Never work with children or animals

As the old saying goes "Never work with children or animals". Unfortunately this is a bit difficult for me, having two of the former and lots of the latter. All have the ability to drive me completely nuts. If it's not the kittens and their mad half hour (which goes on for hours) in which they do the wall-of-death in the lounge and fly up and down the stairs like they've got fireworks up their bums, it's the kids either rowing or shrieking. Sometimes they all do this in unison, during which I am forced to retreat to the bedroom seeking the solace of earplugs and 'Flowerboard' on my ipod. The cats are all oddbods in their own ways; Dolly - who had one eye removed last year -  never used to like being anywhere near people's faces but now has taken to lying on my throat when I get into bed, with her empty eye-socket right up in my face. God love her, but it's enough to give me nightmares! Then there's Lundy, the fluffiest handsomest cat in the whole world, who likes to follow you when you go for a walk - trotting alongside you like a dog. He goes from being absurdly affectionate to totally aloof, only gracing us with his presence when he wants meat. He also rivals the most stealthy of predators and has brought us home presents ranging from frogs to Game birds. The kittens (Birdie and Bob) are the strangest of all. they refuse to go outside during daylight hours but as soon as nighttime rolls around they're scratching at the door to get out. And then in again. And then out again. Birdie likes to get in the litter tray after her brother has been in for a poop and make a better job of covering it up and Bob has extra toes.
But compared to the cats, the kids are actual nutters. As many may know from the parenting forums or Facebook, my daughter is - as my dad says - 'a card'. She is hilarious, with absolutely no tact and more idiosyncracies than you can shake a stick at. She has, since being a baby, wanted mummy for everything which is both endearing and irritating. She also seems to be more than a little bit OCD, having to say 'goodnight' about 15 times, wanting to know what's for the next meal before she's eaten this one and wanting me to take her to bed every night. Religiously. Her brother is quickly catching her up in the strangeness stakes though, which does provide us with much amusement but is also enough to make you want to pull your hair out sometimes. Like the school run, when he thinks it's amusing to lie face down in the school playground, grinning at me like a loon. Amusing for him and everyone else watching yes, but for mummy? No. Neither is it that hilarious when walking round Asda on his reins (to stop him lying face down on the floor), he decides to squat down almost like he's having a poo (save for him wearing a nappy, thank goodness), and refuses to move. And I have to pretend to laugh and jovially call him a nutty noodle, when all the while I'm hissing "Get up!" through gritted teeth and turning ever more purple with shame. Although we did laugh tonight when he stood up in the bath and announced "Water! Coming out of peen!" and proceeded to wee in the bath like a human fountain. But they're all my babies, and would I be without them? Erm...do I have to answer that?

Gym bunny

I love the gym, me. Not just because it helps alleviate the symptoms of my bi-polar and helps relieve stress and aggression (oh, and gives me a bum like two peanuts in clingfilm), but because of the people watching I can do. And I love to people watch. I've been going to the same gym for ages now and regularly see the same faces..and bums. Mondays and Thursdays are Ladies mornings, which means the gym is not only full of women (give the girl a medal!) but is also full of the husbands of those women, who stand around talking by the machines while their WAGs are off in an aerobics class. Most of the men are middle aged or older, wearing deck shoes and do a lot more talking than moving. There's the girl with the shiny black hair and expensive gym attire that she's obviously too afraid to wash. I assume that's the case as she never breaks a sweat, preferring to burn calories by swishing her hair lots and tapping away on her phone, exercising with weights that I could lift with my eyelids during a good blink. There's the bloke who, without a word of a lie, was the fattest man I have ever seen 8 months ago and who turned red and sweaty the second he walked in the door. He is there as often and probably more than I am, and has halved in size. I've got more respect and amiration for him than I have for the Muscle Marys who exercise in packs in front of the mirrors, grunting loudly with each lift to alert us all to their masculinity. There's the small Chinese lady who must be in her 70's and who smells of cabbage every single time I see her. There's the couple who go together, with the girlfriend watching the boyfriend like a hawk to make sure he isn't looking at any other girls (he does, I've seen him!) And then there's me. I wonder what other people make of me? I don't wear the latest gear but neither do I turn up with cheesy trainers or smelling of cabbage. I don't tap away on my phone, but I have been known to forget my headphones were on and sing out quite loudly. Maybe they see me as the girl who should stop gawping at other people and get on with my own business..!

Man flu

As I write, The Husband is suffering from the most serious affliction that could befall the male of the species. I do, of course, mean Man Flu. When women get Man Flu (or 'a cold' as we call it), the world doesn't stop. We still have the housework, jobs, kids to look after, shopping to do. We have a Lemsip, a bit of a whinge on Facebook about feeling like sh*t on a stick and then get on with things. But men? They do this strange squinty-eyed thing and turn into mouth breathers, only breathing through their nose to prove how blocked up it is. They cough with their mouths shut which makes their lips wobble and sound like a horse. They make sure the entire world is aware of just how poorly they are, by announcing the onset of Man Flu and 'THRRRRRFFFFFFF'ing loudly into a tissue whenever anyone who wasn't aware of their illness is near. They refuse to take medications that may help relieve the symtoms of Man Flu, in case the symptoms are relieved and the duration is lessened. Even my son who is two exhibits the same behaviour, which is obviously inherited rather than learned. His sister didn't suffer from Man Flu - sorry, a cold - til she was 2 and a half, and didn't utter so much as a whinge. But the Boychild was a different kettle of fish. That boy was born with Man Flu and has suffered regularly since. He also has a peculiar habit of being sick when he has a cold, which is nice. Goes to bed with the sniffles, and wakes up in a pile of puke. So mums, prepare your daughters. Because if they think that their boyfriends will be nothing like their dads, they are in for a rude awakening! Man Flu crosses all physical and environmental boundaries, all ages and all generations; there will never be a vaccine and no amount of research will ever uncover a cure. The Rainforests do not contain plants that hold the secret remedy, nor do Old Wives tales apply where Man Flu is concerned. The only solution is a bottle of wine and some earplugs...for us women!

Consumer warrior extraordinaire

It's not that I complain a lot. Just that I like it! Don't get me wrong, I don't like having reason to complain, but give me the chance to write a strongly worded e-mail or letter and by God, I'll jump on it. I discovered my - heck, it's a talent, let's not mince words - ability for complaining way back at University (although I'm sure my first boyfriend would claim I liked to complain waaaaaaay before then) when I bought some cheese that had gone mouldy in the pack. I wrote off to head-cheese-office and received a £2 voucher in the post. Yes, the compensation may have been paltry, but the victory I felt surpassed all financial gain and thus I had caught the bug. Since then there has been the Mothercare price-error, (advertising a car seat at a ridiculously cheap price and then claiming an error even though they had taken people's orders) in which all I went all out in my complaining, even setting up a Facebook campaign. Social media has done much for the modern complainer you see, enabling our chunterings to reach a far wider audience. Unfortunately this particular complaint resulted in a big fat nothing except for rehashes of the same e-mail, but not for lack of effort I might add. There was the time I impaled my heel on the pin of a security tag that had fallen inside a shoe I was trying on, and received £50 for my 'injury'. Then there was the time my daughter found a dinosaur bone (ok, chicken bone) in a goujon and nearly broke her teefs. So mummy dutifully penned an e-mail, complete with photographs of said bone attached, and received a giftcard for £50 as recompense. Of course, I would much rather darling daughter had not had to experience chewing on something the size of a hamster, but as it's not put her off breaded poultry bums, there's no real harm done. And tonight, my attention is to be turned to an e-mail of complaint to another supermarket chain after I placed their chicken and vegetable bake in t'oven according to instructions and went off for a shower. When The Husband came home, he took said bake out of the oven and proclaimed it unsuitable for human consumption as the entire plastic tray it was in had melted! Yes, the top had gotten slightly burnt (I accept no responsibility for this; I was in the shower and left The Husband in charge of tea), but surely the containers they provide for cooking should be able to withstand the actual cooking process? So move over Lyn Faulds-Wood and Gloria Hunniford, there's a new moaner in town, and let's just hope the makers of that chicken and vegetable bake haven't caught me on a bad day!

Life imitating art

Maybe this is glaringly obvious, but TV is NOTHING like real life, which is odd because some of it is meant to be. Take Eastenders for example. Current storylines include the murder of a George Michael obsessed woman by a bespectacled gay boy with a photo frame and Ian Beale reeling in his 19th wife. Coronation Street has a tram just happening to fall off it's tracks just as it's passing the cobbles, and all of Gails husbands (and son) trying to off her. Emmerdale has been unlucky enough to have had a plane fly right into the local pub (what are the chances?) and a teenager giving birth in a phone box. Yes, there's been the odd storyline that I can imagine happening in the real world, but even the most mundane event is dramatised to oblivion. And TOWIE is actually depicted as being real, but look at all the drama and parties and affairs! And now let's look at my life and those of my nearest and dearest. Can you imagine getting the Eastenders type 'duff-duff-duffs' to me dragging Charlie across the school playground after he'd lay face-down on the floor in a strop? Or Friday night's cliffhanger being me feeding my neighbours cats and having to clean the carpet as one of them had honked up a hairball? No, didn't think so. An episode of TOWIE would be quite dull if all that happened was one of the humungously-bosomed glamour pusses hanging out some washing and clipping their guinea pigs claws (again, not euphemisms). But maybe this means that someone, somewhere is having all my fun? Maybe there is someone whose life is one long rollercoaster ride of affairs, murder trials, 'who's the daddy?'s and scratchcard winnings? Or maybe I should just move to Essex!

I wish I looked like a Ladyboy

Had my first Girls Night Out in ages last night, seeing the Ladyboys of Bangkok with my friend C and two of her friends. And WOW. Some of them did look like men dressed as women, but some of them were literally jaw-droppingly stunning! How wrong is it to be jealous of a bloke because he looks better in his undies than you?! And I have to admit to something, especially after my chunterings about how I never dance... The heady combination of a bottle of wine and the YMCA was too much for me to handle and I juct couldn't help but *gulp* dance. In fact that was pretty much all I did for the rest of the night. Apart from in one bar we went to which wasn't playing music, because that would have been more than a bit odd. I did have the odd moment of near-sobriety in which I felt like the Nanna of all the young hoons in the pubs and became horribly conscious of my granny-dancing, but generally the IV drip feeding me Woo-woo kept me topped up enough not to care. It was a real eye opener being 'dahn tahn' as an older woman, watching the young 'uns with their zebra print clothing, baggy crotched tight jeans and their arses hanging out of some bizarre high waisted hotpants. It was all quite amusing and I wonder if people looked at me in a similar way when I was that age. Although I can promise you, my arse was quite firmly tucked away, then and now. Mostly.
I had to go cast a cloud over a brilliant night by drinking too much, and the hangover started before I'd even unwrapped my wet kebab. And no, that's not a euphemism. Sitting nomming on chips and meat of some description, I knew that I would be paying for it before too long. And I was right. After a restless few hours 6am rolled around, and off I went to talk to God on the big white telephone before spending the next 7 hours in my pit clutching my poorly head. Thank goodness for The Husband for keeping the loud beasts at bay until I had sufficiently recovered to cope with the squealing. Still, it just reaffirmed that I am WAY too old for this malarky. Roll on next time!!

Whether the weather

Confession time; I'm a little bit obsessive about things. Some things more than others, like doing the vacuuming in the same order everyday, like playing Flowerboard on my ipod every night before I go to sleep (it's been about a year now), like buying the same magazines every Tuesday (since about 1998), and a few million other things. But it's around this time of year that I become obsessed with one thing in particular - the weather. In winter it doesn't bother me; what's the point in Lego-man-haired Sian telling me it's going to be cold when you know it's bloody cold without even leaving the house? But as soon as the weather starts to get warmer (or is supposed to), I'm on that forecast more times a day than an old man gets up to pee. It's at this time of year that we get delightful mini heatwaves in the midst of the misery as a taster for what should be coming, like we did before Easter when one minute I was doing the school run in Snowjoggers and the next sunbathing in the garden while the pervy neighbour at the back trims his bush(es). And yet now it's back to grey skies and 'that fine rain that wets you through'. Well, they do say Ne'er cast a  clout til May is out. What does that even mean? Something about keeping your vest on til June?
It's quite sad that I plan my life around the sun but I do. If the BBC tells me that Tuesday is going to be full sun with only a light breeze, then the world can just wait a bit. I'll save the shopping til Thursday when it's half sun with a 15% chance of precipitation. And I was going to town on Friday but it's full sun again, and turning my skin to leather is much more important quite frankly.
But you'd be suprised how often the forecasters change their minds over the course of a day, so it's vital that - even as I'm frantically rubbing the spf on before the sun goes behind a mahoosive cloud - I keep checking in case they decide light rain is forecast for 3pm. I should know better though really because no doubt our GBS (That's Great British Summer) will be much like last year when I spent most of my time checking the weather online to see when the sun was coming out, and before I knew it it was September again and time to turn the heating on!