Weekly Photo Challenge: Love

Tory Boy is a menace to his little brother.  You saw his birthday card yesterday:

But he loves Spud very much.  He arranged his leave so that he would be here for his brother’s birthday.  He bought him an expensive PS3 game.  And he baked him a cake.  He baked it from scratch and iced it to look like one of Spud’s favourite games:

You don’t get much more loving than that.

And then he locked Spud in the loft.

*

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Weekly Photo Challenge: My 2012 In Pictures (Part IV)

This theme is almost as long as The Lord of the Rings.  Send me a photograph of the beard you grew while reading these posts.

Not a lot happened in October, except that my Love Potato

got old:

And a surprise anthology arrived from the Bolton Poems in Shop Windows thing earlier in the year:

In November, I participated in NaNoWriMo for a total of 12,000 words. I had no regrets about giving it up, but did seek comfort from my beloved:

I confessed to having another love, albeit smelly:

And worried about my poorly Viv:

And joy of joys – the Daily Prompts returned!

Finally, Viveka sent me some Swedish chocolate, which I did not enjoy as much as Maltesers:

I imagine you’ve had enough of a Tilly Bud December to last you all year, so I’ll just write the highlights, apart from showing you this, a lovely hamper from KiwiDutch:

And this, a lovely blog banner from AquaTom:

• Spud got the lead in The Tempest
• My readers wore out my poeming hand with their birthdays
• The End of the World came and went without a single disaster 
• So did Christmas

I can’t believe WordPress wanted me to narrow it down to twelve photos.  But I believe you wish I’d narrowed it down to twelve photos.

Ah well.  Love me, love my long-windedness.

And my manky teeth:

Thanks for sharing my year with me.  I appreciate each and every visit, comment and like you give me.  And to prove it…have a Malteser 😀

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: My 2012 In Pictures (Part III)

Bored yet?

In July we hosted the Olympics (Britain, I mean; I can’t see us hosting even a swimming event in our back garden, though it was wet enough).  You sent me photos of what you were doing during the Opening Ceremony.  Most, like mine, showed you eating, drinking and watching telly in your pyjamas:

I danced in the rain:

I had root canal treatment:

My family were sympathetic:

In August it began to feel like autumn, having bypassed summer after a wet and feeble spring.  We went camping with four children and two dogs in torrential rain, but managed a day on the beach:

Before we went away, we put up our new shed.  Here’s Tory Boy drawing a picture of his father on the old shed:

And Spud working hard:

I had poems in a couple of anthologies, including this one:

And yet again I blogged about hair:

September reminded me why I love the Hub so much:

And brought First Contact with another blogger, Pseu:

I wrote my 2000th post:

And discovered my favourite top in a charity shop for £3.50:

Don’t worry!  Only one more post to go.

Weekly Photo Challenge: My 2012 In Pictures (Part II)

In April I was mad for The Hunger Games:

And looked like I might have taken part at one point, thanks to my ten year-old niece’s skill with my make-up bag:

May brought sunshine for the first time in 2012, so we cleaned up our garden:

It was just as well the sun came out; Spud was beginning to rot:

Great rejoicing in the Bud house when City won the Premier League Title:

And when our babies turned four:

Spud had his school prom in June:

I had poems displayed in three Bolton shop windows:

We watched the Olympic Flame come through Stockport:

June rained a lot but it brought us the Diamond Jubilee so we didn’t mind:

Weekly Photo Challenge: My 2012 In Pictures (Part I)

The prompters suggest we use twelve photos to illustrate the year.

Ha!

You will be visited by four posts of photographs, the first to arrive when the clock strikes one…um, make that ten-fifteen.

In January, I talked about hair:

A lot:

A real lot:

February, there was more hair: mostly the lack of it on my side of the family:

The Hub liked February because my readers started a Save The Hub support group, owing to my alleged meanness to him:

I went to Spain in a manky cardi and was goosed by a brass monkey:

I went to the library with my writing group:

March brought one glorious but brief moment of having a clean and uncluttered lounge.  I knew it wouldn’t last so I took a photo to help me through the down days:

And a Happy Mother’s Day wish from my sons:

 

I’ve Never Seen The Man In The Moon

But I have seen a smiling face on Mercury.

From the NASA website:

Special Photo Challenge: Inspiration

WordPress asks what inspires me to blog.  It’s simple:

I like feeling happy; and I like making other people feel happy.

 

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Silhoutte

I had what might be termed a silhouette figure in 1982:

Now I have more of a she who ate* figure:

*You really need a northern British accent to get that joke: she who et 

The Daily Post tells us:

In photography, often we achieve that effect by putting light behind the object whose silhouette we want to capture, effectively darkening out the features of the subject instead of highlighting them.

I suspect if my 2012 self stood in front of my 1982 self* I’d be darkening out all my features several times over.

*Hey!  I’ve seen Star Trek – time travel will be possible one day and when it is, I’ll come back and do this and prove it to you.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Big

Big Announcement:

For the past two weeks, this blog seems to have been all about birthdays, poetry and head colds.

Here’s the Big Announcement:

so?

This is a photograph of me, pregnant with Spud:

Here’s one from a different angle:

Things don’t get much bigger than that.  

Actually, that’s a big fat lie.  Whales, mountains and my chocolate stash are bigger.  Spud is bigger now (upwards, not outwards).  My ego is bigger (because you keep saying nice things to me even though strictly forbidden).  The tissue pile in my bin is bigger than the tissue pile in the tissue box (still milking it).

Lots of things are bigger.  Including my stomach, sixteen years on.

Sigh.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Mine

Plus the box on my bedside table and the empty one in the recycling bin.  

Don’t tell me I’m not predictable.

Or environmentally friendly.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Solitary

Why the Hub should be single:

 

But who could not love such a daft man?

*

*

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He Loves Me, He Loves Me

The Hub has been at it again, leaving love notes for me.  

I don’t mind them; it’s kind of nice that he loves me enough to show it; but why are they always left in the kitchen?  I might spend all my time in there, but no one in this house believes that’s where my heart is.  It would make more sense if he left them on the computer.

This one is from the paper Pseu used in her gift basket:

Here’s one he left on the milk:

Here’s one he left on the strawberries:

I get the feeling he loves me but thinks I spend too much time with food.  

This one isn’t a love note, just some fun he had at my expense:

It led to Bizarre Question Of The Week #1: Did you put the frog in the fridge?

Weekly Photo Challenge: Everyday Life

Yesterday, I showed you my house, prepared for Pseu’s visit:

Below is my house on Monday morning (and every morning) before the great clean up that takes a huge chunk of my day; at least six minutes.  What a waste of blogging time.

If a cushion falls in the front room, does anyone care?

The house often asks me, If you clean me, do I not get messy all over again? And I have to answer, Yes.

I wouldn’t say we look like this every single day, because we don’t.  We only almost always look like this every single day.  The distinction is important.

Especially when I’m arguing with the Hub.

In everyday life, no one can hear you clean.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Near And Far

I was out all day today, at an administration networking event (I know how to live an exciting life) run by the Church of England (a really exciting life).  It wasn’t far from here; quite near, really.  This is the first chance I’ve had to blog. I’ve missed you.

 

I have had a busy three days: admin event today; church>writing group>visiting rellies in Macclesfield yesterday; packing the new shed and building a free, secondhand wardrobe on Saturday.

I’ve really missed you.

Spud had a proper sort out of his clothes and came across stuff he hasn’t worn for at least three years.

He’s a good son; I love him.  When I was pregnant, I hoped for an intelligent, witty, handsome, suave son.

So near; and yet so far.

In his psychology class today, he had to describe his mother in one word.  He opted for caring.

I wonder if he’s read this post yet?

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Merge

 

I’m late with this one because the summer holiday weeks all merged into one.  

Rather like my children.

Take this photo:

I’m almost certain it is Spud because it’s taken from the left – my hospital bed was on the left wall when I had him and on the right when I had Tory Boy.

Is it terrible that I can recall the position of my beds after childbirth but not what my new children looked like?

The problem is that both boys looked like their father at birth which means they also looked like each other.  It’s been sixteen/twenty-two years and my memory isn’t what it once was, and that wasn’t much.  

I say Spud looked like his father and brother, but he also looked like someone else.  I had him by Caesarian and the anaesthetist (why does childbirth have so many aes?  Coincidentally, A+E stands for Accident and Emergency in the UK – the equivalent of the American ER – and accidents often result in emergencies that include childbirth nine months on.  Well it does in my family), a lovely man, held me up as the gynaecologist (see!) yanked him out.

What emerged was a fat, blue and crinkly Spud.  My first thought – I swear this is true – was, ‘Oh, he looks like the alien baby from V.’

Tell me I’m wrong: