What I’ve learned this week . . .

Dear Diary . . . (and fabulous readers)

I’ve learned a few life lessons this week.  Not all of them useful in any major sort of way, but all of them are probably important in one form or another.  Let me elaborate:

I’ve learned (yet again) that there are some adverts on the Television that make my skin crawl and infuriate me.  This is the current one: (turn sound up a little so that you can enjoy it) …

That    TV advertisement drives me insane.  And … it’s not just me.  Mr. Cobs admitted today that he  “. . . cannot abide this  &*%£*)@  advert!” – as he dived across the room to grab the remote and turn on ‘mute’.

I’ve learned this week. . .  that I really don’t much like my neighbours cat, Missy.  She’s an antagonist of the first degree.

Alfie (aka Alf Capone our HUGE great, black cat with a white diamond on his chest (looks like he’s wearing a tuxedo – in the style of James Bond) – is absolutely a lover, not a fighter.

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Alf Capone.   Used Furniture Dealer 

Where-as Maisie Dotes, our teeny weeny, little wittle,  butter wouldn’t melt, wide-eyed, elegant looking, princess tippy toes, DIVA – is an out-and-out fighter of huge proportions.

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Two unknown cats visited our garden a couple of days ago, when both Alf and Maisie were in the conservatory.  Alf looked up from his feed bowl (breakfast no. 4)  looked at them both, then sat down by the window, with a very soft body pose, not bothered at all that these two intruders were in our garden.  He was only interested in what the entertainment was going to be.

Where-as . . .   Maisie … oh…. my …  goodness!!!  She had been fast asleep, but had obviously heard the hiss and spit which began at a low-level.  So low that we couldn’t hear it, but she could.  Her head spun around like a possessed thing.  She glared out of the conservatory windows and took on an indignation like no other cat could have achieved with their posturing.

She was out of that bed, and at the door within seconds, demanding that she be let out.  “Ohhh ho ho ho… not on your nelly Miss Maisie.  You can fuss all you like, you are absolutely not going out there!”  I told her.

“But … but …. they’re in  our  my garden!!!”   She said, over her shoulder, but not taking her eyes off these two shocking, alien invaders.

Then ….  a third cat appeared.  Ohhh My Stars!!!  This was the one which got Maisie scratching and banging her paws on the glass door, demanding that it be opened because she had to kill that cat!

This cat we knew.   She was called Missy

Missy lives in the cottage to the back of ours.  In the next road along.  She’s a brazen thing and cares nothing for boundaries or correct, polite behaviour.  NOR does she care that we have a dog.  Her belief is that our dog is fair game and she’ll take it on if it dares to challenge her.

One of the ‘new’ intruders had obviously come across Missy before, and when she appeared on the top of her owners shed, right at the bottom of their garden, the one intruder turned slowly, and made its way carefully along the fence and away from any trouble.   Missy smirked.

The other cat obviously didn’t know Missy at all,  for he, the daft thing,  walked along the top of the fence and towards her.

Mr. Cobs and I were both now trying to talk to the cat and tell it to  ‘RUN AWAY… RUN AWAY!!!”  …  but it either didn’t hear us, or it just decided that it felt he could take this stroppy individual on single-handedly.

There followed a long drawn out period of BIG hissing, spitting, and meeooaawwl  growling, before I could take no more and walked to the conservatory door, and opened it and closed it again, fast and loudly.  The intruder cat jumped down and ran off …  but  Missy … well she sat there and told me to  “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!”.

After 5 minutes of everything being quiet, I finally opened the door and let Maisie out … thinking that Missy would have got bored by now and gone home.  Nope.  Wrong.  Maisie jumped to the top of the fence and began a hunched over, “get ready, I’m going to box your brains out!”  warning sound, and started moving REALLY fast down the fence.

…  “Cobs!  Cobs!!! come and get her she’s going for it!”   Mr.Cobs had to rush out of the house, and grab her off the fence.  Now … she didn’t take kindly to this.  She didn’t want to come in.

He picked her up one-handed (she’s really very tiny, more like a kitten than a cat)but she was having none of it.  She shouted  Noooooooo”  –  and reached out with one paw and Velcro’d that paw to one of our big Pine trees.

Cobs Snr. tugged and tugged and couldn’t get her to let go of that tree.  His left hand was around her tummy and body, so with his right hand he reached up and unhooked her claws from the tree – only for her to reach out her other paw and grab the tree with her claws on that paw.  No one was going anywhere.

I glanced at Missy …. and I could actually see that cat smirking at our cats situation.

Mr.Cobs eventually won, and,  despite her best efforts to make him let her go,  Maisie was brought back into the house and the door was firmly shut behind her.

She was as mad as a box of frogs!  She whined and moaned for England.  Had it been a moaning contest, she would have won a Gold Medal.

So … although I learned that I don’t much like the neighbours cat, Missy, . . . 

I also learned that I have more dedication to the safety of our little cat Maisie than she appears to have herself.  Had there been a punch up – Maisie would have had her ears  well and truly boxed by Missy,  for Missy is a big, bold as brass, killer cat, with evil intent.  She runs this neighbourhood with an iron paw!

Well … that’s pretty much the major lessons I’ve learned this week … oh … apart from … …  why is it, when you’re having a great day and everything is going right … why does something – a letter, a phone call, someone or something ….  always come along just to be the fly in the ointment?  [insert grumpy face]. Yeah … I learnt that this week too.

Other than that … it’s been a truly grand week!

So … what have you learned this week?  Do tell!

Thank you so much for coming and sharing a coffee with me.  I love having your company.  Wishing you a wonderful Friday and an even better Weekend!

Coffee Sig

 

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Things I’ve Learned this Week

Happy Friday!  Welcome to the weekly round-up Cobs Lessons of Life.  A picture postcard in words (and sometimes photographs if I’m lucky and the one brain cell remembers to take them), of things I’ve encountered in the last week, from which I have learned something.

Shall we dive straight in?

This week I’ve learned …

That I REALLY, MOST DEFINITELY, ABSOLUTELY, TOTALLY don’t like it when women go around the supermarket shopping for their groceries, whistling the same bit of a totally unrecognisable tune like it’s a perfectly acceptable thing for a lady to do.  As my mother and Grandmother before her used to say:  “A Whistling Woman and a Crowing Hen are neither good for God nor Men!“…  and after this weeks shopping trip, I 100% agree with them.

I’ve also learned that Dr. Seuss actually really did know what he was talking about . . . I saw these words and absolutely laughed myself silly because they spoke of a trip Mr. Cobs and I took to the harbour side about a week or so ago with our Grandson, Little Cobs …

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Whenever we go to the Harbour there’s always something happening, or something which we do which makes a memory for us all.  On this occasion Little Cobs wanted the binoculars – or as he calls them  bew-nonkly-erzs.  He has his own Bewnonklyerzs in the back of our car.

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not Little Cobs Bewnonklyerzs – but the same as his, only these don’t have the four lens caps.

We bought them for him about two and a half years ago, and he’s always loved them. (He’s five and a half now).  They have their own solid sided case, caps on all the lenses, and he knows how to open the case, uncap them and get that neck thing around his neck so that they can’t drop to the floor, and even how to get them focused.  But on this visit he didn’t want his bewnonklyerzs, he wanted ours.

So out came our binoculars and he began looking at the yachts, boats, people zooming around on jet skis and various other things which were happening around and about.  But then, suddenly, he did something he doesn’t normally do.  He took the binoculars, looked at them for a moment and then purposely turned them around and looked down them through the wrong way round.

He suddenly burst into fits of giggles.  He was laughing so much that although he was talking we couldn’t understand a word he was saying.  Still laughing (so much that he was crying!), he took the binoculars away from his eyes and handed them to me, saying  “Look.  Look!”  So I looked through the binoculars … but no, he took them off me, turned the around so that they were now the wrong way around and again said  “Look!”  and began laughing again.  So… I did what any other Grammy would do ….  I looked.  And all of a sudden I could see what he was laughing at.  The world looked  …  weird.  Everything looked suddenly very insignificant.  The people looked like a colony of ants all doing the job they’re supposed to do.  I looked at him through the binoculars, sat next to me on Grandads lap … and he looked so funny that I began to laugh too.  I gave the binoculars to Grandad and told him to “Look Grandad,  and then you’ll see”  …  so he did,  and he did.

There were all three of us, sat in the front of my car, laughing like someone had just told us the funniest joke of all time.  People were looking in and seeing the scene and smiled.

Dr. Seuss knew EXACTLY what he was talking about when he said:  “Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.  It’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope“.

In our case it was bewnonklyerzs . . .  but the view worked in exactly the way Seuss meant.  Try it sometime.

Let’s see … what else have I learned this week?…

Ahh…  now this is relating to Crafting … so if you’re not a crafter, I apologise …

I’ve learned . . .  that,  for me,  Digi Stamps seem to be a huge rip off because a crafter is being made to pay an awful amount more for an image than it first appears they’re paying.

For those who don’t quite know what a Digi Stamp is …  it’s just an image, which you buy the rights to use and you store it on your computer and print it out whenever you need it.

  • If using Digi Stamps,  you have to pay for the Digi Stamp and then store it on your computer to use whenever you wish.  So far, so good.
  • But…  then comes the problem of the cardstock you’d like to use,  against what will actually feed through your printer (and boy do I know the fury of trying to get some cardstock through my printer!  grr!).   You might end up having to print that image out on cardstock you didn’t actually want to use … all because the printer you own won’t take the cardstock you do want to use.
  • Also …  You can’t print on some cardstock because they’re too slippery or shiny and the ink won’t ‘hold’ onto the card.  Or maybe you want to print out on acetate but can’t do that unless you pay extra for printable acetate, but then if you do, it’s not the really lovely acetate which you’d normally use in card making.
  •  FINALLY ... there’s the  COST OF PRINTER INK.   OH. DEAR. ME!!!  ~ Get ready  for this little heart stopper:

Quoted directly from a report in a 2014

At £650, a bottle of Krug Clos du Mesnil 2000 Champagne is decadent,  but compared with the cost of essential replacement ink for a home printer it looks cheapat about 90p a millilitre for the 750ml bottle.

HOWEVER …

In contrast, the ink in a best-selling 6.5ml HP 300 Tri-colour ink cartridge – priced at £15 on the high street – comes to £2.30 a millilitre.

This means  (wait for this) . . . .  

If that champagne bottle was emptied … and instead filled with cartridge ink  – it would cost . . .  £1,725

One thousand, seven hundred and twenty-five pounds.  You could have a holiday!

You can check the whole article out  HERE

I’ve double checked the cost of that same Champagne today, and the price of printer ink, and they are (roughly,  ‘give or take’) around the same prices.  But … you make up your own mind about it.

What else have I learned  …

Oh…  I was taken back to my school days when I came across this bit of information quite by accident:

On this very day in 1066 . . .

  • The Battle of Hastings took place on 14th October 1066.  It was one of the bloodiest and most important battles fought on British soil and heralded the beginning of the Norman Conquest.

I loved the story of the Battle of Hastings when I was in school.  I remember we even went to see a tapestry – called the Bayeux Tapestry – of it.  It wasn’t THE tapestry but a replica, handmade by a group of ladies many, many years ago.

I’ve also learned this week that it’s not just Graphic 45 that I have expensive paper tastes for …  I’ve fallen in love with a Nordic craft companies papers and ... ohhh ...  I’m going to have to place an order for some.  I just have to work out how I can sneak them past Mr. Cobs so that he doesn’t notice them . . because  it was only three weeks ago I said that I wasn’t “buying ANY MORE PAPER until I’d used at least half of the papers I have in my craft room”.  And I MEANT IT!  But to be honest … I think I’ve done excellently well going three weeks!   🙂

Ah, I guess there are worse things I could be addicted to And just think .. everyone is going to get such nice cards made with these papers!  lol.

Well It’s Friday lovely people.  And we all know what that means.

Yes, it means that we have to do the dance.  Stand up.  Strike the pose please ….. AND CLICK THE VIDEO in order to ‘do the dance’, as you will be instructed . . . .

There.  Don’t you feel better for that?

I think …  Friday is such a lovely day.  It’s a day to do great things.  A day to remember how blessed you are and look at all the good which is in your life.  A day to clear things up which have been hanging around.  To get things sorted.  I know that sometimes gremlins can get into a day and give you a bit of a hard time …  but everything is sort-out-able.  Even gremlins.   There is always something which can be done – even if it’s going round to a friends just to chat about whatever it is which is bugging you.

And as for tomorrow, well, that isn’t even here yet,  but  isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?

I wish you a weekend which smooths out some of the wrinkles in your life,  even if it just means resting and relaxing for a few hours to let the stresses ease away.

Have a lovely day, a wonderful weekend,  and  . . .  may your God go with you.

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