If I were a fairy

If I were a fairy, my season would be autumn, my flower would be sunflowers, I would magic in the harvest and paint the leaves of everything in the autumnal colours and I would play tricks on mortals around Halloween by tickling their ears with my breath!

I would smell like spices and apples and have autumn leaves hairclips in my hair and spiders looping their webs into my earring holes and dangling there as fashion models.

I would help the stork deliver babies in big pumpkin carry cots and corn husks as blankets.

Because, why not?

My familiar would be a fox or raccoon and I’d throw peach pits at people who disrespected nature and magically create an instant tree where it lands to serve them right if they walked right into it!

I love faeries; I could get really into writing a book all about fairy culture etc.  it would be smashing if I could do the art I see in my head as well.

But never mind.

I am overloaded with other projects right now that one can wait.

Thanks for reading!

What is autumn?

What does autumn mean to me?

Beautiful colourful crispy leaves flying through the air, if you catch one a wish will be granted according to legend, or you win a day’s luck per leaf you catch!

It means harvest time where all your hard work in the garden really pays off, rewarding you with sunflowers and pretty gourds, squashes and pumpkins to decorate your home with for Halloween.

Halloween, I love Halloween – I love dressing up, roleplaying, planning things for trick-or-treaters or planning parties when we were fortunate enough to be able to afford to do so.  I love decorating the house for Halloween and planning themes, doing weird party foods with weird twists, but the thing is, sometimes I can go too far that the guests decline to eat things.

I suppose raspberry jelly filled gloves to look like a bloodied hand and frankfurters cut to look like fingers covered in ketchup is a bit too much for the human psyche?

Let alone the stuffed Jack-O-Lantern orange bell peppers with spaghetti Bolognese inside of them looking like some kind of zombie freak meal.

I love horror, can you tell?

I love grossing people out too, love, love, love playing to people’s fears when they are spooked out at this season… am I evil for admitting that kind of joy?

I am the kind of person who knows that someone who is sensitive to horror movies, just watched a movie and I creep around ready to pounce when they least expect it – yes, I have a mischievous side, a very impish side!

I am not like that with children though, I don’t like traumatising kids, usually I end up making plans to do things like this with the kids on sensitive adults – but that depends entirely on the integrity and the bravery of each child!  I am a bad influence sometimes!

Halloween is more fun with kids, because kids make things more light-hearted and sometimes they can influence me in becoming grosser for next year!

Kids are sickos at heart!

What’s so funny is, I always regret what I do – why?  Because I am probably the jumpiest person anyone knows, I am easily spooked!

The start of autumn is my birthday and I don’t have very many happy memories about birthdays because I hate to sound tragic, but I am easily forgotten or pushed aside for a couple of weeks because my birthday is apparently too inconvenient usually.  3^rd of October is apparently a difficult date, I suppose I know why – growing up in a family where four of the major family matriarchs have their birthdays between 15^th September to 24^th September, everyone is spent up!

I like watching the children playing with the leaves on the spinney (a little copse island that sits in the middle of our street, separating my side of the road from the other side of the road by two rows of trees with a path in the middle of it).  The children here aren’t like the ones in London who won’t touch the leaves through fear of bird poop or bugs – here the children will gather all the leaves they can in a pile and sit inside of them making huge and very competitive nests for themselves!  At the end of the day, some of the children take all the leaves home to deliver to their gardening parents for next year’s leaf mould fertiliser.

Autumn can sometimes be scary, very scary; for me anyway – I have a huge fear of windstorms in particular, because of a few incidences that happened to me as a child where I got injured or nearly killed.  Thunderstorms are ok, I like thunderstorms, but windstorms scare the Hell out of me!

It is really hard to make me function properly if there is a bad windstorm, I don’t like going out in them at all.

Thunderstorms though, I am a bit of a storm chaser with those, love taking videos of them and watching them and I have to hold myself back from going out in them!

Though I am scared of windstorms or hurricane backlashes, I don’t have the same fear for tornadoes, I’ve seen and experienced them – yes even here in the UK, they are more common here than you think – in fact it is estimated the UK get about three hundred per year, though they generally are small, some have been known to rip streets apart.

I remember my mother sitting on a hammock with a neighbour I didn’t like and a small one around the size of a big football man ripped right through the garden behind them, knocking them off the hammock and lifting the hammock up into the air and landing half on the fence behind them!

I was glad I was twenty feet away watering my mum’s flowers at the time, no one was injured – but I had never seen my neighbour move so fast before!

Autumn is generally my favourite season of them all – I am very much an autumn person.

Thanks for reading!

Top 10 beliefs & superstitions

Top 10 favourite beliefs, spiritual stuff and traditions!

Top 10 traditions I have

Decorating the Christmas tree on December 1^st (as in UK we don’t have Thanksgiving)

Cinnamon French toast & plum compote for breakfast on Christmas morning

Decorating the house for Easter & having an Easter tree

Because I am multi-faith I do acknowledge small aspects of the Jewish Sabbath, not much but there are things I do on Friday nights if nothing gets in my way! Paul doesn’t like a lot of it he is completely faithless; Henry likes it, but if Paul doesn’t like it we don’t do it. I like to light a candle and acknowledge the sabbath in prayer, but that’s all I can do here and usually in the bedroom not at the dining table where its supposed to be! Two years ago Henry and I was seriously thinking about going back to the old family faith entirely, but we didn’t have the support from his dad. My friend Lizzy who is quite Frum in the Jewish community was thrilled and supportive. In fact its because of this, that Henry and Paul’s relationship has suffered, because Henry really wanted to go to the synagogue and learn more and he is upset he won’t be getting a bar mitzvah in May 2023 when he will be 13! -I know it sounds counter to the belief, but visions and spiritual guidance has improved a lot since deciding about exploring my Jewish ancestry.

On New Year’s Eve, you should clean the house as much as possible, open all the windows and doors as close to Midnight as possible and sweep the old year out of every door you can and sweep in the new year – if you are partying that night, don’t worry, do it first thing in the morning! 

Dressing up on Halloween and giving candy to Trick or Treaters – or if I am lucky and able to go to or have a special Halloween party! 

A special family meal on all Equinoxes and Solstices!

Sprinkling magic dust for the reindeer on Christmas Eve with Henry on the path of the house and putting up the magic key for Santa to get indoors and hanging it on the wreath of the door!

Putting a silver coin in the Christmas pudding for extra luck for the lucky person who finds it Christmas day!

Prayers to the full moon about what you need in the coming month with a silver coin in hand flip it 3 times and spin 3 times.

Top 10 superstitions I have

As a woman I shouldn’t pick up a dropped or crossed knife (it’s an old Romany belief)

Shouldn’t cut a person’s hair if they are sick and when you cut your hair it should be buried or burned!

You must always leave a food or drink offering to house spirits before you go to bed, in a specific place in the kitchen for them!

My grandma always told me to stick a knife or a piece of sharp wood under the cradle of all babies to protect them from Lilith – not sure if this is a Jewish belief or not, but it’s in my family!  Henry still has his sharp wood under his bed, I don’t let go!  Lol

If you are having a period of bad luck in your life, bathe in sea salt water in the bath, get out the bath, dry yourself off and before you do anything get your clear quartz crystal and circle yourself, do this for 3 days.

Black cats and the number 13 ARE VERY LUCKY POSITIVE symbols to me and my family, not the normal beliefs others have!

I can’t identify yellow chrysanthemums but when I find out that someone has bought them into the house and told me what they were, I get upset because in family tradition, those flowers denote death and mourning and if nobody has died, they’ve no right to be inside your house!

A robin visiting the window or coming too near me in the garden means that my ancestors need me to talk to them and so I should go and meditate at my earliest convenience.

Don’t talk ill of the dead.

Don’t go out of your way to contact the dead, it’s disrespectful you can talk to them if you like – but don’t actively disturb them!  I am clairvoyant, but I don’t force communication!

Top 10 spiritual things I do or believe

I believe in the God of the Old Testament and no presumed messiah, yet; but I also ask for advice from angels, spirit guides and animal guides or my higher self that looks like prayer but isn’t – totally different ball game!

Though I consider myself mostly a believer in the Old Testament, I do believe in some aspects of revelations in the New Testament, primarily because of my upbringing – but also because of unexplained visions and dreams which have come true over the years and I continue to get these visions at times and I am too shy to talk in depths about them!

My family believe they are descendants from all sorts of things – Vietnamese ancestors believe they’re dragon shapeshifters – my Irish ancestors believe we’re descended from the tuatha de danann, fairies and Celtic Gods, part of my Greek ancestry believe we are descended from Dionysus, the Romans believed they were Sons of Mars and my grandma said we’re related as distant cousins to the families Vakarelski (I have found this to be true on Genesreunited) who were accused of vampirism and are also cousins to Vlad Tepes the III!  As well as many Salem Witches and Aleister Crowley – phew, so I definitely believe I have magical blood.  Especially as my grandma told me that I have green eyes which instantly strengthens all magical powers tenfold!  Along with this whenever I get angry, power cuts occur or electrical appliances die!  Paul never believed me until he witnessed my first fury living with him!

I believe in the healing energy of the earth – I like to walk barefoot in the garden to soak up the energy, when I don’t do this for a while I get sick.

I believe in crystal healing magic.

I believe animals can and do communicate with people, only most people are not attuned to hear them or bother understanding them and their ways!

I believe you need to be careful at whatever you say, you can’t be flippant in your words as what you say has a way in actually manifesting – so choosing your words carefully is vitally important.  Because the more energy you put into your words, especially if it’s a heightened energy like anger, because it will work faster and hit you on the nose later on!  Consistency in thought word and deed is essential!

I believe dreamtime is every bit as real as the awakened world and that you can shift realities after a while of practising and trusting things.

I believe in the balance, to be totally for dark and totally for the light is bad – you need both or everything will be destroyed!

I believe everything is interconnected to everything else, you can’t exist as a lone entity and so what you do and say is important, not just for yourself, but others.  You need to be mindful in your life, not do things constantly for selfish reasons as what you do and say can affect many people around you – it’s like a butterfly effect.

Top 10 faiths I have enjoyed learning about and practised in the past and present, present is indicated with *

Judaism *

The Kabbalah (a Jewish mysticism) *

Native American shamanism  *

Nordic shamanism

Romany witchcraft *

Buddhism philosophy, though not lifestyle yet

Taoism *

Sikhism

I will confess I learned a lot in the dark side of the occult in my youth and it made me research harder than anything and bought me back to basics and learning a lot more than I would had I of just stayed influenced by the J-witness movement my mum got me involved in!  Long and arduous path, but it made everything I was taught by religion more sense!  Basically the darkness taught me how to see the rainbow and appreciate the light and balance!  Ultimately, it taught me that there is nothing to fear spiritually, all things I must fear are within humanity and other people, not spirits. 

Mormonism – they accept people like me who are seers and clairvoyants.

British kids miss out

The UK hasn’t accepted Halloween or Trick or Treat as part of their culture for very long; In fact I remember as a child, the idea of Trick or Treat was largely an American idea, that most UK kids aspired to do, but their parents – afraid of demonic possession, mostly wouldn’t let their kids go out on Halloween night.

My mother was one of those parents who told Gina an honorary aunt that “if my girl comes home with a demon spirit inside her, you’ll be to blame”!  I was ten years old when I first went Trick or Treating and I only went twice in my life, because by and large most British folks are aggressive about people knocking on their doors.

I remember lots of people hurling abuse at me and the other kids, swearing at us, chasing us off with brooms or dogs!

Things have changed slightly since my Henry was born, he has managed to go Trick or Treating, but as soon as he was 10yrs old, people started getting mean – because here in the UK you can only go Trick or Treating if you so happen to be under the age of 11 or look it – or are accompanied by younger looking children with you.  If you don’t look young enough you are shooed away like some stray animal.

At least one in every four or five doors they either won’t open to you, or they will shout abuse at the kids.

It is becoming quite common in this area lately that at Halloween the local JWs start their rounds in the hope to turn people against their evil ways of encouraging their children to do “Trick or Treat activities”.

It’s so sad.

I remember when Henry was in his primary/junior school that they used to do a Halloween party for the kids every year, as soon as Henry goes to High school from the age of 11, it’s like everybody expects them not to be kids anymore – none of those fun things anymore.  No summer fetes, no Christmas fairs, no summer bouncy castles, no Halloween, Christmas or Easter parties, no Christmas card post box for your friends… I don’t get it.  Why 11?

I complained to other parents about the unfairness of the huge culture change from junior to high school, they all seem to think along the same lines as the authorities, it’s time to grow up now!

 But they’re only 11!

Henry has a lot of depression because of this, it seems to him that the whole world expects the fun to stop now and he is made to think about his career already.  When I was in school, they didn’t make me think about what career I wanted until I was 14 – now Henry is expected at 12 to have a firm grasp at what he wants from his life.

He is still dithering from cook, doctor, accountant, marathon runner or actor.

Despite the school pressurising him to grow up, he feels he has less freedom in high school than he did in junior school – in junior school he was a play leader for younger children, this school doesn’t have anything like that – instead they have prefects which are usually the most popular kids in the school as it is done by a voting system.

Henry was certainly the most popular child in primary and junior school, but since moving into high school, he has a small group of friends who are all considered over-achievers and are mostly bullied for it.

It’s so sad they make them grow up so fast here, a couple of my American friends on twitter can’t believe that the UK is so culturally backward as to be mean to children of a certain age at Halloween over a piece of candy.

One of my dreams since childhood was to leave the UK for America or Canada, but things didn’t turn out that way for me.  I always though, that although schools are not as secure as ours in regards to violence etc., they definitely do more for children and giving personal choices to children than UK schools do.  Because here in the UK, most children are educated like they are clothed in school, uniformly, no deviation from curriculum and certainly very limited choices if any and hardly any after school clubs ran at the school. 

Most high schools in the UK are expected to run from 8:30am to 4pm for five days a week, a 15 minute morning break and a 30 minute lunch break and that is all they get, well at my Henry’s school in any case.

I’ve never liked it, Paul and I did plan to move to Canada’s Prince Edward Island, when Henry was 3, but that fell through big time!

Anyway, happy reading!

Brain hurricane season

It’s what time of year again, a time I call “Brain Hurricane Season”.

What is Brain Hurricane Season?

Brain hurricane season happens approximately twice a year for three weeks and inundates me with new story ideas that I have to plan out; but they come so fast I often have to pause current projects and oftentimes I never get to write all the stories I dream up!

The catalyst for this brain hurricane season was an idea I had for Marvel, thanks to discussion Henry’s friends had about Iron Man.  Can he be saved or not?  Is there hope?  I did some research but not much, only about four hours and I have got side-tracked by other things.  But still, interesting stuff nonetheless.  I need to get watching the last two movies though to fully understand what the kids are on about.

Anyway, the kids moved on and now they’re talking about three or four other Marvel movies, such as hearing rumours that Tom Hardy is giving up Venom, is that true?  I did some research and it doesn’t appear to be!  We’re big Venom fans here in this house, it is a recent movie that made us cry laughing – it was so funny!

So I can blame this little bit of research and playground gossip on being the catalysts for my brain hurricane season.

Turns out some of the new ideas are connecting to a current project; my so-called standalone Christmas novel is now going to be part of a small series, hence why subconsciously I have been holding off it for a while.  I thought it was just Christmas music as to why I couldn’t write it.

For some reason or another, the Christmas novel is going to contain poems and songs and is going to be connected to another story about Candyland and The Easter Bunny.  This idea was brand new on the 16th October 2022 and will be known as my Easter Project.

I think another catalyst to all this is the fact that Henry and I realised we listen to a lot of songs related to candies and chocolates and so we created a playlist last month called “Candy” on our only luxury, Amazon music.  It’s funny what the brain does when you listen to certain types of music!

Henry is excited by my new plans as he loves movies about candies and anything Willy Wonka related, he just loves food that kid!  But put it in a dream world where you are having adventures it gets him all excited, but my Henry is ever the businessman – he said to me “ma, think of the merchandise”, oh yes, he is already acting like my manager!  I just wish he would let me write!

I have also decided that although I love writing horror, I want to downplay the gore and darkness of it to make them into family friendly Halloween style stories, as I have decided to focus mostly on family entertainment more than just doing whatever I feel like doing at the time.

I sat back and thought the other day about what kinds of responses from fans will I enjoy the most?  I thought, I love kids, the kids of the world mean everything to me and I am most likely to respond to a child in full if they ran up to me.

Then I had the idea of, wouldn’t it be cool if I became a bestseller and I had mini merchandise toys in my handbag of the characters I wrote and handed them to a kid who recognised me on an off chance?

Thanks to Henry I am thinking about the other business behind writing, not just the book sales now.  Good to think big I suppose?

So I decided, well then, that settles that, I am writing for family entertainment with kids in mind and my inner child has been singing about it all day!

It means I can be more light-hearted and playful and I love seeing kids laugh! 

My inner child has also been insisting that I revert back to being a nine year old but I told it, OK, on some conditions… we don’t eat like we did when we were nine years old and we don’t laugh hysterically in people’s faces when we are nervous and put on a show for them and then hide behind the sofa because you forgot your senses and realised what a nitwit you made yourself out to be!

My inner child nearly cried, I was too harsh to it, so that’s why I said sorry to it and gave it 4 individual jelly babies to make up – she wants the whole bag, I said no, she cries and I am trying to ignore it – it’s for her own good!

I am not saying I can give up horror for good though, adult horror that is, because it’s a major part of me – but it’s just not as big as it used to be in my heart anymore as I am healing a lot of my darkness lately.

All I really want in life now onwards is light hearted fun, lots of love, good friends and a comfortable home, health would go a long way too – but hey, I am working on it!

There is a children’s picture book series brewing in my head too, for kindergarten age.  It’s about a friendly community of monsters that are friends with each other. 

Another story is about an angel who decides to become interviewed by a chat show.

So many new things coming to me and this is only the start of the Brain Hurricane Season, I still have two weeks to ride out, if this is a normal storm!

I wanted to do NaNoWriMo this year, but there are lots of problems in the family right now where I can’t concentrate on more than a paragraph or two per day; so this year I am just not going to bother.

I really wanted a project completed by now, but it wasn’t meant to be, I guess.

To be perfectly honest, I am losing hope to do anything creative these days as I am simply not allowed the time to myself to do anything.

I can’t rely on working on anything whilst Henry is at school, because at any moment Henry is sent home early in the day and I lose my flow.  He is being sent home as often as twice a week!

Since Henry overheard the school suggesting he has an autism assessment, Henry seems to have taken it upon himself to emotionally play up all the more, like he enjoys the attention he is getting about it.  Henry is really play acting towards the teachers concerns and I have told him, this is a dangerous game for his life long-term, but he thinks it’s all a game!

I suggested to Paul he is only doing this so he can be sent home from school to create his robots all day long and play for twelve hours a day on that darn laptop of his!  When he is sent home from school, we should ban him from TV, laptop and his robots until his proper home time comes.  But then Henry plays the suicide card and Paul relents and lets him have the things!

Then I hear the arguments and screams between the two of them because they are getting in each other’s way, and Paul can’t move around the house because of the mess Henry is causing!  I try my best to help, but every time I open my mouth it just fuels the fire in the both of them! 

I tried to take myself upstairs to my bedroom to write upstairs, but they shout so loudly to one another so often, it’s hard to drown them out unless I put earphones on and I don’t like to do that because of increased ear infections. 

I am dying of embarrassment because neighbours walk cautiously past the house, staring at it because of the hysterical screaming that goes on consistently.  I tell them about it, but Paul and Henry are so self-absorbed, they just don’t really care. 

I hate this kind of environment, it doesn’t help my PTSD at all, in fact I am often drained and can’t eat because of the stress of it all, because a lot of the huge arguments are at dinnertime at the dining table and nobody can eat when this goes on! 

I don’t wear my hearing aid when Henry is home, because to be perfectly honest I don’t need it – that’s how loud things are here as soon as he gets home.  Besides, there are times Henry will randomly screech loudly for the slightest thing and it blooming hurts if I have it in my ear at the time!  I even lost hearing a couple of years back where Henry did a screech so loud my ear bled, found out I had a perforation over it!  Henry was two feet from me at the time! 

This is what I am living with.  It’s not excuses to not working, you have to be here to experience it for yourself, because I am telling you, it’s constant!

I do most of my blog posts when they are all in bed at night; this means my sleeping pattern is badly out of sync for a healthy and social lifestyle.  My sleeping hours are anything between 3am and 1pm depends on the day!  Mostly its 4am to 10am, not enough I know, but what else can I do?

I rarely watch TV as nobody respects the fact I want to watch something, reading is getting less and less for the same reason – practising art is almost non-existent, my meditations are slowly going out of the window… it’s tough to have a decent life here on any level!  Even when I am asleep, from 7am until I wake up, someone checks in on me every 45 minutes waking me up, so it’s not even undisturbed sleep.

Lately Henry’s behaviour has been so bad, that I have often forgotten to take my meds because he has been so demanding! 

Anyway, just a heads up about why I can’t finish things.  Never used to be this way! 

Happy reading! 

Inktober 2019 Day 1

Today starts a month of artistic challenges called “Inktober” where artists all over the world make art via inks as a primary material.  My son Henry and I are both lovers of this month and we usually make an effort to produce at least one finished work each day during Inktober.  We are huge fans of sharpies and Windsor Newton inks.

Henry will be concentrating mostly on cars and robots whilst I will concentrate on anything I fancy at the time, today I quite fancy getting into the Halloween mood already with a cauldron and some candies!

Therefore we shall be posting daily on both this blog and DeviantArt.com

Here is the first picture of the month!

Panic Attack from Robot Wars by Henry is the first to be shown below; he is a huge fan of that show, practically obsessed with it. 

 

Panic Attack – Robot Wars Fan Art by Henry!

 

Here is my candy cauldron, I know it is a little bit early for Halloween but it was something I wanted to do right now – Henry isn’t letting me live it down, says I should have waited until Halloween before I did it, but I do tend to do a lot of horror or dark themes when I do art anyway, if not that then fantasy and cartoon stuff.

 

Candy Cauldron by me!

Autumn is the crisp morning dew

Autumn is the crisp morning dew followed by golden sunshine and rains of multi-coloured leaves

Everything crunching under foot with a satisfying crunch, scrunch, crunch

Delicious spices fill the air with pies, casseroles and soups

Harvest time for all, pumpkins, squashes, apples and more

Cheeky children knocking at Halloween’s door, begging for candies and little treats

You have to give it to them, they are so sweet

Dew drops start to freeze in the cooling air

Summer is gone without a care

Soon it shall be winter

Bonfires burn and glow, fireworks emblazon the night skies

The fire is filled to the brim with wood, hear it snap, snap snap to a crisp in the heat

Winter shall be here in a heart beat

Inktober 2018 – Day 13 – Scarecrow

Inktober Day 13 – Scarecrow

Inktober 2018 – day 4

INKTOBER DAY 4 – HALLOWEEN

Inktober challenge 2018

 

Tomorrow is the start of Inktober and Wednesday is my 36^th birthday, yesterday Paul (my husband) and I went out to select my birthday presents and I chose to concentrate on stocking up my art supplies.  I chose to take on two new Medias this month, inks and oil paints.

As you can see in the photographs I have eight different colours from the Winsor and Newton range, traditional black Indian ink, apple green, silver-metallic aluminium, purple, blue, scarlet, sunshine yellow and peat brown; I wanted gold but they were sold out, so I have to buy them another time.  I didn’t realise until I had got home that these inks are mixable, which meant that I would have needed the white I saw there, to mix with the scarlet to make a sort of pink colour.  I learned this by watching some YouTube videos which showed me how to use the ink for various effects in art.

I am very new to inks in this format, usually I draw with inks from felt tip pens and biros, but I wanted to do something a little more traditional – so I bought a dip pen for drawing and mapping to help me, I was tempted to pick up the big black feather quill I saw there too, but I forgot to put it in the bag at the end of my shopping trip, I was limited to a budget of £75, so I wanted to see if I had more money for it at the end of the trip, I did, but I forgot it.

I also bought a pack of 28 limited edition sharpies that are fine permanent markers, another thing I have never used before.  Now all of this didn’t cost me £75, there were other things I bought too – but I took a photograph of the things I specifically bought for the start of Inktober, which is something I am trying to do very seriously this year.  I have also bought a pink mixed media sketch book with forty pages, specifically for this event. 

For those who are not in the know, Inktober is an annual event which lasts for thirty one days throughout the whole of October, where artists are urged to use inks in their art in at least one picture per day and to record these pictures on social media – the idea was bought about by a guy called Jake Parker, it’s a sort of NaNoWriMo for artists.

I am hoping that my best friend in the art world, Erin Cooper is going to do Inktober as seriously as she normally does this year as before now, I have never took on the challenge as seriously as I aim to for this year – it would be fun seeing what each other can do this month.

So, the challenge starts on October the 1^st, all you need to do is draw with inks daily, until Halloween and you’ve officially passed Inktober, miss a day and you can go to the imaginary Wall Of Shame!  Well that’s what I will do to myself, if I miss a day, lol.