28th December, 2008 (9:48 pm)
The Day After Christmas ‘08 (6)
HAPPY CHRISTMAS!
What do you mean I’m late?
You know, I’ve barely even looked at my Mac these last few days, let alone attempted to sit down and write anything on it. When I jumped on this morning I had over 400 accounts to review at CodeGrrl and nearly 50 accounts to approve at SHHF, and I don’t think that the numbers ever reached that high even when I went to NYC, or Spain for a week. It’s weird because I never felt all that busy even though I clearly have been. I finished work on the 19th and besides making mince pies with S (yum) sometime that weekend, I don’t recall what the hell I did until the 23rd arrived, bringing along our friends from France with it. They stayed overnight - drink! Chinese food! Playing games! Yay! - and then Christmas Eve we went to my parents for Christmas dinner which was lovely, even though the goose-fat potatoes and gravy kicked off a gallstone attack at half five Christmas morning. We left around six that evening, came home, and then I realised that I hadn’t wrapped three boxes worth of gifts in the garage. I wrapped presents for what felt like a gazillion years and then - fuck me - it was Christmas Day. How did that happen?
We’ve had a good break though and as always, it was pretty low key. This year it was just the three of us, as our in-laws had been pre-booked to go to M’s sister’s for the day, and so we enjoyed a small but perfect lunch squeezed around our tiny dining table, spruced up with festive linen and crowned with the bunch of flowers S insisted on buying me - bless. :) The lounge, however, was a different story. It looked as though David Tennant had thrown up everywhere, the entire room littered with figures and games and stickers and props and toiletries all along the Doctor Who theme. For example: my parents bought him this insane remote control Dalek, which - when it’s not careering into your shins or smashing into your coffee table - tells you that you’ll make a good Dalek before, as contrary as a WAG on Rodeo Drive, it turns and tries to exterminate you. Awesome.
‘We’ bought S the Leapfrog Tag Reading pen, which he loves. I’m so, so chuffed. There’s very little about me that I think should be passed on to other, mouldable human beings, but my love of books is probably the one thing I hope he inherits and takes into adulthood. We bought three books to go along with it - SpongeBob, Cars and the Kung-Fu Panda - and he’s lapping them up, reading them utterly unprompted and unassisted and periodically throughout the day. Yay. Other than that, mostly everyone gave him Doctor Who goodies, which means I have had to clear out one of the trays from his toy unit in the lounge solely to house his DW figure collection which - and I wish I was making this up - sports NINE Tenth Doctor figures. That’s right - nine. And of those nine, six are IDENTICAL! I’m just so relieved that I bought him two Nightmare Before Christmas playsets to balance it out. :)
As for me? Amidst the wonderful plethora of books (Hornby, King, Tropper), CDs (Take That - woot! - and Snow Patrol) and DVDs (Blackadder Collection - although even though he lives in the same house of me and has done so for twelve years, M didn’t know I’d already had it) I had GHD straighteners - which I’ve been coveting like a fat girl in a cake shop for ages - and a new hairdryer which puts my current circa-1987 one to SHAME. I also received Lips, which I’m enjoying in a this-is-fun-but-serves-no-purpose kind of way that makes Guitar Hero look like a Mensa entry exam. Coupled with family gifts - which includes my early XBox 360 guitar, a mic stand and a guitar tree - it looks like a recording studio in here. A bad one, admittedly, but a studio all the same. And now that I can wield the axe and sing the lyrics at the same time, I know you’re jealous of my awesomeness.
Oh, and before I forget - special love and kisses to Claire, Raq and Sharon who never fail to make me feel loved and appreciated this time of year. You guys are just as awesome as I am. Seriously.
Of course - and as always - about 2.4 seconds after S unwrapped his final gift I suffered crippling post-Christmas spending guilt. It’s a cliche but CHRIST I feel bad when I see the excess of paper and wrapping and food. I started out so well, too; because of the current climate, and me not knowing if I’m going to have a job in six months’ time (fixed-term contract expires - bummer), we had strict spending limits on S and on each other, but then as M’s total crept up - which was probably because the total for my gifts did first - and then I felt bad for S, who by mid-December we’d spent the least on, and kept adding to his pile, too. So in the end we spent a gazillion pounds on things that, whilst lovely, seem silly and overpriced. It’s hard to regret it when your kid is beaming and I know we can kind of afford it but … meh. You know, it’s just as well I’m utterly faithless: I think if I did believe in God and Jesus and the whole nativity thing, I’d be devastated at what a fucking mess Christmas has become.
Anyway. Shall I move on?
To summarise: Christmas was good. Kinda quiet, but good. Between you and me I’m still a little badgunkified, but all that’s going to be regurgitated within the safe confines of a password-protected entry in the next few weeks. It’s just me being me: a miserable, moany misanthropist who probably needs to learn how to calm the fuck down and unclench. Heh. In the meantime, make me feel better. Talk to me! Tell me your best present and worst of the year and the readers of FA.com can vote for the best and crappiest gifts of 2008!
Hope your Christmas break - no matter how/ if you celebrate it - was peaceful and fun. May your 2009 be all you deserve it to be. :)
Comments: (6)
9th November, 2008 (1:20 pm)
The Day With The Return (10)
O HAI interwebs!
Ah, man, it’s been so long, hasn’t it? I suck donkey balls: you know it, I know it. A gazillion things have happened, some good, some not so good, some middling it with a meh, but the upshot is I’m still alive - give me a woo and a hoo - and the bad gunky - whilst not completely abated - is definitely on the retreat.
It would take far more time than I actually have available right now to update you on everything, so I’m going to be lame and do a quick bullet list. Yeah, that’s right. I suck and I’m lazy.
- We went to Disneyland Paris! (I know - it’s old news because the photo already gave that away but play along). I will report on this properly for prosperity, but suffice to say the trip was glorious and helped to de-gunkify me, as well as restore my faith in friendship. Those of you who have been reading here for some time may recall that we went to Majorca with ‘friends’ when S had just turned two years old. BIG. MISTAKE. My advice continues to be that you should NEVER go on holiday with friends if you’d actually wish to remain friends - trust me, I learned this the hard way. That said, our friends in France insisted that we meet up and do the trip together and I’m so, so glad that we did. Their son is BFF with little S, so it meant that they had each other when we hit the parks, and then the Mummies and Daddies had each other for drinks and laughter when the boys went to sleep. :) It was perfect and I loved every single second of it from seeing S actually cry with joy when he met Pooh bear to watching Jack and Sally from the Nightmare Before Christmas lead the Halloween Parade to seeing M’s face the first time he stepped off Space Mountain. Only down sides were the ridiculously hideous Tower of Terror ride (wtf? HATED IT), my riproaringly sore feet and the fact that I came home with the flu.
- Yes, I had the flu. Not a head cold or the sniffles but the real flu, the flu with the shaking and the sweats and fever and complete inability to get warm. Thought I was going to fucking die at one point. I was out of commission for over a week and felt like death for most of that time.
- M’s employers are asshats. Those of you who follow me on Twitter and had intermittent updates during my absence will already know that, but since being promoted in September and moving to a new section, they’ve changed his shift pattern three times. This is beyond frustrating when you have a kidlet to organise and another household job to juggle and has meant we had to reschedule/miss/have him take leave to do things we’d booked months and months ago - like our Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon tickets, for example, and also the Christening of our BFFs’ (we’re BFFs with both my friend from University and her husband hence the seemingly misplaced apostrophe :)) two kids. They seem completely oblivious of the havoc it causes. It also means that we’ll be M-less on Christmas Eve day, Christmas Day day, Boxing Day night and New Year’s Eve day. Harrumph. :( (An aside: he did his first ‘proper’ night shift last night, coming in today at 8am. He didn’t fall asleep as much as trip into bed and pass out. Bless).
- This is incredibly remiss of me, but I bought an iPhone about two months ago and failed to tell you. My bad. *hangs head* Grax convinced me with his vlog summary, and I haven’t been disappointed with my purchase. The battery life is pants (although marginally improved by fiddling about with the settings like brightness, 3G etc.), it’s crap that you can’t send or receive picture messages direct to the phone (have to go via email instead) and the fact you have to manually import Contacts (can’t save anything to SIM - everything’s kept on the phone, which is a pain in the ass if, like me, you swap cards to a cheaper phone when you’re out on the beer in case you lose the phone in a drunken stupor) is bollocks but other than all that, it rocks. I’m saving about £15-£20 a month from my old package on Vodafone, and I’m able to browse online a lot more. Score.
- Dead Space arrived. I didn’t get a freebie copy like everyone else on the Community Day did (clearly they didn’t like me - sob :() so I had to buy it. That said, it rocks - even though I am only an hour or so in but am already running low on fucking health and ammo. Maybe the fact I suck at the game is why EA didn’t send me a copy?
- I’ve started about three million new layouts for this place and all are shit. My angel hasn’t had new clothes since late 2006, which is a crazy long time to go without a facelift considering I used to change layouts here as frequently as my underwear. Yet nothing looks right. I did come up with something and then found a frighteningly similar layout at Perfection. That person clearly did theirs before mine so I do not call shenanigans, but ffs, that was the only layout that seemed okay! So back to the designing board I do go.
- I hate 5th November. I loathe fireworks. I say it every single year but I do HATE the fucking things. M was working so I ended up having to fulfill his promise to our son and take S to an organised fireworks display on Friday night. I spent the evening trying not to cry each time they BANGED and avoiding the sweet but decidedly odd little eight-year-old who took a distinct shine to me.
- My writing has stalled again. Am perpetually procrastinating. The way I’m going this book will only be published posthumously - and only then if someone much better than I finishes the fucking thing.
- Finally, S sat with me again and observed the Armistice Day two minute silence. I’m so proud of the boy he’s becoming.
That’ll have to do. My fingers are cramping from the hitherto lack of keyboard use and I think I’m boring myself, which means I’m definitely boring you. To close, I have to wish Val a happy pregnancy, Tanya a happy wedding and Teesee a belated happy birthday. There’s probably someone or something I’ve forgotten so if so, please congratulate/link yourself in my comments and we’ll pretend that it’s from me, mmkay?
Finally: how’s you? What you been up to?
Comments: (10)
16th September, 2008 (8:06 pm)
The Day I Won’t Ever Be a Grown-up Again (14)
That is the very last time I EVER try and be a grown-up.
I’m not bad with money. I used to be - I used to fucking shocking. But we learned the hard way, dragging our sorry asses out of debt over several years thanks to a (then) booming house market, hard work from us both and a job change for me, and I will never go back to that dark, horrible, scary place again. We still have debt but it’s less than the UK average, and we manage it well. Our credit score is impeccable. I haven’t paid credit card interest for a couple of years now (having wised up to always moving the balance when the honeymoon period expires) and at the end of each year our overall debt is always lower than the year that preceded it. It’s slow but it’s right and I know we’ll get there in the end.
But like everyone else, we’ve been having to adjust to the rising costs of, well, everything in the latter half of this year. The last couple of months have seen two trips abroad, a little one’s birthday and accompanying party which all means that we stretched ourselves a little too thin. Yes, it’s our fault because no, we didn’t have to be so extravagant for S’s birthday, and we certainly didn’t need two vacations. But up until six months ago our disposal income could’ve coped with this. Today it cannot.
To compensate, I arranged for us to extend our overdraft by an extra £250 (about $450) to tide us over. And because I’m a responsible adult and trying to decrease our debt, not increase it, I put an expiry on it to ensure that come payday, the extra debt would be gone and we’d be none the worse off for having it.
THIS IS THE STUPIDEST IDEA I HAVE EVER HAD.
As the rest of this is kinda rambling and ranty and really without purpose, I’ve put the rest under the cut. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Comments: (14)
13th September, 2008 (11:18 am)
The Day The Picture Says It All (16)
I was doing well with the whole blogging thing there, wasn’t I? Almost had a pattern down. Had a whole heap of bloggy-rich material to talk to you about, questions to ask, opinions to pose. But really, none of those things matter. Not when I look at this picture and see how close we were to losing everything.
Go on, click on it - see the bigger version. Yes, that’s my back garden. Yes, that’s my lawn waving like seaweed beneath two foot of dirty water. Yes, that’s my bin languishing on my patio. Even though you can see grass at the end of the lawn, don’t let that fool you; our lawn slopes down towards the house, and the little fence you see behind the wall - see it? our one attempt at trying to prettify our garden - is actually not that little. It’s just that the flood water makes it look little. The photo was taken by my husband as he balanced on the threshold of our back door, moments before he shut it and frantically piled towels, sheets and blankets against the bottom to keep the rising water out.
I say my husband because I wasn’t here. I’d traveled to London for a meeting and got as far as Paddington station when M called me, high-pitched and scared, to tell me what was happening. M shouldn’t even have been home but the roof collapsed at his work under the weight of a month’s worth of torrential rain hitting it in a few hours and they all got sent home. I don’t know which is worse; being a hundred and fifty miles away, as I was, lost and scared and useless, or being there and seeing it happen in real-time and still being useless. But then I couldn’t get home. Train after train was cancelled and I was just stuck, stuck in that station, stuck doing nothing - and I am SHIT at doing nothing. I’m a doer. I take action. Even when there’s no action to take that’s what I do because I don’t know how to do anything else. So I was calling my financial advisor, asking about my buildings insurance - the buildings insurance I’d let lapse in May because I’m a dumbass and only renewed SIX DAYS PREVIOUSLY - and calling M, and calling my Dad, calling anyone, anything to make myself feel useful and controlled instead of stuck and stupid and scared.
Our back fence is fucked, as is our shed. I don’t care much about the latter as it was only full of shit, but our garden furniture, purchased only last year, is also FUBARed, along with most of S’s bikes/scooters/cars that you can’t see but were behind the house and to the right of the picture. Our garage was also flooded and while a good three-quarters of that was also full of crap, the remaining quarter was important; old LPs, bags of clothes for goodwill, our lawnmower, paint, tools, etc. We have our washing machine in there, too, and while it appears to be still working, I’m told that it probably won’t be for much longer.
We escaped being flooded inside our home by an inch. It looks crazy, written like that - one, single, inconsequential inch - but that’s the honest Christ’s truth. When the fire service arrived and started pumping the fuck out of this inexplicable water, the river in our backyard was lapping the underside of our doorstep. We live in Surburbia, on a quiet, 12-house cul-de-sac that backs onto a main A road. I’m told that at the top of the road a culvert burst, sending water pouring down the road, flooding cars, sweeping stuff away, and four out of the six houses that back onto the road were flooded. We were one of two that escaped with just a fucked fence and a soggy lawnmower.
So, I had grand plans to update you on the weekend I spent with two of my best friends and their partners, getting drunk and indoctrinating them into the wondrous world of Rock Band. And the weekend I went to London with my girlfriends, against my better judgment, to watch the stage show Dirty Dancing. (Afterward I wished I’d listened to my doubts; it was appalling - like really, truly, horribly dreadful - and sat only five rows from the front, I had to duck each time Johnny “Not Remotely As Attractive As Patrick Swayze” Castle turned my way as the sight of his omnipresent but unflinching erection made me want to chunder.) I wanted to talk about how strangely depressed I get when I realise people have de-linked me (I’m 32, for fuck’s sake - does it matter? Well, no, not really, but I can’t help how I feel - WHY OH WHY, WHAT HAVE I DONE?!) and how on Thursday night we went to the O2 Arena to see soul legend Stevie Wonder in concert, and M and I managed to spend twenty-four hours with each other without wanting to purchase a gun. They were good times, ladies and gentlemen - good times. But then I look at that photo taken on September 5th and everything else seems shallow and stupid and ridiculously inane.
Comments: (16)
6th July, 2008 (12:30 pm)
The Day I Was Repeating Myself (6)
Oh the irony. The day after I write about a portable shitbox, I found myself in dire need of one.
It was my usual problem. There’s something so mind-numbingly depressing about that - not to mention boring and repetitive and totally not blogworthy. I myself am so bored about talking/thinking about it that I didn’t even blog about it the last time it happened (talk about being an ostrich - apparently, if I don’t write about it, it didn’t really happen) but the last time I was this ill was the day before Mother’s Day. I had a stitch-like pain in a non-stitch-like place for about six hours that grew worse over time, until by ten that evening I was howling in pain. It ended in my almost passing out and paramedics at my house. Awesome.
This week’s been odd; the pain’s been bad, though I’ve definitely had worse, and started Monday night, eased Tuesday, came back badly Wednesday night and then eased over Thursday. It feels as though something is building up in there, ready to go off or burst or break or something. I know that I was ill - really unwell, in a different league from my usual coughs and sniffs - because I slept the whole of Thursday, racking up over twenty hours sleep out of twenty-four. It’s as though my body decides, fuck this for a game of soldiers and passes out to recover.
It’s all settled down again now though, I’m happy to report. I took Friday off work to recuperate and we’ve had a pretty quiet weekend, apart from yesterday where we ventured out to take S to see the Incredible Hulk (meh - unimpressed). We did a little shopping - where I spent far too much on a GORGEOUS Radley workbag, which I’ve been lusting after for some time - and then spent the evening tucked up in front of the TV. S spent the entire day pacing the house and waiting for the season finale of Dr. Who (also meh), mooching about in his new all-time-bestest costume - a shiny gold dalek. Seriously. It’s the cutest goddamn thing I have ever seen. To prove it, I will add a photo post as soon as I clear my memory card.
Today is a quiet one. I’ve been working on my GG client list (slippage - argh - needed to get back on track) and then this afternoon S and I are going to do a little baking - chocolate chip muffins, me thinks, and a scrummy Apple and Blackberry crumble. The weather’s cold, dark and wet and if that doesn’t call for a little comfort food, I don’t know what does.
To close, my BFF 4EVA gave birth to her second child yesterday, a gorgeous, gorgeous little girl. I’m wracked with jealousy and not insubstantial pain - I would love another child if my insides weren’t twisted and black and broken - but do you know what she and her husband have done? They’ve named her after me! WTF?! Am so, so, so touched!
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