so glad the lights are on again!

http://www.grannymar.com/blog/2008/05/28/the-lights-are-on-again/

Congratulations Grannymar! Your star is in the ascendent!

Working: it is no good. We should be at the zoo.

I stayed up too late last night - partly because I'd drunk a cup of coffee to be able to stay awake over the corrections, and got palpitations... nice, not. I don't know how people who drink it all day can stand that feeling.

Just before we went to bed, my husband was watching one of his horrible true crime programmes - this time one about a South American black magic serial killer involved in drug cartels. Human sacrifice and so on. I felt it prudent to run from the room, hands over ears, LALALA but he takes it all in then falls into a deep sleep the minute his head hits the pillow.

Then I got deeply involved in my new Marian Keyes, which is all about depression and domestic abuse, slightly disjointedly, so you don't know who's who or what's going on the whole time. It got gripping and depressing at the same time, so I went to sleep feeling icky - didn't go to sleep and the baby awoke half an hour later - fed him, didn't get to sleep til about two, composing blogposts in my head - I know it was about the gist of this, but can't exactly remember what my angle was.

Her depressed character is really sympathetic, she made me feel sad, and anxious, and depressed about depression.

One bad thing about having small children and working from home is that you only get to read at night and I'm a demon for staying up later than I should, first the internet, then the novel I can't put down. Not good. Yawn.

orange juice

Apologies if I've posted about this before.

The only real craving I had when I was pregnant was for orange juice. Tropicana or the cheaper Tesco one with bits, that they're sadly stopped doing - they've replaced it with one that says it's not concentrated, but tastes concentrated...

I could have cheerfully drunk two litres of the stuff a day - preferable straight from the fridge (I don't know what it is, but I have an urge for cold drinks from the carton - even my soya milk, I just can't resist. It seems the only thirst quenching thing to do. Why? I have no idea.)

But the orange juice, oh, the need for it, when I was pregnant. I had to go get a litre one day when I was working in Rathmines, and I found myself waiting in one of Dunnes' queues, and just couldn't help breaking the seal and having a swig. Pregnant looney alert! And it's never really gone away since. The only other noticeable one was of the same ilk - I bought a watermelon a couple times last summer, and just couldn't get enough of it, shaving off little slice after slice, the cold, sweet, wet, juiciness of it, ohhh!

My cousin told me, when we were on the beach, that she went there for end of school parties with her friends when they were kids, and one of the mothers would bury a watermelon at the water's edge to have when they were finished the day: cold, icy melon, dug up and split open and shared out under the hot Californian sun - slurp!

One funny story regarding the beach and beverages - while we sat down to our picnic, my cousin tried to open the lemonade bottle we'd brought, to no avail. I had a go and got nowhere, I don't know if it had got slippy in the cooler, hadn't been punched fully, or what. I looked around, and saw several MEN in a row, sunbathing. One was sitting up. I suggested we ask the bronzing beauties, and my cousin looked at me. Ok, I'm brave enough for that - off I went, towards the one not lying down - he looked at me with fear in his eyes - what was this woman with two small children doing approaching him with what may or may not have been a champagne bottle and an alarming proposition?

I didn't help by saying 'Can you help, we have a feminine emergency?' He looked even more alarmed, but relaxed visibly when I asked if he could open the bottle. I expected him to have to pass it round, let them all have a little manly competition: instead, his hand barely closed around the lid, and TSST! it popped open, just like that, with no apparent effort on his part. What shame! Men are great. Don't say we don't need them.

whee!

It's hard to believe, but this is a picture of a wee plush toy!

I remember doing a little dance of joy that I wasn't pregnant any more after my daughter was born. I know I'm now ten months away from that state and so I shouldn't be comparing before and after any more, but I have to admit, I am still enjoying the priviledge of being able to wee properly.

You don't know frustration until you've been pregnant and had to wee all the time, yet only ever dribble a bit when you get there, until five minutes later...

So now when I get to the loo (which is not as often as I'd like, you don't when you have small children) it's so lovely to be able to just peeeeeeeeeee. You have to appreciate the little things, you know.

observation

My husband's left two guitar knobs on the printer - it looks as if he's building a lady robot and they're her robot nipples.

I know the picture's not quite right, but none of the sexier looking bots had nipples either. Shiny, definitely very shiny.

uch, you can tell I'm working

One more post! One more post!

I changed all the beds last night, something I could do far more often - but not doing it frequently enough makes it feel doubly good when I finally do it!

Yesterday I took the winter duvets off the bed (huge relief, our kingsize duck feather duvet was so heavy it pinned us to the mattress, oof) and put on new white bedlinen. The baby slept well and stayed in his cot all night, it all felt so light and cool and loveleeeeee - and I even realised I'd actually shaved my legs so it was even whooshier!

The sensual joy of it all!

Rush out and change your sheets now, go on. Better still, buy lovely new stuff. High thread count. Treat yourselves, do it!

breastfeeding in Sweden

I asked dolly of For Nine Pounds to do a guest post on why breasteeding is so successful in Sweden (94% compared to our artificially high figure of 40%)- she's written this for me.

To sum up her ideas, it seems that the difference between there and here would be: attitudes to nudity, fiscal sense and pragmatism and a hospital system that knows how to teach women to breastfeed, even if it does so with as little charm as the Irish one, at least it knows its stuff.

I just scanned over this article on infant death and formula stats - obviously more relevant to third world countries than developed ones, but might help us recommit to the Nestlé boycott... I don't know if the stats hold up, but at first view it's making a significant point.

And while I'm surfing, it seems breastfeeding also decreases the risk of rheumatoid arthritis! Hurrah!

And here's an article on attitudes in Ireland - I'm really including it because it says 'Yayyyy for boobies!' at the end. Indeed!

5!

Up til now I've one faintly lavish, not organised enough to be domestic goddess home birthday parties (still in shower or hoovering in towel when the guests arrive, for example), but this year my daughter wanted an activity centre party and I jumped at the chance - way cheaper than what we spent on the home do last year.

No cleaning before or after, no cooking, none of the hideous cold sweat the torture of Pass the Parcel induces in me. No one has to win anything! They eat sausage and chips, in the case of Zoom in Greystones it's organic and they include a fruit platter - no sweets, lots of exercise. What's not to like!

My brother in law arrived late, and expressed disbelief at it being five years - I looked at my watch and realised it was pretty much five years to the minute. Overwhelming. This time last year I was falling off the sofa after washing the windows and sitting on the floor crying, the baby not yet born. Five years ago this afternoon I was exhaustedly pushing my daughter out of me, the single most epic and significant thing I've ever done. I was in a mess of bereavement, I'm not any more. I don't know what else has changed exactly, maybe nothing much. I certainly haven't achieved as much as I'd hoped, or become more successful or comfortable.. or thinner... well, I was thinner, but I'm not again right now.

Anyway, that's not hugely relevant. I was looking at my driver's licence from 03 the other day, pre pregnancy. In some ways I look the same, in others I look taughter, pinker, more innocent. Younger definitely (god, am I making myself sound like my vagina? Should I be doing the Monologues?) In some ways I look pretty much the same.

Hmm, I've just had a horrible vision of what this blog will be like in my 39th year, I think that's enough musing for now, I'm aging as I type and getting nothing done :)

nice boobies!

Hee.

I was walking down the town, and went past the statue outside McDonald's, which was festooned with three eleven or twelve year olds sitting up in the bowl of it.

It's a nice day, and in fairness I'm wearing a quite form fitting black V neck tshirt.

As I walked by, one of the kids said 'Nice Boobies!', each word enunciated seperately, almost funkily.

I stopped, and turned, hand on hip, to give a little lecture but all three heads were whipped to the side in silent Oh My God!hysterics, shoulders shaking. It was really cute, and I had to shake my head and walk on because I was laughing so much.

And then I decided, it wasn't abusive, it was complimentary, feck it, I'll take it! Two babies and too much cake, I may not do it for the builders anymore, but who are my boobies to deny the pre-teen boys their fun!

nice postcard

Peasant Woman Nursing a Baby by Aimé-Jules Dalou (1838-1902)

dyspraxia

While I was teaching special needs kids a couple years ago (without any training or direction I might add, god help the poor girls) I came across something called dyspraxia which sounded incredibly familiar to me, and explained a lot of the behaviours that I've been berating myself for since I was a kid.

One trained SN assistant scoffed at me for diagnosing myself on the Internet, a fair point, and said if I was dyspraxic I'd know all about it. But to a certain extent I have known all about it, and also I presume there are different degrees of severity, as with dyslexia.

I read through this list of symptoms and recognised myself in most of them, as did my husband. I was sure I didn't suffer from some, but he asserted that I did! Then at the end it says this: Many of these characteristics are not unique to people with dyspraxia and not even the most severe case will have all the above characteristics.

Eep! I'd be interested to see if anyone else feels they have or had a significant amount of these symptoms, as a friend suggested, which would mean that I'm not necessarily dyspraxic, or perhaps that we all are :)

I have looked into proper testing and treatment but in Ireland it's private and started at €500 and went up from there - so that's the end of that for now.

Still, it makes me feel that not all my flaws and fuck ups are purely my fault and makes it easier to get through the day. And when my mother in law says 'But WHY didn't you bring it?' I don't let it make me feel bad ( yeah right :) ).

note to self

Shut the Fuck Up

Stop burning food

Stop Eating so much

Get a smear test

Get off the internet

work

clean

stupidity tax

Ok, it's time to call Eddie Hobbs in, I think.

I have a friend who's extremely organised (anal, by my standards, but hey, it's working for her better than me): she knows what she earns and what she spends and keeps track of it all on spreadsheets and keeps her receipts and claims tax back etc. She is sensible and adult.

I do none of these things, even though I know I should. I file things into piles and forget where they are. I never know what I'm going to make in any given month and don't keep a record of it. I use my Visa and don't put it all back on to the account, so I have a huge debt, all the time. I can never remember how much my mortgage is for. I'm a child!

But today, my husband and I have taken the cake - we were convinced we'd signed up for a 7 year fixed rate term on the mortgage, but it seems we did not, only 5. I rang them today and made them check the hard copy. Dur. So now our mortgage will be an extra €200 more per month.

It's so depressing.

It seems I need a full time job. And Mary Poppins...

coming back to haunt me

Thank you morgor!

While looking through old photos for my aunt's memorial, my cousin found this unflattering photo of me, aged four or five, in my front garden. Note my mother's fab blue Morris Minor Van and what I suspect to be my equally wonderful turquoise Wellies. Also one of my Granny's hand knitted, form fitting jumpers and the terrible 70's cords.

But what is most disturbing is my ragged boy's haircut, which makes me look like Eddie Izzard.

Modern parents would take care never to let this happen - they would buy their child flowery docs, funky denims, and get their hair done at somewhere called 'Kiddie's Cuts' with racing car chairs and tv, not hack at it themselves. My Granny always said they were waiting open armed for the sale of work offerings they dressed me in!

I know it's hard to see, but compare this terrible photo with the one I posted about earlier. Which is worse!

calling europe on the big white telephone

Or in my case, sadly, the avocado green one, though the bathroom looks marvelously better since the husband painted it yellow, surprisingly. Makes the green look almost nice, springlike.

Still, this hasn't been much consolation to me as I spent most of the night heaving. The kids picked up a bug on the way home, and it got me, strangely just after I ate a little bit too much Chinese takeaway - flashbacks to morning sickness and making the mistake of ordering one then too...

I hate hate hate vomiting. It's one reason why I don't drink to excess. I'm one of those difficult pukers, all retching and heaving and coughing pain, it doesn't just flow out easily. The last time I got sick was when I got some strange bug when pregnant and I puked so hard and so much that I burst all the little blood vessels in my face and had red freckles all over my face and neck! And worryingly, it happened gain this time, but only on the left side - what's that about? HGF?

My husband hates when I'm sick and was grumpily unsympathetic - came to bed in a stinky, smokey, sweaty Tshirt, not so considerate! Then this morning I was a little put out to hear him talking to his drummer in sugary, near baby talk tones, telling him to go get himself checked out - it seems he might have dislocated his shoulder. Which of course means he's worthy of sympathy but is another nail in the coffin of 'he's going out with them instead of me' coffin.

Bleurg. So I didn't send my daughter to school today, which is just as well as she had a relapse. We finally got remedies that stopped the puking and my mother in law kindly brought over some 7Up ('why would you shake it, wouldn't that just make it more bubbly, I left the lid off') which was a godsend - I was so thirsty I could have cried, and the two hours waiting for her to bring it were awful! I never thought I'd be so pathetically grateful to drink flat 7Up! But there you go.

Then we had a big sleep, then we got up and had water melon my mother in law had kindly and nervously gone out to buy for us - it's stayed down and we've just had rice crispies! I feel wobbly but my tummy has hopefully settled now.

I should have been busier with the sterile wipes in the airport, I think - telling my daughter to stop putting her mouth on the railings clearly wasn't enough of a precaution :)

Now I'm off to read The Five Hundred Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, one of the significant books of my childhood that oddly disappeared, and was waiting for me from Ebay when I returned home. Note to self - leave feedback, they're going to blacklist me if I keep forgetting.

exotic Cadbury's

My husband was just brought home a present of exotic Dairy Milk from New Zealand (his band know him well) - totally trumping my out of-the-usual M&Ms - there's lemon cheesecake and fudge and Black Forest Gateau fillings! And Rocky Road, and other such things.

Why not have 'em here? It's odd.

They threw in a bar of low carb Cadbury's, for the laugh presumably - it tastes like the Devil's caic!

He said they gave it to him at practice, Andrew's ma had someone in doing the radiators who was mightily impressed at his chocolate mountain - 'Is all that your chocolate? Jaysus!'

I searched for the pic and see that I robbed it off another blogger, so I will link to her post - she has a gorgeous butterfly cursor, want it!

random jetlagged travel observations

A little pre-diet treat for me, for reaching home in one piece

• If I lived in the States, within a week I would be too morbidly obese to leave my house: cookies. Ice-cream sandwiches. Smoothies in giant cups. Burritos. Crisps (chips). Peanut butter stuff. Cheesecake. Sigh.


• My favourite thing to do in foreign lands is visit foreign supermarkets


• Why has Ireland got so very few good public playgrounds? FFS!


• I'm so grateful to all the people in the airports who were nice to me, and helpful, especially the woman who heard me having to count my change for a final bottle of water and asked if I needed any (I convinced myself you could bring them through the boarding gate and had to throw away a lovely big frosty one - it was so hot in LA, I nearly passed out, and I wasn't even allowed have a drink before it went in the bin. In case I combusted... I might have without it! What do they do with it all?


• We drove though Malibu! and some of LA. So cool but unreal, I didn't really have time to register where I was.

• I was shocked at my two surviving aunts. They live quite far away, but I thought they'd be there before me - I heard about my aunt on Saturday evening, and flew out on Wednesday. They arrived Friday night, didn't come over, we saw them at the service, they came back for the party and left early, then came over the next day for an hour or two and pretty much failed to mention my aunt in their random conversation, til I steered it that way shortly before they left. One cousin, who lived in my aunt's house for years as a child, didn't come, and my sister and other cousin came the night before, attended the service and party and left early to stay in B&B's on the coast on the way home. WTF? It's so different in Ireland. There's rallying round, talking, drinking, cooking meals for the bereaved. I'm so glad I went, and tried to provide a little of that.

Though you can have too much of a good thing. A cousin of my husband's died suddenly recently, and my mother in law mentioned she had still been over there at 4am, in the sitting room -and she complained that some of the family were in the kitchen and nobody came out and offered them a drink. I don't know which extreme is worse.

I know there's more but jet lag is overtaking my brain. Three scanty hours on the plane last night and a three hour nap this evening. Not so good. All I've eaten today is breakfasts :) a crappy fruit and solid cinnamon twist on the plane, a beans/mushrooms/egg fest at home that wasn't nice, and cereal for dinner.

My sense of smell is working overtime and my stomach is queasy. I'm happy to be home with my husband but the smell of stale smoke off him and my baby again :(
And my mother in law uses Febreze or something that makes me want to run and puke every time she comes over - and on my kids after her (oops, the smell is on the kids, not that I want to puke on them!). It's a cure. Should I operate and get it removed? (The sense that is, would operate on the smells willingly if it was possible!)

entertainment

So I was driving up State Street, practising driving the automatic and looking at the clean whiteness of downtown Santa Barbara, when I thought I saw a cat standing on a cart, being pulled along the sidewalk - cute and eccentric. But no, it was away better! Sadly I didn't have the camera then, but I caught up with the trio chilling out a few days later.

Check it out:

A rat on a cat on a dog. That's the kind of thing you need to brighten up your day. My daughter even went to stroke the rat, she said she wanted to know what it would feel like!

monthly best blog post award

Blog Readers! Reward the weary and unsung blogger by voting for Blog post of the month, here!

Damian is the cheese, he really is - who wouldn't want a wee trophy! I was worried that posting this would count as whatsitcalled, soliciting? Canvassing? Campaigning! But I see others are doing it, so it must be ok.

I have to say, now and again I write a post that really pleases me, and I hate to think of it relegated to the annals (heh, annals) with no one ever seeing it again. I'm trying to work out how to do a favourite posts box, but haven't managed it yet.

So off you go, read and vote, make a blogger happy :)

new blog

I like the look of this. I love when men articulate. I wish my husband would do one of these... then if he did, and he read my blog, we might end up communicating in some small way.

yay me

So whenever we go on holiday, my husband does the driving. He's a great and instinctive driver, I drive like the (possibly) dyspraxic woman I am.

The stress of trying to guide me through lanes, roundabouts and intersections while keeping me on the right side of the road would never be less than driving for him, so he always does it.

Yet here I am on holiday on my own, and we can't fit three car seats into one car, so I got a driving lesson from my cousin's husband (automatic car, odd intersections where you give way to the right, and take turns with all other lanes unless you got there first - I think..) and I was out and about - I even drove home all by myself, not even following my cousin today!

I'm fierce proud of myself. There was a time when I thought I'd never learn to drive. Now it's automatic. And even though Santa Barbara is a sleepy, easy going town where everyone cruises around at 35mph, I'm still delighted with myself. And the feeling of autonomy is great after being driven for a few days. Very Thelma and Louisey.

We saw a labradoodle downtown today. And something else fabulous, but I'll post about it when I get home and I can show you the photographic evidence. I also had a burrito, you poor, sad potato eating fools. Mwahahahahaha etc.

strange surroundings

representative photo, not actual!


My aunt and uncle live in a very beautiful, quiet street, in a very desirable area, and have done so since the seventies, I suppose. The trees are tall, the mountains are near by, my uncle can walk out of the house to go hiking, which he does every Wednesday night and on weekends. The Eucalyptus trees scent the air, the house is wooden and echoes the smell. It is simple and peaceful and even though I have only visited here a few times in my life, perhaps aged two, fifteen, seventeen, twentysomethingelse, it feels like home to me.

The house is filled with my aunt's beautiful crafts, needlepoint, weaving, a host of beautiful soft blankets knitted in glowing colours which we wrap around us against the cold and sadness now. Everything in the house is her and even though a tragedy took place here, it is still peaceful and comfortable. It doesn't feel like she is not here. Quiet and happier to be at home, she spent most of her time here, rarely venturing far. So she has imprinted herself here with the tens of thousands of hours she spent reading, working , listening to the birds and to her soft soothing music. She yearned for more I know, but she had the life she was comfortable and happy with. My mother would have been the same, but she chose not to stay here, to choose bad, selfish, messed up men instead and swapped this seaside respectability for life in depressed Ireland, beautiful in a different way.

I see them together, side by side on the grass talking, the long flowing hair of their youth perhaps, or shorter and threaded with grey as it was when they died. Can people really find each other after death? Wouldn't it be wonderful to know for sure either way? Maybe not. Why not keep the picture to comfort us for now. My daughter asked me tonight at bedtime if I would die before her. Working out that I would because I am older. I tell her that I will be an old lady, that she will be a grown up woman, a mama... I hope it's true, I hope it's true.


I was going to say I found it hard to write here, that I needed my familiar messy desk and uncomfortable chair. But maybe I'm just tired. Marshalling thoughts, organising and recounting, it's too much to face sometimes. So you just start writing and work on something else.

So here I am in California. The memorial is over, it's 10.20 at night, the childers are sleeping, my cousins are gone to bed, my uncle has retired to his tent in the back garden! and for the first time there's time to marshall my thoughts.

But I'm tired, and it would be a good idea to try and get some quality sleep before my youngest wakes for feeds then leaks out of his nappy a couple hours later and th all get up at six... urg.

My family managed to relax and unwind tonight for the first time since their horrible shock last Saturday afternoon. The pressure of putting together the service, dealing with the morgue, with the lawyer, banks, feeling their way through all that stuff while in shock and missing their mother has been huge.

But they did so well. I'm so proud of them. They did much better than we did. And we had such a lovely family party today - I met my uncle's family properly for the first time today, and they're so sweet. I saw my aunts, and cousins, though I didn't have enough time to talk to them, as my grandfather's widow was there, looking to talk about how much she missed him. And she told me 'now that I"m a married woman) that when she and he had come to visit us in the eighties, newly married, they'd had a shag in the barn and I'd come looking for them, 'Grandma! Grandpa!'and interrupted! Ok, the 'now you're a married woman' bit was funny, but sheesh! And later when my sister and her girlfriend (calm down lads) told us they were going to a b&b on the coast, she said that she and my grandfather had often stayed there, and you could see my sister feeling less cheerful about her romantic night away, wondering whether theirs would be the bed her grandfather had canoodled in... heh.

Meh. I've got a bug bite.

We had a lovely afternoon. Shortly before they left one of the kids came in to get some bread and informed us they were having an 'eating party'. My daughter came in a few minutes later to butter her won bread, having been invited. Very cute. It turned out later that he eating party had been in my uncle's tent. I hope they haven't left crumbs in his sleeping bag.

Earlier my uncle had wondered what to call the gathering back at the house. I think that's what we could have called it - it's what it was! My uncles mother is from Wisconsin, and brought lasagna, chicken and rice and two kinds of brownie. Her daughter in law brought a cheesecake. I made quiche and biscuit cake, though that was a bit of a challenge as all my cousin's husband find was low fat cinnamon animal biscuits.

I have many thoughts to report but no energy - tomorrow. I've missed blogging, I've been thinking in blogpost for the last few days.

It was so good being with my family today. If you have a nice family you don't see too often, or a group of good friends, I urge you to arrange a get-together for no particular reason, just a celebration. It's sad to only do it for a death, even for a weddding, when everyone's stressed. A summer picnic would be perfect. And would be a nice thing to remember as a last meeting if something bad happens thereafter.

Timing

There's never enough time. For years now, I've wanted to spend Christmas in the States with my cousin's family. her mother felt like the closest person to my mother left, our connection essentially that of family in a way I don't feel with my siblings or father.

We've talked about it, since my mother died, renting a house in Vermont for Christmas. I think I posted about how I felt looking at last year's Christmas photos, my aunt's glowing Christmas house. I wanted to be there so much, to feel in the middle of family, with a loving mother holding it all together.

But my husband's job was always busiest at Christmas, my daughter's granny would miss her, we never had the cash. Next year, next year, next year.

I just got a phone call from my cousin a couple hours ago, my aunt Sue somehow died in her sleep last night. My cousin is a couple months pregnant with her second child.

I left it too late. Oh god, I never sent her the photos of my kids in the blankets she made, I've been meaning to do it for a year now.
I'm so sorry. That was a little thing, I could have done it. I'm so sorry.

And I know just how my cousin is feeling, and I wish it wasn't so, I wish I could protect her from this horrible, horrible grief and make things different.

We're too young. It's too hard, to be the mother who makes the Christmas. I'm sorry, Weeshie, if you're reading, this post is about me, I know. We have to be it all now, we don't have a choice.

nothing as it should be

Public Service Announcement

Don't go see Podge and Rodge in Vicar Street, it's shite. Really shite, like a bad school play. Should've left during the interval. The warm up comedian was good though. Colm someone.

Don't go to Abrakadabra in Donnybrook. It's shite too. It's stripped down, presumably to discourage vandalism, it's full of drunken little wee spotty teens, one of whom looked like Beavis and had a non-oronc mullett, the staff got both our orders wrong and it wasn't right either way, not like the kebabs I remember. Waste of a indulgence.

Feh!

Still, it was good to get out.

trauma!

I'd messed up the bath water, it was cold, I hadn't turned on the immersion properly, and that sort of threw me off - I left the baby in my daughter's room and didn't really register when he'd crawled over to the door and was playing with a bag of clothes just outside. He's only just started crawling and I'm not quite used to it yet.

A minute later I looked out to see him at the top of the stairs, reaching down - I jumped for his foot but just missed him as he tumbled onto his face and then rolled over and over in front of me, landing with a bump at the bottom. It was so fast!

Here we go. My daughter never did that!

Luckily our stairs is split in two, so it wasn't that far. Still horrible, the way I could see it all unfolding, but was powerless to stop it. He only cried for a couple minutes, I think he's ok, just a little tender. Rescue remedy all round - he seemed to savour the brandy thoughtfully.

I meant to say, on the 24th of April it was his 9 month birthday. At breakfast he was sitting in his high chair and did a protracted fart - he looked up at me with delighted amusement, and broke up laughing. Yep, he's a boy alright...

what are we doing?

Look at this picture. It makes me so sad, and angry. Here's a PR event. Some pointless launch, or whatever . There's a little boy, on the red carpet, looking like a little boy.

And there's a little girl. I think. Is she ten, maybe eleven? Her gold lamé baby doll dress manages to look like it would on a nineteen year old, instead of just looking like a child's dress on a child- pseudo innocent sexy, despite the fact that she's got no breasts yet.

Her heavy make up, sprayed hair, and the gold heels - she's already got the red carpet stance of the Jimmy Choo wearing starlet.

All this exploitation - toddler make up ranges, spa days for pre teen parties... that little girl should be dressing up in her mums heels and lipstick, then going out and climbing trees in some boots or runners, not wearing gold strappies of her own. Like something out of a Thai brothel.

God, I'm enraged by this this morning!

bad, bad Blogger

Bad evil blogger didn't save my post last night - ironic, as it's about losing things. I don't have the time or emotional energy to write it again now, so you get nowt!

I have to go finish knitting a dog...