Feeling Better?

Day Sixteen: Something that never fails to make you feel better

There are a few things that make me feel better. Watching Doctor Who is one of them. I can just settle down and watch it for hours on end, it’s nice to get away from the real world and loose myself in one of the stories. Same goes for reading books, I choose a nice happy book and read a few chapters of it til I start to feel better.

Other times, I write down what’s making me feel down onto paper, that helps to get it out there and rationalise things in my head.

Then, when all else fails, there is the world of You Tube, I stick on a couple of funny cat videos or the Backin’ up song

Something Missing

Day Fifteen: Something you miss

Right now, I miss being back at University. Not so much the work, I mean, right now my Facebook is inundated with statuses about the exams and final year projects. I don’t miss all that stress, in fact seeing those things make me quite glad that I decided not to do a Post-Grad course. Maybe one day I’ll go back and do one, but right now all that I need is a break from that type of stress. Admittedly, I’m more stress-free at the moment than I thought I would ever be, what with being unemployed at the moment. But I suppose that I should make the most of it while I do look for a job.

The thing that I miss most about my time at University is the people. I miss talking with them about lectures, or saying ‘Hi’ in the lab. I miss living away from home, in my little Wavertree house, where I got up to all sorts of shenanigans (Good word shenanigans XD). There aren’t many shenanigans now that I’m back at home, unless you count hiding random pictures around my brothers bedroom as an April fools.

I’m a bit naff when it comes to keeping in touch with people. I never really know what to say when the conversation starts to dry up, and there are people that I’m friends with from University, but not the sort of friends that I would be comfortable talking to not face to face. I suppose that that goes with the whole phone phobia thing. If I’m talking to someone, I prefer to be face to face unless I consider you to be a really close friend. (So, if I haven’t spoke to you in ages, it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I’m at a loss what to say. Like I said in the first post, socially awkward penguin.)

Nostalgia

Day Fourteen: Childhood toys

Time for some Nostalgia: My favourite toys from my childhood =D So, if you're a 90's child like me, enjoy!

Barbie! (Of course) I loved my Barbies, and this was one of my favourites.

As well as my Barbie dolls, I had some Sindys too, I had that dog, I remember that when it had batteries in it it would walk.

Gina's world were about the same size as Polly Pocket today. I used to collect the magazine too, I think i had about 50 dolls in the end

Speaking of Polly Pocket, the Polly Pocket that I had actually used to fit into my pocket

Another pocket toy, Puppies in My Pocket! I remember the day that I got this set. In the morning I had had an Ice Lolly for breakfast, even though my Mum and Dad told me not to (Badass or what?!) we went out to Ellsmere Port, went into Woolies, I picked out this set, then when I got home, I was sick all over the kitchen floor. I blame the ice lolly. Needless to say, no Ice Lollys for breakfast after that incident.

Littlest Pet Shop, again, I had loads of these. I loved that Parrot one, it's wings flapped when you press his head down.

Couldn't find a picture, but this boat was my favourite Slyvainian Families set.

I was the only one of my friends that had Teeny Weeny Families. I remember collecting tokens to send off for some dinky baby frogs.

I have got every episode of The Animals of Farthing Wood on VHS, that's probably my favourite kids TV show, along with Noah's Island. I still have this set, but Fox is a bit worse for wear, he's lost his tail.

TV Teddy was something that I played with at my Nannas house, though she only had one tape and it was a nightmare to set up, so when TV Teddy came out it was treat!

I got my first and only cabbage patch doll for Boxing Day one year, it was like this one, but it was a boy called Herbert

I always wanted a Furby, but my parents wouldn't buy me one. Luckily though, my Aunt and Uncle got me one from Hong Kong. Loved my Furby, even though by the time I had got hold of one, the phase was well and truly over. My Furby made up me me never being allowed a Tamogotchi

Pokemon, 'nuff said. I didn't have a game boy or the cards, but I collected the figures and cuddly toys

And to finish off, the first computer game that I ever owned, Dogz. I had a cuddly toy too.

So ends my trip down memory lane =D

Admiration

Day Thirteen: Talk about someone that you admire

So after months of waiting, Pottermore finally opened up the other day. I spend most of this morning exploring the site, finishing the first book a few hours ago. I didn’t think that I could love Harry Potter any more than I already do, but here I am falling in love with the books all over again. It’s all thanks to one woman, and that woman is JK Rowling. In my ‘Table for Ten’ post I said that she would be one of my ten dinner guests because she is an inspiration to me, and I thought that I would expand on that.

If you don’t know who JK Rowling is, where have you been the past decade?!? She’s sold well over 400 million books and is responsible for getting an entire generation of kids interested in books again, myself included. Although I’ve always read books, none of them ever captured my imagination quite like the Harry Potter books.

The Harry Potter books have had such a large impact on my life. The books really fired up my imagination and I would often write my own short stories based around the Potter universe. Knowing about JK Rowling, and her story has encouraged me to write more.

As a person, he has faced adversity and come out on the other side, and I admire that. It would have been easy for her just to give up, to throw her ideas away after the constant rejections from publishers. Knowing about the struggles that she has faced and how she has come through them has taught me not to give up when things get hard. I hope that once I’ve edited my NaNoWriMo story, I can send it away to publishers, I would love to see something that I’ve written on a bookshelf, it really would be a dream come true.

Something else that I admire is that you can see that she cares about her fans, how many other authors would agree to work on something like Pottermore.

I like the thought that has gone into the books. She has meticulously planned out stories for everything, and some of this extra information is show cased on the Pottermore website.

Phobia

Day Twelve: Write about things that scare you

Spiders? Not a problem. Heights? Not a problem. Flying? Not a problem. Some people seem to think that I’m fearless, I like to think I’m fearless, but I’m not. In fact, I would rather be afraid of those things than the two phobias that I do have. I know that phobia’s are irrational, but my two really are pushing it a step too far.

The first is needles, can’t stand them, just the thought of them brings me out in a cold sweat and I feel sick to my stomach. It’s stupid, I know. You need to get needles to protect against disease and I have had them all done, but it’s not for want of trying to get away from them. I had to have a blood test and it was my worst nightmare, they had to restrain me in the chair as the nurse poked around trying to find a vein, which hasn’t helped one bit. Horrible. The fear is so bad that it puts me off having children because that would mean having more needles and I’m terrified every time that I visit the dentist in case I’m told that I need to have a root canal or teeth removed. On the upside, I take excellent care of my teeth. It’s a phobia out of control and I have no idea what to do. In theory it shouldn’t be a problem. In my first post, there’s a picture of my using a needle to tag a mouse. That was a massive step for me. When I started, I was terrified to even touch the needles, I did a pretty damn good of hiding it though, So maybe that’s helped me out, I don’t suppose that I’ll know until the time comes for me to have more needles. But that’s not even the worst of my phobias.

Answering the telephone, it should be easy. Not when you find yourself feeling sick to the stomach every time the phone rings. It’s a real struggle to answer if I don’t know who’s on the other end. If it wasn’t for caller display I don’t know what I would do. Once I’ve plucked up the courage to answer, it’s OK, I can muddle through, and anyone that I’ve spoken to over the phone at work has told me that I have a lovely telephone manner. It’s being the one to make the phone call that’s the bigger problem, it should be simple, I watch my friends and family do it without thinking twice, given the choice, I avoid making phone calls. Again, a phobia that’s getting out of control, but I’m taking steps to try and stamp it out. If I have to make a call, I go somewhere quiet and I keep some prompts with me, I make a note of the things that I need to say and that helps out quite a bit. I hope to make a phone call in the week about some voluntary work, once I’ve built up my courage and prepared my little crib sheet.

More rationally, I’m afraid that I won’t be able to find a job that I like. I can think of nothing worse than having to spend the rest of my life either unemployed or in a job that I detest.  This fear isn’t helped by the constant refusal for every job that I’ve applied for so far. I know that if someone gave me chance, I could prove to them what a good worker that I am, and I will prove it once someone offers me an interview.

Books, books, books!

Day Eleven: Favourite Books

I love reading, always have done. I can often be found with my nose in a book. I used to go to the local library every few weeks and I would pick out some new books to read. There is nothing I love more than reading a brand new book, I don’t think that I could ever buy a Kindle to read books on, I like the feeling of reading books too much!

I think that my taste in books has changed as I’ve gotten older. When I was younger, some of my favourite books were the ‘Animal Ark’ series. I also loved a book by Rolf Harris which was full of true animal stories, I still read it from time to time now. I was a big ‘Secret Seven’ fan too, I had a badge with SS on it and everything. Books that I never really enjoyed were the ‘Goosebumps’ series, I never understood why they were so popular! They were always the books that had huge waiting lists at the school library.

The Harry Potter series of books would probably be on the favourite book list of anyone my age, and I’m no different. These books really captured my imagination, even if I was a little late to the party! I started reading the books at the end of 1999, start of 2000. I went on holiday the day before the release of The Half Blood Prince, and it was like two weeks of torture, seeing everyone that turned up at the hotel had a copy of the book and I was on a constant Spoiler Alert. Luckily, I managed to evade the spoilers and the book was waiting for me to get back.

For Christmas year before last I got a book, ‘The Butterfly Isles’ which followed journalist Patrick Barkham as he travelled the country over the space of a year to see each species of British Butterfly. The book highlighted the plight of the butterfly. Their habitats are being destroyed to make way for housing developments and climate change is pushing butterflies further and further North as the South becomes warmer. Eventually they will run out of space if more is not done to protect them.

I love a ghost story, especially local ones. The 'Haunted Liverpool' series of books are firm favourites. I enjoy reading them and matching the ghost stories to the places that I’ve been to, even though it was a tad creepy to find multiple stories which took place close to my student house in Liverpool, walks home after a night out were never the same again after reading one story involving the ghost of a hanged man

Something that I now try to do now is read the book before I see the film. It annoys me when people say ‘why bother reading the book when you can just see the film?’ a phrase that I have heard a lot more of since the Harry Potter films came out. The books are a million times better than the films, so many people are missing out on so much of a fantastic story just because they won’t read the book! I don’t think that people read enough.

I’m not a fan of soppy books, I tried to read ‘The Time Travellers Wife’, after reading the blurb I thought that it would be a book that I would love, but I just never got into it, I found the characters unlikeable and the story boring. I can say the same of Nicholas Sparks books and ‘P.S I love you’, but somewhat hypocritically, I love the film. I try to avoid the genre at all costs, but I make an exception for ‘OneDay’, since David Nicholls also wrote ‘Starter for 10’, which is currently one of my favourites.

Currently, I have four books on the go. The first is the ‘Complete Sherlock Holmes’, it’s taking me much longer than I had expected to read. The next is ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’, I’m dying to see the film so I’m trying to get through it as quickly as possible, but if I’m honest, I don’t really understand what’s going on! Book number three is ‘Elephants on Acid’ which is a book about bizarre science experiments. The final book is ‘Forty Years of Murder’ which is a book written by a home office pathologist.

I have a very long ‘to read list’. I want to read more of the ‘Disc World’ series, so far I have only read one and a half books in the series, so there are plenty more to keep me going! I have ‘Pride and Prejudice’ to read too, I started to read it years ago, but I don’t remember finishing it, so it will be good to read it now that I’m older, I think that I’ll appreciate reading it more.

Awkward.....

Day Ten: An awkward situation you’ve found yourself in

I have a big mouth, and I can be rather opinionated, more often than not, speaking without thinking. Of course, when that happens, its total crap and I end up retracting what I say, but there has been the odd occasion that such things have left me in somewhat awkward situations. A case point is saying how much I hate the name Patricia, when the friend that I’m telling this too tells me his Mum is called Patricia… Oops! But there is one occasion that tops that.

I went on an Identification of Bats course as part of my degree, it was a field course and I spent a long weekend in the middle of Shropshire learning about bats. The person leading the course was a tad odd, she kept dead bats in old margarine tubs, she dried out the bodies in her airing cupboard and we had a un-holy amount of tea breaks. It was the last night and we were out on another bat walk at stupid o’clock at night. By this point I had had my fair share of bats. Once the bat walk was done, she said that she would see us at about 3 in the morning at the same spot to see the bats coming in to roost. Now, in the itinerary that we were given, it said that this final bat walk would be optional, something that she didn’t dispute. We went to bed, but of course, I couldn’t sleep.

The alarm went off in the room and I got up and dressed. It was cold outside, I wasn’t feeling well, and I had less than an hour of sleep. Fair to say that I wasn’t in the best of moods to stand in the pouring rain counting bats. I tried to get her attention to ask if I could leave, but she was too into counting non-existent bats. She’ll never notice if I nip back to bed I thought to myself, and away I went.

 The next morning, I got up, well rested and ready for the day, went down to breakfast where a heated conversation was going on. I was right, she didn’t notice that one person had left, but she sure as hell noticed when about 15 people left and she was practically stood on her own. I had unintentionally started the mass migration of the group back to bed! The people that had stayed out told us that she had noticed that most of the class had disappeared and she would be docking marks from the people that had left (Not that it mattered, I made up any of the docked marks with a 71% on the essay afterwards). Everyone that had left was angry; the itinerary did say that it was optional. Anyway as we went back upstairs after breakfast, I had a conversation with my two friends, pointing out that she hadn’t even been looking at the right roost, that she was being unreasonable, that she shouldn’t have put optional on the itinerary if it wasn’t. I went on, and on about it, getting it all off my chest.

When we got into the room, my two friends were absolutely wetting themselves and I couldn’t understand why. When they eventually gained their composure, they told me that she was behind me the whole time, and she heard everything. Well, the class was a tad awkward after that. Glad that my friends had a laugh, because I was mortified. I laugh about it now though, you have to!