1. What are your current obsessions?
My shed office and getting more shelves in a limited space than was ever thought possible
Supernatural - having missed most of it til now I'm enjoying my 60 episode marathon. And the Padalackles twins are just too CUTE for someone my age to fancy in all seriousness
2. Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?
Mummy jeans with several unidentifiable and possibly unhygienic stains on them that Vanish is powerless to erase
3. What was your favourite childhood meal?
"Full beans, half cheese" as served up by our school dinner ladies, searing hot and in a polystyrene cup. 50p a pop.
4. Last thing you bought?
Two enormous recycling tubs from Costco. Am absurdly happy that the local council has decided upon mixed recycling kerb collections. Am sad.
5. What are you listening to?
Captain Mack - the poor mother's Lazytown (but slightly less sanctimonious)
6. was the question I got rid of... check out Alphamummy's response instead...
7. Favourite holiday spots?
North Wales for proximity of child-caring grandparents, Sri Lanka for Bounty (chocolate, not kitchen roll) ad beaches and curry for breakfast, France for ability to communicate with natives and plonk. Gallons of plonk.
8. Reading right now?
My own website for spelling errors, spoilers for the next Supernatural episode, Ben Goldacre's really good column about the swine flu hysteria epidemic here
9. Four words to describe yourself.
Easily distracted...
10. Guilty pleasure?
Prosecco in the first half hour of This Morning (hey, my day starts at 5am and ends at 9pm... that's a post lunch drinkie!) Once in a blue moon you understand.
11. Who or what makes you laugh until you’re weak?
Billy Connolly, Eddie Izzard and, oddly, my personal trainer Dave.
12. Favourite spring thing to do?
Smell blossom - only flower that doesn't give me raging hay fever which is due in 5...4...3...2...
13. Planning to travel to next?
Barcelona with my husband for our first child free holiday lasting longer than one night. And my third night away from the kids since both of them were born.
14. Best thing you ate or drank lately?
A McDonald's quarter pounder with cheese (it's all sun-dried tomatoes and rocket round out way. Blee)
15. When did you last get tipsy?
Last night.
16. Favourite ever film?
Highlander
17. Care to share some wisdom?
Care, but not because it's about what others think of you
18. Song you can't get out of your head?
It was something something something in the 80s - it's a curse, you can't stop the internal jukebox until you sing the whole song word perfect and I can't remember the lyrics.
19. One thing you'd really like to do this year?Go to bed at a grown-up time and sleep uninterrupted until at least 6.30am with both breasts the sole property of me, myself and I
20. What or who makes you irrationally rage and totally not proud of yourself at the same time?
Well-meaning school gate mothers who serve a hundred committees and whose kids always seem to win the Easter Bonnet competition or get their photos on the 'Our Class in Action' wall and your gorgeous sprog is nowhere to be found...
Rules of the meme. Respond and rework. Answer questions on your own blog. Replace one question. Add one question. Tag some bloggy people. Here are mine:
Family friendly working
Single Parent Dad
Home Office Mum
Notes from inside my head
Over at Alphamummy, Jen Howze has answered a list of questions that are playing tag round the net. She has now 'tagged' me and charged me with answering the same questions, but taking one out and adding a new one of my own. While I think of a snazzy question and some terribly clever answers to the other ones, go over there and have a look. I'll be back soon with my version!
Mx
(oh yes, and an update on the shed - and the last 6 weeks which seem to have flown by with nary a blog update. BAD MUMPRENEUR, NAUGHTY MUMPRENEUR!)
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!"
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