ALIVE AND WELL.......ALIVE!!

Hello poor little abandoned blog. I am truly alive and I think of you often. Having just woken up at 3:30a.m., I decided to grab the bull by the horns and stop watching Fabulous Abs and just get down and boogey on this thing. Sometimes, with a block, you just have to "have at it" and do something to get out of the endless nothingness.

Small explanations for lengthy absence is required:

1.) Wedding of Nat and Dan in late April. Such a glorious and wonderful day in the vineyards. Everyone looked beautiful, especially my gorgeous girl and those two little babies in their Mafioso tuxedos were just cuteness on sticks.

2.) Rapidly followed by the 2 week honeymoon, during which poor old Dan came down with pneumonia. Looking after those wee treasures left zero time for the frazzled grandmother to create or to blog or even to spit.

3.) So, of course the frazzled grandmother's resistance to germs dropped and I came down with a ghastly flu - you know the full blown version with the aches and pains, sweats and chills, vomitting, coughing, blah blah. For several weeks, I could barely lift my head off the pillow.

4.) Endless battling with my ex's superannuation firm culminating a three year paper warfare escalation to the point of my own (almost) capitulation in sheer exhaustion. Thank God I did not and put in the final push as I finally got the half I was rightfully due. I have been busy clearing lots of debt and doing necessary things, like replacing my dying car and booking a holiday to Broome (my first holiday in more than 5 years, closer to 10).

5.) Just to put the icing on the cake, two more flu episodes - the last of which I am still coughing and sweating with. God, I hate winter.

Also, I have to admit, I am a Leo, ruled by the Sun and tend to suffer terribly in the short Perth winter weeks - pathetic as that may be. I really don't understand it - I love rain and that's what it does here in winter, it rains and rains and it's not really terribly cold. You cannot go outside in the middle of winter at 4:00a.m. for a smoke with just your jamies and slippers on, can you? It may be that I am a sufferer of SAD (Seasonally Affected Disorder) which would not be surprising since I have been on anti-depressants for longer than I care to remember and if I should miss a morning dose, wonder why I feel like fainting by lunchtime and howling my eyes out over some stupid documentary about the baby dinosaurs being eaten by their parents.

Well, I feel I have broken the long evil dark spell (maybe). Inspired by the archangel Arlee, I am determined to write something daily if at all possible (maybe). No, I must be firm and positive, I can do this. After all, how inspiring to have blogged for 4 years! Happiest blogaversary to you, happiest blogaversary to you, happy blogaversary dear Arlee, happy blogaversary to you.

Have I achieved anything? Well, yes - I have been sidetracked in the dressmaking arena for quite a while, making several little numbers for myself and a couple of things for the grandsons. I ventured into a small frenzy of getting myself organized better and designed and made some magazine holder thingies. I was a tad cross with myself when I found they were a bit too tall to fit into any but my lowest shelf and also that Ikea has perfectly formed and sized cheap little card numbers that I could have simply covered and saved myself some angst into the bargain. Nonetheless, it were some'at, weren't it? Here are the magnum opi:

(A wonderful way to use up scraps and oddments of UFOs).