my two front teeth.
Actually all I want for Christmas is for it all to be over for another year - bah humbug!
The never ending adverts for stuff you
do not need to have a good Christmas. Since when does a new sofa or TV make Christmas better for you and yours? The never ending blahness of food advertising or Festive Gluttony Brainwashing as I prefer to call it. It is
ONE day, you have no need to stock the larder until it bursts or you have enough to feed and booze up your entire street. Then there is the panic to buy all this stuff you do not need. Scary people with more than one overflowing trolley, two weeks before the actual holiday, the actual holiday that is, I repeat,
ONE day. The shops are open til late on the 24th and re-open early on the 26th! Why do people feel the need to scramble over packets of fat full biscuits and cheap crap filled crackers. Fook me are a snap, a joke and a naff paper hat really essential for Christmas to be a success?
And all this panic and preparation -
it is one day! OK if your entire family/friend group is descending on you, then I understand the need for preparation and mild panic, but even so when you look at it, it is just a slightly more fancy roast dinner. Do you start your prep for a normal Sunday roast on Monday morning? If you forget the mint sauce is the world going to end? I think not. It is
one day and
one dinner.
Next whinge. Do people really need all the stuff that they get given that they would never buy for themselves? Do I need a mug (that doesn't match any I own) filled with a sachet of drinking chocolate and handful of stale tasting sweets? Not really. Do I need another packet of overloaded with cinnamon pot pourri? Nope. It is the thought that counts, but how much thought do people actually give in this commercialised buying frenzy. It just adds to the landfill. I'd rather someone gave me a copy of their favourite poem or gave their time for a chat or a meet up and shared a cup of hot chocolate in a nice cafe with me then buried me alive under a pile of cheap tat I do not want.
Finally, back to food. So many of the ads make me shudder. How do some of the retailers sell such large amounts so cheaply? Think of the shop where Bjork might have been born. What quality is the products that they use in the food - just think what sort of life the animals in those products might have had. Ask yourself - what else could they use in this to pad it out? All that cheap food. What conditions/wages are daily life for the people who work for the manufacturers?
IMHO it doesn't bear thinking about....ewwwww and yuck. Yet we are brainwashed into wanting and needing all that excess. Surely less is more in this case. I would rather have less food that is of a higher quality than eat cheap stuff that has been factory farmed, had stuff added I don't want to eat and been manufactured for slavery wages in dodgy factories.
We are made to believe that we need stuff to have a good holiday. We need to have loads of everything to enjoy the festive season and if you don't, if you buck the trend, then you are a Scrooge, a weirdo and a party pooper. That you are not normal.
I therefore am now known as Mrs Scrooge McWeirdo-partypooper-abnormal-Bah Humbug.
Merry Christmas.
Nope. I cheated :o)
Finished my Autumnal Razzler-No-Purl-Monkey socks today. The 2nd one (which suffered from 2nd sock syndrome) was knit in the main yesterday with just the grafting left for today.
The yarn in Duet Sock Yarns - skinny bought from the now defunct Socktopus in 2008. I love the colours - well groovy socks man.
Our smallest ever tree. But it is mad dog proof. Normally we have a real tree about 6ft high but with the way Fergus and Lottie wall of death around the living room, it wouldn't have lasted an hour. I wasn't going to bother at all, but J wanted a tree so much, we got this little tiddler. It came with the decorations and lights - all for under a £10. I quite like it, it's not a dust collector and is rather dinky.
All that playing in the snow has this effect. Lottie and Fergus crashed out at about 6.30pm Saturday and stayed that way until bedtime about 11.30.....or what should be bedtime. M got a call at that time and spent an hour on the phone trying to sort it out and he still had to dash out early Sunday am - never mind he's off call this week on Wednesday and then on holiday till the new year - hurrah.
Fergus smiling cos team c'ola won Strictly - yay!
After lunch fun with boy and babies. Lunch was homemade soup, a twist on ham and pea using Chorizo and a Parmesan rind - melted into the soup, served with thinly sliced wholemeal pittas with cheese toasted on them....yum!
New kind of snow cone.....snow kong.
Snow dog. He loves it. It's mad. Never had a dog love snow so much.
Lottie heading off Fergus round the pond (Fergus is a the back of the picture). Lottie later fell into the pond.
Snow Bogey. His fur got filled with snow balls. We had to stand him in a bowl of warm water and melt them off.
Lottie with her snow mask.
Conkers loving the snow. He was following mouse foot prints! He almost caught his first one the other day (Fergus almost beat him to it) he is now determined to hunt one down, whatever the weather.
Lottie is 2 today. There have been times when I have despaired of her ever becoming a good girl but (and I'm probably shooting myself in the foot here) the last few months have seen her really start to turn into a wonderful little Border. She's loving and companionable if still a little mad. She and Bogeyboy get on so well and they have complimentary personalities and manage to make me smile many times a day. I think sharing my days with these two little monsters makes the humdrum more bearable.
