Poor Bubbles!

My darling furry boy kept throwing up and stopped eating a couple of weeks ago so I took him to the vet. His brother Perseus was also sick but was recovering. The vet gave the boys some shots and sent us on our way with some antibiotics. Poor Bubbles kept getting sicker and sicker and skinnier and skinnier! So I took him back to the vet--who couldn't find anything wrong. As Bubbles wasn't eating, he had to go on a drip (see the poor thing, above).

Well, one day, the vet saw loads of cotton thread coming out of Bubbles' little butt and figured it was time to operate! After a four hour operation (which the vet didn't think he'd survive), Bubbles had an awful lot of cottom untangled from his intestines. The vet showed me the thread--and I recognised it from my sewing kit which is zipped up and out of kitty cat sight. Or so I thought. When I got home, I checked--and there was a completely empty spool of the thread I used to sew buttons on my daughter's school uniform!

Arrrrggggggg! Anyway, Bubbles did survive. Here's an updated photo:

He's still as skinny as a mink but he's slowly putting weight back on. He has a big old scar on his stomach so now we call him "Franken-Bubbles".

It's amazing how stressed out we get over our pets!

In (dis)honour of string, here's a little Neptune in the sixth house joke for sick kitties:

A piece of string goes into the bar and yells: "Oi!! Barman! Give me a drink!" The barman picks up the string and throws him into the street.

Thirsty, the string sits down to think of what he's going to do to get a drink. Suddenly, he comes up with a cunning plan. he's going to disguise himself! So he contorts himself into a completely
different shape and frizzes his hair into an afro. He goes back into the bar, hops up on the barstool and smiles sweetly at the bartender.

The bartender says: "You're that piece of string I threw out 5 minutes ago!"

The string says: "No, I'm a frayed knot!"

Alex and Ronnie Wood!!

So there I was in Belsize Park, enjoying a curry!! Who should walk in but Ronnie Wood!!

I can't get no satisfaction!! (do pardon the double negative!)

Arrrragggggg!!!!

Of course, he would have to drop in on the very day that I spent the previous 12 hours scraping wallpaper!!

In honour of nice guys (and Ronnie was SO nice, he smiled at my daughter for loudly asking: "Who is Ronnie Wood??"), here's a Saturn-Neptune conjunction in the 6th house joke!!

A frog goes into a bank to ask for a loan for 30,000 pounds. He approaches the teller and can see from the name plate that her name is "Patricia Whack."

"Miss Whack," he says, "I need a loan to go on a much needed holiday."

She stops shuffling her paper pointlessly, stands up and looks down at the frog at the counter. "You're a FROG!" she says. "We don't give loans to dumb animals."

"Look," says the frog, "I know people. My name is Kermit Jagger."

The teller stares at the frog.

"You know," says the frog, "JAGGER. Mick JAGGER is me dad!"

"Oh yeah right," says Patricia Whack, "So what do you have for collateral then?"

The frog pulls out a one inch porcelain pink elephant from his pocket. "Don't forget," he warns her, "I know people."

Playing along, Patricia consults her boss.

"There's a frog out there called Kermit Jagger who wants to borrow 30,oo0 pounds for a holiday,"she tells him, "Oh and he want to use this," she holds up the little pink elephant, "as collateral!"

To her surprise, the bank manager gasps and says: "It's a knick-knack, Patty Whack, give the frog a loan! His old man's a rolling stone!"

PS, thanks Jess for taking the photo!!

Llama Dreams

I finally sent my novel "Llama Dreams" off to the Amazon Breakthrough Novelist Competition. Woohoo!!

Fingers crossed Transist Uranus conjunct my P. Moon will give me the shock I need!!

In honour of shocks, here's a special Uranus crossing the ascendant joke for llama lover everywhere:

A man boards a train and takes a seat opposite to a woman holding a small baby. As the train moves out of the station, he picks up his newspaper to read it. However, it isn't too long before he is completely distracted by the baby. He smiles at the baby and tries to return to the paper but every time he finds something he wants to read, the baby catches his attention. Before long, the man is laughing. He puts his paper down and says to the young mother: "Bar none, that is the ugliest baby I have ever seen!" and he laughs some more.

The poor mother, however, bursts into tears.

After a few minutes, the man starts to feel bad and he gets up and goes to the buffet car, returning with a cup of tea and a banana.

He holds these out to the mother and says: "I'm really sorry. Here, take these so you know how sorry I am!"

The mother says: "Thanks for the tea but I don't like bananas."

The man says: "The banana isn't for you--it's for your monkey!"

Have a break, faithful soldier

One of my childhood friends has been residing in Haiti for the past few years. He works for the Salvation Army and I only have the fondest memories of him. When the devasting earthquake struck, the Salvation Army was one of the first organisations to bring aid to the stricken area--and Captain Bob Poff was at the forefront (and another childhood friend, Steve Himes set up the Salvation Army's Haiti website). I'm so proud of Bob. He loves Haiti and he shows his love not by going around asking stupid questions in the hope he can get a book out of it one day but by bringing joy and light within and without disaster. In the initial aftermath, Bob used facebook to communicate with loved ones to let them know he and his family were OK. Later he used it to coordinate Salvation Army relief services. Of course, his story was picked up by the news and Bob was even eventually interviewed (as he drove a truck packed with aid packages!) by Larry King. Here's a link for Bob's eyewitness account.

Bob is now in the US on an enforced break, getting much needed rest and hopefully coming to terms with the tragedy that he's seen.

So no jokes today--just my thanks that there are people like Bob Poff who get off their butts and do something about alleviating the suffering in the world. BTW, Bob is in the third photo down, on the left.

Irreverent? Moi?

Well, as it turns out, my cat Bubbles thought he knew a few more things about windows than I did so I put him in charge. And what does he do? He forgets to update my blog. So, that's it. The cat's sacked and I'm back in charge.

It's been a hectic few weeks for Bubbles' slave (me) and I've been up to my eyeballs with Ofsted and a few other frivolities. Do I sound a bit contrite? Well, I am--at least a little bit because after all this time, this blog has finally got a mention on the AA website. And Bubbles has let us all down.

That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

Bubbles, no whiskas for you. Not until I get home anyway.

So, it was my turn to give the lecture at the Lodge last night. Now I'm not one to boast (a-hem) but I thought I did all right. I finished on time and I did everything I meant to do. And no one threw anything at me. Oh and my topic was "The Day the Music Died" about the plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens (along with an even seasoning of Don McLean and Madonna.

But back to Mr Bubbles.

Here's a little kitty cat joke as a thank you for his big heart and even bigger purr. Let's call it a Venus in the 6th house joke for cat lovers everywhere (who happen to know that what happens in the joke could never happen to a cat!):

A salesman dropped into to see a customer. Not a soul was in the office except for a big dog who was busy emptying rubbish bins. The salesman stared at the dog, wondering if his imagination could be playing tricks on him. The dog looks at him and says: "Don't be surprised. It's just part of my job!"

"Incredible!" shouted the salesman. "Does your owner know what an incredible dog you are? Imagine! A dog who can talk! I should tell him so you can be on television!"

"No, no, no," said the dog. "Don't tell him or he'll have me answering the phones next!"

Highlight of 2009

Well, excluding being with my family (because that is so obviously the highlight of my year), I think I'll have to say the highlight of my year was seeing Janis Joplin's car:

Of course, I took note of the time! And have a look at the chart above. There's the Sun cj my Mercury and have a look at me and Janis' opposing suns being transited by the Moon's Nodes!

Anyway, I wish you a very happy new year! Here's a special triple conjunction of Neptune, Jupiter and Mercury joke:

God, grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked anyway,

The good fortune to run into the ones that I do,

And the eyesight to tell the difference.

Recovering

It's taken me a full week to recover from this hectic term! I'm just about to the point where I'm ready to venture out into the world!

While I've been recovering and NOT thinking about school, I've been writing a novel. I'm very pleased to say I've reached 55,000 words and am very near to completing the first draft. I'm also preparing a talk for the Lodge and re-working my MA dissertation, having been inspired by my friend Darby. It's so much more fun than teaching teenagers to appreciate random chunks of Shakespeare chosen for them by them by the good people who also insist on inflicting inspections on teachers because that makes teaching such a joyful profession.

Anyway, I don't want to complaing about work on Christmas day! I want to share the joy of having good, spontaneous friends who pop in for tea on the way home from a hard day of busking! Here's a photo of my friend Sebastian who did just that. He even had a special song for my cat, Mr Bubbles and his magical spacesuit. Here's the photo:

To celebrate spontaneous moments, here's a spontaneous moment that marked the beginning of the tradition for putting an angel on top of the Christmas tree. Let's call it Saturn in 6th for when there's a bad day at work.

One Christmas Eve, Santa was having a very bad day. Firstly, his best elves came down with swine flu and had to be replaced with less experienced elves who weren't as quick as the other ones. So Santa was feeling the pressure of falling behind schedule.

And then Mrs Claus announced her mother was coming over for Christmas dinner and this really upset poor Santa.

And then three of the reindeer escaped. It took a good while to round them up, making him even more late.

And then, as he was loading the sleigh, the bag ripped and toys spilled all over the place. So he had to pick them up but discovered the address tags had come off. It took some time to sort this out.

By this time, he was so late, he thought it wouldn't matter if he took a few more minutes to get a quick shot of rum from indoors. He was in such a rush that just as he got the bottle opened, it slipped from his mittened hands and crashed to the floor.

Just then, there was a knock at the door. Furious, Santa went to answer it.

A little angel stood there with a Christmas tree in her little hands. "Merry Christmas, Santa," she said cheerfully. "I have a Christmas tree for you. Where would you like me to stick it?"

Thus came the tradition of the angel on top of the tree.