I think my daughter is trying to give me a heart attack

I had just taken off my man pinny,  you know the ones with ladies bosoms and a thong on, and had literally just turned off the hoover after doing my Freddy Mercury impression .....when I noticed that it was all quiet in the kitchen where I had left Freya in her high seat, so I called out her name ...no answer... called again as I was moving rather quickly towards the kitchen .... still no answer...... there she was having pulled her chair across the kitchen and was in the process of jabbing a butter knife (metal) into the toaster....

To say my heart skipped several beats, I promptly tripped over myself and in the style of Edmund Blackadder in the final series and in the final scene ... and in just as much slow motion mouthing "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"  I launched myself towards her and removed the offending butter knife from her inquisitive and busy hands.... I smacked the back of her hand to let her know how upset I was at her and she promptly burst into tears..... to be honest I'd rather her be afraid of going near the toaster because of how angry I would get rather than her finding out the hard way .... and 240v through such a small body wouldn't do it much good... anyway after a couple of minutes I calmed down ... and so did she...... I guess it's just one of those phases kids go through where they have to experiment with everything .... I suppose it's no worse than when I was a kid ....I was about five years old I think and my Dad was fixing an old valve radio on the kitchen table, soldering iron out, meter etc ... I was fascinated, he wandered off to get something but told me not to touch the radio or the soldering iron... I didn't touch the soldering iron I knew about those having been burnt by one.... the radio however proved too tempting and I touched one of the components and was promptly thrown across the room.... after dusting myself off I sat back on my chair with tears in my eyes holding my sore hand... my Dad came back in the room noticed me sniffling and said with a chuckle... "you touched the radio didn't you ?" "yes" I said ...."That'll teach you to listen...." .... it did

Cute fwuffy (but dead) squirrels

Or one at least that I had to put out of it's misery, it had obviously been smacked by a car which passes our quiet country lane of a road and it ran into our yard for sanctuary, by the looks of it it had been smacked pretty hard and was screaming in agony.... I've never heard a Squirrel scream before and to be frank I don't want to hear another one scream either... it's the most piercing cry.... it was running around in circles with it's front paws and it's back legs were just dragging quite obviously deeply distressed and badly injured... I left it for a while thinking maybe it's just had the stuffing knocked out of it, I thought it may recover but then it promptly lay down still screaming in agony... so I did the only thing I could in that situation and put it out of it's misery with my air rifle... I was quite glad when the screaming had stopped to be honest....he/she was almost certainly going to die but I didn't see the point in letting it suffer unnecessarily ....on inspection of its body it looked like it's back had been broken by the impact of the car..... poor thing....I know some of you are going to say Grey Squirrels are simply pests, but to be honest it's been quite funny watching him steal all the hazelnuts in the hedgerows around our house and bounding across the lawn(s).... ahh well I'm sure another one will muscle in on the territory around here there are rich pickings on the hazelnut front.... lets hope the next one has more road sense ??? 

Dying laptops and being a marathon runners widow

Well my ex girlfriend dropped by with her sorry drunken laptop.... it's sitting next to me now in a cardboard box ........£600 of laptop wiped out with one glass of wine !! ... I tried to recover the data off the hard drive but Cara-Lyn had done a sterling job in destroying it... Anyway she invested in a new laptop a very nice HP/Compaq wide screen laptop the only down side was that it came pre-installed with Vista Home Premium.... I personally have never liked Vista in any shape or form, it's clunky and too dependant on flashy looking graphics with it's GUI which makes it sluggish to respond in comparison to my preferred Operating systems such as Linux and yes even Windows XP... She left almost happy .... at least she had a working laptop .... but sent me an email the other day saying her new laptop had killed itself .... yes her new laptop died a death also, the hard drive died on her.... she took it back to PC-World and they fixed it by giving her a new one...(you've got to laugh)..... mind you 65% of all computer failures happen within the first week.... so no surprises there....

Andrea is busily preparing for the Cardiff half marathon next weekend, she is running it with her friend Niki, they've booked a hotel in Cardiff because driving down there, finding a parking space.... then going on the half marathon would just be too much hassle.... I don't blame her actually, I'd probably do the same.....She's hoping for a sub 2 hour half marathon.... I've a sneaking suspicion she will do it at least 10 minutes under a 2 hour marathon.... but we shall see :)

She is also trying to raise money for her pledge amount towards Asthma UK all tied in with her running the London Virgin Marathon ......she got up at 6am this weekend to do a car boot sale with all proceeds to go towards Asthma UK, she raised a grand total of £28 !! so if any of you people who read my blog feel like supporting something worthwhile go here and drop some cash in the collecting tin :)

http://www.justgiving.com/Andrea-Brabrook/

I don't think there are any online donations as of yet because the website hasn't been up that long, but it will certainly raise a smile if somebody does sponsor her, and it will make all the hard work and dedication she has been putting in over the months feel all the more satisfying... :)

I'm really proud of Andrea... does it show ? ;¬)