Well, it’s September, then. That sucks.
And I know: I know everyone who reads this will be all, “Yay! Winter! There will be long walks in the crisp Autumn leaves, while wearing long scarves and looking just like Ali McGraw in Lovestory! And there will be chestnuts roasting on an open fire! Yay, yay, and thrice yay!” And when you say this, I will nod and smile, but secretly I will be thinking “The hell?” Do these people live inside a movie or something? Because, seriously, I don’t even KNOW anyone who has an open fire, so all of you people who look forward to snuggling up in front of one while the snow falls picturesquely outside the window may as well be on another planet as far as I’m concerned. I mean, I guess I could try to roast chestnuts/marshmallows on one of the radiators, but I just don’t think I would get the same effect, somehow.
Long walks, kicking up the crisp Autumn leaves, as if in the montage scene of a movie? Nah. Here we just go directly from “what passes for summer” to “Holy crap, it’s freaking WINTER”. We do not pass ‘Go’. We do not kick up the crisp Autumn leaves. And we certainly don’t look anything like Ali McGraw in Lovestory, because, well, that was actually a movie. As I’ve said before, there is no such thing as winter “fashion” in Scotland, because we just have to wear everything at once. Or at least, I do.
From this, you’ll gather that I’m not exactly enthused about the end of summer. (It actually ended about six weeks ago, here, obviously, but it’s taken the rest of the world a while to catch up.) This weekend I had planned to do my annual wardrobe switchover, when I pack away all my (mostly unworn) summer dresses and short-sleeved tops and get out all of the warm sweaters and thermal underwear I live in for 8 months of the year, but I just couldn’t face it. It was too soon. So, instead, I went shopping.
Before you get excited, though, it wasn’t THAT kind of shopping – you know, the kind that’s actually FUN? It was a “stock up on winter essentials” kind of trip, and it was actually fairly successful, if not exactly enjoyable: last winter I bought a bunch of stuff I didn’t actually wear because it was always too cold and miserable, so this year I decided to just accept the inevitable: that I will be wearing roughly the same outfit from now until next May, and so I bought some warm sweaters and a scarf, and no shoes whatsoever. (Not that I won’t be wearing shoes, you understand: just that I won’t be wearing particularly nice ones, because it will be wet and freezing all the time.) I was hoping that, by doing this, I could force the summer to hang on for just a little longer, just to spite me, but nah: last night we were actually woken up by the sound of the torrential rain hammering on the window, and today it’s more or less “winter”.
I wish I could hibernate until Spring.
(I know: here I am complaining about the weather and SOME PEOPLE DON’T GOT NO WEATHER! The cheek of me.)
Tagged I hate winter, the weather
Well, THAT was a whole lot of fun, wasn’t it?
Look, though! We’re getting a sun obscured by a little bit of cloud tomorrow!
Do you know, that’s the first time I have EVER seen that particular icon, and I’ve had my iPhone for about two months now? It’s good that it turned up this weekend, though, because we’re going to a barbecue tomorrow, and “sun obscured by a little cloud” will be much better than the “rain of biblical proportions” we’ve been having lately.
NO idea what’s happening on Tuesday, though. It looks to me like the sun will be melting that day. OMG, WHAT’S HAPPENING ON TUESDAY? And how does the iPhone KNOW?
I also just wanted to say that comments on this site are now being moderated. Sorry about that – it’s not something I’d have chosen to do, but as much as I am able to laugh at the trolls (and at myself, which is what my last entry was really about) I AM getting a bit tired of the personal attacks. Needless to say, the vast majority of you are absolutely lovely (and I really, really appreciate your support on The Post That Dare Not Speak It’s Name. Actually, let’s call that post “Voldemort”. Can we do that?), so I hope you’ll not be put off commenting. One more thing for the trolls: when I say “comments are being moderated” I just want to add “and they’re not being moderated by ME”. So not only will your hate mail not be published here, I won’t even see it.
Still: sun! And a whopping 18 degrees! It’s as good as it gets, folks…
Tagged hate mail, OMG internet drama!, the weather, trolls
Does anyone else ever get that thing where you go somewhere in your car (the local mall, say) and when you come back a couple of hours later, it’s SO COLD both of the locks on your car doors have frozen solid? So solid that you can’t even get your key into either one of them, never mind prise the door open with your fingernails, like you did last time?
So you drop your bags, containing the shiny new bikini you just bought (because you are stupid, and therefore exactly the kind of person who goes out and buys BIKINIS in February. When it is snowing) on the frozen ground, and then you drop YOURSELF onto the frozen ground too, onto your knees, in fact, and you pray to the God of Cars. “Please GOC,” you say, “Let the doors be opened, because this car park is dark and cold and I’m all alone in it, except for the crazy old man who will surely turn up any second now to torment, and possibly kill me. Also, this new bikini won’t be much use in the snow.” Maybe you even say a few “Open Sesames” at this point, who knows.
But it doesn’t work. The doors remain resolutely frozen, and no matter how hard you pull and yell and try to force the key into them, they will not budge. But wait! Wait! There is a can of de-icer in the car boot! If only the lock on the boot will open for you! Oh, sweet, merciful Jesus, it WILL! And there is your de-icer! Hallelujah, you are SAVED!
So you skip like a lamb (albeit a clumsy lamb. That is wearing high heeled boots on an icy day.) back to the driver’s side door and you spray your de-icer like there is no tomorrow. You spray, and you spray, and then you spray a little more. And it does not work. The door is still frozen solid, so you mosey on round to the passenger door to try your luck there, casting furtive glances over your shoulder as you go, fully expecting to see a stooped and sinister shape shuffle into view in the deserted car park (did I mention that the car park is also pitch dark? And that soft flakes of snow have started to fall?) and start making its way towards you. “Ya’ll need some help there?” the stooped figure will ask (because in your foolish head, you are now apparently living in Hicksville, USA, as well as being stranded in a frozen car park in the dark), before bludgeoning you to death with the crowbar he was hiding up the back of his filthy trench coat the whole time. When your body is finally found, it will still be clutching the carrier bag containing the new bikini. It is a mystery that will puzzle your friends and family for months, until they finally remember that you always were a bit wrong in the head anyway.
Anyway.
You spray your de-icer on the passenger side door, to the point where you actually start to get high from the fumes. But the door does not open. So you shuffle back round to the driver’s side, and you rinse and you repeat. And then you do it again. And maybe once more for luck.
Finally, success! The passenger side door succumbs to your mighty efforts, so you throw your bags into the car, and you climb in, snagging your thigh really painfully on the handbrake as you do so, and making a mental note NOT to buy a coupe next time. Then you realise that, why, the snow that has fallen has formed a solid crust on all your windows, so you must get right back out again to scrape them!
First, you try opening the driver’s door from the inside, using the very scientific method of throwing your body against it like a lunatic in a padded cell. Needless to say, this makes absolutely NO DIFFERENCE to the door whatsoever, so you’re forced to once again climb across the central console, this time snagging your OTHER thigh really painfully on the handbrake. You spend a few unhappy minutes scraping down the car, and getting your coat soaked in the process, before repeating the whole process once again, with the passenger door and the handbrake. GOD.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: you’re thinking that after all of that, what would’ve been really funny would be if the car decided to pull its “stalling at low speeds” trick again on the way home. I thought so too. In fact, I thought of little else all the way home, but actually, after my ill-fated trip to the gym last week the car was sent to the naughty step, and has never done that again. In fact, if you asked it, I bet it would say it has NEVER done that, no siree!
I had to climb out of the passenger door when I got home, though. At least I will have matching bruises on both thighs. And hey, it is a really cute bikini!
Tagged car wars, the weather, Things I Bought
Yeah, it was the cold. Only at night? At night it turns into the flu, and I lie awake wearing all the clothes I can possibly wrap around my body, accessorized with two hot water bottles, one heating pad and a blanket. And I am STILL COLD. Monday night was rough. On Tuesday, I felt a little better. “Am almost cured!” I thought, smugly. “Will get a good night’s sleep tonight, and will wake up in the morning as good as new!”
I am not as good as new. And I did not get “a good night’s sleep”. Neither did Terry, on account of my shaking like a leaf because I was so cold, and repeatedly asking him if he could take me to the hospital so they could wrap me in one of those foil blanket things you see on people with hypothermia in the movies. (Note to self: check eBay to see if you can maybe buy them things.) Seriously, I have never been so cold in all my life, and I’m actually not sure whether I feel cold because I’m ill, or whether I just feel ill because it’s SO FREAKING COLD. There’s more snow forecast for tonight, too, and seriously, if I wasn’t due to leave the country at the weekend for warmer climes, I’d be willing to sell my soul right now for a plane ticket to somewhere warm. It’s THAT cold.
So, today, none of us are really on top form. Not even Rubin, who used Terry’s repeated trips to the kitchen to refill my hot water bottles as an excuse to bark the house down, and we had to bring him into bed with us to get him to shut up. This might have worked out OK (hell, any extra body heat AT ALL is welcome right now as far as I’m concerned), except he only wanted to sleep ON MY CHEST and that… was not so good.
So. This week has really sucked, to be honest, and it has sucked so much that I suspect my entire holiday will be spent recovering from it. So that’s just great! Now I’m just waiting for Terry to catch whatever it is I’ve had. Or for the house to fall down.
On the plus side, the Week O’Fail has totally distracted me from the fear of flying…
Tagged the cold, the weather
I haven’t left the house since we got back from the Halloween party on Saturday night, other than a quick visit to Terry’s mum (who lives just around the corner) on Monday.
I have no idea how this happened. I mean, I’m going on a beach holiday next month for cryin’ out loud - the plan was to at least go to the gym every day, to prepare myself for the “eating my own body-weight” fest that will be December (holiday AND Christmas – whoops!), but somehow it got to Monday morning, the alarm went off … and I rolled over, looked at it, gave a small, piteous moan, then went back to sleep.
Then I woke up a while later, realised I had seventy gazillion blog posts to write by the end of the day, and ended up still sitting at the computer at 11pm, rubbing my eyes and wishing I had a normal job – you know, one where you don’t have to complete an entire month’s worth of work in advance, just to take a two week break. (Complicated, but that’s how it works, trust me.)
The next day? I did the same thing again. D’oh.
And so it’s gone on, to the point where I opened the blinds in the office this morning, looked out and was actually quite surprised to remember that hey, there is a WORLD out there, people! With, you know, STUFF in it. Yeah. Who knew?
Actually, the Grand Opening of the Blinds this morning was quite the event in itself. You see, up until now we’ve had mostly brilliantly sunny, but bitingly cold weather here. You’d think all this sunshine would make me happy, because I am all about the sunshine, right? Wrong. It does not make me happy. (“Fickle” is my middle name. Always remember that.) Not at this time of year, anyway, because that damn sun is so low in the sky that you walk around permanently blinded by it. And the way our house is positioned, we basically have to have the blinds shut ALL THE DAMN TIME from about October to May, because otherwise we can’t see our computer screens at all. (No, moving the screens doesn’t seem to help. Tried that.)
So, basically, what I’m trying to say here is that I’ve been sitting in a darkened room since Sunday, and actually? I’m starting to feel a little bit hysterical. So when I woke up this morning and realised it was a dull, foggy day, I actually gave a little cheer, because hey, there may be no sun, but at least I can has daylight! For the few short hours that we actually get daylight at this time of year, that is.
Did I mention I’m going on holiday soon? And that it cannot come quick enough?
Aaaand, that’s enough whining from me for one day, I think. How are you?
Tagged holidays, I hate winter, Pro-Blogging, the weather, working from home
The weather forecast for this week says snow. SNOW. And I know I hardly ever mention this here AT ALL, but I really don’t like the cold (did I mention I don’t like the cold?), so with the “snow in October” warning came a feeling that the last straw had been reached, the camel’s back had been broken, the metaphors well and truly mixed. In other words: I HAVE HAD ENOUGH. Enough.
And so it is that on December 7th, Terry and I will be flying here:
 Sunshine! Bring it! As predicted in this entry (just call me The Predictathon…) we’re going to Tenerife. Yes, I know, it’s not nearly as exciting as Cuba, or Australia, or Dubai, or all of those wonderful-but-expensive-and-very-far-away places we would have liked to have gone, but it’s a five hour flight from Glasgow, is still hot in December and, above all, is cheap. And really, when your main priority is to lie in the sun for a couple of weeks and remind yourself what it feels like to get dressed in the morning without having to involve every item of warm clothing you own, that sounds pretty good to us.
I’ve only been to Tenerife once, as a surly teenager, and Terry hasn’t been at all, so it should be something new for us. We’ve picked a quiet resort that gets good reviews and has lots of nice restaurants and shops, but isn’t party central (because we are old, obv) and we’re hoping to just, you know, relax. Which will be great, given that I’ll have to write eleventy-one blog posts before I go so I still get paid.
Right now, it just can’t come soon enough…
Tagged holiday, tenerife, the weather
Well, I’ve kinda sucked at updating this blog this week, haven’t I? I’ve been busy. And OK, also lazy, but mostly busy, stock-piling blog posts like a demented thing so I can go on holiday in December and not, you know, totally lose my livelihood or anything.
Yes, this would be the winter holiday I first started talking about back in August. The one I’ve done nothing about booking yet, but which will hopefully be booked within the next couple of weeks because seriously people, I am done with winter already. And yes, I know it’s technically still “Autumn” (is it?) but it’s not like you’d notice here in the Land O’Amber, which is a cold, harsh land where any temperature below “boiling” is deemed unacceptable to me.
I. Hate. This. Time. Of. Year. Hate it. Even getting dressed becomes a problem at this time of year. I mean, take Monday, for instance. On Monday, I got up, showered, dressed, walked to my desk, sat down… and then twenty minutes later I got back up again, walked back to the bedroom, removed every single item of clothing from the wardrobe and proceeded to drape them about my person, in a bid to fight off the cold that was seeping into my bones. I had socks hanging off my ears, sweaters on my legs – you name it.
Then, half an hour later, I was back, removing all of the aforementioned items and donning my “dog walking outfit”, which consists of the kind of clothes you don’t mind getting utterly ruined by mud and squelchy horrible leaves and stuff. I looked absolutely ridiculous. Seriously, I looked like some kind down-on-her-luck Arctic explorer, and I will continue to look like this until about May next year, because I just cannot stand to be outside for the length of time it takes to walk the dog dressed in anything other than fifteen layers. I would seriously wear a balaclava if I thought no one would see me.
The problem with this, though? People do see me. At the end of our street, for instance, I encountered a young woman who looked like she was walking to work. She was wearing trousers, a fine-knit cardigan and court shoes with bare feet. No coat. No hat. No thermal long johns. As she passed me (me in my dog-walking outfit, and hardly able to move my arms because I was wearing so many layers), we both slowed down and stared openly at each other, each of us wondering if we had somehow slipped into another dimension in which the climate was totally different from the one we’d just left.
Then this morning, as Terry and I drove out of the street, on our way to the gym? We passed a young girl in jeans and a t-shirt. A T-SHIRT. WITH BARE ARMS. In OCTOBER. Aaaargh! The Others, they never cease to amaze me. And I meanwhile, am now on three outfits per day:
Gym clothes
“Normal” clothes
Dog Walking Clothes
And back to “Normal Clothes”, although sometimes with additional layers as required.
It’s exhausting just keeping up with the outfit changes, seriously. I was not meant for this climate.
And this is why I will be going on holiday this December, even if it kills me (and if the last plane journey I took is anything to go by, there’s a good chance it will…). Right now, that holiday cannot come quick enough…
Tagged holidays, the others, the weather, winter
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