Happy Valentine's Day :o)
The picture above is one I took to use on my cards. My jumper sleeve briefly caught fire while I was hovering above the candles with the camera so the heart not only contains love, but also a small bit of Pog…
And remember the telephone box that had a Father Christmas residing in it at Christmas? Well, it has been updated. 
(Sorry, it’s not a great picture)
Happy Velantine’s, whether you are single or coupled up (but especially if you are single) :o)x
I have a gym fairy! And it is safe to say that the un-fatness plan is back on with a
irrelevant, but pretty :o)
vengeance as a result. Because not only did the gym fairy have me doing unnatural things with an oversized beach ball at the gym this morning, but she also gave me horrified looks when I straightened the edges of the chocolate torte we had for pudding this evening. (I do admit, it was the third time I’d felt the need to straighten the edges, but I’m sure I read somewhere that Sunday calories don’t count….)
Yes, my gym fairy is Sister 1. For such a little thing she is terribly ferocious. I may not be able to move tomorrow as a direct result of this ferociousness (‘Yes Pog, you CAN do another 298 sit ups while balanced backwards over this huge overly bouncy ball. No, I will NOT let you only do another 297. 298 or it doesn’t count…’).
Still, at least if I do end up stuck in bed and unable to move I wont be able to get to the chocolate cupboard… :o)
NB: The gym fairy may not be quite as ferocious as I have made out. Almost, but not quite ;o)
I’m still a bit flustered.
I worked from home today. This is something the boys love as they get cuddles (well, allowed to sit on my lap) while I sit at the laptop. I was on a teleconference earlier with a couple of rather senior people and Charlie strolled in.
You know that noise you make when you are getting a cats attention? The one that sounds like you are giving kisses? I did that. Then realised as everyone on the teleconference went silent that I wasn’t on mute. So now a couple of senior management at work think I am either bonkers or I couldn’t contain my love for the one who had been talking.
The only upside is that I didn’t ask Charlie if he wanted a cuddle. Now that would have been embarrassment on a whole different level. :o)
It was his fault!
In December I was FedEx’ed a pair of scissors from the US. Then I moved offices so they crossed from one side of London to another along with my special blue crate. Last Friday we finally we needed them so I walked through central London from my new office so they could accompany me on the epic coach journey to Hampshire. There they had their two minutes of fame before a bit of a rest and an even more epic coach trip back.
Today we had to get them back to the US and the e-mails went something like this:
Please could you organise to have a parcel couriered to the US?
No problem. What does the parcel contain?
A 3 foot pair of scissors.
Really?
Yes. Really.
And if you just did a ‘really?’ too, here’s the evidence. Presenting the most travelled giant scissors I know. (Not that I know of any other pairs. Which is a good thing as they are surprisingly sharp. In fact, how they are not classed as a weapon, I don’t know…) Anyway, back to the evidence:
:o)
I didn’t fall in the polyanthus this morning! Even better, I finally got confirmation that the job I have been keeping my fingers crossed about since the start of the year is mine. This is A Jolly Good Thing as my other job has disappeared…poof!…just like that. So now I can keep the boys in cat biscuits.
I have a feeling that Monday mornings and polyanthus may now become a ‘thing’. I fall in them and the week from hell is on the way, I miss them and something good will happen. A bit like The Yellow Sweet Theory. Because yellow sweets are wrong, bordering on evil don’t you know? The hedgerows of Bumpkinsville are full of ones I have discarded while out cycling. Yellow sweet evil though, is a different sort of evil to beetroot, chickpeas and tomato juice. They are Food of the Devil and as such have their own level of wickedness….
But perhaps at this point I should stop my waffle before I scare you anymore. All I really wanted to do was share my smile and the fact that my shoulders have dropped about three inches with the news on the job. Hooray! :o)
Some non-evil, smiley flowers :o)
I had a feeling that the week just finishing was not going to run particularly smoothly when I fell out of my front door on Monday morning at 5.30am in the pitch black, directly into the basket of polyanthus on the door step.
The week continued in the same humph-inducing way, culminating in spending 6.5 hours on a coach on Friday. And that was after the commute into London. And before the commute home. I could have got to Greece in less time. It was A Very Long Day.
Yesterday had the potential to continue in the same vein. I woke up to find that next door had recently had a McDonalds. I knew this because Norman and Charlie had bought in all the straws they could find, killed them (based on the bite marks) and then distributed them around the lounge. I sat them both down to explain that bringing in rubbish was not the sort of behaviour I expected from them. Then we heard it. A mouse squeaking just above the rumble of the washing machine. I groaned as they, presumably, got excited about the potential snack in the next room and we all raced through to the kitchen. To find that the washing machine must have jumped a little and was making the cupboard door next to it vibrate – the cupboard door which I had tied one of their squeaky toy mice to.
It wasn’t a great big belly laugh but the amusement factor of staring alongside two fur balls, all watching a toy mouse squeaking broke the humphy spell of the week and reintroduced the daft gene. So once again, chaos has been restored in Pog Towers.
Here’s hoping that next week will be calmer and that what is left of the polyanthus 
survives my early morning exits.
:o)
PS: Thank you to the flower fairies for a lovely lunch (made even more entertaining with the senior moments that cropped up!)x
It seems that Finger Pog is a bit of a traveller. He’s been spotted in a few places since last week…
We have Finger Pog in France:
Finger Pog in the big snow in the US (apparently he is a little blurry due to excessive shivering):
With friends trying out the latest winter fashions:
And then having a much deserved warm up:
Back in the UK, perhaps nervous of his growing fame, Finger Pog tried out his gnome disguise (while hiding behind a giant duck):
And after all that, he felt the need to chill out. Meet Rasta Pog:
Thank you to the lovely friends and sisters who have helped with Pog sightings (and proved that I am not the only fruit loop around!). To lovely US friend – please be careful – I don’t want to lose you in a snow drift while you take Finger Pog pictures!
:o)
It seems that Norman has taken on board the vets conviction that he is actually a labrador and has started to model himself on the Andrex puppy. I was doing some sewing the other night and he captured a cotton reel. The next time I looked up he’d unravelled it and wound the vast majority around the table and chair legs.
The labrador and the magpie
Charlie, not to be outdone had decided to impersonate a magpie. He’d climbed inside my sewing bag and started extracting the buttons from the button bag (and there are hundreds).
Once I’d tidied up and sat the furballs down to explain that they are in fact cats and should therefore curl up and purr a lot to fit in with the usual feline characteristics, I got on with the latest project:
Sock Animals. Or Sockimals. Or (as christened by my family), Pogimals! :o)
From this...
...to this. Please note Two Socks' pants and tummy button... :o)
My (now old) view...
I moved offices today. I’m swapping my amazing view for a view of a brick wall. Exchanging my relaxed, friendly sort of an office for a rather uptight-and-full-of-big-wigs one (and anyone who knows me knows that is really not the ideal environment for a Pog). Replacing my drive>train>tube>bus commute with a drive>train>tube>walk commute…
I’m not sure of the protocol in other companies when moving, but we are provided with a crate to fill which is then carted to the new residence and, a bit like your luggage when you go on holiday, you may or may not see it again in this lifetime.
So I had to pack. 9 years worth of stuff. It turns out that you can accumulate a lot of crap in a small space in that time. I found cereal bars older than most of my friends children. I found photos of a jolly business trip to Singapore which included colleagues lying in their trunks by a pool (which I think I hid in the depths of my drawer to avoid any further trauma). I found cards and post it notes from some of the loveliest colleagues I have known. I also found 9 ear plugs with varying personalities, but probably the less said about them the better…
They say a change is as good as a rest. So I have high hopes that my new second home will be a bit like a holiday on a Greek island. Ok, that might be a bit optimistic, but I can hope…can’t I?
:o)
I’m going to tell you a secret. Don’t tell anyone though.
The cookie fairy has been doing overtime. Over the last 4 weeks she has baked something in the region of 1000 cookies…
And what was the reason for this? Well, in addition to the usual cookie visitations, I decided it would be nice to find some new people to deliver to. And where better to start than on my own front door step? Only I didn’t know quite where to stop… In the early hours of Sunday mornings over the last few weeks I have delivered cookies to the closest 90 or so houses to Pog Towers.
I realise most were probably thrown away, but I hope it got people
talking and hopefully smiling. And if that happened, then it was worth it.
Now the cookie fairy is going to take a little holiday as she is exhaustipated. She has found another guise though, so keep an eye open to see what she’s up to next…:o)
the pog blog 