the worst start to the year!

my god... i have been ill! it all started after a xmas party we had at the restaurant for all of us hard working employees... the plan was to start at the restaurant and then move on elsewhere, but with free pizza, lots of space, our choice of tunes and loads of booze, we very quickly fell into full swing and when it's good, why mess with perfection? some sort of polish vodka was flowing and it was seriously hardcore. i had tried some a couple weeks earlier on xmas eve, well i say tried... after necking down a couple of shots in the kitchen at work while still in the midst of waiting on my last table, i then staggered next door to the off license and spent like £17 on another bottle which saw me completely shnockered xmas eve ( note to self for next year: not a good time to get wasted when you have to sneak into a child's bedroom with a santa sack) and also, i came home covered in chocolate.

so here was the vodka again and i tried to avoid it as best i could, which was a good thing, as slowly but surely, like shot pandas, one by one the staff slowly succumbed to it's strength and it wasn't pretty. let's just say cleaning various peoples puke off of the hotel steps wasn't how i had planned my night to end.

so... next day... feeling ok, i went with a friend to get some sushi and then later had some beef stew and watched some tv that evening and fell asleep on the couch. feeling groovy... all of a sudden, i woke up and the room was just spinning in a really weird way i had never experienced. not like the "bed spins" when you've had too much to drink. more than that. my vision wasn't right. i started to panic and scream for scott and try to get upstairs and found myself violently ill on all fronts. and the spinning just wouldn't stop. i was so freaked out. we called the nhs direct and after being sick a few more times i fell asleep, only to wake up the next day still super ill and still unable to open my eyes without the world spinning. this went on for 3 days. i just lay in a dark room with my eyes closed.

it has now been a week and 3 days and i am none the wiser about if it was a virus or food poisoning or what. i thought maybe the vodka was counterfeit, but no one else had had this happen to them.  i am still shaky and am on pills and can't totally walk straight. i find myself bumping into walls and nearly tipping over sometimes. but, i am much better. i just now want to be back to 100%. i am tired of this ride!

xmas was good! scott and i had a nice break spending time with the kids and i was so pleased that nearly all of my presents this year from scott were homemade. i got some bitchin stuff... we also had a really weird cross over happen.

the year before i was pregnant with tex, scott and i went on the best ever road trip, which i keep meaning to write a post about. one of the places we went to was this town called niland in the desert of southern california... out palm springs way. we saw something that has ever since had a massively special place in my heart, "salvation mountain". i am not in any way a religious person, for me, this was the most incredible piece of outsider/folk art i had ever seen. the amount of time and love and dedication that leonard knight put into this work over the last 25 or so years is just heart-warming.

it was summer and had to be about 120 degrees in the shade when scott and i turned up out there. we spent a few hours talking with leonard as he showed us around and told us about the new bits he was working on. he gets quite a lot of visitors (especially in the cooler months so it was kind of nice to almost hav the place to our selves even if we were sunburned and practically heat-stroked). they bring him paint, and food and donations and help him move straw bales and most importantly keep him company. he was so warm and welcoming and genuine. he lived in one of his cars, or slept out under the stars when he felt like it with the few pets he had found as strays. he told me how they looked after him and had protected him from snakes and other creatures and day in... day out...he worked on this stunning piece of work.

he had a visitor there helping him when we were there and together we all worked on putting some new paint on the waterfalls. leonard liked to use crushed up glass to sprinkle on the wet paint to make it sparkle. it was absolutely hotter than hell out there and i don't know what i was expecting when the visitor offered me his canteen and i took a hit of practically boiling water...... not really the refreshment i was needing!

after a while, sadly we went on our way.  i could have spent some time there. some people go and live there or in nearby "slab city" and hang around for months to help him. i think that would have been a cool experience. it has been a place i have wanted to go back and see again, especially to see how it has changed, other new bits he has added. i have wanted to bring the kids there and always dream a little dream that will happen someday in the not so far off future. so, with it on my mind, i decided to attempt to make a paper cut for scott for xmas of salvation mountain. while i was looking at pix, i decided to have a look online and see if there was any recent news, and i was devastated to find this article that said that recently, leonard had been taken into care for dementia and the future of the place was uncertain. it just broke my heart. so it kind of made my mission to try and do a papercut even more significant.

so xmas morning... after many hours  of my hard graft, ( although i am sure it doesn't look like it took me for-fucking ever, but it did) i gave scott this for one of his pressies...

i actually got so disillusioned with, i never finished it.... not to mention i ran out of time!
so when i then opened this from scott...

i was pretty astonished! it was part of this beautiful map scott made for me of our trip to the salton sea and the surrounding areas, which included salvation mountain.

i feel like such a lucky girl to have received such a nice present. i also got this, which is brilliant!

and is a fantastic addition to the family wall which i will post pix of next time.