10/6/2013

So many of my friends here are having a tough time for one reason or another so I wanted to say hi and send hugs all around to wherever they’re needed.

I don’t feel that I have a massive amount to say right now though. CSI Miami is on tv and I’m eating an ice pop of dubious origin! I know, right. Bad girl huh! It’s ‘flavour’ has a subtle nuance of chemical!

So, does anyone else remember the Kenner tree tots tree house? It was around in the mid/late 70’s and most people of my generation remember someone who had one. Well, I had one and I loved it but I FOOLISHLY swapped it with a friend for her old lady who lived in a boot house. It was SUCH a bad move!! The boot didn’t do ANYTHING whereas the tree house had a working lift, a fold-up slide, a dog kennel that opens up. It has a garage and a car and the whole fantasy concept of living in a tree. Hmm, I also loved Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree books as well and there was a slide from Moonface’s house right down to the ground. And now there’s a holiday home in Pembrokeshire that is a tree house too! It just lights my imagination.

Anyway, about twenty years ago I found a treehouse in a second hand church jumble sale. It had the kennel (which often gets lost on them apparently) and a couple of people. I’ve been looking for bits ever since. I found the odd bot of furniture at car boot sales but it was the advent of eBay that really helped me out and slowly but surely I’ve been finding all the pieces. About two and a half years ago I found the last two pieces on eBay. The car and the swing (with its vines to hang it with – these usually get lost too) but then Rich was told that, due to government cuts, his contract wouldn’t be re-newed and so I didn’t order them. And nothing has shown up since then, not without a silly price anyway! But the car showed up last week and had a Buy It Now tag so I bought it from a lady in Connecticut. I mentioned in a message to her that I only needed to find the swing and it would be complete. She said she had seen the swing and gave me the link – I had to add her in fb as eBay wouldn’t allow me to send her my email address. The swing was only tagged as mailing to USA so she sent a message to the seller who said she’s be happy to mail it to the UK. When the auction was almost finished I was stuck in traffic driving rich back from work so that I could go to Spanish. We got back with a couple of minutes to go. I went to put a bid on and there was no ‘place bid now’ button because the seller hadn’t updated her info! Agh! With 44 seconds to go I ran downstairs, grabbed my address book, ran back upstairs (so the girls didn’t disturb me!) and changed my address on eBay to a really good friend of mine who lives in Wisconsin, I clicked back to the auction – 11 seconds to go – put in my bid price, pressed bid, confirmed it and it went through with one second to go!! I won it. Phew!

My friend is more than happy to put the swing in the Christmas package that she always puts together for the girls too. So, by Christmas a twenty year search will finally be done!

I started collecting it so that my kids could play with it too, having no idea that it would take so many years before I had kids but it’s worked out perfectly as both my girls enjoy playing with it 🙂

You see, I had no plans, nothing that I thought I wanted to chat about but there it is 🙂