Dogs often come in two's

Last night there was still a lot of wind and we didn't fancy being woken up at 4 again so we let the girls come upstairs when it was time to go to bed.

When I came back from brushing my teeth, this was the situation

and they were so happy they were both snoring. You would think that 2 people, 2 sides of the bed, one dog each ? No ! Rhea thinks ( or knows, lol ) that I give better cuddles when she is scared and if Rhea is somewhere they Bubbles has to be there too, so I had to climb over these 2 in order to go to bed.

When we got up this morning there was still a lot of wind. We went to the park and it was very unsettled

Bubbles met a friend and was unstoppable

On this one the girls aren't kissing, they are in fact saying hello to another doggie but he is small small that you only can see a tiny bit of him behind Rhea's front paws.

Talking about Rhea. Can you spot her in the photo below?

She loves doing that as much as I hate it, because I always wonder where on earth she disappeared. Here she is hidden in the high grass. She must have been a Lioness in another life.

The clouds were magnificient today. I never get tired of looking at them. They change shape and patterns so quickly depending on their altitude and the wind currents. Some are fluffly, some are heavy . . .

Today is my stepkids week-end and tonight we bring them to see the movie Prometheus, but shhhh . .  they don't know yet !




Project 365+1 - Day 182 : Gothic

With all the research we do for this project, I think that at the end of the year we will be some of the most cultivated people of the planet.

So did I research the word of today ? You bet I did.
I almost had a heart attack when I saw it, lol.

I knew the basic definition and the obvious church style like the beautiful Notre Dame de Paris, but I learnt a lot of new things and this one in particular that I based my photo on.

Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus (1818) has come to define Gothic fiction.

I have double checked and Dracula enters into this category so here you are with my Gothic Character :

 My model was DH in his Halloween costume.

Take care everybody, xxx
  

Late start

Yesterday I was getting a head like a balloon ( I even don't know if that's an English expression, LOL ) with my studying, DH was also tired working so he proposed we go and play squash.

Squash ? ? ?  Eeeeeeek !

In the past 3 years, I had a major physical injury each year during our holidays in August. In 2011 as you know I fell down the stairs and broke some ribs. In 2009 a running dog in the park sent me flying in the air and I injured my back being stuck for many weeks.

Well on an August day in 2010, I was playing squash with DH. I was running for this stupid ball ( that I missed ) and I fell pretty heavily. Result was a double sprain on my right ankle and crutches and tears for the next 6 weeks.

I have always loved squash but that accident made me a bit shy with it, comparing 40 mns of fun to 6 weeks of no fun at all. I always said, I need to wait a bit more, next week, next month . . . and I eneded up never playing again.

So when DH propsoed to play squash yesterday, I got a kind of heavy stone in my stomach, but I thought " OK, let's give it a go ! ". So we went. I was a bit scared, that's sure, but soon the game took me over and I was even able to win 1 game out of 3. Now of course, I can't wait for the next time we will play !

I am not " that old " but I already feel that getting older brings some serious doubts about what the mind would like to do, what the body can do and if it is all worth it. It's a very strange feeling ! Surely many of you will agree.

Last night at 4, we woke up to the sound of Rhea " knocking " on the stairs' door. She was scared and she wanted to come with us. DH got up and brought her back to her basket with a cuddle and came back to bed but 20 minutes later, she did the same, so I got up letting both of them come upstairs. I think the wind was the reason because it was pretty violent.

As soon as she was with us, Rhea felt better but she still wanted a cuddle. Did ever try cuddling a laying down dog when you are in bed? You need to extend your arm out down like it's going to fall off. Then you pretty quickly get a cramp and after a while it's getting cold ! Anyway I managed to have that one happy and sleeping and fell asleep myself. She woke me up again a couple of times but it wasn't too bad.

When we opened an eye this morning it was 9:45 and I still can't believe it. The last time
I slept until almost 10 must have been 20 years ago ! Because the night had been disturbed, the girls were still sleeping and it was raining a lot too, so it didn't really matter. I gave them their breakfast and they went back to sleep whereas DH and I needed a serious time catchup with work and so. Tell me about a dog's life  !

We went to the park obviously pretty late but in fact it was good because though there was still a lot of wind, it didn't rain anymore and the sun did his best to go out now and then.

We had a nice round and then went back home, the girls went to sleep after their biscuit and I went back to my work !



Project 365+1 - Day 181 : Silhouette

Sometimes I wonder how this project will be in a couple of months because sometimes I feel it's getting more and more difficult as I refuse using photos I didn't take on the day ( even if it was only yesterday ) and I try not to do what I already did even if it wasn't a project word.

As silhouette came up, I immediately thought about a shadow photo, but I've done that twice already so I needed another idea.

It wasn't too difficult in the end, I just had to wait for the sun to come out and take my picture.

Take care everybody, xxx
  

Busy busy

This morning I fell out of bed. From 5am on I couldn't sleep so I eventually got up at 6. Even more annoying is that I went to bed close to midnight so I really could have dealt with some more sleep.

I fed the girls and started doing some stuff on my computer.

Funny thing is that Jen managed to text me the word at 8am or so, before I even had thought about checking it. Well done Jen, LOL !

We headed to the park under a nice sunshine. Since a couple of weeks, I take the same photo when we arrive in the park ( same but different , ah ah ). I thought in a couple of moths, it might be fun to look at them.

Even if I got up early, I didn't have breakfast so I took a ceral bar with me. I love this stuff.

I could spend my days taking pictures of wild flowers, I think there are SO beautiful

Both girls were on a mission today.

Little devil Rhea wanted to do as many rollovers as possible, I should enroll her in the Olympics, lol

and silly Bubbles had decided she wanted to play with every single dog passing by even if it was pretty obvious he wasn't in the mood .

We all had a nice time in the end. On our way back we met the gardener. When you think about the size of a tractor's wheel, that gives you an idea how high the grass is outside the paths.

Project 365+1 - Day 180 : Free choice

Eek . . .

In fact, I can't understand why I don't like " free choice " now and then. I am strong headed and don't like being told what to do, so free choice should be great. Anyway !

Of course, I wasn't sure what to do. Hubby said I could take a picture of what I am most involved with today, so I decided to do exactly that.

I am doing this Objective C programming class and in parallel, I watch a quick reminder of programming fundamentals as it has been a while. The picture I took from my laptop screen is about Javascript.

Not a fascinating picture, but that's what I am currently busy with.

Take care everybody, xxx

Let's be philosophical a bit

Today's weather is very similar to yesterday's one. Hot and suffocating but no sunshine to be seen. 

I went to the park and also took Rhea as I thought a short walk would be good for her, even after the swimming of yesterday.  She was happy to come but as expected her baby smell was gone within 2 minutes as the first thing my little devil did, was to have a magnificent rollover in the wet grass. 

After dropping her back I went again with Bubbles. I tried to take a picture of this massive weeping willow I partly showed you the other day, but still it's hard to realize how big he is. May be you can compare with the size of the other trees around him.

My" philosophical title " comes from the fact that I was reminded this morning that uglyness is always obvious but to see beauty, we do have to work at it.

I am 1 meter 72, the highest of these nettles are taller than me, so really hard to miss :

On another side, I had to crawl ( well the big red whale had to ) kind of behind them in order to take a picture of this beautiful plant that they were protecting.

 
Same for this one :

and this one too

So my philosophical point of today is : It is so easy to look at what we see first and dislike somebody/something but if we give them a chance and try to look deeper, very often we will discover very  nice things that nobody else could see because they didn't bother to even look.

Don't laugh ( too loud ) but when I was 17, I wanted to be a nun . . . Do you see a pattern there ? LOL



Project 365+1 - Day 179 : Weathered

The first time I heard about the word " weathered ", it was about a Tim Holtz crafting product color. I have a Weathered wood distress ink and a weathered wood Ink Pad from him. The color is nice, kind of pale bluish grey but I was never curious enough to know
what it really meant, so once again I had to go to Google this morning.

By the way we make so much advertisement to Google by mentioning them almost daily,
I think they should pay us a fee. . .  Hands up if you agree, lol !

So these are the results I got. 

Weathered :
- Affected by exposure to the weather.
- Wear away or change in the appearance or texture of (something) by long exposure to the atmosphere
 - Discolored or stained by the action of air, rain . . . 

Do you remember a while ago I was talking about the power of words? Some being beautiful or ugly or . . .  well this one is depressing to me and I can explain to you exactly why : After understanding it, I realized that anything I can look at in my garden is awfully weathered : be it the chairs, the armchairs, the big table, the small table, the shed, the wooden gazebo . . . boo-hoo, boo-hoo, BOOOO-HOOOO.

The only thing that isn't weathered is the fence because it's new from yesterday, LOL !

I don't think I ever had such a massive choice to take my photo of the day, so I chose the garden bench.

Take care everybody, xxx

Pampering day

I've always been an unconditional fan of Matthew McConaughey. I think he looks cute and he acts pleasantly, so when I heard that Sky was offering free tickets to his latest movie
" Killer Joe ", I tried for ages to get some. Took me a while but I eventually managed so I was over the moon when we drove to Southampton last night to go and watch it.

I have read a comment on the Imdb web site this morning that exactly describes what we felt about that movie " I hated it, I wanted to leave the cinema because it was just so depressingly sick ".

The only reason why we didn't leave is that we were sitting in the midle of a row and we wanted to be polite towards other people. Funny thing is that it looks like everybody else tried to be polite too.
I have seen many movies in my life and I didn't like all of them but I never ever hated one. Killer Joe is supposed to be a thriller and the best performance of  Matthew McConaughey. To both of us, it was a bad porn ( don't even ask ), extremely violent with nothing happening and a completely stupid " no-ending". When the lights came back on, everybody was looking at each other in a complete state of shock ( even hubby ) and wondering " why on earth didn't we stay home tonight ".

I think what shocked me the most is that such a clever guy ( I thought ) could be part of this " thing ". We drove back home very disappointed to say the least and even disturbed. May be next time I do a better research on the movie and don't get carried away by who plays in it !

To go back to a normal topic, the fence is finished. It's pretty hard to take a picture as there are trees and plants almost everywhere, but here you can see it. I know it's only a fence, but I just LOVE it.

Today was a swimming pool day for Rhea. I didn't go with her since my accident last August. I couldn't even say why, may be because it's a bit stressing and I currently can't cope with stress well.  Today I decided to go with hubby, just to get used to it again.

This is how Rhea would explain it if she could talk.

Wow, I went swimming today. It's what I call my pampering day. It is so nice !

On the left you can see the buidling where the pool is. Below are the toilets facilities, so spacious ! On the right is the shower room.

Before being allowed inside the pool, I need a quick rinse, then a harness. Of course I know how to swim, but everybody needs to wear a harness. Reason is if something would happen to us and we would sink to the bottom of the pool, we would be much easier to lift by the harness. Then I also get a special foam collar, that helps me to swallow less water when I swim. Then I am all ready and waiting in front of the door that it gets open.

Then the door opens and WOW  !!!  Our doggy pool is fantastic and many humans don't get to swim in such a spacious pool. I have it all for myself, excepted when I share with Bubbles. Currently I swim alone as they seem to think it's better for me. I check if the water is at the right temperature . . .

. . . and then they send my favorite tool ( it's a hamburger ) and Yee Haw !!!

Although sometimes I need a bit of a rest ! Normally I swim 30 minutes but currently
I am a bit tired so I have a bit of a swim, then I rest, then I go back . . . But it's still a lot of fun.

After 30 minutes, we need to exit the pool because it's time for the next customer to come, so we go to the shower facilities. I love that, I get a good scrub with shampoo. Mum always say that when I go out of the pool I smell like a baby but that is normally only until the next morning when I do a rollover in the park's grass ha ha ha.

After the shower, it's the drying process. Again I get a good massage and it is sooo good that sometimes I even fall asleep. It's very stressing for mum and Dad though, because they only have 15 minutes to get me ready before the next customer comes. So when Bubbles is here, it's a real race against time.
 

Then I am all ready with my car harness and we get ready to go back home.
In the car they put a blanket on me that makes me look completely ridiculous, but it is to make sure I don't get cold as it would be bad for my knees and my hips.

I don't have breakfast before going to the pool, in order not to be sick, so when I come back home, I am starving. But before eating I have to go through the drying process. I really hate that but they made it very clear, no drying, no food. So, what can I do ???
 

After that,  the rest of the day belongs to me. Adog's life they say ?  Yeah . . .  Something like that.

So, back to me ! Whilst this one was sleeping like a stone, I still needed to go to the park with the second one, so I took Bubbles and off we went.
Very strange  weather: Extremely hot, low clouds blocking the pollen down and making it very difficult to breathe.

I often see these very small  flowers and I always thought they were very small daisies.
I never " went down " to have a look ( earth seems to be lower and lower these days ) until today and

no, they are not daisies at all. Again don't now their name, but they are very pretty !

Bubbles was in a very good mood and happily running around with her ears floating in the wind, but as always wherever she is, I only have to slowly whistle and she will turn back immediately to see where I am.

Such an obedient dog, knowing we never trained her !!!




Project 365+1 - Day 178 : Still life

Firstly, LOL at Janice. It's true I spend a lot of time on this 365+1 project and I take it ( too ) seriously, but the hour spent yesterday was only because we were in the park, so it was combined with nature and walking and exercising Bubbles . . .  But  I have to confess that my biggest default is to try and try until I am happy ( almost ) with something.
Perfectionism is a bad thing, I know. LOL at me !

As of the word of today, I found a very interesting article on Still Life HERE . It basically describes what Still life is, what I already knew, but what I didn't know is that the objects chosen for a still life painting or drawing often have a special meaning, either on a personal, cultural, societal, religious or philosophical level and the way that the objects are depicted can evoke a wide variety of emotions. These are things supposed to be taken into account when viewing a still life artwork and especially when creating one.

The problem with information is that when you have it, you can't ignore it anymore ( if not why trying to find it in the first place ) and it doesn't necessarily make your life easier !

But luckily, I found pretty quickly what I wanted to do and here it is.

As of the " special meaning ":

- The watermelon was brought by my father in law on my birthday and it reminds me of him each time we eat a piece of it.

- Lemon and garlic are the 2 main ingredients of my mum's special salad sauce, so they remind me of her.

Quite a long post today. I hope you had grabbed something to eat and drink before, lol.

Take care everybody, xxx
 

Kindness from the heart

What a gorgeous day. I started wearing my clogs again. The skies were beautiful, almost no clouds.

Rhea came with us and because she stayed home yesterday afternoon she was rested enough and could enjoy a small walk.

Although it rained so much, our little stream is back to normal again. It always happens so quickly,, I wonder where all this water goes.

This below is a weeping willow. It's not the ancester's tree, it's another one. It is so massive that I never managed to take a picture that does him justice. The 2 pictures below are taken under him, but again they don't show how big and impressive he is.

Even if we are " only " in the park, Rhea takes her guarding role very seriously and is always on alert when we stop. Bless her.

After coming back, I popped out to the local shops because we needed a couple of things.
I never bought The Sun in my life but I must recognize they have an incredibly good and hilarious front page today. I laughed so much, I had to take a picture. Arrgghh, the match was so awful anyway.

Yesterday we got told that we would get a gift today. It had been planned since a while but it was one of these " non-birthday" birthday gifts offered from the heart and it made it very special.

A couple of months ago, our " right side " neighbour had her fence redone because it was kind of falling apart due to the gale winds we had. Ours was looking miserable too, with some holes in it and the girls were using them to watch for cats in the other garden, what made them hysterically bark when they spotted one. Despite that, if we could have afforded to repair the fence,we probably would have bought a new fridge first, so . . .

A couple weeks later my neighbour told me she wanted to redo the fence on the left and in front of her property and pay for it.  I asked her why because the left one is our responsibility and the front one is the one of another neighbour. She told me that when her husband passed away, he left her some money and as the money was available she wanted to use it to repair all the fences so everybody including her would be happy and have a new fence.

I thought it was incredibly kind of her. Then I didn't hear anything about it and almost forgot. Yesterday there was a knock on the door and she said the guys would be coming today.

They already took our fence down. The girls saw that as the aggression act of the century so we need to keep them inside for a while. 

I can't wait to see what it will look like when it's finished !



Project 365+1 - Day 177 : Sizzling

There are days like these . . .  LOL

I got the word pretty early much before we went to the park. I didn't have a clue what it means so I had to Google it and to Dennis it too, just in case.

I eventually went to the park with the idea that sizzling is the noise made when you fry bacon. Lucky me. It was kind of clear that my chances to find somebody frying bacon in the park were pretty slim, so I thought I will look for bees.

I did that for 10 minutes without too much success and then it was time to bring Rhea back anyway so when I came back out with Bubbles, I thought we try harder but even the Red whale and I couldn't find bees. These things are only around when they can surprise me and sting me because they know I am allergic . . .

So not to make a pain of a walk, we went to the river and it was really nice when suddenly I heard this frying bacon noise. I looked at the river but there was a field of nettles between us and I couldn't see anything. I had long trousers so I went ( what I don't do for this 365+1 . . . ), but I still couldn't see anything although the noise was definitely there. Then I understood what it was, so we went around, crossed the bridge and went to the small kids paddle. This below is what made the sizzling noise ! Mission accomplished.

Oh and Bubbles wishes to say a massive Thank You to Suzie, because after dropping Rhea home we normally spend another half an hour in the park. Today we spent more than an hour looking for bees and other stupid stuff. She really enjoyed that and doesn't mind doing it everyday !

Take care everybody, xxx