So much catching up to do...

...after just one weekend not blogging!

(Go towards the end of the post if you're just after pictures :-) )

It's quite incredible... This weekend, I made the decision (yes, all on my tod!) that I would stay away from the computer, and spend some time sorting out the kids' rooms whilst they are at their dad's ... it was soo, sooooo difficult. I kept passing the desk, on the way to the kitchen... on the way to the bathroom (it's a strange arrangement, downstairs off the living room) ... or going upstairs again to take something up (like yet another pile of freshly washed clothes!). And each time I passed, I itched (yes, and my fingers were scrabbling to scratch the itch) to push that little switch and turn the computer on.

I lasted for most of Saturday. Then I 'suddenly remembered' I hadn't done the Norton Antivirus Check for a while... "I'll just turn it on, set the anti-virus going, and then turn off the screen" I thought, naively.

Ok, so I did turn it on, and I did put on the antivirus, but then there was that familiar sound of the fan... in the background... every time I passed. So, I switched the screen back on again. And off. And on... You have probably never, in your whole life, seen anyone fighting so hard against this self-confessed obsession!! Seriously. It was an ongoing battle :-D

And it's not because I haven't got anything better to do with my time. Admitedly, two people I'd like to have visited most (real life), I couldn't because I still had sniffles :-(
BUT, I had other people to visit, and very important re-arranging of bedrooms to do...

You know, I got through the whole of Saturday without actually blogging, or responding to comments... and was very proud of myself. Sunday, though, I just had to check my mail... and when I saw I had lots of comments, I read them in Outlook, and still managed to not break the blogging ban... until I saw Sanni's comment, that is. She'd been involved in a hit-and-run accident. Luckily she and her family were OK, but I felt I just had to go and say something...

Meanwhile, once Outlook was open, I begun writing to certain others off-line.... and then I realised something. It isn't just the blogging I'm totally hooked on - it's the people behind the blogging. The people I've got to know, just a little, since October when I started Words that Flow.


So, today, instead of rushing to do my next post, I've taken a little time to visit some of my favourite people first - by no means all... there are so, so many that I have run out of time to visit (being as my eyes are closing with tiredness of having been up since 6am, and now it's 2am 3am the next day!)

A big Thank you!

You (and that includes you, whether you comment or not... I've seen the numbers rise in the sitemeter counter on the side!) have enhanced my blogging, that I only started to have somewhere to put my poetry, which was then sitting in a raggedy old bag under the stairs...
I appreciate the unexpected pleasure I have got from knowing, or getting to know, you!

So, now the pictures:-

These images were from the other night, before that spectacular sunset that took my breath away... I was on my way to the local pond, where I used to go fishing with my brother and sisters (along with every other village kid) when I was young. I wanted to take a couple of pictures of the frost on the water. But on the way, I saw this amazing 'whirlwind like cloud' going from one side of the sky to the other:

(Don't you just think this looks like something out of Wizard of Oz?)

I took a couple of pics at the pond:

(I thought the shape of this tree strangely echoed what I could see in the sky...
compare it to the cloud picture above it)

(...and in the water is the cloud's reflection)

(...still faintly here... though I think the reflection of the house probably more interesting... :-) )
(there's another picture over on my poem Hand of Ice)

...then on the way home, the sun was setting, and I caught one picture with both the 'whirlwind' and the sunset in:






... just before the sunset begun:

(Does it look a little like this farm house is on fire?)