Well, Pete is better today than he has been for the last week. He's still a bit snotty, but not as much, and still has a bit of a cough. Unfortunately because his appetite has come back, so has the reflux and/or colic (we can't quite decide which), so we'll have that to deal with again for a little while.

I'm still worried about Niki, she keeps telling me she's fine but I think she looks completely worn out a lot of the time and she also looks a bit down sometimes. All I can do is try to share the problems and work involved with having Pete, and tell her I love her. It just doesn't feel like enough sometimes.

As for me, I'm still where I am.Trying to lay to rest some of the stuff I've carried around but finding it hard to do so because I have other things that I feel must take priority at the moment.

On a less deep note, I ment to make comment last time about the god awful version of Frankenstein that was on TV this last week. I don't know if anyone else saw it but I'd like to know what you thought of it if you did. Frankenstein has been one of my favourite books, and films (and I like more than one version) for years and I thought that what they did to it when they tried to bring it up to date was absolute rubbish. It lost all the power, passion and atmosphere of the original. I even more disapointed in this than I was in the rubbish that was Jeckyl, and that's saying something. I don't know why it seems that there are no writers that can adapt great horror classica for a modern audience, or maybe there are but they are just not given the opportunity.

Here are a couple of links for you:-

Real Life Sculptors.

Free Rice.

And this is a cartoon that Niki found and sent to me, she said it reminded her of herself but it reminds me more of me:-
www.weblogcartoons.com" />

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

Well that's all from me.

Well now, here I am again sitting at the computer typing. Niki is upstairs in bed with Pete, she's been getting a bit stressed out (as have I) with Pete not being well and how it's effected him but other than that and tiredness seems to be ok. Pete's cold is still with us, he's now on to the "snotty/having trouble breathing sometimes/coughing a lot/sore throat/crying" stage, what I'm hopeing is that the snotty bit will clear up soon so he can breath a bit better and maybe cough a bit less, although the cough will probably go on for a while after the cold has gone like they normally do.

I, apart from feeling a bit stressed about Pete and tired, am still handling the whole depression thing and trying to get some of the underlying stuff dealt with, I also have a bugger of a tooth ache. I'm going to have to regester with a dentist sometime soon because this is getting silly, I've been dosing myself up on paracetamol with codine which seem to work ok but not all the time. My teeth have been a problem since before I stopped drinking and now they seem to be hitting back.

On top of all this I am starting to have a few times when I seriously question my sanity. For all those in the UK that watch TV, I'm sure you must at some point have seen the current Kellogs Nutri-grain advert (at least I think that's what it's for, it's something like that) with a horse, sitting on hay bales with his back hooves in a bath of water, phoning his wife to say he's still stuck at work horse-jumping (if not don't worry, it does exists, this isn't the insane part). I watched this advert just the other day and found myself questioning something about the advert. I was fine with the idea of a talking horse, that was married, owned a mobile phone and was talking to his wife on it telling her he was still at work, which was jumping fences, whilst sitting on hay bales with his back hooves in a bath of water, but all I kept thinking at the end of the advert when he starts to eat the Nutri-grain bar was, "How did he pick it up?" And I couldn't get it out of my head for hours.

Anyway, I'm going to go and do something else for a while, don't know what but there you go. So I'll leave you with a couple of links.

KNITTED CAR. I actually saw them putting this together at the show I went to with Niki at Ally Pally last year.

ZOMBIES. This is for Halloween.

See ya!

What a few days we've had. Pete has got a cold, picked up from his big brother we think, so have we a bit. All in all this makes things fun. He's not too bad, got a cough and a bit of a snotty nose, and has been a bit difficult to settle to sleep, but otherwise seems ok. We're alright but tired.

It seems that my last entry was a little misunderstood by some, although stuckinarut seemed to get the idea, so I thought I'd try to explain a little better.

My counsellor and I have worked out a few things about my cycle of depression. Firstly, due to the counselling, I can now see the beginings of a depression coming on and have a much better idea of when it's going to hit. Secondly, we have worked out between us that I have a tendancy to try to find ways to deliberately brake myself out of a depression without either trying to see what was the trigger or useing the depression to deal with the issues at the root of it. By this I mean that sometimes you need to take time to use the depression to mourn losses and come to terms with feelings, thoughts and memories, and unless you stay with the depression (without actually wollowing in it) you cannot do that. If you come out of it quickly you are not in the right frame of mind to actually look at these things in the way that you need to. That is what I, and my counsellor, meant about staying with my depression, I hope that explains things a bit better.

I am still in the depression, but nowhere near as deeply as I was and have started to deal with some stuff in my own head and time. This is the first time that I have been able to stay with it long enough to really start doing this and I'm hopeing I can stay with it long enough to come out a bit better and happier than I was before.

Anyway, enough of that, hope you are all good and I'll be back soon.

I have no idea why I gave this post the title I have, it was just something that came into my head as I started typing.

Well. here I am again. Still down and staying with it, as recomended by my counsellor, although I'm not sure exactly why I'm down and why I'm staying with it, but there you go.

Niki has seemed a bit stressed out of late, and I don't think my state of mind has helped. Pete is doing ok, but can be a bit draining at times when he's not in a happy place and/or sleeping well.

We've had some interesting stuff going on recently, depending upon your point of view. My brother and sister-in-law came over to see us on Sunday, which was really nice and we had a good (if slightly tiring) day. My nephew and his girlfriend are coming over with their daughter tomorrow, and Becca and Jay will be coming over as well, so we'll have a full house for a couple of hours. I don't normally see much of my family, so this is quite nice in a slightly stressful kind of way.

My mind is doing some funny things right now. Sometimes I'm just feeling a bit lost and can't seem to focus on very much at all, other times I can focus really well on one thing but everything else gets a bit lost, and others I just want to cry and haven't got a clue what I'm crying about. God I hate depression!

Can't really think of anything else to say really, here's something I've been using to get away from myself a bit. It's an odd game that's on the Salford University web site, after many times of getting stuck on level 3 I finally made it to the end and completed the game in 19.22 mins, maybe you can do it quicker:-

Curious

See ya later!

Yes, exactly.

I had hoped that once a line had been drawn by the studio going we could move on and not be bothered by the agent (god, I hate him). What I wouldn't give to be able to get my hands on enough money to pay off all debts relating to that place just so we wouldn't have to deal with him any more. I was in quite a good mood up to about 5 minutes ago when he phoned, now I feel tense and stressed, and can feel the start of a down coming on. Maybe I could just find someone to kill him and then we might get to deal with someone that more resembles a reasonable human being, but knowing our luck we probably wouldn't.

AAAAARRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you for this rant.

I'm going to start with a thing that is on Niki's blog:

Alright, on with the rest of it all.

As some of you have asked I will tell you that I got completely fed up with the clicking of the cooker the other night and went up to ask Niki if she had any ideas. She said 'There must be a swith or something somewhere to turn the lighting spark off', I looked at her dumbly as this is the first time I've ever had a gas cooker and had no idea how the spark thingy worked at all. She said that she was going to the toilet and would have a look on her way back. After a while she came back upstairs and said it was done, she had found the switch and turned it off, after some stupid questions from me based upon my total lack of knowledge of gas cookers she assured me that the rest of the cooker still worked fine. I later discovered that in order for her to switch the thing off she had moved some of the furniture to get into the cupboard where the gas meter is and had eventually found the switch under the cooker (which is fitted into the work surface in the kitchen) right at the back, so she had to stretch to reach it, bruising her arm in the process. Then the following day I went out and bought a gas cooker lighter from the local supermarket. Still, at least it's not clicking any more

We're all ok at the moment, usual tiredness and stuff but otherwise not too bad, although I have been feeling a bit odd today and have a few moments when I've felt a bit lost and down, but Niki says it might be the tiredness getting to me, I don't know.

There are times when I feel completely focused and my thoughts are well ordered (for me), and there are other times when my mind is like: "Green, green, green, with a few red and some bits in the. Oh, look the sky, it's all kind of, and then there's the blackness of the grass, who could've known where that would have taken us. I am standing in a sitting position with my hands held firmly in my head, smile!! There's the bell, better be off then, you never know when it's going to be time to see what you have in the bag!" That's today really.

Anyway I thought I'd end with some video links to show why I never bothered to learn to play guitar properly, mainly because I don't think I could ever do this kind of thing:-

Four Hands Guitar

Guitar Skills

Mozart Bass

Ah, well, I suppose that about all from me, see ya!

So, it's been a while.

I'm doing fine, kinda. You know somewhat tired sometimes, and for some reason have been a bit down lately, but there you go.

I am a bit on edge right at the moment, because I was doing some washing up a little while ago and managed to drop some of the soapy washing up water directly onto the automatic electric spark thingy on the gas cooker. It then started sparking and is still doing it, and I don't seem to be able to stop it. I can't just go to bed and leave it clicking and sparking away to itself all night but have no idea how to stop it. And that bloody clicking is really starting to get on my nerves.

Niki is doing ok, she is feeling tired some of the time and a bit run down, but seems to be coping reasonably well.

Pete is down well, putting on weight (he's up to 12lb 5oz now) and giving us grief. I know that things could be a lot worse than they are, and I am grateful they are as easy as they are.

We managed to find him an outfit for Halloween, here's a picture of him in it:-

Well that's about all for now from me.