Hestia and Tempus Fugit

I have just been sent this photo via the delights of facebook.  Something seems to have gone wrong with the formatting, I'm not quite so elongated in real life!

This is me.  And our family dog, Sherry.

Those curtains have followed me my whole life and are currently covering the Ducati in the garage, keeping the cold off Tartarus's precious machine!

Say what you will about the 70s, it was a decade of dubious taste.  And a lot of brown.

I decided to write to the girl in the photo:

Dear Hestia

I'm looking at you now and I wish that I could waft back in time to tell you that everything is going to be ok.

Your thighs are NOT too white and wobbly.  Well, they are NOW, but not when you used to stand in front of the bedroom mirror and waggle your legs with a dejected sigh.

You will not get acne.  Your skin is so dry that you are spared the horrors of acne, but are rewarded much further down the line with wrinkles.  I remember how awful it was for kids with acne in the 70s and am happy with the trade off.  No one cares whether you have wrinkles or not when you are hitting 50.  But to be afflicted with a sore face at such a tender time of life is the worst cruelty adolescence plays on young people.  That, and giving girls bosoms when they are still expected to jog miles around a games field at PE when sports bras haven't been invented yet.

Don't worry about your hair! Sure, it isn't quite the Farah flick or the Purdey cut that everyone else is sporting, but don't worry - hair styles become a lot less tyrannical in later decades.  Plus straighteners get invented and that makes your life much nicer.  And a Brazilian Blowdry solves all your problems for 3 months at a time.  You should, however, start saving now to pay for all the hair colouring that you are going to need because of the grey hair.

Boys.  Please stay away from Tartarus.  Honestly.  I know that he's kinda cute in a bad boy sort of way.  Well, as much bad boy as someone studying for 7 highers and wearing spectacles can be.  He does get that motorbike and he stands you up outside the Pink Pather Lounge while he goes to buy his first bike.   This is the first of many motorbike related jiltings.  If you DO stick with him - you get a baby.  Who is wonderful. Mostly.  

You are about to go off to university.  Please, get as much sex as you can.  But  be careful - there is one night that you DO have sex with your Uni boyfriend and your parents come home and find the evidence down the toilet.  Your father never really forgives you for it, so for Christ's sakes, make sure that your condoms are flushed away.

Don't worry about not knowing what you want to do with your life.  That never really properly resolves for you, so you might as well just do what takes your fancy!  Can you believe it, you are doing a Tarot radio show?  I KNOW, life is WEIRD!

Lastly, I want to tell you that you ARE pretty.  For the rest of your days you'll never believe that you ARE, but you will always look back to old pictures and see that you WERE.

And if I didn't make myself absolutely crystal clear before: Tartarus. Is. Trouble.

lots of love

Your older self

PS - lay off the kitkats before it's too late.


What would you tell your teenage self?!

Hestia and reversals

Some serious reversing issues
Pic:  BBC

Mercury doesn't go retrograde until next week, but I more than made up for it myself the other day.

I think we could blame it on my hormones or the Fast Diet (monthlies and fasting are tricky bedfellows - there's too much coming out and nothing at all going in!)

Hestia.... and the sorry tale of Tartarus and Why He Did Not Get A Valentine Card This Year

Road map to a new way of thinking.
Also, the TT route.

Jeez - where to start?!

How about dinner a couple of weeks ago with our friends?  It was, after all, during the cheese and crackers wind-down part of the evening that he let a couple of bombs off in the conversation:

1  That he was planning to go to the Isle of Man for a FORTNIGHT for the TT a couple of years hence with his PALS.

2  That he would not be here for my 50th birthday later this year.

Neither of these two seem particularly bad on their own, but when you factor in the following,  I was pretty angry:

Hestia's Hero Product

It's a shocking photo, but as an addition to your cooking staples, I promise you that you will never regret buying a couple of jars of this for your kitchen cupboard:

It adds a lovely fresh garlicky and gingery warmth to everything and I'm going through JARS of the stuff - add it to stir fries, stews, curries, marinades.....ANYTHING that likes a bit of garlic!

If you're inclined, tell the world what YOUR Hero Product is - could be anything - kitchen, hair care, drain cleaner..... but it's got to be something that you have welcomed to your home like a long-lost lottery winner :-)

You can bung it in the comments here, or, if you are feeling particularly evengelical - make your own Hero Product blog post :-)

BTW - did you get a card yesterday? I did.  But I'd told Tartarus that we shouldn't bother this year.  He has spent 12 hours going through his luggage aboard his ship looking for a carefully-hidden card That Does Not Exist.

*tough, unapologetic face*

I didn't buy him a card this year.  In fact, after the Isle of Man Fiasco of last Thursday, he's lucky to have escaped the country with his life.  But more of that on Monday :-D

Have a great weekend ;-D

Hestia and the stained glass....

...STAINED WITH MY OWN BLOOD THAT IS!!

'Who would have thought the old tart would have had so much blood in her.'

With apologies to Shakespeare.

The Aldi budget version of 'Saw V'

Fuck and bugger. 

This snappage made me hurl my glass cutter to the floor and howl like a 

demented pre-menstrual harridan.

Which I am.  You have been warned.....

Still friggin' bleedin' even aas I type....

rtbvgfv <-  me clearing the blood off the keyboard

I shall have a day off tomorrow.  From EVERYTHNG.

Hestia's Glass Update

Well, it's coming on, but my sanity and my finger tips are shredded.

Look at today's damage:

ouch!

That's kitchen roll and duck tape - kindly applied by Tartarus.  I have used up all the little plasters. He also made me a restorative cup of tea and slice of lemon cake.  There may also have been some sniggering, but I'm ignoring that.

Anyway - here's the panel:

I know that it doesn't look like I've done much, but I recut the green leaves too and the two very large clear sections that I did this morning needed a little grinding work to get them to slot into place.  Tomorrow or Sunday, the second layer of green leaves will go in place and then on Monday, the really tricky stuff starts when I try to fit in a couple of bits of old glass from the original front door (a sentimental touch that might just drive me to consume several bottles of Crabbies).

Went to see Life of Pi yesterday and then had to explain it to Sonshine as we walked home from the cinema.  I don't want to spoil it for anyone if you haven't seen it yet.....take a hankie.  Also, someone might have to explain it to me to make sure that I understand it properly myself!

You won't believe how amazing the animation is - the tiger animation especially. You totally forgot that it was CGI.

Sonshine tapped me on the arm about half-way through the movie and whispered "One day this might be the only way we get to see a tiger."

That brought a lump to my throat.

Maybe one day all we'll have of black rhinos and elephants and tigers is someone's animation skills.  Maybe we'll wonder how on earth it came to pass that we extinguished entire species..... maybe we'll see the light.  Clearly Life of Pi has had a very mournful effect on me.  That and David Attenborough's Africa series on the BBC which has left me a puffy-faced wreck most weeks.

However, on a brighter note, giving a tiger a cuddle is VERY high on my list of Things I Want To Do This Year, so if anyone knows a tiger that's due a bit of anaesthetic and might be up for a bit of fierce cuddling, please let me know!

Meanwhile, I shall nurse my bloody fingers and continue working on the glass!

My highly technical work station.

One day someone will tell me that dish is worth £3m 

Not the Bertolli margerine dish, clearly.

Have a truly Excellent weekend, my friends! *Bill and Ted face*

Stained Glass....one post of many (I suspect)

oh Lordy! For those of you who have been a friend for a couple of years (or just a keen reader!) and remember my jaunt to the Glasgow School of Art to learn the ancient skill of stained glass work I have an announcement:

I HAVE STARTED WORK ON THE STAINED GLASS WINDOWS

I know - it's taken me about three years to get to this stage, but I could not put it off any longer....and so this morning found me standing in the cupboard with my safety glasses on top of my actual glasses, my glass wheel oiled up, my drawing in place..... enormous sweat rings of panic under my armpits and the camera, of course.

Tadah!

BTW - I didn't break that bit of glass.  Truly.

The first few pieces were not happy events.  The house is old.  The glass panels will not be exactly right-angled at the bits one would expect to be right angled.  Therefore, I have a bit of a run on some of my horizontals.

There was a threat of weepage when I realised just now noticeable this might be.  And that it would be in the house FOR EVER.

But then common sense kicked in and I knew that I'd be able to fudge it. Somehow.

So I set to:

The first bit in place.

This took about an hour.

I'm not kidding.

Then the other bits slotted into place a little more quickly.

Of course, I don't think that I should RUSH these things, so now I've stopped for a while.  I've got a music lesson in an hour.  

I've been putting off starting this stained glass project for years.  And it's actually quite fun.

In fact, 2013 is turning out to be funner than I had expected.

Mind you, it's only February.

What have you been putting off that you've decided to DO RIGHT NOW?

Hestia and the art of Ninja T-Shirt folding

Cross my heart and hope to die, this is THE best way of folding short-sleeved T-shirts.  Heck, almost makes me look forward to doing the ironing.  ALMOST, I said.

Now, all I need is the sister video - how to iron the little suckers in 2 seconds!

Have you got a skill (that you can share in public!) about how to make the daily drudge a bit more exciting?

Do share!