WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE TO HEAR?

the good news first? or the bad?

i'm going to start with good. it goes in date order and it gives me a little longer to delay writing about our holiday drama.

last day of may. my birthday. and day one of our holiday road trip to ireland. we took things easy...packed a picnic for the journey and made a stop off in beaumaris on our way to catch the ferry from holyhead over to dublin. it had suddenly occurred to me the day before that we'd be driving a stones throw away from janet's gallery so i wrote a spontaneous email to see if she'd be about and hey presto the next day we went to meet the very lovely janet + her husband!

i have been in touch with janet through this network of blogs for a few years now and got to know quite a bit about her from reading her posts and exchanging emails. janet likened it to a grown up pen pal scenario. brilliant.

it felt funny-strange to be chatting and saying "oh yes i remember when you did that" or "i loved those shoes you bought" when we had never met in real life. but for me it felt like greeting an old friend too. she was just the same warm and sweet girl that i've got to connect with via my keyboard. sitting together in her back garden in the sunshine was pretty much the icing on the cake for my birthday. my normally shy self didn't feel one bit anxious about stepping out to say hello to her and i hope we'll get together again as we make more voyages over the sea over the years!

so if you ever get the chance to spend some time with a fellow blogger i would heartily recommend that you do. i suppose that the foundation is already there for these friendships through our little community online...and it still makes me so happy to sit and join in with this amazingly massive thing that exists through the internet.

ok. i will talk of the bad news part later. when i've got the laundry sorted!

clue :: it involves hospitals and our girl. {there is more good news though...she is ok now + napping in her own cot upstairs...but she gave us a big fright on holiday}