The last christmas to be spent in this house was a quiet one. The week previous to it, I managed to fall up the stairs and sprain my ankle quite badly and so I spent the week hobbling around on a rather bruised foot. Come christmas day and I was knocking back painkillers like smarties, not that they helped much. Coralie stayed until the afternoon so we had a drink and something to nibble on before she left. We exchanged gifts, and quite frankly, Coralie is doing quite well for herself.

Tatiana and I then watched a couple of episodes of Desperate Housewives, a present from the girls, before Tatiana embarked on cooking the evening meal of lamb. I managed to prepare the entrée seeing as I could do it seated at the kitchen table, and we both both enjoyed the meal despite the fact that Tatiana almost burnt the spuds. We watched more TV before going to bed after what seemed to be a short day with very little company. Heavens knows where I’ll be next year, but it can’t get worse than this years’.

My dad had sent me a SAD lamp for christmas but due to the weather it hadn’t yet arrived – I could have done with a blast of light. Still, it was the first white christmas that I can remember – ever, although Tatiana had to push Coralie’s car as it was stuck deep in the snow. Even now, the roads are pretty bad, but thankfully, people appear to be driving very carefully, apart from Little Miss Giggles (Coralie) who drove over a pedestrian crossing today that had five people on it. Fortunately, they were no where near the car.

“Oooops,” she said, “I didn’t see them.”

I should have bought the girl glasses for driving – she misses sign-posts too.

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We’ve had our fair share of snow, amounting to about 10cms last Saturday until it started raining during the night and washed it all away. I haven’t seen so much of the white stuff fall in years and I really needed to get out last week so I did. During a snow blizzard. Dragging my granny trolley back from the shop was a bit of a nightmare and I ended up with a fucked back. I really should invest in some good gloves, too, as Tatiana lost my thick woollen ones last year.

Coralie has looked at her first apartment but apparently it was too expensive. At €700 per month, heating only included, I’m inclined to agree – especially as there was only one bedroom. And people wonder why I don’t want to rent – talk about throwing your money away. With whatever I get from the sale of this house – and I’m really hoping it will be slightly more than €100k as any less and I will end up living in the city and I have never lived in a city – I like trees and bees and things.

SAD hit me very early on this year and it’s getting worse so I am thinking of buying a SAD light. They look rather expensive so I will have to wait until I get a job which defeats the entire purpose of buying one as I’ll be old Miss Doom and Gloom in the corner of the office. These jobs are simply throwing themselves at me hard and fast – I can’t keep up. The temping job that I did last month had me sticking needles in my eyes as it was two solid days of listening to somebody talk into a dictaphone and then type up whatever he or she was saying. Fortunately we were fast and rather than stick it out for 4 days, we got it done in 2. Less money, but I felt less suicidal at the end, as well.

I also have an interview on Friday, although all the interviews I’ve been to so far have been far from fruitful, so no fingers need be crossed. If I get it, I get it.

Right, time for a cuppa and start emptying a cupboard.

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And then that all died too.

About two weeks ago we woke up to yet more snow, although it was a pitiful amount yet very slippery.  And this morning, we have yet another coating of snow, the fourth time this winter, and this simply doesn’t happen in Belgium.  It’s either once or never.  It’s a bit of a pathetic fall but it doesn’t look like it’s finished yet, and what’s worse is the fact that it’s freezing outside.

But it’s all my fault.

Yesterday, when standing against the sink trying to find out where I was getting stains from the spag bol sauce I checked to see if my snow drops were pushing through, and sure enough, there were hundreds of little stems under my hedge.  So I thought to myself “snow drops look so pretty when there’s snow on the ground.”

And now there is.  Please don’t hate me Belgium, although I suspect you already do.  Tatiana obviously does as she found my box of All Bran hidden away in the garage, so I couldn’t deny her a hearty breakfast full of good, solid fibre to get her bowels functioning.  Dammit.

Just look at the snow and think how pretty it is, what a wonderful excuse not to go into work by car today – public transport is great.  But please don’t hate me – at least not too much.

And I promise not to talk to my plants again.

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The move has been a longed-for project, but I was afraid of losing all my comments at Haloscan. It appears that they have all managed to move over, including 20,000 triplicates or so, but I think that Andy has managed a good job – we just need the odd tweak here and there. Andy Ramblings has been gracious enough to host this on his server and add his extensive IT knowledge when Andy was up against a wall, so I thank them both.

I’m pleased with the result and extremely annoyed with Haloscan that this ever had to happen at all, but there you go. I’m not the only one to be moving over here as a result of Haloscan selling to JS-Kit, and it will take me a while to learn this new template which is far more complicated than Blogger, but I will, one day, manage my entire site all by my very self.

Well, both Andys hope so.

And so here I am, finally. I’m trying to get rid of 1000 comments a day and am doing quite well so far, although I shall probably be unemployable due to RSI.

Hoping that none of you are stuck in the Eurotunnel or on a Eurostar and that you all have lovely holidays. I shall continue my job-search after the last interview sunk, as I guessed, try and brave the weather and get 3 christmas presents and spend the holiday as a couch-potato.

It’s almost certain that I shall blog, too.

Happy holidays

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I’ll try and take pictures later on – the snow would ruin my camera if I tried now.

I’ll just chase that moose out of the garden first.

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