My Smile Award from Sue B

Sue got this award from Donna, because she is always making her smile, No wonder, then Sue writes scandalous stories about sparkly nipples, lady-bird porn and paper bills, to name just a few, Chaos follows her through life leaving a trail of funnies in her wake. And now I have got this award from Sue, together with 4 others because, I quote: *Valerie as she always has a funny story to tell - those darned spiders have kept us very amused lately! Valerie also tells a moving story, and is a constant inspiration with her mind-blowing flow of stunning creations!* (She just hasn't yet realised that my mind blew long ago). And I am choosing for my five award recipients SusieJ,(This Is My World) Alyson (Crafting to keep sane) Joanne (Take life by the hand), Crafty Tracy (who will soon be downloading her buba) and Slightly South of Sanity, whose hilarious antics often keep me amused.
Thanks Sue, thanks to all who make us smile even when the world is sometimes sad,mad and bad.

An Udderly moooooooooooooving story

Well, folks, it has happened. I retired on Friday. Although I had been looking forward to this great date for months, I was rather sad when the day finally arrived. I will miss my oldies, all those gossipy old girls telling hair-raising stories and enjoying a good giggle and naughty jokes, and those sweet old men, who hardly have the strength to stand, but insist on opening the door for me and kissing my hand. I will miss those who always sing the same, sweet Russian melody, because it's the only thing in life that they haven't yet forgotten. I will miss those who always dolled themselves up, day for day, telling me that there was a lot of competition about. I will miss those who always smuggled some food from the dinner-table to their rooms, *just in case*. They all knew what is was like to survive on scraps during the bad times of war, those hungry times where they never knew when they would get something else. I remember a lady called H., now some years dead, who survived 7 concentration camps and seeing her 2 year old son shattered to death in front of her eyes, who always said, *I knew I would survive, because my name means life, and somebody has to tell the story*. Some of our residents were depressed, often cried - they really had a reason, too - others were always happy and smiling and full of kindness. Each of them was different, had another story to tell, and the majority of them had endured at least one hell in their lives. I will miss them all, cherish the memories of those who died, and try to remember the difficult ones with kindness, too, then I know what a lot of them have been through.
I will miss my nice, fun-loving and hard-working colleagues, and wish them strength to carry on with their work. Perhaps I won't miss the bosses so much, but I wish them well, too. And I wish the secretary a kinder tongue and fewer bitter words for the colleagues who occasionally have to dare to disturb her work (which is of course, always top priority!). I will need a few weeks to get used to not being there. I can go there anytime and visit my oldies and colleagues, but I think I need a time to get used just to being me again. When I came home on Friday evening I was very sad, and my friends from the scrap booking forum on Dc were waiting for me, took time to dry my tears and make me laugh again, and Maria sent me this wonderful card, *I've herd you are retiring*, which really did put a grin back on my chin. Thanks, too, to Alyson, who also sent a wonderful card, and for the many mails with good wishes for my *new life*. Now that I will not be working anymore, I will have time to do things that matter, like crafting, reading, like living, just for me!

Freddie's Family - the never ending story....

Well, I sprayed half a can of Paral on the places where the spiders were. The wind blew it back into my face, and after I had stopped choking thanks to the speedy use of my asthma spray, I looked outside and saw some cheerful spiders jumping up and down and thumbing their noses at me. What a waste of my good fly spray! After watching the merry antics of F's family for another 24 hours, I asked the girls on the scrapbooking forum over at DC if anyone had a hot tip for me. Sue B told me to try hair spray. As most hair sprays really smell awful, I thought that it was worth trying, even if it only stiffened the hairs on their little legs....Decided to do the evil deed this morning before I left for work. So I sneaked onto the balcony, armed with a pump bottle of super-hold hair lacquer from A*** (guaranteed to fix the most extravagant punky hair styles) and sprayed, under the motto, *Let us spray*. Well, it smelled even worse than the fly spray, but as there was no wind, it arrived at its destination in enemy headquarters. Then, cowardly as I am, I left them to their fate and went to work. I got home again at about 7.30 this evening. No spiders. No bungee jumping in front of my window. OMG, what have I done?? I still have a compulsive urge to look out of the window and see if they are there, but it's all quiet outside.
Anyone got a good tip for cleaning super-hold hairspray off the window??

Revenge on eight legs - Freddie's family is mobbing me!!

After a couple of cold, blustery and wet weeks, we are now enjoying warm winds from the south. And in case you think I'm talking about farting, I'm not! On the one hand, mild weather is good, because it keeps the heating bills down. On the other hand, it has evidently encouraged Freddie's family to hold a wake for him and Frieda. At the moment, 3 (yes, THREE) of them are dangling from the roof of the balcony. As usual, they are directly next to where I am sitting at my computer. And they are hypnotising me to keep looking at them. I can feel their little spidery eyes watching me and see those hairy legs quivering, ready to bugger off to the top if I go outside to splat them. I have my new, yellow spider-splatter at the ready. I banged on the window with it. They never moved an inch. I banged again and they never budged. I KNOW they must be making fun of me, telling me that I can't get rid of them. I opened the door to the balcony and zoooooooooom! They spun off to the top where I couldn't reach them. Before I had time to sit down again, they were dangling in position at my eye-level, reminding me that I murdered two of their family. But I will not be threatened. Tomorrow I will advance to chemical warfare. The dreaded Paral spray is ready on the window ledge. Watch out spiders, the final countdown has begun. High Noon is on its way.

Freddie's Family - the saga continues

Are you superstitious? Do you think that Friday the thirteenth is an unlucky day? Well, I don't. But it was a bad day for Frieda. Freddie's big sister (or cousin? or was she his wife?) You will have noticed by now that I am writing in the past tense. She may have been a good spider, even though she had hairy legs. But as far as I am concerned, the only good spider is a dead spider. Today I had to work till seven this evening. Came home, sat at the computer, and there she was, jumping up and down outside my window. It was too much for me after such a long day, so - splat! Now she is with Freddie. But she had the honour to have been splatted with my new, yellow fly swatter. But now I really must clean the windows .

Freddie's relations?

Did I say yesterday, *Tomorrow will be another day?* Well, after murdering poor Freddie yesterday evening, just looked out of the window, and there's another one bungee jumping out there at exactly the same spot!! It's a bit bigger than Freddie was, perhaps it's his big sister come to revenge him. I'll give her till tomorrow to spin-off peacefully. When not, she will be meeting Freddie again sooner than she thinks in the big white spider home above the sky. I'm just wondering how many other relations they have?

The ancient mariner and bungee jumping

Yesterday evening I really was a busy bee. Made 10 (ten!!) post-it note holders, chatted to a friend on DC, baked a batch of shortbread, talked to my friend on the phone and switched on the dishwasher, wanted to get everything cleared away for once. Then I went back into the kitchen to get something and got wet feet -
*Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink ;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.*
Well, actually there was still water in the tap , and the (laminated) boards were not shrinking but puffing up, and the water was trickling like a silver stream out of the dish-washer - eeek! Panic, help, why me again??? Switched the machine off and grabbed all the towels I could find to mop up the water, took the skirting off the kitchen cupboards and mopped underneath, moved the dresser and mopped there, too, reached under the fridge as far as I could get and removed the water there. After an hour the kitchen was more or less dry, the space under and behind all my cupboards was clean - yuk, where did all that dirt come from? and I had enough washing to fill two machines. Thank goodness that the washing machine is in the cellar and can't leak all over my kitchen. Anyway, as we should think positive, I want to say that my kitchen is now gleaming like it never did before, and the laminated flooring does not look so boring now that the edges are puffing up, looks really different. *Always look on the bright side of life....* Then I went into the living room and sat at my computer, where I saw something moving on my left side, outside the balcony window. It was Freddie. Freddie is a spider who has been bungee jumping outside my window for a week now, and always there where I sit and can see it out of the corner of my eye. I felt like it was observing me. I don't like spiders at the best of times, and this was NOT the best of the times after Noah's flood in my kitchen. Well I did warn Freddie. I banged on the window and told him to spin off, but he didn't. As I said, it had been a hard evening for me, and that after a long day at work. And then it happened. Sorry all of you who like spiders. I don't. So I shot out and splat! That was the end of Freddie - *Always look on the bright side of death....* But now I have to clean the windows, too. Oh well, tomorrow is another day!