3 years and counting

Twas a cold October evening in the year 2006, the wind was howling and the body lay there cold on the floor.... Shit wrong story! Ah hem, forget the body bit. A young (ish) woman was stumbling around the internet looking for an online journal of sorts, something to record her thoughts for a personal development project. It was for her new counselling course, as the old pen to paper of recording thoughts thing wasn't working for her. Somehow she stumbles upon 'blogger' and Bob's your mothers aunt. She ponders for a while on what to call this blog thing (for about 2 minutes), nobody is going to read it anyway, so what does a name matter? Then the poor gal falls down a rabbit hole and awakes three years later.......

Lessons Learnt in Blogging

If you are a newbie blogger or just clueless like I was (well still am), then I think that you will enjoy reading the posts that I wrote for my first and second blogging anniversaries. I have learnt a lot and it really can't all fit into this one post. I will still highlight some of the information from those previous posts, in this post, as I try and sum up three years of blogging fun. This is blogging 'Personal' stylee, not making money, not professional writing, blogging tips or anything like that. This is just my little journey through HTML hell, troll dung and template tiffs.

Year One

My first blogging anniversary was a tad late,who knew you had to write an anniveresary post for every year you don't quit.

The blog looked like this

You can also see it in action here, thanks to the Way Back Machine (records all your old horrors). I have no idea how it works, but maybe you should check to see if your blog is there? Wayback Machine

The first actual incarnation was a horrid green spotty classic template (no offence to those that have the horrid green spotty one, although you could change it). There are No screen shots of that, because I had no clue what a screen shot was.
Main lessons learnt after year one: Posted like crazy, several times a day, twas a bad idea. Tried paid posting, it got boring,fast. Horrid template at first, messed the HTML, did a million memes, got bored.

Year Two

The blog looked like this

The wonderful Design Bug designed this for me and I loved it, still do.

Main lessons learnt after year two: Started doodling again, twas a joy, found more of a 'style', posted a lot less. Made some great friends, not all people on the internet are scary. Rediscovered twitter, found it vastly appealing. Twitter also led me to connect to people closer to where I live.

Keep Reading for more wonderful insights........

Swine Socks

Finally getting over the ruddy flu! It may have been swine related, it may have not. I took the dreaded tamiflu anyways and I am not dead, so that is good. I thought I would photograph my appropriate swine like socks and whack it in a post, whilst I catch up on things. Three years of blogging is rapidly approaching, so things may possibly be changing around here very soon.....

Mumborg: 50th commemorative edition

First of all what is a Mumborg?
The word Mumborg was first created to describe my mother as she was edging ever closer to bionic woman and ever further away from normal human being status. I decided on this post , after playing with variations of the bionic/borg theme, ranging from mum/cyborg to cybernetic beast master. I use to refer to her as the 'Cupboard Monster' but that confused people a wee bit too much. I think they thought the 'Cupboard Monster' was my alternate personality, which is ridonkulous (that is Ralph, Hey Ralph!). Also Mumborg is another home run on google, I currently own the market on 'Mumborgs' woot. The question now is, does the mumborg still qualify as a borg like parent since having the leg removed? I voted and the answer is yes! Although the major metal work was in the leg that was removed, she now relies more on the electric wheelchair, which is bionic (sort of), so the nickname stays!

Today Mumborg hits 50

"The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down." By T.S. Eliot

I couldn't have a birthday month of my own, oh no, the mumborg sneaks in a mere 5 days later. That also means I must have been the best birthday present ever all those years ago, right? Also another year of her being in hospital for her and my birthdays, I think it is 5 or 6 years on the run! Maybe she is trying to tell me something? The good news is that, although she is in hospital for her birthday, she should be home rather soon.

"I think when the full horror of being fifty hits you, you should stay home and have a good cry." By Alan Bleasdale

Act your age, not your shoe size.

Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.

In a effort to post a least once a week, this weeks instalment falls upon my birthday, yay for me or something. Like many women my age, I am 28 years old, no really, that is how old I am now. Some advice I received, once long ago, is running round my head at the moment, it is rather deep so take a moment whilst you read it:

"Act your age, not your shoe size"

Shockingly profound isn't it? But as I have rather large feet*, I think acting in relation to ones shoe size, wouldn't actually be that bad, in fact I positively recommend it.

*Not freakishly large feet by the way, don't haunt me with clown music (you know who you are).

As my birthday fell upon a Monday this year (worse day ever!), I decided to go out over the weekend to celebrate instead. What to do now that I am past the drink so much, puke, drink some more stage of my life? Go to my first ever proper gig of course! In the last few years I have developed a new love for music, gone are the complacent days of just flipping on Radio 1 (popular station in UK land). For those that write reviews on music and gig, may I give you three mugs of Kudos? Because holy shit is it hard to write about music! I have tried unsuccessfully to describe how much I like or dislike certain music, trying to put some passion into it, but failing miserably. So I have come up with a really technical scale of musical wonderment chart, which I will probably never use again...

The Claire Scale of Musical Wonderment
1. Hallowed three thumbs up of awesomeness (Similar to wet my pants awesomeness)
2. Ohhhhh awesomeness
3. Pretty awesome
4. Hmmm (The hmmm of pondering)
5. Meh
6. Holy shit! How fucking awful (similar to 'My ears, my ears, arghhhhhhhhh')

Even though I am British, I still love the word awesome, there are other words that may be more eargasmic, but  I am sticking with awesome. Just thought I would mention that, after having a discussion about the word awesome with someone else and not really relevant to this, but hey this is my stream of nonsense after all.

So whom did I see? 
I saw Bat for Lashes and Yeasayer at the Liverpool O2 academy, which is a smallish venue. Yeasayer where the supporting act, but in my opinion they got the 'Hallowed three thumbs up of awesomeness' and should have played for much longer! Hardly anyone was watching them either, which was shocking, as they were such a treat. Bat for Lashes were only slightly below them with a 'ohhhhh awesomeness' rating, not sure what it was, but they didn't connect with me as much as Yeasayer. It could be because some absolute morons decided to edge they way through the crowd and stand right in front of me, forcing me to tap them on the shoulder and utter moooooooove in a some what snarl. I know its a gig and standing room only, but if you are keen, then get there bloody earlier and position yourself in a cool spot, no need to act like a tool. Anyhoo it took a while for me to avert my laser eye beam stare from the back of their heads and back onto Bat for Lashes, after some musical meditation all was well once more. I loved the small venue feel to the place, as it definitely added a more intimate vibe, both bands are well versed in playing at festivals, so you know they can perform on a larger scale too. It wasn't hard to imagine being a sunny field dancing bare foot whilst listening to their tunes. So now I am hooked even more on those two bands and now live gigs! Slap me with a wet haddock for leaving it so long to go to a gig! I know this gig review has blown you away...... (come back).

Bat for Lashes - Daniel

Yeasayer - Tightrope

If you are musically inclined and on Last.fm, then check out of my profile.

Now for the rest of my birthday I will be doing...... Not much

Update: Mucho thanks for birthday wishes

Look what TJ doodled for me:

I hate the gal for being so talented, but was touched that she took time out to doodle this for me.

Fake leg shenanigans

What do you buy a mumborg with one leg? A fake latex rubber leg of course.....

Typical! The shop only had fake latex like 'right' legs and we needed a left leg, but what can one do. My sister and I scared the poor shop boy person as he was wandering back towards the arm and leg section with an awol arm. Seeing two women rummaging manically through that section, seeking a left leg must have looked quite odd. I think it was the laughing as my sister told him that we were looking for a leg for our mother who had been freshly amputated, that really  made him scarper. I don't know why....Where on earth can you find an arm and leg section anyways? Tis the season to be bloody of course! Halloween in other words, so the supermarkets are full of all things gory.
Anyhoo the mumborg liked her gift, but some dastardly person had taken the real humour out of it! Offended by it? Nay. The lady next door to the mumborg has also had her leg recently amputated and someone gave her a fake latex leg the day before! Curses to them and their sick sense of humour! The mumborg has put it use straight away and is terrorising the nurses and doctors with it, confusing some of them into thinking she hadn't had surgery after all, haha.

Thanks to the great googly moogly powers that be, one of my doodles is already appearing in google images when one searches for hindquarter amputation. Not that I imagine many people actually search for that term and/or want or expect a daft doodle? What I do hope is that people find this site and maybe find it of some use, if they or someone they love is going through something similar. This stream of waffling was caused in some part by a comment I received yesterday on this post 'Risking life and limb', I am not going to post the whole comment on this post, but it is there in the comments of that post, if you would like to read it. I will however post this bit:

But I just came on this page looking for hope for him after the amputation. Is there? Is mumborg okay now?

I hope they don't mind me posting that bit of their comment here, I just wanted them to see my response, if they come back, as there was no other way of reaching them.

I am not one to use the word 'hope' willy nilly, as it is not something I control or even really believe in. All I can say is that mumborg is okay now and she is doing fantastically well. It is hard to give advice to someone else going through the same thing, as everyone will handle it differently. I suppose I look upon it like the grieving process, as it is a significant loss and there are a whole range of emotions that you go through. What helped the mumborg a lot was meeting other amputees and talking to them, they, after all, are living breathing examples that life does in fact go on after amputation. Things are still very new and strange for me at the moment, as it has only been just over a week. I have no crystal ball that will tell me that things will be wonderful and there wont be any more problems, but for now things are good and it looks like she may be allowed home soon.

If you have only recently joined in on the mumborg adventures just click the 'mum' to find out more.