets.

7: talk about a time when you got in trouble at school...

heh, i think the most prominant one was when i was around nine and i was out in the playground with a kid called noah loetcher and a couple of other girls. for some reason noah thought it would be fun to show us his willy and he did.

it is weird though, you know? i do not remember a single thing after that until i was in the principal's office later that day with a pink slip in my hand. the next day being the one where i had to participate in 'lunchtime detention.'

lunchtime detention was the worst because it was followed through in such a way that one was forced to eat with all the smelly kids and then sit with their noses against the wall JUST within sign of the door leading to everyone having recess. worst punishment ever, no?

i heart things and things tuesday

this week is like, the best week ever in the world for hearting things. i have spent just the last two days in a big fat whirlwind of excited glee, trying to keep my feet on the ground but failing quite a lot. i have been running around with wedding plans and hen-night plans and rabbit joy and have forgotten to remember to slow down. although, despite my pleased-ness, i have been enjoying all things life...

• the sneaks... this is the band husband played with on friday and they are delightful. the lead singer is a really young guy who looks quite a lot like chad from new found glory and he is generally really sweet, shy and has amazing taste in music. it is not often that i really enjoy a band that husband plays with. i tend to be quite protective about his abilities and how he goes about utilising them. it really makes me happy to see him playing in a band that he seemed to enjoy a great deal and that performs a genre of music that speaks more to his style of music than anyone else's.
• my amazon wishlist... i have only just learned the glory of creating an amazon wishlist and holy moly has it been a fun experience. i really love that when i look at a book it tells me what other books that i would like for it to make friends with. it is true, i would like for all of my books to have their own BFF and if i can find something that is willing to help me in that quest, i will greet it with open arms.
• angel food bakery... i am more excited than anything ever to prance into the little bakery on meeting house lane and buy every single cupcake i can find whilst i am there. they all look like their own little piece of precious and yummy art that i just want to consume as quickly as possible. i plan to march into the shop within the first hour of arriving in brighton and gain at least half a stone by forcing these precious treats to become friends with my esophogus.

• getting tattoos... never in the course of getting any of my tattoos have i felt so chilled out and pleased than when i got my hula done on my arm. i had spent at least a week before getting it fretting about the impending doom my arm would experience and how little i was going to be able to sit through. however, going against my expectations, my arm decided it would behave and i was able to sit through 6 1/2 hours of being stabbed. in that time i took a nap and drank at least a litre of orange juice (which i have now deiced is much better than consuming an abundance of caffinated liquid. obviously, having a tattoo on the underside of one's arm does leave a lot to be desired, but mygod it is splendid!

• changing jobs... it isn't until one leaves their current job for another that they realise how much they are needed and how lost the world will be without them. it has been so delightful this week to have the chance to see how much everyone is falling apart with the thought of not having me around to do my work. everyone keeps trying to weasle queries into me before i leave and it is just really nice. if ever you are feeling down or like you just aren't needed, quit your job. people will fall at your feet, begging you to stay.
• our bitchin' hen night!! so, as you are aware, the hen night is fast approaching. the excitment has only been building for it though, in leaps and bounds. last wednesday i got a phone call from a lady at BBC3 saying that they are doing a programme on 'modern women's relationships with alcohol.' so generally, they want to send a presenter out to drink with lots of people with lady bits from all age ranges. one of the nights they wanted to attend was a hen night. well, i got a call and spoke to the lady for a while... after being so excited, she said that they would speak to the director and get back to us by the end of the week but she was SURE we would be picked as characters like us are 'virtual gold dust' in the world of television. well, friday came and went with no phone call so gem and i just gave up. until yesterday! gem got a call saying that the producers are going to come meet with us today and get the go ahead for filming!! OMG! so not only will it be the best 50's themed partay ever, but it will be filmed and aired on national television for everyone to pretend they are a part of!!

quite good, but not good enough for a real blurb... making your own bath bombs, galaxy chocolate milk, mini cheddars, stationary, the dirty looks one gets if they have tattoos and DARE to walk down the street, lush toner tabs, abseiling, post-it notes, tiny boy tee shirts, flipz, tattoo conventions, imporomptu day trips to birmingham, almost being finished with a project and having a big fat curry after a night on the booze.

6: Are You The Same Person As You Were As a Child? Or Much Different?

i guess... well... uhhh... there are the obvious differences. i mean, the fact that i am taller and fatter. but like, when i think about it, i always had this image in my head about what i wanted to be like as an adult. a list of things i just HAD to achieve as an adult, as stated by danie ages 10 reads as follows:

1. become friends with a tattooist and get a shit-ton of free tattoos.
2. live in england.
3. never regret anything.

if i am being honest, i would like to say that i have achieved almost all of those things... and this is how...

1. i have indeed become friends with a tattooist and have been granted quite the lucky gift of being able to get as many tattoos as i can handle for free. to be honest, i never actually thought my luck would allow this... i never dreamed that i would be 'cool' enough to have a tattooist as a friend, but here i am today with over 16 tattoos and a big fat smile on my face.
2. well, again, this is something i never dreamed i would achieve. but here i am, an almost british girl who is in love with life and crisps and curry and scotch eggs.
3. more or less i don't regret things. i never actually look back and think, 'fuck, i wish i hadn't done/seen/said that.' sometimes i wonder how it would be had things been different but i never fret for losing out on that chance.

it is quite obvious that i am different from who i was as a child, but it is also obvious that keeping all childhood qualities is almost completely impossible. people grow up, see things, do things and that changes their perception and general stance on life.

overall, i am still a wee child at heart. i don't often worry about things like 'adults' should and i love to be impulsive and have no modesty at all. i exist for doing things on a whim and not looking back, which frightens a lot of people. i reckon this frightens them because they wish that sometimes it was easier for them to just DO things and not be afraid. gah... i don't want to go off on a rant, that is just the D L on my existence from child to now...

i heart things and things tuesday!!

oh the things i heart!!

• Joe Delucci... OMG i heart this ice cream! not only because it is summer and if i do not put cold things into my body i might die, but also because it is JUST like coldstone, but italian. AND it is £1 a scoop, which fulfills my need to be cheap and full of yum yums! they have so many amazing flavours that make my tastebuds go 'weee!' and the colours of all the ice creams are just like little pieces of the rainbow fell into the freezer.
• dodol! the parcel of delight arrived from malaysia last week and lived the wonder that is dodol.. coconut dodol. it is like the most lovely gummy sweet you will ever eat in your entire life x5,994,033! there were only around fiften pieces in the box, so i am having to savour whilst still sharing small bites with the people i heart.
• breadfruit in all of its starchy glory. vic and i participated in an adventure to birmingham where we were lured into purchasing a breadfruit by a man who haggled the price down by £2 without our help at all. we were looking at them with wonderment when a lady came up to us and bestowed upon us all the secrets that the mysterious thing in front of us held. she boasted that it was best when roasted and my-oh-my did she roast breadfruit well! unfortunately, i did not practise the fine art of roasting... i boiled it and made it into a prawn and coconut curry. husband was more than surprised with the end result that depicted how little fail my cooking is actually made of.
• crochetting! i have taken on the task of creating the bouquet for gem's wedding day and mygod it is fabulous! i have hand-created each and every rose and stem lovingly with wool and pipe-cleaners to create something that gem will be able to keep with her for the rest of her life.

honourable mentions are as follows...

coke, my mobile, my watch, having my teeth fixed, tattoos, flipz, aidan hawken, swapping internationally, chevy, having husband in bed with me, milk, teacakes, pierogis, cheezy horror films, dane cook, working, being able to be bossy, having everyone tell me how much they will miss me when i go, getting ready for the wedding, dying my hairs.

hooray!

oh how you read my mind...

despite my recent and reasonably uplifting post, i have been sitting here feeling quite sluggish and generally poopy-pants. i have been trying to swirl my life up with a big sexy bath and a delightful session on flickr where i am sharing photos of things and people past. trying with all my might to remember everything about each of those things.

what better dish can fate hand me than to decide to send me an email via dailyOM which makes me feel all weepy and like everything is working just fine...




July 21, 2008
Remembering the Moment
Enjoying Life

Life, in all of its fullness, is happening right now. While our thoughts are sometimes elsewhere, beautiful opportunities and moments are being passed over and lost to the flow of time. And though we cannot possibly fully experience each leaf that falls to the ground, sometimes we get so attached to reaching our goals that we don’t pay attention to the wonder all around us. When we do that, we live in a world that exists only in our heads, while we miss life itself. There is so much to be enjoyed and appreciated that we need to remember to pay attention to the present moment, because it is the only space in which we can experience being alive.

We learn from our past, but dwelling on it keeps us from being fully present to life in the moment. We create our lives with our thoughts, but focusing so firmly on our imagined future keeps us from co-creating with the universe, so we might never allow ourselves to live our dreams as they manifest. It’s possible to be so happy and comfortable in our inner worlds that we lose touch with the business of life. We may enjoy spending large portions of time in meditation, or focused on our thoughts.

Life must be attended to, and if we are wise, we can enjoy it at the same time. We can awaken ourselves to the moment we are living right now by taking a deep breath and simply looking around. In doing so, we refocus our attention to our location in the real world. Then we can learn to appreciate the process of working toward our goals as much as their attainment. Balancing ourselves between the present moment and eternity, we can experience and enjoy the full range of reality available to us as spiritual beings living on earth.

how to have a good day/week/LIFE!...

i am a firm believer that if you focus enough energy on positive things and making yourself happy, you will live a life completely surrounded by positive things and be happy. i see and hear so many people from day to day who just complain and focus on the negative things that they have in their lives and wonder why they end up having shite days. i can tell you, i notice a very huge difference in days that are spent focusing on potives compared to days spent existing in the negative.

there are so many small things that you can do to make a difference on the days where the rainclouds just will not shake. ways to stop yourself on the get-go from having a crappy comment snowball into a huge messy avalanche of horror.

• stop pointing out negatives in everything! instead, take the time to note the good things in an otherwise miserable situation. say you have been off work for a couple of days and when you come back your desk is covered with paperwork, your answerphone has been bombarded with angry calls and you have 20 emails... it is quite obvious what the faults are there, but what about the good things? 1: people miss you when you are gone and the work cannae get done without you. 2: you have a reason to ignore that one annoying woman who sits two desks down and will NOT stop talking about her holiday to spain next week. 3: you now have a chance to get a bit of overtime which will give you some extra money towards that holiday/couch/stereo that you have been wanting. you know, it sometimes isn't amazingly easy to find the positives in everything but a lot of the time, it offers you a special time to yourself to focus on the special little things that make life alright. it lets you chill out and have a breather whilst you just think about what you can do to make a situation easier and more ideal for yourself.
• take on some hobbies to allow you to relax. a lot of times, people come home from work or school and delve straight into home life. they come in and start tidying or cooking or worrying about bills. doing these things straight in from work or other daily routines can really stunt the amount of passion you offer to that task. you may break a vase whilst dusting, burn your dinner or pay too much on the wrong bill. start doing things that can help you to relax and clear your mind... set yourself a timeframe that you can follow easily from when you get in the door that will be time specifically for you. start a craft or project that you can put a small amount of time into here and there, get a pen-pal or three and write them a letter a month, look at your local telly guide and find a sitcom that starts when you get home to sit and watch once per day through the entire series, start playing an online game that allows you to just play it once a day. the amount of things that you can do are limitless and with most of them, you will just end up with nothing more than a splendid sense of completion and satisfaction that nothing could compare to.
• don't say anything negative anymore. so many people start the week saying 'oh my god, it's monday AGAIN!' **insert sob or banging head on desk** or go into a meeting or interview saying 'god, i bet i'm not going to get that promotion/job.' all that does it set your mentality to negative and buts a bit of a block on any posative things actually happening. it sounds a bit hoaky, but it is true. if you focus on negative things happening, they WILL. think posative and it will follow.

i know they are only a few things... but they are things that will make your life completely different. your general outlook and existance will be altered into a place that will make not only you happy, but all the people around you.