Mother’s Got A Dot Com

At 8 o’clock Saturday morning, our neighbour rang. Our 5 horses had been romping around in his garden most of the night (Actually, they’d been all over the place – the white stuff told the tale), and he was now about to take his dogs out, and could we remove them, please?

Hmpf. I don’t blame him. They’re lambs, really, but one of them literally weighs a ton, and is quite imposing. Not really the company you want for your rose bushes, either – except for what comes out of their back side.

Anyway. Hubby and a couple of Brats went and got them, and put them back with their regular diet of silo hay. When they investigated what had gone wrong, it turned out that the elecric fence installation had no power. So, when Hercules (yes, that is the name of the monster horse), who’s no fool, sussed that one out, he just pushed the fence down and led everybody out for walkies.

We got the power back on, and we’ve checked it daily ever since…

I’m a bit apprehensive about this week end – hubby is going away, and so are 2 of the Brats that are eligible for horse-hunting.  There’ll just be me and one Brat here to do the biz if Hercules decides he needs some time away. Luckily, the white stuff is still covering most of our neighbour’s rose bushes. Not to mention his lawn… And the monster horse is a lamb – he just looks like a monster horse.

1. More Brats. I’ve done my bit in spreading my superior genes.

2. More Things. I sometimes think I’d be a good candidate for “Life laundry”. I wouldn’t mind lighting a great big bonfire while benevolent souls did a makeover on my house.

3. More White Stuff. ‘Nuff said.

4. To Gain Weight. I should be a bear. Hibernate, and wake up 20 kilos lighter.

5. More Dust Bunnies. The most stubborn ones eat Smarties. I wonder where they get them from?

6. Phone numbers to immigration attorneys. White stuff, politics  and taxes aside, I do love this weird little country of ours.

7. Another Blog. Although…

8. Another Bill. Dream on.

9. Another Telephone Salesman. I know, they’re trying to make their own ends meet. But do they have to be so oily?

10. Daylight Saving Time. It’s OK this time of year. (We switched this weekend). But I absolutely HATE it in October, when we get an hour less daylight in the afternoons. Who cares about mornings? No one sees the light anyway. But to deprive people of daylight in their spare time is not a good idea!

I’m not going to whine about the weather or the snow for a while. I promise.

Today has been lovely, the white stuff is melting fast, and I’ve cleared a space on the terrace that’s large enough to put out a few deck chairs. That means we can enjoy a nice cup of cocoa with whipped cream in the sun, while letting the sun tan our faces by reflecting on the white stuff.

I think I’ll just enjoy the coming week. I’ll paint Easter eggs with the Brats, pick birch branches that I’ll put in water to enjoy a bit of spring indoors, buy a great big pot of mini daffodils, and stick my tongue out at the white stuff, as I watch it melt. I’ll not worry about life insurance quotes, unpaid bills or even mortgages, and just enjoy life for a few days.

Wouldn’t it be nice to just vacuum the old mind for any worries, and take a day or two doing time out?

Please consider all my recent doubts about the coming of a new Ice Age as nul and void.

It’s been snowing for 24 hours, we’ve got 15 centimeters of the stuff, on top of the 25 centimeters that were left of what we’d had before.

The daffodil sprouts are buried, in fact, everything is buried, and our roof, that was clear, is now white again. The birds are still chirping away – silly things, they don’t know what’s in store.

In this context, it’s easy to dream of something completely different. A hotel get-away, for example. Anyone free to look after our horses for a couple of weeks? (Brats too, please…)

(Illustration photo, courtesy of me – from springs past)

Thank God It’s Friday – and Hubby’s been called out to snow duty again. Which of course means that it’s snowing. The great outdoors is back to looking like mid-January. The calendar, however, hasn’t changed with more that a day since yesterday, and shows that April is one day less away.

Global warming, my big behind!

FYI, we’re not supposed to have snow for Easter in April here. We’re supposed to be enjoying colorful crocuses and daffodils on the brink of bloom. The daffs have been seen to crack through the snow, but that’s all been hidden during the night, thank you very much. The birds are singing. Makes you wonder if they know what they’re doing.

Great blogging weather though.

It’s looking like other things are perking up. Unless any must-have household appliances choose to blow out their electronics in the next month, and the car(s) stay on their best behaviour, we’ll be all right. Actually, given another month or so, we could possibly even handle the odd unforeseen expense – which is a much better state of affairs than what we’ve had lately. (Great big sigh of relief).

The scammers are getting more elaborate.

I still get the “Your email address has won a zillion $!” e-mails, and the “Mr X died, and left a gazillion unclaimed £ in an account in Farawayistan that I have got my hands on, and would like to invest in your country” e-mails.

The other day, I got a new variety: “Mr X (name withheld for security reasons), who died and left a gazillion unclaimed £ in an account in Farawayistan, turns out to be a relative of yours. This is the final notification from attorneys Z, Y and W, that you need to provide us with your personal and bank details ASAP, to make you eligible to claim the funds”. I googled attorneys Z, Y and W., and the names were, indeed, associated with the legal profession, in various parts of the globe. Clever.

There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Or a free hotel night, as the case may be. If something seems too good to be true, it usually is.

# 1 Brat came home for a flash visit this weekend, bringing a friend from school. Now, the school in question is run on Christian principles, and I thought that maybe I had to be on deCorum watch.

In a household with 4 teenagers, sometimes words are spoken that would not be acceptable in polite society. This is certainly true in this one, and the little 2 1/2 year old tyke is quick to parrot anything he hears too. We tend to try to ignore it, since we’ve experienced that whatever is made a big deal of, just gets more interesting.

However, I’m not one to willingly offend my guests, so I hoped for best behaviour all round. (Let it be said that swearing is not an everyday occurance around our dinner table, and I repeat: we just don’t make a big deal out of it). Anyway – #1 Brat and friend arrived, and in came this beautiful girl, polite, friendly… and then she smiled at me. Revealing a great big “bag” of snuff under her upper lip. I managed to contain myself. I did not laugh.

Prejudice is a strange thing. In hindsight, I failed on at least a couple of counts:

1. Christian people are offended by swearing. Some are. Many though, think as I do, that it’s just words, and what counts is what’s on the inside.
2. Christian girls don’t use snuff. Eh… where did that idea come from? She might well have had deep rooted beliefs, what do I know? We never discussed the matter, and no swearing occurred.

As life is a life-long learning process, I can sum up the weekend’s lesson as follows: Appearances and preconceptions almost always lie. Get to know people first, and then refrain from passing judgment.

I’ve had regular comments lately, on posts that are buried way, way down in my archives. They are obviously written by people, but the link goes to a commercial site.

The comments themselves don’t always make sense, or have any real content. Some are shameless praise – they’re the easy ones to catch.

I don’t mind linking out – I would, however, like to decide for myself which commercial sites I link to. Which, of course, I do – I mark everything as spam that I don’t like.

Akismet has done well for me here – it’s stopped thousands of spam. Usually, the ones that are stopped are very obvious spam. These new types – it looks like commercial sites have people employed to go around commenting on blogs to get them backlinks.

Not a job I’d want.

So, spammers: Isn’t it much better to have bloggers link to you willingly? It’s dead easy – the following, for example, is a link: It has to do with automotive lifts. Not something I’d normally talk about on this blog, and I’m not about to start, since I hardly know what they are. If this type of link isn’t what you’re after, get in touch! A blogger who writes about the stuff you’re selling might want to exchange links – who knows? Ask! The worst that can happen is that you’re turned down.

You might have to give links out to get links back to your site, but nothing ever comes into a closed hand.

It seems to me that the Mystery Shopping industry must be heaving… My little work-from-home sideline as a proofreader has turned out to be quite a job this month.

Up until now, the largest number of checks I’ve been assigned in a month was around 40. Which made it one little egg in my basket. This month, I’m fast approaching 200 assigned proofreadings. My basket is filling up…

Since I also have to attend to more mundane chores, like changing nappies (that’s diapers to anyone west of Land’s End, Cornwall, UK) and feeding hordes of Brats, as well as chasing dust-bunnies, blogging has been forced to the back seat.  I know the weather conditions in places like Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur  and St.Petersburg on any given day, but that kind of information does not make interesting blog posts. Especially if coming from someone who’s never actually been in either of those places.

One mundane thing that filled my heart with joy today was that I spotted the first sign of spring: In a spot in our garden, where the snow has gone for some strange reason (most of  the garden is still covered with 10 inches of snow, which is 25 centimeters to anyone of the metric persuasion), the daffodil bulbs that I threw there last year are sprouting. Not blooming, sprouting. Green things sticking up, with snow all around. This means that somewhere down there, in the cold ground, things are happening, and the new Ice Age won’t be for this year. Always good to know.

Global warming, while not applicable for us Northdwellers, will give us another year’s respite, and while waiting for milder times, I keep my mind active by putting eggs in my basket.

Easter’s coming!

- Could it have something to do with the appalling rate with which I’m updating this blog these days?
One of the good things about blogging is the roller-coaster quality of the experience.