Things I have noticed

1. That's a really impressive title because I havent noticed much recently. I actually feel like if you tipped me upside down I'd make a 'Mooh' noise, vacant aint the word.
2. My brain is still off on a round the world trip, it seems. Still I have my purse attached to my keys and to a bleeper that goes off when you whistle, so although I am constantly going round the house making piercing squeaky noises, there has been no dire emergency.
3. I woke at 3am to our cat having one of those wailing disagreements with another local tom, right under the bedroom window.
4. By the time I found my dressing gown and opened the back door to go break it up, he had already won. Basically all I did was hold the door open for him like a butler and save him the bother of using the cat flap. Lord muck strolled in like it was natural.
5. I woke again at 3.30 because I left the bedroom door open and cat decided this was a good excuse to come join us - by taking a flying leap from the window ledge onto my head.
6. 4am he had moved to my stomach, or more precisely my bladder and woke me by purring loudly. I spent the rest of the night vaguely aware of a desperate urge to use the loo, but too tired to get up and do anything about it.
7. My husband has had two weeks off work with nowhere to go and instead of going stir crazy he has become progressively more charming and enthusiastic as the time has gone on. I remember that side to him, but seeing it reappear out of nowhere is strangely creepy, and trying to calculate how many microseconds he will have to be back at work before the more usual 'mildly annoyed armchair sergeant' reasserts himself is, um, frustrating.
8. Its not just me thats messing up - the material world is at it too. Things just arent performing to spec.
9. The bathroom light fixing decided to perish and a bit snapped off. The light bulb flew to the hard tiled floor. It never broke and parked itself neatly in a corner beside the bath.
10. Blogger 'create post' is looking very weird all day today and I have had to use a 'blog this' box and delete the thing I linked to, just to do this post.
11. Hotmail is becoming annoyingly good at page errors
12. Yesterday I was the only moderator on the Homeworking Forum all afternoon/evening and in that time it felt like there were a weeks worth of rule infractions.
13. My 22 year old daughter has been over here every other day, either picking up her little brother or sister, or bringing one home and voluntarily taking the other one instead. I have had an entire week with only 1 child in the house at a time.
14. This one is yikky but bloody brilliant - I have found that Jojoba oil (you know, the stuff they go on about having in hair products in microscopic amounts) - the pure product, which is a base oil and has no properties beyond moisturisation, is actually a liquid wax, and it never goes off so you can keep it for donkeys ages (unlike essential oils which last about 12 months once you've let air in). It can be rubbed into a scalp and yet wash out easy enough, leaving hair soft, shiny and conditioned. If your youngest daughter also happens to have played with a couple of nitty Noras whilst out and about, the oil will not only condition the hair, but unglue everything - unstick the eggs and let you get them out with a scurf comb quite easily, so no nasty chemicals which turn the hair to straw and can produce excema, no contributing to the evolutionary development of the supernit (well super head louse) every time one survives to breed and no need to go back and do it again every two days until you have spoiled the lifecycle. I know. I checked. Bliss!
15. Cats are allergic to tea tree oil (melaleuca)
16. Guinea pigs are allergic to buttercups
17. My ten year old son is allergic both to making his own cup of tea, and to money. Oh he loves money, but if he has any, it irritates the hell out of him until its spent. He even made his first ever solo trip to the local sweetshop today, down a hill, round a corner and across a road, just to scratch his itch after his sister gave him a pound. Scary.
18. Bloggers can be lovely - see the three posts below and the comments they got. Wow.
19. My mother is possibly the most wonderful woman and mum in the world. Lets just say that as soon as BT get off their butts and realise I have (miraculously) paid their huge bill, we will have a phone line again, then I can change to Telecom Plus so the next one doesnt hurt so much.
20. I am the only one responsible for my financial and spiritual health. Nonetheless it does seem like as soon as you accept that responsibility, the universe steps in with unexpected gifts like nice people, and help, and luck. I can understand that. I mean, I'd give treats to a kid that didn't expect it a lot more readily than I would to one with his/her hands out all the time. It sort of makes sense whilst still being really very lovely.

And thats pretty much it. Just about everything that has got through to my vacant head, or travelled via my brain on its way back out and actually stuck for a moment or two this past week, has had a 'wow' or an 'uhoh' attached. There were many more, but I have forgotten them, some even from this morning. See point 2. I remember thinking uhoh, but not what about.

I quite like this. There is a certain peace and unnatural optimism to having selective retention. I may not want to live like it permanently, but still.....



Correction. Earlier I made a rambling but hopefully encouraging comment on a really brilliant blog. It had microphones in it. That being all I know now, I went back to check whether I had made any sense at all - wouldnt you? I can't find it. Even the blogger I was determined had written the post (one of my newer interests) is apparently not that blogger. All is lost in the mists, with nothing to satisfy my fully functional pride that my less functional IQ actually even attached the right comment to the right post, or else wrote it out of the blue against something completely unrelated. Cooper King tried to reassure me that I was mentally off preparing for a Eureka moment, but sadly a you loony moment seems much more likely. Oh dear. I want my brain back. Now, please.