Poor me

Sick with sinusitis and probable bladder infection. This low immune system pregnancy thing is starting to seriously suck.

Back with you in a couple of days. Unless I come down with typhoid. Or the plague.

Moan much? Yeah, I know.

The secret teenager within

Did Dinosaur art part 2 today. I still don't like dinosaurs but I do like teaching 7-year-olds. They're just so appreciative. I was treated with an embarrassing reverence all because my drawing skills don't totally suck (but let me get this straight, I'm no Picasso). I tell you, it's almost enough to go to a girl's head; if I was a teeny bit more insecure I'd be enrolling myself into teacher training college double quick.

Apart from acting as an unpaid art slave at school I've been sleeping (the dreaded pregnancy narcolepsy strikes again) and working my way through the Twilight series for the second time. I love it even more on second reading, which is why you've barely heard from me in the past week - I've had my head buried in VampireLoveLand.

Now, it has crossed my mind that I shouldn't really be reading books about vampires. After all, the Twilight series is kind of meant for teenagers (or at least, I assume this to be the case since most bookstores are stocking them in the Teenage section) and there isn't even any sh*gging until Breaking Dawn (even then it's not exactly detailed, going direct from frenzied snogging to the aftermath). Plus, I'm a 30-something matron who nobody ever mistakenly calls 'miss' anymore, mother to two girls and a fetus, married for more years than Alpha and I care to remember (only joking sweetie, kiss kiss!) and am supposedly sensible, mature and responsible.

Thus, or so the logic goes, I should not be spending most of my waking hours immersed in a love story about an awkward teenager and a vampire, should I? It's not the most plausible plot line after all. I mean, vampires? Come on!

But, you see, in my secret heart of hearts I am still a teenager. Despite the irrefutable evidence every time I look in the mirror and witness the cruel ravages of time, I still secretly believe myself to be a dewy-skinned, pure-hearted, 17-year-old innocent- basically, the Me I once was before being pulverised by repeated exposure to the bitter disappointments meted out by Life and too many Marlboro Lights.

It also doesn't help that I, just like Bella Swan, can barely walk five yards without tripping over my own feet and have never managed a gymnastic maneuver in my life. I was always the last one to be picked in gym at school. Plus there's the awkward thing, the feeling slightly out of step with 99% of everyone else in the world, the almost permanent undercurrent of angst and uncertainty, the nagging thought that I'm about to do something utterly klutzy at any given moment, and the sheer embarrassment of having arms and legs that don't always want to do my bidding (and I'm not just talking about when I've had one too many strawberry daquiris).

You see, I'm overidentifying. Totally, utterly, insanely overidentifying with a fictitious character who is decades younger than me, a thousand times more hot and a million times more unlikely. 

Oh well. I'll snap out of it at some point. In the meantime, any other Twilight fans out there can join me in reading Midnight Sun, which is Twilight re-written from Edward Cullen's point of view. Enjoy... sigh.

I don't like dinosaurs

I'm teaching a rabble of 7 year olds how to draw dinosaurs tomorrow.

What am I letting myself in for? Am I truly insane? I mean, I don't even like dinosaurs.

... Am I turning into an Alpha Mum? Oh sh*t.

Reprieve for ONE Frenchie

OK, I take it back about hating ALL Frenchies everywhere. I have met a nice Frenchie at school who appears to be a normal human being.

I know, I know. It's a shocker! I can hear your gasps of surprise. How can this be? you exclaim. This is outside of the natural order of things! If you were French you would say Boof and do that funny pursed lip thing as if you've just been sucking lemons. But thankfully you are (probably) not French so we can all get on with registering normal expressions of shock and saying rude Anglo-Saxon swear words in order to properly express our bewilderment.

Anyway, as usual I digress. So I met a brilliantly weird Frenchie who does the following non-Frenchie things:

• She looks like a human being - in other words is of normal weight with boobs and other female attributes - rather than having the sort of physique more suited to that of a young boy
• Following on from the above, she EATS! This very morning I saw her drinking a full-fat latte while nibbling on a muffin. I nearly dropped my croissant in surprise.
• She converses with English people. Not just rich and famous ones but ALL English people. She even smiles at us. And makes non-French style jokes. And I don't think she hangs out with the school Frenchie gang. I haven't heard her curse yet though.
• She doesn't push and jab at people with her elbows. But then again I haven't accompanied her to a sample sale selling the sort of things ze Frenchies like. It could be that she reverts when faced with such a situation.
• She doesn't seem to wear fancy linen clothes with little bows and witty touches from The Secret French Boutique. She wears normal mum stuff from normal chain stores, like the rest of us. This morning she was wearing trackie bottoms and she wasn't on her way to the gym or to do anything exercise related (how do I know this? Because I asked her of course).

Mon dieu! C'est formidable! I am going to celebrate this beacon of hope for Frenchie-kind with a nice medicinal (small) glass of Beaujolais. Chin chin, y'all!

Letter from the Small(er) One

The Small(er) One is revelling in her newfound ability to write. When she's taking a break from writing Alpha and I little notes to tell us that she'll be moving house as fast as she can pack her bags, mainly due to the fact that we don't give her enough chocolate, she's writing love notes. Here's one we received yesterday:

To Mum and Dad,
I reele reele love you.
I wul mis you wen you dye beecus I love you.
I love you. xxx

Pet Peeve # 2034

People who use the last of the milk then put the empty carton back in the fridge. Like I won't notice. Dur.

A rant about melting cookers, empty promises and inept repairmen

Am currently embroiled in a Herculean attempt to have my cooker repaired. So far it has taken nigh on three weeks and two different sets of 'technicians' - possibly misnamed as so far they have failed to display much in the way of any kind of technique (except for champion level ar*e and head scratching, and a dose of dumb insolence) - and my oven is still refusing to cook anything properly. Plus the knobs are in the early stages of melting due to the seal having broken (the one thing they have so far managed to repair, whoopee) and the timer doesn't work.

One technician announced that he couldn't fix the problem as he wasn't an oven specialist (then what are you doing in my house under the pretence that you are here to fix that particular appliance, eh? Explain me that, sunny Jim!)

Another one, a self-professed 'oven expert', insisted that there is nothing wrong with my cr*ppy oven despite the fact that the gas flame stays the same whatever the temperature on the dial indicates. I may not be an 'oven expert' but I do possess half a brain and a highly developed ability to spot bullsh*t in all its guises (didn't work in PR for all those years for nothing, y'know).

Numerous Sharaf customer service grunts have apologised profusely, assuring me in honeyed tones that the problem will be fixed very quickly and brilliantly by their fabulous technical task force super-team - no doubt reading verbatim from their 'How To Get Rid Of Annoying Customers Double Quick' handbook before putting the phone down and laughing uproarously at the idiotic utterances of yet another angry fool with an impotent axe to grind. Well, despite the assurances of these silver tongued charmers I am still the disgruntled owner of an oven that doesn't work properly. The Dali-esque knobs and the silent timer are merely the final insult.

Sharaf, Sharaf, Sharaf... come and fix my oven. Pretty please?

Bah.