Oh look – it’s Thursday again!  And that means it’s time for another ‘How to be Happy’ post, and I’ve found an amusing apple for you!

I can’t bring myself to eat this apple, because every time I look at it, it makes me smile.  It reminded me of an alien when I first saw it, but I can see other things too. For instance, today it reminds me of Grumpy Cat – I don’t know if you’ve seen Grumpy Cat, but it’s a series of pictures of a … well, a very grumpy looking cat, maybe a Birman or some other exotic breed, but she’s got a kind of squished face and it looks as if she’s seeing the world in decidedly murky tones. Definitely not rose tinted, anyway.  Often there’s a caption which makes it funnier.

This apple hardly needs a caption.  It’s funny, just because it is.

What do you see, when you look at it?

Join in ‘How to be HAPPY!’ if you’d like.  Steal the badge and post a picture of something that made you smile this week, then link back here.

There was no post today.  OH remarked upon it as we left the house for our morning dog walk.

‘There’s no post today,’ he said.

I thought about it and decided he was jumping to conclusions.

‘There might be,’ I said.  ‘Perhaps Milly* hasn’t come yet.’

And off we set.  We walked into the village and around the church green, up to the chemist’s shop to drop off a prescription request, and back home.

When we were a few hundred yards from home, and there was still no sign of the lovely Milly, OH turned to me.

‘Perhaps something’s happened to her!’ he said.

Me: ‘Milly?’

OH: ‘Yes! I haven’t seen her this morning at all!’

Me:  ‘Well, look on the bright side.  She might have brought our post by now. She might be there even now, pushing all kinds of stuff through our letterbox’.

OH (In tones of gloom): ‘Stuff we don’t want’.

Me: ‘It might be! There might be a letter – from, um – from your brother, C!’

OH turned and gave me a Look.  The fact is that his brother C communicates with the rest of his family once every decade, if we’re lucky.  He married S, emigrated to Canada long before we were married, had children, got divorced and became a bit of a hermit. He is now a school bus driver.

I said: ‘There might be! He might have written to you! Come to think of it, though, he might have dropped dead. How would we know? Who’d tell us?’

OH: ‘S would let P** know, and he’d probably tell us’.

Me: ‘But what if they both died? Maybe they took his school bus out for a joyride, came off the road and fell into a canyon. And were eaten by bears!’

There was a somewhat lengthy pause, while we both pictured this scenario.

Then I added: ‘Mind you, that’d probably make the news, don’t you think?’

OH:  Yes, I do think. ‘Estranged husband and wife in bear death pact’ – I can see it now!

There followed manic laughter, startling a couple of nearby road workers, who turned and began cautiously walking away.

OH: ‘Of course, she might have been kidnapped’

Me: ‘Kidnapped?’

OH: ‘Yes, we have to admit the possibility.’

Me: ‘By aliens?’

OH: Well .. maybe just someone at home. Maybe she knocked on the door to deliver something, and they opened it and just dragged her inside.’

Me: ‘You do tell me she has a certain something …’

OH nodded: ‘An old-fashioned charm!’

So yes.  I can see the headlines now: ‘Village Post Lady kidnapped by Obsessive Enid Blyton fan!

We are expecting to hear that the ransom demands have arrived at the Post Office any day.

 
 
* Our post lady, for whom OH has a bit of a thing.  She reminds us both of someone from certain children’s stories of the fifties – all cheery and rosy-cheeked with rumpled blonde hair, pedalling like a dynamo all over the village with her post bag.  Just like an Enid Blyton character, in fact.

** S is C’s ex-wife. They live just around the corner from each other and get along better than ever. P is one of their sons.

Names have been changed or disguised. I do love a bit of subterfuge!

Yep, I think we have a nester!

In the past, we’ve had dogs who scrap up their beds from time to time to get comfy, but Jeffie takes it to the extreme. He likes make darned sure there is enough padding for his old bones.

And he’ll turn around, not the traditional three times, but as many as fourteen or fifteen times before he’ll lay down, thus rucking his beds up even further.

Sometimes he’ll collect other beds for his bed pile. In this next picture, he has scraped together two beds plus the top part of the one Sid is lying on, leaving his companion to make do with the base –

And he looooves the comfort of a pillow for his bony old head. A whole dog bed will do for that, since his humans have not been considerate enough to provide him with a real pillow for his own use.

But don’t worry too much about Sid. He actually likes to lie on the carpet quite a lot of the time and because he’s a tripod, he feels unsafe if a bed is too squishy – hence the sleeping bag and duvet ‘dog beds’ you can see in these pictures.

And there are times he simply gets there first, leaving Jeffie to make do with the edge!

Yes, yes. I know Jeffie could simply move around and creep in the other side and have quite enough space, thank-you-very-much, but Jeffie can be a tad challenged in the common sense department at times!

Never mind. We love him just as he is … which is just as well, really, on those occasions when he throws up on the carpet.

‘Oh dear … ‘ I thought, when I read the prompt word. ‘Storm? What am I supposed to do for ‘storm’ – unless, of course I want to paint landscape?’

But of course, that’s the UN-creative, knee-jerk reaction of someone who expects to fail.

So I thought again.

See, me being me (as I’m sure you all know, I am), I didn’t want to paint, draw, or otherwise create a run-of-the-mill scene of a boat being tossed on the waves, or people scurrying along with umbrellas being blown inside out, and I don’t do whimsy*. Besides which, one of the reasons I’m doing Illustration Friday is to stretch my imagination.

As it is, I’m not sure I’m really done anything terribly original. I mean, who hasn’t heard the phrase ‘storm in a tea-cup’? But I had a lot of fun doing it, and I’m fairly pleased with the result.

This is a digital collage made in Photoshop Elements. I began with a photograph of a cup and saucer with a nice storm-grey backdrop, which I picked up from my old standby MorgueFile. I ironed out a few wrinkles in the background, sharpened and brightened the image a tad, and sat and looked at it, wondering what I had in my photo files which might fit.

I found what I was looking for among our holiday photos from Niagara, circa 2006. We were unlucky in the weather because despite only being early October, it snowed and blew a gale while we were there, but that did provide some beautifully stormy water. So I cut out a piece of turbulent river and included a bit of the falls, then cut another from a different part and reversed it. Joining them together made the stormy-looking ‘whirlpool’ in the cup.

Then I needed some interest for the rest of the picture, which I found in a folder of a road trip from a couple of years ago when it absolutely bucketed down so hard that everyone’s speed dropped to about 30 mph, because visibility was so bad. I took a ton of pictures, and the ones from the side window were ideal for this. I’ve used a series of overlays of rain, which allow the shape and detail of the cup to show through nice and crisply, while the surface drops are still visible.

After that it was just neatening, balancing colour and contrast etc, and cloning a few bits and pieces to make everything fit together seamlessly.

What do you think? I rather like it, but you know what they say; I might have been working on it so long that I can’t see the wood for the trees!

* Well. Hardly ever, anyway!