Arty goodness

I made some cards, I thought I'd share

Dreams

Last night I dreamed that my friend Hayley did not die and that it was a horrible joke played on me. She was standing in the bus station and the first thing I did was run up and show her my tattoo with her name on. Then I said "I love you" because I'd been meaning to say it to her before she'd gone. Then I was angry because of all the heartache and tears after her death. Then I was so happy because she wasn't dead.
Then I woke up

Lies, damn lies and photoshop

Music

I'm 34. That really isn't very old but...it's older than 17. When you are 17 music is really REALLY important. It is a way of defining who you are, what you think and making sure you're not like those people who listen to that other stuff. When you get older and have kids you stick with what you know or maybe try to keep up with the charts.
Oh listen to me..."keep up with the charts". Even that makes me sound like a granny.
I used to tune into Top of The Pops, tut a bit at the crap music that wasn't anything like as good as it was in my day but I'd manage to hear a few tunes, get to hear the names of the new bands so I wasn't completely out of touch. Since the demise of TOTP my 'keeping up with da kids' days are over. I tried to watch some music channels but they seem to be exclusively programs about where people live, doing up cars and giving make overs to 14 year olds. There doesn't seem to be any actual MUSIC on MTV. I'm informed that you can buy extra music channels that DO play music but only if you get top whack TV packages.
So...I watched the BRITS awards tonight hoping they could shed some light on what's new and ~hot~ in the pop world. There was Amy Winehouse wiggling like she had a bad case of worms, Mika, Kaiser chiefs. Oh I'd already heard of them...or was that the point; well done, you get an award because someone's mum has heard of you?
One very happy point in favor for the 'kids of today', if the BRITS is anything to go by, which it's probably not, there were FAT WOMEN on there. Yes, two of them. Beth Ditto (She's go to be the greatest fat girl ever) and Adele. Great stuff! No longer will big girls who can sing be told they sound like Alison Moyet! (People get 'sound like' and 'look like' mixed up all the time).
Hooray for Fat girls in pop!

Tragic and beautiful

Tragic and beautiful...that's how they are portrayed.
If you type 'bulimia' into the internet you get a huge range of videos of young thin girls making themselves ill. I found several that had sad songs, montage of a disappearing girl, soaring cords, meaningful lyrics about being blown away on the wind. Their all so bloody tragic....but soooooo beautiful. Oh the pain, oh the disappearance...what a waste....
For those of you who can hear the mocking tone and sarcasm in my words; you clearly know me. For those of you who can't; I'm being mocking and sarcastic.
However, if you type 'fat' into the internet there is a lack of this 'tragic, beautiful, sad, waste' stuff even though most people who are overweight suffer from the same eating disorders as the thin ones. Yeah, fat people CAN be bulimic but there is a kind of attitude that unless your not stick thin you're just not trying hard enough. You're just not LIVING the eating disorder. You're even failing at that!
I know a girl who plucked up the courage to go to the doctor about her bulimia, it had taken her years to even admit to herself that she needed help. She had ruined her stomach with binging and purging, living with pain everyday. She went to the doctor for help. "I'm bulimic" She said, thinking that once she said those words out loud it would be ok, some one would help her. The doctor looked at her 16 stone body and said "Well, people who are bulimic are not overweight." and with that dismissed her. She still lives with it. She still hates herself.
Yeah, thin people get all the sympathy but if you are a fat person with an eating disorder people think you can just STOP EATING FOR FUCKS SAKE! But if it was that easy we'd all be tiny...wouldn't we????

this is for irgxana

Spring

I've put the garlic sets in the veg patch, the chives are coming up, the parsley has made an Aslan-like reserection through the corpse of a Halloween pumpkin. We've had two meals from my purple spouting that hasn't actually sprouted but has put forth lots of green leaves that are yummy. There are buds on my raspberry canes and it's been sunny enough for the kids to play in the garden whilst I hack away at the horrendous arrangement of toxic evergreens with my £10 secerters (every penny well spent).
I think Spring is here!

What book are you?

You're Ulysses!

by James Joyce

Most people are convinced that you don't make any sense, but compared
to what else you could say, what you're saying now makes tons of sense. What people do
understand about you is your vulgarity, which has convinced people that you are at once
brilliant and repugnant. Meanwhile you are content to wander around aimlessly, taking in
the sights and sounds of the city. What you see is vast, almost limitless, and brings you
additional fame. When no one is looking, you dream of being a Greek folk hero.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Ha! This is surprisingly accurate!

Her footsteps on the land

I look up to the grey sky and see a lone bird flap forlornly across it. It's cold, the wind cuts through my clothes. I have nowhere to go and no money in my pocket. My child is wriggling in his pram, wanting to escape, to run about, to play but we have things to do and I'm sorry, little man, but we need to get on...
I look above my head and see the wind-whipped branches above me. They roar like an unquiet beast calling to it's mate. It's the trees calling to the summer. Their desperate sound carries to the edge of the horizon. The sky has grown dark too soon. We need more light. The sun doesn't stay long, not long enough to dry the washing. Not long enough to dry my eyes.
It's too cold to run in the meager light, collecting all it's goodness, to make enough vitamins in my skin to keep me going. I'm an engine running on empty; running on fumes.
As I dream of jackpots and possibility, the sun sets too soon. The long rays of red pull my thoughts with it and leave me standing in the garden counting the green shoots.
I cup a shoot with my hands and try to listen so carefully to it's message. The ground knows that spring is not too far away. It's earthy silence, leaf smell communication, unbelievable certainty is a small still part of myself reflected.
There is colour here, it's coming slowly out of the ground. There is life. There is space and warmth coming to us all.
I hope I have the courage to live, to fill up all the space of summer, to not let it trickle away.
There are cells in body that hear the call of Spring. They respond like the bulbs in the ground. My body is the fertile soil and the green shoots of ideas and hope are springing from me. I feel they are breaking me as they grow. Breaking me to bring newness. The life born from the stone-like egg.
Easter will come to me. Dressed in yellow handing me a bunch of daffodils.
But her coming is slow and the birds still wheal above me in the dead sky. The trees still crack and moan their winter lament. But I know if I look hard enough I will find each branch studded with a hundred tiny buds. They have the faith in her...and so must I.