Looking after yourself has got to be one of the most important things in anyone’s life. If you get this right then you will be a lot happier, so why do I always forget to do it? Ok, so now is the time to start. Having being brought up in a frugal family in Scotland I learned at an early age that anything other a dry biscuit and some low cost clothing is a luxury but now I am going to change my outlook and think about some necessary luxuries I can treat myself to.
Getting some front yard landscaping done shouldn’t be a luxury really, should it? The houses on my street are all fairly new but every other one has a better garden then me. I just wasn’t cut out for weeding, seeding or whatever else this involves. It seems that some people actually like getting their hands dirty with soil and stuff but for me hiring someone to do it is far from a luxury.
If my mother could see me looking at the best coffee machine on the market she would be shocked. She believes that a rusty old sieve is good enough to filter anything which could be filtered. Now I would love to have to have a machine which makes unfeasibly loud noises as it does the same job as my mum’s sieve in a more expensive way.
Do I want some slipcovers for sofas? Yes, I believe I do. I bought some cool ones a few years ago in La Paz, Bolivia. If you are ever there go to the witches markets by the way. Apart from the unique sofa cushion covers you will find dried llamas, multi skirted women and potions to cure you of anything you might possibly have. Anyway, the covers have now been packed, unpacked and squashed far too often. I am not planning to return to La Paz until my llama disintegrates and I need some new ones now.
Isn’t a full length mirror just dreadfully extravagant and more than a little bit daring? I actually have one in the new shower unit we just bought and I feel rather guilty about using it. Maybe my mum was right and I am just not cut out for luxuries like these.
Isn’t it a weird feeling to get back home again after a holiday? I recently arrived back after a nerve shredding and bone jarring 7 day car journey and it was strange to see my house appear around the corner as I arrived at my street. Of course, seeing it again made me realise some of the things I need to do to do it.
I definitely need some outdoor chair cushions. Why? Well, to sit down out side of course. I had never properly appreciated how peaceful my garden is, although as it is the rainy season here it is completely overgrown and wild after a week or so without being looked after. Maybe I’ll need those cushions to rest on after slashing my way through the vegetation.
One thing I don’t need are deer resistant plants, as there are none of the cervidae family roaming around here. However, I could do with some cow resistant plants, as some bovines regularly wander up to fence to chew on my plants. Do cow resistant plants even exist though? I just had a quick look online and it seems that they don’t. So I had better just hope that some deer move into the neighbourhood and shift the blooming cows.
French door refrigerators, aren’t they great? Err, depends what they are really. I am guessing that they are fridges (do people still call them fridges?) which come with attractive glass doors. Do I need one? No, not really. Do I want one? You are darn right I do. Can you imagine the fun I could have by looking at my yoghurts cool? Ah, hang on a second, it seems that they don’t come with windows after all. I’m still in a holiday mood so I’ll have one anyway and stick a picture of a cooling yoghurt on the door.
I have never been to any of the furniture shores NYC offers. Am I missing out on some thing here? I guess that they come with a lot of big apple chic but it is worth taking my next holiday there in order to buy the new wardrobe I need? Maybe furniture tourism in New York could become a new trend or maybe it already is, who knows?
Is it only me or do everyone else in the world get racked by doubts about really simple things?
For example, I just got a loft built but don’t have any loft bed plans. Is this something I need or is it really just an option? Will guests and other unwanted visitors make fun of me behind my back because I have a bedless loft? Things were so much easier when my house was a loft free zone. Maybe I should tear the thing down. Or buy a bed.
Could I use the services of black hair weaving and braiding salons even though I have red hair? I would quite like to get my hair woven or braided but I have this horrible image of walking in there and having all these black haired people laughing at me. Will I need to live the rest of my life with unbraided hair or is there a way round this? Maybe I could dye my hair before going there and see if I could fool them into sorting me out with some weaves.
Maybe a Tiger torch is what I need. I bought a strap on head torch a while back and I still use it even now. The only problem is that, well, I look like a bit of a fool with it on. A fool with straight, red hair and a torch on his forehead no less. Good job they don’t know about my bedless loft. Would a Tiger torch be any better for me?
I have never spoken to any granite experts. I don’t have any granite in my house or about my person but maybe if I spoke to them they would tell me to get some in. In fact, maybe my big problem is that my home is completely granite free. I tried to do some research online but lost interest when I came across words such as phenocrysts and porphrytic. Oh, where are those blooming experts when you need them.
Having exposed my ignorance to an unbelieving world not long ago I feel that it is time to tell everyone about more things I have only recently become aware of.
How many different pergola designs there are. I know what a pergola is but what I never before realised that there are so many ways of creating one. This left me strangely exhilarated as I would quite like a pergola in my garden. I just need to work out where to put it now.
That vacuum cleaner reviews can be interesting. I had to do some research on these lately and found myself getting quite caught up in them. Ok, so they weren’t so exciting that I caught myself thinking, “oh look. it’s midnight and my breakfast has gone cold while I have been reading about the latest Dyson technology”. However, it was a better read than I had thought and a darn sight more interesting than that Charles Dickens nonsense I have been trying to finish for several months.
That loft conversions are cool. I need to qualify that point actually. Technically I had a loft construction carried out instead of a loft conversion. Anyway, the end result is the same and I get a great place to view the nieghbourhood from ahigh. It seems like a great place to throw a party or to write some poetry so I might give one or both those things a try. Hey, do you fancy going to a poetry party in my loft?
That balcony railings are rather dull. Compared to my cool loft the balcony is a bit naff. There is now way I could hold a poetry party out there, although I guess the overspill from the loft might want to head down there for some fresh air after my rambling readings of Wordsworth and Romboud have sent everyone running for cover.
The world is a bigger mystery every day. At least it is to me now that the internet shows me my level of ignorance on a daily basis.
I never knew that skate sharpening was such a big deal. I did an internet search on the phrase and the first sites that came up talked about mysteries and taking the world of hockey by storm. Is there a whole world of skate sharpening fun to be had which I am missing out on? I have never owned any type of skate – neither sharp nor dull – and I use this as my rather feeble excuse for being ignorant of such things.
I never knew that woodcraft furniture could be a fun hobby. I mentioned a while back about my problems with carpenters and the latest instalment is that I am trying to fit some wooden windows myself. For four days I have been fighting a losing battle with a chisel, a hammer and some nails. Is making furniture more fun this? To be honest I think that being hit over the head with wooden furtniture would be more fun than what I have been doing.
I never knew that canopy tents came in so many shapes and sizes. We went for a day in the countryside yesterday and spent all day cowering inside a tent as the rain lashed down. As there were 8 of us inside a 2 man tent you can imagine how exciting that was. Thankfully only 2 poeple caught pneumonia and even more thankfully I wasn’t one of them.
I never knew that fast growing trees even existed. I looked up some information and was told by Mr Internet that Crape Myrtles are the fastest growing trees around. I had never heard of them either. Is this another whole slice of life which I have been missing out on? Why have I spent so long waiting patiently for trees to inch upwards in a painstaking way when I could have a Crape Myrtle shooting its way up towards the heavens instead? I am glad I found out about them now though.
