Wednesday 28 November 2007

Dizzy and happy

Dizzy because I haven't slept much. Nothing new there.

Happy because I PASSED MY DRIVING TEST THIS MORNING! With flying colours and hearty congratulations from the tester.

So I'm feeling bloody good about myself for a change.

Will they fire me if I fall asleep behind the desk?

Tuesday 27 November 2007

There goes the diet

So I was talking to my mother.
On the phone, naturally, her being On Home Ground.

"Do you have anything specific you want for Christmas? I'm putting the parcel together here," she says.

"Nah, I'm fine, don't need anything. Don't go overboard now, it's expensive to send packages!"

Annoyed silence.

"Well, I'm gonna at least send you some Estonian chocolate! I know you love it!" she declares with victorious air.

"Mom, I told you I'm on diet. DON'T send me chocolates! I have a will power of a tatty dish rag, you know that as well!"

"Nonsense! A bit of chocolate won't do you any harm. Gotta treat yourself once in a while, otherwise you'll go nuts." Thoughtful pause. "Well, even more nuts."

"Thank you!!! Well, at least keep it sensible. Just a little of chocolate AND DON'T GET THE BOX TOO HEAVY! You'll be paying for the postage through your nose!"

"Yeah-yeah ...we'll see."

That was the end of it until The Ultimate Other Half went home at lunch time yesterday and found a notification of the package in the post box.

He drove unsuspectingly to the post office only to be presented with a HUGE wooden box (made lovingly by my father) weighing 20 kg (44 pounds) and secured with around 500 screws.

I still don't know how he managed to lug it to the car. Trip back home involved open bonnet and anticipation of getting the box from the car into the house.

In the evening my long-suffering husband combined watching The Panel and Podge & Rodge with laboriously unscrewing 250 of 500 screws. To get the box open, like.

The contents included:

  • 1 solid wood rocking sheep covered with natural lambswool (For Sir Sprout, I presume)
  • pile of Christmas-related soft toys/decorations
  • 2 sets of cookie cutters
  • 8 boxes of liquor-filled chocolates (125 g each)
  • 2 boxes of nut-coated chocolates (200 g each)
  • 6 tablets of nutty chocolate (100 g each)
  • 6 maxi tablets of premium chocolate (300 g each)
That would be 3.8 kg of chocolate (8.4 pounds). Which in my mothers books obviously qualifies as "a little".

I was drooling sadly as I locked the whole pile of it into the room where furniture goes to die. A lot of our friends will receive a presents of Estonian chocolates this year.

We are considering painting the box and declaring it a two-seater bench.

But I love the rocking sheep!

Wednesday 21 November 2007

Sleep issues or actually lack of sleep issues

OK, here I am again, sitting at my desk.

Yawn.

I distinctly remember most of the baby-related books I read (and oh did I go through plenty) stated that little humans usually start sleeping through the night at the age of 6 months. Well, maybe 9 months if you happen to have a particularly uncooperative baby.

I trust books. Wisdom of the mankind is bound into books. They're solid and smell nice and make me purr much louder than finding David Beckham stark naked in my kitchen ever would.

(Actually, bad parallel, finding Becks in my kitchen (naked or not) would just plain freak me out. But I WOULD jump him alrite - to bloody gag him. Just a thought of that whingy voice of his makes me shudder.)

Anyway, who cares who's wandering around naked in my kitchen!

The point is I have come to a shocking discovery that BOOKS CAN LIE.

And I think it's a conniving plot to lull couples into false sense of security.

You know - ah sure let's not throw him out of the window yet, he'll get better in some months.

And then couple of months pass, you refer back to the book and sure it did mention that it CAN happen a bit later as well so you cross your teeth and suffer on.

By the time you have lost all hope to ever get sleep again it's too late. You've bonded with the little divil. He/she can do nothing wrong and is Generally One Of The Prettiest Children Alive.
Presenting The Most Smashingly Gorgeous Demon Alive Complete With Huge Zit, Manky Face And No Pants

There's nothing to be done now. He can stay up all night screaming for I-don't-know-what-I-want-but-you-better-get-it-for-me-now.
He can keep hiding The Ultimate Other Half's watch, my shoes, his socks, my phone.
He can nick Mutt The Mad's food and keep lovingly smacking our faces (a new charming trait and it flippin hurts, especially if he has a wooden block if his hand).
He can raise a hell every evening when we all get home cause WHY ISN'T DINNER ON THE TABLE YET, I WANT IT NOW, WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU HAVE TO COOK IT FIRST.

We still adore him immensely and could not imagine a life without him and will get through another no-sleep period as well.

After all that's what God created Dozol, Bonjela and Nurofen for.

Tuesday 13 November 2007

How to drive your husband nuts Vol 1

I think I have a lot to contribute to the subject. You could almost say I'm an expert.

And unlike some I am always happy to share my knowledge with the world. So the world could benefit, like.

Lets start with Little Things. They have proved to be extremely efficient.

Thing no 1
KEYS
Frustrated Foreigner after 10-minute search: Have you seen my my keys?
The Ultimate Other Half: I put them into key cabinet.
Foreigner: WHY the hell would you put them into key cabinet??? I NEVER put them there!!! FFS!!! (storms out huffing and puffing)

Thing no 2
CURTAINS
Grumpy Foreigner: Why do you bloody keep opening the curtains?!
Baffled Husband: To let light in, of course.
Foreigner: Well STOP doing it! We'll only need to close them again in the evening and it annoys me!

Thing no 3
OLD T-SHIRTS
Throw them away. Ignore his pleas.

Thing no 4
TOASTED SANDWICH MAKER
The Ultimate Other Half: Where's the toasted sandwich maker?
Foreigner: Dunno. Why do you want it?
Other Half (with poisonous stare): I want to make toasted sandwiches! Why did you move it?
Foreigner: Needed more space in the corner cupboard.
Other Half: The corner cupboard is almost EMPTY!
Foreigner: Well, it was IN MY WAY and annoyed me!
Other Half: So where did you put it?
Foreigner: Told you - I DON'T KNOW!

Oh yeah, don't mention it. I know I'm good!

I might move on to Big Things some time in the future since those inconsiderate people here in the office keep whinging that I should get some work done.

Or maybe I'll just retire and devote myself to blogging, Sprout-rearing and Husband-annoying. Oh what a life would it be!

Monday 12 November 2007

Picking up the slack - The Pharyngula Mutating Genre

Here I am, trying to get my act together.

It appears that long long time ago in county far far away the incredible K8 had tagged me with a meme.

Now first thing I had to do was to find out what the heck is a meme. It wasn't easy. I packed my bags, kissed my family goodbye and took off for the wild planes of Wikipedia.

Thats what I found:
" A meme (pronounced [miːm] in IPA), as defined within memetic theory, comprises a theoretical unit of cultural information, the building block of cultural evolution or diffusion that propagates from one mind to another analogously to the way in which a gene propagates from one organism to another as a unit of genetic information and of biological evolution.[1] Multiple memes may propagate as cooperative groups called memeplexes (meme complexes)."

Wha'?????

I read it five bleedin' times. Still the same outcome.

Wha'???

After a brief moment of despair I tried a different approach and made a quick search in Google. All became clear then:
"A meme is an idea that is shared and passed from blog to blog, like a question posted in one blog and answered in many other blogs."

OK, I guess I could manage that. Hopefully.

Now to the task itself.

There are a set of statements below that are all of the form:”The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. Copy the statements, you may modify them in a limited way, carrying out no more than two of these operations:

You can leave them exactly as is.
You can delete any one
You can mutate either the genre, medium, or subgenre of any one question.

For instance, you could change “The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is…” to “The best time travel novel in Westerns is…”, or “The best time travel movie in SF/Fantasy is…”, or “The best romance novel in SF/Fantasy is…”.

You can add a completely new question of your choice to the end of the list, as long as it is still in the form “The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is…”. You must have at least one question in your set, or you’ve gone extinct, and you must be able to answer it yourself, or you’re not viable.Then answer your possibly mutant set of questions. Please do include a link back to the blog you got them from, to simplify tracing the ancestry, and include these instructions.

Finally, pass it along to any number of your fellow bloggers.

(And yes, I had to read that three times as well. It's not easy being intellectually challenged. I do my best to cope.)

Here comes the business:


My Ancestry:

My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Pharyngula.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Metamagician and the Hellfire Club.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Flying Trilobite.
My great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is A Blog Around the Clock.
My great-great-great-great-great-great grandparent is archy.
My great-great-great-great-great grandparent is Why Now?
My great-great-great-great grandparent is Hipparchia.
My great-great-great grandfathers are Archaeopteryx and Kiefus.
My great-great grandfather is Catnapping.
My great grandmother is BirdAnonymous
My grandmother is Baino.

My mummy is K8.

My statements:

• The best “bad” movie in comedy is: Starship Troopers (I can't take it seriously as SciFi so it qualifies as a comedy and bad one at that)
• The best lifty-uppy in pop music is: "Shine" by Take That (me likes HONEST kitch!)
• The best angst-inducing short story in modern classic literature is: “The Eyes of a Blue Dog” by Gabriel Garcia Marquez


Since I am not a bad person deep inside I will only pass it to two people:

Firstly XBox4NappyRash as a little MindFuck would certainly be a welcome change to, well, other kinds of fuck. (I will NOT blush hereby. NOOOOOO!)

And of course to gorgeous Hails cause she's always looking for blogging challenges and I am in awfully obliging mood this morning.

Good luck! I'm off to wash my hands now.

Friday 9 November 2007

First and consequent steps

I don't have a baby any more.

Before you offer me your condolences let me assure you that Sir Sprout is going as strong as ever. It's just that he has morphed into a toddler.

Wait, maybe you SHOULD offer the condolences after all.

It all happened in a sneaky and gradual way. First he started to stand up on his own expecting a round of applauds every time he managed not to tumble over within first second. We provided the due ovations without fail although it did get a bit tiring to break into mad cheers at least 10 times in every hour.

So, after couple of weeks or so the standing up trick got a bit old and didn't provoke enough admiration. Sir Sprout decided to take things onto a new level and started taking steps. And then falling onto his face.

Which he didn't mind too much as long as he got his attention boost in a form of boisterous applauds and praises.

We were sitting around with adoring grandparents and counting the steps.

One, two, three...oops, just missed the coffee table!
That was SIX steps, wow!
...four, five...eeewww, that must have hurt!
...three, four, five - DON'T lunge for a dog like that!

Then we stopped counting. Just told him to get up and get on with it.

And he did.

Yesterday morning I was looking at my boy as he was waddling from bathroom to our bedroom sporting only his nappy pants. He was happily clutching a My First Animals book, gave Mutt The Mad a loving kiss and hug while passing and stopped to try and stick his fingers into electrical socket.

Yes, definitely a toddler.

The fun has begun.

 
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