Naughty or Nice?

Am I lucky or what? I received this parcel in the mail today from my 3-2-1 swap partner Anne-Heidi in Norway. 

And here is what was inside:

Three tantalising presents and a delicious sounding Christmas recipe.

So the question is. Am I naughty, and do I open my presents? Or am I nice and wait til Christmas?

Well, for now, I've compromised. I knew one would be a lovely Christmas themed tote, so after a lot of squishy-ness testing, selected the right parcel and opened that one.

And what a gorgeous tote it is! Beautiful fabrics, lovely stitching, and it is nice and roomy to use for Christmas shopping.



I am going to try to savour the remaining parcels for a little while longer. I may not make it to Christmas, but I promise to try to hold out until December before opening them.

Thanks Anne-Heidi!

Not much other news to report here. I am feeling much better after my nasty illness, although work is still quite stressful and demoralising. We had a union meeting today and there are bad things happening in other departments too.

Almost all of the tadpoles have become tiny frogs now. I'd like to look after them for a little bit longer to let them become bigger and stronger before they go to live in the scary, dangerous wild but they are getting quite difficult to look after. Cleaning their habitat has become quite an adventure as they are very good at hiding now, and also know how to jump. And I think as frogs, they are so much more fragile and delicate than tadpoles.

I try to avoid touching or interfering with them as much as possible but this week, two of them died. It was very upsetting as in 8 weeks of raising them from tiny specks to tadpoles to little frogs, they have all survived up until now. I just don't know what happened to these 2 gorgeous little things. They looked healthy and fully formed, and weren't sick looking or injured. They were just lying there dead when I got home from work. I guess none of them would have survived to this stage if I had let them dry up in the puddle they were born in, but still, I can't help but think I am to blame and something I did caused it.

Also, Sugar has started taking an interest in them. Or if not them, their food! As they are now frogs I've been gradually introducing a more carnivorous diet (dried blood worms) on top of their lettuce and kelp flakes. The worm food has quite a smell to it and as soon as I opened the container she started getting quite boisterously interested in goings on. A few days later I was on the computer and had been listening to her crunch on something for a while before realising I hadn't given her any bones or biscuits, so I went and found her on the sofa with the cannister of flakes which was now badly chewed and all the flakes were either on the floor or in her stomach. Reminds me of when she was a puppy and she was the worst kleptomaniac and used to steal EVERYTHING and chew it to bits including shoes, mobile phones, books, toilet rolls, bath mats, sewing machine attachments and TV remote controls. But she hasn't chewed up anything in ages, so the fish food must have smelt really good.