transformation ends in maggoty mess

sadly two more of our caterpillars bit the dust in a fairly spectacular maggoty way - so we released the other one into the wild in the hope that he would find his way into a chrysalis

transformation is a messy business

at the minute i am sharing my home with three of these guys (it was four but one stopped moving and then about a hundred maggots burst out of it in an alien-esque way), in the hope that they will one day turn into large white or cabbage white butterflies.

they came from my mum and dad's crop of pak choi, which were very nice, until the caterpillars got them.

what i now know about caterpillars is that they poo a lot and they eat as much as they poo. the person who wrote 'the very hungry caterpillar' talks about the eating, but not the pooing - very misrepresentative. all i want to know now is when are the darn things going to turn into chrysalises?

some randomness

in this last week:

I was temporarily driven insane by my children - they were off for half term and allied carpets forced me to stay in for 3 days whilst they may or may not eventually turn up and fit our kitchen floor.

I joined the fulcrum leadership team.

I had a lot of late nights.

I began to worry that the 'emergent church' thing was going to become just one more clique, if it hasn't already.

in the coming week:

I am still trying to entertain children, as someone in their wisdom has tagged on two inset days to the half term - I am also still waiting in for allied carpets.

I am going to go to bed very early tonight.

I am having an interview at trinity college in bristol - hmmm.

going on a bit

it has come to my attention that I have been 'going on a bit' about the whole gender thing and whilst I am likely to 'go on a bit' about it in the 'near future', I thought before the 'quotation mark' thing gets 'out of hand', we'd have a bit of an 'interlude'.

so here it is.

an interlude.

oh go on, that was funny, ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hoo hoo hoo aah *wipes away tears*

it's a serious business

courtesy of johnny and hannah

parenthood

what can I say - if anyone has been a full-time parent of over 4 year olds, surely surely they will identify with this?

I'm back and currently impersonating mr bean

so yesterday we drove back from sweet norfolk (more about camp later) and we got back around midnight - we had to leave camp a day early because my sister is having a 'thing' and we have to be there today at 4pm, so in order to have time to turn some stuff around at home, we had to leave yesterday.

for any of you who lead on camps, you will know that we are walking zombies at the moment, well that's my excuse anyway. today I did a very fine impression of mr bean, in that episode where he gets into the carpark without stopping to pick up a ticket. literally, in zombie mode, I followed the car in front of me as it moved forward and then looked in horror as the barrier started to descend on top of my car, but I zipped forward and no damage was done, except for the slow trickling realisation that I was now in the carpark without a ticket and was going to have to present myself as dumb brunette to the carpark attendants, something I have had to do in the past, not my favourite activity, and, of course, I realised that I SHOULD NOT BE DRIVING.

having wittily begged a ticket from said carpark attendants, I toddled into town, bought the thing I needed to buy, and went home.

my eyelid is ticking too.

perplexed

dave walker is a wonderful cartoon blogger who has asked us to come up with things that perplex us about church - this has of course meant that his comments section has become very long, for some reason many people have things that perplex them about church.

my favourite are:

tractor girl's perceptive comment: Why the person at the front has to use the word “folk” instead of “people”, even if they never use the word in normal speech.

and Phill's frustration about paint: I also find it perplexing that a church would spend 45 minutes arguing about which colour to paint the vestry! (in the end I think a fairly non-descript white colour was chosen).

brilliant dave! very therapeutic.

my frustrations were these:

why people basically want to say ‘I told you so’ - this is the basic foundational premise of the Rapture, Left Behind series etc etc. you know a kind of ‘please let the rapture be true, because I’ve left a very smug message on a video at the back of the cabinet….’

people who judge what comes out of your mouth by whether you happen to have XX chromosomes.

feel free to add your own suggestions.

bad christian music

okay, I found this on the internet. it's entitled 'bad christian music', but, correct me if I'm wrong - isn't this the entire cast of 'bread'?

as much as I agree that some Christian music might be considered 'bad', I must protest that the cast of 'bread' probably were not out to be the gospel choir of Liverpool....

tonsilitis

my son has tonsilitis.

big slap on the back for anyone who can actually point out the tonsils in this picture...

I feel like my brain has melted.

what's that buzzing sound?

it's my brain going into overload.

I have now finished previously mentioned monolithic essay. However it is 1138 words over its word count and that's including the extra 10% that they generously allow us to play with.

why oh why is it that for every year that I am at college I seem to exponentially grow in the ability to floweth over with unnecessary words! when I started I had to do essays that were 1500 words long - now that is routinely the (least) amount that I have to cut out - grrrr.

my husband despairs of me - he says 'why use 10 words when you can use 50'. what can I say? I'm verbose (point made)

bzzzz bzzzz

I never do this, I'm not doing it now, for instance

once again, thanks to Dave for nailing my exact problem on the head with astonishing accuracy (the monolith is an essay, in my world)

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

meltdown

so apparently the swimming didn't clear my head enough the other day and this probably contributed to the slight meltdown that occurred this morning.

things contributing to meltdown scenario:

1. children are going through a developmental state which necessitates them being little 'horrors'.
2. someone I know died this week - not a close friend, but still weird.
3. am completely pre-menstrual.

the actual meltdown just consisted of me having a rant and probably smoke coming out of my ears - thankfully there were not too many people around to see it and those that allowed me to rant are people that I can now return to and show that I really am a lovely calm person - really.

lessons learned:

1. instigate 'zero tolerance' procedure with said lovely sunbeams of mine.
2. remember that grief comes in all shapes and sizes.
3. breathe deeply at all times - remembering not to hyperventilate.

feeling better already

last day of the holidays

well, as the title suggests this is the last day of the holidays.

of course a good majority of the county go back to school today, but we have the joy of an 'inset' day - that's a teacher training day for anyone reading from outside the UK, or a 'baker' day for those who wish to look back in a nostalgic manner at their own school days and were born in the 1970s.

so, in view of the belief that there will be less children around, we are braving the delights of Legoland today.

pray for us.