I've been tagged by From Dawn till Rusk
to do a rambling apprciation of five Blogs I like. This in itself is tricky because there are so many good ones out there. I have to limit my blogging time otherwise Birthday Parties would be a disaster because I had blogged instead of sending out party bags, ooh, imagine the hostlities!!

So, in no particular order I like this one, by Girl with a Mask which I think most of you have seen.
It just makes me cry laughing. It's the kind of thing I can imagine being muttered under the breath of my husband around his mothers table, just loud enough for us all to hear but inaudible to his mother.
I love Girl with a Mask, very often I don't comment, she leaves me speechless, but she's brilliant.

Next (in no particular order is Millenium Housewife she writes the most brilliant lists.
This one is my favourite, unless you have a young child you just can't appreciate it, so if anyone wants to borrow my youngest daughter, do give me a shout..no, I'm not serious, we'll sell her on Ebay to the highest bidder.

And another wild woman I like is Jo Beaufoix this post is just typical of the nonsense spoken in my home too...erm, I think I have a theme going here that a. we are childish and b. we are childish.

And this Post from my lovely Blog friend (whether she likes it or not) Potty Mummy because she's inspired me to go on a diet too...and boy are we hungry!

And I am a huge Pig fan, so here's the recent post from her a great example of the trials of motherhood and selflessness which we all exhibit from time to time inthe course of our duties as parents......

But, I have to add one extra because I cannot go without the person who inspired me to start blogging. The queen B Dulwich Mum. I can't find the Swarfega one, so I'll settle for this fantastic post by Bea.

So I tag Millennium Housewife, Dulwich Mum, Gone Back South, Valley Girl and Blog That Mama

We seem to live constantly in a rat race!!
Living out in the sticks, this is a constant source of entertainment to anyone who comes here..."We thought it would be so quiet here" is often the reaction.

Yesterday for instance, we all got up and surveyed the immaculate downstairs (my lady that does is just brill).
Everyone was threatened with severe pain if they made any mess, 'my boys' were coming (my Godson and his little brother) with their Dad and Step-Mum. 'Dad' was going to take some product photos for me to put on my website so I cleared the kitchen table and started to make up a wrap-around light box.

Darling Husband was rushing in and out giving orders for the day...it was his first year as Chairman of the Village Show and he was putting in wads of effort.

"Pick me up from the hall"
"Just knock up this poster with the Chicken Race rules"
"Phone Hywel and get him to bring a chicken"
"Who's manning the Crockery Smash?"

The Milkman arrived.
He put the kettle on and said 'mornin'!'
I was horrified..
He made no comment or looked the slightest bit surprised that I had a 5ft lawn mower box on the table and was lining it with white card...are we that weird in our house that nothing shocks the milkman any more?
He got fed up with waiting for our archaic water boiling method and made like Elvis.

I fed my piggies (31 now!!- I do fear I'm becoming a farmer) and unlocked my executive storage facility to get out new stock that needed photographing.
Right on cue, here come my boys, Godson now at eye-level (gulp!) and an aspiring Welsh Rugby player with a deep voice. In came the tripod, two cameras, laptop, cuddly toy and tea-set.

I pretty quickly realised that my multi-tasking skills were fading fast.
Making tea,
answering the phone "Yes I will give you a lift to the show, no it doesn't star for a few hours yet",
cooking pancakes,
setting up photo-shoots,
mopping pancake mix from my jeans and shoes,
delegating the chicken race rules poster to 'Step-Mum',
finding felt flower rings (where are they?)
chasing the cats out,
keeping the dog in,
teaching Godson how to make pancake mix,
putting out pan fires,
smoke extraction without letting the cat in and the dog out,
making coffee for those I forgot in the first round,
proof-reading the poster.. " Erm,I think there's an 'r' in Mallard",
answering the phone..."yes I will be there for the start of the fun run",
"Where does Darling Husband want the Purple sprouting planted? ..In the garden"

My boys and friend and lovely wife left with all their belongings, my children sat in the car.
Eldest daughter (vampire-pirate-fairy)looking all lovely
Youngest daughter looking pleased with herself at having managed to avoid a hairbrush all morning.
Middle daughter seemed to have already gone to the show with Mr Chairman, un-noticed by this caring nurturing mother.

The Village Show went very well.
No fatalities on the Fun run
No fighting over the vegetable competition
The ice-cream van didn't run over any children even though we thought he was making a very concerted effort to do so when he arrived.
No chickens turned up, I for one was very grateful, but Darling Husband was disappointed.
The highlight for me though was the local Mayor, who is blind, having a go on the coconut shy!!
Not content with missing badly, he proceeded to the crockery smash!
Then he had a go at skittles....

We came home exhausted and I was hit by the thought the house had been vandalised. There were broken and burnt pancakes all over the kitchen, wrapped around knife handles, sugar covered the worktops and maple syrup dripped from the bottle on it's side. The living room was no longer how I remembered it that morning, all the cushions were piled on the floor, throws were screwed up under the TV and my lovely feather sofa was as flat as road kill. There were empty cups all over the place...bugger!

I re-adjusted the living room and put all the washing up in the sink (thank goodness it's so big) and flopped onto the sofa with a glass of wine.

The milkman arrived.
He brought with him his lovely wife and daughter.
They also brought with them a huge bunch of gorgeous flowers (for dog-sitting) and a new kettle .. he's so subtle.
My children got out of bed and played badminton in their pyjamas.
We sat and laughed and watched our fab new kettle that changes colour according to the water temperature..awesome!

I'm such a tired little frog.

Pigsty inside and out

Hoorrrayyyyy!! (Don't panic, I'll moan in a couple of paragraphs) More baby piglets!
My lovely Pepper Pig has had thirteen piglets.
Poor thing, she gave birth to them over 7 hours while the boy pig, Ham (short for Hamilton) sat outside the pen, puffing and panting in sympathy.

We have also had an overnight guest, my daughter's best friend. He and she have been in each others' company since she was six weeks old and he was born. They've been to restaurants and barbecues, parties, camping and they are even in the same class at school. It's lovely, they are very close and think the world of each other even though the whole class thinks they are in love..bless! They are only 9!

He and she are very alike, they bring out the creativeness in each other like I have never seen. Within minutes of being home from school yesterday our living room was dismantled and transformed into a world of blankets and giant lawn mower boxes. The den 'fell down' (with the aid of my 4 year old daughter) at least three million times and there was whining of the screechiest quality to be heard for over five hours. The den became a large bed of a strange design, so basically they slept in a box and we had a momentary panic that only two children could be found, the third was found fast asleep snuggled (wedged) between the sofa and a cupboard.

This morning the den had taken on an organic form and life-force of it's own. I fear I will never reach my huge feather sofa again and I've no idea where the TV is.
The lawn mower box has collapsed and there is growing criticism between the friends that each is pretty duff at building dens. The tension is building faster than the den, it's a true test of friendship, and a true test of my nerves...I need a drink but I don't suppose being sloshed at a school summer fair might be terribly good for my company image.

The milkman's' Labradors have been here for a week now. They are city dogs and have thoroughly enjoyed a farm holiday. They collect sticks and pile them up outside the back door like a pair of beavers. Fruitcake is quite friendly towards them, but Jess, the long-wheel-base sheep dog climbs onto the windowsill and shakes with fear.
The cats have taken to the darkest corners of the barn.
At night we put them in a nice straw lined horsebox outside the house, where they bark every four seconds, in turn, with two second intervals, until we let them out in the morning.
These clean sleek city dogs are muddy and have been eating and rolling in things their owners would probably scoop into a bag and throw in a special bin. I hope and pray we will not be blacklisted for it, otherwise we'll never get milk delivered again!

But good news, Shirl left a message on the answerphone saying she'll be visiting tomorrow....
All I need is for her to bring some bloody red wine!
I'm a Frog on the edge!!!!!

I've been ill and v.grumpy lately, so I'll continue the theme with some home truths,

Shirl could easily be confused with Short Term Memory Barbie.

I do not like the cheap red wine my mother (Shirl) brings me.

Phoning me at the exact time I leave the house, every day to take children to school is not the best time to phone me and declare you had something to ask me, but can't remember what it was...while eating something loudly.

Farmers do not (all) get up at the crack of dawn.
Dairy farmers do, of course, have to get up at unearthly hours to do the milking, but it’s not the case for so many others any more. When my father in law was a young man, he had to get up early to feed the horses. The horses would then have some time to digest their food a bit and then go to work. That’s where (I think) this modern myth comes from. Tractors don’t need a rest after filling up, and they can also see in the dark, which the horses couldn’t, and so the farmers work later rather than earlier.

There’s no such thing as a mistletoe tree. Mistletoe is a parasitic dieasey plant type thing.

I do not like the cheap red wine my mother brings me.

Putting your child into private education does not mean you have bucket loads of money, it means you have no money because you are paying for private education.

No does not mean: ‘yes, of course you can, especially as you have moaned and whinged about it for an hour, I really like it when you do that’.

Vauxhall Vectra’s and Mercedes sports can be easily mistaken for one another.
I do not like cheap red wine.

Just because we have stone walls and old beams in our home does not mean we haven’t got round to plastering and painting our beams black, this is how we like it.

Not all members of the WI (Wild Indians) wear false teeth (I have heard of a youthful group in London), but around here, I think we can take it as red..

Farmers do not have hairy calf muscles….wellies make their legs smooth and completely hair free.

The smell of diesel is not attractive.

I do not like the cheap red wine Shirl brings me.

Sheep are not cute fluffy, woolly things that gambol about in the hills. They smell and are extremely stupid. They like getting tangled up in briars, so much so, that if you release them from such a constraint they will endeavour to do the same thing again, immediately if not sooner.

Shirl is not actually related to Sindy.

Why is it that when tidying the house (shudder!) you pick up three million pens, and put them by the phone, yet, two minutes later, when you need a pen there isn’t one there?

Not wearing a hearing aid when you need one is quite frankly, irritating.

If washing something delicate, placed inside a securely tied pillowcase in the washing machine, the knot will always come undone and the items will have come out….yet…if washing items separately, the pillowcase will always have the entire wash stuffed inside it when the load has finished.

I do not like the cheap red wine my mother brings me.

Telling me how well you can hear when you wear your hearing aid is, quite frankly, irritating.

Tired

I'd like to apologise for not visiting anyone this week, I've been very unwell (sniff!) and not feeling very humerous or sociable. In short, I'm rather short tempered and cranky ("nothing new there", I hear someone muttering at the back).
Some of my dearest friends have expressed concern at my total lack of conversation and enthusiasm for anything other than hot tea and very soft tissues.
I'll be back!

Fine Wine

I'm not the slightest bit feminist, after all, who wants to carry the rubbish out or fix the car? I'm happy to cook (most of the time) and leave instructions for my fab friend who cleans for us.
I admit to being a petrol head and being a better driver than my husband on the road, certainly much faster, but that's about as far as equality of the sexes goes in my life.
I have no wish to wrestle the bull, chase cattle round and round the field, drive the tractor or do the sheep shearing.
But today I was sent this and I thought, yeah, let them think what they like, now we know the real score.

"Men are like fine wine.. They start out as grapes, and it's up to the women to stomp the crap out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with"

Strangeways

I just Don't Believe IT!!
Today I received an offer to enter a competition, the winner will receive a Luxury trip to Paris, Wow!
Runners up will receive a pair of Eurostar Tickets.
The competition simply requires me to sign up to a 'Green' Club that wishes to promote healthier living and greener living, such as more composting, less emissions etc. "There are a wide range of things, from simple to life changing, that you can do to reduce your impact on the environment."
Oh, but hang on, am I missing something or is travelling abroad not contributing at all to our eco-problems?

Last week I saw a man win £100,000!! Wow!
It was a fantastic prize and although I didn't see the whole programme, the final task, to clinch the dosh, was to drop a pea (yes, a pea) into a wine bottle??##!!!

What's going on?

In a local paper is the story "Flying Mattress brings city to halt".
Now, this really happened!!
A mattress 'fell off the back of a vehicle', and became wedged under a Fiat Punto. "Two ambulance crews were called to the scene where the mattress was eventually freed from the car tyres"
In case you're wondering, it's doing very well, it'll obviously take some time to recover but should spring back fairly quickly.

What is going on?

Then there's the farmer's wife on TV saying that her Bull is the biggest 'cow' in the world.....How can a Bull be a cow?? Cows are girls, even I know that, and that lady is a proper farmers' wife, indeed she's probably a farmer...pfft!!

Darling Husband has just collapsed in hysterics..."listen to this!"
Apparently a man has arrested in Australia because he was driving with two cases of beer on the front seat, firmly kept in place by a seat belt, and his Toddler in the back seat, wearing no seat belt whatsoever!
He obviously didn't give xxxx!!

And why is it?? Hmm, say! It's good question, one I just heard on the radio.
Why, when you open a can of Evaporated Milk, is it still full?? Surely Trading Standards would have something to say about this?

I've said it before and I'll say it again...will someone please take me back to my room?