Hestia has a fertile imagination

image from babble.com

I had just started my *cough* jog through the woods the other day, when I spotted a fallen section of fencing at the side of the path.  The path is cut into a hillside, so it's quite a drop on one side.  Over the years, various Councils have hammered in staves and stretched sagging bits of wire to stop the dog-walking and jogging fraternity from meeting a hideous death down in the rhododendrons.  Now a bit had been damaged.

Now, whereas most people might think of some mindless teenagers unearthing the staves on a drunken walk from one end of town to the other, for Hestia, years of mindless TV hours spent watching CSI, the Sweeney and The Rockford Files all snapped to life in the synapses and I stopped to examine the damage more closely.

Hestia says......The Fellowship of the Vuvuzelaaaaa!

This will be my sole reference to The World Cup and the vuvuzela - should give you a bit of a laugh at the same time.

Video found thanks to these guys

Hestia considers Valentine's Day...

Yes, a tad unseasonal, but there is a reason for it :-)

My dad was not much into Fathers' Day.  Like Fathers throughout the western world, he could quite happily live without a card, packet of cigars or new un-rottable nylon socks.

Unlike Mothers' Day, where failure to remember a card will result in so much emotional tracer fire that you NEVER forget it for a second time.

No, my dad much preferred Valentine's Day.

Hestia and the Greenhouse massacre - update

You might recall this moment of violence against the aged vine in the greenhouse. Or this attempt at Grey's Anatomy surgery on a beheaded sunflower?

Time for an update.

Firstly, Wilfred the sunflower has now been planted outside. Against a south-facing wall which absolutely BAKES in the summer.  As you will see, he is still spindly and the source of much worry in the Hestia household.....but he's STILL ALIVE....even after total decapitation. Perhaps I need to upgrade from Hestia status to Christ?!  *waits for bolt of lightning to strike her dead*

Hestia is....built for comfort, not speed

Last year, I was reliably informed that the reason I was fat/irritable/tired all the time/bad hair etc is simply because I have allowed myself to turn into a troll, not (as I had perversely hoped) a dicky thyroid.  But doctors, what do THEY know?

It was at that point I decided to take up some form of exercise, or die trying:

Swimming was out because there was too much defuzzing to be done on a daily basis and life's too short to be constantly trimming one's badger.

Hestia celebrates Kevin's birthday!

Birthday parties usually have cake, but yesterday we had a birthday party where the birthday boy IS cake.

Yes, two years after he was born, Hestia and Sonshine threw an intimate birthday party for Kevin, the pain-au-chocolate who lives in the bread bin. 

Happy Monday!

Got the Monday Morning Blues? Look at little Johnathon as his cochlea implant is switched on. He's been deaf since birth. Happy Monday everyone :-)

Hestia considers bees

I made it to the bee keeping introductory course with about a minute and a half to spare - so it was a rather sweaty and disheveled Hestia that burst into the local church hall this afternoon.

Of course, this being the island, the standing around and blethering went on for another 20 minutes, so I entertained myself by scooping a cup of tea and a home-made Empire biscuit from the attending WI ladies.  One should always keep in with the WI ladies - you never know when you will need an emergency home-knitted matinee jacket gift or a crocheted jam jar cover.  I'm deadly serious.

Hestia mourns the passing of Wilfred, RIP

Sonshine is terrible for blagging a lift home from school. He stands next to his wee friend (the one who eats duck) and looks balefully at friend's mother until she offers him a lift home.

A couple of weeks ago he emerged from the gleaming silver 4 x 4 clutching a family-sized yoghurt pot, from which a slender green plant clung nervously to a kebab stick.

'This,' he announced to me with all the awe and gravitas of a man introducing the Brazillian lap-dancing girlfried to his mother, 'is Wilfred.'

I looked at Wilfred's spindly green neck with much the same concern as aforementioned mother might regard a lap-dancing girlfriend. 'He's very...slender...for such a tall plant, isn't he?'

In a flurry of floppy leaves, Sonshine thrust the yoghurt pot into my hands: 'You need to look after him.'

Now, some of you may remember that I'm not hellish good with plants (see: greenhouse massacre) and I was pretty sure that some hideous fate lay in store for poor Wilfred at my hands.

Handbag contents

Since I cannot fit another gnat's bollock into my handbag*, I decided to have a clear out of my everyday handbag.  This is what I found:

1 x purse
1 x Oberon organiser
1x nail file
1 x sunglasses (now scratched due to proximity of nail file)
£1.67 in loose change
Mystery envelope containing £37.50

2 x Bill Bailey Tix (mystery of money in envelope solved)

Hestia tries helicopter parenting

Sonshine got his report card home the other day and although he's doing well at school, his lovely teacher said that his homework 'could be better'.

That puzzled me because his homework always gets done and I always check to make sure it's correct. 

What I think she REALLY means is that *I* could do better. 

Y'see when Sonshine sits down to do his homework, my contribution is limited to making sure that he is strapped into his seat and has a sharp pencil.  Sometimes I'm called in to assist with a particularly tricky spelling or to unravel some arithmetic mystery, but that's about it.

It would appear that his classmates' parents are a bit more, shall we say, hands on?

Hestia loves Kiwi!

This little film by Dony Permedi has been viewed over 20 million times on YouTube. It's one of my favourites....and if you haven't seen it before, enjoy.

And if your hankie is sopping wet at the end and you can't bear it, look at this afterwards

Alone again, naturally......

And so, my hubby's six weeks of leave are up again, too quickly.

Sonshine and I drove him to the ferry and we had a final hug in the carpark, Sonshine burrowing in at waist height, his small dark head hidden beneath his dad's jacket.

The next few days will be terrible. 

Hestia the highs and lows of caravanning.

As a child, one of my favourite books was Mr Galiano's Circus by Enid Blyton.  Since then Hestia has had inexplicable urge to own a caravan and pretend she is travelling gypsy fortune-teller.  Last weekend did next best thing and took family in our new (ie new to us) caravan a massive 50 miles to Inverary.  Here's the edited high/lowlights

HIGH - Towing caravan down Argyll's narrow roads nowhere nearly as stressful as being one of the cars trying to overtake said caravan.

Hestia becomes Our Lady of Perpetual Menstruation

First off - this is not a blog posting for the chaps in the ranks, so look away now if the discussion of blood loss makes you feel wobbly. Although - if you have any sense, lads - you WILL read this and perhaps be more sympathetic to your own Goddess when she's got her monthlies.

I am typing this to you from atop several folded towels where I am perched like a very angry crow, cawing irritatedly at Sonshine and Hubby. Both of whom have been slinking around silently in the shadows for the past couple of days like caterpillars who don't want to be pecked to death.