Down With This Blog

OK, so I am somewhat miffed. Before my 2-year hiatus from this blog, it had a 5/10 Google rating. When I came back, it was down to 4/10. How it managed to stay that high for two totally unposted years is more than slightly puzzling. However, now that I am back, it has suddenly gone down to 3/10.

Does this mean my blog does better without me posting anything on it? Perhaps I should just shut-up permanently ...

Google Mood Ring (Grey): Anxious, ill-at-ease, strained
(Is it any wonder after seeing my rating?!).

If It's Loose, Don't Lose It

Lots of things irritate me, on account of how I am easily irritated. Most of all, I am irritated by stupidity, especially stupidity caused by lack of attention to obvious detail.

No more is this demonstrated than in my total aversion to the misuse of words and one thing that really drives me insane is the inability to differentiate between "lose" and "loose". Why do so many people get these confused? It should be obvious from the pronunciation alone what they both mean, yet so many people insist that they are going to, for example, "loose their mind" ... what does that mean exactly, that they are going to send it on some sort of rampage?

Let's get this straight once and for all. When the word "loose" is pronounced, it has an "s" sound; when the word "lose" is pronounced, it has a "z" sound. If that simple difference is borne in mind, there should be no margin for error and no excuse for it. To make it even clearer, "loose" is the opposite of "tight" and "lose" is the opposite of "win". So, if you say "I know I am going to loose the game", what you are really saying is "I know I am not going to tight the game", which makes no sense whatsoever. It also makes you sound like a complete idiot.

Oh and while we're at it, the words "to" and "too" are pronounced differently, too (not to). So, you would "go to work, too" (light "u" sound followed by heavy "oo" sound), you would not "go too work, to", although you might "go to work to work".

Google Mood Ring (Blue): Comfortable, breezy, at rest, lovable

Unwashed Teenage Blondes

Well, for those who know what I mean, Second Life is down for updating and the Beta grid doesn't seem to be working either, so I may as well prattle in here a bit seeing as I haven't done for a while.

Perhaps I will moan about my teenage daughter for a paragraph or two. What is it about teenage daughters and clothes? Mine has like hundreds of things to wear, but yesterday she wanted to wear the one thing that hadn't been washed. Never mind that everything else was clean and dry, it just had to be the one top that she'd forgotten to give me for washing the day before.

We had far more fun during the Easter holidays, though. Her hair is naturally medium-dark brown with red highlights. Due to the fact that, like her mother, she can be a bit scatter-brained at times, the majority of her schoolfriends have told her that she should have been born blonde (she was actually dark blonde as a toddler, but it darkened). Anyway, to this end she decided to colour her hair blonde. Unfortunately, being 'blonde', she didn't make too good a job of it and ended-up with a large patch of very blonde hair on top, surrounded by reddish blonde, graduating to gingery-brown as it went further down. She did all this at her father's and he hadn't the common sense to tell her that with hair the length of hers she'd need two or three packets of colourant, not one. She did try using several others afterwards, but it didn't seem to work.

I had a similar problem when I was her age. My hair then was extremely dark brown (blue-black in some lighting), but it also had red in it. Blonde highlights were all the rage when I was about the same age my daughter is now and as my mother didn't want to pay for me to have them, I decided to try them myself. I bought myself a box of peroxide, grabbed an old toothbrush, and ... well, the end result was several huge frizzy pieces of ginger fuzz and the eventual loss of an entire head of hair that had taken me years to grow to well past the bottom of my bra strap. The hairdresser insisted the only way to solve the problem was to cut it all off to nape of the neck level (way above the bottom of my bra strap, on account of the fact that I have never worn a bra around my neck). Since then, it hasn't seemed to want to grow much past my shoulders, so goodness only knows what damage I did to it.

The upshot of this is that my daughter ended-up having to colour her hair medium-dark brown and the final count in financial terms was around £30 to get herself back to the colour she'd started with.

Google Mood Ring (Blue): Comfortable, breezy, at rest, lovable.

The Last McDonald's American Holiday

It's been the Easter holidays for the past two weeks and I took my son to the cinema a couple of times. Last week we saw The Last Mimzy and yesterday we went to see Mr Bean's Holiday. My son wanted to see Mr Bean last week, but I persuaded him against it as I didn't really fancy it much. However, I have to say that I did enjoy it when we watched it yesterday. The Last Mimzy was good, but nothing extraordinary. It started off reminding me of Gremlins, then became more and more like ET as it went on.

Anyway, the first time we went to McDonald's after the film and the second time we went before. This is the third or fourth time I have been to McDonald's since I NOTICED SOMETHING. The kids noticed it, too. Quite simply, the size of the various burgers has decreased, as has the size of the drink cups. The prices, however, haven't decreased. In fact, they appear to have increased. Even before this change our portions were much smaller than the American ones (as I recall, our small doesn't exist there and our large is their medium or small or something - I think they have two sizes bigger than our maximum).

Not that I want American sizes here, it's all I can do to manage our largest, but I do wonder why Americans eat so much more than we do. It's not as if they're built any differently. Do they feel they're missing out if something isn't BIG? I remember a friend of mine going to America once and coming back saying "Oh my god, one portion in a restaurant is equivalent to what I eat in a week". She was obviously exaggerating slightly, but she wasn't far wrong. I've heard similar from other people, too.

Most restaurant portions here are way too large for me. Ideally, I would eat a child's portion, that's usually about right for me. If I went to an American restaurant I'd probably be sick at the very sight of what they would place in front of me. I suspect that even a toddler's portion would be too big.

I've never understood why restaurants don't offer smaller portions for smaller people - let's face it, there is no way a woman weighing 7 stone can eat the same size portion as a man weighing twice that size, yet there is no difference in the amounts they are given. This makes no sense to me, but I suppose it's all down to money, as they'd be expected to charge less for the smaller size. Nevertheless, if anyone ever has the common sense to start a restaurant chain like this, I think they'd make a fortune.

Just realised it's Friday the 13th today. Not that it bothers me, it's supposed to be lucky for us Scorpios. I shall live in hope of someone reaching 30 pages before midnight (don't try to work it out, you won't be able to, unless you're the person writing 'em).

Google Mood Ring (Grey): Anxious, ill at ease, strained.

I Can Only Marry You if the Weather is Right

It's been like summer here the last couple of days. I went out today in my jacket as usual and almost melted away. Sheepskin doesn't really go with blazing hot sun. Apparently, this year is going to be the hottest on record, beating the record set in 1998. I don't recall 1998 being particularly hot, the hottest year I remember is 1976, the year I got married.

I always said that I wouldn't repeat that particular event until we had another summer like that and as it didn't happen in 1998, maybe it'll happen this year instead. Actually, it's more likely to be 2008, because my last chance came in 1999, a year after the hottest summer, so it'll probably be two years after this time. Then again, it might go back a year, because there haven't been enough offers to work out the pattern yet, in which case it would be this year. Yes, I do strange things with numbers, it's probably some sort of disease. Wonder if it has a name?

Of course, it would all be totally mucked-up anyway if next year turns out to be even hotter than this year. Not to mention the fact that there may have been other 'hottest years' in between 1976 & 1998 that I don't know about, which would render the whole thing pointless and would probably mean I will never get married again at all. Then again, my chances of getting married again probably have nothing whatsoever to do with the weather, because in most cases I don't think there tends to be much of a connection.

Hot weather and me don't mix too well, as it happens. I don't like extremes of weather one way or the other, I prefer it to be warm with a nice breeze. Spring suits me just fine, especially mid-late Spring. I get all frisky and gambol about like a little lamb. Not that there is much use for my friskiness right now, but I live in hope. Spring has only just started, after all.

Apparently it's going to get colder tomorrow, so I won't go out jacketless just yet. Takes a lot to get me to strip off and weather doesn't necessarily have anything to do with it. Probably explains why I've never got married again.

Google Mood Ring (Green): Steady, stable, no emotional turmoil

Pushing the Elderly in McDonald's

My 14-year-old daughter is OK as far as 14-year-old daughters go, but she is awful when it comes to pushing herself forward. She's had since October to arrange a work placement for July and recently I received a letter from her school asking why she hadn't done so. It would have helped if she had told me about it coolly and calmly in October, rather than telling me in total panic a few days ago.

The letter I received included a website where details of available work placements could be found. My daughter said she'd tried this website at school and it was useless as it had hardly any placements on it. I went to look anyway and found so many it took about 15 minutes to read through them all. She'd already expressed an interest in social work and I found one for that, but the person dealing with it was unavailable until Monday so I tried another one in the care field. After trying that, I went back to the social work one and pushed myself forward a little on the phone, resulting in me being given another number to try.

The end result of this is that my daughter now has two work placements on offer, one working with disabled young adults in a social work setting and another working with the elderly at a nursing home. She has therefore decided to do one week at each. What she likes best about them is that both of the places she works from are situated round the corner from McDonald's.

What she likes least is the fact that when she is at the nursing home she will have to tie her hair back and remove her jewellery, including her belly piercing. She also isn't too keen on the fact that when she's on the social work placement she'll have to work from 9-5, not to mention that she will have to work on her birthday, which falls on the second day of the first work placement week.

My daughter is clearly going to go FAR once she finishes her education and has to work for a living.

Google Mood Ring (Dark Blue): Impassioned, delighted, whiff of romance