Detentions, Dresses and meh. (by sarah)

Jean has a lunch detention today for forgetting her PE kit yesterday. It's an automatic thing, she's stressed, I assured her we've all managed this one she reckons only we manage this sort of thing - she packed for the wrong day.

Mary is off to Funky Thursday an all change day at school and chose her own cloths, it is the new dress she was given at her birthday party. It is the third time she's worn it ie everytime it comes out of the laundary she wears it.

Me and Al are ill, we've had a week of three different little babies coming and going in the house plus the normal everyone has the late winter sniffles. Inflammation is the name of the game including joints, sinuses and for me also this always includes my inner ear and issues with my stupid thin ear tubes. Yep we have man flu and are still basically functioning, not even ill enough to be off work etc...

There is no real purpose in this post other than I wanted to write it.

We Were Hacked (by sarah)

The blog was hacked, I noticed about 4 hours after the initial hack but with Al at work I realised I did not know what to do about it. The hack happened in the middle of the night and wasn't a bad one, more a sort of warning that there was a vulnerability and I needed to sort it.

It had occurred in the wee hours of the morning, I assumed I'd logged in and forgotten somewhere so changed my password etc... but by the time Al got home from work the hacking had gotten realer and they were deleting blog content wholesale and leaving adverts and offensive material.

Still assuming it was me having been a muppet somehow Al nuked the blog, and did some tech voodoo and reset from the archives - no content was lost.

And it was hacked again - same pattern - first the guy warning that it is was hackable and then the others, this time worse because more people, bots, dark webbers, whatever... knew that it was doable and so where doing it. I started getting phone calls, texts and messages from readers who were noticing either by going to check for new content or are notified of thread changes (not sure the correct term for this on blogs as it's sort of a forum thing but some of our posts have turned into mini forums).

This time Al looked deeper and realised it was something that was wrong with the under laying WordPress platform that the blog is built on. He was puzzling how to fix it when they announced a patch/fix/upgrade. You don't announce hacking vulnerabilities until you have the fix. So it took about a week to fix the blog.

Al had super admined and changed my password and forgotten to let me know what it was... still a little nervous about new content surviving long enough for back up... so this is also a test post 🙂

Also a big big BIG thankyou to all of those who contacted us to let us know, if I hadn't been trying to blog daily at the moment we might have missed it for weeks!

Big Food and Naps (by sarah)

Yesterday I did an hour of work and then went for my 9 am nap, this is supposed to last half an hour and is part of the new regime to make the head injury go away but... I woke up at nearly 2 pm having slept through all my alarms.

To be fair before said nap I felt awful, really fluey and afterwards I felt really good and got lots done but it was frustrating as it felt like I'd waisted the day.

I hadn't even had breakfast so I decided to treat myself and had Christmas left overs that were frozen in the freezer and made some gravy. This was my meal for the day - it was good 🙂

Alaric has made me me safe paneer for today which I can just reheat and I was actually organised enough to sort us out a family only mocktales. Al did admin, Jean worked on her Foodverse and has actually managed to get it out of the planning stage and started writing it 🙂

I finished off my Storystorm with over 100 ideas for picture books - most of them are kind of one idea and would make a series - now all I need is time to write them! I also did some poetry writing once Jean had gone to bed - she was most helpful with my storystorming and looked things up on her tablet for me. Mary did not join in this Mocktales which was the first of the year (my bad!) as it was too late which made her a bit of a grumples but Daddy flew her to bed and she was a super hero so she was happy.

So yeah kind of did everything wrong yesterday - binge slept and ate one huge meal which was most of my cal allowance instead of spreading out over the day but was actually very productive in the end - still kind of feel guilty though!

The Jan Recap… (by sarah)

It's the end of January so what has gone on in the household snell-pym in the first month of 2017?

For a start there was the end of Christmas, I am still making the last few Advent vids ready for Christmas next year. We delivered presents though sadly not all the presents so we still have a back log!

Also mine and Mary's birthdays - mine involved a coffee, meal and shopping with Al before hospital stuff but we have only just done the proper celebration with kids and friends this weekend just gone which was also Mary's birthday. There was also posh vegan/Gluten Free brunch. Mary has so far played in the Waterstones cafe with her friend Lilly as her party is going to be in two weeks time. We've planned the party and got stuff ready for it.

This includes me working out how to make upcycled unicorn head bands and tail belts and little roll and pop up horses for the kids to make.

My mother was hospitalised so there was a trip to Essex and the adventures of getting home on the train which were unexpected.

DIY wise we have fixed several toys, remounted a coat rack which had pulled off the wall, dealt with networking and upgrading Jean's computer.

We got a telescope - an amazing thing which was a pool of Christmas money instead of presents for Al and Jean and part of mine and Mary's birthdays. We've seen binary stars so far. It was an undertaking to assemble and we now need to build a storage/transport box but it is assembled and being looked through though we've only had like three clear nights!

I've had three lots of testing at the hospital which took it's toll and norovirus hit the household. I missed a theatre meeting about performing a monologue and a poetry recording evening but I am being given second chances at those so that's all good.

I also missed my Krav self defence one off class and a poetry book launch which made me sad but on the other hand I was live streamed reading poetry at Food For Thought.

Talking of poetry I have also been typing up and editing poems from the BOOKCASE (Not shelf) of notebooks I have. The shear number is insane obv. not all of it is usable but a lot is so I have been organising Turquoise Monster and have even started submitting work again (as in 2 poems so far). I've written three poems this month predictable all about Trump. Of course I am doing my poetry writing challenges so I've drafted a good few more mostly not about Trump.

Jan has also been me gearing up for the poetry writing challenge that I host over at Wopo.

I have also designed, refined and created mini poetry scrolls, story scrolls, made bookwallets etc... for blank scrolls for others to write poetry on, personalised pencils and made write your own poem kits, made and put together 100 mini zine surprise pouches, story boarded two more zines, drafted half a short story, edited a couple of flash fictions, tried to write daily on this blog and started on the mammoth task of trying to sort out the Salaric Craft blog.

Also Storystorm - what used to be Picture Book Idea Month has rebranded and moved to Jan. so I have been idea generating and expanding on those ideas for kids books.

Alaric has been making a cufflink holder for the cufflinks I made him for Advent, the girls have been making invites and decorations for Mary's party and we have all been working on the cosplay outfits for True Believers Comic Festival which is this weekend coming. This has involved sewing, sticking, painting, metal twisting, papier mache and buying new wellys.

I had to get a third print run of my colouring book Love: A Stranger Dream made and in general have been trying to sort out The WigglyPets Press.

I have been teaching myself origami and have folded lit. hundreds of things from geometric modules to make bigger things from to little stand up foxes to pretty little boxes.

We've organised things for getting back down the allotment, so just sorting out containers for soil etc...

I've knitted four hats, made an Ironman craft kit, taken the kids to two (not us) birthday parties. Three projects are still currently being designed and refined including mending a rocking horse that is older than me. I accidently made a pair of slippers from an old coat whilst trying to make a portal gun (please tell me this happens to other people!).

Alaric made my laptop usable again (for now) and we had a chicken fatality 🙁 and we had to fix the chicken run and stuff and general animal stuff to sort out. We've got our new electric car and there was pie making!

NB pie was not chicken Al is veggi!

Jean is still at Scouts, Jujitsu, and Drama and Mary is doing her Ballet, both girls are missing climbing but for one of the parties we did get to go "caving". Alaric is still doing Krav and Hackspace each week. Oh and of course we had to do my tax (sobs!).

There were also visits from and too various family.

So that was January - it snowed and it rained and there was scary fog.

Is Spiderman Real? (by sarah)

As we gear up for the True Believers Comic Festival including cosplay outfits Mary ponders the nature of existence.... we have been having lots of questions such as where exactly does Father Christmas live? and how did Jesus make the world? And why don't I see fairies everywhere? What are spirits and does Korra really control elements?

Today's... "is spiderman real?"

Me "not in our universe I don't think, he's a story made of imagination here but I don't know if there are other universes or if he'd be real there."

Mary "oh he is real and he belongs in this universe just a different world because Jesus made different worlds that were all far away from each other so that he could see what happened on each one."

This is reality according to the just turned 6 yr old. I think according to this Jesus would be a scientists...