Gossip... AKA #DateFail

Soooooo I may or may not have been on a few dates with someone. Don't know where it is going but we get on well and he is easy to talk to, lots in common etc. Plus he only lives a couple of miles away which is nice. Anyway, most of our 'dates' have involved walking the dog or something equally low-key, which suits me down to the ground. I am not a high maintenance girl who needs to be spoiled - I can spoil myself thank you very much. This Sunday we went to the cinema and had Chinese takeaway and watched Lord of the Rings, but last Sunday was a different story... This is the somewhat amusing part to my story.

He said he wanted to cook me dinner... sounds lovely, right? So we were texting that afternoon, decided on a time etc, then that evening I got myself ready (as in, took off the smelly baggy hoody and put on a reasonably presentable cardigan) and set off in my little car. Once I got to his place, I rang the doorbell... no answer. Rang his phone... no answer. Then I looked at the house and noticed there were no lights on. Sent a text message. Rang again. Sat in my car for 25 minutes. Nothing.

Rang Mutti. Said I was coming home. Not entirely sure what was going on at this point, but I thought that he seemed like a genuine guy and I was going to give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that something had happened and he'd had to help someone or something like that.

Went home and had a cup of tea. Suddenly my phone started going off like a crazy thing, and do you know what? He had fallen asleep for seven hours. On a Sunday afternoon. Lucky I have a good sense of humour, eh? He apologised A LOT and bought me flowers. Bless.

I reckon it can just be a funny story to repeat when I want to tease him. I am, however, still waiting for my home cooked meal.

A Little Bit of Music

As I'm getting older I'm finding my musical tastes are changing. I'm definitely getting more mellow, and also a little bit more mainstream. At the beginning of my teenage years I would listen to Lifehouse, Goo Goo Dolls and Switchfoot, then late teens and early twenties at university I was into Green Day, Yellowcard, Lostprophets and anything with heavy guitar. Now I find myself loving Mumford and Sons, The Naked and Famous, and Ellie Goulding. I thought I would share with you some of my recent loves.




It's hard to believe with a voice this haunting that this girl is only 15.



This album is brilliant. Also, I love Rupert Grint.

And... Becoming completely mainstream, a little bit of Jessie J. She has got a serious set of pipes on her!!

Want vs Need

I've been thinking about the difference between wanting things, and actually needing them, quite a lot recently. Not sure why. There are a lot of things on my wish list. A house, a car, a Kindle, clothes from Joules, a new camera lens, a digital radio, new furniture... but you know, how many of those things do I actually need right now?

I want a house... I don't particularly need one. I have a roof over my head, with heating and food and as many cups of tea as a girl can drink. I want to move out, and I suppose on some level I do need to move out to progress in life and love, but that is a different kind of need; it's not immediate.

I want a new car. I have a nice little car I've owned since I was eighteen; it's economical, it's good for nipping round little country lanes on my way to work, and it's good for parking in the ridiculously small spaces in this country. But smallness counts against it too... There's no room for Louis, and when someone sits in the front seat I often touch their knee when I go for the gear stick. But, I can live with these things. I don't particularly need a new car.

I want a Kindle. Advertising tells me I want one and that it will make my life better. But I LOVE books. I dream of when I buy that house that I want and can have an entire wall of books. I love going to charity shops and jumble sales and buying books for 20p, knowing they have a history and that the paper can tell me more than the words written on it.

And all the other things... will they actually make my life better? Will I be happier? Probably not. Sure, it would be nice to have a wide range of clothes that make me look fabulous, but to be honest, at work I kneel in mud and put my hands in animal poo so I definitely do not need fancy things, and at home I lounge around or walk the dog, again getting covered in mud. I have eighteen dresses in my wardrobe, and I haven't worn many of those recently. I don't really need anything fancy.

In some ways, my ability to separate my wants and needs has helped me a great deal in recent years. I never would have saved so much money if I had to have the latest fashions. I wouldn't have been able to come out of university with so little student debt. But then, there's the other side. I feel like a total Scrooge. Today I bought an electric toothbrush. I have been looking at it on Amazon for at least a month, feeling guilty for wanting to press the purchase button, and feeling guilty for not doing it. And this was something I actually needed!! (My old one is dying a painful death).

So I suppose I need to find balance. And I think that's what 2012 will be about. Balancing the wanting and the needing, because while it's good to make sensible decisions about money, sometimes you need to just say to hell with it all and buy something that makes you feel good. Balancing the work time and the relaxing time... I want to relax but sometimes (most of the time) I need to get work done. And balancing the me time and the sharing the love time. I love being alone with myself, and I have a pretty good idea of who I am and how I will react because of it, but I need to invest more time in friends, family, and potential love interests.

Balance is my 2012 watchword. Watch this space.

I'm Like A Tree

So I'm still steadfastly and stubbornly avoiding the absolutely massive pile of marking that's giving me the evil eye... But I suppose I should mark it soon or I'll get in trouble. Until then, lets blog!!

For about a year I have been religiously checking RightMove every.single.day. to find me a house. I have saved about 80% of my pay from the past couple of years. I follow lots of house blogs. I watch too many property programmes on TV. And now... I think I've found a house.

But I'm scared. Scared to borrow so much money. Scared to take on such a huge responsibility all by myself. How will I ever be mature enough to do it all? My attitude to anything I don't want to do is to stick my head in the sand and ignore things until they go away (please see first paragraph).

On the other hand, I am massively excited. There is a whole new chapter of my life out there if I can be brave enough. How exciting it would be to stand in a house and say 'I own this!'? To put my own stamp on somewhere, to make it mine?

I saw this house on the internet and dismissed it pretty much instantly because of where it is. What can I say, I'm a postcode snob. But then Vati mentioned it to me, so I looked at it online, then was brave enough to arrange a viewing, went with Vati to see it, liked it, thought about it for about six weeks, and went again yesterday with Mutti. It's been a long process.

Mutti is very sad that I am wanting to move out. I know she wants me to grow up and be happy and experience life, but I'm also still very much her little girl, far more than I am her grown up daughter. Mutti said to me that she is looking at the whole situation like I am a tree, and this is a branch of my life, but that my roots will always be here. I quite like that analogy.

Routine

My life seems to have fallen into a routine lately. Sleep a lot. Go to work. Ignore the assignments I have to mark. Ignore lesson planning. Lust over houses. Drink tea. Sleep a lot. Go to work... You get the picture.

I went on a bad date a few weekends ago. Everything I said, he thought the opposite. Or everything he said, I thought the opposite. For example:

Me: So where do you see yourself living in the future?
Him: I'd like to live in London.
Me: Oh, I could never live there, I'd miss the countryside too much.

Him: What movies do you like?
Me (trying to not nerd him out when we'd only just met): Shawshank Redemption, Bourne Trilogy, Lord of the Rings. Forrest Gump etc.
Him: I like romcoms.

Me: So how long have you been in your job?
Him: A few months, but I've failed my probation so I've got to leave.
Me: Right...

It was never going to be a successful relationship, but for some reason he thought it would be great to go out again. Um, no.


Today I went on a field trip to the Fens. The Fens are a flat, marshy area where people are inbred and have webbed feet. Only joking. Kind of. We went to a nature reserve to see some wild ponies, but it ended up being a bit of a waste as they were miles away and the guy who organised it didnt realise we weren't allowed in that part of the reserve. Never mind. It was bright and sunny but a little bit chilly. I took a couple of photographs.

Back at work (on Saturday actually) I took some pictures of my favourite animals, capybara. The pictures I liked best were actually the ones where you can only see a part of their body.

I think I has got mad photog skillz.

A Rock 'n' Roll Friday Night

We were never that into Hallowe'en when I was little. It's nowhere near as big in the UK as it is in the US. I don't remember dressing up all that often, and I was never allowed to go Trick or Treating (my parents said it was as bad as begging). We never even had a pumpkin until I was about 13 and begged Mutti to buy me one.

I got a bit more into it when I went to university, having dressing up parties quite often anyway. But my pumpkin carving skills have always been somewhat lacking. Mutti reminded me I have trouble carving simple triangles for eyes. She's not wrong. But I decided, this year would be my year!

I had a few ideas for my ambitious project from Googling and Pinterest, and settled on a subject close to my heart. I found a stencil online, and traced it onto paper.

Then I washed my pumpkin and prepared my work area.

Then I cut out my template and put it up against the pumpkin, and drew over the lines again in pencil to create the outline on the pumpkin.

Then I spent about two hours cutting and chiseling. My fingers hurt, but it was so worth it. Even my brother said he could tell what it was.

I'm more than a little bit geeky, and more than a little bit proud.

It's been a while

I'm struggling to find a reason why I blog. I can't blog about babies or marriage, I don't know much about fashion or makeup, I'm not creative or crafty, I don't cook, I don't have a home to renovate/decorate, I can't talk about work, I don't do anything exciting, and I don't have any profound thoughts on life and the universe (but I find blogs that do post about self improvement to be a little bit ridiculous, personally). I don't know. Time passes and I have nothing to write about, and I'm a little bit sorry about it all.

I had a long hard talk with myself the other day. I feel like I've been a bit of shit person really. I'm definitely a bad friend. I don't bother to keep up with people and wonder why they don't keep up with me. I've resolved to be better.

So, the internet is full of the news that, apparently, it's autumn! Our summer was over far too long ago and far too quickly (I think I wore shorts for a maximum of four days this year... pretty chilly!), but a couple of weeks ago we had a mini heatwave. It was nice to have a short burst of warmth before busting out the layers of hoodies and my favourite body warmer last week. During our heatwave I enjoyed some incredible sunsets on my drive home from work, but I never managed to get any good photographs. I raced out with the dog down the park but by the time I got there the sun had always disappeared, although it did leave us with a lovely pink glow to the evenings.

I do seem to have been pretty busy over the past few weekends though. In the height of our heatwave I had to spend a whole Saturday at the University for induction, which was completely boring and pointless and a waste of a good Saturday. Then on the Sunday two porcupines escaped so I had another trek to work to round them up. Some weekend. I managed to find an hour to sit out on the lawn with a blanket in the sun, and took some pictures of my muse.

I know dogs aren't supposed to eat wood, but he does spit it all out. He carried that log around for ages.

Last weekend featured a work meal and drinks (lovely times with lovely people), lunch with the grandparents, a trip to the village jumble sale for my books to get through this winter, and the village Apple Day, which was really good. The cider there was amazing; Mutti and I were a bit tipsy walking home. This weekend involved looking at a house with Vati, and a friend's flatwarming party and trip to the pub afterwards. I really am getting too old to dance all night. The kids seem to be getting younger and younger in pubs these days. I swear they look about 12, but they must be 18 because they're a lot tighter on ID now than when I was younger...

And, to finish, a self portrait.