You know it’s F**KING cold, and you have inadequate heating when…

Well I’m off to my moms for the weekend on Thursday, well my moms and a Friday evening with one of my adopted lil sisters. But that leaves me with a slight problem. This trip wasn’t really planned, meaning I didn’t have a couple of weeks to get ahead of myself work-wise. This leaves me with two written blogs, a video blog, AND a webcomic page to have done by Wednesday evening…you’re getting list posts. Sorry but that’s how it is, and seeing as for the past week my first thought every morning has been “Gee I wonder are my eyelids frozen together this time?” We’ll be starting with this.

(Most of this list is made in jest, but I did honestly think every single one over the past 7-10 days.)

You know it’s F**KING cold, and you have inadequate heating when…

…there’s semi-frozen slush on the insides of your bedroom windows.

…the idea of being smelly is more appealing than having half of your body exposed by the bath water.

…a shower sounds like a quick way to get colder.

…the dogs refuse to leave the living room, even to eat.

…they also refuse to leave the living room, to pee.

…or poop.

…you go outside, and realise it’s warmer outside than in your house.

…a long boring drive is appealing purely for the car heater.

…your computers cooler fans haven’t switched on in days, even though you’re playing a borderline playable game, at maximum graphic settings.

…you leave out dinner to defrost, and it doesn’t.

…you need a hammer, and chisel to remove the dog poop that is outside on the decking.

…Eastern Europeans are saying that the weather is getting a little nippy. (Extremely bad sign, those places have SERIOUSLY cold weather.)

…you don’t see a single overweight, florid faced man, in a t-shirt for days.

…going to bed, you still have your bed-clothes on underneath your day clothes.

…getting up the following morning, your first act is to put on your heaviest clothes, over your bedclothes for the third day in a row.

…your second act is putting on your hooded fleece, with hood up, to go eat breakfast.

…you can’t wait to empty the tumble-dryer, oh that glorious gust of hot air, and those lovely toasty warm linens to cuddle as you fold them.

…you stand with your hands in the sink for 10 minutes before you remember that you’re supposed to be washing the ware.

…you rush to empty the dishwasher so you can handle the dishes while they’re still roasting hot.

…you’re a Winter person, but you keep catching yourself thinking longingly of Summer.

…you actually consider renaming your dog “Winter” something a little warmer, like “Summer”, “Lava”, “Volcano” or “Heat-Death”.

…you slice your finger open, and don’t notice until the sandwich you were just making is ruined by the blood-pool.

…Hell sounds like a great vacation spot.

and last but far from least,

…you seriously consider moving out of the house you adore, just to be warm.

The Versatile Bloggers Award.

Okay we’re going to pretend that it’s awards time today, and all because of the blogger extraordinaire, and bearer of many wonderous tattoo’s Kana Tyler. On Friday the 18th she awarded me a Versatile Bloggers Award. This seems to be rather like a blog writers Oscar. Except that it actually means something, seeing as someone has to actually like your work to nominate you. Rather than just liking the brown envelope you just passed them. However this award comes with some responsibilities, and rules.

(Yes I do know there’s a difference between “award”, and “nominate”. But do you know what? I’m not a frikkin’ Nazi of the Grammar, Punctuation, or Dictionary varieties. So we’re going to use those two words in an interchangeable way. If you don’t like that…well I say bladders on sticks at dawn.)

Have at you vile knave! (Image via http://www.badscience.net)

1. She must link to the person who nominated her for the award.
2. She must share seven random facts about herself.
3. She must nominate the next fifteen winners, with links to their blogs. (note; blogs she actually likes.)

So that’s step 1 done, when I linked the blogger extraordinaire, and bearer of many wonderous  tattoo’s Kana Tyler. (Bet you love me even more now Kana. That’s two plugs in one post.)

Now my seven random facts.

1. I like dull overcast days best of all.
2. My first dog was a Kerry Blue Terrier, named Snoopy. He hated my sperm donor, and so bit him at any, and every given opportunity. Good boy Snoopy.
3. On my 17th birthday I was climbing a cliff in a local quarry. I fell, all my gear stripped, and after about a 40 foot fall I landed bum first on an upward pointed stone. This resulted in my breaking my coccyx for the third time, and my having a very red face.  These days I remember that “OH SHIT I AM GOING TO DIE!” moment every single damp day. *Shifts uncomfortably in her chair.*
4. When I was a little individual, I always wanted to grow up to be a 1930’s science fiction serial film heroine. Think Jean Rogers as Dale Arden, but without the constant screaming, the cowering behind Flash, or the wandering around without a gun all the time. Damn it Dale, stand up for yourself woman!
   

   "If he steps in front of me, just one more time I'll...." Shortly after Flash was found with his head stoved in. (Image via filesofjerryblake.netfirms.com)

5. I’m going on my first date in 4 years tomorrow. She’s kind of awesome, very hot, and I’m genuinely crapping myself.
6. Before I changed my name, I was named after 3 different people. Including a random stranger who just happened to be in the church, and having no family they asked my parents if they could be remembered through me.
7. On the night I was born a star fell from the sky, and crashed to Earth in the form of Star-Metal. That Star-Metal was secretly forged in to a sword of unsurpassed elegance, and killing power. A sword which one day will be used by the steampunk-heroine, and alter-ego of Amanda Harper, Acidgirl, to slay all the false gods. Thus freeing us all in a Red Sonja/Star Gate-esque manner, from an unknowing enslavement to our hidden overlo….No, not really, but I did try to come out face first. Thus causing my sainted mother to be cut wide open to get my shapely arse out into the world. One of these days she might actually forgive me for that. Though probably not.

Step 3 is going to be kind of tough. I’m not sure that there are fifteen blogs that I read regularly, and actually like but, hey we’ll do our best

1. Consider the Tea Cosy.
2. Stacy Bias.
3. The Musings of a Lesbian Writer.
4. Threads of Aether.
5. DeShocks 
6. Sadhbh Warren.
7. Ukulele Hunt.

That is literally it. I spend far more time writing blogs than reading them, so I just don’t have 15. It would have been 8 except that I’ve already plugged the blogger extraordinaire, and bearer of many wonderous tattoo’s Kana Tyler twice already…ah crap.

Ten ways I knew I’d finally become an adult.

I’ve always maintained that eventually you do have to become and adult, but you never have to become a grown up.  The difference is of course, that being an adult is being responsible for yourself. As well as willingly, even enthusiastically, owning you actions, thoughts and words, no matter how embarrassing they may actually be.  While being a grown up is the generic equivalent to being the horrifically untrendy geography teacher, who somehow still thinks he is trendy.  You know the guy, he called everyone dude, threw slang around like it was going out of fashion.  But he did this while wearing a patterned hand-knitted jumper and smoked a pipe when he wasn’t in class.

But lately I’ve realised that after thirty-three years of knocking around the planet I’ve somehow gone and become an adult.  Yup that’s right, I’m now a responsible human being.  But unlike my geography teacher in school I’m still hip. I play PC games, I make chainmail, I still play Dungeons and Dragons, I play a ukulele goddess damn it! Anyway, while coming back from a trip to a knitting shop earlier today, I got to thinking about the signs that made me realise that I’m no longer an overgrown kid.  This post is the fruits of those thoughts.

So here are the ten ways I realised I had become all grown up.  Enjoy.

10. I not only have a last will and testament, but I realised I needed to update it in order to account for changes in my circumstances.

9. My own birthdays mean almost nothing to me anymore, but making my friends and families birthdays joy filled affairs mean everything to me.

8. The phrase “Amanda is going through a troubling period in her life, hair has started growing where there was no hair before, and she’s started to notice girls in a new way…” has started to have meaning again in my life.  I found a hair, a big-ass curly one at that, growing out of the centre of an old scar.  And I’ve started to notice just how annoying girls in their 20’s can be.  Seriously if I hear one more high-pitched cackling laugh from a gormless twenty-something dressed like a chav reject from the television show “Misfits” I may actually be able to claim temporary insanity for my subsequent actions.  This is a sad state of affairs, since I used to just find younger women hot.

7. I have a medical condition which always seemed to me to be the embodiment of what we shall call, a person of superior maturity.  I have a hernia.  It may only be a hiatus hernia, but still…

6. Where not long ago I would have eaten it by the fistful, I now avoid fried food because I like my heart beating inside my chest, instead of it being dissected by a future dentist.  (Ten points to anyone who recognises that reference.)

5. I now actively look for computer games which have enthralling stories, preferably including some biting social commentary.  Needless to say I’ve yet to find many of those.

4. My last birthday present from my partner was a coffee grinder.  Not a new piece of revealing leather wear, not a shiny new strap-on, not a boxed set of horror movies.  A coffee grinder.  To make things worse I asked for it.

3. In my teens, and early twenties I looked at other women’s bodies with unrestrained jealousy. In my late twenties I looked with envy at other people’s gothwear.  Now in my thirties I gaze longingly at other people’s houses and find myself imagining what I would have done differently with the decor.

2. Once the thought of sex, involving multiple positions, toys, whips, chains and preferably a third person every single night was heavenly.  Now I just want sex every other night, after all it’s so nice to snuggle up to someone, cuddle them to sleep and then read Terry Pratchett ’til the wee small hours of the morning.  Though the third person would still be very welcome.

1. Finally the most damning sign of the oncoming personal apocalypse, I no longer think longingly of eating chocolate morning, noon and night.  In fact often weeks go by with my having eaten absolutely no chocolate at all. What’s happened to me? I used to think of chocolate the same way I thought of sex, often and usually intermixed.

Well I guess there’s nothing left for it now but to buy a beautiful coffin and prepare for the inevitable. By occasionally sleeping in it and making a gorgeous coffee table/sex toy case out of it. I did say adult, but screw ever growing up. (Ten more points for identifying the coffin reference)

Oh and just to add a little point of interest, my friend Rachel turns 24 today, so happy birthday Rach.  I’m dedicating this one to you, you’re still a young one so don’t be getting all down in yourself.