To e Or Not To e
The title refers to a current problem of my nightly routine before I go to sleep - I pick up a book, get a few pages in and start to drift off, whereupon said book ‘clonks’ on top of my face in an alarming fashion. Not only is this painful (especially if it's a hardback) but it wakes me up again thereby defeating the main purpose of the activity :)
So after a recent birthday where I was given some money, I thought about buying an e-reader. It wouldn’t solve the clonking issue per se but presumably the end result would be a slightly lighter clonk.
I reviewed the most recent Kindle Paperwhite and compared it to others of the same ilk then made the mistake of looking at the Oasis. At twice the price and with much more storage, there’s really no need for me to spend that much but I do like the larger screen and different design I have to admit and am now making up all those daft reasons we come up with to justify spending an amount we don’t need to spend.
So I’m wondering if those of you who have e-readers could give me a summary of why you like yours? Has your e-reader taken over the reading of ‘normal’ books or do you end up still doing both? And has your sleep been affected? (I know the front light thing is more conducive to sleep but I’ve heard recent reports that there may still be issues for some people).
To i Or Not To i
I also need to upgrade my phone but can’t decide if I want to switch to an Android or not. I have a Mac and an iPad so it’s handy having them all linked I must admit but I would prefer a larger phone and a better camera. I’m sick of looking at all the choices so again - if any of you have recently made the switch and are delighted/dismayed with the outcome - can you let me know? Or if you just have a super-duper phone which you absolutely love also let me know and tell me what you like about it.
I did buy a handy little gadget though which might help things in the interim. It’s a flash drive with a lightening connection which means you can pop it into an iPhone and transfer your photos and videos/documents on to it thereby freeing up storage on an overloaded phone. Stuff on it can then be transferred to a computer or just kept on the drive.
I do back up everything in the Cloud but seem to have major problems getting photos off my phone when I connect it to my Mac (I thought it would be simple enough to select a large number and transfer them over to the Mac but I can only get it to do one at a time somehow) and if I delete any from the phone they’re also deleted from the iCloud and vice versa. So I’m hoping by using this, I can make the phone last a little longer until I decide what I’m doing.
My Birthday
I had a lovely birthday on the 5th but had to laugh at one of my presents from Nikki. Normally around a week or so before, I get frantic requests for suggestions as to what I want but this year there was nothing which either meant she was really disorganised or she’d got something in mind and I suspected the latter. The reason being a couple of weeks earlier, she’d been going through my photo albums to pilfer some snaps to make a 70th birthday present for her Dad. In the course of that, the girls came across my wedding album and wanted to see it.
I mentioned that I still had my wedding and engagement rings too so they wanted to see them as well and were pretending they were getting married with a ‘ceremony’ and ‘wedding dance’ which was quite hilarious.
Then I said I still had my wedding dress somewhere.
Great excitement! “Can we see it Granny?”
Not a problem - except I had no idea where it was so there ensued a major search of the house and shed and I finally found it stashed in a box at the bottom of my wardrobe. I can remember writing an entry on Open Diary about it yonks ago lamenting its ruin - I’m not sure what happened but somewhere along the way, something must have got spilled on it and it spread - and spread - until it looked suspiciously like there’d been a bloodbath of a wedding day!
I still couldn't bear to part with it because even in that state, I could remember how happy I was on my wedding day just by looking at it and touching it. Years later, thinking the girls could use it for dressing up, I had taken it to the dry cleaners but they said it was so bad they wouldn’t touch it and I was too scared to try any treatment on it in case I made it worse.
Lily put it on back to front and it didn’t look too bad as long as she didn’t turn sideways in which case it looked like she’d had an unfortunate toilet mishap!
Doing the Wedding Dance.
This is what it looked like on my wedding day (before the murder :)
I feel ancient looking at this - these little page boys and flower girls are celebrating 40th birthdays and have families of their own now!
Nikki asked if she could take it home to see if she could try her Vanish Gold on part of the stain and I said sure - it certainly wasn’t doing any good languishing at the bottom of a wardrobe. So when there was no anguished “What do you want for you birthdaaaaaay?” leading up to the date, I thought surely not??
But having opened three other presents I was then ceremoniously presented with a lovely floral box and when I opened it, there was the dress pretty much all cleaned up! I tried to feign as much delight as I possibly could and apparently there was a bit of disappointment that it wasn’t quite enough - especially when I realised she was recording my reaction!
Don’t get me wrong - I’m delighted it’s mainly clean now (there were a few stubborn bits on the lace) but obviously it would have had slightly more impact if I had still been married and still been madly in love with Boyd! The fact we had a hellish marriage and got divorced 10 years ago mars the issue. Just a tad.
It’s the thought that counts.
Trying it on - complete with Me To You slippers.
(I love the crazy mermaid by my side.)
(Don’t congratulate me in getting into it - the back isn’t zipped up :)
Nikki laid on a cream tea for us all and bought me a toffee pavlova bomb which is as yummy as it looks. Ruari had his first fresh cream strawberry tart and loved it! And she was so proud that both girls asked for more sandwiches after having only one cake - we fully expected them to take advantage of being allowed to 'go straight to pudding' without having to eat something healthy first!
And for once the red roses she bought me are still alive and looking gorgeous because she also got me a beautiful engraved crystal vase so I was able to put the flowers in water straight away - she is notorious for giving me flowers or plants which are half dead by the time I get them because she’s had them lying on a worktop or in the car for hours on end!
Scrabble Nights
Normally when I go to see the kids I go out in the afternoon, stay for tea, then leave just after bedtime but this doesn’t give Nikki & I much chance to chat. When the girls go to Joel’s every second weekend I go out then as well so we get a better opportunity to catch up and lately she’s been asking me to stay and play Scrabble because she’s so starved of adult company and sleep-deprived! (Ruari’s teething so has been waking up at nights).
Playing games I’m delighted to do but lasting out the evening has been tricky occasionally - however I’ve done a few evening babysitting stints in the last few months and they haven't been too bad - I’m just careful to keep the next day free for a ‘down day’. On Saturday I went out at 5.30 p.m. and didn’t leave until after 2 a.m. so I was really pleased with that.
I was starting to feel it by the time I left though and to be fair it did make for a pretty white knuckle drive home because I get quite dizzy when I get overexhausted but the roads are back roads and are dead quiet at that time so it’s okay.
Our relationship is a whole lot better now and in fact we had hysterics on Saturday night and both of us said we couldn’t remember the last time we’d done that - I mean we’ll often laugh at something the kids do or amuse ourselves in our texts - but this was completely-losing-the-plot-out-and-out-belly-laughing-hysterics-complete-with-tears :)
That felt so good.
It made me wonder if my mum and my auntie were sitting there with us because after the Scrabble, I was teaching her one of Mum’s favourite card games - Nominations - and of course forgetting half the rules causing more hilarity. When Mum came down to Aberdeen (where I live) to visit her sister, Nellie, the 3 of us would get together to play triple patience and in the course of cards flying everywhere (they were brilliant and very fast players) they would reminisce about the old days.
Listening to them was totally fascinating and completely entertaining and, every single time, without fail, I would end up in absolute hysterics, wiping tears from my eyes while desperately trying to keep control to win the game. Often I had to give up :)
And Uncle Charlie would sit there in the corner in his armchair shaking his head at us but his eyes would be twinkling with merriment at seeing us having such a laugh.
Writing that has made me remember I mentioned them in a piece of writing for the Scottish Book Trust which was published online recently - the theme was ‘Blether’. (Scots word for having a good chat/natter). It’s here if you want to read it -
http://www.bletherstories.com/Blether14/12/
I’m all organised for the writing group tomorrow night in the sense I actually have something all ready in time for once (a poem) so just have to get myself there and last out. I’m praying I don’t wake up like I did this morning at 4.30 a.m. with toothache - a bottom tooth needing filled being the culprit (I have an appointment with the dentist but it’s not for a week or two yet.). That’s because I had a late night on Saturday night not getting to sleep until 4 a.m. and being woken by Bailey at 7.30 so I was already sleep-deprived. If that happens again tonight I’ll be scuppered and will never last through to the evening.
All fingers and limbs crossed please🤞😁
The title refers to a current problem of my nightly routine before I go to sleep - I pick up a book, get a few pages in and start to drift off, whereupon said book ‘clonks’ on top of my face in an alarming fashion. Not only is this painful (especially if it's a hardback) but it wakes me up again thereby defeating the main purpose of the activity :)
So after a recent birthday where I was given some money, I thought about buying an e-reader. It wouldn’t solve the clonking issue per se but presumably the end result would be a slightly lighter clonk.
I reviewed the most recent Kindle Paperwhite and compared it to others of the same ilk then made the mistake of looking at the Oasis. At twice the price and with much more storage, there’s really no need for me to spend that much but I do like the larger screen and different design I have to admit and am now making up all those daft reasons we come up with to justify spending an amount we don’t need to spend.
So I’m wondering if those of you who have e-readers could give me a summary of why you like yours? Has your e-reader taken over the reading of ‘normal’ books or do you end up still doing both? And has your sleep been affected? (I know the front light thing is more conducive to sleep but I’ve heard recent reports that there may still be issues for some people).
To i Or Not To i
I also need to upgrade my phone but can’t decide if I want to switch to an Android or not. I have a Mac and an iPad so it’s handy having them all linked I must admit but I would prefer a larger phone and a better camera. I’m sick of looking at all the choices so again - if any of you have recently made the switch and are delighted/dismayed with the outcome - can you let me know? Or if you just have a super-duper phone which you absolutely love also let me know and tell me what you like about it.
I did buy a handy little gadget though which might help things in the interim. It’s a flash drive with a lightening connection which means you can pop it into an iPhone and transfer your photos and videos/documents on to it thereby freeing up storage on an overloaded phone. Stuff on it can then be transferred to a computer or just kept on the drive.
I do back up everything in the Cloud but seem to have major problems getting photos off my phone when I connect it to my Mac (I thought it would be simple enough to select a large number and transfer them over to the Mac but I can only get it to do one at a time somehow) and if I delete any from the phone they’re also deleted from the iCloud and vice versa. So I’m hoping by using this, I can make the phone last a little longer until I decide what I’m doing.
My Birthday
I had a lovely birthday on the 5th but had to laugh at one of my presents from Nikki. Normally around a week or so before, I get frantic requests for suggestions as to what I want but this year there was nothing which either meant she was really disorganised or she’d got something in mind and I suspected the latter. The reason being a couple of weeks earlier, she’d been going through my photo albums to pilfer some snaps to make a 70th birthday present for her Dad. In the course of that, the girls came across my wedding album and wanted to see it.
I mentioned that I still had my wedding and engagement rings too so they wanted to see them as well and were pretending they were getting married with a ‘ceremony’ and ‘wedding dance’ which was quite hilarious.
Then I said I still had my wedding dress somewhere.
Great excitement! “Can we see it Granny?”
Not a problem - except I had no idea where it was so there ensued a major search of the house and shed and I finally found it stashed in a box at the bottom of my wardrobe. I can remember writing an entry on Open Diary about it yonks ago lamenting its ruin - I’m not sure what happened but somewhere along the way, something must have got spilled on it and it spread - and spread - until it looked suspiciously like there’d been a bloodbath of a wedding day!
I still couldn't bear to part with it because even in that state, I could remember how happy I was on my wedding day just by looking at it and touching it. Years later, thinking the girls could use it for dressing up, I had taken it to the dry cleaners but they said it was so bad they wouldn’t touch it and I was too scared to try any treatment on it in case I made it worse.
Lily put it on back to front and it didn’t look too bad as long as she didn’t turn sideways in which case it looked like she’d had an unfortunate toilet mishap!
Doing the Wedding Dance.
This is what it looked like on my wedding day (before the murder :)
I feel ancient looking at this - these little page boys and flower girls are celebrating 40th birthdays and have families of their own now!
Nikki asked if she could take it home to see if she could try her Vanish Gold on part of the stain and I said sure - it certainly wasn’t doing any good languishing at the bottom of a wardrobe. So when there was no anguished “What do you want for you birthdaaaaaay?” leading up to the date, I thought surely not??
But having opened three other presents I was then ceremoniously presented with a lovely floral box and when I opened it, there was the dress pretty much all cleaned up! I tried to feign as much delight as I possibly could and apparently there was a bit of disappointment that it wasn’t quite enough - especially when I realised she was recording my reaction!
Don’t get me wrong - I’m delighted it’s mainly clean now (there were a few stubborn bits on the lace) but obviously it would have had slightly more impact if I had still been married and still been madly in love with Boyd! The fact we had a hellish marriage and got divorced 10 years ago mars the issue. Just a tad.
It’s the thought that counts.
Trying it on - complete with Me To You slippers.
(I love the crazy mermaid by my side.)
(Don’t congratulate me in getting into it - the back isn’t zipped up :)
Nikki laid on a cream tea for us all and bought me a toffee pavlova bomb which is as yummy as it looks. Ruari had his first fresh cream strawberry tart and loved it! And she was so proud that both girls asked for more sandwiches after having only one cake - we fully expected them to take advantage of being allowed to 'go straight to pudding' without having to eat something healthy first!
And for once the red roses she bought me are still alive and looking gorgeous because she also got me a beautiful engraved crystal vase so I was able to put the flowers in water straight away - she is notorious for giving me flowers or plants which are half dead by the time I get them because she’s had them lying on a worktop or in the car for hours on end!
Scrabble Nights
Normally when I go to see the kids I go out in the afternoon, stay for tea, then leave just after bedtime but this doesn’t give Nikki & I much chance to chat. When the girls go to Joel’s every second weekend I go out then as well so we get a better opportunity to catch up and lately she’s been asking me to stay and play Scrabble because she’s so starved of adult company and sleep-deprived! (Ruari’s teething so has been waking up at nights).
Playing games I’m delighted to do but lasting out the evening has been tricky occasionally - however I’ve done a few evening babysitting stints in the last few months and they haven't been too bad - I’m just careful to keep the next day free for a ‘down day’. On Saturday I went out at 5.30 p.m. and didn’t leave until after 2 a.m. so I was really pleased with that.
I was starting to feel it by the time I left though and to be fair it did make for a pretty white knuckle drive home because I get quite dizzy when I get overexhausted but the roads are back roads and are dead quiet at that time so it’s okay.
Our relationship is a whole lot better now and in fact we had hysterics on Saturday night and both of us said we couldn’t remember the last time we’d done that - I mean we’ll often laugh at something the kids do or amuse ourselves in our texts - but this was completely-losing-the-plot-out-and-out-belly-laughing-hysterics-complete-with-tears :)
That felt so good.
It made me wonder if my mum and my auntie were sitting there with us because after the Scrabble, I was teaching her one of Mum’s favourite card games - Nominations - and of course forgetting half the rules causing more hilarity. When Mum came down to Aberdeen (where I live) to visit her sister, Nellie, the 3 of us would get together to play triple patience and in the course of cards flying everywhere (they were brilliant and very fast players) they would reminisce about the old days.
Listening to them was totally fascinating and completely entertaining and, every single time, without fail, I would end up in absolute hysterics, wiping tears from my eyes while desperately trying to keep control to win the game. Often I had to give up :)
And Uncle Charlie would sit there in the corner in his armchair shaking his head at us but his eyes would be twinkling with merriment at seeing us having such a laugh.
Writing that has made me remember I mentioned them in a piece of writing for the Scottish Book Trust which was published online recently - the theme was ‘Blether’. (Scots word for having a good chat/natter). It’s here if you want to read it -
http://www.bletherstories.com/Blether14/12/
I’m all organised for the writing group tomorrow night in the sense I actually have something all ready in time for once (a poem) so just have to get myself there and last out. I’m praying I don’t wake up like I did this morning at 4.30 a.m. with toothache - a bottom tooth needing filled being the culprit (I have an appointment with the dentist but it’s not for a week or two yet.). That’s because I had a late night on Saturday night not getting to sleep until 4 a.m. and being woken by Bailey at 7.30 so I was already sleep-deprived. If that happens again tonight I’ll be scuppered and will never last through to the evening.
All fingers and limbs crossed please🤞😁
Loading comments...