Overall it's been a pretty good week! I won a Singer sewing machine in a competition (find it on ebay), was offered a few pieces of blog work, and I had one of my stories podficced for the first time. :)

In work it was education scrutiny committee on Tuesday and Wednesday. To be honest I was planning to kind of coast the meeting and just ask a couple of questions, enjoying the first one I've been to where I don't have to chair. ...So of course the chair couldn't make it and I was nominated to sub for her. It kept me on my toes, I guess!

Marianna had a teacher training day on Friday so I took her to the Bron Afon litter pick in the morning. She was less than impressed with the idea - her argument was "I don't want to go, I don't want to be part of a community" - but I think she had a decent enough time once we got there. At least it meant she didn't spend all day playing Roblox / watching Youtubers play Roblox.

On the flipside I felt really ill on Thursday and ended up sleeping through a meeting - which might sound great if it weren't for the freaky nightmares I couldn't wake from. I always get really panicked when I sleep that heavily, afraid it means a backslide to chronic fatigue and just losing huge chunks of time to exhaustion. (Seriously, I just don't remember 2013.) Marianna came down with a cold though yesterday which made me feel a bit better, as it was probably just cold germs and not anything more serious.

The other downer was the announcement by TOTS100 that they're switching from being a blog chart to an 'influencer' chart. The biggest weight will now be given to your Instagram account. I rarely even log into Insta unless it's to enter a competition so I dropped 382 places in the new ranking. So, yeah, I deleted my TOTS account because, what's the point? If I was into pictures and social media I wouldn't spend all my time on long form writing. Sigh.

On the blog I posted a guide to Crayola Colour n' Style Friends dolls, my top ten hits of 2008, scans of Just Seventeen magazine from 17/04/1985, and Welsh UFO sighting reports for 2020.
 

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Deal of the Week -

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Another half term holiday completed! We didn't do anything particularly exciting, but I tried to make it a bit special for Marianna - we had a picnic, a movie night, had the paddling pool out one day, etc. One day she had free reign of the remote to play all her favourite songs on YouTube and dance along, which reignited the ol' 'everything she listens to is completely inappropriate' arguments...

At the moment she's obsessed with Melanie Martinez, Billie Eilish, and Ashnikko. Because they all dye their hair/wear wigs, dance, dress up, and act out fantasy scenarios... I kind of feel like if I make a big deal about the lyrics being unsuitable it would only draw her attention to them and make them seem all the more exciting / glamorous or whatever for it. As it is she's never asked what any of it means and instead is like, can we watch the Melanie Martinez one where she's a doll? (Dollhouse) Or can we see Ashnikko when she's the pirate? (Deal With It)

I dunno, I feel like it's done way less damage than some dumb video she watched about haunted chucky cheese and ended up afraid of all her own teddy bears for a month...

Other than entertaining, I've managed to get some more UFO research done and list a bunch of stuff on ebay. It sometimes amazes me our house is always so cluttered when we're always getting rid of things!!

On the blog I posted a guide to Curli Girls dolls, my reading list for May, Welsh UFO sightings for 2019, and Just Seventeen magazine scans from 19/06/1985.

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Deal of the Week -