Ding dong merrily on high!

I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas, Festive Solstice and Happy Hanukah!

I haven't been here to blog as I've been planning world peace, building an ark, fighting crime, learning all about my new job as a Housing Support Worker to women with mental health issues...

I've been a bit busy to be honest.   I'm not sure where the time has gone, but I am cream crackered.   My husband has been practically house-bound for three weeks with a gammy leg and foot; I've had my birthday and celebrated with dinner with some lovely ladies what I know; I've been last-minute Christmas pressie sorting (I got most of my bits and pieces earlier this year for folk, but always save my husband and son to last to buy for, so I can still feel some of the rush and magic of Christmas shopping) - This year I just wanted to cry, though!   And I didn't have dashing Earl Grey (this is his monument in the centre of Newcastle) to wipe my tears...

I felt a bit weepy owing to the fact that it wasn't very pleasant, traipsing through the shops that evening, barging my way away from rude folk who ought to know better and that made me sad, and I was due to go to college for counselling supervision at 8 p.m. and I was dog-tired, and I was also panicking about what I needed to do for my final assessment for my Diploma in Therapeutic Counselling, and fast running out of time...

I've subsequently sort of decided to postpone my last piece of work, which would have been due to be handed in on 7 January, as it'd only be likely to turn me into an English female version of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas!   What with the new job starting and everything, I need to be a bit kinder to me, I think.

Said new job is going fine - The service users I'm working with are lovely and interesting women and I feel comfortable working with them, although it's obviously not counselling I'll be doing in this job - That will be my next job, hopefully - Or maybe I'll somehow manage to combine the two - Who knows?!   I don't, for sure.

And so.   Last week at work I decorated a Christmas tree, bundled a wheel-chair user into my car, sniffed a damp hall carpet, patted a dog, chuckled with some grand-babies, and got lost in a massive housing estate - This photo shows just a smidgen of it.   I also found time to get my hair cut as I was starting to look as if I'd been dragged through a hedge backwards.   Voila!

Oops, I forgot you can't see me!

So, my son is home from Uni, I've got a tree to find and decorate, some pressies to sort and wrap, some course-work to complete, some films to watch and the house to clean.   And I'm working Christmas and New Year's eves - Yikes!

Meanwhile in two days off I've done a wash-load for my son, and found that I'd only gone and washed some clean clothes he'd brought home - D'oh!    There are days like these.   And others live in worse states.   As I now know.

Anyhoo, fond blessings to you all.   I'm bound to blog over the Chrimbo, with the onset of rapid cabin fever and so on!

Thank you for entering my giveaway - The two winners are number 1 - The fabulous Mac n' Janet, and number 19 - gorgeous Scriptor Senex , randomly selected by Mr Peg-Leg from the comfort of his sick-bed.

Let me have your postal addresses, peeps, and I'll be sending your sweet little parcels of tat out once the Christmas post starts to behave itself again, I pwomise.

Big hugs to you.   Thanks for visiting and making me love you.

Don't dodge that mistletoe - "It's behind you" - Come 'ere!  

Mwah!

Trees 'r' good... And a giveaway!

I am sitting, nay recumbent, on the sofa on a Sunday morning.   I've been up since half seven, in spite of longing for a lie-in, and I'm trawling my interwebs, filling the dishwasher, feeding the fire its logs, and so on...

Suddenly, (I've never been able to say or write 'all of a sudden', since a belovedly Bohemian English teacher of mine, a throwback to the fabulously hippy Sixties, hell she even had a cigarette holder!), said 'Whenever one hears 'all of a sudden', one always thinks 'a big black puddin' came flying through the air!')...   Suddenly I am startled from my zombie-like reveries by the whirring and whining of a chainsaw.   Peering through the frosty morning, I am not wholly surprised to find two neighbours steadily dismantling a tree in my garden.

Am I alone in wondering, I wonder, whether a partner is supposed to communicate such things to his much beloved other half of thirty (long, long, bloody long) years, when he's taken out a contract on the tree with two of our neighbours who he met at the pub?!

Yes, he's been whining and whinging like the chainsaw for a while about the tree.   About a year, in fact.   Not that I've noticed.   Much.   Yes, it interferes with our otherwise uninterrupted view of the hills.   Yes, it blocks our way up the garden path.   A bit.    And, admittedly, it was growing terribly close to the telephone wires that lead to all 17 houses that form our neighbours in the top half of the terrace (we're in the middle.  -Ish).

But the last straw for the tree came yesterday, when our neighbours' new kitty, Pepper, decided it was an ideal vantage point from which to spy and snare young birds.   We used to have cats as pets.   I grew to love them and now I miss them dearly.   But going all snacky-snacky on young birds was 'Verboten'.   As much as you can ever verbote cats not to trap birds...

Sample bird commonly seen in Fhina's garden.   (NB:   No birds were harmed during the writing of this blog).

So, as much as I liked to see the green leaves blowing gently in light breezes, and as much as I hate to cut down any living thing, the tree's days were numbered.   Its time was up.   It was soon to be an ex-tree.   And as much as I thought I could replicate Owly, a wooden sculpture which I blogged about earlier, within the tree, it was far too skinny to do so, when I looked at it realistically.

And now the chainsaw has ceased its whirr, I have had my lazy bath and have managed not to flash the neighbours cutting down the tree, when I shimmied out of the bath-towel in my bedroom which overlooks the garden.

And here I am once again gazing out of the window.   This time at a patch of blue sky with a frosty, but fluffy, white cloud skimming across it on this golden autumnal morning.   The tree is no more.   It has ceased to be.   But wonders never cease.   The sun is shining, and I am amazed at the symmetry once again restored to the garden's outlook, where once there was only untidy tree in sight.   Now the green-golden-copper beech hedge, split in twain by the garden gate, can yawn without interruption.   The gateway is more clear.   I can see the road and the hills beyond.

I shall eat my words.

I live and breathe.   Sadly, the tree does no longer.   I think the tree was a bit of a metaphor for how stuck I've been.   How hard I find it to let things go.

How good is/are your partner(s) at communicating, I wonder, mes bloggy chums?   Do you take the rough with the smooth.   Is your communication with one another a bit like the tree of life, with lumps and bumps along the way, or does it flow like a river-stream under shady willows?

Do you still experience surprises, sometimes on a daily basis like I do?   What are your expectations of them?   Do they drive you mad?   How do you cope?

Answers in the box below - Oh, and please do follow me, if you don't already.   I have lost a few followers recently and the numbers go up and down like a navvy's breeches, and I have an oh, so fragile ego...

Ramble over - One random answer, or rather answer selected at random, will receive a hastily carefully chosen bijou bit of tat trinket from somewhere about my home, as I strive to de-clutter and free my mindspace for more sane sensible things...

I hope you will like it.   I have a no returns policy.