7 years old

My cousin has just left.
during the day, he managed to tickle me and my sister senseless, arrange many many attacks on uncle niall, get himself covered in mud, fall asleep on my knees, eat lots of stew, open lots of presents and generally be the cutest cousin ever. he has perfect manners too, fi and john have trained him well.

he is very cute.

you have to wonder why we can't all be like little children, ready to let go and be noisy and fall asleep when we need to and invite everyone that we love to our birthday parties and be so excited at the prospect of a gift, love giving hugs, plan multiple attacks on family members with 99p toys...

he lives in london, so i don't see him all that often and i do remember him being a tiny baby (which seems inconceivable now that he's seven -and weighs four stone, as he proudly told me whilst walking on my feet, so excited to go and take midge for a walk to the beach where we weren't allowed to take the boring path, we had to go down through the rocks and over the seaweed in all the mud.) and he's gotten so big now. i wish i was seven years old again. he just got the roald dahl books on cd for his christmas. i would (still) love that as a present! (hint hint ;) ... )

ah, he's just very sweet. but still even at that age he's been corrupted by the world. we walked up past the tay bridge, past some shrubbery that, when it was spring or summer spelt out FIFE. i spelt that, (f, i, f, e, so what does that spell?) and he said it spelt fucking. i was actually quite shocked, this beautiful little boy with his english accent saying that. so when he didn't stop, dad and i had to ignore him for a bit. it took all of a minute before he was saying, "i'm sorry, i'm sorry, please forgive me, " and all it took to let him know he was forgiven was to include him in the next conversation and laugh at his jokes and cheer him on. it was forgotten that we'd ever fallen out. so simple. but so sad that he has that in his vocabulary already.

anyway, that was my ramble. happy boxing day.

lonely soul

well, its christmas day evening, the turkey was cooked, eaten and enjoyed, presents were exchanged, the childrens talk at church was too long, but thats a story for another day.

its been, mostly, a good christmas, yes, we were missing j and granny (j chose to stay in glasgow) but aside from that.

yesterday wasn't entirely full of christmas cheer, mum and i both got a bit stressed, about the same kinda subject- cleaning. my g'parents are down from granite city for the holidays, which means i'm sharing with the littlest sherriffs, and the g'parents get my room. which is fine. i'm used to giving up my room, or parts of it, christmas wouldn't be christmas if i wasn't sleeping on a matress on the floor at least one night. however, because the g'parents would be in my room, i had to make sure it was uber tidy- by my standards it was pretty damn tidy, but that wasn't enough and i do understand why- mum has never felt entirely comfortable around the g'parents, so everything has to be as clean as poss, which gets her stressed because she thinks she'll be judged and doesn't want us to feel judged too, which i get. we are more similar than you might think. anyway, i had to clean because they were coming, which i felt a little resentful of, but not really at mum, more at them- why can't they just accept that i will always be a bit messy. anyway, i was in a bit of a strop and took it out on everyone else by being less than friendly and quiet and dismissive. by this point i was taking rubbish out to the wheelie bins, walked past mum, who said sometjing like "thankyou" i acknowleged it way too quietly, slammed the door (unintentionally, mostly) too hard and was generally a moody cow. stalked back to my roomto cry in the dark, but mum came in in tears, annoyed and upset that i'd slighted her- which i hadn't meant. we had a half enunciated crying argument, where i tried to explain i wasn't mad at her, just at myself and stuff and she said we were more alike than we realised and that she always felt she hadn't measured up as a daughter in law. but that i had always measured up for her and she didn't want anyone judging me.

so its been a mixed blessing this year.

merry christmas

i would be, i should be, so near

update: i have written one essay.
i (almost) saw two friends bands in two different venues in one night (i missed the first band because i got out of work too late, but i heard the last song through a call to erin as i was walking down the road)
i locked myself out of 25kersland for the first time this year
i got called a boy by a customer at work (er, have you had your eyes checked recently?)
i played rather a lot of mario-party in the last week

its been a good week.

mmmmmmmmmmmm.. smoothie

i bought cranberries yesterday because they were cheap and today i ate cranberry pancakes (with bacon and maple syrup, yum) and now cranberry, banana and orange smoothies (with some vanilla yoghurt and raspberry tea, yum yum.)

its a good day.

except for the essays. gargh.