International Relations

If you're reading this you know me.

Well, when I say you know me, no-one who knows me in my offline life reads this (god forbid!) so I mean my online friends. Notice I don't call my offline friends my "real" friends as over the past year my online friends have become as real to me as my alarm going off at 530am for work when Im working the dreaded day shift.

Most of my friends are American, some Australian and the odd Canadian. Jenna's not that odd but you know what I mean....

I digress, a 12.5 hour shift and wine does that.

We all speak the same language - allegedly

Honestly you guys talk funny!! It's not me, I'm normal, I speak the Queen's language with a quirky Welsh twist (Wenglish), you lot speak a different language altogether. I have whole conversations with Helly or Brian that none of us understand and explanations fly back and forth as we try to clarify what the other meant.

The time thing amuses me no end, different times in the same country - too funny - or should I go American and say Go Figure..... - West Coast 8 hours behind, East Coast 5 hours behind, the middle I have no clue. Damn international date line....

I don't understand American Football, you call football soccer and Brian calls cricket demented baseball when cricket is clearly the saner game. I don't get Thanksgiving or the funny little holidays you get- Martin Luther King Day - who'd have thunk it???

I understand only about 80% of Brian's blog, about 50% of Dead Honkey (which is probably the same or more than anybody else) and a recent posting of Memoirs of a Gouda left me completely clueless.

You are used to my cwtches by now - Welsh for hug for the uninitiated and I want to send a big cwtch to the friends involved in the Travel Log adventure..

A member of grab staff asked if I could help out with her niece's school project. The class were compiling a kind of chain letter Travel Log. Deb sent it to me from Texas. I sent it onto Shaun in England who sent it to Helly in California. She's sending it to Jenna in Canada who is then going to send it to Scot in Michigan. If we had more time we'd get the Aussies involved but theres an October deadline. So in a month between us, we've covered 4 countries - pretty cool. Anything for the little ones eh? my postcard was the first and maybe only European one - we've earned this kid some serious brownie points in school.

But there is help at hand - for handy translations from UK English to US English try English to American.com. And yes, fanny and fag is there, I looked....

Unfortunately theres no help for deciphering blogs written by a tipsy, wine guzzling, Welsh chick who's been up far too long.......

Weekend Viewing

My initiation into sci-fi geekiness has arrived.....

Japanese English Lessons

Well I suppose any English is useful...

Incy Wincey

I just read a blog about spiders whilst watching a spider crawl across my wall. I'm not particularly scared of spiders although I don't really like them either, especially big ones. Bethan checks her room for spiders before she goes to bed as she thinks they will crawl down in the night and into her mouth. Because of this I've learnt the art of removing them without having the heeby-geebys.

What exactly are the point of Spiders? They eat flies I hear you say - And? Whats the point of flies?
This made me realise there are numerous animals in this world with no point in life but just being here. This is where some smart person recalls the food chain from school - so tell me oh smart one - which animals eat those bastard headlice then?

We eat animals obviously, or the products of, but it does make me wonder who decided what we'd eat and what we wouldn't. Why does everyone cringe at mentions of the consumption of horses or dogs in other countries but quite happily eat a cow or a cutesy little lamb? Why do the French eat snails but not slugs, when everyone knows slugs are just homeless snails who probably sell The Big Issue to the well off, with house snails at the corner of the garden.

But back to spiders, how do you get rid of them. Are you a messy splatter, a catch them in a tissue then squash them (like me) or do you humanely empty them out of the window/door?

Of course without spiders we wouldn't have Spiderman, or Toby Maguire...

So, I guess they do have their uses after all - and this blogs spellcheck wants Spiderman to be replaced with subterranean..

My Blog isn't my Blog....

....without gratuitous pics of my Ewan

Im Going to be Such a Smirt..

From April next year, the Welsh Assembly (Mickey Mouse Welsh government who can't cough without asking Whitehall) have decided in their wisdom to ban smoking in "enclosed spaces". So no smoking inside pubs, clubs, restaraunts, hospitals, etc.

Healthy I suppose but when you're having a drink, a ciggy goes with it - the drunker you get the more you smoke - or is that just me? I use it as a screen - if my mate goes off and Im stood on my own, I light up, gives me something to do and I feel less of a dork.

Dublin, Ireland did it last year and on the radio they interviewed an Irish journalist who said having to go outside for a smoke has brought along a new term...

SMIRTING

Picture the scene - you're in a pub, you want a ciggy so you go outside, without your drink of course cos drinking outsides been banned. You join the huddle of evil, nicotine-addicted pubgoers and convesation starts - and you flirt with the hot guy puffing next to you. Hence you are smoking and flirting - or smirting...

Its even in wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smirting

Now I was hoping to be completely smoke free by next April but I dunno - I want to be a smirt..

Raindrops....

My girls are bugging for a dog. It wouldn't be difficult to get one. Living in the hills and vales as I do there is a rescue centre close by. I grew up with various pets in the house and miss having a dog myself. The thing that puts me off is that they go die on you. My friend Julie can testify to this, having only yesterday performed a touching garden ceremony for Snowdrop the rabbit.

The best pet my parents have had was Fred. Fred was a cockatiel. When weird grancha died, we inherited him - and the name as weird nana couldn't cope with him. When I say weird I dont mean weird as in wears a colostomy bag outside of clothing weird but goddamn, off your head weird. Their favourite trick was to move - and not tell anyone. A couple of years would pass and then they'd reappear, no explanation, no apologies, just turn up at the house like you'd seen them only the day before. It sounds funny but they were evil too. They never, ever, acknowledged my brother's existence. Ever. For some unbeknown reason, even though I was the one born after my older brother was killed, they decided that as a boy, my parents had replaced Ian and weren't going to do that themselves. So they never spoke to him, took me and my sister on holidays and left him behind and sent presents "for the two of them". I didn't find this out till I was older but by then I'd already realised they were fucked up by myself. Now history repeats itself and my children have their own derranged grandparents. Not my side of course.

So back to Fred. Fred didn't talk despite our best efforts. But he whistled, boy did he whistle - that shriek was enough to wake the dead. Well me after a night of debauchery and clubbing when I'd usually only got to bed an hour before actually but thats another story. And then the ad appeared. Some cutsie ad with a Westie running about in the rain and then being fed some superior dog food. And with the tune of "Raindrops keep falling on your head" jangling in the background. And the clever fucking bird learnt it. Over and over again he'd twirp his little ditty proudly with his beak in the air and his fuzzy mohican held high.

Visitors who didn't have to endure it for hours would start to whistle it so he'd do his party trick. It was about that time that we stopped having visitors. It even ended up in the background of my Wedding Video when they filmed me at home - you know, the video I love to watch in rewind so I end up as a single female....

But, eventually it saved his life. Literally. Taking a bid for freedom one day he flew off into the sky, never to be seen again. We thought. Over a week later my dad was walking in the local woods with the dog when, stopping and chatting to a friend, they discussed Fred's demise and started whistling his signature tune.......and he answered. Forthwith a rescue bid of epic proportions, involving several grown men and a fishing net was launched and Fred was reunited into the bosom of his family again - still whistling that bloody tune.

Fred's actual demise was way funnier. Well, now it's funny. No, it was always funny but for my mother's sake I kept a straight face. As he got older, Fred thought he was a dog. He fell in love with my lab Ben and followed him everywhere. Would fly down and cuddle up to him when he was snoozing, and follow him everywhere he went - including outside onto the patio. His brush with freedom surely affected him as he'd run about outside and never fly off. But his love for Ben proved to be his demise. Following him out the back door one morning, a freak gust of wind blew the door shut......onto poor Fred's neck.

Quit laughing.....

Random Question

They ask me to tell a story and then tell me it's too long - so I'll blog it.

Random Question
The children are waiting! Please tell them the story about the bald frog with the wig:

The princess was playing in the forest. She'd nicked her daddy king's tequila and was drunkenly dancing round the lake.As she shook her booty to the beat, the tiara she was wearing fell into the water. As she had borrowed it from her really evil stepsister without asking, she really needed to get it back. A frog appeared and the princess cried "Oooh, gross man, you're bald." The frog said "Listen sister, I can save your ass. I'll get you the headwear if you give me some of your hair to make me a wig" So the princess lopped off her locks and the frog dived and got the tiara.

Moral of the story - Don't get pissed on Margaritas when you're wearing a tiara....

Another place to procrastinate

Might post here, might not.
This is an experiment