Platinum Paws

I'm ridiculously, insanely busy at the moment so free time has been spent with Venzo or sleeping! As a result, my poor wee blog has suffered. Be assured though people, I'm still alive! Anyway, while I'm here explaining myself I may as well plug the reason I'm so busy....

www.platinumpaws.co.uk

Pet lovers, get shopping and spread the word!

x x x

Angels and Poles

Having had a fantastic Christmas and New Year (although ended up working somewhat more than planned, but hey, that's self-employment for you!), it's now back to the grindstone. Lata and I are hoping that 2008 is the year for us - business plans are going full steam ahead, so hopefully within a few months we'll have our online shop up and running! As I've learned in the last year and a half of self-employment though, hurdles are thrown at you every step of the way. It's really just a case of pushing through problems though, even when things seem hopeless. Also, as well as the problems, there's the little things I call my "angel moments", when something comes along which makes things a bit easier. Angel moments can be a new booking, a supportive chat or just a new perspective on things, but they really do save the day when you feel like giving up.

Went back to my pole dancing class last night, such fun! Got a whole new set of moves to work on, and boy do they need work! Arrived home with a massive bruise on my foot where I'd banged it off the metal trying to jump up. Venzo keeps enquiring as to when I'm going to showcase my new found skills. He's in for a long wait. At the moment I feel about as sexy as a baby elephant as I clunk round the bloomin' thing! I don't think I could ever actually dance in a club, the presence of men would freak me out, but the classes are just full of women having a laugh and getting fit so would highly recommend it to anyone out there looking for a fun way to tone up!

Anyway, I'm currently wasting my day off by staring at computer screen when I could be doing exciting things like cleaning, going to the bank & doing paperwork...hmm, perhaps I'll spend just a little longer reading blogs...

x

Merry Christmas

I'm not sure if anyone actually reads this blog. However, I shall presume that they do and wish you all a merry Christmas. I cannot wait. I have a few days off for the first time in what seems like forever! Going to spend lots of time with my family, friends and Venzo, snuggled up infront of the fire! Christmas day itself shall be fun, my favourite part of the day being when my sisters and I send Dad downstairs, "to check if Santa's been" (somewhat odd when we're aged 14, 15 and 21 but exciting all the same)! Truely though, as cheesy as it sounds, my main Christmas wish would be that all the people I love are happy, at the end of the day, that's all that matters. Too many people get caught up in the commercialism of Christmas, which, although fun, shouldn't be what's it's all about. Whether religious or not, we should remember that Christmas is about spending time with the people we care about, recharging our batteries and giving what we can to others; not fighting for bargains in the shops, whinging about presents and general bah-humbugging!

Love, Joy and Mince Pies to all,

Zannie x x x

Written in the stars...

Sooo, Sunday night and I've returned to my blog. Weekend was sad and lovely all at once but I don't feel like going into the ins and outs of it.

A fresh week of business is about to commence, looking forward to it and nervous at the same time. Have a few things to sort out with a couple of difficult customers. Being one of the least confrontational people on the planet (although I'm getting better) this is one aspect of business I'm not overly keen on. However, I'm learning day by day to stand up for myself and not let people away with any nonsense. Thankfully Lata is at the opposite end of the scale, so we work well together, she encourages me to be a little more feisty when it's required and I have a calming effect on her zealous approach!

I'm not sure whether I go for the whole zodiac sign thing, but when contemplating my approach to life I decided to google my star sign Libra. The results were surprising and summed me up to a tee!

GOOD POINTS:
The Libra person is co-operative, diplomatic, open-minded, urbane, fair, partnership-oriented, avoids conflict, easy-going, even-tempered, refined, balanced, graceful, artistic, home-body, charming, debative, flexible, sensual, idealistic, equalitarian and sociable. They also seem to have a great chance at making vast amounts of wealth and fortune.

NOT SO GOOD:
They can sometimes also rationalise, be easily deterred, indecisive, lazy, changeable, gullible, easily influenced, flirtatious, conceited, perfectionist, aloof, mildly vengeful, can't say no, quarrelsome, over-seriousness, cold, self-indulgent, cruel, jealous

I would hope from the list of negative aspects I honestly try not to be cruel and I don't consider myself to be particularly lazy, however, many of them strike a cord. In particular, the indecisiveness and the perfectionism which is definitely more of a negative aspect than a positive. I've lost count of the times I've been called "miss priss" and "pernickity" by my mother (who, I hasten to add, is somewhat guilty of the exact same crime! Having the same birthday as each other, we have the same star sign and similar characters. Mind you, she has "the gift of the gab", whereas I can be a bit shy with new people), and have frustrated people around me by failing to move on to the next project or go somewhere because I'm fussing about something not being "quite right" - this includes everything from how the bed's made to book keeping for work.

The typical likes and dislikes of a Libran are as below and are pretty accurate:

• Likes: fairness, equality, home, stability, happiness, justice, saying yes, gentleness, sharing, the "finer" things in life
  

• Dislikes: drama, yelling, being ignored, judgmental people/being judged, saying no, injustice, violence, bad manners
  

I did think though - who doesn't like happiness?!

Soo, having delved a little into the stars I'm still not sure where it's all a load of codswallop or not, I must say though, some of it bears an uncanny resemblance to me -but is this just coincidence?

Princesse, and anyone else that's reading, why don't you have a look into your star sign and see if you feel it matches up to the real you? Look forward to the conclusions....

x x x

Grandad

My poor Venzo's grandad has died. He'd been ill for a long time though and in some ways it's good he's at peace. If you believe in Heaven, I do anyway, he's healthy and happy with his wife again now. However, it's sad for all his family who had to watch him struggle with alzheimer's all these years and have now lost him to it. So to all you fellow bloggers, I'd ask you to please keep them all in your thoughts/prayers/whatever you believe in.

That is all.

x x x

Happy December!

It's Saturday 1st December, 4.15pm, icy rain is hitting the window and it's already dark outside. Winter and I have a love/hate relationship.

Bad things about winter:

-Being freezing 24/7. I think I must infact be a cold blooded reptile (although I don't have scales yet), I operate on a completely different temperature scale to the rest of the world! When normal people are over-heating, I'm contented, when normal people are contented, I'm shivering and when normal people shiver I'm in a semi-comatose state where I can't function and just want to curl up (I hear this is similar to what happens if you have hypothermia!). There's no medical explanation for this, I'm not lacking iron and I'm not underweight, so why? I personally have no idea, what I do know though is that I hate wintery weather.

-Darkness. The past couple of years this has not been such a problem for me as I work outside a lot of the time and see what daylight there is. However, I used to detest it when I went into work and it was dark and came out and it was dark again.

- Ice. Terrifying when driving and even more so when teetering around in three inch heels!

Good things about Winter:

-Snuggling. There's nothing quite like a winters night, snuggled up in a blanket with Venzo, watching some film I've seen a million times before and singing along to all the songs. (*cough* Dirty Dancing). While this is going on, Venzo charmingly feigns interest and even, on the odd occassion, joins in with my out of tune singing!)

-Christmas. The older I get, the more childlike I seem to become at Christmas. My two younger sisters are at that awkward teenage stage where you can rarely get more than a grunt out of them, and anything remotely fun is considered "soooo uncool". I would HATE to be that age again! Now that I'm in my twenties and my life no longer revolves around what is "cool" and "uncool", I can relish in the Chrsitmas spirit and wake my entire family up at 7am, before sending dad downstairs to "check if Santa's been"!

- Scarves. I love them. Brighten up any outfit and on those cold horrid days, a scarf wrapped round your neck can make it all seem better! Unfortunately, scarves (excpet the skinny silky kind) are not really deemed appropriate in July, and let's face it, they're not really necessary then either. I therefore look forward to October for the simple reason that my pink polka dot scarf can make a comeback!

Right, better go, Venzo is coming over soon for some of the above mentioned snuggling, and my hair currently looks like I fell in a chip pan (a switched off one of course, had I fallen in a hot one, I would have a lot more to worry about than my hair!)

x x x

Rain Cloud

Why is it that bad things always seems to happen all at once? Is it because the first bad thing makes you feel a bit down, so that things that follow seem worse than they are? Or does bad luck really just land on you for a few days?

Our best customer cancelled this week. Not because of any problems with our service, but because she's ill with MS and felt she had to give her two small dogs up. It came as a great surprise to Lata and I, although we knew she was unwell, we didn't realise the dogs were becoming a major burden. In fact, it's often said that animals can be extremely therapeutic in times of both emotional and physical distress. I believe this is true, having been comforted many times by the snuggle of a pet. Anyway, I'm straying from the point, which is that we have lost a major source of income. This would not be a huge problem if we weren't trying to pay off the new van we've just bought and if it wasn't so close to Christmas.

Having received this bad news first thing Monday morning, Lata and I then took a group of five dogs out to the country for a walk. One of them disappeared. Now don't get me wrong, when you take dogs out a walk, they do occasionally wander off, but have usually caught up with you again in five minutes. This one, Alfie, took off after a squirrel and was no where to be seen for over half an hour. Just as we were starting to panic a little, he came trotting along the path towards us, tail wagging, delighted to be reunited with us after a vigorous chase! However, what Alfie couldn't comprehend was why we were cross at him. When you look at it from his point of view I suppose you can understand it a little better, he'd had a delightful walk involving squirrels (his favourite thing to chase!) and had now met up with his human companions who were going to escort him home for a well earned nap! We, however, were already late due to cancellation and were now going to spend the rest of the day trying to catch up the time, which meant missing lunch -not a popular option!

After the morning's fiasco things seemed to pick up around midday. For around ten minutes. The rest of the afternoon consisted of my foot getting sorer and sorer due to inflamed tendons, Lata having bad news about the state of her car, which is in for repair, someone setting fireworks off in the park near the dogs which sent them all berserk and the windscreen getting a chip in it. By the time the pad fell off the break pedal of the van, it seemed like the worst thing that could possibly happen to us!

It's not all doom and gloom though, the little rain cloud that seems to be hovering above our poor business's head showed some sign of shifting this afternoon when the phone rang regarding a booking, the people haven't phoned back yet though. Fingers crossed.

In my personal life everything is hunky dory, let's hope it stays that way, at least until the business sorts itself out! X X X