Hello blog fans.

Been away so no update for a while but I will get back on the case as soon as possible. Lots to prattle on about - yey!

Also, the sun is out!!! Hurrah!

Love love love xxx

Brain is fried today! Finished my reports last night and the idea was to spend today planning so I had time to catch up on ironing/cleaning and that malarkey tomorrow, but my planning has been shockingly slow and poor because I just can't think anymore or in fact be bothered at all. I need a magic work fairy.

Anyway, as promised, here are some of the highlights of my summer car playlist extravaganza...

Shine - Take That (gotta love a bit of TT)
Star Girl - McFly
Lies - McFly
We are the young - McFly - need I say more?! I LOVE THEM!
Join with us - The Feeling (ring ring, beep beep)
Lollipop - Mika (he is so HAPPY!)
We built this city on rock and roll - Bruce Springsteen
She's so lovely - Scouting for girls (she's so loverlyyyyyyy)
Everything changes - Take That (ah, back in the robbie days)
Sit Down - James (love the old Sugarhouse dancing to this one!)
All the small things - Blink 182
I'm your man - Shane Richie (I just don't care how sad this makes me!)
What a fool believes - Dooby Brothers
Bring me sunshine - Morecambe and Wise
Bring it all back - S Club 7 (wahey!)
One Fine Day - S Club Juniors (it disturbs me greatly that they have not stayed children forever and that one of them is now in The Saturdays)
This Love - Maroon 5
Red Alert - Basement Jaxx
Girl all the bad guys want - Bowling for soup
Two princes - Spin Doctors (If you want to tell me maybe, just go ahead now!)
Summertime - DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince (Now this is a story all about how...)
Crash - Matt Willis (of old skool Busted fame)
Reach out - The Four Tops
Everlasting Love - The Love Affair
Man in Motion - John Parr
Sweet Caroline - Neil Diamond

Now this is just a sample selection, and it is actually rather an extensive list, but the above is a taster. And I am fully aware how rubbishy and ridiculous some of these songs are, but actually, I just don't care. So there. Hehehe. Until you have heard them turned up loud in your car driving along in the sunshine you have NO idea how brilliant they are!

Right, better go attempt to do something...

Love love love xxx

What an odd sort of day I've had. And an odd sort of week.

School was pretty good this week, lots to do, but good. And now it's half term so I'm busting a gut trying to write 29 school reports which I don't really have a clue what I'm doing with... nice. But I've done 12 now so only another 17 to go. Although stupidly I left the hard ones till last. Sigh.

So, before I discuss the oddness of my day, I will just say this. I don't get all the fuss about Susan Boyle. I wasn't blown away by I dreamed a dream, and was even less so by Memories tonight. She's got an okay voice, better than a lot of people, but I just don't get all this hype. I don't understand why she's suddenly become this global superstar. And I think she's at real risk from being exploited because I genuinely don't think she knows how big it's all blown up. But yeah, I just don't get it. I think she's okay, but I think there are acts in Britain's got Talent that are much better, and I don't think it would be fair for them to be pushed aside, which I think there is a real danger of.

Anyway, my day. Well, I woke up about 9, but was in one of those weird dream half awake things for a few minutes and thought it was 4 in the afternoon. So that was bizarre. Went off out to pick up a few bits and did a big detour on the way home to enable me to have a good big drive because it was sunny and I had an amazing playlist on in the car. How good do some songs sound in the sunshine? I had totally cheesy stuff on, a bit of rock, a bit of dance, a bit of swing, loads of stuff. And things I haven't heard for years. It all started with Everything Changes by Take That, and as the intro kicked in I just thought, I wish it was still the 90s. I loved music in the 90s. I still do now, I just think there was so much good stuff around then. And there wasn't this domination of indie bands which we've had for the last few years, who all begin to sound the same after a while. I guess the 90s was kind of dominated by pop, so it goes in circles, but I have to admit, I am a bit of a pop fan. So a brilliant morning, singing away in the sunshine, thinking everything was pretty fab. And then sat and wrote some reports which wasn't very exciting, broke it up by going for a little walk to make the best of the weather. And was feeling fine until about 7, and since then I have just been getting more and more tense. I can't put my finger on really why, or what's brought it on, but my mind is just racing and worrying about things, and I'm feeling overwhelmed by the amount of things I have to do, even stupid little everyday things like ironing. So I watched a bit of TV to try and settle myself, and it got to 12 and I thought, I just don't want to go to bed. I am actually frightened of going to bed. How stupid is that? I haven't dreaded going to bed this much in months. For quite a while bedtime was the worst time of day. It was a time when I was totally alone, in the dark, with nothing but my thoughts. And those were the days where it took hours to get to sleep, where I would wake up a couple of times a night in a panic. And I'm frightened that it's starting again. I have come so far and I don't want to go back again. I have been fighting and fighting and tonight I feel like there's no fight left in me, and I'm tired of fighting my way through. I just want it to be easy for a while. I know this post is turning into a self absorbed ramble, but I just thought if I could get some of this crap out of my head it might make it easier.

And I miss talking to people. Really talking. I'm on my own in the house this weekend, which is really nice actually, because I didn't really get any time to myself over Easter, so it is refreshing to just be able to chill on my own, and I'm fine in my own company. But just in general I miss talking to people. I still feel like I don't really have many solid friends back here. I have a lot of acquaintances, and I do have some close friends, but it still feels quite lonely here. I feel a lot of the time like I am the person arranging things and like people only come along to stuff if there's not a better offer. Which might just be my insecurities, but that's how it feels. And I've always found really talking to people hard, because I cover up my emotions with humour a lot as a way of protecting myself I suppose. So I have to be really close to someone to talk totally honestly, and those friendships are rare. And most of the people I have those with are pretty far away. And MSN and phones are all very well and good but it's not the same is it? And it's easy to forget about a text or an email if you're busy when you receive it.

Oh goodness, what a whingebucket. Right, I'm going to brave going off to bed, and hopefully tomorrow I will wake up okay, and if I don't, well then I will just have to go back to the old "keeping myself busy" plan.

And next time I will try to post something nice and also will write a list of brilliant things that were on my playlist so you can all go and recreate it for yourselves and have a roadtrip. Woop.

Love love love xxx

Before I get started today, a few little plugs for other blogs I've been reading recently.

First of all, Rich's latest blog about the MP expenses stuff - I thought it was pretty brilliant.

And also, the Trev and Simon blog, blast from the past kids TV gold, and even better they've started making a podcast which is always random and mad and makes me laugh.

And now onto my blog which probably won't be half as interesting as theirs.

Last night turned out different to the way it was planned. The Eurovision party didn't happen quite as planned, but I did watch Eurovision and also get to spend the evening with Lauren which was brilliant because she's one of my all time favourite people. I wish we'd lived together right through Uni, my second year house despite the disturbing nature of our other housemates, was one of the funnest times of my life. And the disturbing nature of our other housemates has given us enough stories to dine out on for the rest of our lives!!

The rest of yesterday was nice, had a really good sleep Friday night which doesn't happen all that often, so lovely lie in yesterday morning. And then went off to Gemma's birthday party. She is so big now, I can't believe in 2 weeks she'll have an actual real life baby. It seems a bit mad. It seems like only 2 minutes since she told us she was pregnant. Anyway, we did some predictions about the baby and I said it would be born I think on the 4th June (due 31st May), it would be 8lb4oz, blue eyes, dark brown hair, boy and born I think I said at 3.27am. Something like that anyway, can't quite remember!

This morning I was supposed to be going to aerobics with Suzie but she needs to get ready for her brother's wedding next week so we didn't. Then we were going to go to aqua aerobics tomorrow night but I'm having my hair cut then so that's not happening either. I'm hoping we can go to aqua soon though, I've been wanting to give that a go for a while. Plus I think I need to get a bit fitter. I don't do too badly, I do my dancing on a Thursday and after the holidays I might start the toning class she does just before it, and I join in with PE lessons at school quite often, and we do dancing in the classroom sometimes when I need to get the ants out of their pants. But I think it would be good to do some real cardiovascular stuff, keep me a bit more healthy. I wish I could do running really but I just hate it. I'm so bad at it and don't enjoy it so I never go out and do it. That's the main reason I'm not doing race for life this year, which I do feel a bit guilty about because I've done it every year since we lost Elizabeth, and I have raised quite a lot. But I'm hoping to do some kind of fundraising for Cancer Research UK at some point this year instead so I will still be doing something.

Oh, another couple of funny links before I go... McFly were on the JLC show this week which I watched, and honestly, I have rarely laughed so much. It was just so ridiculous and funny, and they giggled all the way through, it was brilliant. So here are the links to both parts...

McFly on JLC part 1
McFly on JLC part 2

Enjoy!

Love love love xxx

Hurray for Fridays!

Has been a really tough week this week, lots of parent problems at school which always stress me out, and then of course the not so nice dermatologist yesterday.

Went to the hospital for an injection in a scar I have, been having them for a few months now. Anyway, it was a new consultant yesterday, and he was just sooooooo not nice. He said basically that there was no point injecting it anymore because it would always be there and that if I had had treatment for my acne earlier it wouldn't even be there. Which is untrue in all senses. Since I was about 15 I have been striving for some acne treatment that works. I have tried everything there is. And nothing has made a difference. And the scar isn't even from acne, it's from a mosquito bite that got infected. And he didn't really make the experience very positive. So then he told me my face looked dreadful and he couldn't believe I hadn't done anything about it. And he asked me if anyone else had mentioned it to me, like my boyfriend, and when I said I didn't have one he said "Yes, well that is understandable". I couldn't believe it. So I got home and just sobbed, really crushed the tiny little bit of confidence I had left in myself. I work so bloody hard every morning trying to make myself feel decent enough to even want to go out of the house and for someone to say that to me really knocked me for six. And the hours I have spent telling myself that I'm not ugly and I'm not horrible and that I do deserve somebody all just feel like a waste.

Anyway, the video I posted last night was a response to that, and even though I don't usually like to do this I am going to put the lyrics on here now because they really touched me.

she's so big hearted,
but not so remarkable
just an ordinary humble girl
expecting nothing as we're made to think its a pretty person's world

but you are beautiful and you better go show it
so go look again,
you gotta be true to your own
if you really wanna go to the top
do you really wanna win?
don't believe in leaving normal just to satisfy demand

well if you wanna get free
and if you wanna do the passionate thing
and if you wanna get smart for the sake of your heart and all
you should own your name and stand up tall
and get real and see the beauty in ugly

well you are fresh, your face is fabulous
don't forget your one of a kind
when nobody is checking the deeds you've done
and nobody is hearing your cries
you make all of the fashion statements just by dressing up your mind

well if you wanna get free
and if you wanna do the passionate thing
and if you wanna get smart for the sake of your heart and all
you should own your name and stand up tall
and get real and see the beauty in ugly
and see the beauty in ugly

well if you wanna get free
and if you wanna do the passionate thing
and if you wanna get smart for the sake of your heart and all
you should own your name and stand up tall
and get real and see the beauty in ugly
see the beauty in a ugly

A few weeks ago I spoke about the beauty in my imperfections. And even though that's really hard for me to see at the moment, the fact that someone else in this world would write a song like this, to me is amazing.

Anyway, trying not to dwell on the badness too much, I'm really looking forward to the weekend. Tomorrow I'm going to Gem's birthday party (assuming she hasn't gone into labour by then!) and then in the evening I'm having Mel and Emily over for Eurovision which I'm very excited about. I love Eurovision. And I love Mel and Emily and don't ever get to see them enough, so brill on both counts. Then Sunday I might be going to aerobics with Suzie which is good, I really want to start doing stuff like that for myself, I think it does me a lot of good, but I hate going alone. My school trip this year is canoeing and sailing which I think is going to be lots of fun, and it was suggested in the staffroom today that we go to Go Ape! Which is not really my thing because I don't like heights but I threw caution to the wind and said yes. He he. What a daredevil eh? Hahaha.

I'm really liking school at the moment. I really feel like I fit and I'm making some good friends there. I know I've been there now for almost 9 months and only have 2 more to go, so it seems rather late in the day to be feeling like this, but it has taken time to settle in, which is another reason I'm so gutted to be leaving. I really hope I can stay in touch with the people I've met there. We have a student in at the moment and I am loving that, having someone else my age (ish) around the place, it makes a nice change. And also a boy which is a change for our school! I've always got on better with boys though for as long as I can remember and I'm not really friends with that many at the moment, so I very rarely see any, so is kind of nice. And there is just a lovely group of people there I think, we really have a good time together.

Right, going to go now before I start thinking about how I have to leave or about my "dreadful" face.

EUROVISION! Wooop!

Love love love xxx

Crappy day today, had a horrible time with the dermatologist.

Sax Tim sent me this and it really made me smile.

The Beauty in Ugly - Jason Mraz

I will talk about it more next time I blog. For now...

Love love love xxx

I meant to write again on Wednesday but never quite got round to it. This is what I was going to put on...

Oh for goodness sake. Well the whole crazy happiness of yesterday has somewhat fallen on it's arse. I knew it was too good to be true. Ah well, thems the breaks. I guess it's not so bad sharing what it was now in my fluffy headness. I sort of developed a bit of a school girl crush on someone, and actually, it was all quite exciting. And even though I now know it's never going to go anywhere, it's okay. Because maybe I didn't need it to. Maybe just getting that feeling about someone again is enough. Because for the longest time I genuinely didn't think I ever would. So actually I'm remarkably upbeat about the whole situation. Plus, it did make for one heck of a brilliant day yesterday! All I need now is to feel it again and for someone to feel it back. That could be the hard part!!! But until then I shall continue to have ridiculous celebrity crushes and you know what, I may just have made a great friend. Here's hoping.

So that's what went on on Wednesday!

On Thursday I went school visiting - it was a very odd experience this week, slightly mad school... I am really beginning to detest the whole application trying to find a new job thing. The more schools I visit the more I realise I just don't want to leave where I am, and I have to, and it sucks. And I am just praying my hardest that I will get something soon somewhere NICE. Mum has been on at me quite a bit this week about how I might just have to take whatever I can get, which I know is true, but I just feel like actually, I kind of paid my dues last year with where I worked, and it would be nice to just get settled and happy somewhere. I feel like I've had enough unhappiness to last me a while. So calling all readers to keep their fingers and toes and arms and legs and eyes etc crossed that something good will happen there.

The rest of the week so far has been fairly uneventful, but I have been oddly tired. I think maybe my iron levels have dropped again. And I feel a bit like a duck swimming along. Now just bear with me... by this I mean that everything on the surface looks lovely and smooth and gentle and wonderful, but just beneath the surface I'm paddling like hell to keep going. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed I suppose... I cover it up well most of the time, but I looked at myself in the mirror this morning and I could actually see in my face how I felt which was a worry. I'm tired and I feel like I never really catch up on anything, like I'm always behind with things, and as we all know, my life isn't exactly panning out quite to plan, and trying to figure out the new plan is hard work and actually if I'm totally honest, just plain frightening.

Oh I really should go, I'm beginning to babble. I will try to say happy things next time... fingers crossed!

Love love love xxx

So. Slightly mad couple of days...

Monday was fairly uninteresting until the evening, when I went with the parentals to see Only Men Aloud at Symphony Hall. I was somewhat worried that the whole entire audience bar me was middle aged-old but I dealt with it and actually, I have to say, they were fantastic. I'm not really one for male voice choirs in general but they really pulled it out of the bag and it was a brilliant show. Anyway, whilst in Birmingham I started having this little daydream about what my dream life would be like, and came to the conclusion that I'd quite like to live in a city apartment and have one of those dead close groups of friends Bridget Jones stylee or something, and do exciting things and go out for drinks after work and all that.

Also, during the concert I was thinking about what I'd do if I met the men and fell in love with one of them even though they live in Wales and I don't, and I reckon given the opportunity I could be quite spontaneous and just give everything up... even though in practise I never would, I like to think that maybe I could! At the time it all seemed unplausibly realistic and fascinating, now in the cold light of day it sounds a bit mad and like I live in this whole other world in my head! Just be glad I didn't decide to blog it last night when it was fresh in my mind and making sense. I seem to recall making up and ideal man list in my head too but fortunately I can't really remember much of it, although I remember there were some pretty good things on it.

And today. Well. I woke up with this big grin on my face for no reason at all and it's lasted all day and the reason has become somewhat more clear but I'm do not going to write about that just yet because it is most probably more of my little fluffy head life than anything else. But it has been a good but maddeningly frustrating day in the life of me. Goodness knows what will happen next. Even though to read this it looks like nothing has happened, and in actuality it hasn't really. Honestly Hannah, get a grip. And stop talking to yourself...

Love love love xxx

Another pretty busy week in the life of me.

Before I forget, I finished "Flight from Deathrow". And nothing really did happen in the end but I think it was worth the read. It was very random and a bit mad. I think it's the kind of story Daffy would like, I can imagine him writing it.

So, Monday, a pretty ordinary day really, not much to report. Tuesday I went on a dance course for my PE development. It was alright but I would have preferred it to be a bit more practical (I can't believe I have just said that about a PE course, how things change!). Then Tuesday night I went to the pub with housegroup which was lots of fun, I very much love those guys and they have been absolutely invaluable to me over the last couple of years since I moved home.

Wednesday was THE DAY... photo day! I cannot describe how very nervous I was before we went in - there are no words - I was petrified that they were going to be awful and I was going to cry! So we went up with Jason (yep, Jason, not Jamie!) and the photos were projected quite massively onto a wall - eeeek. So it started off as a proper show thing, he'd put Superstar by Love Inc over the top which was quite nice, I kind of like the idea of being a superstar hehe. And after my name and all that shebang, on came the before photo. Well. It was truly truly dreadful. Very very flat hair, about a zillion spots, several chins and very shiny face. At that point I thought that this whole experience could be a very painful one. But, it wasn't. The photos were AMAZING. Truly fabulous. When we went through them again afterwards to choose which ones we wanted he said he'd kept loads in because they were all so good. He must have taken hundreds, and he said he normally narrows it down to about 25 for people to choose from that he's done all the art to and stuff, and after my first round of eliminations I still had 32! So I carried on whittling them down and I'm getting an album made up of 14, Mum and Dad are getting a wall portrait and they've got one for my Grandparents too. Album is due on 29th June (ish) and I can't wait. I was honestly gobsmacked how good they had made me look. So after this it was off to the pub again this time for Linda's leaving do from work, which was also very funny. Me and my classroom assistant Suzie got very silly and spent quite a long time re-enacting that Cadbury's advert with the 2 little kids and the eyebrows, which we found hilarious but oddly nobody else seemed to find it that amusing... he he.

Since then it's pretty much been work work work. Although I did have one very exciting moment on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. And it was quite momentous so I'm going to put it on here minus all the boring details. On Wednesday night/Thursday morning I had my first "man dream" about someone other than Chris for 5 years. Which is remarkable. And put me in SUCH a good mood all day on Thursday. There was nothing particularly interesting about the detail of the dream, nothing much happened, but I was with someone else and I was happy. And after the recurring dream of recent times it was a relief and it was a real moment. It might sound stupid getting this excited about a dream, but I have waited so long to be capable of dreaming about someone else and something else that this was really a big deal. I've always struggled with dreams, I seem to have incredibly vivid and "real" dreams, that when I wake up I can't tell if they're real or not. At Uni I used to have a different recurring dream where everyone I knew was moving to Australia, and the amount of times I woke up actually crying was ridiculous. In 2nd year I remember waking one of my (slightly weird) housemates up screaming and crying in my sleep. And my latest recurring dream is a pretty awful one to wake up from, because in it I'm actually incredibly happy, but then when I wake up I realise it isn't real and then I relive months of hell all in a moment and have to come to terms with a lot of rubbish all over again. So my relationship with dreams is quite a tough one really, because of how real they feel. A lot of people I know don't ever remember dreams, or they sort of know they're dreaming, or their dreams are so ridiculous that they know they're not real. But mine are so real, and sometimes I remember them for months, even years afterwards, as if they are real memories. So the top and bottom of this long ramble is that I was absolutely delighted that I had this new dream, and even if it was a one off I feel like it was a real turning point for me. Because I think dreams are a way of your brain working stuff out while you're asleep, and to me that signals that actually all the rubbish that's been happening is finally sorting itself out in my head and getting better. I may be reading too much into this... let's just leave it with "I was very relieved".

And this weekend is a long weekend and even better it's sunny! I went out for a drive yesterday. I love going out for a drive in the sunshine, stereo up nice and loud singing my little heart out. I love singing loud when no one can hear. It's such a release and I think it must release some kind of happy hormone in me.

Right, well I'd better be going, got a bit of work to do before I can continue to enjoy the sunshine. Apologies about the epic and rambly nature of this one, especially the dream bit, I expect no one wanted to read that bit much. I expect it's a bit of a let down not having any photos now too, I will attempt to find something interesting to put in the next one!

And now, just to make Sax Tim laugh....

Love love love xxx