#nothing is broken

Look at all my babies!!!!! 😍

This height slider by Redhead Sims is SO AMAZING! Look at the range! 

I’ve been looking for a better height slider for children for a very long time. I wanted something where the heights could flow gradually between age stages. The slider I was using before left huge gaps between toddler and child, then child to teen. But this one, I can do gradual heights seamlessly from age 6 months through adulthood, and I am so happy! 

In fact, it works so well (so far, I’ve been playing with it for only a couple hours, lol!) that I might toss out my old sliders entirely and use the adult version of this for my teens and adults too! 

My toddlers are ages 6 months, 1 year, 18 months, 2 years, 3 years, 4 years. 

Children are 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. (Would include 11, too, but I don’t have any 11-year-olds to show at the moment.)

I have had this cat statue for ten years. I didn't like it when i got it - it was a tacky beige fake-earthenware with painted on 'flaws'. I certainly wouldn't have bought it... but I didn't buy it. I broke it.

Some of you might have heard the funny version of this story - how on my first day of work in my whole life I was tripped by a customer and fell into a window display of crystal and china. And yeah, it's hilarious, but I was also devastated at having ruined something someone had loved.

And so I picked up this cat statue, with his head snapped off, and his bum smashed to smithereens , and took him home to fix him. To prove something I guess. I did the Japanese thing of filling the cracks with gold(-coloured putty :P ) which is supposed to celebrate the history of an object.

A couple of years ago he got broken again. It was silly, just knocking into a cupboard and everything hitting the floor. This time, he was really shattered, and so was I. I didn't know I attached so much symbolism to having fixed this ugly thing until it happened, but I couldn't let it go. I put him back together as best I could, wrapped the corpse in electrical tape like a mummy, and shoved him in a box. I knew I should throw him away, but I couldn't. We can't throw away everything that's broken. I couldn't be the person who, over and over, smashes things beyond repair.

This week, I came home from an amazing night at the theatre to find my mirror had fallen from above my mantelpiece and smashed everything below, ornaments, plates, my interesting bottle collection.... again I shattered too. Even the mirror itself felt like a symbol, since it was the first thing I bought to make this house a home even when I didn't want to move here.

And yesterday, I began to put everything back together. Not the mirror, too dangerous, or some of the bottles, but I saved the ornaments and plates. Thank God for super glue! I used tissue to cover over cracks and holes, and painted over them good as new - thanks to The Repair Shop on BBC4 for that!

And then I remembered this guy.

I dug him out.

I pieced him together, papered him over, and painted him all new.

And now we're fixed, unless we break again, and then we piece ourselves back together, over and over.