What are you loving?

Every year Mr Click and I agree that we’ll just do cards and not exchange gifts, and every year he slips up and buys me something. Luckily this year I slipped up too and I’ve got him a little treat. It’s not what I wanted to get him which was the newest Sherlock Holmes film, A Game of Shadows, because for some reason it was more expensive to buy it on its own in blu-ray format than it was to buy the two films in one case, which I refuse to do because we already have the first one!

Anyway, you don’t need a special day to say you love someone, but as it’s Valentine’s Day, here’s a few of the things I’m loving at the moment:

My new bookcase and having access to my books:

My daft dog (and my lovely girlie!rats):

The good TV we’ve been watching recently:

The fact I got to catch this beautiful sunrise last week:

And of course my wonderful husband who’s been keeping me really well fed recently.

So what have you been loving recently?

Proof we were destined to be together?

I suspect this is evidence Mr Click and I were mean to be together.




Yup, we picked matching Valentine's Day cards.

Book 4 of 2013: The Idiot by Fydor Dostoyevsky

The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoyevsky was another book from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, plus it fulfilled a requirement for the Winter Reading Challenge (the letter I). I actually couldn’t decide between The Idiot and Ivanhoe but I made the choice based on the fact that I’d had a bit of a bad day and a book entitled The Idiot suited my mood better. As I’ve been gradually adding as many of the free to download ‘1001 Books’ to my Kindle, I went for the ebook version.

Image of Dostoyevsky from Wikipedia

I’ve wanted to try reading some Russian literature for quite a while. I went to St. Petersburg when I was eighteen and there’s something about the place that I just fell in love with, there’s so much history there. Aside from a bit of Chekhov, I’ve never really read anything by any Russian authors so picking up The Idiot felt like I was able to tick off another box for my own personal reading challenge.

I didn’t have any real expectations for it because the free download version didn’t actually display a synopsis. There was obviously a description about it in ‘1001 Books’ but as some of them give the endings or significant plot points away I avoided reading that as well, so I honestly didn’t know what it was going to be about. It started quite well; I began it quite late at night and only manage to read a few pages because I had to be up for work the next day. I actually found it to be quite funny and I remember thinking that if it was going to be 389 pages of this, it’d be a breeze.

But then after the first fifty or so pages, nothing really seemed to happen for about two hundred pages. I really felt like I could have read the first six or seven chapters and then skipped to the last hundred pages and not really have noticed much of a difference. It took me almost two weeks to read because it was so easy to put it down and when I started it again, nothing seemed to happen, and it would be late, so I’d put it down again. Then suddenly things picked up again and I spent the last night reading the final ten percent of the book fairly quickly. It’s a shame that the rest of the book couldn’t have gripped me so strongly.

I did enjoy reading a book set in a foreign city that I’ve actually been to. There were only a few place names that I actually recognised (one of which I’m going to have to look up because I’m sure I’ve been there but I can’t actually remember). I don’t think that there was a huge amount of description of what the places looked like, there wasn’t much that stuck with me, but I found it really easy to picture the places because I spent so much of the trip to St. Petersburg studying all the architecture. It’s a beautiful place.

One thing that I think that the book could have benefitted from, and perhaps other editions, have this, is a list of characters and their relationships to one another. The way that Russian naming works means that many of the characters have several names, all of which are used interchangeably. It meant that it was a bit tricky to actually keep track of people at times. There were times when I would forget who was who in a scene because I thought there were five people but actually there were four but one or two of them were using two different names depending who spoke to them.

It was a heavy-going read and I think that perhaps at another time I might have enjoyed it a little more than I did on this read through. It’s not put me off attempting another novel by a Russian author, but I’m planning on taking a little break from the ‘1001 Books’ for a month to read some books that I really want to read rather than ones that I think I should read.

Liebster Award

On Saturday I was merrily working away on my OU chapter for the week when I got an email to say that I’d received a comment on my blog. The comment was from my friend Bob @ Nailey Ma Bob and included a mention that she’d nominated Click’s Clan for the Liebster Award.

This is an award for bloggers who have less than 200 followers and helps to highlight new blogs. I’ve been trying to find some new blogs to read for a while, I’m incredibly satisfied with the ones I already follow, but they tend to be written by people I know from other sites and I like to think that part of the reason I blog is to ‘meet’ people I don’t know. That’s part of the reason why I’ve signed up for the A To Z Challenge. The Liebster Award has rules which help to promote other blogs, so I’m definitely on board with that.

These rules are:

1. You must post 11 facts about yourself.
2. Answer the questions set by the blogger that nominated you.
3. Choose 11 blogs and link them in your post.
4. Come up with 11 questions for your nominees to answer.
5. Go to their blog and tell them you have nominated them.
6. No tags back!

So here goes…

11 Facts About Me1. I love to read aloud. Some books just sound better when you speak the words out loud, any time that I’m alone and I have a good book, I’ll read it to myself. I can’t wait to have kids because reading bedtime stories will make this so much easier for me.

2. We don’t have TV in the house; that’s actually a bit of a lie, we have a TV but we don’t have Sky/broadband/a phoneline/etc. to actually watch programmes while they’re on. My lovely in-laws let us access the internet when we visit and we record Bones on their Sky+ but when we moved in we said we’d wait to get all that stuff for ourselves because it wasn’t top of our list of priorities. We thought we’d just finish watching some TV series boxsets that we owned and then we’d get around to it. Well, it’s over a year and a half down the line and it seems like the longer we go without ‘live TV’ the less of a need we feel for it (and the more DVD/Blu-ray boxsets we seem to acquire)!

3. When I was twelve I travelled to America by myself to spend Christmas with my Uncle and his family in Atlanta. Travelling to America as an unaccompanied minor was the coolest thing ever; for the last twenty minutes of the flight I was bumped up to first class, then I was the first off the plane, escorted through all these little corridors and handed over to my family before the rest of the travellers had even disembarked. Coming home I was left on the plane until last and was seriously beginning to think I’d been forgotten until someone came and got me.

4. I love taking photos, they’re not always very good photos, but I enjoy it and I think I’m slowly getting to grips with my DSLR camera. I live in such a beautiful place that it’s a shame not to try and capture as much of it as I can.

5. I’ve delivered several lambs by myself. A couple of consecutive years I spent first two days and then a week on a farm during lambing season. I’ve always said I wanted a pet sheep and a family member arranged it for me. It was a fantastic experience – I showed up on the farm at about 6am on the first day and was delivering my first lamb within roughly twenty minutes.

6. After nearly three years of trying to start a family was diagnosed with endometriosis and learned that the only way I’d ever conceive would be through IVF. I went onto the waiting list last April and I have to wait until next April before we’ll be anywhere near the top of the list. We’re hoping to get the funds together to go private but, living on an island, we’re tied to the seasons as we couldn’t have treatment during the winter months when there’s the most disruption to the ferries which could mess up our appointments. I’m sure one way or another I’ll get to be a mum some day.

7. All of my pets prefer my husband. It all started back in 2008 when I got two male rats named Nero and Finn. Mr Click wasn’t too sure about handling these tiny little fluff balls because he’d never been around rats before and was scared of hurting them. They grew up to be big, confident, squishy ratboys and they won him over with his charms; of the two, Nero was his best friend. He’s like the Dr. Doolittle of rats because all of our subsequent rats have loved him over me. It’s not just rats either! I begged and begged for a dog when we got a place of our own. We adopted Tara, our lovely black labrador, and she would much rather cuddle him than me. Actually, that’s a lie, I’m her best friend if I’ve got a biscuit.

8. I have a huge phobia of talking on the phone. My job involves talking on the phone all day. For some reason this doesn’t particularly bother me, but the moment my mobile rings I panic.

9. I am a massive Tolkien fangirl. I first read The Hobbit at the age of six, though I didn’t get into The Lord of the Rings until I saw the first film (then I devoured the books). I have a massive collection of Tolkien books and other related doodads. One of my most treasured possessions is a very early copy of The Silmarillion which my Grampy gave me.

10. I’m very accident prone, in fact, this is the longest I’ve actually gone without seriously injuring myself or warranting a trip to the hospital (though I came close the other week when Tara stood on my eye). I’ve spent three weeks in plaster though not for a broken bone; I’ve broken a rib and a bone in my foot, neither of which needed/could be plastered. My person best injury was driving four and a half inches of wood into my leg whilst teaching a primary school maths lesson.

11. I dream of someday having a house with a room which I can use as a library, that said, recently we’ve been rearranging things in the house and I’ve roughly half of my book collection out on display in the living room. The other half is in the spare bedroom that we’re turning into a hobby and craft room, so all I need is a comfy chair up there and it’ll be almost like having two libraries.

Questions from Bob
1. What is your TV guilty pleasure?
I have a soft spot for old kids TV shows, in my defence, I think they can now be classed as ‘classics’. Among my collection I have all the episodes of The Clangers and Bagpuss, I’ve also got a Hairy McClary DVD, Stoppit and Tidyup as well as Button Moon. They’re great for when you’re feeling under the weather, but not the sort of thing you really want to own up to having spent your weekend watching.

2. Have you got a party trick?Not really a party trick but I can recite the whole of Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening’ off by heart. I used to use it when I was in the drama group and we needed to keep talking to test our microphones. I learnt it in English when I was about 16 and it’s one of my favourite poems so it’s just sort of stuck with me.

3. What is your favourite item in your wardrobe?I’ve got a couple of lovely long cardigans. They’re lovely and comfortable and when I wear them I kind of feel like I’m wearing a Harry Potter-style wizard robe. I got the first with some gift vouchers we got when we were married, the second one Mr Click bought me (and I need to sew up because I’ve got a hole in one of the arms). They look nice and smart for work, or are comfy if I’m wanting to wear them with jeans as a sort of smart-casual.

I also like my big baggy hoodies and jumpers I’ve stolen borrowed from Mr Click. I’d wear them out if it was more socially acceptable, but mostly they’re just for lounging around the house in winter.

4. You’ve been given £/$100 and you have to spend it in an hour, what do you buy?Right now? I’d put it with the money I’ve already got put aside and toddle down to our local electrical shop to buy the chest freezer we’ve been saving up for. Any other time? I’d splurge on DVDs and books. Top of my DVD list right now is the ER boxset.

5. What is your favourite all time movie?Jack and Sarah. Richard E. Grant is a man whose wife dies in childbirth and he’s left to raise his daughter on his own, and then he acquires a rather unconventional nanny. It’s got Judi Dench and Ian McKellen in it and I’ve loved it for as long as I can remember, even though it makes me want to cry.

The Lord of the Rings films are a very close second but as they’re three films I don’t think they count.

6. What annoys you the most?Rude people.

There are ways to say things if you’re unhappy about something and there are ways not to say things. People who talk over others, put people down, say things behind people’s back, don’t listen, it’s all the same and it’s not nice.

7. Who would play you in a movie of your life?Ooh, tough question. I don’t really resemble anyone famous so I couldn’t pick that way. I asked Mr Click and he said Billie Piper or Honeysuckle Weeks, so yeah, I’d go along with that. They’d have to get my accent right though, I’ve got a terrible West Country twang, hehe.

8. What’s your favourite joke?After studying two OU linguistics courses I have a new respect for puns or anything involving a bit of wordplay. I like funny business names like ‘Lettuce Eat’ (a sandwich shop) and ‘Sherlock Homes’ (which I think was a rental agency).

I know one about an email which is sent to the wrong person, but it’s long and I always muddle it up.

9. Who is your role model?I’ve not really thought about who my role model would be, there are lots of people who I admire though. I think in terms of role models, J.K. Rowling is pretty much up there. She made it through really difficult times, worked hard and does so much good now. I think that I’d probably class her as a role model.

10. What is your favourite website?Probably HTV. I joined back when I used to watch Casualty because it’s a community for fans of the TV show, but there’s something about the place that just sucks you in. I’ve not watched Casualty in about two years but I still hang around HTV, mostly in the Chit Chat and Books forums. I’ve made so many friends on there and some day I will actually make it to a meet-up. I can’t even say exactly what it is about the place except that everyone is really nice and caring, and just slightly insane, which makes it a fun place to be.

11. Do you drive & if you do, what car do you drive?I don’t drive yet, someday. I’m hoping to start lessons again later this year, just as soon as I’ve got a new provisional license, my old one expires this year and I’ve never actually gotten around to getting my maiden name removed from it. Mr Click has a car which is ‘our car’, it’s a Renault and it’s nice and high and comfy (and I would love it even more if it was an automatic which I could happily drive). Since getting Tara it sports a dog guard, seat covers and a sort of seatbelty thing in the book for her, oh and we’ve recently had to get a new seatbelt for the back seat because she ate one. It’s a sort of silvery colour and sometimes it’s a bit slow going up hills. I’m really not a car person.

My Questions for my nominees1. How old were you when you first started using the internet?
2. What’s your favourite memory from school?
3. You can invite five people, living or dead, to a fantasy dinner party. Who do you invite?
4. If you weren’t doing your current job, what job would you be doing?
5. What is your favourite photo or picture? (If you can’t share it, describe it).
6. What is your favourite room in your house?
7. Why do you blog?
8. Who was your first crush on?
9. Do you still have your first teddy/stuffed toy?
10. Where in the world would you like to visit?
11. What is the worst book you’ve ever read?

My Nominees (all blogs I've recently found through the A To Z Challenge)
1. Oh Frog It!
2. My Baffling Brain
3. Reading, Writing and Everything In Between
4. My Creatively Random Life
5. Domestic Evolution

A To Z Challenge

On Twitter last week I spotted a fellow OU student posting about something called the A to Z Challenge. I'm not sure what made me click through to the link she'd posted, but after reading about it I thought sounded like a good idea to help me with my goal of posting a blog post every day.

I signed up almost straight away, well, not straight away, I opened my page on my phone, got frustrated with trying to read it there, borrowed my mum-in-law's computer and then signed up, but it was fairly soon after learning about it. At the time I thought I'd just post more of the same. I've been trying to get into a routine with book reviews, Project 52 posts and stuff for my Day Zero Project so I though that would help catch me up and inspire me.

Then last week I was sitting at work, in my lunch break, writing a blog post about trying for a baby and it struck me, why not do the whole challenge about infertility?

I never meant for this to become an infertility blog, when I picked the name 'Click's Clan' I thought it would be a good name for talking about all my family; pets, myself and anyone else who happened to come along. I kind of like reading 'mommy blogs' where mums post photos and stories and things they've been up to with their offspring and I wanted to do that myself.

But since finding out that I'm going to need IVF that's kind of become an important part of who I am; I've got something that causes infertility which means my journey to have a family is taking a slightly different route from lots of people. And I've been wanting to say more about it in my blog, but haven't really known what to say.

I'm thinking using this for my A To Z Challenge my be a good way to say some of the things I've wanted to in the past, show what it's like to be waiting for so long to start a family and hopefully show some other people out there that they're not alone, because believe me, it feels that way at times.

So I've been frantically planning things I can write about which will cover each letter of the alphabet. I've managed to gett something to say for each letter of the alphabet bar four and I've got until the beginning of April before I need to start actually posting. I think it'll be fun.

Project 52: Week 6 - Self-portrait

I was hoping that this week’s challenge might encourage me to try taking a photo of myself for a change, but I just didn’t get around to finding anything that I really liked. I’m going to have a look at some portrait photography blogs and sites that I like to see if I can see if there’s something I can attempt myself to try for the future.

My two immediate ideas were to take a photo of my shadow being cast on a wall, which would’ve been perfect if I could’ve rigged up a lamp or something to actually cast a shadow on one of the walls in our house. I think this would also work best with a tripod and a remote for the camera. Mr Click has recently bought a very expensive tripod at a bargain price for his radio equipment (and since discovered he might not actually need it) so I’m hoping I might be able to borrow it at some point in the future.

My other idea was to take out the contents of my bag and lay it out to take a photo of it. I’ve seen this done before and I like the effect of it, especially when everything’s laid out very geometrically. The problem with this one would be organising it someplace where Tara would walk through it/run off with bits and pieces as well as finding an interesting way to arrange the things in my bag. I think what’s in a person’s bag is really interesting and can say a lot about that person. Mine will always have a book in it, there’ll be my phone and some pens, random medication, my purse and usually some old receipts and things that’ve just been tossed into the bottom.

Then I got a better idea while rearranging the book boxes in the spare bedroom. I found my old baby book. This is one of those big hardback things that my mum filled in after I was born with all sorts of little things like when I first smiled and took my first steps. One of the first pages has a card from the hospital glued in with all the details about how much I weighed, the time I was born and how long I was. I was so new when it was filled out that the name slot just says ‘Baby Girl’. One of my favourite toys from when I was younger wears the hospital bracelet that was put on when I was born (so tiny I can only fit two fingers into it now), and it says ‘Baby Girl’ too.

Week 6: Self-portrait

So I thought that would make an interesting ‘self-portrait’. I realise I’m taking the term loosely but I think it still counts, it’s a photo that I’ve taken of a snapshot of my life nearly twenty-seven years ago. It’s a little weird to think of myself as just a baby girl, not Cait, with such tiny little wrists. It’s like I was a whole other person, but at the same time, it’s still me.

I had to be careful when I was taking the photo to make sure that my surname back then wasn’t showing, I just didn’t want that in the photo. I wanted to make sure that the fact it said ‘Baby Girl’ on the card and bracelet was really obvious as well. I wish I knew the exact moment that I stopped being just ‘Baby Girl’ and started being me. The other little bits of information weren’t quite so important somehow, but I’m glad I included some of them in the photo as well. Somewhere I have my hospital bracelet from my operation last year, I should fill in a new card with my weight and height and do a then-and-now version of this photo.

Next week the theme is baking so I guess this will be an excuse to whip the bread machine into action and get a photo of whatever comes out. We’ve been running low on bread making supplies so this may be a tricky challenge after all.

Changing Rooms

Over the week we've been playing musical furniture at home. It's been a double pronged attack coming about because we decided we actually wanted to do something with our spare bedroom but also because we had run out of room for our books and films.

While Mr Click started work clearing things out of the spare bedroom to make room for the desk his parents let us have, we started looking out for new bookcases for the living room and front lobby. We already had one big bookcase which we got shortly after we moved in but it just wasn't enough to hold my vast collection.

Unfortunately bookcases were in short supply at our local furniture recycling place, but we did manage to find a nice deep shelf unit which would work for books in the living room. And so we started a Tetris-like process of moving furniture around the house.

We emptied the old bookcase and moved it to make room for the new one. Then I had plenty of fun moving all the books across.



Then we had to clear all of the DVDs out of the cupboard in the front lobby, move that into the living room and then move the old bookcase into the space where the cupboard had been. I thought it was going to be a huge job but it didn't take long at all.

By far the most time consuming part of the job was moving all the films and TV series around in the front lobby. It was good fun too; until this point we've had to keep most of our boxsets in plastic tubs in a cupboard but now they're all out on display. It looks really bright out there now and it's so much easier to pick what we want to watch now we can see it all.

Now we've got a desk in the spare bedroom as well, all we need is a sofa bed and well be practically sorted up there!