Sometimes a blog just needs to serve as a diary - apologies for emptying my brain here today!

I'm just like a big, bulgey and squashy bag of thoughts at the moment! So sorry for the ramblingness of posts for the time being - I can't pin down any ideas to write about them properly...

Just waiting for Noomski to send me some pictures that he took of me last night. (Got them now, see above!) Sometimes, in the right light, with a very good camera, and a bit of distance, I can look quite nice :) I don't usually photograph well - I seem to have one of those faces that always gets captured pulling a very strange gurn* whenever a camera comes near me :) Thomas is the same - or at least he was when he was a baby. I remember looking at the photos we used to take of him, and being frustrated that we couldn't get a photo that showed him as he really looked. I knew that he was beautiful, but always felt like people wouldn't believe me when I showed them his photographs!

* gurn |gərn|

verb [ intrans. ] chiefly Brit.make a grotesque face : [as n. ] ( gurning) gurning is one of the fair's most popular competitions.DERIVATIVESgurner nounORIGIN early 20th cent.: dialect variant of grin .

Anyway, last night's photos were taken because we went to a fancy dress party, and I was dressed in the costume that I wore to my friend's '60's themed 40th birthday party a little while ago. I made the dress myself (with some expert guidance from my seamstress mum :) ), and I'm very proud of it. I would like to make more dresses, because I really did enjoy making it. There's something ever so relaxing and focusing about using a sewing machine, I absolutely love it. But I've no reason to make dresses really. I wouldn't wear them, and they actually turn out to be more expensive than buying clothes ready made :( I could make my own dress for Noomski and Jessica's wedding though. It really wasn't all that long ago that people made their own clothes all the time though, was it? It's so strange how the world changes, and different ways of being become normal so quickly. My mum talks about how she loved spending her evenings making clothes for me and my brother, and about knitting while she watched us play (I've done that myself - only really made scarves though, nothing so complicated as my mum used to make). But perhaps lots of people are striving to go back to more traditional ways of living, and I think that's marvellous. My friend Emily's blog, The Tangled Yarn, is very inspiring - she has moved onto a smallholding, and pops into the blogoverse to tell us about things she's been making (the Jamaican Crunch Pie looked DIVINE!), with scrumptious photos that make us all feel uplifted and encourage us to have a go.

But I was talking about the party. I love family parties. I have a lovely family :) And family just seems extremely important this week. There's been so much sad loss, and of course, that invariably makes a person think about what they have.

And I have everything :)

I mean, it's no wonder I'm so goddam happy all the time, is it? My boys are fantastic, and I have my family all close by. And I have lovely friends - who I don't see too much of so as to get sick of them! I have Kev :) And I have my beautiful friend Jamie, all the way over in Arizona, who is another inspiration to me, constantly. Life gets pretty tedious and tough at times, but it's not hard to look around and find beautiful things everywhere. I still have not watched Life is Beautiful properly, but I know that the sentiment is true.

Oh yes, I was talking about the party! Off on tangents today, sorry :D And what's the best thing about family parties? (Apart from fancy dress costumes, when people's personalities go on display very nicely, and we get a glimpse of their fantasies, as they reveal who they most admire, be it Shrek, Lady Gaga or Dennis the Menace! There really was a splendid selection of costumes last night - photos to follow in next post, though I was too busy enjoying myself to take many.) Dancing! Dancing like a loon. My mum loves to dance :) And I love to dance :) Some serious hip-wiggling, and some stomping, and some arm-waving, and quite a bit of pogoing, and some screwing up of the eyes and singing at a ridiculous screechy volume to your old classic rock tunes by Queen and Suzi Quatro (is there actually a better family-party-dancing-tune than 'Devil Gate Drive'? I don't think so). It's one of my favourite things to do, though I don't do it very often. Always do it at family parties though. It always makes me want to organise my own party - but there's the rub: I can't stand organising parties! I get serious nerves, and sweats, and palpitations, from the minute the invitations are issued to the point that the first guests arrive. I think it's about fear of rejection, LOL! But at least it's a nice change from my shy-person days, when the sweats and palpitations would be from fear of someone forcing me to dance in front of other humans.

Waffle, ramble, witter. The problem with this post is that it's taken me about three hours to write - I've been writing it in between cleaning up some juice spills, some poo, and some destroyed Lego games :) I've been getting no time to write anything at all for the past week, so I respectfully asked the boys if they would mind playing nicely while I blogged. Of course, they had no idea what blogging was, but said that of course they didn't mind. But good as they are, even the best behaved kids need things doing and cleaning several times a day. We love this slobbing around the house kind of time, where they get to just play and make mess and get mucky and be free for a few hours. Later I'm taking them to Morecambe for a play on the beach, a bit of paddling, and perhaps an ice-cream if they're good.

And this evening? Oooooooh...

WE'RE GOING TO THE CHINESE STATE CIRCUS!!!!

I'm so excited! :D Very expensive (and that's with three of our tickets at half price!), but I'm very certain that it's going to be well worth it. My dad took me and Noomski to see this same circus a few years ago, and it was excellent. Thomas, I know, will be practising acrobatics and gymnastics for several weeks after this :D They're a little nervous about it right now, as they saw the 'tent' when we went to buy the tickets, and were a little overwhelmed by the size of it, and by the sound of deep bassy drumming coming from inside. They really have no idea what to expect, which is partly what's making me so excited. Will certainly be posting about it tomorrow.

Well, I think that's quite enough of this rambley rubbish. Have a good day everyone.

One more link, just for the hell of it: Muse, 'Supermassive Black Hole', because I love it :D