Our aunt, future-uncle, cousin and future-step-cousin-or-something came over yesterday to have a celebration for my aunt's birthday, which was on the 11th.

It was nice ^.^ we had cake and biscuits, played around in the pool and took her dog, Yeti, for a swim. I don't have a photo of the dog in the pool now, but I'll upload one tomorrow. For now, here's one of her drying off in the grass.

Yeah, slightly mad.

This morning I woke up at about 7 - which, I'm sorry to say, is early for me. But at least I have the excuse that people in the Mediterranean usually stay up late and wake up late...

I tried to wake up Sky but she groaned and said stuff like "no" "I'm tired" etc.

Finally I got her to cooperate and asked her to come for a walk with me, to the pond. (It's about fifteen-twenty minutes away, in the woods...well, garrigue.)

Finally she woke up and said no, she didn't want to go over there, there were hunters and hunters were drunk and left broken bottles everywhere.

I said it wasn't hunting season and besides, they weren't all drunk.

(Sky has slight agoraphobia and also winces if you mention the word "drunk" in a conversation. If I pretend to be drunk, she gets hysterical and starts whacking me.)

Then I told her, ok, I'd go by myself. (Seriously, I didn't mind if she came or not.)

Then she started getting annoyed and said I wasn't allowed etc etc etc.

Let me just say my parents are a bit overprotective and paranoid. I mean, come on! We live in the countryside! The worst that could happen would be we'd trip over a stone. Or eat poisonous berries, or something, and we're not that stupid. Anyway, due to their lunacy, they've stuffed Sky's sensitive mind full of horrors and now she thinks that we're totally doomed if we go anywhere where there's a possibility of meeting someone drunk, mad, scary, adult, gothic, smoking and so on.

But finally she said she'd come if we didn't go to the pond. I said we'd see, and we'd at least go to the stream.

So we headed off. It was nice with the golden morning light, and there were lots of pretty spiderwebs everywhere.

We crossed the stream...well, stream bed, it was bone dry. I started to go up the small track-path thing but Sky said she didn't want to go up there, blablabla.

I said she could go home then, and she said we weren't allowed to split up and I'd have to come back too.

I pointed out she practically forced herself on me, coming on the walk, and no way was I going back.

Then she said she could hear dogs (the hunters usually have dogs) and looked really panicky.

I said they were just the enclosed hunting dogs in the village. (Which they were.)

Sky said surely we couldn't hear them from all the way over here, but obviously we could, since we'd been hearing them for the past two years.

To cut a long story short, we didn't go to the pond but didn't go back either. We wandered back down the stream bed and came home.

 We did the usual stuff today, and I took some photos of a butterfly and some more waterdrops.

I haven't finished uploading them all since the camera ran out of battery.

 I'd better go, my wrists are starting to ache a little, and besides, it's 9.30pm and we should be having supper...

 Ooh, one last thing. What are you scared of? Do you have an irrational fear (a phobia), are you paranoid? Or just slightly scared of something? Spiders, werewolves, mushrooms, drunk people, needles?

Comment what you're afraid of ^.^