So! Here I am. Miss me?
.....Of course you did.
And I'm sure you're all agog with curiosity, so I'll put you out of your misery.
Over The Past Month (or so), there has/have been:
* a lot of work and/or work related angst, not only for Alice and Mother, but also for Brother, Aunts, Uncles...
* a desperate struggling to regain a functional sleep pattern.
* a rekindling of rude health and character for The Grandmama since the operation for her hips was quietly shelved; a progression made sweeter by the admission of a possible overreaction from her youngest daughter - Aunt 2, that is - and the granting of permission to resume her much missed mid afternoon thimbleful of brandy and nightcap double thimbleful of port.
* a lot of resting done by Mother, peppered with knitting and tinkering on the piano.
* a much needed week away from The Store; comprising of heavenly 7-AM starts, an evening on the town with Cousin 1 (well a visit to a restaurant. Between 6:30 and 9-PM. But there were cocktails involved, so that still counts, right?), two lunches at Pizza Hut, smatterings of inspired writing here and there, an utterly perfect day at the seaside, the reading of two new second hand books, and a whole load of lounging.
* an obsessive amount of brooding upon the subject of death, heaven and hell and two bouts of tears.
* a monstrous three day blip in the Get Alice Healthy plan, when Alice got all tired and achy and depressed about restarting work and all the horrid thoughts about dying and going to hell (or dying and becoming nothing at all; I haven't decided yet which would be worse) and typical to prior form, reverted to the tried and tested method of Lets Really Stuff Things Up And Pig Out Until We Feel Sick, Then When We Feel Good And Shit About Ourself, Lets Do It All Over Again.
Results of said three day blip remain to be seen.
But I'm guessing they won't be good...
* chaos in the Collison household due to our landing and stairs area being decorated (though that has finally finished, thank God), resulting in stress for the two ladies of the house, an overexcited dog and one mightily pissed off cat.
* a bold (but not rash) decision by Mother to leave one orchestra and join another to escape the great discomfort caused by the underhand and spiteful actions of certain members toward certain other members; actions that, while they did not involve her, directly, still left a bad taste in her mouth and an unhappy unease in her soul.
* the privilege of seeing many beautiful views - some seasidey, some not - along with the exciting (if fleeting) glimpse of various animals including a baby deer, a territorially aggressive dragon fly, dogfighting butterflies, a rabbit poised and listening and a king fisher streaking its way downstream like a neon blue bullet.
* four Collison Version dart games (I didn't win even ONE. How is that fair?)?.
* one series of Rosemary and Thyme (watched on the mini portable DVD player).
* the selling, finally, of Aunt 2's house and the move of the Porter family into temporary accommodation; Aunt 2, Uncle G2 and Fuzzy the dog moving in with Aunt 2's in-law's, and Cousin 1 becoming a guest of both The Grandmama and The Grandpapa depending on what shifts she is doing where.
Incidentally, an offer has been made on a nice bungalow by the afore mentioned Aunt and Uncle, so fingers crossed that they get it (for EVERYONE'S sake).
* several gallons of Pepsi Max drunk.
Some of it, delightfully, 'cherry'. Who knew that 'Cherry Pepsi' existed? I sure didn't until five days ago.
* a corruption of the files on Nile's hard drive relating to Google Chrome. This resulted in a three hour battle to remove what was remaining of the half deleted and damaged files, clean the drive and start over again.
Our Internet connection is now operating, therefore, through something called Mozilla Firefox, and a whole lot bloody better it seems to be, too. I never liked Chrome. I only agreed to upgrade from the ordinary Explorer - which I was quite content and happy with - in the first place because it said I had to in order to log in read my e-mails; a cleverly worded lie on the part of Google, by the way, as I now know.
So that's another thing I'm cross about (because how DARE they?).
...On the same subject, the crash also resulted in a bout of hysterics from The Mother, as she was the last person to use the computer before everything went arse over tit.
I kept saying to her, I said; "mother, please, relax, this is not your fault. Google Chrome did not throw a temper tantrum, corrupt and partially remove itself because you typed the words 'who composed the song Where Have All The Flowers Gone' into the search engine and instead of a name, it brought up an ERROR message", but she wasn't having any of it.
She wept with relief when I was at last able to tell her that it was all fixed...
* a visit to the bank to report a lost chequebook.
Which, predictably, turned up again the day that the new one arrived.
And! Last but not least =drum roll=
* the opportunity for me to offer myself up as a personal bodyguard for The Mother against the WFSO mafia and after proudly assuring her that I knew some handy 'gangster lingo', utter the following phrase:
"don't yo' start wi' me girlfriend, or I may have to pop a cap in yo' goddamn ass."
...Mother was dreadfully impressed.
Alice x
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