Anniversaries & Theatre Doings

It was our eleventh wedding anniversary on Wednesday 6th February. Emily had made us some beautiful presents and cards. I got hand made bubble bath, and Jon got a heart shaped lavender meditation pillow. She's such a sweetheart. Emily also vanished on the morning and made us a secret chocolate and orange anniversary cake. All by herself - the only thing an adult did was put it in the oven and take it back out again. She's getting so independent :-)) She iced the cake with chocolate orange icing and put eleven candles on it, plus a red and purple flower decoration (our wedding colour scheme was red and purple). We had a super day :-))


On Thursday, we had another anniversary too, but a sad one; it was the first anniversary of Merlin's death, so we thought about him lots. Well, we always think about him lots, but even more than usual. Jackie came round for the day with Mei Lin and Jasmine; we were going to do some Chinese New Year things, but didn't get round to it in the end. The girls spent nearly all day playing while me, Jackie and Jon nattered. We did get the girls to do learn some breathing techniques, though, for calming down in stressful moments. And they made lots and lots of lovely fimo clay figures. Oh, and Jackie made us laugh by telling us all about how much she loves Emily because Emily's "odd", rofl! She means it very fondly, as in quirky ;-) And she's right, Emily is very different, in a lovely, unique way. Who wants to be ordinary anyway?!

Yesterday was a very busy day; Emily and I had to be in Grimsby by 10.30 for the Hamlet play, which was absolutely fantastic. This is the third year in a row we've seen an S4K production and I really do think they do them so well. When I first heard about them, before we went to see Romeo and Juliet in 2006, I had reservations; I thought it was going to be some awful happy clappy dumbed down rubbish, but they strike a brilliant balance between introducing some fun elements but at the same time keeping much of the original text plus maintaining the tragic atmosphere when necessary. I cried at the end of Romeo and Juliet and I cried at parts of Hamlet yesterday too, lol. Mind you, I almost yelled too - at the teacher "supervising" the little brats sat behind us. They spent the entire performance talking, kicking our seats and trying to hand clap through entirely inappropriate for hand-clapping music. They were clearly bored out of their minds. *Shrugs* I don't know what they do in these schools any more. How children could be bored watching such a great performance, I don't know.

We got back from Grimsby just in time to have something to eat and a quick break before it was time for me and Jon to head off back to Grimsby again, to see Derek Acorah. That was, well, very interesting. Not particularly impressive, I have to say, in terms of mediumship skills. But fascinating. I'd really *wanted* to be bowled over, but it just didn't happen. To be fair, the audience was incredibly unresponsive, which didn't help. There needs to be a certain amount of energy and atmosphere for large scale mediumship to work well, but I think half the audience was only there because they'd vaguely heard he was someone famous and weren't really interested in what he was trying to do. Oh well. It was a very nice evening out. Emily had fun too back at home with Nana and Gramps; I gather she completely thrashed them at Catopoly :-)) They're all looking forward to the return match when Jon and I got back to Grimsby to see Derren Brown (can't wait!) early in March.

Today is Saturday so of course it's writing deadlines day :-( I've been stuck at the PC all day. On the bright side (financially) I got two more assignments from household name magazines this week. On the downside, I really don't like what I'm doing any more. Understatement. I really, really don't like having to spend my weekends writing this stuff. I want to be writing what *I* want to write. I've got plans to change all that this year, but for now I'm stuck doing it because we need the money. Hrrrmpphhh.

Jon's made brilliant progress clearing all of the clutter out of our bedroom over this last few weeks. We've now put on the calendar w/c 25th Feb to redecorate it completely, top to toe. It has to go on the calendar, lol, otherwise it will never happen and will be shunted off to the bottom of the list beneath "fetch my prescription", "take me shopping", "make my appointments", "take me to the doctors", "take me for a blood test", "fix my television" and other such daily demands. Rolls eyes so far back I can barely see any more. We're going to dig out the detailed feng shui plan Emily did last autumn while Jon was away on a mediumship course and use that to decide on a colour scheme and new furniture for the bedroom. Hopefully, it will really make a difference to the way we all feel. Plus, having finally achieved that small milestone, we'll be all set to plough on with the next redecoration project (really big one) turning the huge landing/junk room at the top of the stairs into a new room for Emily. Got June pencilled in for that one, but given the amount of junk that needs to come out of it and be binned/given away/sold, that could be slightly amibitious.

We've been looking into some more residential psychic and mediumship courses for Jon and have got quite a few possibles...now all we need is the money to fund them, lol. He's already booked on one for October and one in November, but ideally he needs to go in the summer too, otherwise it's too long a gap. Oh, and I'm going to be going to the psychic circle too, starting not this Monday but the following one. See how much more confident I am? I'd have curled up in horror at the thought of that a fortnight ago, but now I'm quite looking forward to it! Emily certainly is - as both of us will now be out she gets to come with us every week and play with Jackie's girls all night, lol.

Just wanted to finish with the lovely arty pictures Emily took of Juliet looking through her Barbie house today :-)