My husband and I are considering (trans: I've decided, he's panicking about how to pay for it) setting up a home office log cabin job in the back garden. It's only wee - about 2.5m by 3m - but it will have electricity and warmth and carpet and such.
But most importantly it will not have a fridge.
The fridge is the bain of my existence when I'm working from home. That and the crisp drawer. Today alone I've had a cheese and ham toastie, an instant noodle bowl, two packs of crisps, hUUUGe bowl of crunchy nut, chocolate mousse, two lollies... ugh!
This will all end when I am down the bottom of the garden. I will allow only a smattering of fresh fruit in a bowl and some diet coke to cross the threshold.
(though I may invite a small sweetie stash into the filing cabinet!)
There are a few review copies floating around out there before the 'proper' publication date a week tomorrow and here is a comment on netmums from one enthusiastic poster! It's a bit fuzzy so clicky linky thing here to read without your eyes watering
You have no idea how close this is to the truth round here right now!
Never underestimate the power of the local press. For a start the local rag did a wee piece about me and the book here, and included a beaut picture of the boys. (I look like crap but no-one's going to get beyond Tom and Josh looking stunorific).
But then it was picked up by bloggers and fellow mumpreneurs here so I'm feeling quite pleased. And Wokingham Times, your reach is further than you know!
I just got a sexy new phone and I'm all of a twitter... and a facebook and an alphamummy and a Yahoo! It has unlimited interwebulator access so I can work on the move finally. Of course, I could do it before but it meant tracking down WiFi or forgoing a gym session to use the pooters in the cafe. Which was no great hardship but there you go.
Now my sexy new Nokia 5800 has a touch screen, handwriting recognition, QWERTY keyboard (I seriously need more sleep, I had to think about how to spell that - dur!) and millions of space for music and photos and suchlike.
It was brought home how much I really do need it when I managed to figure out how to divert the home phone to the old mobile and was promptly asked by a client to email them something. Which I couldn't do. Now it doesn't matter that I'm stuck in playbarn hell, I can still pretend to be slaving over a hot desktop and no-one knows the difference. I'll admit that I also have tech envy for all those people who tweet and fbk with little messages that say 'Sent from Blackberry'. In fact I was initially going to get one of those until I discovered that they were a) expensive and b) a bit crap. Seems the new Blackberry Storm is not going down a.. Storm with users. So hooray for my new phone. Here ends my craven plea for free Nokia goodies (some speakers would be good chaps if you're feeling generous!)
...of a sort. Did you see that a bishop was arrested - and allegedly roughed up - by police for sending his son up a chimney. This was no Dickensian throwback however. He put his son on his house's chimney (attached to a harness) to take part in a 'most unusual place to read a book' competition. I WANT HIM TO BE MY DAD!
He sounds GREAT! I can understand a passer-by being a bit concerned but come on, in this day and age of seriously lazy parenting and even lazier forms of abuse (eat what you like, play what you like, I'll do to you what I like...) what serious abuser is going to go to the effort of taking a kid and sticking them on a chimney stack!? Common sense, people!
From this moment on I want to see more kids up a ladder and crawling all over the eaves. I want to see 'em up telegraph poles, in trees (taller the better). Now, what did I do with that ladder...
Heads up from The Times Alphamummy blog. It's a You Tube video of the actress Salma Hayek breastfeeding a baby whose mother fears she can no longer produce enough milk. Brings up the whole question of wetnurses. Now, my concierge service, rentamummy.com, provides many things, but wetnursing isn't one of them.
I don't have an ick factor about this. Going to someone's coffee morning where they pick up my son and stuff a boob in his mouth - that's icky. But here the child was obviously hungry and Ms Hayek could provide something far better and safer than anything that might have come out of a bottle (btw, I'm not anti-formula either, I just question the safety of the water and sterilising equipment used to prepare it here). BUT... but something does make me uneasy. What does this woman do when SH has had her photo opp (though I do think she did it with the best of motives)? And how does she feel? I know as a mum that anything I fail to do for my kids, however small, makes me feel shit and inadequate. How does this woman feel having her baby swept away and fed in a way that she simply cannot manage? There are a million questions here, and none of them are as You Tube seems to show, "WHOOO Salma got her titties out!!"
Honestly, boys...
The smalls are obsessed with balloons. Bending them, popping them, blowing them up (actually, just filling them with lots of spit before passing them across to me) and kicking them about. I'm hiding the news of this one from them. It's been hurtling round the world in space for the last 42 days, is called the 'pumpkin' and NASA sent it into space for a cool $1m. Crikey, can you imagine NASA's birthday party budget:
"No Mr Astronaut, you can't have more than 10 scientists at your birthday party. Putting a balloon in everyone's party bag is crippling me!"
Kind Mr Fry over on Twitter has pointed me in the direction of this http://www.badscience.net/2009/02/legal-chill-from-lbc-973-over-jeni-barnetts-mmr-scaremongering/. When you read it you have to highlight the text as it has legal issues.
The general jist is that Jeni Barnett on LBC has been pontificating about the MMR vaccine and its risks. This whole story, started by Andrew Wakefield over 10 years ago, has been widely discredited and yet she picks up the baton and scares another generation of parents. The upshot of the original misinformation was that vaccine take up dropped to 75% and is threatening 'herd immunity' - that is, even if you've had the vaccine, if less than 80% of the population is immunised at any given time, the strain of the disease can proliferate and you can become infected. And measles isn't a case of two days in bed and itchy spots. It can kill.
And silly women who promote stupid urban myths are just silly. Supposed journalists ought to know better.
Edit: Hooray! Someone has YouTubed so you can follow the above with the below!
The BBC has a film sent in by a viewer which I wish with all my heart was on Uchoobe so I could post it but instead is on their website here. It's a stoat going completely postal in the snow. Now, the Beeb points out that the video has no sound. So watch it and say the following out loud:
Are you kids ready?! Are you READYYYYYYY?
WHY not? Look, that's not how you put your socks on. Now, where are my keys. Where are they? WHERE ARE MY BLOODY KEYS?!
WHEREAREMYBLOODYKEYSWE'RELATEANDICAN'TFINDMYKEYSANDWE'LL
MISSSHOWANDTELLANDPUTTHATRUDDYSPACESHIPDOWNOHITISFORSHOW
ANDTELLOKTHAT'SALRIGHTTHENOHWHERETHEHELLARETHEKEYSOHFORF***'S
SAKEGETAMOVEONCAN'TYOUSEEI'MLOOKINGFORSOMETING...
what do you mean, the school's closed?
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
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