"I need some air"

Once again, totally irrelevant title, but it made me laugh when my five-year-old cousin Hasan, (who has a tendency to be slightly effeminate), said this in reaction to eating a particularly spicy pakora. Bless him.
So hello! I dropped off the face of the Earth firslty because I had nothig to blog about during exam season, then because I was too busy sleeping/being a slob to blog after that. but I am here now. With my non-chronological List of Events That Have Happened.

• When I was younger, the family and I would go for walks along the canal that runs fairly near where I live. It's a hell of a long walk, but very pretty for greenery and the occasional barge that goes by, with the people on board waving as they pass, like it's still a century ago. We made a spur-of-the-moment decision to revisit it in June, and so, woefully underprepared with a lack of sunscreen/hayfever-tablets for the brother/water/cool clothes, we set out to be all nostalgic. Fifteen minutes into the walk, the brother descended into explosive sneezes, the sun came out and melted us all to death, and my dad got thirsty. It was too late to turn back though, so we soldiered on. My dad's quick-fix solution to the brother's hayfever went as follows:

Dad: Humaira, do you have any lip balm?
Me: ....Yes..? Gawd, I know they're bad, but there's no need to-
Dad: Give it to him.
Me: But his lips aren't chap-
Dad: It's for his nose.
Me: *laughs uneasily in a misheard-way*

Dad: Haroon, rub the lip balm around your nostrils. It'll trap the pollen and you won't sneeze.
Me: *Begins to run*
Dad: SEIZE HER!

Maybe the last part didn't happen.
After much disgust, struggling and refusal on my part, I was coerced into finding a lip balm I was sure I never wanted to use again (I may possess several due to a slight obsession). There was a horrible moment of lip-balm smearing and emasculation for Haroon, and then it was over. And despite the Bear-Grylls-ness of this, he did stop sneezing and my dad did the whole smug see-I'm-a-pharmacist-I-know-these-things look.
We did actually manage the walk, despite the humidity and the sun and the younger brother moaning that this was too much and my clothes sticking to me, and an awful ten minutes when we had to pass the sewers and there were literally swarms of flies @_@ But yes. About 4 hours later we were back home and decided to offset all the calories burned by ordering two Dominos Pizzas. Because why not :D
The first picture is just the pretty-ness of the canal. Yay! And the second was when we passed along a field of rapeseed..I think that's what it is, the bright yellow one anyway. Huge field of all these yellow flowers, and I spied two red poppies in the middle of it all. I felt for them, so took a photo.

• I MADE COOKIES TOO! Same recipe, refer to the Emad's blog for the link, I can't be bothered to find it and may as well plug his blog while I'm here, it's adequate in a sort of readable way :P (I JOKE! It's great.) But yes, the cookies were awesome and that recipe is seriously the best ever: they come out all chewy! And don't listen to what anyone tells you, using chunks of galaxy chocolate instead of chocolate chips tastes ten times better. :D I know. I tried both ways, to make an informed decision. Or just to get fat. Note the pretentious arty-ness of how I took my photo. Because I'm oh-so-experimental and creative.
  

• I have been making a conscious effort to be a girl, recently. I have decided that 20 years of life is long enough to be going through a self-conscious awkwardness crisis. Despite being hopelessly outshadowed by girly cousins and the like, I shall make my own small steps towards attempting to do things that girls do. Step One was to acquire a girly bag, as I have never carried anything other than boyish satchels. So I got a huge, pretty white and pink shoulder bag with a lot of shiny sequins/beads on it because I am a magpie. And I can't find a picture but will edit with one if I do. This decision worked well, despite me walking lopsided for a month due to not being used to the weight of a shoulder bag as opposed to a cross-body one. Step Two was not biting my nails, as I felt this was not ladylike. Nah, it's because it was starting to hurt to touch things. But I did put nail polish on for the first time in my life! It was an awesome peacock blue-green metallic colour, and admittedly I got it everywhere due to never having worn the stuff before, but it was a start. I have now ordered a sparkly purple one because it looked awesome :D And Step 3 will be to sort my dress sense out, but that ones going to take a while. Note that high heels will never be a part of this effeminisation. Yes. New word.
  

• My family is all over the world at the moment. Had to stay behind to do a resit/curl up in a ball of self pity as everyone else went off to do things. It shall be a lesson to me: use brain more effectively next time, stupid person.
  

• Spiders appear very frequently in my room due to there being a massive hole in the wall where the fireplace was, that can't be covered by my clothes drawer. I keep having heart attacks. Just...*shudder*

• I have a LOT of palpitations. I mean, I know I drink pepsi a lot and caffeine accounts for this, but I keep having them when I haven't had pepsi- sometimes I haven't had caffeine all day and still end up with them. It's like my heart misses every 3rd beat and it scares the hypochondriac in me. Already thought out all the worst case scenarios. I fear that another spider would just cause my heart to throw in the towel and storm out.

• The Sandman graphic novels are pretty damn ace so far, but what with exams I haven't been able to get the next one so all I can say is the first 3 are very good. I've never read a graphic novel before, but they were clearly a good place to start. Awesome stuff.

• My obvious bewitching-ness made me the target of attention for not one, but two creepy Asians, when I was getting the train home from Uni. It happened twice, and I would have been flattered by their perversely invasive questions ('Where are you from in pakistan', 'Where are you going?' 'Will you come to Manchester with me?' and further Urdu things) had they not been forty something and dentally challenged. I mean, really?! A sad state of affairs.

• Went to see the Wolves crew yesterday, just for the day. This was, as ever, much fun: comfort white Magnum with my aunty Em was indeed comforting, and the comedy relief of hearing Baby Bear (who is now 18 months-ish) saying nothing but 'Ball?' the whole time was great. And Hasan's over-excitedness manifested itself in him abandoning his food to come and tap dance in front of me. Brilliance.
  

• I think I may have run out of things to say. No, really. I know..!
  

So yes, I won't make any blog-soon promises because clearly it's counter productive.
In a while, crocodile!
(Or, as my housemate likes to say as I'm leaving, 'Stay safe, and say no to drugs!' ...You'd think she had no faith in me.)
:)