Macleans Toothpaste

In todays internet world and in some cases having to deal with on-line customer service it can be very frustrating.  In a lot of cases you don’t get a response from the contact forms.

So imagine my surprise when I contacted Macleans toothpaste company regarding their milk teeth range. 

I sent a message through their contact form late one night because I’d been unable to buy any from both Sainsbury’s or Boots.

The next morning (before lunchtime) I had this reponse back:

"Thank you for your email regarding the availability of Macleans Milk Teeth Toothpaste.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience you may have been caused, and we thank you for taking the time to contact us.

Kind regards

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The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I’ve just spent a very enjoyable evening with my family (including mom, sis and her daughter) and an old friend (and his wife) of my dad’s.

I mentioned it under There’s More and Time Flies.  My sister helped me scrub the house clean and rearrange the living room and she helped me prepare supper for them.  My sister is definitely the artistic one.  The way she arranged the food we prepared looked lovely.  It’s one of her favourite things, entertaining, so I had expert help on my side.

We spent the evening reminiscing about dad and the things that they used to get up to and generally about events in our lives.  As I mentioned before in the blog they had never met my children so it had been over 10 years since we last got together. 

But one of the nice things about old friends is how you can just pick up where you left off.  There was no awkwardness in our conversation tonight and it really did seem like only yesterday that we last met up.

It was funny though, my dad’s friend is quite a straight talking person.  He calls it as he sees it, so to speak.  He was summing up how we all looked,  and when he got to me he said I looked thinner and haggard!  What do you say to that apart from "yes, I probably do". 

The thinner part I don’t understand as I am still the same weight as before I got pregnant which is under 9 and a half stone, so whether it was the clothes I was wearing, I don’t know.

This in itself was (fairly) okay.  Sometimes it takes a person outside of the usual circle to make you stop and think.  But, we looked at some of the old photograph albums and there was one which mom had made up of mainly photos of me.  (She did it for both my sister and I.)

As he looked through, he laughed at some of the funny pictures, then said that I was never a good looking girl anyway, but I’ve matured!

At 43, I can’t get upset at comments like these as I always knew I was never the one to be picked at school dances for the slow numbers.  Even as I was older at nightclubs, it was the same.  I was usually the one to make up numbers. 

But today I’ve been feeling weepy and a bit hormonal and the comments have just slapped me in the face a little bit more than they should have. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not cross with him for the comments being made and in actual fact it was probably my just rewards for laughing at my sister when not one but two people thought she was my mom not my sister. 

I’m just the ugly daughter that’s all.

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What a Wonderful World

Well for a day at least.  I was determined to have a family day out today so we packed some sandwiches, chocolate and drinks into the car . . oh yes and the children . . and tootled off to Kenilworth Castle for the day.

It’s a wonderful place.  Even though it’s mainly the ruins of the castle it’s a great place for children to run around and explore in.  Their imagination can run wild.

And of course when the sun is shining as brightly as it has been today it made for a fab day.  And that’s the verdict of the children.

My eldest son had stayed at his nana’s last night but came home this morning to come out with us.  As we drove home from Kenilworth Castle he said he was glad he came with us.  Big compliment indeed.

One of our biggest laughs was watching the boys rolling down the side of this steep mound.  I love how children show no fear.  We were sitting looking up with sharp intakes of breath at the way they were just throwing themselves down.  Our laughter was probably more of a nervous relief!

I should be doing some work tonight, but the fresh air has got to me and I’ve been asleep up with the children for over an hour and a half.  I only intended staying for 10 minutes!

Mind you, I had stopped up late last night to try and get some of my backlog of accounts done, so that probably hasn’t helped.  I was accompanied by misslionheart who was blog hopping and kept stopping by for a chat.  Thanks for that.  (Although she did tell me off at one point as I wasn’t doing my work!)

It is one of my weaknesses I’m afraid.  Any excuse not to do the miserable jobs, like ironing, accounts, cleaning, tidying etc.  Speaking of which there is a pile of ironing with my name on it . . . . .

Posted in General | 8 Comments »

Stop Worrying!

There are always so many things to worry about. But is it really necessary at all?

We worry about things that have already happened. Since we are powerless to change the past, why bother worrying about it?

We worry about the future. Yes, planning for the future is important. But overdoing it serves no productive purpose. Isn’t there a saying which suggests that tomorrow will take care of itself? Besides, the future is unpredictable and anyone’s life can take a turn for the better or for worse very suddenly - what’s the point of worrying about it then?

Basically, the things we worry about can be split into two broad categories - things which we can change and matters which are out of our hands. For the latter, there is no point worrying, is there? As for the former, well, go do something about it, rather than sitting around moping and worrying!

Worrying is a negative mechanism which has adverse effects on both our physical and mental health. Furthermore, it uses up much time and energy. It’s time to cut down on this indulgence!

(This piece is courtesy of JaneBond who writes on MySpace.  The articles are lovely pieces she either finds, re-writes, or writes herself.)

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Sock It To Me!

I have completely outdone myself and I don’t know whether to be proud of it or embarrassed.

You see I decided to spend a proportion of my day sorting out my odd sock bags . . yes I have more than one bag. 

I went for the world record of sock pairing and matched up 164 pairs and I’m not done yet.  Can anyone beat that?  Would anyone admit to it?

I still have about a hundred lonely socks (very conservative estimate, it’s probably much higher than that).   

To be fair many need to go to the textile recycling bins as they either have loose elastic, they’re really worn out or they’ve lost their colour (especially the black ones). 

I’ve been amazed by the number of different colour black socks I have.  You think you’ve got a pair but they just won’t match up.  I am particular you know!

These socks have been littering my bedroom and I got fed up of the children constantly whining "we’ve got no socks". 

So now I have floor space back in my bedroom and no nagging from the kids!

Posted in General | 15 Comments »

Topical

Well for five minutes I’ve actually been topical.  Following my blog entry Marriage Guidance about happy relationships, Channel Five ran a small article on their tea time news about the same thing!

It was only a short segment and referred back to attitudes from the 50’s like "men, don’t nag your wives".  They did talk to one or two couples but I didn’t really pick up on any good tips from it.

However I did find the Liz Jones article I was referring to.  It was actually in first magazine, 9 - 15 June 2007 and the article was called "The bigger the wedding . . the rockier the relationship".  Unfortunately I couldn’t find any on-line references to the article so here are some snippets from the Liz Jones article.

"According to a new survey by wedding planners TK Weddings, more than 59 per cent of couples wanted guests to think their ceremony was the best wedding they had ever been to.  Only one in four wanted guests to see how in love they were. . ."

". . . And my experience is that the more elaborate the wedding (the Beckhams, Liz Hurley, Liza Minnelli and David Gest), the more the couple are trying to prove."

"My theory about elaborate weddings is that the whole exercise is displacement activity.  What counts is not how fancy the flower arrangement on each table is, but how long the couple stay together."

Staggeringly Liz quotes that the average wedding now costs £60 a minute . .!

The article is lovingly finished off with a testimony about her own parents who married during a three-day furlough from active service in Italy. 

Liz says " She (her mom) wore a cotton frock from Horrocks and drew a line up the back of her legs for want of a pair of stockings; he was dapper in his captain’s uniform.  They were together for nearly 60 years, and never spent a night apart . ."  How wonderful.

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Talent in Abundance

I marvel at how other people write.  The use of description to make an every day task seem so much more alive. 

Take Livvy’s Life for example.  The way she writes about potting plants in the blog entry Planting Up especially the first two paragraphs makes me almost smell the soil.

Anne Brooke is the same.  Her blogs make me laugh out loud at the way she describes her daily life.  I also love that she can just ‘throw together’ words to make haikus, poems, and short stories as well as the novels. 

I came across this lovely little mini story she wrote called Break-Time.  Seemingly effortless but a little joy.

I would love to be more creative in the way I write but I wonder if it would look too false for me now.  Maybe I’ll start throwing in the odd adjectives apart from ‘nice’ and see where that gets me.

But not today.  I have two children at home poorly with different things, although Calpol has kicked in at the moment so both seem ‘up’ for now.  They could be in that advert where Calpol apologise for the difference it makes!

I therefore have all three children at home today.  I’ve already had to make a batch of fairy cakes.  And for lunch they have all  requested pancakes.  So a cheap food day really, just water, eggs, flour, milk and sugar.  Plus the lemon for the pancakes of course.

While my husband was at home I nipped out to the local supermarket stocked up with calpol, tonic (not for the gin I might add, the yummy orange variety that builds you up!) bits and pieces for tea and bought a film for this afternoon. - Over The Hedge.

So you can guess what we’ll be doing later.

Posted in General | 2 Comments »

Marriage Guidance

Having been married for ’double figure’ years now you’d think I’d be able to pass on some pearls of wisdom.  No!  Simply because what works for one couple doesn’t always work for another. 

However I was intrigued by an article in a recent magazine by Liz Jones who was lamenting on the invitations she had received for three weddings and the rules and regulations attached to them.  The underlying comment that stuck out for me was that the more expensive the wedding, the less chance it has to survive. 

Plus a very good comment that "did people invite others to see them marrying for their love or the show of the wedding?"  (Unfortunately I couldn’t find the full article at the time of writing this but if I do I’ll let you know which magazine and highlight the parts I was referring to.)

It’s a big generalisation but in part I tend to agree with it.  I remember years ago attending a friends wedding and nothing was out of place.  If you knew this friend you would also know that appearances in these circumstances meant everything.

A little while later I commented to her how perfect the wedding was.  She purred "it was, wasn’t it".  Fast forward a few years, the marriage ended.  I could never see her growing old with the man she married but I would never have wished her to split up and go through the heartache of divorce especially with children involved.  And I was on the receiving end of the heartache.

But it is strange.  When I married my husband we had our doubters although I’ve never found out the reason why.  I think people just thought we weren’t suited.  We got married within 18 months of meeting each other and that was with my husband having asked me to marry him three weeks after we we’d met.

We didn’t tell people until four months later as we knew the reaction we’d get.  Even then because we decided to tell our parents at a family meal straight after our first holiday together, at that stage we hadn’t even bought an engagement ring. 

This actually led some people at work to not believe me.  Without that token on my finger how could I be engaged?

Because getting married was our first thought, the engagement ring, to us, came when we had the money to buy it after my husband’s next pay had gone in. By todays standards mine was not expensive, being less than £400. 

This doesn’t mean we were cheapskates.  The ring stood out to both of us at the same time and that’s why we bought it.  And the magic of us both liking the ring at the same time meant it was far more special than how much it cost.  In comparison to my friend above who had paid £3000 for her ring and seemed to think that this was the norm and dare I say even cheap.

Our wedding was in a Church, but our reception was held at my parents house.  And it rained!  Not good when you are basing your reception on being in the garden.

However, as one of our guests said "at least people will remember it". 

Maybe it worked for us because we were older when we met (I was in my late twenties and hubbie in his early thirties).   Of course this can also come with disadvantages because you can be a little more set in your ways.

But over the years as we hear of acquaintances who have divorced, had affairs, separated, it always begs the question - what does it take to make a marriage work?

Our own formula?  A very good sense of humour (to laugh things off), apathy (our idea is that if you don’t have the high expectations of each other you’ll be less disappointed!) with a good measure of tolerance (sometimes you just have to walk away and say nothing).  Plus a big dollop of love of course.

Oh yes and make sure you get the biggest slice of cake!

What’s your secret to a happy relationship?

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