all things cute, adorable and squealy, er scaly

A wee while back at my local cinema, Cineworld, I got the most amazing surprise when I went in to catch a flick with my mama (we go every *Orange Wednesday, it's such a treat!)

* text film to 241 for 2 for 1 tickets - can't get better than that for the big screen eh? except on a Friday night date :)

anyway, back to my story - and there in the foyer, under a bright light, was a life-size statue of a baby dragon!  like omg! oh wow!!

ofcourse it wasn't just any dragon mind,

it was the adorable hero of How to Train Your Dragon - toothless

what a name eh? maybe something catchier would've been a bit more flattering for such a handsome lizard

so I got my ma to snap a few pics of me n my wee pal

here we are above, enjoying a few romantic words...

(cos I'm so in luuurve with all things lizardys)

I would have sat on his back, like in the movie, but there was a huge sign saying 'no adults allowed to climb on the adorable dragon'

rats!

I saw the first Dragon movie on dvd about a year ago

not sure why I missed it at the cinema

and I just loved that adorable little Night Fury - now isn't that a grand name for a dragon species?

and ofcourse I immediately wanted a baby night fury all my own - as you do :)

the animation is beyond amazing!

absolutely full credit to all those talented graphic designer/animator/cgi thingy peoples and all that 

and to think - all those years I turned my nose up at playing playstation/x-box/nintendo, thinking it was 'kid stuff' and 'I'm too serious a person for that' and I could have carved out a nice career designing slinky wee flying lizards instead of stuffing 2 legged hares and squirrels.... (the things we miss out on..)

- so here's some night fury and some ... and some.... and ..

could watch that wee beastie all day!

isn't it funny how the good-hearted chieftans and leaders in the movies all have broad Scottish accents

and isn't it funny how all the bad bastards and weak-spined traitors in the movies all have strong Scottish accents (yeah, I'm talking about that wee shite in Maleficent, Disney's latest movie)

anyway, accents aside, though I must say the Scottish accent is very nice, always makes me smile, no matter what part of Scotland it hails from

I caught the movie on Wednesday and it was really, really good! 

It's the type of movie you need to see again cause you missed so much the first time. Toothless spent so much time in the background playing games and frolicking, and there was I, listening to what the main character was saying, thinking it was more important than watching the adorable dragon play chase in the background! duh!!

there were only 2 kids in the whole packed cinema - infact there were 3 (2 kids + me :) and all the adults just loved it! 

I thought I would be surrounded by tiny humans, but nope, I was surrounded by adult-kids instead. 

Kidults? adids? Kidults sounds better eh?

so I was out shopping with my pa a week after getting my snap of me and Night Fury, and we were looking at laptops and I remember seeing them in Toys R Us (why, ofcourse I did!), but it was rather a long, long, long time ago. 

So papa went into the computer store and I dashed over to the toy store - and omg! it was my lucky day!

there in the first aisle I went down - were 20 tiny baby Night Furys, all in their boxes, looking up at me! 

tiny, tiny little night furys - the size of real-life tiny little lizards! omg!!

I spent a good 10 whole minutes touching and drooling and sighing and inspecting and admiring and... you get the picture - it was ~Love~!

ha ha ha!! 

I made a mental note to come back to them, took my time to slowly dash past the dinosaurs and action man aisle, but making sure I had a look at the latest military hardware on issue there - action mans equipment is just getting better and better!, anyway I couldn't see a computer anywhere except x-boxes and nintendos and playstations...

and 20hrs later I was back in the same baby lizard aisle, choosing my wee beastie and happily handing over my £12.99! thank you very much Toys4me, er I mean Toys R us

bargain!

so here I am - my very first 'selfie' - (ain't I cute? em I mean isn't Fury cute?) 
cause I'm a little on the shy side with all this posting pics of yourself online stuff 
(on facebook I much prefer to repost other peoples stuffs, especially all those good looking boy pics out there - isn't that the whole point of it? or am I missing something?)  

but I prefer to call this one a 'family photo' - me n fury :)

and ofcourse lil Fury insisted that I make it very obvious that it was a 'family selfie' - so yes, the shower curtain had to be on view, as did my camera, and the towel rail and....

so he hopped up on my head, being the tiny king that he is, and did a little wing flapping - but my camera isn't the most modern, and I never managed to get the wing movement in, not even a bit of blurriness

I'm so happy to have my own tiny scaly beastie here!

I'm so glad some of the dinosaurs managed to get on to the ark :)

Ever since I was a tiny beastie myself, I have always loved lizards. I used to have chameleons as pets when I lived in Zambia. Granted they could come and go when they pleased, had free range of the house and could climb up anything they so desired, but I remember them in my living room, on the huge branch, studying them, admiring them, adoring them.

And then when I was a bit bigger, but still small, I had baby lizards in my room in Australia. Yes, they never stayed for long in the big sand filled fish tank, yes I would spend hours in the grass hunting for them, watching the 5mm long babies come out of their eggs, bask alongside them in the sun, enjoy their quiet, contemplative, adorable friendly company.

Lizards have always been my friends. I've always gotten on very well with all things cold blooded.

And you thought I was just a reindeer and hare girl eh? 

surprises eh, this one's got surprises

so - last group family photo for quite a while

tiny Fury is admiring my handsome steppin' out shoeses and about to do a death-roll-dive

and real-size Fury is purring with pleasure as I caress his temple (I know all the right spots :)

~I swear I could feel his heartbeat on my thigh~

and a couple minutes after this pic was taken, 3 girls come out of the movie, How to Train Your Dragon2, see my tiny dragon - and yes, you've guessed it - borrow him for their 'family' pic!

*sigh* lizard love....

the Midnight Sun Vs Tropic of Capricorn

Autumn is here, again, the days are getting colder

and the sun is getting weaker, day by day 

some beautiful crystals catch the brightest rays, as do the eyes on the smallest hare 

nearly every day I am blessed with the sun shining brightly on me as I work at my desk

and that's a good thing, because I have grown to LOVE the sun more and more

when I was tiny I lived in Zambia for 5 years

growing up in the bush just a bit above the Tropic of Capricorn

surrounded by crocs, snakes, antelope, zebra, eles, lizards and every insect imaginable ~ and the insects in Zambia are the size of small antelopes!! I kid you not

and every day I played happily in the scorching sun, as it beat down on me, relentlessly

- but I was a kid - and kids don't really mind the searing heat, nor notice the bright rays,

well, I never seemed to mind. I was as brown as a berry in all my photos and my hair was nearly, well, it wasn't my dark brown now that's for sure. I was gonna say blonde, but I don't do blonde...  ....mmm, it was *sunkissed*

anyway, it's a long way up North, up here in Scotland with her snow and mountains, from the Tropic of Capricorn!

and the sun, whilst very hot in summer ~ if you lie as still as a lizard on a rock ~ just never seems as omnipresent as in the tropics

it's not ofcourse, I think I was being a little wistful?

but after Africa I then did the rest of my growing up in Outback Australia, in the Northern Territory - again, just above the Tropic of Capricorn

in the hot, hot stiflingly humid tropics of tropical Darwin,

and boy oh boy was it hot and humid all year round!! took me a few years to acclimatize unlike the dry heat in Africa 

and then after all that sun I needed a respite so I came back to Scotland to the grey, and clouds, and rain and fog 

and saying something about the sun being over-rated.. blah blah blah...

- and it wasn't just a fog lying on the land here, it was a fog in trying to understand the locals. Now that was hard!! 

I could hardly understand a thing anyone said, they spoke so fast, with such thick broad accents and really weird strange words. They thought I was taking the piss at work, because I kept saying 'excuse me?' every time they spoke to me, as I didn't have a clue what they had just said!

Hmmm what can I say? perhaps I was not as Scottish as I thought I was? Obviously not!

My most Scottishest word had always been 'aye' (yes)

(but i only used to say that when i lived in Australia....)

and if someone here says 'aye right!'  

it does not necessarily mean 'yes, okay' - it is local banter for 'what rubbish/your kidding/get away wi' yersel ya wee....'

anyway, back to the sun!

Wesley loves the sun shining in, and all day long he will follow it around the room, to bask in the warmth

he's a little sun-bug :)

just as well I have South facing windaes.. oops! sorry, I meant windows

(seriously, I do not talk with much of an accent or use the local banter, I promise)

and my delicious cups of Lady Grey tea are kissed by the autumn sun

so pretty!

always makes me think of the midnight sun, this fading winter sun does, sitting low on the horizon, not giving too much warmth in all it's brightness

even my little fountain seems to be doing a better job?

though it is really very beautiful when I go out to feed the squirrel and sparrows and other beasties

there is something rather mesmerizing about the sun at this time of year, that's for sure

the birds get to tuck in to some mixed seed from their Norwegian bird house

hmmm, perhaps it is rather Scandinavian eh? it did come from my sister-in-laws over in Norway

and em, so did their purdy little water dish. 

It's got 2 permanent water drinkers on the side. Often I see blackbirds standing in the centre taking vigorous baths after I've washed all the leaves out and refilled it.

Glad I got it home in one piece, inside my suitcase... the things you drag back home from your holidays eh??!

(and don't even ask me about the huge 1.8m steel-enforced cardboard tunnel I carted back from Norway for Wesley...!) (oh, alrighty, lying about the steel-enforced part, but it is construction material tunnels and I had to get the guy next door to cut it in 2 with his huge professional circular saw, and even then it was still too big to get in my suitcase ha ha!!) (the things I do for my rabbit eh?)(Wes turned his nose up at it infact)(sorted! sarcastic self-effacing adj.)

alrighty then, the sun is still shining, and the little squirrel that I feed every day comes scurrying across the branches to me when I put some nuts and raisins and sunflower seeds down for him (or her).

it is a rather small squirrel - this year's baby infact and the other 2 siblings have not made an appearance for quite some time, so I could be fattening up just the one tiny beastie

- fattening up to get thru the long winter months ahead I mean. Though I do feed the squirrel every day, so by next spring this little mite will be a huge bundle of fat I reckon?

the little squirrels I make are not so fat

still, that's not an issue,

they don't need to fatten up for hibernating as they will be spending their time on your Christmas tree

amongst all the pretty little sparkling winter suns

oh, okay, xmas tree lights then 

- I was only trying to add a bit of sparkle to the image

I've become rather attached to Achilles since I made him, in all his unkemptness, and sort-of innocence

and I really do love Adore as well

she really is a very beautiful little hare

such a gentle appearance

shall have to give her a tough persona with softened edges, to carry that kind of cuteness off then 

so, that's decided then - these 2 hares are mine

I think they are meant for each other infact? what do you think?

she adores him, he does indeed adore her....

... though no-one is saying anything...

hey?! what's this?

put the lights back on!

okay Wesley :) 
perhaps we should be considering a sojourn in the Tropic of Capricorn then?


Midnight Sun Vs Tropic of Capricorn - I think I will have both, thank you!