Dark Alex's Really Long Post Thread.

[Alex]

Just settled Ash down all ready for his first christmas on the moro. Elizabeth got him some special PJ's (see below pictures) and she made a stocking for him which I've filled with toy cars and toys that make noise. Me and Kristi spend decades tormenting patents by buying their kids noisy toys and have had many of them swear vengeance on us. I slightly spoil their fun by by geting there first and pointing out it doesn't bother me. I am surprised though that no one has so far bought us any Elf's on the Shelf as anyone who announced they would never let one in their house was automatically bought one by me. Was expecting a whole tribe of the damn things to turn up.






Just waiting now on Elizabeth going to bed so we can wrap her presents. Decided to have some beers and some hot toddy's for my throat. Seems to have killed off whatever was giving me the assorted aches and pains so as promised I will be fine for Ash's first christmas.

[Alex]

Feeling stuffed after a five course meal. Ash had a happy day and I managed to get him in his first christmas jumper





Wondering how I am going to get all his presents up the road though.

[316zombie]

you have a living elf on a shelf, no need for a doll. or at least he'll be climbing shelves by next christmas anyway! 

[Alex]

I have been surprised that he hasn't been climbing the tree already. We were shocked that he left both it and the piles of presents alone.

Everyone else seems to be gradually succumbing to the virus I had a couple of days ago. I am fairly sure that Ash is the plague spreader amongst us. We give him toys, he gives us coughs and sneezes. His favourite toys seem to be cars. He really seems to be a little boy through and through. If we build up a tower of blocks for him he lets you get three high every time before knocking it down.

Kristi is watching a show aout the hundred greatest musicals. Hmm, Rocky Horror, Little Shop of Horrors and Blues Brothers. In that order. The rest are just annoying. :P

If I ever find myself in a real life situation where everyone 'spontaniously' bursts into a song and dance routine like you get in a musical... well only one person is walking out of that situation. I can tolerate a lot of things, but musicals.... *shudder* I think I'd rather watch The Human Centipede (and hopefully that is a choice I'll never have to make). Andrew Lloyd Webber I curse thy name!

[Alex]

Been in the house now since Saturday. Starting to feel a little stir crazy. Suppposed to be going to Glasgow tomorrow to meet up with some of Kristi's friends from Warcraft, but she's been feeling ill now so may cancel.

Maybe I'll just even go somewhere myself. Arranged to meet Aaron and Leona on  the 28th. Not sure as of yet what we are going to do though. Might suggest thhem coming to my mums for dinner. Going to go up for an early night and get some reading done I think for tonight though.

Got my mums record player set up, but some of her favourite albums seem to be missing so I guess I'll be looking for some new vinyl for her. Still, 'Bat out of hell' is not generally a hard one to find so I should have no problem on that one. Watching Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey just now. I am thinking the good robots are actually better actors than the real ones lol. Turns out, as much as Kristi loves the original, she has never seen the sequel. Figure she should watch it, just on the off chance they ever do get around to making the third one.

[Alex]

Got woken up by Kristi about half four this morning. Her leg was burning hot and had a big patch of red skin on it. Phoned NHS 24 and they sad they'd get the duty doctor send out to us to have a look at it as they were worried it could be Sepsis. Anyway by the time 07:50 arrived the doc hadn't. We got a call to say the doctor was having to do too many home visits and didn't have enough time, so could we go down to the health centre and get her seen there. Had to then wake my mum up and ask her if she'd get up and watch Ash while I took Kristi to the docs. Anyway, she got seen pretty quickly and they reckoned it was an infection although they couldn't find any entry wound for one. Still just an infection at the moment, so she had been prescribed a weeks antibiotics.

Ash is teething again so he is being a treat too right now. Mother and baby are now back home and hopefully having a nap since they've been up since the wee small hours. Right now I seem to be the only person who isn't ill. Oh well, at least I got out the house this morning, even if it was only to the doctors and back.

Had to run out and pick up a new clothes horse for mum as her old one broke. Ah, the excitement. Hopefully everyone will be feeling a it better tomorrow and we can all get out for a bit.

Hmm, the British Heart Foundation (no, not Bret Hart's european cousins before anyone asks,but it would be cool if it was) wants everyone to give up Chocolate for Febuary. Lets see, some other charity wants us to give up smoking in October (Stoptober), shaving in November (Movember), and now chocolate in Febuary. No doubt they'll come up with some 'clever' name for that.

I wonder how many other month's we are supposed to give up stuff for. Out of sheer bloody mindedness I am more likely to actually go do whatever they want me to stop more (well except smoking as I consider that a filthy habit and wouldn't take it up even just to irritate people. Once rented a fully furnished house off a woman in the RAF. She was an armourer (and they tend to be something of a breed appart from the rest of the human race. You are not a proper armourer until you've drank a pint of urine, and not your own either). Anyway, I was cleaning up the house (oh believe me that house took some cleaning. I spent several days trying to before I gave up and hired professionals to do it for me), and I lifted up the bedside cabinets to hoover the floor and found piles of cigarette ends underneath them. And not small piles either. Other than that, I am quite happy to drink extra, eat some chocs or even take up a bad habit just for lent. If I want to do some good, then I will. I don't really feel like I need any encouragement or peer pressure on that.

[Alex]

I understand the biological reasons (and even the sociological reasons why it is good) for dying, but damn it seems a useless thing. If you are lucky, you get an entire full life time of experiences to learn from, good and bad experiences (ok, technically there is no such thing as a 'bad' experience, just something you fail to learn the right lessons from even if doing so hurts. I guess equally that should mean that there are no good experiences either really, just experiences and what we take from them but that is another discussion). Do you then hope you die while you still have all your faculties intact, or just wait until you need someone to help go to the toilet and feed you like some little baby.

I dunno. It just seems like such a waste of hard earned experience.

The alternative is to go before your time. As Death says in The Sandman, you get all anyone ever gets. A life time from beginning to end. Some times that is way too short. I find it much easier to accept this as some biological process gone wrong than the idea that some deity somewhere decides "Yup, this one doesn't get to live more than a few days" and we are supposed to accept this as in some way as being divinely ordained. Nah, can't do that. Even before we lost Lilly that wasn't part of the whole deal I was willing to accept.

If, when I die it turns out there is some god out there deciding all this stuff then to me any way you try to cut this or explain it, he decided to murder my daughter and murder is something that requires punishment. Part of my core beliefs is you protect the innocent when you can and then punish the guilty when that isn't an option. If there is someone out there who thinks our lifes are nothing more than a game of The Sims then you better believe I'd be extracting that vengeance. I only disliked the idea of an all powerful god before then. Afterwards, well I actually had a reason to hate him (or her, I am open to the idea of a godess messing things up for mortals just as much as a god would). In the days, weeks and months following us losing her I really wished I could believe in a god. We'd had an autopsy done and there was nothing me and Kristi had done that had caused her to die, it was just one of those things. If I believed in an all powerful deity then I could have blamed him (or her), directed my hate at him/her/lbtgq+.

All I had was science though and science is a cold, hard, b***h that offers no comfort. Kristi for example at least has the belief that one day our family will be reunited and so on. People who hate on religion I think seriously miss out on even thinking about this side of things. I think it just doesn't enter their (tiny) minds that it can have a positive outcome for some people. Even if you don't agree with religion, no one has the right to take away the comfort something like that can offer to someone. I know some people think otherwise, but the correct term for those folks is a***ole. I don't agree with much in religion, but I do not believe anyone should have the power or right to take that away from anyone else.

If if you think you do have that right, then yeah look at a dictionary under the entry for a***ole because you feature there greatly. You might even see a photo of yourself beside it. Take some time, go grow up a bit and maybe you'll even find life a tad easier to get through.

Anyway, back to the whole dying is such a waste of life thing that this post is supposed to be about (most posts I make on this thread are not anything to do with what I actually plan on discussing. At best they mention them in passing). We spend an entire life gathering our experiences, learning from them (sometimes the right lessons, sometimes the wrong ones) and moving on (or not as our personalities demand). I started feeling this way when my gran died around 15 years ago and since then the feeling that somehow it is all wrong and whatever is in charge of things has done it all wrong.

[Alex]

On the other hand, if I was to drag someone like Mark Kermode outside and double tap him I doubt anyone would shed a tear (if movie critics couldn't stop Sex & the city 2 being a hit, or the Twilight movies really what is the point of them?).

[Svengoolie 3]

Keep us posted on that womans leg,  will you?

[Alex]

As mentioned above it is being treated by antibotics. Unless that doesn't work I doubt I'll do an update.

[indianasmith]

I just don't believe that death is the end, Alex.  I never have.
It's a doorway we all pass through, not a pit we fall into.
As for what's on the other side - I believe in heaven, of course. But even if that turns out to be wrong, I still believe the heart of what makes us, us lives on after death in some form.  It's NOT the end.
I'd never try to shove my faith down your throat, that's not the way I roll.
But I also am never shy about talking about it, either.

[ER]

For what it's worth, when I almost checked out at fifteen, I can't say I was dead, just well on my way there, blood pressure horribly low and plunging, no longer responding in any way, and past a point all I remember is when my pupils started to dilate to maximum everything around me went incredibly bright, then I was just.....gone. No OBE, no invisibly walking the halls while my relatives sat talking, just....nothingness until when I was revived I seemed to rush back to consciousness (and pain) and pulled this deep breath into my chest which ached beyond all imagining, and in the days, weeks, months, years, decades ahead I spent a lot of time thinking about all that, and whether me going down the rabbit hole into darkness means there is nothing after death or it simply means I was only unconscious, whatever, but I do believe there is a part of us, the strongest part, that survives the loss of our body, and I think there are sound reasons to believe that.

Whatever the truth is, the best course is to invest well your time in this life.

[Alex]

I had an uncle who was on a coach holiday across Europe when he collapsed. One of his fellow passengers did CPR on him (breaking several of his ribs in the process). Anyway, he was telling me he'd seen the whole white light at the end of the tunnel thing and that death had no fear for him now.

I was later to find out he hadn't had a heart attack as everyone had thought, but he had instead been blind drunk. So much for that.

Still who knows, perhaps there is a soul. After all as far as I know the tiny loss of weight experienced by a body (that to the best of my knowledge is still unexplained) on death has as yet defied science. It could be the soul leaving the body.

The days may have started getting longer, but we are still deep in the territory of it hardly being worthwhile for the sun to rise before it is sinking once more beneath the horizon.

Everyone is still overloaded with their various coughs and sneezes. Ash managed to sleep for 14 hours last night / this morning which is the longest he has slept thus far in his short life. He is having problems sleeping in his travel cot (which we think is down to it having a rather hard base. We've ordered a new mattress for it and are using some blankets to pad it a little and see if that helps). Last night he spent 3 1/2 hours lying in my arms until half midnight, and then Kristi held him until 5:45 and then I held him until half ten.

So yeah, he is getting plenty of sleep. Me and his mum not so much.

Being at my mum's means watching lots of crime shows. Be that real or fictional. Currently we are watching one called Midsomer Murders, set in a small english village. Pretty sure the number of murders there over the years would have entirely depopulated this particular place. I remember watching the first episode and thinking they had some really interesting characters, like the creepy local undertaker (mother and son), who liked to blackmail the other villagers. All these characters though were killed off before the end of the pilot. After that it just became a regular cop show.

If I am ever staying in a hotel, or anywhere and a famous detective turns up I am getting the hell out of there right away. I swear these shows are all about psychopaths who go around murdering people and then fitting up other people to take the rap. The little old woman who writes crime stories, she has to be the most successful (fictional) serial killer in history. And no one else ever notices how every place they go, people die.

Still finding it odd that it took Barr's so many years to make a sequel to their Snowman advert. The original was 12 or 17 years ago. 

For anyone who is wondering what I am talking about, this is the first one...

Sorry...	Small | Large

And the new one.

Sorry...	Small | Large

[Alex]

Ah the penultimate day rolls around. Ash slept well last night, but once again no one else did. I am doing my usual of wanting to be left alone and feeling increasingly grumpy if that doesn't happen. While I appreciate people are doing it because they care it just seems to get on my nerves and although I managed not to snap at anyone I can tell I need to be left alone when I start refusing things I know will help just because I want to be left in peace.

Wonder if I'd be upset if everyone did leave me alone and think they didn't care?

[Alex]

Thinking I need to find a new computer game to play. It's been about a year since I last got one. Maybe I'll finally invest in Civ 6. Wandering between X-Com 2 and Civ 5 just now. Maybe I'll reinstall Skyrim for a bit. There was still plenty to do in that game. Last time I played it was down the Falklands and I was doing pretty well in it when I had the disasterous 'crash' that meant I'd to get Kristi to send me a new laptop down.

Very dark grey skies outside. Think we'll be having a storm tonight. Guess it will be a dramatic start to the new year then.

Lets just hope that isn't some kind of omen then.