Almost in the Middle

It's not unusual for me to come home from work and be on my own. (My daughter lives in her bedroom...well she's 13, what do I expect?)I don't complain, in fact it's nice to not have to watch Sky Sports news all of the time. Sometimes though, you just wish that you had some company.
I was so pleased today when I found out my husband was taking a half shift. More good news was that my son and his girlfriend were having a night in our house for a chage. With the possibility of my daughter leaving the darkest depths of her bedroom for a short while I was quite beside myself with the thought of having loads of company.
The reality?
My daughter is in her bedroom.
My husband is in the conservatory reading one of those books that you can't put down.
My son and his girlfriend are snuggling on the sofa in the living room watching a dvd.
Me?
I'm in the back room on my own....
It's great having company! *rolls eyes*

Really? Do I really want it to go away? Ok, so it's a little mood altering. It has the power to bring your spirits crashing to the ground from the soaring heights of the sunny days we remember.
It's romantic though. Through life I have learned that if you look for the good it's always there. Every gloom ridden object has a shinier side...somewhere. I always look for the good. It's there, my mum taught me that. Sometimes it just takes a while to discover the beauty hidden underneath all the darkness.

The freshly filled birdbath... I've tried to capture the moment the raindrops hit the water.. there is something magical about watching the ripples form their circles until they disappear.

The dusky skies filled with threatening darkness, yet it looks full of beauty and it stirs this powerful emotion in me. It's almost hypnotic. I'd watch the sky all day if it wasn't for the fact that I'd keep walking into lamposts..

The sodden tree. Reflecting the light that is escaping from the breaking clouds. I think this, for me, screams out "Hope!"

Having said that would a little bit of sunshine be too much to ask for? It is August after all...

The threatened rain held off and it's been a pleasantly warm day regardless of the rather blustery wind.
Credit crunch awareness has taken a front seat lately and I decided to turn my back on J.Sainsbury and his money grabbing competition and for a change I took my dad to Lidl. It was a good shopping day. Plenty of different things filled the trolley and a few little luxuries had managed to jump from the shelves (unaided) into the passing trolley. With fewer people, pushchairs and rogue trollies to negotiate, my dad had a calm amble around the aisles.
Once home, with my dad settled on the sofa, he's fighting an awful cold at the moment that he just can't seem to shake off, I busied myself with lunch.
I did the unthinkable after lunch and I wandered into the garden where my husband was going bananas with a saw and a pair of fancy looking scissors. We've been plagued with greenfly and sadly, as a result we have had to cut back all of the fruit trees. Three apple trees, which haven't fruited in a few years and one plum tree which provides us with the worst plums you have ever tasted, every year.
Once they were cut back I filled my 'wasp catching' things with a waspy mouth watering fluid made up of washing up liquid, sugar and water.

I must admit I looked rather useful wandering the lawn with a rake. I hasten to add I wasn't really being useful but the thought was there. As my husband sawed, I 'raked' and my dad discovered a secret stash of gooseberries and proceeded to pick the (slightly over)ripened berries.

Glad to find another job other than 'raking' the twigs and leaves strewn around the garden I took the gooseberries away to clean them.
After a wash and a painstaking mission of removing all of the stalks they looked ready to eat.

Now all I have to do is decide what to do with them. I have some ideas and I'm sure, that with enough coaxing, I may be able to talk my husband into trying one of these.

I have the heart of a writer but sadly that is where my talent begins and ends. So the next best things is to find somewhere to hoard all my ideas and dreams. Somewhere where you know they will be safe until you are inspired... until your muse appears. I'm certain my muse is down the back of the sofa, that's where everything is when it's lost. She'll be there, along with an odd sock, a crisp packet and a twenty pence piece.
You need somewhere to keep all of your triggered memories too. You need somewhere to store all your new stories, you know the kind. The time when you went to get your uni-brow waxed for the first time.. how good you felt when you realised it wasn't one long brow... it was actually two!
You always need somewhere to moan about things. The cost of living, the Olympics, Penny Smiths first novel..
Oh Books, I need somewhere to list all the books I have read or I intend to read. It will be good to document the day I managed to upgrade my reading level from Enid Blyton stories to something more befitting a woman of my years. (I am reading Undercover Angel by Katie Price but I'm not sure that counts... can you really compare Katie Prince to Enid Blyton? I think not.)
So it would seem a strange place to start...Almost in the Middle...