Between blotch and blok

Late Saturday evening (yup, it's been a very busy weekend), after the cake was iced and decorated (damn, we've just realized we didn't take a picture this year, and it was an original for the first time), the presents wrapped, a treasure trail devised, we wrapped a parcel for pass the parcel. We'd never done that before. Very odd. I suppose it's partly because we're from a relatively small and scattered family, and not one that has huge gatherings on significant dates, that there's a huge gap since we potentially helped with our younger sibling's party preparations. The which we can't remember ever doing and, if we did, it was easily twenty-five years ago.

Just another sign of time passing, methinks. Looby Loo is now old enough to have a party with organized (in the loose sense that "organized" has around here!) games. Another of those moments when we seem to be saying goodbye to some part of her, letting her grow, eventually letting her go.

Hell, we were only wrapping jelly beans in cast off pieces of wrapping paper. No need to get maudlin.

The first few bars of "I Don't Sleep, I Dream" up to the first syllable of Michael Stipe's vocals sounded so much like The Velvet Underground we thought some instantaneous swapping had taken place. We really haven't listened to R.E.M. for a while.