I’ve been hoarding pictures of Freddles for the past few years now…

And my sister sort of cracked the biggest shitfest ever when she discovered a picture from Fred’s christening (way back when) in the book my aunt put together to celebrate the life of my grandmother. The situation was made even worse when she saw the scrapbooked page of us all that I’d done. Eep.

So now I have to put nearly three years worth of photographs onto CD for her and my dad and my mum and just about everyone else in the family.

Is there a way to batch convert RAW files to jpg?

Anyway, I guess I should also add to my tales of the life of Fred… He loves horses.

No, seriously. He LOVES horses.

It all started with a horse at the local pony club called Boof. Boof as in rhymes with “hoof” of the horsey variety. And then Donkey, from Shrek. A movie I have now watched probably 491 times this year alone.

See, Donkey turns into a HORSEY in Shrek. Which just, you know, makes him the COOLEST DONKEY EVER. And I get a very patient explanation of how Donkey gets turned into a horsey at the precise moment when Donkey… turns into a horsey. Mind you, that’s all still in Fred’s patented Swahili Baby Speech…

My mum’s sisters worship all things equine and while my sister and I liked the occasional pony ride and patting the horses, we were never really adamant that we must own one of those magnificent creatures. Plus we’re both terribly allergic to them which I am sure had something to do with our interest levels. Simple put, the pure and all encompassing love of horses passed us by. It skipped a generation and hit Fred full force in the chest.

So now whenever we see anything horse-shaped there will be much excitement and of course every time we drive past the pony club he calls out for Boof who I am sure would come if he could hear an almost-three-year-old in a moving car with the windows wound up - providing there were carrots involved.

Fred loves horses so much that when Nanny bought him a stuffed toy horse, he decided he would ride it. And ride it he does. With stuffed horse jammed between his legs and little fingers grasping tightly to straining ears, Fred gallops (ok, it’s not so much a gallop as a waddle-hop but it’s incredibly cute) around the house like a maniac, exciting dogs, cats and thoroughly amused aunties alike. The poor horse is a bit thin around the middle from being ridden around so much, and slept on, and cuddled, and chewed on…

And, oh my god, don’t get me started on Xena. He loves Xena too.  Xena as in “Warrior Princess, The”.  We’ve had bike pumps, which make great swords, shoved down the back of jumpers just so they can be yanked out Xena-style to ward off would-be evil doers.  The acrobatics, the swords, the action. He loves it all.  He wants to be Xena.

And XENA ON A HORSE sends him into conniptions.

I was talking with Allison yesterday about her bringing down her Wii and guitar for Guitar Hero at the end of the year. Well, Allison, ol’ chum, there’s no longer a need.

Guess who bought Guitar Hero for PC this morning?

And guess who else has been forced to listen to it for the past nine hours?

Here I was thinking I was safe. We’re a very anti-console family. I hate XBOX , PlayStation and the rest, so does the manbeast but we are followers of the PC … but no, the makers of GH went and totally spoilt my day!

It’s not so bad when he’s got the headphones on but that infernal click-click… click-click…click-click of the guitar is driving me somewhat batty.

Though in related news - and people not interested in World of Warcraft stuff, skip this paragraph - after two very long years, I finally hit the big 70 with Denalli! Not only that, but I got my flying mount the same day. Beautiful ebony griffin. Beautiful-but-slow-as-shit ebony griffin. Hehe. I was crushed yesterday as I’d worked really hard all week to get to 70 so I wouldn’t be behind the guys for the next WoW Day but I got hit with probably the worst migrane I’ve had for a long time and ended up knocking myself out with a large dose of mersyndol just to escape the pain. So the manbeast took my Denalli through Kara and got me some lovely purple stuff…

And in other news, the lovely Michelle released a new scrapping kit (I gave her the idea, go me!) and I’ve been playing with it all weekend and made these two pages:

It did. I gigglesnorted. It’s just so appropriate. But then I felt naughty. Stupid Catholic guilt.

I am a sad, disillusioned-by-religion geekette.

But I still gigglesnorted.

But OH OH OH! I made my first real CT team! I am now creating layouts and quickpages for Cathie Sipes of Scrap Acres at DigiScrapStation.com. Happyhappyjoy! Alright, so it’s my second CT job, I also work with Michelle at Mellowbutterfly.com but she let me on the team because she’s a friend.

Anyhoo, what is a quickpage? Well, basically most of the hard work is done for you. You just whack in the photos and chuck on some text if desired.

Like so…

I just had another hair and makeup trial. WAY better than the first one.

I’ll be posting some photos up in my wedding blog but I just wanted to say here, for the first time, I look and feel absolutely magnificent. I love my eyes, I love my hair, I love my face.

I am fucking beautiful.

Me: Ketchup.

Her: Ketsup.

Me: No. KetCHup.

Her: No. KetSup.

Me: CHA! CHA CHA CHA! KetCHUP!

Her: KETSUP!

Me: Oh, fuck this. Tomato sauce. I WIN.

I don’t usually look at my spam messages very often other than to figure out which ones to delete. However, one did catch my eye…

“Gain your massive man tool today!”

My immediate thought was that I already have a man tool. His name is Manbeast.

I was reading Daniel’s blog the other day about World Environment Day. To be honest, like Breast Cancer Day, Red Nose Day, Talk Like A Pirate Day*, and a myriad of other “days”, it passed me by without a second thought. Though the tips in Daniel’s blog made me laugh and groan a bit.

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The face that made us fall in love a thousand times.

Just thought I’d share a new page I’d finished this week. An old photo of Freddles (you can tell he is my inspiration for the whole scrapbooking thing).  Nanny-Mum love’s this picture.  So do I. it reminds us both of the Cabbage Patch dolls.

I don’t take nearly as much pictures of Fred as I’d like, but he’s suddenly gone all anti-camera in his old age of nearly a whapping three years which makes it rather hard to get a good picture.  He puts things in front of his face and says “No! Stoppit!” very sternly… and then says something else which is in Swahili but I’m sure it’s something not very pleasant about his adoring aunty.

Ho-hum. It’s after midnight and the depression has kicked in. Worried about a whole lot of things including (and most importantly) the nephew who doesn’t seem to have quite recovered from a nasty bout of pneumonia. His chest sounds so rattly at the moment and he just has that sickly, fragile look about him that’s even more pronounced because of his already-fair hair and so-pale-he’s-transparent skin.

Definitely not his chubby, happy little self though he does try and be normal - as normal as a sick little 2.5 year-old can be.

Anyhoo, I made an oil pastel drawering a few weeks ago and neglected to show off:

Looks almost convincing, eh?

I know the blog looks CRAP at the moment. I was going for plain but this ended up a bit too plain.

Any suggestions for a wordpress theme in which I can incorporate my squirrel pictures would be appreciated.

Update: This one will do for the next five minutes while I sort out the graphics on the other layout that I actually quite like. Arrgh.

Update v2: Wow, I kinda like this layout…

Update v3: Even with the lack of squirreliness.

Welcome to the new blog. Today I am talking about toilet habits in the workplace.

Hey, I said I was making a new blog, I didn’t say it would be a better blog. Or wait, maybe I did say it would be better. Oh well, I lied. Nyah-nyah.

The darling Rae, when she still had her blog, once mentioned that occasionally when she was in the loo there would be the odd visitor who would sound like they were pouring water into the bowl from a great height. For an extraordinarily long time. Frankly, they were pissing like racehorses. This little observation was a huge source of amusement and revelation for many who read it.

I’ve noticed another kind of toilet-goer, though. The holder-on… hold-onnerer… bah, the ones who will sit there until everyone leaves before they do their business. Particularly Number 2s business. Number 2s seem to be a big problem for a lot people (alright, a lot of GIRLS) and the tell-tale splishing of water is apparently very embarrassing. I don’t get why. It’s a natural bodily function. Not doing it can actually make you quite ill if not kill you in extreme cases.

I must admit though, there have been times when I’ve waited, particularly when the other kind of toilet-goer that I hate visits the loo.

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Bear with me, it’s coming.

How do you like the pictures though, eh? Cute? Eleanor is a fabulous drawerer.

And I love squirrels.