Thicker than water?

"Dear" sibling,

You're such a scum-sucking bottom-feeding lowlife. How dare you use the death of our family pet against my Mum, Dad and finally myself?

Don't be a dick for once in your life, if at all possible. I'd rather be an only child than have a brother like you.

The sister you don't deserve,

Chloe

Photos Updated!

FINALLY got round to updating Ma Vie En Photos with the photos from the last week. Feel terrible that I let it go untouched that long and vow not to let it happen again!!

Dungeon Master...

I've been lagging behind in updating my Photo Blog since Monday, and this is mostly because I've been grieving for Jasper and busying myself with looking for work. Neither of these things have been particularly productive, but rest assured I have been taking the photos - I just need to upload them. I'll be doing this later today.

In other news - I've been made custodian of my friend's Dungeon while he's away for three weeks! He's given me the keys and it will be my job to meet the clients, let them in, wait somewhere with a book for them to return the keys to me and make sure everything is tidy. How exciting :) In the words of my friend Becca I'll "get to meet all the perverts!"

Celia continues to be pregnant and her belly is swelling up nicely. She's eating loads more than normal and the other cats are jealous that she's getting special kitty food to help meet her nutritional needs. She's due the first week of March. Expect more updates (and photos) between now and then!

I'm having my hair done at the weekend - red dreads to match the shade I have it dyed at the moment. Barnaby is going to give me a hair cut before then, I'm thinking of going for a pointy fringe again but not too much off the length. Growing my hair this year AND having dreads installed are both things on my epic List! Ooh, on that topic, sort of, we booked the venue for my party last week - it's perfect and I'm very excited about it! Need to start getting the decorations ordered from eBay and deciding on the buffet food. Luckily, I've formed a Prom Committee to help me with all that stuff and we'll have our first meeting next week! Yay!

Anyway, that's enough for now. It's lunchtime for me and then I've got to send some job applications out.

Tainted Strawberry Gashes in the Paranoid Ending

Today has felt like a very musical day so far. I've been sorting my cds, finding ones which I'd forgotten I owned, finding others to be missing (sob) and also discovering ones which I thought were unplayable but seem to be doing just fine now! Odd, but very good!

Jack Off Jill, Garbage, Avril Lavigne (be careful if you have the speakers on when you visit this site!) and Marilyn Manson have been my soundtrack for the afternoon.

An update on The List!

I've accomplished three more things from my epic List!

31) Re-lace all my corsets correctly - Proof of which can be seen in photographic form here

43) Eat a twinkie for the first (and probably last) time - Every time I went past or into Cybercandy in town they didn't have any! One morning last week they had a box full but they were closed and I honestly couldn't justify waiting around in the cold for an hour! But, yesterday, Phil and I ventured in and they had some on Buy One Get One Free! REJOICE!! So we each got one and...well, it wasn't totally gross ;) Here I am taking my second bite!

68) Watch the sun set over the sea in Brighton - Now sadly, there's no photographic proof on any of my blogs of this, but Phil did take some spectacular ones which I'll try to upload at some point. We were on the Palace Pier with Hannah-May and Mike, watching the starlings do their crazy low-flying hypnotic dance around the shoreline. It was absolutely amazing to see, as the sun slowly dipped behind the horizon. Breathtaking.

Kittehs?

I'm pretty sure that Celia is pregnant! :D

My Adventure in the Haunted Flat

The incredible ceiling in the ballroom

A tiny kitchen within the kitchen!

Ring for service!

This is absolutely insane.

I am currently staying in the most incredible house I haveever had the pleasure of setting foot inside. It's like staying in the poshest hotel imaginable. This is actually a little difficult to put into words so you will have to bear with me, dear readers!

Ok, let me explain. My friend Hannah-May cleans for a very nice and very rich lady who has two very nice but very spoiled dachunds. Said nice and rich lady has been whisked away by her husband for a holiday to celebrate her 50th and asked Hannah-May to dog-sit. Because the house they live in is HUGE and somewhat creepy (and also apparently haunted – more on that later) she really didn't want to stay overnight on her own so she enlisted myself and Becca to help out and essentially have a bit of an adventure.

We arrived on Wednesday at around 4, settled in pretty quickly in the Children's Bedchambers upstairs and I got the tour of the place. There's the usual beautiful and spacious kitchen, dining room, toilets, bathrooms, utility room, bedrooms that you would expect to find in a lovely Regency flat, but on top of that, here we have an ante-chamber with an indoor fountain! Fully usuable servants quarters and hidden stairway! A toilet which was apparently used by a king! A dressing room which is hidden on the main stairway and is really, really creepy!

The crazy indoor fountain

The incredible range in the kitchen where we cooked and ate each night.

There's a Ballroom with a grand piano which was restored and redecorated by the V&A Museum (this is where I am currently sitting now, on the plushest sofa, watching something inane on the enormous TV) – so much gold leaf and rich embroidery! It's honestly like a room in the Royal Pavilion. I LOVE it so much. I've often wandered through old houses and castles wondering what it would feel like to stay over night there and NOW I KNOW! Crazy times. The Head Girl of Slytherin feels right at home here – granted, she rather fancies repainting the yellow marble-

effect walls with a deep forest green or silvery grey, but hey, you can't have everything. The house was taken over by squatters a few years ago, but that actually led to the house being saved from further damage. On of the upstairs toilets was broken and leaking, which meant the ceiling in the ballroom was being damaged but had the squatters not been there the damage would have gone on for much longer and the epic ceiling would have been unsalvagable!

And yes, it is reportedly haunted. The other girl who cleans here full time has told the owners and Hannah-May that she's been tapped on the shoulder three times while cleaning the hidden dressing room, only to turn round and find there's no-one there. Mrs Nice-And-Rich has seen odd refelctions in mirrors on the upper floors. Personally, we haven't seen anything ourselves yet, but I can well imagine it being haunted. The building is very old and as such, creeks and groans in the dark at night. Lights flicker on and off. The wind whistles in the chimneys and is clearly audible as a high-pitched moan in the large open fireplaces in most of the rooms and this is really offputting when you're here by yourself :) I have another night here tonight and Becca is joining us for a girly night of nailpainting, facemasks, movies, popcorn, drinking and gossip – and inevitably some ghost stories and tarot reading – so who knows what the darkened rooms will bring tonight?

I'll leave you with another photo and the rest are on my facebook!

The large, and somewhat creepy entrance hall. Can you see the orbs?