Happy Birthday Down Under continued…

Just after midnight I published a birthday greeting to my four~year~old twin grandsons, who are currently traveling in Australia with their Mum. What with time differences and unstable Internet connections, it has been tricky to stay in contact, though obviously I think of them often ~ particularly today.

They’ve probably gone to bed now, their special day over for another year. So I’m not going to be able to speak to them directly ~ no matter, they’ll be flying home soon. However, I have managed to ‘see’ them ~ my daughter posted this photo on Facebook a few minutes ago:

That’s Mylo on the left, singing the birthday song, I’m guessing, to Ruan on the right.

Almost instant communication, through a social networking site.

Many people my age (and younger) dismiss Facebook and the like as time~wasting obsessions.
‘What’s wrong with just talking,’ they complain, ‘phoning or writing a letter, like we used to do in the old days?’

Well clearly that wouldn’t work, in this case, or we’d have done it ~ I’d just be left wondering and wishing. And, while nothing can compare to the joy of seeing my loved ones in person, I am grateful for the technology that beamed this wonderful photo, from the other side of the planet straight to my heart!

Happy Birthday Down Under

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RUAN!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MYLO!

You’re both four years old now. Excellent!

I don’t know if we’ll Skype today because you’re on holiday in Australia and you may not be on~line when I am.

So I’m pulling your invisible strings instead. Can you feel me doing it?

Have a brilliant day and when you come home you can tell Grandad and me all about it ~ the people you’ve met, the places you’ve visited and the exciting things you’ve been doing on your Big Adventure!

Until then stay safe, have lots of fun and be good for Mum!

xxxx Happy Birthday Mylo! xxxx

xxxx Happy Birthday Ruan! xxxx

And, just so you both know,
Gran adores you!

Untangled

Since the end of November, when I took part in Deepak Chopra’s 21 Day Abundance Challenge, I have been meditating at least three times a week. I’m generally awake before The Artist, so I set myself up in the studio with candle, incense, iPad and headphones, listening to the music from the course, which I purchased once it had finished.

Great stuff!

Except my ear~bud wires seemed to have a life of their own ~ however carefully I stashed them away, when I pulled them out of the drawer the next morning they were a complicated mess of tangles. Very frustrating and not exactly conducive to serenity.

Then I saw an item on Pinterest, demonstrating how to avoid this by wrapping them. So I decided to give it a go:

The technique proved trickier than it looked ~ requiring the skills (and tentacles) of an octopus to keep everything under control. As you can see, my first attempt created more of a muddle than I’d started with, so I had to chop out the knots…..

…..re~think my strategy and start all over again:

Once I’d pinned the jack to a folded pillowcase and wound the wayward yarn round a plastic~bag clip, it became much easier…

….. therapeutic and quite addictive ~ almost meditation in itself. So I wrapped my iPad charger too:

It works! Even shoved in my pocket, amid keys and tissues and dog treats, the wires remain tangle~free. I’m convinced the music sounds better too!

The photo on Pinterest showed the knots in the yarn spiralling round the cords ~ describing them like those in a friendship bracelet, (which I’ve never made either.) Disappointingly, my attempts so far haven’t worked out that way…..

Now, where did Martin leave his earphones?

Not Connecting

Our Internet connection is random at present, so I’ll be absent for a week or so, until we get a better, fibre optic connection installed.

Missing you already!

Sunshine After the Rain

After a few days of heavy rain, Sunday dawned bright and clear, if a little chilly. So The Artist decided to ride out on the Harley, visiting a mate who has a fourteen acre ‘back garden’, complete with small fishing lake, ancient woods and motocross track.

I’m always welcome to join him but I’m definitely a fair~weather biker babe these days. Besides, I know he appreciates ‘bloke~time’ as much as I like being left alone to ‘potter’ occasionally ~ these ‘spaces between us’ help us both maintain our balance.

So I waved him off, flung doors and windows open to air the house and headed out into our front garden to absorb a few rays while the sun still shone. When I wrote about my intentions for 2013, I didn’t think I’d be able to work outside for a couple of months yet, so this was an unexpected bonus, reconnecting me with the natural world and literally grounding me.

I began cutting back an overgrown jasmine, which a friend had given me as a cutting several years ago. It may not be the right time of year to be doing this but it grows like crazy, so I’m sure it will appreciate the pruning. After all, nature is programmed to survive. Actually, looking at the photo, I might have been a little enthusiastic with the secateurs ~ ah well, too late now!

The cat who isn’t our cat kept me company, sharpening her claws on the gate post, before settling on a sunlit bench ~ but by the time I’d taken off my gardening gloves to photograph her, she’d scarpered. Here’s a picture of the empty seat, in front of our new fence. It looks quite stark at the moment but I have plans…..

By the time the homeward bound HD roared through the gates, it was clouding over and becoming cold. So we dumped three sacks of clippings and a skip bag of rubbish at the recycling centre and came indoors, grateful for this brief foretaste of spring!

Looking Forward to Twenty~Thirteen

The Artist and I have been laid low by two sneaky viruses since way before Christmas.

We rallied enough to make a trip to the mainland, the day after Boxing Day but relapsed/collapsed on the sofa as soon as we came home. So we spent the last week of the holidays taking care of ourselves, resting and reading and making loose plans for the year ahead:

I’m going to concentrate on my arts and crafts ~ knitting, crochet, scrumbling, papier~mâché, collage and anything else that takes my fancy. When the weather turns warmer, I’ll start landscaping the front garden and planting up my vegetable beds. There’s much work to be done ~ I’m excited about that and collecting ideas on my Pinterest boards.

I’m also going to continue the meditation practice which I started way back in November, when I took part in Deepak Chopra’s 21 Day ‘Meditation for Abundance’ Challenge. If you’re interested you can read about that on my other site: Wightrabbit’s Blog.

Martin is going to renovate the workshop and finish re~designing our old sports car, so that we can enjoy open~topped motoring once again. (It’s going to be a great summer, isn’t it? We’ve certainly earned it after last year’s abysmal washout.) He’s already drawn up some innovative concepts, which are bound to shock and surprise ~ watch this space!

So this is how we’d like to occupy our free time over the next twelve months. But there’s no deadline or timeframe for any of these projects. After all, the whole point of taking low~paid, part~time employment was to free us from time~pressures and targets. Until now we’ve been focused on home improvements, now we can relax and allow the inspiration to flow.

I’m looking forward to twenty~thirteen unfolding. The energy already feels fresh and exciting, completely different from previous years and ~ from what I can gather ~ others are sensing that too.

Onwards and upwards then, into the future, wishing you all a Happy New Era!

Looking Good

I simply wished to post an up~to~date picture of myself, wearing my new spectacles. One which didn’t make my unruly hair look as though I was wearing an angora bonnet. So yesterday, after my bi~monthly shearing, I handed my phone to ‘The Artist’ so that he could take an instant snap. Simples! There’s even a facility on WordPress to upload a quick post, so it should have only taken a second or two.

Hmmm…. Not so fast….

We tried taking several shots in the living room, but I was too far away. When I cropped the photo and enlarged it, my face became pixelated. Not a good look.

Martin came in closer, but I resembled an hysterical hamster: rosie cheeks puffed out and pearly whites bared in a fixed grin. Not a good look. Seriously.

The light from the windows in the studio reflected too much in my lenses.

The voiles in the bedroom made it so dark that you could hardly see me ~ let alone my snazzy new bins.

In further attempts, I just looked worried or cross ~ clearly caught mid ‘just do it!’

On the way to our afternoon cleaning jobs, we didn’t argue about it. I merely suggested that Martin might benefit from an eye test, while he accused me of wildly over~estimating the technical capabilities of a smart~phone.

‘If you want to look perfect,’ he told me, ‘then book a professional sitting’. So much for instant upload.

In the end a colleague came to our rescue. Caretaker Pete, whose mobile doesn’t even have a camera, pressed the shutter on mine and voila! Here is me, at work, in my new Gok Wan glasses, with their groovy purple frames:

Doing the Honours

The lovely people at Studio Blue Sea have honoured me with the ‘Lovely Blog Award’ for both this and for Wightrabbit’s Blog! It’s just the kick up the wotsit I require to get me back into writing regularly, after my relaxing Summer break. So thank you, thank you and thank you, Pippa and Miles! I do enjoy reading your posts and viewing your creative work!

That’s the first condition of accepting the award fulfilled ~ now for the second, more challenging task. I have to reveal seven things about myself. I love reading these personal disclosures on other people’s blogs ~ my cyber~buddies seem to have such fascinating back stories. I can’t guarantee to be as entertaining and informative as they are but here goes:

1) …. hang on, let me just brew another mug of coffee……mmmm……’lishush’, as my granddaughter would say. Now, where was I? Oh, yeh….

It might not be obvious, but I’m really good at procrastination. I’d like to be more disciplined and prepare things in advance but ~ even though I have plenty of free time these days ~ I still delay until the last minute. I’m far too easily distracted. Or maybe my mother was right and I am simply lazy?

2) But somehow I always manage to wing it. I’ve not missed an important deadline (yet) ~ and I’ve never had to stay up all night to finish an assignment or project. Even if I leave home later than I ought, I always usually arrive on schedule, (not a moment before, mind, but still not late.) I must thrive on the adrenaline rush, maybe it gives me the edge I require to get motivated? It used to annoy me and I’d search for all sorts of excuses but now I’ve accepted that this is the way I am. Which is quite liberating, actually.

3) I love washing up. By hand. Seriously. It’s Zen Meditation.

4) I am a ‘lonely only’ ~ I have no brothers or sisters and was brought up in an old vicarage, in rural Wales. From an early age, I escaped into books, fascinated by the story lines and the characters.

5) My step~father wasn’t a vicar, he was a Veterinary Surgeon, so we always had animals. Labradors, a cat and budgerigars as pets; chickens and ducks for eggs (and the table.) A neighbouring small~holder used our field as grazing for his sheep, cattle and ponies. One day the heifers broke the electric fence, charged through the spinney, trampled my mother’s precious rose~beds and escaped onto the lane. So that arrangement was abruptly terminated!

6) I once sat on an Arab stallion that the Queen wished to send to the King of Nepal, as a gift, once my Dad had approved it.

7) I’ve always loved purple. Many of my clothes, my spectacles and the ink I hand~write with are in various shades of this colour.

Now I’m supposed to pass this award on to 15 other bloggers. (That’s right. Fifteen. Who thinks up these random numbers?) Anyway, here goes:

Soul Dipper

Crowing Crone Joss

On Dragonfly Wings with Buttercup Tea

Mature Student Hanging In There

Susan Jane Jones’s Blog

Bodhirose’s Blog

ladybluerose

Inside the Mind of Isadora

Spirit Lights The Way

I Choose How I Will Spend The Rest of My Life

Lucid Gypsy

All That Matters

Dragon’s Dreams

clairecappetta

Wondering Rose

Dreamwalker’s Sanctuary

Oops! That makes sixteen ~ but every one of these authors deserve the award and I can’t possibly choose who to leave out. If you don’t believe me (or if you do,) I thoroughly recommend that you follow my links and check them out for yourselves.

Well, it’s been about a week and a half since I received this award (see Confession 1!) so I think it’s time I ‘put it to bed’.

Thanks, once again, to Pippa and Miles for nominating me. I’m not sure whether the logo will show when I publish this post ~ at the moment it’s a blue rectangle with a question mark ~ possibly because I write exclusively on Apple Mac computers. If you’d like to copy it; or to read the proper rules, or just have a good nose at the seven things that Pippa has written about their lives, please do drop by and say ‘Hi’

To Lee

Forty years ago today, my first child was born. In the last few weeks of my pregnancy I found it difficult to sleep. Excited and nervous, I couldn’t wait for the Big Event, longing to see what he or she looked like.

At the time my (then) husband and I possesed a portable record player but only a couple of singles ~ ‘My Sweet Lord’ by George Harrison and a ‘double A side’ by Roberta Flack. One track was the haunting ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ but the flip side tapped into my emotions at the time and I played it over and over every night ~ it soothed me until I dozed off.

Years passed and my son became a dancer, performing on the West End stage and in Germany. Once, when we were discussing our favourite music, he told me that each time he heard this particular piece, he fell asleep!

So, Lee, here is my 40th Birthday greeting to you ~ I know that it’s supposed to be a love song from a woman to her man but the lyrics describe, so perfectly, how I felt  ~ the first time ever I saw your sweet little baby face. Awww!

P.S. Please don’t listen to this while driving!

P.P.S. If you find this embarrassing, tough. I’m your mother, that’s my job!

VOS Roundup

I’ve been suffering from splitting headaches, recently ~ it transpires that my eyesight has worsened. So, until my new prescription specs arrive, I’m banned from staring at a computer screen.

I have collated all the previous Virtual Open Studio images onto a Pinterest board, entitled ‘Amazing Artwork by Martin King.’ So, if you’d like to see them all laid out together, please follow this link:

Jacqueline King’s Pinterest Boards

I hope to be back to 20/20 status soon ~ please accept my apologies for not posting or answering your much appreciated comments.

Missing you already!