Liss

liss07 — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 11:39:12 GMT

Harley just walked up to me and asked me to smell 'Spot' (his latest Dalmatian, makes a total of eight now lol), so I did and noticed that his belly was wet as I sniffed. Harley had put some of my roll on deodorant on him! ROFL! He does make me smile :D

liss07 — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 17:49:26 GMT

I've been mucho absent recently - forgive me, just needed time out. I will try to get back into the swing of things soon.

I'm afraid of 5 out of 72 common fears

liss07 — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:42:53 GMT

[] the dark
[] staying single forever
[] being a parent
[] giving birth
[] being myself in front of others
[] open spaces
[] closed spaces
[] heights
[] dogs
[] birds
[] fish
[] spiders
[] flowers or other plants
[] being touched
[] fire

[X] deep water
I am petrified of drowning, same goes for suffocation - just two of the worst ways I could imagine going!
[] snakes
[] silk
[] the ocean
[] failure
[] success
[] thunder/lightning
[] frogs/toad
[] my boyfriend's/girlfriend's dad
[] my boyfriend's/girlfriend's mom
[] rats
[] jumping from high places
[] snow
[] rain
[] wind
[] crossing hanging bridges

[X] death
I get scared thinking about losing those I have left to death, it's something that it is with me everytime the door knocks and I am not expecting it to.
[] heaven
[] being robbed
[] falling
[] clowns
[] dolls
[] large crowds of people
[] men
[] women
[] having great responsibilities
[] doctors, including dentists
[] tornadoes
[] hurricanes

[x] incurable diseases
If they were to affect my loved ones then yes, I'd be absolutely bricking myself, especially if they were to lead to death

[] sharks
[] Friday the 13th
[] ghosts
[] poverty
[] Halloween
[] school
[] trains
[] odd numbers
[] even numbers
[] being alone

[x] becoming blind
After the fear of losing the people that I love then this is the second highest, my eyesight is so bad and gets worse everytime I go to the opticians that I can't help but panic that this may happen to me :(

[] becoming deaf
[] growing up
[] creepy noises in the night
[] bee stings
[] not accomplishing my dreams/goals

[x] needles
that eye bulging, scream, try to run away fast, fear has calmed lots to just squeezing my eyes and saying a slight prayer that it'll be over fast these days.

[] blood
[] dinosaurs
[] the welcome mat
[] high speed
[] throwing up
[] falling in love
[] super secrets

Final Total: 5

If you wish to post this in your journal, it's been requested that you title it "I'm afraid of __ out of 72 common fears"

If you get more than 30, I strongly recommend some counseling.
If you get more than 20, you're paranoid.
If you get 10-20, you are normal.
If you get 10 or less, you're fearless.
People who don't have any are liars.

British Gas can kiss my ass - just posted this on theladiesloos

liss07 — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 15:18:08 GMT

I am going to complain to british gas, as they've royally pissed me off one time too many today. I am sat here with steam still coming out of my ears, and was hoping to get a second opinion on this complaint (I am going to try to email it to them or print it out and send it recorded) as I really do want them to take us seriously, and not ignore it (they've ignored pervious email queries I have made regarding my Grandmother's problems with them). I'll change the 'Dear...' part of course, but couldn't resist starting off with this despite wanting to say so much worse! Any input is much appreciated!

dear fraustrating gas supplier,

We lost our gas card on friday 20th june, which wasn't realised until that evening when we ran out of gas and so we waited until the following morning before making a telephone call to your customer services. This was call #1, the operator who took the call advised us to go to the local coop where we could purchase another gas card. I told her that only a few weeks previously when I had lost the electricity key and been told to do the same thing, only to discover that coop does not and has never distributed such things. She still told me to go there or to somewhere on Gypsy Lane, Leicester. I reiterated that I do not drive and could not possibly walk all of that way with two small children (over 28miles distance according to google maps), still she told me that coop do sell them and that was my only option.

Of course co-op did not sell them, and thus we were without gas. Therefore we telephoned again that evening (costing us yet more money in a phonebox), only to be fobbed off once more, we were told it would take 3 working days to recieved a new card and that was all the operator could do, she then told us after we'd insisted she get an engineer out, that she would get an engineer to telephone us that evening. We did not recieve any such phonecall, and spent yet another night without gas, which also meant no cooking for our children and no showers or baths.

I made a third phonecall on the Sunday, and spoke to someone who said he would get out an engineer to us immediately as we had children (all the previous operators knew this fact also), which he did. The engineer put £5 on our meter and went on his way as I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

Now I am here a week later, and having still not recieved the gas card through the mail, we'd been using the gas sparingly. We were down to 40p and while it was still daylight I thought I would go out the payphone with my two children to telephone your customer services to query the fact that we still hadn't recieved the card and that we only had 40p on the meter. Queue call #4. The operator told me that there had been an 'error' when you tried to send the card, and then I was told that unless I had zero gas then you would not be able to send an engineer out to me, and I would have to go out (persumably which will be tonight after the children have gone to bed or whilst I am cooking) and telephone customer services once more to let them know. Something which does not please me as I am half expecting to have the same problems I had last week where the operators tell me to go the co-op, or Leicester, and that they cannot possibly send an engineer out to sort the problem.

I asked this last operator where I could send a complaint and he started to tell me to complain to OnStream whom you contract, which made me even more engry as it is not their fault that your customer services leave so much to desire - ranging from incorrect information that was not corrected a few weeks previously when I pointed it out to you, to flatout lies after being told we could not have an engineer come out to help.

This is infuriating, we acknowledge that we were to fault in the first place as we misplaced the gas card, however the amount of money we have spent on making calls to customer services from a phonebox is ridiculous when all of this could have been sorted out on the Saturday morning. Also tomorrow, when no doubt the engineer will be calling out I will be told to wait in the house - although I have a busy schedule tomorrow, despite the fact that our gas meter is outside and the previous engineer didn't need me to do or say anything. This is completely unacceptable.

I would like a reply to this complaint as well, it must be taken seriously, as we are going to change gas and electricity suppliers due to your customer services and practices failing us once more. I will also be informing everyone I know about these problems, including publically in online forums and such, as I really would not want anyone with young children to have to be without gas or electric and inconvienienced in such a way.

Liss07
Address etc...

liss07 — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:06:10 GMT

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they've printed. Well let's see.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicise those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Not really sure why this is here as it's part of 33...)
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73.The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte's Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton Surely the Famous Five should be on here????
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I'm not really bothered that I haven't read that many of them (just glad I got above the average 6!), and there's not many I'd go out of my way to select for reading either as they don't interest me much and I usually pick my books via instinct, I read for pleasure these days - I remember being subjected to Lord of The Flies for my English GCSE and hating it (I am shuddering just remembering how it bored me to death). I find these lists quite pretenious to be honest, like you're less of a book lover if you haven't read all of them. Yeah right!

I am very fortunate that I only now read what and when I want to. I do intend to make a return to education at somepoint in my future though and English Lit will probably feature somewhere in there, but it won't be for a while yet - been saying it for long enough mind you!

liss07 — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 14:16:56 GMT

We have gas... wooo!

Carter is currently poking Harley who is laying on the sofa and moaning 'NOOOO, I don't want to play, I WANT TO SLEEP!' hehe... best go rescue him!

liss07 — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:37:09 GMT

I am so scared, Gareth is late home now. Ever since he got ran off the road I have been so paranoid about him being involved in an accident. I can't even ring him because I have no working landline (whole other story!) and have lost my mobile phone. OMFG. I am getting desperately worried, may even go to such lengths as to see if a neighbour would be so kind as to let me borrow their phone or message people on facebook and hope someone is online who will ring him for me :(

liss07 — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:32:25 GMT

My tooth is hurting less finally, so am able to concerntrate and what happens?

Gareth's car breaks down on the way to work and he had to walk the final 3 miles, got it picked up and took to a garage who have quoted him £500 as it's the head gasket.

I can't cope, we already owe money for having no choice but to buy another car in the first place, and now this! I want to die.

I am clutching the side of my face

liss07 — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 17:27:08 GMT

ARGH! Wisdom teeth :( *&*&!"£()£&$*&$ Need I say anymore?

liss07 — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 07:18:53 GMT

ARGHHHHHH!!!!!! It's Harley's first school sports day today and I didn't know until late last night when I got a message off Vicky via facebook - I was hoping to use Carter's morning nap to get the keyrings sorted out so that I can post them asap for everyone's Father's Day gifts. I will get there, just going to be tight to fit in I suspect,I may have to cut them out and put them in the keyrings when I've fetched Harley and then run to the Post Office.

However, I am looking forward to Harley's sports day, I just hope he does better than I used to at the frigging things! Thank goodness Vicky let me know otherwise I wouldn't have been there for him *blush* it does make a little sad though as I lay in bed last night crying as i can remember Tamara's every year, especially the last one just after Mum had died and I went with her Dad to watch. So sad.

liss07 — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:14:53 GMT

Create your own family sticker graphic at pYzam.com

liss07 — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 14:31:08 GMT

we always tell carter 'bad' when he does something like whack us in the face etc...

he just put gareth's fishing line that arrived today on the desk and i picked it up, so of course he turned and glared at me and told me I was 'bad' hehhe

liss07 — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:39:39 GMT

Mum's anniversary wasn't too bad, it was bearable. However I seem to have reall sunk into a deep depression since :/ No idea why.

Harley's birthday tomorrow, hope the weather is better then!

Trying to cheer myself up by looking at camping gear as we really want to go camping this year, on Sunday morning we actually went to out local carboot to see if they had anything for Harley's N64, but ended up buying a stove like this one from Halfords with four bottles of gas for £15 that folds away into a carry case. So it made me smile. We actually also bought Gareth a huge fishing umbrella too, which should be getting plenty of use today as he has gone fishing and it is chucking ti down! He went yesterday as well, but the rest of week is for family time so I am cool with him spending a couple of days of his holiday fishing.

OK neccesities for camping:
Tent (haha!)
Sleeping Bags - may be able to get one for Harley off Gareth's parents who have one of those kids blow up beds, must ask if we can borrow it.
Inflatable matresses and something to blow them up - again may be able to borrow one double off Uncle Matthew, must ask.
Football
Hot chocolate
A Lamp
Wellies
Waterproof blanket or a pop table thing with chairs
Washing up bowl and liquid, along with soap and shower gel for washing people
Disposable BBQ trays (must check poundland for these!)
Carrier Bags for rubbish/recycling
Headtorch - a possible extra for me to make reading easier.
Tent Tidy: http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Product/partNumber/0191634/Trail/C%24cip%3D1500011159.Garden%2C%2BDIY%2Band%2Bleisure%3EC%24cip%3D1500011160.Camping%2Band%2Bcaravanning%3EC%24cip%3D1500011171.Other%2Bcamping%2Baccessories.htm
Collapsible stacking crates (think we have some, will have to check)
Dustpan and brush
2 Tables and chairs - we have Gareth's fishing chair we can use too

Already Got:
Water carrier - got (thank god for poundland!)
Stove and Pans
Enamel plates, cups and bowls - got most of these from poundland, do need a couple more of each for spares and Carter however.
Handheld Torch x2 - Harley has his own and would need it for toilet trips and when he has night tremors, plus we'd need one.
Baby Carrier
Lots of socks
warm thick clothes
Books and board games, cards etc.
Lots of batteries for torches
Whistle Kettle - Nan has one we can borrow.
Lots of tea towels
Handcream
Binbags

There stuff to be added to this list I am sure, just need somewhere to refer to.

liss07 — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 07:11:47 GMT

Ohhh how exciting, Bonnie has posted pictures of most of the Holden's Landing order up on her blog now here

Here are mine:

And my rainbow coloured wipes:

Wow!!! So absolutely excited about these, can't wait until they arrive now, Bonnie is posting them out on Friday, wahoooo!

liss07 — Fri, 30 May 2008 13:00:10 GMT

Scary - fire at our local council offices

We discovered it a couple of hours ago when we had to detour on the way to the shop for some Electric O_O Harley wants to firemen to come to our house to put out our fire (wtf! Kids are crazy!).

Spoke to one of the firemen as we realised we'd have to turn around and walk the long way round and he said nobody had been hurt. I have images of a disgruntled OAP hobbling round to start the fire because they're annoyed with paying too much council tax ;)

ETA: more pics, damage is bad! http://www.bbc.co.uk/leicester/content/image_galleries/melton_mowbray_fire_30may08_gallery.shtml?1

liss07 — Fri, 30 May 2008 09:10:55 GMT

Urgh, so sick of being ill, and to top it off Carter has gotten it too and woke up every five minutes in the night crying out (teeth and damn throat I'd guess) so I am extra exhausted.

Just want to go crawl underneath a rock somewhere very quiet and warm.

liss07 — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:38:02 GMT

I was woken up this morning by Harley puking into the toilet bowl. he was complaining of a sore throat yesterday just after we got back from popping into town to see the show, and he had a bit of a cough. He went to bed at 5:30pm after asking if he could O_o and then slept through until the puking.

He has puked a couple times more, and I had to take him out to meet my Nan in town quickly to go with her to the local newspaper offices where I helped her put a memorial notice in the paper for Mum's anniversary. I'd have cancelled but we don't have a phone anymore so Ididn't want to just not show up as she'd have a fit at me. Luckily Harley chirped up once we got outside though, and was fine for the hour we were out.

Carter's still teething, but one has finally come through on the bottom at the front. I just need them both to be good, and healthy today so I can get Evelyn's skirtie finished up for Ez as the funeral is tomorrow, then Thurs and Fri I'd really like to get some stuff done on other products so that they are all ready for stocking on Sunday. Can't see how I am going to do it to be honest, unless I have a couple of late nights at the end of the week.

I really want to do something special on the shop for my birthday on the 30th June too, but we'll have to see how my orders go through the month for that I reckon.

To top it all off I think I am coming down with whatever it is Harley has, my throat is like sandpaper and so sore. Gah.

Melton Show

liss07 — Mon, 26 May 2008 15:38:27 GMT

Well that was a waste of a fiver! Although Gareth will be chuffed with the box of donuts I bought back for him to nibble on when he gets home.

Harley loved seeing everyone walking their dogs around though, he even spotted a couple of dalmatians and got so excited about it. Highlight for him was 'winning' a stuffed dalmatian toy on hook-a-duck.

liss07 — Sat, 24 May 2008 10:22:01 GMT

I wonder if Gareth would like to go to the cinema this evening to see Indiana Jones? Hmmmm....

Getting away from the kids sounds good to me for a couple of hours!

Motherknit and lil-starry fluff pron...

liss07 — Thu, 22 May 2008 16:34:44 GMT

I love these photos!

(help yourself to any of the photos Sophie, sorry it's taken me so long to get around to doing them but these are so much better than my previous attempt when they first arrived!)

Grieving

liss07 — Tue, 20 May 2008 22:14:16 GMT

I am pretty depressed today, well this week in fact.

I am so scared that my nan and gramps are in their old age and they might suddenly die on me. I don't want to ever lose them :(

I know my biological father is alive, but he might as well be dead (especially after how evil he has been towards me the past year with those nasty emails). I feel like an orphan.

My Ma is gone, I can't understand why, I mean i know logically but emotionally it is so hard to keep remembering the facts. I just resent that she was taken so soon, and has never even seen Carter, she didn't even know we were going to have another baby and she wasn't even there for Harley's first day at school.

Mum had a very good friend who had a son born just before Tamara, and we were shocked to discover that upon the breakdown of her marriage she moved back to Melton after living in Derby for a few years. Even more shocking was to discover that she has been living only doors away from us! Her little boy is so grown up now, I saw him for the first time today and he was so tall and handsome. Tamara and he used to play together all the time, they'd kiss as toddlers and were just so cute together. It makes me yearn for Tam and those years when they were both so small again and Mum was happy.

I don't want to go to Gareth's Grandad's funeral, it's being held in the same church as Mum's was, and the burial is at the same cemetary, which is good as it means we can visit when we go to Mum's grave, but I know it means the funeral day is going to be so damn difficult for me. I'm not sure I will be able to cope at all. I have to though, for Gareth, and because I don't want crap off his family who would think I was heartless or whatever.

I want to tell her how much I love her, how much she means to me still, and that I still tell Harley about her. I want to apologise and beg her forgiveness for letting Tam be ripped away from all of us. I should have done something, I should have known how to stop it happening.

I'm just so sad and lost.

I want to stop grieving, I want to move on, and in some ways I have but I feel like all of that progress is being torn apart and I am going back to the beginning again. It hurts so bad, all of it does.

Ohh and I almost forgot...

liss07 — Sun, 18 May 2008 21:20:50 GMT

Evelyn very kindly offered to make Carter some nighttime shorties when I mentioned that he's desperate because longies are too warm for him at night now, she made them in bulletproof peacefleece that I sent to her, and I am little late posting this up here, but here's Carter wearing them the morning that we got them. He was busy climbing all over the place as you can see, but they're not too bad ;) They've been worn so much this past week that they are now in need of a wash lol :D

Excuse the tan, the hot weather snuck up on me and I had to rush out to buy him sunscreen *blush* but I'm amazed that he doesn't take after his Dad and Harley and didn't burn instead, he must have my skin type! His hair is going curly at the back, and as it's still fine and fluffy it gives him a mad professor kind of appearance lol! Think he may end up with my wavy hair, but whether his will be thick I don't know as I had lots more and it was thicker right from babyhood.

PS.. Evelyn, I've sent you a message via Ravelry :D

liss07 — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:37:24 GMT

Oh yeah forgot to mention that we're going to have to buy a new car and fast, this means I need to figure out where to get the cash from. The fun never stops in this house.

liss07 — Wed, 14 May 2008 11:34:58 GMT

my business cards are here!!!! wahoooo! they're so cute as well :D

liss07 — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:31:01 GMT

Wahoooo! My soaposh order is here, mostly gifts though - see if you can spot Harley's little birthday soap ;)