We Really Love Our iPad

Where did the sunshine go? This has been a weird January, I have had my duvet covers and things hanging outside to dry in the balmy Bournemouth breezes. People have been out in t-shirts. But no more! The weather gods must have noticed us all out enjoying the sunbeams and today they are making up for it with grey skies and snow flurries, but mostly rain.

Dandelions, by Sam

I love my iPad. I haven't been using it for work, YET, but as a toy it absolutely rocks. This painting was created by Sam in moments, using ArtRage. We have SketchbookPro, which is a good app for drawing... and cheaper, and easier for young children... but ArtRage is really fun, especially if you like to smush paint around and are not afraid to let your creativity flow and leap!

For kids, there are so many good apps. Max uses 'Times Tables Quiz', which is free, and there are plenty of other good number and word games which are free too... if you can tolerate the ads that pop up in between every move. I love 'Words With Friends', but the ads are really annoying. If you've got 'Flipboard', look for 'The Kid Should See This' and National Geographic for youngsters, and my Facebook Page if you want to keep up with my latest writing adventures. Women's Health is there, The BBC, Oprah, Yoga Journal. I can keep up with the news, and do research. I can make notes on Bamboo music on Garage Band. I guard my apple id with my life, so that the boys cannot download any apps I don't approve of.

'Star Walk' is a beautiful app which will show you exactly what is in the sky at any moment. If you have ever looked up at night and wondered, "Is that Jupiter?" then you really need Star Walk. Best of all, you can click on any object in the sky and get loads of information about it! We often see satellites glinting in the sky in the hour or so after sunset. Star Walk will tell you which satellite it is, and what it's doing there. SO AWESOME!

'Ted Talks' is a great app to have, because all of the Ted Talks are amazing. There is a Kindle App and iBooks. So many free books to download! If only I had time to read them all! I am learning to use 'Scripts Pro', a scriptwriting app, and playing with ArtRage with my mind on storyboarding and on illustrating my children's books. Of which I have written at least two, and they are fabulous, but they really need pictures. I'll keep you posted about all of these exciting projects! I've always been an artist, and having access to new media is cool.

So yes, I love my iPad, and it will gradually change the way I work. It's nice to have such a great, new, different outlet for creativity. But I still love my laptop!

Zombies. All They Need is Love

So, we have decided, in a fact-seeking early-morning scientific assembly at Chez Sheppard, that zombies are simply misunderstood. They walk around groaning "BRAAAAIINNNSSSSS..." In fact, they are only trying to explain that due to their lack of functioning brains, they are feeling down and really need a hug. They want to groan, "HUUUGSSS..." and somehow (due to the brains situation) they can't formulate their statement clearly. See? So the next time someone lurches up to you with their arms outstretched, try to find some empathy in your heart, and don't just run away screaming.

  "HUUUUUGGSSSS!"
... Discuss.

Good Things

Yesterday, there was a complete double rainbow against a dark grey sky. Three seagulls coasted under it, catching the sun and shining so brightly. Everyone was calling everyone else up and saying, "GO AND LOOK OUTSIDE!" and all evening, "Did you see it?" It was at heading-home-from-school time, and teenagers with iPods and phones stopped their bikes and took pictures. When they got home they were all yelling up the stairs and then coming in and dumping their wet jackets on the floor and announcing that they had seen the most amazing rainbow. And then stunned because I SAW IT TOO.

The rainbow faded quickly, but the rainbow mood lasted all evening.

Gratuitous Brasso Seco Holiday Shot

Today it's dreary and grey again, but I keep looking through the window just in case. The birds at the feeder are annoyed. "Whatchoo lookin' at? come and fill 'er up!" I have lots to do, from boring stuff like sole trader taxes to exciting stuff like submitting query letters to new magazines. I have had a few articles accepted or printed this week and it's heady stuff! The new Work Your Way Magazine is out, and you should order or subscribe today! The website is great, and the magazine (featuring my, um, features) is brilliant.

I have an article in an upcoming issue of Aquila, a lovely magazine for curious kids. In which I attempt to explain Mirror Neurons and Empathy to a ten-year-old audience.

And, Green Parent Magazine would like to print my article on getting teenagers unplugged.

All of this is after a year of queries, rejections, total lack of replies, and loss of faith in self. Unfortunately, I cannot quit the day jobs yet, but it's nice to see my name in print, and it makes rejections easier to accept!

What's good with you, peeps? Is 2012 your year?

January, You Are the Pits

...Or as my friend Tracy says, "This weather is PANTS!" an English expression which I have adopted wholeheartedly. Yesterday, my camera SD card arrived via registered mail (Thank you thank you Seanos!), so today you get to have a photo of sunshine to brighten your day!

Damian's Bay, where we battled big waves. I bodysurfed a lot, then used my brother's surfboard once and had to lie on the beach to recover.

My lovely friend Pat left a box of hand made Cocobel Chocolate for me at mum's house while I was in Trinidad. I have been eating ONE every few days, they are amazingly good and so pretty to look at. The truffles are ultra-creamy, and the fruity-centred ones, which I usually HATE and give them all to dad, are scrumptious. Not overly sweet or overly 'Flavoured'. The nutty ones are awesome. The chocolate coating itself is very good too, and I know what I am talking about. I think these may be the best chocolates I have ever eaten. Pat, I am RUINED now, I will never eat Cadbury's chockies again. When will we be able to order Cocobel from here? We may have to resort to FedEx!

Looking through all of my photos (1,783 of them!) I am revisiting my holiday. But I'm really supposed to be working. So I will be terribly disciplined, and get back to work, and leave you with just a few.

See, it wasn't ALL sunshine! Five inches of rain falling... and then evaporating again, only to fall an hour later. The forest was like insta-watercyle. I wonder what five inches of rain weighs? These photos taken at the beautiful Brasso Seco Eco Resort.

Hellooo? Is This Thing On?

It is well and truly January, peeps. I haven't posted here in weeks! We were off the grid for most of our holiday, which was lovely. I forgot my camera SD card in Trinidad, with thousands of holiday pictures on it, and hopefully it will be here soon, Sean put it in the mail for me. I'm praying that it arrives safely!

Even though I haven't been posting here much, I am still writing regularly over at Work Your Way. If you are a parent who works from home or runs your own business, check out the site for great tips and inspiration! I have a new post up there every Monday morning. I've also been temping last week, at a marketing company. No eating bonbons on the sofa here!

In other news, the weather is not too dreadful (for January), I have many good books to read (which I will eventually get around to), the iPad is loads of fun and we are all enjoying "Artrage" and "Starwalk" among other programs. We all got colds from our travels, but we are fine now. The boys are getting more warlike, and know everything about guns. But they also know about hugs.

I'm watching the birds bicker round the nearly empty feeder as I write. They eat all of the seeds at top speed and then sit looking accusingly through the kitchen window until I climb back up the tree and do a refill. Don't they know I have other things to do?

Happy 2012, my faithful readers!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas From my NEW IPAD! Sean can really keep a secret :) thank you babe! We have been having a lovely time, watching five inches of rain fall in the rainforest (the sound of five inches of rain crashing onto a galvanized roof... Mind-bending. It sounds like the end of the world. And then it stops, and you can hear more coming up the valley. Sounds like a train.) Where was I? I have no photos on my BRAND NEW IPAD yet, and we have been unplugged and Internet-free in a wonderful way. When we get back to civilization we will sort through the zillion photos and tell you a few stories. The Happiest of Christmases and a bright and joyous new year to all of my fabulous readers! I Hope that Santa has been generous, and that you DON'T eat 7,000 calories today, which I hear is the average, and that is just crazy... Save some leftovers for next week. Stuffing sandwiches, nomm nomm!

Dear Peeps! I know you've missed me, despite the fat that no-one emailed and said "Ooooh, how we miss you!" all weeping and gnashing etc.

I have had a terribly hectic time, working all day and writing all night kinda thing (Boys: "Pizza again? Awesome! You should work all the time") but we are heading off to Trinidad and a couple of weeks of tropical bliss. Hold on, let me just stop a moment and listen to the December GALE that is blowing around my house for a minute...

Ahhh, December Gale, you go right ahead and blow.

You can pop over to Work Your Way for the continuing saga of Work Matters. I will be mostly unplugged and off the grid for a few weeks, but I'll check in from time to time. Have a great Christmas!

Things in Pockets

• Crunchy Kleeneseese (O November! O Runny Noses!) 
• Bus tickets. Because our fingers get cold when we ride bikes 
• Cashew nut packet 
• Socks 
• Gloves 
• A sort of torch light which, when switched on, makes a red eyeball on the wall. There was a lollipop attached to one end, a sort of sweet but terrifying Halloween thing 
• A 'pet' rock 
• Chalk 
• Lists! "Post Office. Bread. Invoices. Call npower and threaten to send plague of fleas."

I'ts FRIDAY! The weather man says ze wezzer weel conteenue zees fine. I will give you another picture of Trinidad, just because this is my blog and I can do whatever I want.

My old front porch, pic by Diana Joseph

'Sexypink' Heliconia

 Okay, A FEW photos.

Double River Waterfall, Brasso Seco

"Try Switching it Off and Switching it Back On Again", And Other Pearls of IT Wisdom

I'm working at a helpdesk these days, and loving it. It's long days, and a ton of stuff to muddle through (Temping: They throw you in at the deep end) but everyone there (and there are thousands there) is cheerful (except when they are yelling "I reported this THREE WEEKS AGO!" to the temp who started yesterday, but that's okay, they weren't to know) and friendly, and the dress is fairly casual which means COMFY SHOES!

Every morning, the boys look at me appraisingly, and say, "You're going to work like THAT?" Today I wore a skirt, kinda a bohemian look I'll admit, and Sam said, "Good grief, you look like you fell out of a tree." Even on the first day, which as every temp knows is 'Dress Smart and Suss Out the Threads' day, when I wore smart slacks and a jacket, they weren't entirely happy until I had tucked in my shirt. And then they sighed, "I don't suppose you have a belt?" I just snort at them and ignore.

Don't look outside... 

I have posts up at Work Your Way, if you want to know what else I've been up to. Having lots to do is making the time pass so quickly, that I think our holidays will come, and we will be on a plane to sunny climes, before we know it! Yes, we are having a green Christmas. Everyone at work I've told that to says "Okay, shutup." So I won't carry on about it. Muahahahaa!

However, sitting in an ergonomically designed chair, answering the phone, gazing at an AMAZING huge computer screen from 8.30 to 5.00, snacking on flapjacks and McVites Cheddars... I just realized today that I will be wearing a bikini in exactly three weeks. So I got off the bus early, and walked a while. Then I packed myself a container of crunchable veggibles, and a bag of nuts. And I will not be having the huge subsidized lunch with all the sauce and cheese and things in the canteen tomorrow. Sigh!

A word about Cheddars: About two years ago, I had my first mini Cheddar. I was in a pub, and fished one out of a bowl, and crunched. Angels sang. I held one up. "What! What? What are theeese????" I cannot believe that I never knew about Cheddars before. And now I do. My world is a yummier place. So I may allow myself occasional Cheddars at work.

I think I will have to make peace with not being skinny in my bikini. I suspect that once I'm lolling on the sand, I won't care.

Nudists and Yogurt: My SEO Stats are Weird

Yes, folks, most of the new visitors to this site are googling 'Nudists' and 'Yogurt'. With a sprinkling of 'Hangy Boobs'. NO ONE ever comes here looking for 'Great Books for Boys' or 'Where is That Missing Sock' or 'How Can I Get my Teen to Pee Straight', topics which I find totally gripping and which, you may agree, are the flesh and bones of this website.

Oh well. It's all pretty interesting.
(Edited: my world-famous creamy yogurt recipe is here! No cats were actually injured in the making of this recipe, I promise.)

Chas, you are a fantastic photographer. Thank you for this!

I recently bought my own domain name, which is very cool. I have been meaning to, being a Serious Parenting Writer and all, because this blog, which started out as a whim, has turned into quite a good platform for my writing, and even the reason I'm calling myself 'A Writer'. Although, of course, according to my stats, no-one has ever googled 'What I really need is an awesome Parenting Writer, quick!' and arrived at this website. So really, I should just not take it too seriously, right?

But then my friend Nancy, who IS a serious novelist, gave me a heads-up about a new book and website about things someone has found in their children's pockets. Very cute. (NO, I am not linking it here, duh.) (Her kid has way cuter things in their pockets than my kids, in case you were wondering. No crunchy kleeneseese or pet lizards there.) So before someone cleverly pinches my domain name and I have to send my cronies over, I thought I had better just get to it. So I signed up with GoDaddy.com. I'ts been easy, everything is the same as before with blogger's easy buttons in all the same places, except that my blog list mysteriously disappeared and I had do it over. I have no idea whose fault that was!

Interestingly, my kids (Hi Guys!) are still a hundred percent supportive of my embarrassing them on the internet. Chas disappeared into the darkness and spent hours writing with a light and a slow shutter to make me that 'Pockets' sign above as a new-domain-name present. I am blown away by the way Margo's old headboard, which is propped up behind the sofa, frames the word. Very cool photography and awesome design.

(In Demented Old Lady news: Margo is doing well, eating well, and has forgotten that she ever lived in Bournemouth. She misses her mum and wonders why she doesn't write. My mum is doing an amazing job of caring for her. I hope that when it's my turn, I can be as patient.)

And, as this post appears to be about advertising, I have also started a facebook page where I hope you will all become fans and tell your friends and friends' friends and ex-boyfriends and other friends who have been searching in vain for a speedy and grammatically obsessive writer with a terrible addiction to parentheses and TA DAAAA! I am it! Because the 'x' has fallen off my keyboard and it's annoying that I can't just buy myself a new keyboard. And YOU DON'T WANT ME TO BE ANNOYED do you? Oh, and it's winter, so send chocolate and socks. That is all.

Read me a Story: Audiobooks are Awesome!

When we used to drive for HOURS to school and back, we had dozens of Audiobooks on CDs and Tapes. It was amazing. We would sit in traffic and laugh at the antics of Hiccup in How to Train Your Dragon, or listen in rapt attention to A Short History of Nearly Everything, an incredibly listen-able tale the important scientific bits we should all know. Chas learned his times tables by singing along on a cassette tape, we listened to Shakespeare's  As You Like It over and over until we understood the weirdness of the language, and on the way home late in the evening, we were lulled with poetry, bedtime tales and classic stories.

Two years ago, we discovered Audible Audiobooks, and now we can choose and download a story in minutes. Many is the night I've heard Chas giggling, and when I look in he's got the headphones in. So I'm pointing you in their direction.

  Here's a FREE TRIAL!
Some Bedtime Meditations for Kids:
The Prince's Bedtime:
And many more wonderful books for children and grownups!

Campaigning for Civilized Toilets Since 1998!

Yes, folks, it's the latest battle in the War of the Toilets. Alas that I cannot install a urinal and a pin-locked girls' loo...

But I will not be defeated! Occasional battles may be lost, but victory will eventually be mine!!!! Or they will all move out. And I will probably miss them, and look back and sigh, "O how I miss complaining about stinky loos."

Or not.

I'm Rocking my Baby... And Babies Don't Keep!

I'm sitting at the kitchen table, hacking out a few articles and a Rockstar Blog Post over at Work Your Way. And giggling at my sister! Ailis is visiting, and trying to be helpful. Ailis clears the dishes... and then baby Kate squeaks and off mummy goes to burp her and gaze adoringly at her. Ailis comes back, no doubt totally impressed that I managed to fold a pile of laundry, put in another load, and have a shower with such aplomb this morning while she was breastfeeding. She washes two plates, and then goes to gaze at Kate again. "I WILL wash the dishes," she announces, from the comfort of the living room where Kate is curled up on her chest, breathing with quick newborn breaths and smelling divine.

Really, the dishes can wait. They aren't going anywhere.


Song for a Fifth Child by Ruth Hulburt Hamilton

Mother, oh Mother, come shake out your cloth,
Empty the dustpan, poison the moth,
Hang out the washing and butter the bread,
Sew on a button and make up a bed.

Where is the mother whose house is so shocking?
She’s up in the nursery, blissfully rocking.
Oh, I’ve grown shiftless as Little Boy Blue (Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).
Dishes are waiting and bills are past due (Pat-a-cake, darling, and peek, peekaboo).

The shopping’s not done and there’s nothing for stew
And out in the yard there’s a hullabaloo
But I’m playing Kanga and this is my Roo.
Look! Aren’t her eyes the most wonderful hue? (Lullaby, rockaby, lullaby loo).

The cleaning and scrubbing will wait till tomorrow,
For children grow up, as I’ve learned to my sorrow.
So quiet down, cobwebs. Dust go to sleep.
I’m rocking my baby and babies don’t keep.

Travesty!

My blog list is MISSING! I know I can find most of my favourite peeps again, never fear, but I have been too busy to go looking yet. So how about EVERYONE leave a comment, just to make life easy for me, k? This should be fun!

I recently went from blogspot.com to my OWN domain name, thingsivefoundinpockets.com, which is very cool and cheaper than I thought. Maybe that has caused the gadget to disappear? Ah well, in the grand scheme of things it's small stuff. And if you ONLY KNEW about the grand scheme things that have been happening here, you would be sending me chocolate and advice and warm fuzzy socks.

In fact, you should send me some anyway.

I did my grocery shopping: Riverford's Meat Box (usually we just get masses of veggies, and hardly ever eat meat), pot barley, double cream. I am craving stodgy food, and it's not even winter yet! The clocks went back a few days ago, and the dark evenings are (insert word here)

To counteract the stodge effect, I also bought amazing comfy new running shoes for effective pavement pounding. They are silver and purple and sparkly! My old shoes had holes in them, and my shins were hurting... the new shoes, happy shins! They were on sale too, asics. I love 'em.

We're plugging the TV in this week, for long dark evenings of nature documentaries and hopefully, good programming. and maybe some CSI. Wish us luck!

Things in London Pockets

Acorns, Haycorns! Pretty leaves, crumbled to dust. Half a ham and cheese sandwich (eew?) Bottle Caps. Crunchy Tissues and Soggy Ones (eew? again).

I met with Mary in Richmond Park, and we brainstormed, networked and all those things that people with desk jobs have to do in stuffy offices. Mary is fabulous and full of great ideas and advice.

Our associates flew kites and hung upside down from branches. It was such a beautiful day. And a busy week!

Train Tickets, Cinema Tickets (Tintin fans, rejoice! Five Stars), Feathers, Nice Rocks, Gloves, Socks, Chocolate Wrappers.

I tried to put Kathryn in my pocket to bring her home, but her Mummy said no. Sigh! Is she not absolutely THE most adorable niece you have ever seen? Why yes, that IS a smile :)

What have you found in pockets?