Are They Planets or Nuts....

My bloggy BFF is having a baby.........(pause because I still get excited for her when I mention it).......In the mean time she is going through what all mums do; Baby Brain. Why this isn't an official clinical condition I don't know!! So during the course of this debilitating condition, where she will be surrendering as many functional brain cells as possible to her developing child, the only known treatment is to limit multi-tasking. You can read more about how the treatment is going here where you can also hear about her call to share our nuts at the same time! You ready for my nuts??

Prince Charming Conundrum

I spent most of my childhood imagining and dreaming about the day my Prince Charming would ride in and sweep me off my feet. The day when I would be special; the centre of someones universe. I had the wedding dress planned even before I fell for the Other Half, which is some feat given how long we have been together.

Are we all waiting for our Prince to ride in on his steed? Is this what every girl wishes on the stars for? Do we wish for love and to be the centre of someones universe? Will we ever get it?

The reality? Your prince may arrive but he is the centre of your universe too and you end up spinning around each other. There are compromises to be made. The things you do are for mutual benefit. Then your universe experiences it's own big bang and your planets  re-align. They begin to spin not around each other but on the same orbit around the infant planets that have just been born.

Life and love take work and Prince Charming doesn't exist. This is a life lesson that we need to learn. You will never be the centre of someones universe because you will want to light theirs too. So why do we still swoon over films where the boy gets the girl? Where the boy sweeps her off her feet and they live happily ever after? Do we still secretly wish on a star that we could be whisked away?

Did Disney set me up for disappointment at an early age? Or is the definition of Prince Charming more flexible than we are lead to believe?

So, join the fun and share your nuts ;-) link up here or at Kicking Corners.

World Book Day

This is one of my favourite times of the literary year. A time when books are celebrated and there are book related events going on all over the place.

Children's books are the focus of much of the hype and so they should. A trend on twitter today was 'growing up I read' and some of the responses made me wish I had been more into reading as a child. There are books that I wish I had read growing up that are mounting up on my catch up list. Classics like Alice in Wonderland, Narnia and many more should be required reading, it seems I missed the boat and am doomed to have to paddle, or read, twice as fast as an adult! If just a few children every year get the reading bug at a young enough age then the campaign is a success!!

I can't wait for Thursday 1st March when both of my girls will be attending school / nursery dressed as their favourite book characters. My eldest, who has recently discovered the Potter series, will become Hermione Granger for the day and my youngest is insisting on being Alice in Wonderland for the day. Is it wrong to get so excited about dressing my kids up as two of my favourite characters?!? Oh well, I think I will embrace the philosophy of living vicariously thorough them and continue to foster the reading bug in them!

Who was your favourite character as a child? Are you doing anything for World Book Day?

Episode 1

Ok, so last time out was some of my writing, here goes the abridged history of me:
My first real memories, the ones that aren't feelings attached to photos, are of when I was 6/7/8. My Dad was ill and I remember the trips with my Mum to the hospital at Preston, stopping and the Little Chef on route. When you tell people that your Father died when you were 8, their face drops and the response is always 'oh how sad'. I have to say I don't remember that time as being sad. Of course their were moments, and living my life without him there have been times I have missed him dearly. But most of the things I remember make me smile; the auxiliary nurse at Preston that took me under her wing and let me help send the laundry down the shoot, probably to give my Mum some time with Dad but I felt so important with my nurses hat and helping out! Roy and Ann (Roy a patient on the same ward and Ann his wife) from St Ann's, who in the later stages of Dads illness took me in from time to time. I don't recall why but I remember having fun there.
My over riding thoughts looking back on this time are how many sacrifices my Mum had to make, I only realised recently, when I turned 30 (cough, cough), that my Mum would have been my age whilst dealing with loosing my Dad piece by piece and trying to raise me at the same time. I can't wrap my head around how hard it must have been for her; sleeping on cushions on the living room floor when Dad's hospital bed at home was downstairs and he was having a bad time, having to deal with the normal routine of school etc... and hospital visits!
I can't look back on loosing my Dad with sadness (well maybe sometimes), I really don't think I would have the relationship with my Mum if he had still been around. Also near to the end, a matter of months before cancer claimed my Dad, we moved house to a bungalow, as he could no longer manage the stairs at all. As it happened he went in to hospital not long after we moved and never came home again. A month after we moved in a family moved in to the house across the road and there I met my husband for the first time, apparently we didn't get along then, how things change!!!
If Dad hadn't fallen ill I may not have been best friends with my Mum growing up and would never have met my Husband. Life throws many things at us and if we are to carry on we must find the silver lining!