Better than a kick in the knickers with a winklepicker

Vi-Vi seems to be over whatever was ailing her! She was drinking more and more juice throughout the afternoon, then had a proper tea and enjoyed a cup of milk at storytime. A weight off my mind, although I still really want to avoid the same thing happening on our Wales trip.

Thanks to all of you who posted Cheering Youtube Clips. I shall respond with the song I've been singing every time I've seen articles about Barbie turning 50 today.



I remember this video from when I was a kid, BTW. The 'does anybody know where the toilets are' bit cracked me and my little sister up, because we didn't usually hear people talking about going to the toilet on the telly, least of all in the middle of a song.

1 - Today has been a good day for presents! I received a very late birthday card and pressie (The Orphanage, which I've wanted to see but we didn't get from Bafta) from my friends Kev & Leah, which was a nice surprise. Also, thanks to my mysterious benefactor I have been able to watch the first two episodes of Lost. ( spoilerish thoughts )

2 - My daughter can now say 'cucumber', 'pitta bread' and, of all the lengthy words to learn, 'gazebo'. She also enjoys repeatedly reminding me that aeroplanes are fast.

3 - Today is DaddyDeath Anniversary mark five, as my mother decided to remind me with an early morning text. Doing my usual trick of keeping too busy to dwell on it.

4 - I still have a cold and a vague, lingering headache. Boo.

So Vi-Vi didn't fall out again, but rather nervously slept squidged up at the wall side of her bed instead. She's still a little anxious about the prospect of sleeping in it, and had a cry when it was nap time today, but she didn't get out and is now fast asleep. She's not in the best of moods today anyway, since she has a streaming cold.

We ordered a bed rail for her to minimise night time tumbles and have realised that we won't need to buy a single duvet since we still have ours from our student days, back when we perfected the art of fitting two slightly overweight adults comfortably into a bed approximately three inches wide, and hiding one of said adults (albeit shoddily) from the cleaner who came in at about half seven every Wednesday. But that's another story. Anyhoo, once we've given my lighter duvet a good wash, we'll be attempting a move away from the sleeping bags. We gave her a pillow for this nap since she likes snuggling into ours whenever she gets into our bed, and she seems to have appreciated it, so that'll stay now, too.

Those of you who are friends with me on Faceachebook might already be aware of my ongoing struggle recently to find maternity wear suitable for my cousin's wedding in March. My main problem with this was that, if pretty much all the major Maternity wear retailers in the country are to be believed, pregnant women only ever want to wear black, charcoal grey, navy blue or a hideous paisley tent. The only dashes of colour I could find were in tops that were far too casual. Absolutely every formal top or dress I saw would have made me look like an obese waitress or a whale at a funeral. However, I eventually found this, which is still mostly grey but is at least a little bit pretty and weddingy. Also bought a pair of smart black trousers, which are never not useful. Wearing them now, and they are without a doubt the comfiest trews I have ever worn. That's one of the few benefits of pregnancy, along with being able to pretend that your Toast Belly is all part of your Bump - the clothes are just. So. Monstrously. Comfortable. Seriously, next time you're in a shop that does maternity clothes, just try some of the trousers on. They're brill.

Yesterday was a very, very Thursdayish sort of a Thursday. Allow me to share my pain with you in list format:

1, Began the day imitating a mid-90s pop song by being rudely awakened by the dustmen, at about 7am. There should really be a law against noisily collecting rubbish before the hours of daylight.

2, Awoke with a vague, annoying headache that stayed with me all day.

3, Remained exhausted all day, for no real reason.

4, Got a phone call at 5.30 (when hubs is usually home) saying he was caught in traffic and would probably be another 45 minutes.

5, 45 minutes later, at 6.15, hubs was very much not home.

6, Was starting to worry by quarter to 7. When hubs finally got in at ten to, I was utterly knackered and randomly furious without actually having anything to vent it on.

7, attempted to make cakes for the party tomorrow once Vi had gone to bed. My hand mixer decided to break half way through doing the cake mix. Planned on buying a new mixer today and doing the icing tonight but hubs declared the mixer fixed, so I attempted the icing. Mixer gave up after approximately half a second of mixing, but since I already had all the ingredients in the bowl I had to carry on. Ended up making the icing by hand - a lot of stirring. The icing may be slightly lumpy tomorrow :(

8, That done, Hubs and I spent 5 minutes turning over the living room to find the TV remote only to find it in the place it always was, only covered with a book. Perfect.

Today is being much more Fridayish, however. Violet has come out with several new sayings today ('Hello', as well as 'very very hot' and 'very very cold') and my Ma and Sis are down tonight.

Plus - don't faint - I've been working on Zombie Dad and it's very nearly finished!

Oh, plus a big weight has been lifted from all of our minds yesterday. I haven't felt comfortable blogging about it (and still don't) since it involved legal shenanigans, but one of my extended family has been going through a really horrible time of it recently but yesterday found out that (legally, it least) it wasn't going any further. I had been very worried about her, and she'd obviously been finding it very upsetting. But it's done with now.

You know how I said I wasn't looking forward to when all the LJ Comments from the last few days turn up in one big lump...? Guess what have been flooding my inbox all day so far... *sigh*

Vi has taken over the past few days to grabbing a piece of clothing out of her dressing table, sticking it on her head and declaring it to be a hat. The other night it was her swimming costume, pulled down over her head so that her face sticks out of one of the arm holes like it's a balaklava. This morning it was a pair of tights, with the top rammed on her head and the legs dangling down like floppy bunny ears. She had fun running around the first floor of the house shouting 'Hat! Hat!' while I was reduced to a giggling wreck.
( BSG S4 vaguely spoilerish reaction of pity )

Gah! Well, it may be a good thing that we didn't attempt to go to Norfolk or to the Bonfire this weekend, because when Hubs tried to go and check the tyre pressure on the car it wouldn't start. The battery had magically flattened itself. The RAC man's been round and seems to have fixed it but late this afternoon was a little bit stressy. We ran out of time to do the hoovering. Madness!

Bought teeny-tiny little hairbands today and attempted to put Vi's hair in bunches - it didn't really work, there's still not enough of it. But it did look mightily cute for the three seconds they stayed in. She's been channelling her Inner Spike Thomson today and wearing her sunglasses indoors, in the dark. Plus she did a proper jigsaw all by herself today. And she can sort-of say her name. It sounds more like jho-jhot at the moment though - she still can't say V or L properly. She prefers to refer to herself as 'Baby Girl' at the moment anyway, which is adorable.

Haven't had any complaints from the Mail yet. The Queen Mum's ghost rides a pig through Uxminster every night, drinking Sunny Delight from a novice nun's cleavage and singing 'Cockles & Mussels' in the style of Sid Vicious.

We have had a lovely day in Hastings today, and Violet wasn't carsick once! Woo! (Admittedly, she napped most of the way there and back).

We went to a Brewer's Fayre pub for lunch - one of those big Family pub grub places - I'm still at a stage of motherhood where I get ridiculously excited at the concept of ordering a restaurant meal for my daughter, and was very pleased that this pub had a special under-5's menu with plenty of options other than chips (which she doesn't like). Ordered her some pasta with tomato sauce and cheese which she seemed to enjoy, along with some of her Nana's popadom and donated mushrooms and sausage from Mummy and Daddy respectively. It was just really lovely to be able to sit at a restaurant with her and for us all to be able to eat our dinners. She was impeccably behaved throughout, and there was a little soft-play bit that she could scamper in while we were waiting for dinner.

We went to see the F-i-L and, because it was a beautiful day, sat out in the garden for a while as Vi-Vi scampered about, and then went to Alexandra Park for icecreams and drinks. Vi drank apple juice from a carton with a straw for the first time and chased the bigger kids' footballs around.

So nice to be able to do a bunch of actually quite involved things pretty far from home and for it not to be stressy for a change :)

So she slept reasonably well last night - woke up just before midnight with a dirty nappy and was able to keep down a few sips of water then, although it took her a while to nod off again.

Is now managing to keep down water and juice, and has managed a small amount of toast and dry Cheerios. She is keeping a stiff upper lip in a terribly British fashion - I'm always ever so proud of how well behaved she is when she's poorly and miserable. Certainly doesn't take after her moany mum in that respect!

God, I love this time of year. Those of you who've been on my F-List for a while will know that I start waxing lyrical around mid September about the smell of the drying leaves and the crispness of the air and the general sense of renewal I always feel with it - a hangover from academia. It's not just that though, not just the memories of the excitement of my friends coming back for Uni (by the first summer break the combined factors of parents splitting, having to pay rent on the student house for the whole year anyway, my boyfriend still living here and it being easier to get a summer job in a busy, touristy city than in Bloody Ilkeston - plus the fact that Canterbury's about a million times nicer than Ilkeston - meant I no longer went home for more than a couple of days at a time). I just love Autumn, especially early Autumn, and especially especially sunny September Sundays like today. There's still a hint of Summer, but the overbearing heat of July and August are gone. The air smells simply beautiful. Everything's just really relaxed. We took Vi out to the park this afternoon, where there were whole families larking about, Dads having a kickabout with their kids and whatnot. The sun was bright and low, everything was bathed in yellow, and when we got back, Violet's hair smelled of grass and leaves.

It is Spider Season, however, but I don't mind that too much, as long as they stay out of the house. We've got a real monster who's spun the biggest web I've ever seen at the back of the house... basically between our kitchen and next door's, spanning both floors of the house. Massive. He's caught some big bastard bluebottles in it, though, so he's very welcome to stay awhile. I don't actually mind garden spiders that much - the ones with the really fat bums - it's the brown house spiders I can't abide. Vi loves them. She can say 'Spider', and gets very excited when she sees one.

She's better today, BTW - still has a streaming nose, but slept normally today and has been very cheerful, if you discount her trying to escape out of her buggy in Sainsbury's.

Had a funny TNG dream this morning that could have served as a Plot Bunny had my subconcious not decided to go down such a silly route with it - Data and Picard had had their bodies swapped by some handy plot device or other (transporter malfunction...? Q...? My dream decided to let me guess how it had happened.) Now - that has the potential to be quite cool, right? Their entire personalities were now lodged in entirely the wrong bodies, with very little idea as to how to even so much as maintain their new forms - doubtful Picard would know how to run a self-diagnostic, and I can imagine Data regularly forgetting to sleep, eat, wash and so on. Not even that, but the amount of information in Data's mind might well overload a human brain, ditto a human personality with complex emotions and so on overwhelming an android brain. You've got Drama there. What did my dream do with this scenario...? Android Picard just being delighted to have hair again. That was it. He kept brushing it. Stupid dream.

Today is my & hubs' anniversary - 4 whole years!

Violet has decided to celebrate this by being an absolute nightmare to put down for her nap - two attempts so far have ended with her screaming herself into such a tizzy that it's taken ages to calm her down. God knows what's up with her. Attempt number three right now after sitting with her til she was practically asleep seems to have worked, but that was a *war*. Took nearly an hour. Cup of tea in a sec - I think I deserved it!

Thank you for my review, Fay! Funnily enough, that's the second old short fic that I'd almost forgotten about to get a review from out of the blue in a week. I like it when that happens :)

Oh, and I'm writing a Dixon Hill adventure into Rollercoaster at the moment, due to take place mid Season 4... it is so much fun. I'm deliberately trying to make the narrative voice as Pulpy as possible. I've already used the word 'Frisco' and the sentence 'the blonde’s coquettishly crossed legs just went on and on until Doomsday'. Add to that the ubiquitous Holodeck Malfunction, a three-way Detective Crossover and characters regularly breaking the Dixon Hill-verse 4th Wall and you've got yourself a very silly Scribbles. The title is going to be '"Merde", He Wrote'. Joy! I might even throw in Luxemburg's Finest Crimefighting Duo Jean D'Arme and Jacques Ouze (most likely played by O'Brien and Barclay) for shits and giggles.

Right.

Tea for me.