Spooky, Scary!

What's all this nonsense about Halloween? The spookiest of all holidays is the werewolf Bar Mitzvah.

Enjoy

Saturday Night Treats!!

I don't know if I've mentioned this recently but I have a poorly leg. Just in case you were wondering why I've posted a picture of my legs...that's why. Also, it's hard to see in this picture, when I took this picture my left leg was pretty swollen, the toes were about twice the size of my good leg, and one shade down from my bright red cast. (The 4th in a series of casts with a disappointing lack of dinosaur print)

I probably should have made sure my feet were next to eachother.

So, to cheer my up for my enormous foot, insane amounts of pain, and...well, just because it was Saturday, Josh bought some mad stuff for Saturday Night Treats.

That's right, that is a milk carton full of red juice.

I should probably explain what Saturday Night Treats is. We watch an old episode of Saturday Night Live and usually buy 1 type of treat to have with it. Recently we've been getting more and more treats to make up for the fact I can't have wine with my codeine. So we get a ton of sugar and get silly.

We find our limit last night. We had way too much sugar and we're agreed that the most we can handle is 1 type of sugary drink and 2 types of sickly food stuff. I'm still coming down from my sugar high. Even when we'd consumed so much sugar our sexy tum tums were making not so sexy noises, and our mouths were dry from only having sugar in them for as long as they could remember we kept right on eating. And drinking.

We were determined to get silly. So silly we got! A particular high point was finding an owl in with the strawbs. I was so freaking excited I started hooting like an owl. Then I started looking for a mouse to hunt and eat but with limited movement it meant looking around the sofa bed an giving up.

The owl didn't even taste of strawberries. I couldn't tell if it was raspberry or cola.

We rounded off the evening by watching various comedy shows and complaining about our full bellies. I also made triangles out or our wrappers and Josh tried to make them say words. As you can see I was much better at my job than he was at his.

What does that even say? oOor? Str?

Join us next time on Tales of the Mundane.

A brand new spanking cast

What a weekend!

We've had a crazy family weekend where I: Saw a baby in 4 dimensions - 3 months early, Saw 2 half films, Saw 2 whole X factors, Saw (not met) Adam Buxton, Knitted 5 squares of a blanket, Picked out 2 dresses and 1 poncho to knit for said 4 dimensional baby. It was pretty fun filled.

Yesterday my stitches came out. That was an adventure. It meant saying goodbye to the old bright orange cast, thank goodness for modern technology though, it means I don't have to keep an empty shell full of dead skin, instead, here are some pictures:

Unfortunately some of the earlier messages were so faded they wouldn't come out on the pictures very well.

So, I go to the hospital, expecting to see my doctor that I had only actually seen twice, and one of those times he came just to tell me I had a fat leg, but it turns out I don't actually have to see him, I was a little bit glad because my leg isn't getting any thinner while I can't move it. Why are doctors all such fat bashers?

The man who does the casts, let's call him...cast man. He calls me into the room and gets me to hop into a giant chair, he then lifts the chair so I am the TALLEST PERSON IN THE ROOM! Cast man removes my cast with a mini buzz saw and, even though it's his job to do this every day, I pray that he isn't going to cut into my leg, and guess what, he doesn't! What does that tell you? Cast man leaves me there for about 10 minutes waiting for the nurse to come and remove the stitches, let's call her...stitch nurse.

In the meantime I notice how hairy my leg has gotten, and I have a long way to go yet, in fact it's so hairy when I sent it to Josh's phone he thought it was his own thigh he'd accidentally taken a photo of. There's also this bruise looking thing, how do I get a bruise on a leg that's been in a cast for over 2 weeks? Oh wait, that's an arrow so they operated on the right leg, still there.

Hairy right?

I also finally get to see how many stitches I had. Everyone always says "I had 2 stitches" or "I had 8 stitches" but no one ever told me how many stitches I had, so I was starting to feel a bit left out. Here was I, recovering from a major operation and I didn't even know how many stitches I had. Well to answer this question that had been plaguing me, I had 19 stitches. Here's some picture of (what I have affectionately named) my frankenfoot:

Considering it was my ankle that broke, they seem to have cut a pretty long way up my leg.

Along comes stitch nurse, she's friendly enough and I'm not too worried as all of my friends who have had stitches say that they don't hurt. Granted this hurt the least of everything I've been through so far, it still bloody hurt! Literally, when she took out the first 3 stitches they bleed, she went to get some new tweezers, apparently they weren't very good. That puts my mind at ease perhaps it was just the tweezers, with the new tweezers I bet it won't hurt very much at all. I lost that bet. Imagine waxing your legs when they are twice as hairy as they should be. Now double that pain.

The worst parts over! Wrong again. Cast man comes back to put another cast on me. He plasters up the bleeding stitch holes. He tells me my leg has inverted itself and he pushes my foot to the left and up a bit, it's agony but it least it's done. What's that? I'm wrong AGAIN? As he is putting all the layers of bandage on my foot slowly, but very surely, inverts itself again "like elastic" cast man says. So he calls over his buddy Matt.

Matt has to put to cast on while cast man is remodelling my foot. In a very rude, patronising, but somehow compassionate way, cast man tells me I need to work with him or I won't be able to walk when the cast comes off. It's agony but I agree with cast man that I will probably want to walk after this whole ordeal, so I let cast man bend my leg and I move my toes when he tells me to. Matt tries to sell me his unborn baby, and then immediately reneges on the deal. Just as I was working out a price! And before I know it the cast is on, cast man has stopped torturing me, and I only have to wait for half an hour before I can have more pain drugs! Life is wonderful!

Isn't it pretty?

And after all that, I have to go in next Monday to do it all again, apparently my foot is still swollen and I have to sleep with it above my heart in order to get the swelling down. C'est la vie!

Broken legged and bored.

Hi guys, remember me?

I haven't blogged in almost 2 years so forgive me if I forget all blog etiquette.

Since my last post I have graduated with a 2:2 in society culture and media, started and failed a post graduate course in childcare, somehow gotten a job in a nursery without any childcare qualifications, and; most recently; broken my leg.

This has gotten me thinking, I'm used to running around after children all day, wearing ridiculous plastic aprons, being bossed around, and cleaning up bodily fluids. This is becomes almost impossible with only one leg and I miss it, more importantly I miss the conversations with the children, I miss the cuddles, I miss playing as a living, the other stuff I can take or leave.

As much as I love hanging out and doing whatever I want, it's hard not to think about the wonderful children I work with, especially when about 1/3 of the doctors I see are parents from the nursery.

But today I realised that I'm actually having quite a lot of fun, I can do all the things I did when I was at uni, I can trawl the internet and find charming little blogs to follow, I can take up a new hobby (knitting in case you were wondering) and much more besides.

So what if I need everyone to wait on me hand and foot? So what if I drop my pen on the floor and need to wait for someone to enter the room before doing any activities that may require a pen? So what if I have become addicted to the exploits of the Kardashian family? Instead of focussing on the negative I'm going to enjoy all that life has to offer me and make the most of it, because in a blink of an eye I'll be right back on it, cleaning up all those bodily fluids all over again.

In order to keep positive I thought I'd blog, to tell you all about my fabulous adventures, I'll also keep you up to date with the not so fabulous adventures if you like. Now I'm off to do some knitting and listen to my 1st and 3rd favourite McElroy talk about America's dirty little secret in Losing The Sheen it's well worth a listen.

Thank you and good Taffmen.

All I want for Christmas is...Gloria Hunniford talking about Angels?

Christmas TV! Love it or hate it, it's still a force to be reckoned with. The question is: do you watch the rubbish crimbo films you've seen year in, year out, and you either own on DVD, VHS or waiting under the tree from the grandma who doesn't really know you? Or do you venture into the one off TV shows that only rear their ugly heads at Christmas time?

It's not all bad though. There's the token Christmas specials of our favourite shows like Gavin and Stacey, and The Royle Family (yes another one!) Don't forget last year's old Christmas specials, for some reason BBC3, E4, Dave and all our other favourite TV stations think we want to see old plots of old Christmas specials every year.

Not forgetting the feasts for the eyes, yes every year our favourite celebrity chefs present their Christmas favourites. It's astounding how many different people we can watch making the same meal, deserts, starters, alchoholic drinks, and mince pies.

But the thing that really got me this year, was Gloria Hunniford (yes THAT old women with a confusing accent) presenting her Christmas special of Angels. The ad sums it up really: she proclaims "We all know that Angels are important at Christmas time" and that's all you need for Christmas. A bunch of loons talking about apparitions that may or may not have happened, while Gloria Hunniford uses the birth of the saviour as an excuse to expose these mad tales to the general public.

Have a lovely Christmas, and good luck in finding something decent to watch this season.

Hail to the bus driver

So last week my car broke down, don't worry people it's fixed now, but it got me thinking: How did I go so long relying on the Norwich Bus service?

Don't get me wrong the 25 and 35 are almost always sometimes reliable, but what about those of us who live outside of the clutches of the university route?

The bus that I need to get in the morning is supposed to come every 20 minutes, but you can guarantee that the only time it actually will be on time is the time that you are late. It's bad for us students who are running late to their lectures like always, but what really gets you is when you're standing next to a kind old lady who looks like she's about to turn blue. Then there are the cold winter afternoons where all is dark by 4 and you need to get to riverside so you grab a bus, and lo and behold there are chavs playing annoying music from their terribly lo-fi phones, yelling to each other about their sexual exploits (even though they only look 14,) and then for some reason telling a 20 year old of the same gender that they are sexy (I didn't know whether to be flattered or afraid.)

Even for the handy uni buses, some of the drivers seem to hold a grudge against students for being younger than them and not on a bus all day long. I've had some odd comments from a driver, from "That bus pass doesn't look like you!" to "University?! I wish I was going to University" and even the creepy beckoning over and whispering "Stop looking so grumpy, you'll make me sad." The best, and weirdest moment I've ever had on a bus was the bus driver who was paused in traffic half a meter away from the bus stop who wouldn't let me on, when he finally relented then reproached "What do you think you are doing, getting on the bus in the middle of the road? Does this look like a bus stop?" To which I had to hold my tongue in replying "Well the bus is stopped....just after a bus stop."

I have a theory, these drivers try to get our attention in weird and wonderful ways because they are not Clive Ashcroft and will never be! The more downbeat drivers have come to terms with this but some still hold out hope that there is room for more than one legend in the Norwich First Bus world, but these bus drivers need to realise there will only be 1 Clive, but then that's a realisation we all need to come to one day.

The Axe Factor

Let me be the first to say it! We love The X Factor! I've been watching Telly Talent Shows since the hay day of Hearsay being crapped all over by their not preferred, but somehow more successful rivals Liberty X.


Yes, the auditions may be better than the actual contest with some of the best, worst, and downright weirdest performances you would have ever seen

And yes, the producers may have already picked out a winner from the first episode of the show.

But gosh darnit we love this show...or, at least we did.

It's time to face up to the facts. The X Factor has lost it, it no longer has the X Factor! From the first episode of the new series it was obvious that the show was trying to keep up. I can kind of understand why they wanted to steal the popular audition set up from Britain's Got Talent, but the auditions was one of the best parts of the show, and now with an audience there we are sorely missing the awkward moments when a bad contestant really thinks they are good, or when they are close enough to the judges to throw water on them. Not to mention the competitive attitude that the judges have taken to. Now that's not to say this is the first time they have boasted to eachother that their groups are better, and they as a judge WILL WIN this year, but this year they Simon seems to have lost his partial stand point and good criticism skills, he is blinded by love for his 3 boys. And anyone who will say Cheryl Cole's new single is "good" is deluded by money.

Now all of this was fine, it was quite annoying, but bearable. The thing that topped me was the fact that Jedward were in the bottom two last week, but somehow they are still in the competition, while the talented (if not dull) Lucie was kicked out. Simon Cowell, you have done Britain a disservice. The whole point of the judges getting the final vote is for situations like that, so good singers will stay in the competition and underage boys who can't even rap in tune will not have to be endured for another week!

The whole thing makes me want to turn over the channel and watch Brucie make some uncomfortable sexist and racist jokes for the evening.