iPhone Therefore iAm

Well hello! I've had a bit of a blogging break in case you hadn't noticed (probably not!), not just writing but reading too, it's going to take me all week to catch up with all the other blogs I like to read. I haven't been taking many photographs either and I can't claim to have been busy keeping up with the household chores either. There have been a few distractions though. For one.....

chickens of course.........

......which are incredibly distracting! I can see their run and coop from my kitchen window and they are just so entertaining to watch, they are constantly on the move, constantly searching for stuff to eat and constantly pooing ...peck, peck, dig, dig, poo......peck, peck, dig, peck, dig, poo......peck, dig.........I'm sure you get the picture. May sound dull but it's strangely mesmerising. And if one of them disappears into the coop there's nothing for it but to stand and wait patiently for her to emerge then rush out into the garden like a loon to check whether there's an egg in the coop! They are actually laying one each most days so I'm hoping that means they're happy......although I'm not sure happiness comes into it otherwise battery hens would never lay would they? And another thing about chickens - they are crap at posing for pictures.....peck, peck....etc etc

My other big distraction has been the iPhone. In a previous life I sneered at people on trains, in cafes, and - even worse - in the street, publicly, blatantly 's'wanking with their iPhones.......but now I know the truth. It is a disease. I suddenly became overcome with a desire to get one and now that I have it I just can't leave it alone. If I don't check Facebook, Email, Twitter, Apps Store etc etc at least once every 10 minutes I start suffering from severe withdrawal symptoms. I take pictures, I play backgammon, I check my remaining allowance.....anything... just so long as I can swipe that screen and hear that little whooshy noise it makes just one more time!! On Saturday I went to my friend Karen's 40th birthday party and I was ashamed that amongst the photos of the evening that she sent to me the following day was this one.....








Although, in my defence, I had just taken a photo with it and was posting it to Facebook.......urgh, just listen to me........ My name is Sarah and I'm an Addict, anybody know the number for iPhones Anonymous?







Last week Tess, my little girl - my first-born - turned 16.

She is so beautiful and clever and brave - I just hope one day she'll realise/believe it.

On Friday she went to the Prom with her friend Robert.....and I thought chickens were hard to photograph....

And yes, those are Dr Martens! ..... she definitely inherited her mother's loathing of uncomfortable shoes.

This and That

The Tortoise - who still has no name - died yesterday. He had been a bit lethargic for a couple of days and on Friday I was a bit concerned about him and decided if he didn't pick up the next day I would call a vet but the next day was too late, he died overnight. I have no idea what, if anything, I did wrong. He was fed, watered, and recently had been spending more and more time outside in the garden in the sunshine. After checking on him over and over and even attempting to give him a warm bath we had to resign ourselves to the fact that he was in fact dead and not just sleeping so Mouldy Moo dug a hole and we buried him in a Converse box - because 'a cool pet deserves a cool box'.

But, as one door closes and all that............

We had been planning for Tortoise to start living outdoors soon and Steven had converted a little area of the shed into a den for him with a door leading outside to an enclosed bit of garden for him. So, looking out of my kitchen window at the shed it occurred to me that there are other animals that can benefit from a nice cosy room with access to their own little garden........no, not rabbits (been there, done that).........chickens!!

In the past I've raised the subject of chickens and not got a very polite response from Steven but yesterday when the idea hatched (oh yes, I've started with the puns already) he was already thousands of feet above the Atlantic on his way to Washington so I just had to take the initiative....didn't I! So, with the aid of a couple of co-conspirators egging me on we soon managed to cobble together a temporary chicken run and coop.

Last night when Steven phoned me to let me know he'd arrived safe and well and asked me what I'd been doing all day I simply said 'oh, you know, this and that'.

Introducing.......This

and That......

and since I started writing this entry That produced this..........

I'm mightily impressed!! Tessa and I just shared a fried egg sandwich and I have to say it was delish!

And .... clutching at straws (every word I use now seems to have some sort of chicken connotation attached to it) in my quest to prove to Steven that chickens are a worthwhile distraction from all the washing I said I would get done this weekend ..... the Outlaws keep chickens too so at last something in common to mull over the endless cups of tea - although having said that Mother-In-Law might see this as a new-found domesticity in her erstwhile crap daughter-in-law and attempt to discuss eggy recipes.....this would be a complete waste of time of course because I anticipate most of our chickedy dees' produce to end up in the dogs' dinner!

This and That so far seem pretty happy in their new home but being ex-battery hens I guess their expectations wouldn't be too high.....still, producing an egg on day one seems like a good start to me.

Don't get me wrong, the Tortoise was great, I'm really sad that he died and I'm going to miss him but let's face it - he was never going to feed me!

BIGGER

When Steven said a few months ago that he had the opportunity to attend a conference in America this Easter and that I could come along I was quite excited. I've never been to the USA before and a few days of sunshine sounded like a great idea.......

....yet, as usual it seems we brought the weather with us!


On Friday before we left home I was feeling anxious, the longest flight I've taken before is probably about 3hrs and here I was contemplating an 8 or 9 hour flight, plus a shorter one for the transfer from Atlanta to Savannah. Plus, I've been away from the kids for a night or two but the furthest was Paris which is pretty much as easy to get home from as most places in the UK. By the time I'd been sitting on the plane, on the tarmac, for an hour, waiting for some paperwork to be signed off I was really beginning to doubt my decision to come along at all! 16 hours later when we arrived and I felt more tired than I ever have in my life I realised that travelling is not for me.....but too late as I have no choice but to journey back again........

There's not too much you can do in three days (especially if your children give you a shopping list as long as ours did) but we have managed to visit Savannah twice... 'Historic Savannah' that is - I think some of it dates back as far as the 18th Century(!)

although we are staying at Hilton Head which has an amazing beach..

One thing I have discovered is that what people say about everything in America being bigger really is true. The beds are bigger, most of the cars are bigger, the food and drink portions are bigger (and so are a lot of the people!), even the gap under public toilet doors is bigger which is particularly disconcerting! I have never seen so many places to eat in my life, every 500 yards along every road there seems to be some sort of eatery and or motel. But, bigger is not necessarily better, less can be more and all this show-offy excess is peppered with really obvious poverty and a huge class divide. I think I like small...well, perhaps with exception to the bed - I may just pop into Dreams the bedshop when I get home!

It's Me Not The Dog

Spring has well and truly sprung this week and its prompted me out of my hibernation at last. Can't believe how long it is since I last put on my blogging hat and it's not just been that I haven't had anything to say.......I've actually been pretty busy (busy being a relative term...busy for me would probably not be considered busy at all by somebody a lot less lazy than I am!).


So, dog whisperer dictator came to conquer Darcy me right after my last post. She arrived in a big van and I almost hid behind the sofa when she came to the door because she looked so angry....thankfully her fury was directed at my neighbour and not myself because his dogs had been left outside and were barking so ferociously when she arrived that her (perfect, presumably) dog wouldn't get out of the van to pee. I was then interrogated about the frequency and longevity of their barking to such an extent I began to wonder if I should move house as the 'negative energy' caused by their behaviour was 'bound to be having a very bad effect' on my dogs......despite the fact that my dogs are so used to the rowdy idiot hounds from next door that they barely seem to register their noise at all. But, the smug feeling I got from knowing that my dogs rarely bark indoors and are quiet and well-behaved in the garden didn't last long. We went for a walk and Darcy whined and cried and made a horrible fuss because I wasn't the one holding the lead. We met other dogs who barked at Darcy and who Darcy barked back at but instead of crossing the road like I would usually do dog-dictator just kept walking back and forth, back and forth past the dogs until Darcy shut-up.....meanwhile the man with the barking spaniels seemed to get more and more frustrated and dog-dictator shouted to him above the din that his dogs were creating 'negative energy' - meanwhile I was desperately searching for the proverbial rock to crawl under. Apparently Darcy sees herself as pack leader, the house is her 'den' and she has extended this to incorporate our normal walking route.....as for me - I'm not just the lowest member of the pack, I am virtually the poo on Darcy's paw! My instructions were - change her food to raw meat/bones, take away her 'den' by crating her indoors, get a back-pack to wear her out quicker on walks, get a treadmill to exercise her(!), get a nasty collar that chokes her if she pulls and withdraw all unearned attention/affection. So, having taken on board some of dog-dictators advice we are actually making slow but steady progress, Darcy is walking better, has stopped barking at people and is beginning to calm down a bit when other dogs are around....and instead of huge mounds of steaming brown stuff she's producing neat little chalky white poos that used to be found on pavements in the seventies!