Strange Things, Plus Brilliant Norfolkian News
Strange things are afoot. Peculiar gurglings and burpings of Fate are poppling all around. It’s a funny old life, indeed.
In other news – my best friend is great(ish) with child, in the family way, expecting, embunned and up the duff!! I’ve already informed her of the dangers of soft-cheeses and cat-litter and she’s promised not to eat either. Plus, I have advised her to use all caution when on the internet, lest she be drawn, wide-eyed and credulous into pregnancy chat-rooms where loonies will, will cause her to diagnose herself and her unborn child with toxoplasmosis, Dengue Fever and/or progressive earlessness. Not that I ever did. Nope, not me.
Anyway, to my dear, sweet M, may God bless you and all who gestate in you. And hearty backslaps and a manly handshake from the Problem Husband to P too, for a job well done. (This public announcement might mortify the parents-to-be, which is, of course, why I did it.)
In still other news, the Problem Loin-Fruit have finished preschool for the year and my mornings are no longer my own. Blogging therefore is a much more opportunistic pursuit. If I haven’t been round your’s lately, chalk it up to my needing to wipe jammy faces and scraped wee knees more often than in term-time. It’s lovely having them home. They’re growing up far far too quickly. I met my pal, the pregnant one above, when I was their age – 5 – and thinking on that, along with today’s happy news about her impending mammyhood, has made a great sobby, soggy, soppy mess of me.
Fizzy wine for me tonight!
June 12th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
You think you have problems?
I woke up one day and my daughter had bought a fucking house.
You can’t do that, I said. You’re supposed to be five.
Dad?, my beloved daughter said.
What? I barked.
Dad, is there any chance you’d have a look at my car?
June 13th, 2007 at 5:08 am
God bless you and all who gestate in you. Class! I must remember that for the next embunning. I must also remember not to write Congrats. I knew you had it in you on embirthing cards.
June 13th, 2007 at 6:03 am
Bock, oh nonononono. I’m confident that’ll never happen to my girls. They will always, always be five. In a non-creepy way. (I, in my turn ,live in S. California with ready access to many clever doctors so I’m sure to look like I’m 33 right into my 90s, also in a non-creepy way). I’m ensuring they remain 5 with a low protein diet, brick hats and daily exposure to the Paris Hilton fairy story. At the moment they can’t believe someone like her really exists. They’re right there with me with Santa and the Tooth Fairy – but they just think the Paris story is too incredible. I don’t believe in her myself so I can hardly disagree with them.
Sneezy, I would frame any card I got reading “Congrats, I knew you had in you.” Any card – possibly even a sympathy card. I think it works on all sorts of levels. It is an occasional greeting of beauty, so it is. Am Team Trivia Tuesday night tipsy. We won! 3 free shots and a delicious pudding! God bless you, Taste-Buds! God bless you, Liver! God bless you, non-complicating Inner Ear Fluid! Blimey, I am drunk.
June 13th, 2007 at 7:02 am
Have you told your little madams what it was like to do the everyday things of life with them inside you? And yes, I include going to the toilet.
June 13th, 2007 at 7:59 am
Congratulations indeed to the embunned! Tell them that at least dengue fever is difficult to diagnose – they wouldn’t let me out of hospital when I had it, kept me trapped there for days trying to figure it out!
And enjoy the time with the little loin-fruits! Hooray!
June 13th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Tommyrot! The French eat soft cheeses during pregnancy and they turned out alright.
June 13th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Bestest to your mate. And enjoy the little ones. Do they have space to explore, chop worms/snakes , ground flies etc.
And Paris is being tortured. It smacks of an election stunt by that judge. She in, she is out, she is in again.
June 13th, 2007 at 10:59 am
The french…soft cheese? aha! So that’s what went wrong.
Sam, I have been sipping this frightful stuff called West Coast Cooler, it’s a non drink although the bottle claims it contains alcohol, basically it’s a lousy, yet curiously delicious-for summer any road- fizzy wine, so huzzah!
‘Cept tonight I’ll be hitting the rum, hitting it like a naked actor hits bongos.
June 13th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Prosecco, best fizz there is.
Two of my Drummlets are heading for self sufficiency – ie buying themselves technogadgets and paying off personal loans – shocking.
June 13th, 2007 at 11:35 am
You also have to be careful with fish when you’re embunned, right? From all the mercury in it.
Enjoy the fizzy wine!
June 13th, 2007 at 12:37 pm
Nanas, going to the toilet when I was pregnant is better described as an everyhalfhour thing of life. The girls often chat about their time in mummy’s tummy – they had a swing-set in there too, according to them. My bruised inwards tell me that they’re not making it up.
Carolyn, are you kidding? Is that what the recent mystery illness you blogged about turned out to be? Shouldn’t you be – how can I put this – dead? Jolly glad you’re not, hun! Bloody hell – Dengue Fever! I can’t leave a comment on your site today.
Something technical won’t let me and then tells me to try again later ‘cos I’ve been leaving too many comments! Blast the something technical! Aye, and damn it too!
Sweary, when i was wee I used to squirt tubes of Primula right onto my tongue. I’ve always thought this early experience with soft chees helped me to understand the French better than the average non-frog. It gave me the confidence to be that bit extra nasal in O Grade French; that bit extra rude and unyielding on my bicycle; that bit extra pongy in my breath.
Vince, our back garden looks like it’s been hit countless times by teeny-tiny meteors although in fact it was teeny-tiny children. They are mudpuppies by nature but won’t kill anything. There was an embarrassing incident at preschool recently when Problem Child II wouldn’t give an end-of-year kiss to the dear and lovely grandmother, who came to class every week to read stories and do crafts with the children. PCII stuck her thumb in her mouth, wrapped her hair around her finger and scowled because this sweet old lady had stepped on a roly-poly (woodlouse), PCII’s favourite bug of all time.
fmc, “hitting it like a naked actor hits bongos.” This had better not be a preview of Friday Fun. My eyes! They bleed yet from last week’s Danny Bonaduce pictures! Yet, they bleed – flippin’ yet in the “still” and “continue to baffle all doctors” sense of the word.
Conan, now you’ve thrown me. I thought you were an early thirties father of wee wans and certainly not old enough to have personal-loan-having spawn, with or without technogadgets. I wants me one of them, by the way – where can I get me one of them there technogadgets? I won’t be able to use it or anything – I can’t even work my granny’s electric tin-opener for Himself’s sake – but I’d like something with important-looking wee blinking lights.
Medbh, you’re right – all the bigger fish like tuna, shark and salmon are full of mercury and farmed salmon’s full of PCBs and antibiotics. Happily, sardines – that king amongst fish – are not on the verboten list for pregnancy. I was like a sealion for sardines for about a week when I was pregnant. We remember it as The Week Of The Sardines And Also Of The Liquorice, in our house.
June 13th, 2007 at 1:56 pm
They do grow up fast. In just a couple of weeks, my eldest shall obtain a driver’s license.
I’m going to go throw up, now.
Cheers.
June 13th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Randall, the only way to deal with that is to run to your room, stuff a pillow over your face and scream, tapering off to a gentle moaning and rocking for long distance lamentation. I read something lately though about devices you can put in your car which will monitor a teenager’s driving and report back to you in some clever way on their speed and so forth. This allows you to yell at them when they get home and, with luck, make them more careful on the road. Might be worth a looksee.
June 13th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
Have you given them the winter hurling sticks yet, you call it shinty
. It seems that you have a pair with the makings.
June 14th, 2007 at 1:34 am
nice, fizzy pop all round then if you are offering…
June 14th, 2007 at 11:41 am
I remember doing a doubletake when my 8 year old stepdaughter asked me if I wanted to be called Grandad or Grandpa. Turned out she was 20 and pregnant.
June 14th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Dear Sam: I had just seen over at Randall’s that you had the girls home for the hols and just popped in to say hi, to find you have done a post. Clever girl! But you are right to make the most of your time with them – it is so fleeting in retrospect although seemingly endless at the time.xoxox
June 14th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
where were you at the time of the necessary birth announcements etc of my children, class post. Not much makes me laugh out loud but this did, cheers!
June 14th, 2007 at 5:34 pm
That was so sweet.
My four year old is almost 30. She’s still my sweet baby. (as are the rest of ‘em – the 3 other chirr’un)
I’m glad you’re enjoying the time with the little problems.
June 14th, 2007 at 9:48 pm
People getting knocked up left and right…dogs and cats, living together…mass hysteria.
(I started to actually comment and it someone just flowed into a quote from Ghostbusters. Strange.)
June 15th, 2007 at 12:04 am
Vince, their sport-of-choice at the moment is barrelling round corners well below our centres of gravity and sending us spinning and glancing off the kitchen walls.
Manuel, be glad I didn’t offer. I posted that on Tuesday and Wednesday hurt ’til 3pm and then the hurtin’ was replaced by nausea. Bloody fizzy bloody wine.
Kim, a double take? Surely a 2.5 take to bring the 8 up to 20. God, I’m inbloodysufferable sometimes. Often.
Pat, I love this age with the girls. They are trying so hard to figure stuff out and they’re just hilarious and earnest and it’s as much as I can do to keep a straight face sometimes. Like yesterday, for example when PCI told PCII that the man on the penny-farthing bike in the old picture book we were looking at was “much deader than Grandma because he was from the Ancient Greek times and Grandma was from Minnesota” (he was riding down a road in London.)
Honey, cheers backatcha, baby. My own kids had no birth announcements ‘cos we were brand new to the area, 7000 miles from home and too flummoxed to think of them. Fortunately we had my mother and my mother-in-law who were remarkably efficient. Almost to a fault.
Jali, I’ve seen your picture on your blog and I am having a hard time believing you have an almost 30 year-old child. Bloody hell, woman, you look terrific! I had you for about 40.
Kara, I’m impressed you can quote Ghostbusters beyond the “nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh whoyougonnacall? Ghostbusters!” line. Me, I just remember marshmallow-toasting taking on a whole creepier tone after that film. I would gaze at my flaming marshmallow on a stick while out on Girl-Guide sausage-sizzles, and be troubled by my own thoughts.
June 15th, 2007 at 12:23 am
That’s sweet. Congratulations, friend.
Sounds like you are giving up regular blogging for better things.
June 15th, 2007 at 5:14 am
Ahhhhhh, merican football.
June 15th, 2007 at 10:33 pm
*sighing* they come back..or call and ask for a loan, so enjoy this time while you can….