Hotel Beds

I miss my bed.  Desperately.  More than I thought possible.  I have decided that I am spoilt.  Nobody spoiled me, I managed to do that myself 5 years ago.  I went out and spent an extortionate amount of money on a tempur mattress and now I am spoiled.  Hubby has continued to spoil me in many random ways but that is by the by.

I love my bed.  I would live in my bed if I could get away with it.  I am not a lazy person by nature but it is so so very comfortable.  I think I could easily complete a necessary experiment to find out just how much one person could accomplish from her bed.

Maybe I am just getting old.  Every time I stay in a hotel of late, I wake up in the middle of the night with a pain in the shoulder I am sleeping on.  Bad enough to wake me up.  Either I am getting old and my joints are going into early retirement or I am spoiled.

The beauty of a tempur mattress is that it moulds itself to your body to ensure that you apparently lie in perfect alignment and do not put undue pressure on the joints that you are lying on.  I don't care personally, I just like the fact that I get in my bed and even now, 5 years later, in my mind I go "Ahhhhhh". 

Maybe I am not spoiled, maybe it's just my joints that are.  It's only my shoulder that hurts today and I do not have particularly bony shoulders (refer to previous posts about the desire to live in the gym for the next 6 months).  I've been out of bed now for a whole day and the shoulder is still telling me off for daring to subject it to such an inferior quality bed.

I am not the only one.  Hubby loves our bed.  He must because since we treated ourselves to a TV for the bedroom (under the pretence that I could use the, then, only TV to catch up on all my recorded programmes he would not be subjected to having to watch them also) he has spent most of his life in bed.  I have taken to calling him Grampa Joe because as per the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory story he spends most of his life in the bed but I can get him to get out of bed once in a while. 

Hubby claims that the bed is the most comfortable place to watch TV after a hard days work.  I would suggest to furniture manufacturers that they begin to make sofas and chairs out of tempur material but then I would never get to work let alone the gym or the housework.  Mind you, there's an idea - if they make work chairs of the stuff maybe they would get many of us to stay at work longer.

The fluffers have identified how comfortable the bed is and frequently try all sorts of covert moves to find their way into the bedroom to lie sublime on the top cover until I shoo them out of the room.  Then I get 3 looks of disgust and ignored for the rest of the day...well, until I tell them that it is teatime or time for a walk. Fred, the giraffe, has identified a way of opening B's door - he is either confused and forgets that B does not have a tempur mattress or finds our door handle much more difficult to manouvere. 

So, I am in this hotel room until Thursday morning.  I expect by that time that my shoulders will have gone on strike making the carrying and pulling of two suitcases (one of which is the approximate size of my house) almost impossible.  I wonder if I can find a random person on the street to drag said suitcases to the train.  Hubby has a meeting in some random town on the train route so he will be subjected to carry the suitcases the remainder of the way home.

The upside of all this travelling is the first night home.  After being flattened by the 3 fluffers while Beautiful B stands and waits for them to allow me to get up off the floor we all find ourselves sat on my bed as that is the first place I go.  I lie on the bed and say "I love my bed"....of course, after I tell the family I have missed them.

You will recall that I think Beautiful B is weirder than I.  One of my arguments for this line of reasoning is that she says our bed is uncomfortable and much prefers hers.  Now I don't torture my daughter - well not on purpose, apparently embarressing her (which I do on a frequent basis) is torture but personally I find that you can feel every spring in her mattress.  Maybe I should buy her a bed of nails and see if she finds that as comfortable, it really can't be much worse in my opinion.  Each to their own so for the moment, everyone else can think I am subjecting my daugher to an uncomfy bed; I, however, will know that she is secretly just weirder than me.

My Beautiful Baby Girl

Well, okay she is not a baby anymore, she's 16 next week and I am in frantic preparations for her 16th birthday which she (obviously!!) feels is much more important than I do.  I mean, what is she celebrating?  The fact that she is legally able to smoke and do the nasty - both of which I would kill her for?  Yes, I would, even if only in my mind.....

So, she is not a baby anymore, she had her prom two weeks ago, I came home from work and didn't recognise her, honestly I didn't.  I live with her every day and as mother/teenage daughter relationships go I like to think that we have a fairly good and stable one...wait, while I ask.....

Yep, apparently we do, even if she now thinks I need to be put in a 'looney bin for asking random questions'.  Where was I?  Oh yes, unrecognisable.  Leona, her best friend would be fair in assuming it was as a result of the brilliant make up she had so lovingly slaved over, and yes it was fantastic (I suspect she will go far if she chooses a career as a make-up artist).  Alas, it was more a case of how grown up she looked.  Yes, of course she no longer looks 3 - and some days I thank God for that as arguing incessently with her that the Shamu ice-cream in Florida was a Shamu ice-cream and not a Free Willy ice-cream was tiring in 35 degrees of Florida sunshine - but I forget how old she is, or even how old I am.

 

Admittedly, I feel about 18 and certainly act like it at times but I was stunned, truly stunned.  Of course, she does not think she is beautiful.  I, of course, am biased (if I wasn't I would deserve to be stood against a wall and shot) and constantly try to convince my delusional daughter of such a fact when she is moaning about how ugly she is.  So, yes I knew she was beautiful before prom day but she took my breath away that day.  I am dreading her wedding day - I will need industrial strength make up. 

I have no idea where she gets her looks from.  I am guilty of passing on the short gene but as I am fond of telling her the best things come in small packages.   Since prom I have been beating the boys away from the door with a stick, a stick I tell you.

Is the photo of her in my prom dress my favourite?  Mmmmm, it's beautiful, in fact it will adorn a wall (once they are decorated, which so far has taken 6 weeks and we are not even half way done - pesky exams!) but I equally love the random photos that turn up on the computer.  These are obviously as a result of my gorgeous Beautiful B being alone in the house and bored.  I would hide the camera but I find them hilarous - maybe that is why there are so many of them, she knows I secretly love that she is as nutty as me.

The Future is Right in Front of Me

I don't take random photos of people as a matter of course.  Granted, I accept that some people on the bus yesterday morning may have thought me strange or some sort of stalker when I took this picture.  I didn't care though, I don't live in that city so I wasn't going to see them again.

As photos go, it's not the best and doesn't really potray what I saw.  I used to look like this, I really did, I promise.  In fact, when I took myself of to Disney in 1997 I was probably a little thinner and most certainly as fit as this woman.  Granted, part of the reason was because I knew that I would put weight on whilst over in sunny Orlando but still.....

I enjoy keeping fit, I really do. You wouldn't know to look at me at the moment, you could be forgiven for wondering if I spend my life eating all sweet things that children love. And I do......

In my defence, I spend my life working, sleeping, cleaning, running around after the family and studying.  It has been my life for the past 5 years.  There is no time to keep fit.  Something would have to give and that would either be family, cleaning or studying and all of them are very important to me.  Yes I know I am a freak because cleaning is in that list but hey those that know me love me.

I am almost finished with the study.  As well as having the world at my feet (as many keep telling me) I will have an abundance of time to get fit again. 

I have no willpower, or at the most very very little of it.  It comes and goes.  I love the gym, I really do.  If you saw me you wouldn't believe it but I do.  My problem is that I am an all or nothing kind of person.  I do all sorts of things with an all or nothing attitude. 

When I take myself off to the gym I say to Hubby "See you in an hour" and I wander on back at least 3 hours later with a great big grin on my face with endorphins rolling off me in waves.  All very good, I hear you say?  Well yes, but not when you are studying for accountancy as 3 hours at the gym seriously eats into that more than an hour does.  I am totally incapable of just going to the gym for an hour, I've tried but I spend all my time there thinking "Just 10 more minutes...."

Stupidly, if I go to the gym the healthy diet follows - something kicks into my brain telling me that what is the point of spending 3 hours in the gym if I am going to eat a Mars bar when I get home.  Try and do it the other way round?  Nope, doesn't happen.  I go to do the weekly shop and fetch all sorts of goodies home for Hubby and Beautiful B and then they call to me from the drawer or cupboards.  Can I resist them, well yes obviously but I am weak.

I am finished with the exams on the 10th of June.  Hubby and Beautiful B are prepared for me living in the gym for the next 6 months.  A close friend told me that was a bit silly as running machines cannot make comfy bed. 

The new cardio equipment at the gym have screens on them so you can watch TV or plug your iPod in. So yes, I have been looked at strangely in the past laughing in the corner at the one liners on some TV shows that I download onto the iPod and then watch while on the treadmill or bike.   I wonder if any of them have bad dreams after randomly walking past me while watching Supernatural.... It doesn't concern me, I am used to laughing at myself, I do it regularly.  Life is full of things to laugh and giggle at - my glass is always at least half full so yes people laugh along with me.

So, I will be off armed with a towel, water, iPod and a book and I will walk, run, cycle and lift my way to looking like the woman in the above picture within the next 6 months.  Will I post a picture of myself looking as fit as the woman above?  Probably not.  I have an aversion to cameras - I love taking photos of family but if anyone points a camera in my direction I run faster than I ever have on a treadmill. 

There Is Just No Need!

God made many wonderful things but I have to say feet are not one of them.  In fact, I have a real foot phobia, so bad that when Beautiful B was younger (with legs long enough for her feet to accidentally touch mine - yes I am short) she was thrown off my knee on more than one occasion.  Now this wasn't deliberate, it's an involuntary reaction - kind of like when the nice doctor smacks your knee with the cute little hammer.  Hubby and Beautiful B realise just how lucky they are to have escaped with nothing worse than bruises in the past.

So, I innocently turned up at work today for my accountancy revision course ready for what was, for me, to be a "what you do not know and now need to panic about" course.  As you can imagine, I was assuming the worst to start with.

It did not get off to a good start.  Pardon me, had I just misheard the lecturer?  Did he just say that the sandals he wore today made a funny noise when he walked across the carpet so he was taking them off?  I had!  Truly I had, I had not imagined or dreamt it, I had indeed woken up this morning, had a rather unhealthy breakfast in the hotel room and proceeded innocently to the course.

To make matters worse, he further explained that the same thing happens when he walks across the carpet at the lecture venue in Birmingham!  I looked around cautiously to see if it was just me wondering why he would think it would be a good idea to wear them elsewhere then? Yep, just me.  Was he hoping that he would be in a squeak free zone today? Evidently.

Now bear in mind that one of the exams is on Strategic Business Management (SBM for short, rather catchy some would say) so I was prepared to be somewhat distracted with musings of whether I had actually previously heard some of the original lecture classes or whether I had inadvertently banished it from my mind immediately after hearing it the first time. Instead I found myself frequently distracted by feet. 

I tried, I truly truly tried not to look at them but my eyes were disobeying me.  What did I subconsciously think was going to happen?  That his feet were going to detach themselves from his body, walk over to me and taunt me?  Irrational.   I cannot even tell you if they were okay as far as feet go because I avoid looking at feet at every opportunity, even my own.  Probably explains why I fall over often.

I thought I was extremely polite by not asking him to put his sandals back on - obviously the good old British reserve that we are known for.  Lets face it, he was wearing sandals - would it have been much better if he had put them on if I had made such an insane request? I'd still have been able to see them.

I had to visit the chiropodist a while ago.  I felt sick for 3 days.  I told myself off all the way there in the car.  Beautiful B asked if I needed someone to hold my hand but I was brave.  Torture - I'd have been happier if you had put me on a medieval rack and stretched my oh so short body for 3 weeks.  The chiropodist was nice, smiled at me when I explained my aversion to all things feet evidently humouring me until I sat with my hands over my eyes and sniffled every now and again to which she responded "Oh, you are really really bad aren't you?"  No, I randomly go to places and explain that I am a bit of a freak.  Needless to say the enforced aversion therapy did not work.

Advertisements are another culprit. You can expect to find bare feet in bed, more than anywhere else but why on the TV? Will showing bare feet endear the public to go out and buy a bed?  I suspect not.  Even the cute little Bichon Frise puppy that jumped on the bed was not enough to make me watch it.  I had to take control of the TV remote from Hubby for the 3 months it could potentially just pop up on the screen unannounced.

Hubby and Beautiful B understand how I feel.  They are afraid of spiders, hubby amazingly so which I find somewhat amusing.  Beautiful B left me a nice note last week, translate to begging note explaining in full (A4 size) her reasons for leaving the HUGE spider from the sink (and how did it get in there anyway mum?) asking me to remove it so she could proceed with washing the dishes - the spider was smaller than a teaspoon and dead. 

House (House MD in the USA) is a wonderful programme, some of the shocking things Hugh Laurie is allowed to say make me giggle.  In England, the show is currently sponsored by a carpet company - tasteful and nice carpets as carpets go but why the marketing department thought they could sell more carpets by having random things "walk" across it is beyond me.  As much as I don't understand it even in my world, a tortoise and potentially a snake can be coped with.  Someone evidently complained because the tarantula that crawled through a shoe is no more - much to the families relief who no longer need me to supervise the opening credits at the beginning of the show and at every ad break. 

I am aware that I am strange. I freely admit it. I tell everyone this when I first meet them - I find it tends to prevent the inevitable look of confusion when I revert to be a bit nutty. In my defence, I am not the only one, Beautiful B is stranger than I, - her feet used to hurt when she saw blood, now they just hurt when she sees spiders - go figure!

So, is there a need? 

Not in my world but then I do not always live in my own little world - I randomly pass from my own to that of others, sometimes more frequently than other times.  People do not, however, pass through to my world - that is reserved especially for me.

Certainly no need in advertisements.  It is summer at the moment, people tend to wear sandals in warmer weather though in my defence the warmer weather was last week - we live in England, there will be no more until the random 1 week of gorgeous weather we get next year. 

Procrastinator or Not?

I can be extremely organised, I can, I promise. Especially when it comes to cleaning which I freely admit I can be a little obsessive about but that would be a future blog.

Todays musings over my inability to concentrate centres around the fact that I am less than a week away from my final exams in accountancy yet I find myself sat in a hotel room randomly conversing with friends on Facebook and reading some of my favourite blogs. Does that make me a procrastinator?

Before you wonder if I have rushed into that question without thinking it through properly let me break my day down for you:

1 Got up at ridiculous o'clock to make Hubby his lunch only to discover that he was in fact travelling to a meeting today and did not need his lunch. Therefore, he will be having it for his dinner. 

2 Calmed Beautiful B down after she had a minor meltdown about her first exam today - to be expected, she is my daughter after all so it is in her genes to put herself under too much pressure, she can't help herself.  At this point, I must ensure that you are fully aware that I was definitely going to get to the hotel and spend 6 hours completing intensive study and research for the forthcoming exams.

3 Packed the family off to work and school like the perfect domestic goddess that I am.  Had a shower then sat down for an hour to clear some of the recorded TV programmes (I assume it is the same as TIVO in the USA) to ensure that there is sufficient room to record the many programmes that must be recorded whilst I am in the hotel (and classes) studying furiously.  3 hours later got up again.  Received a phone call and sold my daughters best qualities to a job recruiter who obviously thought Beautiful B was wonderful after reading her job applications and who can blame her?

4 Packed and showered in record time while the fluffers flitted between staring forlornly at me and rummaging around in said luggage looking for goodies.

5 Travelled to the hotel, let Hubby know I had not crashed the car into a random motorway barrier on the way, had the minibar emptied to avoid dangerous levels of alcohol consumption and filled it with goodies that the fluffers had been prevented from stealing, unpacking in record time.

6 Spoke to Beautiful B who rang to relay that exam went better than she expected and to thank me for my confidence boosting speech this morning.  Was extremely happy with her and myself and much more relaxed about her ability to cope under such pressure.

7 Promptly went shopping for one thing, came back an hour later with 3 bags of things that I most certainly did need, thank you very much!


8 Spoke to Hubby who kindly informed me that while I was busy studying like a mad woman for exams which are a week away (!) my god daughter was learning to walk and I was missing it.  How nice of him. He did make it up to me, however, by telling me that she was wearing the giraffe dress that I bought her (being as obsessed as I am with all things giraffe, baby E has giraffe clothes, toys and books in a bid to ensure that she will always know who buys her all things giraffe) and that she looked beautiful. 

9 Read the archive for January 2008 for one of my favourite blogs Queen B - having only just discovered the joy of blogs I am furiously catching up whilst being well aware that this ideally should wait until the 11th of June when I will have an abundance of time on my hands (cleaning permitting).

10 Researched how to set up a blog - yes I know I should be researching High Quality Regulation in preparation for my exam but......

11 Set up a blog.

Now, does that sound like procrastination to you?  I think so.  So if that is the case, why do I not procrastinate when I feel the need to clean?  And why on earth do I find cleaning relaxing?  It is at times like this I wonder if I would fare better living in the USA where it is normal to discuss these things with a therapist.

As I told Hubby yesterday when he innocently said "Why are you totally incapable of sitting down and relaxing?  You have studied all weekend (honestly, I did) and today you clean the car for 3 hours." I was relaxing.  I was much happier and calmer when I could drive in a nice clean car to pick him up.  I was that relaxed I wasn't even upset when he got in the car and didn't notice I had laboured long and hard over it.

I Guess An Introduction Is In Order

I don't profess to be funny by any stretch of the imagination but I am told frequently that my mind wanders in all sorts of directions, generally in a number of directions at the same time which can be confusing for others but not for me.

I live in England. Blackpool to be precise. We have a football (Soccer) team affectionately known as the Seasiders, probably because Blackpool is by the sea. This football team managed to get into the Premier football league on Saturday - a major feat, even I have to admit that and I don't even follow the sport. The Seasiders will be playing against the big boys in a few months - to put it into perspective for you all, our best player was bought for £500,000 compared to players in the Premier league such as Rooney and Ronaldo who sell at extortionate amounts of money, you know, in the region of £20m. So I will be rooting for the "underdogs" as we affectionately know them over this side of the pond.

Blackpool has a tower, apparently similar to the Eiffel Tower in Paris, but smaller, much smaller. Trust me, I know, I've walked up Eiffel Tower - took me 4 days.....

We also have a theme park, but not built around a theme. Some may wish to compare it to Disney, I'm not sure why. I love Disney, I revert to being 10, I even managed to embarrass my daughter, who was only 3 at the time, when I ran up main street after Chip & Dale like some manic stalker.

In fact, I have enforced a law in my house which forces my Hubby (to be, but he won't mind being my Hubby for ease) to follow me to Orlando at some stage and cope with the extreme heat (of which he will not cope with as he gets hot when it is 2 degrees centigrade) so I can stalk Goofy.

I live with Hubby and my daughter, to be known as Beautiful B (as she hates her real name at the moment). We have 3 dogs (affectionately known as the fluffers) 2 Bichon Frises who are mum and daughter and a dog of whose origin is unknown - the vet is even confused. He resembles a giraffe but I am almost positive he is not crossed with one of those.

We did have 3 fish, Beautiful B fetched home another fish one day without permission, which promptly killed off her 3 fish as well as itself and the fish were no more. It was a shame - when one previously survives after being out of water for 2 hours on the kitchen floor and being stood on by Beautiful B you do begin to wonder if God is willing it to live - for all of about 5 seconds when Hubby and I realised we no longer had to clean out the fish tank on a regular basis.

Why am I starting a blog? Well, one of a number of reasons: either I am a procrastinator, worrying that I will be bored after my accountancy studies finish in 2 weeks or concerned that I am the only one whose mind wanders as far as it does. So, if you will bear with me, I may pass comment on random thoughts that push through what others may consider to be normal brain activity and may ask for opinions on what they mean as I have so far managed to completely confuse Hubby and Beautiful B who I am now sure just humour me.