Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

I had a nice birthday, although I've forgotten some of the lesser details now. Mum gave me a pretty little storage box, a pretty notebook and 1000 piece mystery jigsaw puzzle. I finished it in two days, once I'd figured out a way to assemble it on my desk (the puzzle being twice the size of the available space on my desk, were my desk completely empty though then it probably would have fitted very well) and a gift card for the craft store. Napoleon gave me a card with money, as I'd advised him to.

We didn't go out this year but we ordered a takeaway which was very nice. She also gave me a chocolate birthday cake with a pretty 26 candle. I stayed up late to bake surprise cupcakes for the following Mother's Day and watched Howl's Moving Castle. It's still my favourite film, couldn't exactly tell you why though, I just like it.

For Mother's Day we watched Sherlock season 1 and had the leftover takeaway for breakfast. Mum liked the cupcakes.

Things have happened. Not big things but general things. It's hard to think of what to write about without going on and on and on for too long. I know I do that far too much, despite my best efforts.

I had a good Easter. I got some cheap moulds for little eggs and Easter chocolate pops from Tesco. I spent about two days painstakingly making them. On the first day the microwave decided to break so we had to get a new one and I had to spend the day boiling the kettle to melt the chocolate instead of being lazy and using the microwave. I had four chocolate pops but instead of just using plain chocolate I coloured the details with candy melts and then poured in the chocolate, that alone took me a day, but they looked pretty stunning when I was done. I also made four little eggs, two white chocolate with gold glitter (to be golden eggs) and filled with jelly beans and two milk chocolate decorated with coloured cake decorating sugar spots and filled with Smarties. These were evenly divided for the two children and put into two sweet little cupcake boxes. for mum I made a milk chocolate egg with a green heart. Then I spent the next day making additional eggs for the adults. There was one leftover Smartie one, two dark ones with the gold glitter that was left over in the mould, and three milk ones that I'd tried to marble with squiggles of white and dark chocolate and two dark chocolate with strawberry squiggles.

I only had two days to make the eggs and pops because we were meeting the family on Easter Sunday. That was also the morning Napoleon visited to exchange eggs.

Easter Sunday went well. We were a bit late. My cousin was there with the children, which greatly pleased me since I'd gone to all that effort to make their eggs and they weren't there last Easter, when we bought eggs for them. They were in the other room eating assorted little chocolate eggs that my aunt had given them. She gave me some too. I asked if they'd had much chocolate that day, my cousin just gave me that look that I'm sure all parents give at such a time and said yes. (By the way. She's actually my second cousin but for quickness I'm calling her my cousin, just so you know, doesn't really matter anyway.) And, smiling away, I replied, you're going to hate me then. I put the children's boxes on the table before them and they looked at them in such wonderment. Two days. Totally worth it. But I couldn't relish watching them eat them because my cousin decided that they should be saved for tomorrow, as the children had already had so much chocolate. I silently agreed with her decision, though I would've liked to see them open the boxes and see the surprise fillings inside the eggs but never mind. I didn't actually have enough eggs for the adults but I'd figured they could decide who got what between them, in the end they were put to one side and my aunt ended up keeping them so it was no problem.

For a short time the little girl made herself a little nest in the dog bed, as you can imagine, the dog was none too thrilled about that. The children started to get bored and there was no children's television to entertain them, my cousin hoped Jurassic Park 2 would entertain them, being full of dinosaurs but I suspected differently. It's too plot driven for an almost three year old and an almost four year old and not enough screen time was given to the dinosaurs at that point to engage the children. I was right.

One of my other cousins went to get some of their old toys for the children to play with. After playing around with some of the stuffed toys the boy was shown a box of toy army men and the girl some dolls and doll clothes which entertained them both for quite some time.

I was sat nearest to the door and with the best view into the room so when the boy wanted help making an army man stand up I was the first person he saw. The army man in question was a sniper and designed to lay on his stomach, so incapable of standing up. I tried to point this out and that it was more fun to wiggle him along on his stomach but the boy wanted it to stand up. So after a few attempts I was able to prop it up on the little plastic wall that came with the army men.

Seeing that I'd helped her brother with his toy dilemma, the little girl wanted me to help her dress a doll in a coat. It wasn't that tricky, she just wasn't twisting the arm enough to get it into the sleeve. I went back to the adults for a brief moment, then the boy wanted another flat army man to stand up, so I propped that one up too.

At the end of the evening the children wanted to take the toys home with them but my cousin didn't want them to. The little girl was already starting to protest so I stepped in and told them that if the toys left the house they would turn to dust (a blatant rip off of Night at the Museum, but they didn't know that). Evil I know but small children are innocent and inherently gullible so why not take advantage of that when you need to? It was hard to tell them this with a straight face but I managed. Liking the idea of this story my cousin and her mother backed it up as it stopped the children protesting. They were promised that the toys would still be there next time they came to play but they just couldn't take them home. I guess my cousin felt they had enough toys at home already or didn't want the extra hassle. Either way, if their mother is adamant that they can't have the toys and their grandmother is trying to help make that point then, as an adult, I have to agree with them and if I can make it easier for them then great.

As someone attempting to be a writer, telling stories to children can be considered part of my job. I did worry about the possible ramifications of this lie though. I know children forget very easily so, unless they are reminded of this story then I doubt they'd remember it by next year. But if they discover one thing told to them by an adult to be untrue then they may question other things they're told. I'm sure I'm over thinking this whole thing. Just in case, once the children had been taken home, I told the other adults of the story, just in case it should come up when I'm not there. That part of the family all live closely to each other and the children were due to visit again the following week, so I felt they should be made aware of the story in case the children should ask about it. I think my aunt didn't actually care if they had taken the toys but the wishes of the childrens' mother had to take precedent.

So. Those were the highlights of Easter.

I never got around to writing up our Christmas visit to the family. There's not so much I can remember about that but I should write it down for posterity. That day, before we went, mum went to the toy store to get a Christmas present for both children, which I wrapped. She got the boy a toy truck and the girl some strange fuzzy stuffed animal thing. Both children seemed very pleased with the gifts. The girl had brought two dolls with her that I guess she's just gotten for Christmas, since she was messing them up quite a bit but they looked quite new to start with. I wasn't quite sure they were appropriate for a two year old, since they came with small accessories. They were Disney princess dolls, I think, that had removable tiaras, dresses and shoes. The shoes quickly went missing and/or broken, as did the tiaras. They both spent a lot of the time eating sweets and cakes. At one point the girl went exploring the bedrooms of my other cousins and found two little stuffed toys.

My cousin said she'd have to take them away from her at some point before they left because the girl would start screaming when it was time to leave. Towards the end of the evening the boy started loading little bits of cake into his new toy truck and driving it across the table. It was so sweet to see. When my cousin was starting to think about leaving I went around and gathered up the little pieces from the dolls attire and gave them to her. I still remember being a little girl and losing toys at my aunt's and being unhappy about it, so I decided to try and prevent that for the little girl as best as I could. I had previously and surreptitiously removed the two stuffed toys from the girl's sight earlier on when she'd forgotten about them. As I'd predicted/hoped, she didn't notice their absence. I remember from personal experience that small children forget very easily. My cousin was relieved about that.

When it was time to leave, just as my cousin had predicted, the little girl did start crying. No surprise. It was quite late and she'd been awake the whole time. At that point she'd only just realised that she felt tired. Another thing I remember that children do very well. From the moment she was told it was home time she started crying.

My cousin didn't plan to drive the short journey to their home as she'd been drinking so mum offered to drive them home. She loaded the little ones into the back and we drove her home and helped her get everything out of the car. The girl was still crying during the short journey. During that time I was making a little paper crane. I wanted to make a flapping crane to try and entertain the little ones but forgot how so I made a regular one and gave it to the boy. He was pretty amazed by it. Then we went home.

In more recent news.

The fur on Yuki's tummy is growing back very well. She's shedding like crazy. I finally got around to putting up all the glow in the dark stars in my bedroom. I've been feeling pretty good lately, so that's good. I'm almost dome making a new plastic bag. Last night I started thinking about an old story of mine. It's the one I was writing about ten years or so ago now. Wow, quite some time ago huh? It's the one based on various mythologies that I'd looked up on Wikipedia, but mainly based on Greek mythology. I lost that story a long time ago, it didn't matter much, it wasn't a very good story and I hadn't gotten very far with it. But I started to wonder if I could rewrite it into a good story now. So I'm writing down what I can remember of it and then I'll make additions and alterations to improve it based on what I've learnt and the kind of influences I've acquired these past ten or so years.

I'm still working on my "Mad Scientist Project" too. I plan to work on this old story while I gather more thoughts for the "Mad Scientist Project". The "Mad Scientist Project" will take precedent though.

So. That's all for now.
That's all folks

Bluebiird out.