I'm catching up with life, honest I am

I feel like I'm running just to stand still at the moment. Work is, as it always does, expanding to fit the time available, and then spilling over wherever possible. That's reasonably easy to deal with as Husbandio is off work and therefore available for childcare should the need arise, but he's back to work on 1st April, so it could all fall apart then. To prepare myself, I'm catching up with everything else - I've just filed a backlog of photos dating back to last August, and spent 3 nights last week working my way through the ironing mountain.

The blog has suffered, inevitably. Part of this is because after spending all day in front of a laptop, the last thing I fancy in the evening is sitting in the lounge with the laptop open. After work, I tend to shut the machine down, and leave it upstairs in the office. If I don't, then people either Skype me or e-mail me, and frankly, after 9pm I just don't want to know any more.

I could also blame lack of blogging at the weekend on a small yet significant incident involving a cup of water, a 5 year old, and a laptop. It was not a good combination. To her credit, Isabel apologised profusely, using several plaintively written notes. Despite putting the machine in the recovery position in the airing cupboard, it was not happy the following day. Fortunately it turned out that the keyboard was the problem, nothing worse than that. Our outsourced IT company tried to charge me £260 to replace the keyboard, but I managed to get a cheap keyboard from eBay for £19, and then found a lovely laptop repair fellow in Amersham to fit it for £10. Bargain! Gawd bless local tradesmen. He saved Isabel's life, that's for sure....

I know they say time flies, but this is ridiculous

Time is clearly flying by, since I have been less than assiduous about writing regularly. I will, as ever, try harder etc etc. What I need really is for this blog to become terribly successful, attract loads of advertising and sponsorship deals, and then make a full-time living out of blogging. Which would be great, because you have to do some reasonably interesting stuff in order to have things to write about. Alternatively, I should review more restaurants, get a reputation as a restaurant critic, and similarly move to full time blogging, this time with free food thrown in. In my dreams...!

Anyway, I was just skimming the BBC News web site and saw that David Schwimmer's getting married. I'm nosy, so I clicked through to see who he's marrying, and it turns out to be this girl who's 24, to his 45. Well done, that man. But that wasn't the shocking thing. The shocking thing was that the article said Friends had ended in 2004. That's SIX years ago (for those with poor mathemetical skills). SIX! That means that I seem to have lost six years in a bit of a haze. What happened? Oh yes, children, silly me.

While I'm depressing myself, this may be a good time to reveal that I left school TWENTY years ago (groan...!) and have been working for FOURTEEN in the same job. Well, for the same company anyway.

That's the trouble with blogging, some topics can really bring you down! Mental note: think of cheerier topic for tomorrow.

Teething

Emily's been teething the last few days, and we've been eagerly awaiting the arrival of at least one of her two top teeth, but to no avail. Her gums were all puffy and sore for a couple of days, making her most grouchy, but the teeth seem to have decided that it wasn't the right time, and have settled back down where they were.

Isabel's got the opposite problem - losing teeth. She's just got her first two wobbly teeth - and it's the same as the two teeth than Emily already owns. If Isabel's come out before Emily's top teeth come in then they'll have a full set between them! I thought I'd be really squeamish about wobbly teeth, but I didn't feel too bad when I saw them yesterday. Well, other than the heart-wrenching knowledge that this is yet another step on the long road towards growing up - sob! I'm not surprised she's started with the bottom two teeth - all the thumb sucking over the years has pushed them into a funny angle, so she's probably loosened them. I wonder how long they'll take to come out. I can't believe my baby's nearly got adult teeth, to match her almost adult size feet!

Apologies...

Oh dear, sorry - last week exploded and before I knew it the week was done, and then so was the weekend, and no blogging had taken place at all. Tsk tsk tsk. Must try harder.

It was a really crazy week. I drove 200 miles on Monday to Loughborough and back - and nearly didn't make it back since I drove over a pallet which a lorry driving ahead of me down the M1 had dropped. Husbandio was out that evening, and I was then out the following two nights. The first one (which I really did mean to blog about!) was to see Carly Simon perform live at the BBC's Maida Vale studios. It was very cool - she was accompanied by her son Ben Taylor, and he was excellent too. Turns out it was the only live gig she's ever done in the UK, so I felt very privileged. I'd won the tickets in a web site competition and was totally surprised to have won - perhaps I should have bought a lottery ticket that week as well!

Wednesday night was an evening down the pub with some of the mums of kids in Isabel's class. Managed to consume 4 Jack Daniels and coke, not quite sure how. Good night though, and some funny gossip. Which perhaps, this blog being a public forum, I may keep to myself!

Thursday and Friday were both spent in town all day which was knackering in itself. Went to lots of meetings with my boss who was over from California. He also took me to lunch at a curry place in Covent Garden which I love but haven't been to since before Emily was born. I ate far too much, and felt queasy all evening, couldn't even manage my dinner which is most unusual. Turns out it was less a question of too much curry, and more a question of a tenacious stomach bug which stuck with me for the next 4 days and is now plaguing Husbandio. Thought it was kind to share. Emily may have it too, since she was very sick on Saturday night and then again today. Wash the high chair jobs, both of them. Marvellous.

Despite the dodgy tummy I geared myself up for the first weekend we've had away for years. I think we've been away once or maybe twice for the weekend since Isabel's been born, but it's never really been something we do, somehow. Lazy, us? Maybe! Anyway, we went to stay with my cousin, his wife and her daughter in Bath, and went to a point to point race meeting with them and my aunt and uncle. It was great! Bit chilly, but Isabel loved the horses and the drama of hearing them thundering past. No-one other than my aunt won any bets, but it was a lovely day, really nice to be outside and to be doing something out of the ordinary.

By the time we got back yesterday afternoon we were all pooped. Some of us more literally than others. We'd stopped at Leigh Delamere services for some lunch on the way home, having tried and failed to find a pub which (a) didn't look rough, (b) served food and (c) wasn't fully booked. Thank goodness we were in the services, with its spacious and well-equipped changing facilities, since Emily took it upon herself to unleash the most unholy poonami the world has ever seen. She even managed to get Husbandio with it, and he had to change his t-shirt. Glad we had sets of spare clothes for everyone. I wish I'd been able to give her a bath - once I'd stripped her down I realised it was up to her neck at the back, and down to her knees elsewhere. Don't know if it was the bug or teething, but it was messy!

So, now we're all home, starting to recover from our exertions. Husbandio has a cold and the tummy bug at the same time, which isn't much fun, but he's bearing up well. Thank goodness for a quiet week, when the only place I need to visit is Slough. Come, friendly bombs, and all that!

Funny poo stories

I caught up with my NCT group today, and one of them shared a really funny poo story, which then reminded me of one of my own, and another which may be apocryphal. So I hereby share the stories with you - if you don't want to read about baby poo, look away now....

Story #1
My friend's baby had a nasty tummy bug, and each poo had been vile and very explodey for several days. However, the baby recovered and there came a day when she had not pooed all day, so by the afternoon my friend decided to risk a trip to Waitrose. While she was wandering the aisles she smelt an ominous smell, looked down, and spotted the poo. Which had leaked onto the floor. And soaked up the baby's vest almost to chest level. She whisked the offensive child off to the toilets, changed her from head to toe, made her vaguely respectable, and returned shame-faced to her abandoned trolley. And the poo had magically been wiped away - that's what you get for shopping in Waitrose!

Story #2
When Isabel was walking but still in nappies and edging towards potty training, we went to visit some friends with a rather nice garden. Several other children of a similar age were there, so we de-nappied them and put a potty down. Rather hopefully as it turned out. But I only discovered this when my host for the afternoon pointed out Isabel crouching over a corner of the patio rather than the neighbouring potty. Wet wipes clean poo off a patio leaving little trace, FYI!

Story #3
Another one from the age of toddler-hood - a friend of a friend was in someone's garden with her daughter, who, after being quiet for a few minutes, approached with cupped hands. You guessed it - those hands contained a delightfully fragrant offering.

Kids eh, gotta love 'em!

Doomed to a life of blubber

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I've been bemoaning the fact that having a home office means I have reduced the amount of exercise I do each week from laughable to imperceptible. And it turns out I'm right, and that home working could send me to an early grave. Well, that's what I read into this blog post from the New York Times. For those of you so lazy that you can't even move your finger far enough to click on the link, it basically says that sitting is bad for you. And advocates a stand-up desk with a treadmill.

Now, this is clearly crazy talk. But it did worry me enough that I spent a 30 minute conference call earlier hanging out the washing and then pacing round the office in an effort to keep my metabolism going before it decides that life just isn't worth living. And it even made me leave the house to walk to school to pick up Isabel (it's a three mile round trip, and it was raining). The problem is that the article says that even if sedentary office workers make the effort to go to the gym regularly, that this still isn't enough. It's the sitting down for long periods of time which does the damage, whether you go to the gym or not. I read this to mean that there's no point going to the gym, which is great news. But I'll keep on pacing round the office, just in case. And maybe put a treadmill on my Amazon wish list, but marked as the lowest priority.

Two nights out in a row!

OK, so one of those was a work do, but nonetheless, I'm back out there, getting the late night train back home, and generally getting myself out of the house. Goodness me, it's tiring. I'm knackered tonight after two late-ish nights, and may even have to retire to bed before the magic hour of 10pm. As an aside, why does it seem acceptable to go to bed at 10.01pm, and yet 9.59pm is only allowed if you're coming down with something? I digress.

Monday night was a social event - my mum bought theatre tickets to Six Degrees of Separation and we went for dinner first in Livebait (bit of a ripoff - expensive food, and mum found five bones in her fish pie, which is not really acceptable). The play was good - I'd seen the film with Will Smith years ago and think on balance that the movie was probably better. It was short though - 90 minutes and no interval - which I appreciated since the journey home from Waterloo takes a good 90 minutes. And there's nude men in it, one of whom waves his bits and pieces about quite wildly (cue very British giggles in the audience).

Tuesday was the work do - my company has an annual "Leadership Dinner" for the hoi polloi and bigwigs of our industry, so this meant a slapup meal which started with cocktails and was accompanied by a lovely drop of Rioja. But again it was a 90 minute journey home and I didn't leave the restaurant until 10.30pm. Dashing for, and missing, the Met line train at Wembley Park, and then successfully chasing the Chiltern instead at Harrow swept away the effects of the alcohol, but I spent the night dreaming of rich food and woke up so full that I couldn't manage my breakfast until after the school run.

Got another night out planned for next week too - I won tickets to Radio 2's session with Carly Simon, so will be chilling out at Maida Vale Studios which will be really fun. Unfortunately Emily's too young to be babysat by anyone if she's not fed and put to bed by either Husbandio or self, so I'm taking the stepmother (not stepmonster, luckily!). Need to get my Best of Carly Simon out to revise beforehand!