Really?

I have, in the day and a bit since my last post regarding my Interview (Schminterview), had several polite emails asking exactly how I fared in the Suck It Up and Grovel campaign for my old full-time job back.

Okay, so it was only one email,  but I am thankful nonetheless. The executive summary for those who don’t want to read is ‘Probably Okay Enough’.

Honestly, I’m not even sure why I really want the job back so badly, except perhaps to prove that old farts with children can be functional doctors with something to contribute to healthcare-at-large, even if it is only the best combination of ‘ahh’s’ to deal with Banged Knee.

Oh, and the best way to rip off a Band-aid (as fast as humany possible without breaking the sound barrier).

Don’t snicker, will you, about the seriousness of Banged Knee.

Saag will have you know that when your walking is a little on the imperfect side (i,e, she looks pissed when she tries it, and by pissed I am not being euphemistic for anger, but for about ten sherries too many), that Banged Knee is a Real and most Serious injury.

Really.

Or so about a dozen stumbles, followed by careful looks for a possible sympathetic parent and a very predictable LaLa on the nearest floor would have you believe.

Me, I don’t take her so seriously.

It’s an old permutation on the three second rule, the one that goes ‘if it’s on the ground for less than three seconds, you don’t need to clean it’. I love that rule, but getting back to my personal variation, to whit: If Saag takes three seconds or more to decide if she’s actually hurt, well she isn’t. 

Accordingly I shall clap up a motherfucking storm and generally play the fool until she decides she isn’t, either. 

But, where was I?

Ah, job interview. I was busily trying to distract you from the subject at hand, i.e. I was avoiding trying to talk about the blasted thing.

Suffice it to say that my Campaign Not To Mention the Babies was foiled by the predictable event of one of my interviewers being the very bitch who I distinctly recall screaming so loudly that I had to hold the phone about half a foot from my ear at my dead-baby-and-three-IVF-transfers-whee-TWINS news (pardon my French, but I’ve already contributed to my virtual Swear Jar with a carefree ‘motherfucking’ or two now, so I figure that the b-word shall not shock those that remain reading excessively).

I don’t precisely think she shared my enthusiasm for the possibility of a live birth at the time.

Since the very first distinctly unofficial words in our three question Structured Exchange were ‘How has Maternity Leave been?’, I don’t think she has forgotten me, either.

Also, I struggled mightily not to guffaw out loud at the liberal rewrting of history involved in changing ‘forced resignation’ to ‘maternity leave’. A smirk may have escaped. Possibly.

As for the actual interview questions?

A: Name a value of in our network slogan and describe how you apply it in daily life. (yawn, the acronym is XXXX, and here’s how I bore the pants off all of us with a random anecdote).

B: Describe a situation involving conflict and what you did to resolve it? (well, funny you should mention that…..)

C: Oh My God WHAT DO YOU DO if somebody is having a heart attack? (Easy, check it IS, call for help because we all know a problem shared is a problem halved and if they’re actively trying to die get the crash trolley).

I’ll find out how I went if a few weeks.

Meantime the litmus test is do any of you want to try a coronary on for size and see how I do?

Timing is everything.

Why, yes it is.

In the Infant Subclause of the infamous Sod’s Law, if something blastedly inconvenient, sleep depriving, messy, smelly, noisy and red-faced can possibly happen at the height of parental inconvenience, then it inevitably will.

My previous case in point was Saag’s genius discovery with regards to the reciprocal fit of her first digit and facial orifices in supermarket queues.

You may recall that part one of this phenomenon was the realisation that she could relieve the boredom experienced by those with an attention span best measured in a particle accelerator (at at it’s most Higgs Boson questionably existent and bleeding SHORT to extend the analogy) by some invigorating nose picking.

The kid made really thoroughly sure by dint of much digging that not only was her nose squeaky clean, but that her mother was correct in telling her that it is truly impossible in the normal course of things to reach your frontal lobe via your nasal cavity.

Well, unless you use special surgical equipment. Then it is very possible.

In case you wondered, no, she didn’t let a little matter like her finger being buried in her left nostril up to her second knuckle stop her in the least from smiling winningly and craning her head to make eye contact with all and sundry.

The kid’s a flirt, albeit a mildly revolting one.

Part two, of course (raising the revolting stakes by about a million percent), was where she then shoved the very same digit down the back of her throat and only ceased in attempts to play tennis with her own uvula when Vomitus Inevitiblus Everywhereus stopped her fun.

Sigh.

There’s nothing that fails to warm the cockles like the feeling of having a snot and vomit covered kid while trapped in a queue with about ten people in front of you, as many behind and with a pram in which every available crevice is jammed full of things one is going to have to pay for in order to make a legal escape. Oh, and some daft fool at the cashier has an item without a barcode.

Anyway, not to be outdone, Naan has now been kind enough to raise the stakes.

In other words, last night at 3am (why must these things always be at three sodding am?) poor Naan, due to yet another light joust with an upper resporatory virus, coughed until she vomited.

And vomited.

Oh, and vomited some more. Just for good measure.

I awoke to bloodcurdling screeches to find my second born literally dripping in fresh vomit, sitting in a puddle of half-curdled sick and stomach acid, red-faced and generally rather vocally unhappy with her lot in life at that moment.

I can’t say I blame her, really.

Nobody likes to see what they had for dinner twice, let alone sit in lumps of it.

Suffice it to say that after one late-night bath to wash the chunks out of her hair, a full sheet change, pyjama exchange, cuddle, paracetamol and fresh dumdum combined with heavy reassurance of a truly rattled Saag that the apocalypse was not in fact nigh (despite all the noise), I got back to sleep at about 6am.

The babies woke up an hour later.

Anyway, the real clanger I shall leave you with is that it’s not so much the nocturnal timing of Naan’s power-chuck I object to, but how on earth did the kid know I have a rather important job interview today?

If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to wash a load of laundry that has been well-marinaded in sick overnight on the back of not-very-much sleep. Then I have the fun of grovelling to resume the position I was forced to walk the virtual pregnant plank from. By the bastards who yelled at me and made me resign.

To paraphrase Basil Fawlty, Don’t Mention The Babies. This should be fun.

It’s Been a While.

Those of you who have read this blog in ages past (specifically the Age of Shagging Without Result, The Age of Look! No Eggs, The Age of Confirmed Completely Doolally Mutant Sperm, The Age of Just Why Am I Pissing About With Clomid Anyway?, The Age of IVF (the BFN edition), and finally the Ages of FET #1 (in which I win a small sucks-to-be-me prize for bleeding throughout the cycle, causing it to go tits up after transfer)and FET # 2 (the Holy Fuck I’m Pregnant Edition, with Bonus Twins).

Sigh, I’m rambling and I do apologise. May I blame nostalgia?

Anyway, good people of the Internet who are polite enough to read what I often secretly worry passes for either the ramblings of an insane mind, leading to one of you figuring out how to commit me from inside your PC screen, or perhaps simply the written counterpart of verbal diarrhoea (Okay, I am trying Very Hard to stop with the Poo References, I do hope I am allowed a small amount of slack in exchange for the promise that I am weaning myself of the Poo like a terminal nicotine addict cutting back from two packs a day to one?).

Anyway, you, yes you. And possibly you as well.

You may recall that in the days before the Indian Takeaways made their extrauterine existence loudly and destructively apparent (both on the state of my house and the state of my tits and abdomen), that I used to enjoy indulging in a little light Paint Abuse. No, I don’t mean I inhaled, I drew.

Mostly very badly, obviously.

There’a ART therapy, (and also A.R.T therapy, obviously, I cannot resist a bad pun) and then there’s a good old Explanatory Diagram.

Well, the time has come to reinstitute a good old illustration of a case in point. No, this time I shall not be using the infamous paint swatches to describe the daily fluctuations in the Too Much Information Category, although I do reserve the right to do that again should I ever actually see another period. This century.

May I entitle this masterpiece ‘The top six reasons that Naan should look into getting taller one of these days?’:

I only stopped at six because I ran out of room.

Sadly although neither Saag or Naan have a skin tone as worryingly off colour in the general direction of Corpse White as my best efforts with Paint would suggest, the vertical discrepancy is about as stark as pictured.

Actually, as a small aside, depending on how fresh they are and the position the head was with respect to good old gravity when everything congealed, the face of a corpse can be quite  festively colourful in a vaguely red-white-blue patriotic way, you know.

Oh, and yes, Naan has three teeth these days.

Until yesterday I would have firmly claimed that no, she only had one, but that is because I am clearly painfully non-observant, fail to get the answer of ‘4′ to the question of ‘what’s two plus two?’ and am generally  incredibly slow on the uptake when it comes to the not-so-hidden meaning of three days of yelling, red cheeks, dribbling for the Harlem Globetrotters and general fits of pissiness.

Apparently two teeth came through at once while I was busy wondering when Saag was going to consider a move in the direction of dentition herself (answer? I have no idea, but the lack does not seem to stop her eating just about anything that she can gum to death).

Regardless, Naan’s previously lonely SoloTooth now has a companion, and as a bonus item she also has an upper fang with which to impale the fingers of the unwary.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, the Cranky Midget is shaking the bars of her cot and I think my reprieve is over.

Grow kid, because I don’t think you can sue the council for laying the pavements too close to your arse.

Dear Saag and Naan

Dear Saag and Naan,

Thou A.R.T most blessed of the Indian Takeaways and forever dear to my heart and close to my stomach. Very close.

Why, barely a day goes by where I do not lovingly caress the takeaway menu of my local Indian restaurant and weep just a little at the memories of heartburn so severe I thought that losing my esophagus and back teeth was the price I was going to pay for your uterine residence.

Actually, I get sourbrash just a little even thinking about my many gravid consumptions of the above ill-advised dietary items for those lacking a lower esophageal sphincter worth a damn on the grounds that Saags arse and Naan’s head were conspiring to crush my stomach into pitiful non-existance. Or perhaps even evict the lot (including my poor liver) into my thorax on the grounds that there was rather little room to work on blaming reflexes for punching one’s sister In-Utero  what with the existing arrangement of having abdominal viscera abdominal in geographic residence.

I guess I figured if it was going to hurt like a motherfornicator anyway, I may as well enjoy the first repetition of the meal.

Really, it is no surprise that you both seem to have a rather precocious ungodly fondness for consumption of anything spicy, although I do not entirely share your enthusiasm on the grounds that I have to change the nappies around here.

But, dear children of mine, I am doing my best to follow through on a small resolution not to talk about poo quite so freely, so we shall say no more of the infant version of the proverbial ring of fire and how it is actually somewhat remarkable that a nappy has yet to spontaneously combust after a little light-hearted consumption of half of my lamb vindaloo last night.

However I am not here to wax all nostalgic about how Indian food, like most others, suffers a significant and regrettable drop in the taste element while gaining a buttload of the less-than-desirable corrosive burn quality when repeated from below.

No, I am here to talk behaviour, oh children of mine.

You are getting to that age.

First with the positive feedback, I think.

I positively adore your arms flung around my neck and the spontaneous cuddles. Please don’t stop those. I can even live with the slightly french version of kisses you give, although as a woman who has yet to contract mono, they do give me some pause.

Toddlers swap even more spit than a randy teenager at a party, you see, and odds are I shall accordingly catch a dose of Golfball Glands and general disinclination to assume the vertical position off of you little buggers as soon as you acquire it from some other similarly drooly companion.

Anyway.

You can continue to clap with glee when something funny happens, even if it is at your poor beleaguered Mama forgetting about the baby gate across the kitchen and providing the evening’s entertainment by falling bum-over-teakettle over the bloody thing and launching a full plate of spaghetti and sauce into space, only to have it’s progress halted by a colourful slide down the wall opposite.

By the way, I have two bruises the size of eggs on the front of each thigh as a direct consequence of THAT particular episode, the gate is quite strong, you will be relieved to note. That’s probably fortunate since I am likely to do exactly the same thing at some unspecified future date.

My quibble, in my best Bad Baby No-No tones is this. Please don’t Slap Your Mama when you’re pissed about something.

Please?

Heck, don’t Slap Yo Mama, either, to cover the occasions that your trousers happen to be at their inevitable half-mast in  best white-baby homie style. Oh, look into growing fatter bellies if you’re sick of having your bums hanging out, there’s only so much I can do with clever use of a Structural Nappy Pin.

Also, Saag darling, it is not in any way okay to wait for Naan to stand up and lurch over to her, place both extended arms against her trunk and shove the poor kid to the floor, just because you could.

Love,

Mama.

I should have seen this one coming.

Really, I should.

I sat here for five minutes debating on how best to say the following sentence tactfully, before deciding it was in fact impossible.

Poo is a frequent topic of discussion Chez MII. In fact, there have been notable days in which LS and myself’s sole verbal interactions have been all about the poo. Or the  ’poopy’, ‘poo-poo’, ‘Brown Toothpaste’, ‘Bum Nugget’, and the ever-dreaded leaking-down-one-leg by the point of discovery ‘Nappy Quicksand’. 

Hey, I change a lot of shitty nappies. Yesterday I was up to eight by midday. If anybody needs fertiliser, I’m your lady.

Naan, for mysterious reasons best known to her left colon, has the especial talent of shooting out oozy seas of crap that inevitably just suck you further and further into their messy depths as you attempt to clean up. Many the time I have been stuck thusly, carefully breathing only through my mouth, valiantly dispenseing half a packet of wipes against the onslaught only to find them about as useful as tackling an erupting volcano with a portable fire extinguisher.

By the way, the laundry sink and a good old fashioned Hose Down is absolutely acceptable in these sort of circumstances. Works a treat.

Saag, deepening the mystery and rendering me desirous of how one gets a bowel to explain why it works the way it does (even though having a wee chat with either child’s innards is a slightly bizarre concept presumably running along the lines of ‘Dear Naan’s Left Colon, Hi! I don’t think we’ve met before but would you mind awfully looking into resporbing  just a  little more water and slowing down your average transit time a smidgen while you’re at it? Thanks ever so!’), keeps to ‘Nugget’ territory. Believe me, that is Rather More Civilised of her innards and I am eternally grateful.

Anyway, if one is struck with Nappy Quicksand, suffice it to say that if you’re lucky you emerge with your life, but unless fresh sh!t is good for hair in the ways that beer allegedly is, it’s a scarring experience. Nobody likes to look in the mirror half an hour later and note they are now the proud owners of a fringe styled with dried crap. 

I could talk sh!t about sh!t for entirely too long, it would seem, and you’ve all noticed.

As several other bloggers have been kind enough to start referencing me on their own pages when talking about the kind of things that tend to emerge from an infant’s bottom lately, I guess I could take it as a subtle hint that have becomes somewhat of the Internet Poo Story Lady.

I’m your go-to girl for Bum Talk, it would seem.

Oddly enough, google doesn’t yet seem to have picked up on my area of expertise because I’m still getting twenty hopeful hits for those with negative betas who are absolutely pregnant despite the best unequivocal ‘No, you’re not’ that science can offer. Oh, and the evergreen kinky use of footwear in wee-wees.

Anyway, before I revolt my last reader out of existence, do you want to know what Saag’s fifth word is?

The first four were ‘Mama’, ‘Dada’, ‘Beh!’ (Bear) and ‘Doh-Doh’ (this one is coupled with a most solemn head shake and is meant to be ‘No-No’. Can you tell I usually spend large proportions of my day racing after Saag with something forbidden and/or valuable in her gob yelling ‘No!NOOOOOOO?).

The fifth?

A gleeful ‘Poo-poo!’

I guess I can’t really be all that surprised.

‘Almost’ is the critical word.

Really, it is.

In (for random completely-unrelated-to-anything-I-may-or-may-not-have-done-today example) the sentence ‘Going to the Cinema with the Indian Takeaways in tow was almost a good idea’, the ‘almost’ is the critical word.

But, wait.

Before you all fall about laughing merrily at the very idea that any enterprise involving two hours of critical shutuped-ness, mixed with a heavy convention in the direction of the sit-still-and-watch nature with two ten-month olds is anything but insane and deserving of instant certification, do continue to read. Let ALONE such an event conducted in a dark, boring room.

I can see the case for reasonable wonder as to why I ludicrously crack out merely an ‘almost’  in front of the ‘good idea’, as opposed to the more appropriate ‘never’ and not-so-gentle enquiry on whether I have been smoking crack lately. Really, I can.

However.

Before I am committed involuntarily without having actually metaphorically inhaled, may I clarify matters?

Yes, I have spawn who rarely, if ever, indulge in such behaviour on the grounds that they are babies and therefore prefer to ricochet off the walls, but….

I have NOT (on this occasion at least) landed myself several chairs, or heck, a whole table setting short of a picnic in taking the babies to a movie.

It was a ‘Mum’s and Bub’s’ event, something which I had never even heard of, let alone attended previously. However, it was something that now hits me right in the Target Demographic thanks to the Indian Takeaways.

My Target Demographic is notoriously poorly guarded.

Put simply, although I cynically wondered just how much of the movie I would actually see when chasing two toddlers around a cinema in the dark (and hoping they were at least my children), I couldn’t pass the opportunity up to see a movie on the big screen. Because I couldn’t actually recollect when I’d last had the opportunity.

Yelling was expected. What was there to lose?

So bright and early we headed off to try it out, expectations set suitably low and in line with the Bloody Cheap price tag.

I did consider the 10am hour a bit of a design flaw as I am not normally dressed beyond a dressing gown unless the clock is past midday, but made the special effort anyway.

I also objected to the lack of planning in regards to the fact that strollers tend to be propelled on little round objects more commonly known as ‘wheels’, and that wheels on the whole prefer to go downhill on a ramp as opposed to, say,  a great big bloody flight of square shaped steps.

But we managed, although I do believe the bloke who assisted me may never have the lumbar spine he began with, ever again.

I cannot object to the fact that it took both Saag and Naan about twenty minutes to decide that the Giant Talking Heads were in fact NOT going to leap out of the screen and eat them up alive and stop shrieking in terror, because, well, if I’d never seen a movie screen before I think it would scare the snot out of me too.

Besides, once the little buggers warmed up to it, All was Well.

The reason I placed an ‘almost’ in front of ‘good idea’ is because of one thing and one thing only.

The good people responsible for cleanliness in such venues didn’t go so far as to Think Small and scrape off the used chewing gum (that is nearly as prevalent as under a middle-school-desk) from under the seats before the session.

Sadly, it took me a very long time to work out why Saag and Naan were chewing so thoughtfully and for so long and were so generally well-behaved and quiet when I hadn’t actually fed them any Bribery or Corruption. I just foolishly optimistically thought somebody else had fed them something and that I had unusually well-behaved children.

Clearly I should have looked the proverbial gift horse in the mouth.

They’d been having a veritable feast on retrieved pieces of the stuff for about an hour.

Suffice it to say I spent the second half of the movie wondering just how many pieces they’d already eaten and picking the remainder off of the underside of chairs within reach.

Sigh.

Tomorrow I expect to be able to revolt you all with the answer to the unintentional experiment of elucidating the intestinal transit time of N pieces of well-loved gum in the average infant digestive tract.

Almost a good idea, really it was.

Almost.

Punctuate THIS.

Sigh.

I love poor Long Suffering, my aptly named spouse, really I do.

Even though he has the propensity for massively getting right on my fried-egg  tits (that I am seriously thinking about, um, upgrading to something worth stuffing in a bra) on a daily basis, usually due to the repeated sin of minor domestic transgressions such as  leaving dirty plates and cups decoratively scattered around the house for the Picking Up Fairy to retrieve and transport to the dishwasher (me), grotty underwear and sweaty post-workout socks on the bedroom floor for the Hamper and Washing Fairy (also me), empty toilet rolls on the bathroom sink for the Rubbish Bin and Restocking From Just Underneath In The Bleeping Cupboard Fairy (me again), wet towels on the floor for the Drying Fairy to hang (oui, c’est moi), and carefully avoids ever stretching so far as to press ‘go’ on either the sodding washing machine OR the explodingly full dishwasher and waits for the Emptying Fairy to replenish the forks and makes do eating with spoons in the meantime (yes, me again), I do love him.

Yes, I may indulge in a little light mental imagery of ripping off his untidy head and filling the wet hole with all the garbage he leaves lying around, what what multitalented wifey fully occupied with twins who also bleeping works (for MONEY) as well as donning a set of wings in order to be Domestic FairyEngineer extraordinaire does not?

Okay, also sometimes I shamefully must confess I do stick up both middle digits behind his back and wave them about in a disturbingly jabby fashion. Or twiddle them in circles while muttering the most-unladylike ’sit and rotate, honey’.

I do love him. Really. He can just be a git sometimes.

However, I am sure that I do many things that annoy the living snot out of him, and I know that after five-ish years of marriage, preceded by many years of living gleefully (but with boxes for furniture in some very mouldy rental properties in all the Funnest Parts of town) in Sin, neither of us are likely to change such habits and I married the man in full knowledge of his faults.

Kind of like having ticked the ‘I agree’ box on the product disclosure statement for Spouse 1.0.

Anyway, despite all of this he still can’t get away with saying ’Well, fuck you’ to me at 3 am, even if he spends the best part of the next two days grovelling and repeatedly explaining that there were quotation marks around it, and therefore it was not directed precisely AT me, per-se, but more a general statement of my attitude of being pissed at having been woken up by yet another bout of Prodfest (the ‘09 STOP SNORING…poke…jab edition).

I don’t do punctuation at 3am, honey. Please take note,

Love (with only a small order of Bonus Steak Knife Set in the back),

Your Domestic Fairy Wife.

I must be premenstrual.

Dear Internet,

Firstly, I do hope that you are enjoying your weekend. As the title may imply, I am not enoying mine in the least, and in fact am bringing large amounts of The Cranky (B!tch edition) wherever I go.

So perhaps those of you who have enjoyed my personal Fantasy Morning of a good a lie-in, followed by toast and eggs and a leisurely newspaper read in which (for once) mysteriously there are no headlines screaming ‘DEATH’, ‘CRASH’, ‘ECONOMIC CRISIS’, ‘DISASTER IN THE WAR ON….

(pick your item of choice, this poor overworked phrase is quite painfully abused nowadays. I’d like to declare a war on The War On, if I may? Or did I just commit the sin of grammatically irritating the heck out of myself?)

…’, or, if your fancy takes you in the more tabloid regard ‘AFFAIR!’, ‘CAUGHT WITH MISTRESS!’, ‘PREGNANT LOVER!’, and the like should just click away. Now.

I’d joke that I must be premenstrual, but I haven’t seen a period this season and despite wistful peeing on anything vaguely stick shaped at several bathroom opportunities, it’s not because I shall be ending the post with the grand denouement that I am in fact in my thirteenth trimester and wasn’t I silly to mistake those cramps for gastro?

Anyway, I’m just vaguely pissed. Saag has taken to shoving her fingers up her nose in the supermarket, as well as inexplicably down the back of her throat,  often after indulging in the first item. I think the kid is trying to win the contest for world’s tiniest bulimic, because she vomited everywhere in a particularly infuriating queue by amusing herself in this gag-reflex discovering fashion.

Additionally, and I say this only reluctantly and with difficulty because I love you all, Internet, a bunch of tweets is NOT a real post. 

No, it’s not. I am sorry to break it to you in this manner.

No, not even if you cheat and let it automatically update to your blog periodically. Not even a nicotine patch version of a post.

I’d need to take my socks off to count how many times I have happily clicked on a link in my feed reader lately, excited to read a post, only to be hit with a bunch of garbled sentences, all less than 140ish characters that often bear no connection to one another.

Unless it’s a particularly obscure form of poetry, I have to confess as a self proclaimed slow-adopter of New Things (and closet technological cretin) that I Do Not Approve.

How does one comment on a bunch of bird noises?

Told you I was cranky. Now write something, will you? In sentences, please, this time.

Much love,

Geohde.

You win some, you get within 90 degrees of others….

If you prefer an alternate title, this  post could be more complexly entitled ‘You can’t sleep in standing, kid (and kid) because even though you get about on four legs for preference, you are not a horse’. Oh, and ‘In which I win a minor battle in the neverending war of Screw That for a Lark’. Edition fifty million, give or take.

May I begin with the first item, the (in case it is not quite clear as yet) Indian Takeaways? You know, since they are making what can only be described as a Bloody Din from their room and are therefore (‘BlahblahBLAHHHHHH!) consequently (‘MamamamamamaMAAAAAAhhh’) rather (DadadadadDAADADADAaaaaahh‘) hard (‘PffffffffffttTTTTTTTTTTTT’) to (’YahahahahahAHAHAH’) forget (..and so on)?

Before anybody leaps to an impressively tall conclusion from a standing start, no, I have not cruelly imprisoned my spawn in their cots, just so I can play on the Internet, tempting as that sounds, now that I type it out.

No, the little buggers are meltdown-inducing tired, but lately naptimes have begin to go comprehensively pear shaped. So very pear that my borderline toddlers, who only a month or so ago indulged in three delicious hour-long-minimum intervals of red-cordial-powered trouser-leg-pulling, cable chewing, vomiting, hair tugging and yelling free NAPTIMES a day now barely scrape ONE nap.

Sob.

As to why? 

Because, and this is ridiculously simple and a bit daft, they have discovered the Joy Of Verticality and Socialising Across the Great Divide between their cots.

I put them down on their backs and before I’ve even left the room, the silly sods are both up like a jack-in-a-box with a particularly energetic spring. They then begin a chorus of enthusiastic yells which become progressively distressed sounding as neither infant has worked out that they should just lie the heck down and go to sleep already if they’re tired. Especially when there’s a whole another baby four feet away looking all interesting, lobbing toys in your general direction and making a blasted din.

Eventually they do  both tire of it simultaneously and sleep, but it takes sweet forever.

I’ve tried patiently restoring the appropriate Sleep Geometry by repeatedly returning them to the horizontal position, but all that achieves is more openings of their bedroom door than the door of a cruise-ship loo during an outbreak of gastro. Besides, I’d have to superglue them to the mattress for it to be remotely worth bothering.

So as I type this missive I have two quite clearly NOT napping Indian Takeaways red-rimmed-eyes-tired but persisting in performing synchronised jiggering up and down, babbling and indulging in a little light cot rail rattling in the next room.

Please tell me this too, like a particularly nasty bout of constipation, shall pass?

Trust me, Saag and Naan, even though your fledgling trips to the park have revealed a positively ungodly fascination with eating grass, you really are NOT anything more than very distantly related to the long-nosed equine fraternity with the whole design flaw of the snapping legs and high-velocity-lead-therapy treatment thing. You cannot sleep in standing, so please for the love of all that is holy lie down already.

You are NOT horsies, children.

That’s a good thing, really.

To put it another way, should you ever be at a dinner party with a long-lost distant second cousin, they shall not be eating out of a nosebag.

Sigh.

Onto other matters, while I wait for the clamoring to fade and fizzle, I actually won a small battle in the War On Stupid yesterday.

With logic would you believe, the one thing that usually utterly fails to work with ANY Big Company versus End User dispute.

It was in regards to my shiny new tappy screen phone (which I shall have working properly ANY DAY now) and the fact that my number, carefully retained over more than a decade from phone to phone had yet to change across. Despite two visits avec twins (who like to pull expensive things off of low shelves and draw the attention of shop security everywhere) to the shop in mega-stroller space-hogging person to sort it out.

The first time, I gave the requisite details and signed the form and was assured all would be tickety-boo within a mere 48 hours. Ha.

The second time, four days later, and with some minor frustration because phone enquiries resulted in an unhelpful ‘in progress and it really will be ANY DAY NOW’, I returned to ask why I still seemed to have two phone numbers. I pointed out that I was feeling somewhat of an utter tool as I was forced to carry around two phones and had publicly had to answer Phone A while still talking on Phone B on more than one occasion. Only rockstars can get away with that sort of behaviour. Women with vomit on their jeans that has not originated from a loving drunk groupie, not so much.

They made some calls and assured me that the matter had been signed high priority and my largess of contact details would be resolved within three hours. Also ha.

So, yesterday (after another two bleeping days and still encumbered with two blasted numbers), I called again. The very nice, but almost incomprehensible Foreign Call Centre operator said ‘Oh, we’re very sorry it hasn’t gone through yet, there’s been an unexpected delay transferring XXXX XXX XX9 to your new phone’.

Well, fuck me. I’m not surprised, really.

My number ends in a four. Somebody had a brain fart when reading the initial form and so they’ve been trying to move somebody else’s number all week.

Incomprehensible Operator instructed me hopefully to just pop on into my local phone shop and fill out another form and it would be fixed in a veritable jiffy.

I objected on the not-unreasonable grounds that the staff and I were already on first name terms as it was and besides I’d already given them the correct details and signed the authorisation and I’d be doing the exact same thing again. Apart from the whole Groundhog Day aspect of pointless repetition of paperwork, they already had a valid signed form, so as far as I was concerned they could Screw That For a Lark.

Amusingly enough, twenty minutes later New Phone cheerfully beeped to inform me that, hallelujah, it’s number had finally changed over.

The inverse law of functionality.

The post otherwise entitled ‘In which I go GARAAAAAAgggghhhh rather a lot at inanimate objects’.

I think my many complaints about my no-longer remotely trustable (even for something as normally intuitive as the manner in which to hold a full-to-the-brim virtual bedpan the correct way up, we’d be in for rather a lot of Electronic Brown if I tried it) Intel Rival (TM) Start ‘er Up and Go Make Coffee PC have probably made it quite clear to many of you that I am somewhat of a technological cretin.

When it comes to all things that live in shops behind glass cases, looking sleek and expensive, well, I missed the iodised salt.

Call me Girtie Goitre.

To be honest I find those shops with the bright lights and Gadget Savvy Young People especially intimidating, because I know deep down at gut level that the more the seller proclaims how clever, and easy, and useful something is, it won’t be. They also almost always, with a laughably straight face seriously proclaim how I’ll wonder how I ever managed before.

Ha. Quite well, usually.

Then they hit me (most importantly) with the implication that simply everybody has one and I am the uncoolest individual in the multiverse. Also, no, I can no longer get replacement parts on a chisel and slate. I must upgrade, and by golly, I will LOVE it.

The more of these items that happen in a transaction, bitter experience tells me the more likely the inverse will be true and the Bloody Thing(TM) will accordingly be in and out for repairs for half of it’s usable life. It’s positively guaranteed if I am solemnly informed just what a light-year leap of technological wonder the particular expensive breakable is with regards to the old model.

The old model, you will note, which I never acquired because I was happy with the positively neolithic prior version. Well, after about two years spent getting to know it properly.

If I buy the New Gizmo, I just know I’ll spend the rest of it’s life studiously ignoring the manual on the basis that those things usually only inflame an already delicate situation, writing down birthdays in my diary instead of the incomprehensible organiser. Oh, and charging the bleeping thing.

They all suck power like an electric chair.

Anyway, given both my mobile phone and PC were both doing their level best to die with dignity, the Time Had Come.

Overriding the urge to run, far FAR away from the prospect of spending over a thousand dollars on things that would probably cause significant upset and only result in some unfortunate tendencies to swear loudly in crowds (courtesy of how-the-heck-do-I-work-THIS bluetooth headset, apparently MUCH better than putting a phone to one’s earhole for the mildly hearing impaired), I replaced both items.

My Shiny New Computer, I am relieved to report, does appear to almost offer to make me a cup of tea, rather than allowing time for ME to make one and have it go cold while starting up. For those that care, I am assured it has a Lightening Jack Fast processor, an indecent amount of GiggleBites of best Male Sheep with Horns On (RAM), A Whopping Big Hard Drive and many other goodies I shall only discover when they stop working.

Unfortunately, my old computer had all my Precious Data on it. Data that I simply couldn’t bear losing and so I’ve been rather quiet the last few days, busily using my measly thumb drive (itself only a recent acquisition since computers don’t seen to have disk drives any more) painfully to move files bit by bit onto LS’s PC. A PC from which I could burn it all onto CD’s and thus have Real Backups, just in case everything comprehensively went to shite with BOTH computers at some point.

Trusting aren’t I?

No, to answer the obvious question, I was not deliberately being convoluted, I couldn’t just put them on CD straight from my old computer (even though that would have been infinitely simpler) because the CD drive had gone tits up at some point, and I had resorted to using it in the open position as a drink coaster.

Suffice it to say it takes a bloody long time to transfer five years of odds and sods in this manner, especially when you realise at the very end that the burner is actually a DVD burner (and therefore Huge), so you’ve been needlessly cutting down all your files into neat 700Mb lots and cleverly wasting 30 DVD’s time four gigabloodybites each in the process.

Argh. I suck at this stuff.

Anyway, returning to my point, thus far the new PC itself seems to be fine. I’ve yet to cause it to crash and Christmas does not pass while I wait for it to do something.

The phone, on the other hand?

Let me count the ways it’s f*cked thus far (and I’ve only had it a week):

• Battery unexpectedly has a lifespan more commonly associated with the average gnat, despite happy talk in shop of usability in the hundreds of hours of constant yak-time and gleeful predictions I would forget where I kept the charger.
• Not deigning to recognise the card with the phone directory from my old one, necessitating manual entry of ALL my numbers, and part two of this irritation,
• Not being clear on just how one then copies said painfully entered numbers from the memory on it’s card to on the phone itself, so that THEN it will let me enter birthdays. As far as I can tell it will not let me enter a birthday for somebody unless I have their mobile number stored thusly. That is a bit of a problem for most of the under ten set for which I buy birthday gifts, since I do not have a mind like a steel trap, unless colanders count.
• The fancy little memory card, promised to permit me to store more pictures of the Indian Takeaways than my Real Camera that suffers no role confustion whatsoever and Does Not Moonlight Calling People does (the phone has a better! camera!, anyway!, I am told) , has already turned up it’s delicate tooties and refuses to work.

In summary, one doesn’t need a crystal ball to see that I’m now heading back to the shop for about the third time in the last few days to exchange Broken Gadgets.

Last time, the assistant, smelling impending expense and kicking in whole banks of cost-avoidance circuits, almost flat out refused to exchange the phone on the basis that 36 hours battery life was entirely reasonable (once I’ve purchased it, clearly. It was rather better before I handed over my credit card details).

She caved when I pointed out my very first BrickPhone(TM) performed better than that. More than a decade ago. While she was still in primary school.

Also, I need to whinge at them on the grounds that they haven’t fixed swapping my long-held number across yet, and so I’m resorting to secretly still using the old phone.

When I can get it to work, of course.

Sigh.

Eureka.

Isn’t that latin for ‘I need a towel’, proceeded by a invigorating public nudie run down the local main street?

I ask merely because I think I have found the cause of my (I am assured previously only mildly irritating lady like nocturnal oral trumpets) snoring reaching ‘jet engine in full power at takeoff’ proportions, or ‘B-Double Truck that missed it’s turnoff at the freeway and chose to go cross country via my bedroom’.

You get the idea. I’ve also apparently taken a recent fancy to omitting breathing for anywhere up to an invigoratingly carbon-dioxide laden thirty seconds, followed by the most ghastly gargles as my slumbering form decides to Choose Life.

Those of you with the incredibly secure secret password that have read the post below, and perhaps the many below that one lately that are not coded in any way other than a minorly obscure URL that is a bit of a pain in the ass to type and I really should have considered all the RSI when I chose it, are fully aware that my snoring has become, well, somewhat of a sticking point lately.

It is small consolation to me right now, because I am busy performing mental calculations of the highest sublethal dose of paracetamol I am likely to get away with without all that messy business with turning an invigorating shade of yellow and dying and stuff, but I think I know why.

I have an utter mother fornicator (Google, knock youself out. I’m sick of stillettos in wee-wee searches. I’ve never ventured an opinion to my recollection about stillettos, even on FEET) of a viral URTI.

My neck is about three times it’s usual size, and I have lymph nodes that are approximately the size of golf balls, practically glow in the dark and I can feel people when they even think about touching them.

I’m living on ice-cream and trying not to think about making a badly timed Swine-Flu joke, mostly because I don’t want to be landed on by a bunch of jumpsuit wearing fools with masks who all then take my doors shut for a week in a vain attempt to stop spreading the Deadly Pestilence. Lord of the Flies, would have nothing on Reign Of The Twins.

Sigh. I’ve digressed, but the Piggy Flu (that one of my friends keeps using as an excuse to ring up all his mates in the police force and ask if they’re okay. Quite well. Not sneezing? And so on until they rumble the bad joke and hang up on him. He’s a brave man.) is just a new flu strain. Viruses like to mutate to get into your upper respiratory epithelium and party hard, they get bored with presenting the same futile antigens over and over again and beeing bounced by the doorb!tch. I can’t blame them.

You probably won’t drop dead or do anything remotely newsworthy, but you will probably feel a bit sorry for yourself for about a week should you catch it.

Also, while I’m talking animals, regarding those isolation policies: Horse. Barn Door Closure. Bolted. You get that, too.

Regardless, I am snoring like Boeing’s latest creation because I can barely breathe when awake and vertical.

Another danger of children is about a decade of misery spent with Serious Runny Nose, ladies and gentlemen. I’m stocking up on the tissues in preparation, because now that I think about it, I’ve spent most of the last three months snotty. I don’t want all my sleeves to turn green because I have not seen fit to Plan Ahead a tad.

Finally, all of the recent discussion now means that Google has taken a shine to directing searchers in hope of ‘pricks’ here.

It’s a step up on ‘cock’, I suppose.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and feel sorry for myself on the couch while the Indian Takeaways destroy my house.

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Why, yes, I did.

Dear Internet,

Due to Severe Ongoing Computer Infirmary on the grounds that it is Bloody Old and Can’t Be Expected to Possibly Keep Up with anything much beyond being a mildly decorative paperweight (and I really should do the kind thing and put it out of it’s misery already, preferably with a hammer), oh and lest I forget my life, I’ve not really been able to whine to the world wide web at large (or indifferent) for some days now.

Fortunately, the gods of working motherboard have smiled upon me after an hour spent unhappily swearing ‘WORK damnit, work, the eight hour day is standard in the first world you slack sod’ at my PC and restarting innumerable times, I have the Internet.

HI, Internet, I’ve missed you.

I have but a brief tale on this occasion, pulled from the Annals of Daft Twin Stuff, mostly because I’ve just about reached yet another critical mass of ‘did they really just ask me that?’ and it helps somewhat to vent just a tiny bit.

Actually, to be brutally honest, the cerebral cortex minus questioning is gradually fading over time, and I almost miss it. Since Saag and Naan are so very different in size, temperment and most other things that strangers like to assume constitutes twin-ness, people seem to instead think that I have not spent much money on condoms in the last two years, rather than that they are actually twins.

Ok ‘twiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnns’.

Fraternal twins are allowed to fish from wildly different ends of the available gene-pool, world.

If I dress them both head to toe in pink matching outfits pre-emptively, you’re meant to pick up on the not-so-subtle cue and refrain from asking ‘So are they twins?’ (duh), followed by ‘a boy and a girl, right?’ (wrong, oh-so very very wrong). Both of those items happened to me today.

Please, I implore you world, if you don’t want to be on the receiving end of a carefully blank face and measured ‘No, she’s sixty seconds older and the boy dripping in pink is a girl’, just bite your tongue. For me?

Going grocery shopping with twins really is the most wonderful never-ending source of things to write about, suffice it to say.

My case in point is as follows (real conversation):

Woman In Supermarket: After the usual obligatory clarification of twin status, I shan’t bore you (again) with THOSE questions and one mildly uncomfortable up-and-down Geohde Inspection that had me concerned I’d ventured out with fresh vomit down my jeans again. Actually, I lie, I had and I knew it. ‘Oh, TWIIIINS! (pause for laser glare of physique) Did you carry them yourself?’

Geohde:  Gobsmacked at a new and clever permutation ‘are they yours insert-brackets skinny b!tch’. ‘Yes, I did. They were quite heavy as I recall’.

WIS: ‘Oh, my! So what’s your secret?’

Geohde: ‘A special blend of custom methylated deoxyribonucleic acid’.

WIS: Furrowing forehead ‘Wow! Were can I get some, you look GREEEAT! Do they have it in the pharmacy here?’.

Geohde: ‘I got mine from my parents.’

Boom-Boom-Pow.

I’m not very nice sometimes, am I?

Can I take the credit?

If the title does not give the game away, this post may also be known as ‘I make the entirety of the Internet projective vomit with that insanely irritating brand of Proud Mama of Precocious Child Who Can’t Shut The Eff Up Already’.

I don’t know about you, but normally for me when I cop an unavoidable gush about some strange woman’s Doubly Incontinent Mensa Candidate (with an age still best measured in months) who she insists  can count to twenty in ten languages already and is thinking of running an idle half marathon because their walking is SO GOOD at the grand old age of six months, especially in the face of the unlikely snotty nosed evidence, I want to snarl.

With that in mind, I’ve been hesitant to mention a new development on the part of one of the Indian Takeaways mostly on the basis that it’s smiliarly irritating.

So, to make it quite clear, the title is facetious.

Yes, I am quietly pleased that motor development continues apace, because conversely I’d be loudly worried if it wasn’t, but in no way am I going to consider this as proof that I should be badgering the nearest university into enrolling either child in a Ph.D programme any time soon. I am Not That Mother.

Besides, I can’t afford the fees.

To belabour the point, the normal range of motor development is really quite wide and being on the early end is not predictive of much other than perhaps a need to move breakables to a much higher shelf sooner than one planned. Oh, and that your child will probably be sporting a rather fetching collection of bruises a few months ahead of schedule.

In other words about two weeks ago, I was a mildly startled but dead chuffed party to an event that had me mashing ‘record’ on my video camera as fast as I could turn the bloody thing on, drop it, pick it up, fumble, turn it back on and finally successfully press ‘record’ and point in in the general direction of Saag.

Okay, I’ll get it out of the way. Saag did something I’d call clever, except that it’s not really. Clever is like finding the solution to the Theory Of Everything, or how to merge Newtonian physics with Einstein’s.

We’re setting our sights rather lower on this occasion, which is not unreasonable given we’re talking about two little midgets who have yet to figure out the role of toilets in their daily lives, something most of us take for granted (along with reliable sphincter control, which S+N also clearly lack in spades).

Saag, just shy of nine months corrected at the time, crawled up to her favourite push-toy (the one with the most irritatingly asthmatic horn this side of a salbutamol convention), grabbed the back of it and stood up. Then she walked clean across the loungeroom with the thing.

Hence the reason I had time to find my camera, set it to ‘video’, drop it, fumble about and still acquire 20 seconds Saag’s star turn.

Yes, she did look rather like your Nanna taking her wheely walker for a spin after one too many sherries, minus the blue rinse of course. It wasn’t especially graceful.

I’ve kind of sat on the news for a while because of aforementioned reluctance to beat my chest about such things, hope (to be brutal- my bookshelf is Not Ready for this) that it was a fluke, and the fact that Naan is safely still in the land of ‘four legs GOOD, two legs BAD’.

Bless her porridge coated socks.

But Saag seems to have taken a shine to bipedalism and seems to be rapidly getting rather good at it. She actually uses the push-toy to get around all the time, endangering unguarded parental toes at all sorts of inopportune moments as the child Takes No Prisioners in the pursit of Forwards.

Well at least until she hits a wall, her sister or another obstruction that runs her clean out of options in the forward progress department. Steering as yet eludes, and progress is only ever in a series of straight lines determined by the geometry of the room.

Would it be wrong to hide the toy, do you think, or will that simply serve as inspiration to fly solo?

Drive-by email.

It’s been a while since I’ve felt the hot blast of a drive by virtual bullet peppering, but never fear, Internet, it appears the drought is over.

I think.

See the thing that drives me positively nuts about written communication, apart from the fact that it forces me to use a positively ungodly amount of commas, parentheses and commit general punctuation abuse on the grounds that I have a lot to say and like to do my best to say it all at once by painful dint of a cram it all into one what-the-hell-was-THAT-let-me-try-again sentence (Insert pant here, I do hope you are keeping up)…

I’ll take mercy on the tired Monday in all of us and start again, shall I?

Well, apart from my incurable case of run on sentence abuse and the like, the thing that drives me bonkers about written communication is you can’t precisely see Death Stare, Bitch Face or blatant Voodoo Doll pin sticking on the part of the writer.

This means that I shall forever wonder just a tiny bit whether the comment I received in regards to the scenario I shall now relate was actually intended to piss me off, or whether it’s kind of like an unintended bonus option.

Like those free steak knives, but in my back. If you get my drift.

Shall I explain?

Okay. Here’s the deal.

Please don’t groan at your monitor overmuch, but it relates to that infernal Mothers’ Group.

Yes, I know, I too wonder why the Bleeping Flaming Dog-poo in a Paper Bag I’ve kept attending, given I have a clear history of not deriving much in the way of pleasure from the experience.

I mean, in the interests of honesty, I guess it’s not precisely at the level of having bamboo shoved under one’s nailbeds, especially since the Assvice-r Extraordinaire who proclaimed all sorts of Important Titles with regards to child rearing stopped attending when I caught her in her Real Identity, working behind the deli at the local supermarket.

To be brutal about it, any group where you’re all expected to instantly be Best Buddies because you’ve had babies extracted from your person (an act I like to refer to as ’my multiple baby-ectomy’) at about the same time is going to be a heterogeneous mix of those you kind of like, those you like quite a bit and those that, well, hey babies!

It’s okay, but will we all be exchanging Christmas cards in ten years? I very much doubt it.

No, I keep going to these groups where the sole point of commonality is Live Spawn because Saag and Naan quite clearly positively adore holding a momentary truce with regards to picking on each other and instead indulge in a little light ganging up on other people’s children and having a good fish around in their mouths. Or poking their eyeballs. Or earholes. Or licking scalps. Or pulling hair.

You get the concept.

I think that it’s generally good for their social development to see other babies and learn that Orifices Are Private, let alone have the golden opportunity to catch the bazillion colds they need to suffer and pass on to their mother, of course, before they are reasonably immunologically competent citizens. Whose noses do not run like a leaky tap twenty-four hours a day.

So, being the modern age, we all keep in touch via email. It saves all that nasty talking stuff and requirement for obligatory social banter (Talk! About! The! Children! if stuck, and failing that for inspiration, the pregnancy, last holiday or wedding. If they’re married, please note, it is critical to examine the appropriate digit first).

Last week, I held the get-together Chez MII, except for various reasons to do with it being a 20 minute drive and pissing rain and cold, ahem, make that it being all very late notifications (via text message and email) of one count of the ever hard to prove ‘gastro’, one count of ‘last minute work’, one count of ‘I’m scared to drive that far’, one count of ‘oops, I thought it was yesterday‘, one count of ‘up all night with sick child’ and a few other excuses I do not really believe, only one person showed up.

One hour late.

I know I cannot prove simple couldn’t be arsed syndrome in court as such, but honestly, even with people I am not close I am polite. I cancel the night before, by PHONE, and if something happens on the day itself, like say losing a leg, well I drag my bleeding stump in.

On time.

It’s just how I roll, I am a Reliable as Rotavirus, even if I usually fail to make people vomit or refuse to leave their bathrooms just in case.

So a very pissed off Geohde was left to eat sixty dollars worth of food and wine largely on her own. That did assuage the anger a little.

Enough that in response to all the cheery ‘how was it’ emails from the asshol-eh’s who failed to attend, I (with sunshine positively blooming out of my ass) said sweetly how it was sad that everybody was ill and indisposed, but geepers Other Mother and I had FUN by-golly, all on our own-some and how we did chortle that we had all this food to our greedy selves.

Honestly, in no way did I say ‘it’s funny how you’re all sick or indisposed when it’s YOUR bloody turn to drive 20 minutes away in the wet’ or imply I thought they were all clearly more flaky than old paint.

So I was rather surprised to receive a reply including the sentence ‘Try not to take it personally, it just seems like we all had genuine reasons.’

Now, I don’t know about you, but I actually hadn’t taken it especially personally, until I received that drive by blast. Yes, I was angry at the late bail out’s and the sad excuses, but I didn’t think it was anything to do with it being ME, but the combination of aforementioned COLD, WET and the like.

It’s worse than being asked if you’ve stopped beating your spouse yet.

I can’t answer a zinger like that without looking like I spent the past four days taking it about as personally as a pap smear.

Garrragh.

Group again this afternoon, and I would just love to stay home and be all pissy and cite Sick Children, but see two sentences above for why I cannot do that.

Deja Screw…

Oh my.

With a title quite as salacious as that one I hardly know where to begin on how best to fill you all in on my day.

Suffice it to say that today from before the crack of dawn in true Hospital Ungodly AM fashion (why, just WHY I plead of you does a completely sedated, ventilated patient need to be reviewed in a hospital a full hour’s drive away for me before eight am? It’s not like they’re going anywhere in much of a hurry, after all, is it?) I was at work, generally Doing My Bit to win the never ending War On Disease.

Oh, and lest I forget, cars wrapped around trees in fits of pissed merriment and such.

I was, yet again to my eternal disappointment in my never-ending Sleep Until Daybreak campaign, peacefully wondering if a fourth cup of coffee was in order at the bedside of an especially poor prognosis type. Lest you deem me harsh and uncaring this was on the not-unreasonable grounds that there was little I, or anybody else for that matter, could do for the patient as such but a coffee would help my personal misery quotient at having to get up at 5 am to work this out. A bit, anyway. 

Then somebody else also came to see the patient, ending my reverie about all things coffee in the presence of brain death.

Turning to leave and perhaps fulfill my rather determined-but-refreshingly-simple desires in this world with regards to the liquid extraction of the coffee bean, I came shockingly face to face with a Certain Person I hadn’t seen in about, ooohhhh, seven years.

Right after that hideous drunken shag ruined a perfectly mildly flirtatious friendship and replaced it with a world of ‘I’ve seen your p.enis and I wish I hadn’t’. Oh, and, ‘Gee, the weather on the other side of the state is rather nice this decade, isn’t it?’.

So, rightly or wrongly, the inner Geohde that resides between my ears was fully occupied initiating the Do Not Blush sequence along with poking tiny fingers in virtual ears and singing ‘lalalalalala‘ in response to a rather unwanted but very present Blast from the Sexual Past.

It was all I could do to handover what little information was relevant i.e. he did not need to see this patient (so please for the love of all that is holy could he just bugger off. Now! Be anywhere but here!) without interjecting in my best Pretend Tourette’s ‘Brewers’ Droop!’, ‘Foster’s Flop!’, and the more simple ‘Willy! Weiner, knob, stick, wee-ee! ARagggghhhh’.

But I did, resist that is.

I did mention it was rather a bad shag, didn’t I?

On a scale of ‘1′ to ‘Marshmall.ow in a coinslot’, call me a sweet tooth. I shall say no more on the matter lest I burn retinas in the process.

To conclude my tale, mortified, we both spent the rest of the morning very carefully avoiding all further contact at opposite ends of the ward.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the Internet, the old adage that one should NEVER Screw The Crew is a good one. No matter how drunk you happen to be at the time.

Please learn from my example and you shall never have to face the owner of a willy you had done your best to consign to pe.nis history, before breakfast no less, at work ever again.

As for me, is it too late to change jobs?

Sigh. Really, just…sigh.

I’ll say it again, once more with significant feeling, sigh.

Since a brief perusal of my archives would lead to the conclusion that I could justifiably be accused of using this site solely as a vehicle in which to whine about my I-Asked-For-It lot in the IVF and twin pregnancy experience, expending a lot of virtual hot air in the act of checking the boxes:

• Betas, and how insanely high is never high enough when it’s your own.
• Anxiety, rabid thereof, is clearly a stronger predictor of viable gestation than morning sickness in some women. Not talking to g-d on the porcelin phone every day is something to be pleased about, really it is.
• Elastic Waistbands and Empire Lines are your Best Friend in the first trimester for both comfort and concealment if you’re Not Telling, but screw that because people are nosey and clearly vaguely suicidal and will ask anyway. Often.
• Brief moments of panic at having to tell people one’s oven has two renters at eleven weeks (and not, say, when heads are crowning, my preferred time to disclose a delicate condition), counterbalanced by the rapid realisation that this scenario is at least a million stutters and blushes better than the one that would have occurred if I’d merely been fat?
• Contracting at twenty weeks, and other fun ways to quit your job in a hurry.
• Bedrest and how being a waddling-to-the-toilet-only vaginal AND oral pharmacy (Got an orifice? Stick a pill in it! What do you mean you can’t reach?) all things Anti-Labor  probably justifies keeping a calendar with ‘minus X days until viability’ and ‘minus Y days until I probably actually take two living babies home. After NICU time.‘, oh and let I forget, ‘minus Z days until I get to term and have Immediate Take Home Babies. Ha.’. I never did take my scheduled c-section date all that seriously, preferring to guffaw merrily at the calendar until the contractions reminded me that my irritable uterus did not approve of compression from above.
• Fundal height is not another way of saying ‘the height of fun’, but rather after a certain point refers to just how many centimetres Baby A’s ass is now closer to your nose in sitting.
• Waist and how it really should never be a euphemism for ‘equator’.
• Grooming, and how the state of one’s pubes merely becomes a problem for the nurse who has to shave you at delivery. Complete with bonus failure to care or apologise for subjecting an entire theatre full of people to Hairy Ground Zero.
• Finally, pre-eclampsia, and other fun ways to make eyebrows raise into hairlines when taking a BP.

To recap (already), since I seem to whine rather a bit, I’m going to ask how you’re all getting on and dispense a virtual cup of tea for those interested before I get back to regularly scheduled programming. So how are you? Milk? Sugar?

Also, since I am feeling unusually chatty today, do you all have any questions for me?

No, that is not code for I have no idea what my next post is going to contain (other than my finest drivel), it’s genuine curiosity. Really. Promise.

Regardless.

Let me tell you about my morning before I go and have a good lie down to get over the experience.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that a day is never going to go all that well when it begins with a quick dash to wee in one bathroom and ends with a search for Mobile Spawn in the other bathroom. Spawn who are quiet because they are eating bits of a fully unrolled bog-roll, and merrily crawling through a bright green puddle of toilet cleaner (courtesy of the small well of the stuff that always ends up in the dunny brush holder which is now sideways on the floor).

I blame coffee.

I only hope they didn’t chew the bristles of the brush, and if they did, I’m simply glad I didn’t witness it.

However, I did have the pleasure of seeing Saag eat her own snot when I interrupted an otherwise safe play session and rather foolishly turned her around to see what all the happy slurping was in aid of.

The daft kid was trying to eat her own top lip and had her tongue halfway up to her nose to catch those precious Snot Lollies, presumably aiming to drink in as much liquidy green goodness as she could before Mama killed her buzz with a tissue. Geepers, it was exactly like a fourteen year old with a stolen St Patrick’s Day beer.

What can I say, the kid hates having her nose wiped, but she doesn’t mind eating her own bodily excreta.

Finally, on the note of excreta and before I go, I’d got to the point where I’d finished the poo-palooza that is always the first bum-change of the morning (now with bonus Extreme! Roll! Kick! Grab! action every single time) with both Indian Takeaways. I was therefore attempting to wrestle Saag into some rather fetching spotty tights that she was clearly having none of when it began to oddly smell rather sharply brown again.

Confused, I assumed that Naan had merely uncharitably simply let one rip right after changing her and continued in my pursuit of a task not unlike herding cats (to whit: getting both legs down to the bottom of each leg-hole and not both down ONE and the crotch generally crotchal. If it wasn’t for the fact that both little buggers like to eat their own socks, I wouldn’t bother).

But the smell got too strong to be ignored and I looked up.

Just in time to see Naan happily kneading into the carpet what can only politely be described as a Bum Nugget, retrieved fresh from the nappy pail.

Saag is still tightless.

Arragh.

Furthermore, grr.

I’m just a teeny tiny bit on the seeing red mist side of bloody annoyed in full knicker-twist mode today.

Why, you quite reasonably ask?

Bills.

Not any kind of bills, either, but the extra fun type that actually belong to somebody else (i.e. the developer that built the current Chez MII) which I seem to mysteriously somehow have the fun of being  held liable. All apparently due to a screw up between two energy companies in handing all the red tape over when we moved six bleeping months ago.

It did not help my mood any at all, but additionally those stupid automated phone message systems where my query never neatly fits any of the available options bit me in the arse.

That’s why I got hung up on by a machine the first two times. I was mashing the hash button repeatedly in frustration as I didn’t have an account number to enter on accounts that it wasn’t my bloody bill already and I just had a nasty looking emailed copy (from a lawyer, no less) of the cover page of a ‘threat to disconnect’ notice over less than twenty bleeping dollars.

Breathe in.

The third disconnect I must accept fault for as I pressed ‘9′ when I shouldn’t have.

The fourth time I got through to a human who handled residential gas enquiries, only to find out that for the purposes of this bill my perfectly residential-looking to me house wasn’t residential at all. The operator kindly offered to transfer me to the business section, but omitted to mention the half an hour wait.

I think you get the gist of it now.

Busy morning spent on phone fighting all things automated literally single-handedly (Naan in the other and jammed on maternal hip on accounts of being bloody sorry for herself) trying to avoid black mark on credit rating AND having my precious gas disconnected.

All of this daft charade for a NINETEEN dollar blasted bill that reached up like a rake left carelessly in long grass, smacking me painfully in the forehead out of the blue when I checked my email first thing.

Oh, and did I mention that both spawn could get a job in a goober manufacturing plant on accounts of we are all still drowning in the stuff? Disgustingly enough, I must admit to having Naan’s snot still drying on my cheek from where I was trying to sooth her while having a most entertaining discussion with Energy Company Representative about how due to privacy regulations that even though I was the one left holding the unpaid virtual hot potato, she couldn’t actually tell me anything about the contents of the bill. Because it wasn’t addressed to me. But could I pay it, please (or else) NOW?

Say it with me please, yaaaaarrrgh.

Given the choice of quite reasonably not paying on grounds that I couldn’t really sanely be expected to if they wouldn’t tell me what it was for as such (and getting in deep kimchee over a paltry nineteen bucks), or paying a mysterious account for items that would remain forever unclear and making it all go away already, I paid.

Normally I’d probably kick up more of a stink on the grounds of Screw That For A Sodding Lark, but Naan was screaming the entire time. That does tend to make one waver somewhat in one’s righteous indignation.

But I am most emphatically Not Amused about it.

Also, before I go and scream just a bit a bit to feel better about things, may I share another minor disaster?

I am not bragging in any way, I promise, but up until three nights’ish ago Saag and Naan would sleep from 8pm until 6.30am and additionally to that had three 1 to 1.5 hour naps a day. I do not know if it is the Snot Factor or not, but it is sadly the end of an era. For the last few days neither child has been at all inclined to take that third precious nap.

Sob.

Generally speaking, if the Terrible Twosome do something once it’s a fluke, twice is luck and three times is a habit and it sticks.

Accordingly, I now have to make dinner and eat it while juggling two rather cranky Little People who know all about Grown Up food and want it right off my bleeping plate. They’re quite clear in their opinions regarding Baby Food as being for losers and stuff.

Little seagulls, the pair of ‘em.

Also, I now have sixty to ninety minutes less time in my day to Get Stuff Done unmolested by ankle-biters.

Sigh.

If you’ll excuse me I have to go wipe snot off my cheek.

Is it too early for nicotine patches?

Please, pray tell Internet.

Is so-painfully-nearly-you-could-spit-on-it (were you rather more uncouth than I expect you all are and additionally entirely Tuberculosis free, I hope) almost not-quite TEN months too young to see if Saag and Naan would benefit any from the good people of Nicorette’s marketing?

Heck, even if you ‘don’t smoke when you sleep’, a fact I can agree with on a behavioural (if not a pharmacological or adiction medicine level) after seeing that TV ad with the snoring bloke puffing away.

Incidentally, that very advertisment always makes me flap around my lounge-room and yell a bit about ‘Don’t you know that is a FIRE hazard, you fool?’ in a Pavlovian kind of Safety Response before I remember that it is only TV, at least, and is therefore entirely absolutely made up. 

It’s not like you can really have a relaxing fag with a bunch of bright lights on you and a camera rolling.

Um.

At least on in the kind of TV I prefer to watch, although there is a whole industry that goes to great lengthsbetter-make-that troubles to portray scenarios along that exact line, I guess.

I’ve just realised how unintentionally blue writing about having a relaxing local-euphemism-for-a-cigarette sounds, if you have the right kind of mind.

Apologies for that one, world.

Well, coming back to my point, regardless of the fact that one does not smoke in one’s sleep, at least not when you’re unable to get out of your prison crib without assistance…

…Well, without assistance barring Saag’s earlier efforts in the maternal heart attack department before the base was lowered to bedrock with alacrity, of course.

….and therefore logically wake up to about a billion rather cranky nicotine receptors all bellowing demands along the lines of  ’Toxin Soup! NOW! We don’t care about that Cancer thing, or the Emphysema thing, or the Wrinkles that give you a mouth like a Cat’s Bum, you vain ass, let alone smelling like an ashtray you Big Girls’ Blouse! Get on with it will you? ARaagggh‘, and the like.

I am simply wondering, in jest in case I am not entirely clear on that point and you all think I’ve finally flipped my tiny lid, if the 24 hour version of a wee baby sized nicotine patch might be in order?

Stuff the 16 hour ones for the reasons just canvassed. Mornings around here are already chock full of enough yelling as it is, thank you very much.

Because the poor buggers have copped a lovely dose of viral laryngitis along with extra helpings of Fluidly BiNasal Snot, Cough, throats that must feel like they are lined with sandpaper on accounts of neither of them will eat anything because that would involve swallowing, and the miserable crying upper respiratory viral infested like.

I’m now onto my third day of babies who are hungry enough to take at least the first mouthful of custard with almost unhinged-gob enthusiasm (yes, I am a soft touch and feeding them utter rubbish in an effort to cajole some actual consumption), attempt to swallow, and stare at me in pained shock. Then they bawl their red-faced eyes out at the fact their nasty mother would do something that hurts dammit.

Oh, and they dribble the Evil Custard down their fronts and babble in misery. Like a smoker with about a 50 pack-year habit.

The poor mites.

Ah well, like most kidney stones, constipation and swallowed buttons, this too shall pass. Until the next time, of course.

I simply wish I wasn’t aware that normal babies get at least a dozen of these dastardly things a year until their immune systems have seen it all, so to speak, and the stop sharing spit quite so liberally.

Well, until adolescence, when they’ll get mono.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to find that parac.etamol liquid again. Also, I have to idly speculate on how long I personally have before I’m whining about how sick I feel.

Weekend Funk

Dear Internet,

I post this missive on my six-year-old and rapidly heading toward the technological scrapheap (from where not even Act of Over Enthusiastic Swap Meet shall save it’s dusty old motherboard or CD drive that is now regrettably purely there to use as a drink coster. Well at least when left open) computer.

In case I am not clear because of Sin Of Parenthesis (I am a frequent offender), let me try again.

I post this missive on the weekend from aforementioned Inspiron start-er-up and go make a coffee(TM) chipped device.  

This means, looking on the positive side, I get to have a full cup of warm beverage at the very least as the poor thing huffs and puffs and decides whether opening Internet Explorer is really actually TRULY worth all that bother after all.

Not only should I really do the decent thing an euthanize my PC because it is in rather a lot of pain these days, but it may actually have a point.

You see as the astute of you have probably noticed, I work three days a week mostly on the weekends and am thusly utterly shagged out and feeling sorry for myself by today and I have a mere two full days to go.

Ergo, I shall probably whine rather a lot about how I shall need the next four days off to recover from the strain of all this paid employment AND the inevitable preparations to leave the hyperkinetic Indian Takeaways (who appear to have a secret stash of Red Cordial I must find and destroy, soon) with poor LS for three madcap, hair-frazzing eight hour sessions. Major instructions? For g-d sake, just strap them to something if it gets too bad, preferably with gaffer tape.

Not that he actually has hair, fortunately for HIM.

Also, I may be in danger of blathering because I am painfully tired.

These particular working days come just delightfully jammed on the back of two nights of on-call on LS’s part at the local obstetric hospital.

Accordingly, we have both been woken up at 11pm, 2am, 3am and finally a gut-busting suck-it-up and call it morning already 5am for the obligatory c-sections. Or epidurals.

Because it’s easy to be all Tough And Brave and I Shall Not Have Needles Near My Spine at 7pm when you’re having early contractions, but another thing entirely when it’s dark and late and you’re so bloody tired and MY GOD this HURTS. Also what the frig do you mean I’m only four bleeping centimetres? Give me some testicles to crush and an epidural, stat!!!!

You get the idea.

So I am tired, more than usually whiny and I was feeling very sorry for myself when I made my way into work this morning.

So sorry, in fact, that on this occasion I actually for the first time in many months completely failed (while waiting an age for the geriatric lift, I have time on my side in this endeavour) to correct all the painful spelling mistakes on the ‘Aparment For Rent’ ads people see fit to type out and paste up, and yet for mysterious reasons of their own carefully omit to use spellchecker.

Or a dictionary.

Also, did I mention that LS had recently commenced refraining from poking me to stop my bloody-tired snoring on grounds that he may very well lose digits if he kept it up and settled for a foghorn ’Shhhh! STOP snoring!’.

Thus cleverly waking me up every thirty minutes or so all darn night.

No wonder I snore, I’m comatose as soon as I hit horizontal and if I got a bleeping night’s sleep, I probably wouldn’t sound like a small truck was crossing the room on the world’s tiniest and most misdirected highway to nowhere.

Additionally, I was not in the least amused to wake at one point to LS appearing to be indulging in some belated Adolescent Hickey hi-jinks. His response to my chirpy ‘What the bloody eff do you think you’re doing?’ at the news I seemed to now be sharing a bed with a vampire was a spirited (and surprisingly witty) ‘I’m sucking it up’.

When I asked if he had truly finally flipped his lid and became a dinky folding chair short of a picnic, he reminded me that I had instructed him to suck it up when he asked what to do about that night’s inevitable nasal symphony.

Smartarse.

Now if you’ll excuse me, the Terrible Twosome are awake. They’re not pleased about it on the grounds that they’re currently chock full of snot.

Fun times chez MII. Goodnight.

Yannow.

I’m having one of those kind of days.

You know, the sort where it’s past midday, I’m still in my dressing gown, somebody has spewed curdled porridge over my crotch at some point along the way and I’m wondering if a sixth cup of coffee would be entirely out of the question.

Or perhaps I should cut to the chase and move on to the hard stuff already.

In other words, as I write this missive, Saag and Naan are running pure bloody riot.

Quite franky, I’m surprised you can’t hear the noise from inside your computer. It’s a veritable din-fest in here courtesy of the developmental stage best known as Banging Things and Yelling. Kind of like letting a particularly geographically deranged (and rather careless with the sheep) Swiss yodeller and Town Crier Avec Bell duke it out hell for leather in an echo-infested cave.

I’m still hearing screams reverberating from the Hair Pulling Followed By Eye Gouging of thirty minutes ago. Fun times.

In case you wonder how I’m managing to complain about my lot so fluently, I’ve had to stop approximately once every five words thus far to intervene in such serious matters as:

• Blatant  Dum-dum Theft (Fingerprinting not required to identify the culprit. It was clearly Saag, bloody red-handed of Naan’s and despite having her own already),
• Crusings for Bruisings (also Saag, labouring under the delusion that gravity does not apply when one is learning to walk. It does, kid. Gravity does not take day off, and neither does it have a happy sign saying ‘you must be THIS high to hurt yourself’),
• When Body Art Goes Bad (the crawling through your own vomitus edition, Naan in case you were wondering. I always get this sinking feling when I hear the unmistakable sound of reverse peristalsis because they’re too fast these days and they’re through it like the proverbial pig in sh!t),
• USB Cables Are Not a Teething Aid (although they do buy five minutes of blissful quiet, as I have serendipitously discovered) and, finally,
• No You Cannot Climb In The Bath Still Filled With Yesterday’s Water Now and not just because it’s gone all cold, the So You Think You Can Swim? edition (incidentally, I was fractionally too late on that one and now Naan needs a change of clothes but at least she didn’t drown. Who knew nine month olds could climb up half a metre and them slide on in so very well?).

Anyway, neither child is in the clothes they started in just two hours ago although as already canvassed I am.

I guess I must make allowances for their tender age and shrug off the Perma-Frazzle as Factory Standard with mobile multiples.

Additionally, perhaps Naan was simply entirely reasonably trying to wash the vomit off, something I would quite like to do myself before too many more hours pass and I smell even more distressingly like a sweaty cheese farmer’s armpit. It’s hard to be sure of the kid’s intentions when the only words the little Red Cordial Powered Jet Engine has are ‘Mamama’  (Translation = Come fix something NOW) ‘Dadadada’ (Whee! Party!) ‘Blahblahblah’ (What do you mean you don’t know what I want?) ‘Babababa’ (I’ve cacked my dacks again, little help?) and the evergreen ‘RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHhhhhhhhhh’ (if the previous do not get her way).

Yeah, I know, you can’t actually farm cheese as such. Even a city girl like myself knows it grows in supermarket fridges.

Help, Internet, the little buggers outnumber me and they know it.

At least on the plus side, they actually come when I say ‘heel’ these days, even if it is from chewing my shoes to bits out of sight. My biceps inform me that they are heavily relieved by this development.

Now if you’ll excuse me, Saag is out of sight and worse than having gone mysteriously quiet (read, destroying something forbidden), she’s wailing….

G

P.S. Don’t worry, after brief investigation you’ll be relieved to note that I discovered the nitwit had simply crawled down the gap between the fridge and the wall in search of something fabulous (like a dust bunny or long lost sandwich crust) and got too thoroughly wedged for engaging Reverse Gear to be an option.

After a brief internal struggle about the wrongness of hypothetically leaving her there for five minutes to go look for Naan (in the mysteriously quiet camp) I pulled little fool out by the only remaining body part accessible, her feet.

Roll on naptime.

Carpark Shmarpark.

Otherwise entitled ‘You probably shouldn’t talk to the ticket vending machine with such animation outside the psych wing of ANY hospital’.

I hate machines.

I especially hate machines where I should by right be getting a human being to steam at.

DD is entirely right, I hate the ones that ring up to suck me into buying the latest and greatest energy deal or obligatory crap raffle tickets and worse than that don’t even bother to disguise the fact that they are a recorded message properly.

Telemarketing Geniuses out there, I hate to break the bad news this way, but most of the world is not fooled by a token two second pause for an answer to the empty ‘….and how are you today?’.

Personally, however, I sadly always fall for that damn pause and have duly stupidly said ‘well, thank you’, followed by an aggrieved ’arrrraaaagh, piss off will you?….CLUNK‘ to about a million dalek-impersonators by now.

Anyway. I dislike machines.

I also hate the ones that expect you to think on your feet when calling a big company by pulling the correct string of terms out of thin air (or your ass) to match their pre-determined set of Magic Words to have any hope at all of getting through to the right department.

The sound of ‘Please say in a few words what you’re calling regarding……’ followed by an empty pause fills me with dread every time.

Besides, half the time I say ‘Um, shit…um…blast, oh crap…um….’ before I get going with something more sensible.

Fortunately the blasted things never do hear that one right (or nobody has yet had a department called ‘Oh, shit’) and I am left to resort to yelling what I should have said in response to the infuriating ‘I’m sorry, I did not understand your query. Did you mean department X, putting you through now. Please hold’.

Once, purely for fun, I must admit I said  ’fellatio’ repeatedly down the line. Well, I did right up until I got a rather startled sounding Real Person. I don’t think I’ll do that one again.

While I am on a theme here, let me continue.

I hate the automated menu options where you have to mash the correct key on the keypad nearly as much. I like to guess ahead (because I am unsurprisingly an impatient soul) and therefore always get wrong department after a thirty minute wait.

Speaking of waiting, I hate the snarky voice that says that my call is indeed (in the face of all the evidence to the contrary because they have no buggery operators do they?), deeply important to them and when they have dealt with the two hours of queue they’ll be right on it. On my cell.

I hate candy machines. They always jam on me right when I’m at my most sugar-craving cranky in the middle of an especially godawful shift.

Now I can add carpark ticket machines to my hit list of Things I Shall Blow Up should I even get my paws on high explosive.

Having taken a small prize for a remarkably long introduction, let me relate my tale.

At one of my jobs, I am only required for one shift a week. Ergo it really isn’t worth bothering to pay half my paycheck for access to the staff carpark for such piddly use.

Besides the staff carpark is bizarrely always double-parking-is-not-a-sin chock-a-block whilst the public one could be used for learner drivers to complete wobbly laps without endangering innocent trees, kerbs or, you know, actual parked cars.

I find this fact most odd.

Whilst most hospitals are insanely social places, presumably due to the legion of families all merrily getting home from work and school and happily uttering ‘Come on kids, it’s 6pm, let’s go visit Granny In Hospital’, this one isn’t.

Perhaps it’s something to do with the clientele. Did I mention the whopping big psych unit?

If your limbs break, the world commiserates with you in the form of flowers and chocolate, if your brain breaks you’re lucky if you can bum a fag off of your fellow involuntary inpatients.

Regardless of all of that, (and coming back to my point because boy can I ramble on) I was attempting to pay for my day’s parking with the aforementioned metal box on legs avec tappy screen when the blasted thing went and jammed.

Perhaps I should have refrained from firstly feeding it the coin that had emphatically lost a contest with the blades of my lawn-mower and now bore more of a resemblance to a teeny-tiny throwing star than actual currency. But I’d had a bad day and wasn’t in the mood to be kind to a lump of metal with a touch screen on it.

No matter how much I pressed the coin return level, unsurprisingly the machine would not un-jam.

Fresh out of fouled currency with which to attempt beat the system, I turned to the only other machine available with my ticket in hand intending to genuinely pay and get the hell out already. 

It was also jammed. 

This time in a new and interesting way, having already half-eaten somebody else’s ticket for lunch.

I pressed the big red phone-for-help button and commenced a detailed explanation of my plight (in the pissing rain no less, did I mention that part? It rather reduced my charitably to all things technological).

Don’t ask me why given I was talking to a disembodied voice, but I couldn’t resist some good old Italian Style Hand Pantomime of ‘……THEN I put my money in (sob) and THEN it ate it all(wail) and THEN I tried THIS machine, but it’s already eaten something and doesn’t seem to have room for dessert’.

No wonder the poor bloke who walked up at that point to pay for his own parking took one look at the wet-cat haired crazy lady waving and yelling in the rain at two ticket machines (as the Speaker Man had to project from one and them the other to somehow verify their faults) and walked off, opting instead to pay by credit card at the exit boom.

Yes, I guess I could have done the same, but guess who got free parking?

I may have nearly drowned in the process of avoiding paying and committed the minor sins of a teeny-tiny white lie about why the first machine failed and a veritable nose-lengthening whopper of a fib about having already put in all my money for the fee before I jammed it, but the end justified the means.

Geohde = 1, Parking Machines = 0.

Now off to spend that four dollars on coffee…..

BOTW, edition 10.

Once again I commence another un or semi-solicited blogaview. Blog of the week, the tenth spin of the carousel….where does the time go?

Ta-Daa!

And so it begins again, the tenth edition of BOTW. Double figures it is! Not sure what I’m talking about? Click on the logo to be taken to the reasoning behind my unsolicited blogaviews and previous BOTW’s.

BOTW. An unsolicited admiration of blog-ness. An acknowledgement of the road travelled. Putting my excessive Google Reader activity to good use. On some level, we all write to be read, don’t we?

This week (Yes, okay, probably more like ‘month’. But it’s too late to change BTOW to BOTM after ten goes. Additionally, ‘BOTM’ sounds too much like ‘bottom’ for my liking) I choose to review:

Mrs. Spit Spouts Off, by The Grammatical Goddess herself, Mrs. Spit.

Firstly, the quickfire version:

In a nutshell?

Mrs. Spit Spouts Off is a blog about infertility, loss and the grief of losing her newborn son, Gabriel, born too early at only 26 weeks due to severe pre-eclampsia. Oh, and though it all, the Punctuation Queen has kindly educated us all about the correct use of the language that I, personally, see fit to tear to shreds on a regular basis.

The clever search terms version? Geepers, I always feel like I’m highlighting the bad points of each blogger’s reproductive careers in this section:

Infertility, Pre-eclampsia, Premature Birth, Neonatal Death, Loss, Grief, Reflections, Grammar, Etiquette, Knitting, Politics, Religion.

In more detail:

Again, I shall not over-revise Mrs. Spit’s history (In case I stuff it up. Check out her blog for the story in their own words rather than my clumsy paraphrasing), but…

Mrs. Spit, in her own words pinched from her sidebar, …

” She knits, she gardens, she actually understands grammar and she buys too many shoes.

She talks about politics and religion.

She’s wife to Mr. Spit, mum to 2 dogs, 2 cats and a baby boy Gabriel, born 15 weeks too soon, in December 2007, as a result of severe pre-eclampsia.”

Mrs. Spit writes absolutely beautifully about the experience of losing of her son, Gabriel, picking up the pieces in the aftermath, coping with grief and many other matters.

Oh, and I mean it about the grammar.

Care to read?

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….

Want to see YOUR blog featured? Like to be in my blogroll? Let me know in the comments section below and I’ll gleefully add you, after all a girl can never have too many hyperlinks in her sidebar.

Still with the bum references.

This post may, if you prefer your language on the slightly saltier side, be alternatively entitled ‘I do not give a hemorrhoidal rats rectum how you think you feel LS, I’m REALLY tired. You know, the kind of tired you get when you’ve had a total of six hours sleep in the last two days and counting’.

Except that’s a bit too long, isn’t it?

Perhaps ‘When the Hershey Highway encounters unexpected (pointy) angered northbound traffic’ would not be out of the question?

Or, even, ‘Kitchens: A veritable treasure trove of hitherto-undiscovered torture implements just begging for their own Explanatory Infomercial’. You could get a free set of steak knives with every thumbscrew. Buy an Iron Maiden, get one free. Special offer!

In other words, dear reader, my own personal ass-hol-eh continues to drive me moderately insane with his ongoing protests of dying fatigue when he doth finally emerge from the bed he’s been slothfully lying in all damn day to ‘catch up’ after a busy night spent prodding and poking his poor damn wife in the face, boobs, upper body and (once) even nostrils when she has the temerity to roll onto her back and, you know, snore just a little because she is so bloody goddamned tired already.

My airway patencey becomes borderline when I’m utterly shagged out, yes, and I may as a result make a noise like only a teeny-tiny truck or a petite jet-engine coasting through the bedroom, but for feck’s sake, the man has earplugs in and he’s been married to the sonorous yours truly for several years now.

It isn’t a new development, but the Bloody Prodfest is.

I don’t like that sort of behavior when I’ve spent a Fuzzy Brained day downing coffee like a thirsty desert rescuee in a failed bid to stop the godawful yawning and feel remotely human, complete with Extreme Solo Twin Wrangling. Especially when the Solo aspect of the Wrangling comes courtesy of a certain person on annual leave, no less, pissing about in bed all day and glued to the pay TV once awake.

In case you were curious as to the extreme element, I spent much of the day chasing a naked Saag AND  Naan around the house and oftentimes futilely trying to stop them crawling through each other’s wee, or worse, poo.

 The poor buggers both have some nasty Spotty Botty, the prescription for which Chez MII is a Good Airing (never fails me but is damn hard on the reflexes, needless to say), but oh how my carpets do suffer the consequences when I’m tired and Slow On The Uptake.

In other words, my beloved sh!t woke me up about six times an hour last night between those heady hours of midnight and three am when I personally like to indulge in a little REM mixed in with some slow wave sleep, just for kicks.

Oh, and then if that wasn’t enough, I’ve gone and acquired a nasty urinary tract infection.

Hands up those who were also up three times an hour since three am with the burning desire to urinate, only to pass a pointless teaspoon of widdle on each occasion with a sensation not un-akin to as if some nasty sod had filled one’s bladder with razor blades while you weren’t looking?

See, kids, I told you se.x was a bad idea. Stuff pregnancy as the thing to be afeared of, it’s the pissing barbed wire I find most terrifying.

Fortunately, given my current fatigue and mood, I don’t think I’m going to be having much of the provoking activity in the near future so here’s hoping the gods of ur.al do their thing today and I sleep tonight.

Wish me luck.

PS. New pictures up at Terrible Twosome. One of you very politely nudged me that it had indeed been some time and small people do tend to change over nearly half a year.

PSS. Spellchecker is doing the ‘ing’ thing again and glueing words together. I may have missed a few in the Swear-ey Unsticking that followed. Ass-hol-eh to THAT, too.

PSSS. Next up. BOTW. Much belated, again.

Ass-hol-eh.

Dear Long Suffering,

Yes, the Indian Takeaways do sleep through (praise bloody be).

But unfortunately due to a small manufacturing fault, their personal definition of ‘through’ runs from approximately 7pm to anywhere between a heady 5 and 6.30 am.

Because you (and I for that matter, I shall accept some of the blame here) churlishly often refuse to go to bed when the Tiny Tyrants see fit to conk out for their Big NighNighs after a busy day chock full of Frazzling Mama’s Nerves by Getting Into Stuff and going suspiciously quiet until I catch onto the fact that I have one child crawling happily through a puddle of toilet duck (the bog roll, in case you wondered, UNrolled with glee all over the bathroom floor, we’re going through that stuff like a very localised dysentry outbreak has hit), while the other takes advantage of the distraction to merrily attempt to continue teething on the power cords for the telly.

In other words, I go to bed damn tired, even if I do not ‘work’ all day four days of the week.

So, before I murder you, could we please stop with this painful charade of pretending not to hear Naan’s strident Good Morning Screeches on the mornings that you are NOT working? Also, could do me a solid just once in a blue moon, please, by getting the little buggers up and feeding them?

I’d simply just about kill for a lie-in by now. I am Not a Morning Person, LS.

I shall in actuality kill for real if you One More Time wait until I am already fully up, drinking copious coffee, bottles warmed and children happily slurping to make the Grand Gesture of offering me a lie in.

It’s too bloody late by then. Really. You see, so we a quite clear on lie-in etiquette, the major difference between a thoughtful gesture and an empty one is the execution, LS.

Now excuse this twitching eyelid, won’t you? I seem to be more than a little murderous this morning.

Also, no I shan’t be staying up tonight to ‘hang’. May I respectfully decline on the grounds of prior engagement? I already have a sparrow’s fart date with Saag and Naan the following morning. You don’t seem to, I note.

Sigh.

Yours (ass-hole-eh)

Geohde.

Panhypo-proctrastination.

Dear Internet,

Please don’t dob me in to those I teach, but I’m meant to be preparing something suitably clever about the good old hypothalamic-pituitary-end organ of your choice axis and the various fun ways in which it goes pear from time to time.

Briefly, because I really should get back to it, depending on the glandy-pair involved, you get problems ranging from:

• Epilator, where for art thou?
• Why having no pubes is eerie on a forty year old, after all, and the brazilian industry should quit it already,
• How to tan in all sorts of clever places without the aid of sunlight,
• Blood pressure, only required if you want to get out of horizontal, but don’t worry about that because the myopathy means you probably can’t get out of bed,
• Stretch marks, not just for the knocked up,
• When Overly Square Jaws Go Wrong,
• Bitemporal hemianopia is Absolutely Bad For Driving, and, my personal favourite,
• Prolactinomas, now he can feed the baby, too.

Sigh.

So, if you shall excuse me, I think I have to improve upon my clearly fading grasp of all things involving a feedback loop.

I don’t think I’m going to get away with a simple ‘If certain hormones all with clever acronyms go up too much, that’s bad, and if they go down too much, that’s also officially Not Good’. Oh, and ‘Page Endo’.

Lastly, because I fully believe in giving credit where it is due, LS (sensing the Spousal Ice Age) ended up getting me Fried Crap for breakfast yesterday. Although mildly unfortunately since everybody else’s Male Half was busy doing the same thing it was nearly lunchtime by the time I got it in my greedy hands. As a bonus item I got a blissful twenty minute shower (uninterrupted by screeching, no less) while the dear man also took the spawn out for a walk to purchase some fresh milk.

I had been wondering about the odd stiffness to the froth on my coffee and the unusually sour taste. It turns out the stuff was practically on the march on accounts of being nearly a week post expiry.

Details, gotta love ‘em. They’re forever my weakness it would seem.

Schmothers’ Day.

Welcome to Mothers’ Day, MII style.

It’s safe to enter, don’t worry.

There will be no flowery discussion of my beautifully fulfilled life with multiple blessings and how I am now complete, happy, and about to generally gambol off surrounded by butterflies in a field of daises while puppy dogs and kittens look on approvingly. You shall not, in other words, require an emesis bag to negotiate this post.

I just felt the urge to discuss the Hallmark eleph.ant in the room.

I do not think revealing that I live in a nation that choose to celebrate a Certain (heavily commercialised, inevitably) Day on the second Sunday in may is precisely a great revelation.

According to wikipedia, many of us do.

Although not, it would seem, the good people of Malawi, Belarus, Nicaragua and the United Kingdom (who instead see fit to actually celebrate it on a day that has some grounding in Real History).

Also according to Wiki, rather unsurprisingly Schmothers’ Day is an entirely made up holiday.

Mildly startlingly not by the clever marketing geniuses at Hallmark, but by one Anna Jarvis, condemning generations of beleaguered menfolk into trotting their ageing matriarch out to a plastic lunch somewhere not already fully booked out by similarly guilty spawn at least once a year.

Incidentally, Mz Jarvis spent her dying days campaigning against the Gift Card Industry monster she created.

In light of the above brief goo.gle, it is perhaps apropos that I could hang a huge ‘nothing to see here’ sign on the blog.

If you were imagining a veritable orgy of well-rested, groomed, un-dressing-gowned happiness, complete with a feast of cooked breakfast, surrounded by rose petals, and (since it is my fantasy), clean non-screaming children, an emptied dishwasher, washing on the line, and a doting spouse, well.

I hate to burst your bubble, but you should probably try another blog.

Here’s how I’m celebrating my first Big Day.

It all started last night, when reminded by a friend that Today Was Special and we couldn’t catch up for lunch on accounts of her husband was planning to Generally Pamper her (My response….oh, so that’s why there’s more flowers, big pink chocolate boxes and a general plethora of Ribbons on Shit  in the supermarket exit aisle lately)…

Armed with the Hot Tip that I was due a break, at bedtime I hopefully sidled up to LS to try my luck, visions of sleep-in, breakfast-in-bed and the like at the fore of my tiny mind. Only to be rapidly dashed by the reminder that he is on call for 24 flipping hours Sunday and additionally ‘Can you do the morning feed, love? I might be up all night’.

Awesome.

I desperately made a bid for dinner that I don’t have to make myself, at the least.

Sadly, this was also deemed ‘no’ on the grounds that LS, quite reasonably it must be said, fears bodily harm if he had to abandon me and spawn halfway through it right at the point where they usually merrily indulge in a bit of food flinging and loaded-mouth raspberries.

Nobody likes sprayed tomato sauce down their front followed by a walk home in the dark.

Ah well.

So, as usual, I woke up at the crack of proverbial this morning when the Nasa-level sensitive retinas of Saag and Naan detect through closed shutters and eyelids a single measly photon of daylight and being yelling.

Myself, blind as a bat without my four.eyes and decent light, did the usual instep-lacerating Dance of the Scattered toys through the small landmine of the bloody things that fills the passage-way every morning to their room and began the day in it’s usual Symphony of Four Shrieks.

Let me explain further:

• First shrieking….get me the hell out of bed, already (Naan)
• Second Miiiiiiiillllkkkk! Now (also Naan)
• Third shrieking…get me the hell out of this rocker! (um, Naan. Pattern, much?)
• Fourth shrieking…Nann, the feisty moppet protesting hugely at the brief loss of visual contact, predictably shrieking as she does every morning when her poor mother takes five minutes to sit on the can and perform some more, um, evacuative functions before she explodes. No pressure there.

The fourth is usually accompanied by a chorus of ‘Mama’s doing poopies, okay Mama gives up, there’s always tomorrow.’

I may be literally full of sh!t by now.

Anyway.

I sat down (children happily slurping on milk and briefly thankfully quiet) to check email and blogs because it’s too bleeding early to do anything else. I realised I was feeling a little on the scratchy side.

It appears that I also forgot to shave for the occasion.

Actually, I think I have forgotten to shower at all in recent history judging by the feel of my hair.

As a bonus item, since I was feeling all racy yesterday (read had to work and therefore look like less like pallid death) I’m covered in well-distributed mascara.

Thus my darling spouse when he eventually surfaces, shall be  greeted by a grey-clad, mildly smelly, spew stained dressing-gowned, panda-eyed fright with a deathly dangerous sharp, spiky cooch, no less.

Happy Mothers’ Day, Internet.

Seriously, kid.

Dear Saag (eldest of the Indian Takeaways),

Consider this an open letter from your loving but ever so slightly frazzled around the edges maternal parental unit. Yeah, you can call me “MuhMuhMuuuuuuuuuhhhh!’ if you must, just listen up for a bit, okay?

I shall take your silence as assent and continue forthwith, lest I lose my advantage. I have a list, if it helps you to focus. I’m all organised like that.

Child of my heart, quit it, kid. Let me count the ways:

1. Please cease and desist from insisting on standing upright in your cot and cruising around the entire thing repeatedly at naptime. Firstly, because I bet by now your lap time is about as good as it’s going to get, and secondly because you will find it very hard indeed to go to sleep already in that position. You can’t sleep in standing, kid, you are not a horse. Trust me.
2. Also, was it really essential to projectile vomit over the edge of the damn thing this morning far enough to splatter poor innocent (and sleeping, take note) Naan on the other side of the room? I could cheerfully live without that one.
3. Keep your clothes on in bed, please. Whilst it is mildly amusing to chase a naked baby around her cot at eleven pm trying to reapply pyjamas lest you freeze to death overnight, it is not quite so funny to notice that there is p-o-o nuggets keeping your toes warm. Also, you are not a rabbit, so please don’t think about sampling your own produce, my stomach cannot take that one. Smearing is also not okay, but preferable I suppose.
4. I admire your early vocational interest in dentistry, really I do, but could you refrain from giving your poor parents (and sibling) rather disgusting auto-wet-willies by jamming your index finger in our earholes after you’ve finished molesting our oral cavities?
5. Please, for the love of sweet gravitational attraction, could you stop climbing anything that doesn’t either crawl off and cry (your sister), or alternatively, fall over (some furniture) before you acquire a head injury? Yes, I have noticed that you seem to find your playgym a particularly entertaining venue from which to escape. I managed to get photographic evidence the last time you mysteriously ended up outside it, so I know I am thankfully not in actuality dementing, and you mountain-goat out of the damn thing when you think I can’t see you. Yes, I dobbed you in to your father, too, so don’t expect sympathy from that front.

Capiche?

Quit it, kid, and I’ll cancel the bulk duct tape order. I’m going grey down to the short hairs.

Geohde.

Agony Aunt, edition 16.

Getting drunk for the first time and puking in a handy wastepaper bin at a heady room-spinning sixteen, it’s time for Agony Aunt to trot out The Cranky at the things people type into Goog.le. Because they end up HERE, and I object whole, fat, lotso.

Oh, and before I begin gleefully assulting your retinas with my latest misdirected gems, may I just briefly (with appropriately flaming cheeks of contrition, because apparently my ass DOES look paranoid in a URL cloaker) apologise to the very kind blogger who fessed up even after all that misdirected cross stuff?

Deeply sorry I am, because it turns out that there are entirely legitimate reasons for a URL like hide.refer to pop up in my stats package from time to time. Like peacefully reading my blog.

I honestly thought I was calling out one of those rather wearisome cyber-stalker types, really I did. To be honest, I feel a bit like you’ve just caught me on the tail-spin of a rather juvenile hearty poop-fling, Angry Monkey Style.

Ahem.

Shall we say no more?

….and so it begins again. I decide that I cannot let Goog.le proclaim me the font of all knowledge with regard to ‘exhasperated follicles’ and the misspelled (and perpetually confused) like without a little more than a small sigh of resignation and mutterings about bloody spellchecking already, PLEASE.

As always, click on the button for previous editions of my snark advice to the frequently illiterate. Or click on the Bad Google tab at the top to see a more comprehensive list of what can only be described as Really Dumb Stuff.

 

 

• why to you exasperate all follicles duri
• posterior sweet fu.ck squits
• inserting stiletto heel into urethra
• penis in the uterus pictures
• how to fu.ck to make pregnant.
• pregnancy fu.ck position.
• bad days fu.ck for avoid pregnancy
• negative beta and I am pregnant.

 

 

Item #1 (Why to you exasperate all follicles duri….):

Because only a truly p!ssedoff follicle contains a grown-up eggey-poo?

Sigh.

Okay, dear vowel-challenged individual, I’m going to roll with your humorously bad spelling and pretend I didn’t notice it in the least. What snorting at my monitor could you possibly be referring to? I’m much too grown-up to do that to the plight of the presumed owner of a dictionary that met with a horrible accident.

Anyway.

You ‘exasperate’ all the follicles during egg retrieval because you’re paying mucho dollars to make a baby and the more eggs you get, the better over all.

Why spend all that cash on sweet, sweet FSH only to leave some behind?

Also, put really, really simply ‘in vitro’ fertilisation means fertilisation outside of the body, whereas ‘in vivo’ is what happens if you don’t exasperate anything and se.x works for you in that regard. But mostly you’re getting to the ‘in vitro’ bit precisely because shagging your brains out failed.

You can’t avoid the exasperation, lovvie.

Item # 2 (posterior sweet fu.ck squits, AND inserting stiletto heel into urethra):

Um. I know that on the surface of it, there is little in common with posterior squits and urethral footwear, but will the two of you forgive me for dealing with these items together?

Oh, my.

I truly wish I did not possess an unusually vivid imagination right now.

But thank you for showing me that I’m still good for the odd Kin.ky Po.rn hit. I’ll be sure to tell Long Suffering that I’m not entirely Sexua.l Whitebread after all.

Item # 3 (penis in the uterus pictures):

That’s plain old greedy, you know.

Even if you’ve got a whopper of a ding-dong, Sonny Jim, no lady wants it THAT far north. I promise you, no matter what you might hear in certain blue movies.

Additionally, I entreat you to learn a little bit about female anatomy, and specifically how a structure that goes by the handle of ‘cervix’ should stop the above painful-sounding scenario from ever happening.

Item # 4 (how to fu.ck to make pregnant AND pregnancy fu.ck position):

Again, dear goog.lers, let me risk offence by dealing with two of you at once.

Did that just sound a little bit kinky to you, too? Or is all the dirty search terms only making ME feel like I should go and wash something?

Regardless, I’ve covered this item before.

For best results, try her vag.ina until ej.aculation. Simple! Well, for most people, anyway.

Item # 5 (negative beta and I am pregnant):

Again, I wonder just how I became a beacon of inappropriate hope for the definitively not pregnant who just can’t take it without asking goo.gle to prove their intuition right.

I’ve covered this before here, and here.

No, you’re not pregnant.

I’ll say it again, just so we’re all quite clear, except in instances where you’re either not very good at counting OR you don’t know when you ovulated and you’re really less than, say, about-ish 9-12 days post ovulation and your little bun has yet to get all cozy in that oven of yours, a negative beta means you should not be buying booties just yet.

Really.

Item # 6 (bad days fu.ck for avoid pregnancy):

Try contraception. You might like it.

Additionally, have you met item #4?

I suggest you don’t shag them.

G

Does my ass look paranoid in this URL cloaker?

Dear English-reading-world with both access to a computer and the good or bad fortune (depending on how one looks at it) of discovering this merry URL,

Hi!

Enthusiastic waves of greeting and big sh!t-eating grins for all, I positively insist, as long as nobody sprains anything in the process.

Welcome, so lovely to see you all here Chez MII.

I aim to be a good host, and in that vein may I cordially invite you to do please pull up a virtual chair, pour an imaginary coffee from the ever-simmering pot and grab a zero-calorie pretend donut as you read?

We’re all friends here, and I’m sure if you think you might know me outside of the clicky box with Internet access, that you’d be kind and tactful enough to not, say, extensively peruse my archives. Because I like to flatter myself that nobody I know would do something, well, stalkerish or plain old spying. Right?

Right?

You know, dear Mystery Person, the way I’m feeling (since you’re clearly reading what I’ve felt and shared with a community I’ve come to trust over several years now) is kinda analogous to if you’d taken a fancy to peeking through my bedroom curtains at night,  examining the contents of my underwear drawer or rummaging through my trash can all in order to see what I get up to in private.

Oh, and feel free to use hidereferer to cloak your URL, because subtlety is always the key to a good lookey-loo for something positively juicy, right?

I wouldn’t want you to put a big red flashing light on your head and a foghorn that says ‘I’m Spying!’ while you do it. That might be kinda obvious even for a chronically tired dolt like my humble self.

Yes, I see you in other words.

This post, dear Black Cloaked Nosey Parker could alternatively be entitled a letter of ‘please explain?’

So, um, well?

The first time I noticed your inneresting encroachments upon this humble domain, I chalked it up to one of my more exotic po.rn searchers feeling all shy about their unquenchable appetite for gems like ‘inserting stiletto heel into urethra’ and getting here by random act of goo.gle. But, it’s happened more than once now, so unless I am considerably more titillating than I ever thought I could be, this seems an unlikely scenario.

There are a positive dearth of footwear related jollies Chez MII, I promise you.

So, dear reader of mystery, I’m giving you a chance to politely bugger off if you really shouldn’t be reading. By the way, in case you’re not sure if this means YOU, the litmus test for that one is if I haven’t told you about the URL I don’t really want you eating my pretend donuts. Also, if it comes to it there are ways and means of finding out where you’re really coming from and I feel it is probably only fair to tell you that. I have other tricks up my sleeve to cross-reference your IPof origin. Heck, I could just password the entire blog, too. Your party cannot last, dear mysteryperson.

But, before you go, I have one departing paragraph for you, so read up: 

There are no really juicy details here that if you did not know me well enough you wouldn’t already be aware of, I am not a complicated person. I deeply love my spouse and wake up ever day feeling lucky I married him, he is still the kindest, sweetest man I know who has incidentally put up with all my rubbish over the years and stood strong when we went through the hell of infertility and excruciatingly painful loss. Yes, I had an a.bortion once, but it was one of the hardest choices I had to make and in the end it really wasn’t a choice because, dear nosey parker if you don’t know me well enough to know about this in real life I’ll save you the archive peruse, my first baby had a particularly nasty unquestionably lethal birth defect. My children, now that I am lucky enough to have them, are the very centre of my universe. I am punctual to a fault, diligent with my work and always looking out for others to the best of my limited ability. I pay my bills and taxes, on time. I may be a colossal dork with an incurably tactless mouth, too, but we all have our cross to bear, so please forgive me that. I also like my privacy, and I hope you can see my desire in that regard is not unreasonable.

I wouldn’t do it to YOU.

Oh, and if this is all one big, fat mistake, wave ‘hello’, eh? So very sorry to have startled you like that. My ass apparently DOES look paranoid in this URL cloaker.

Have a coffee, on the house,

xo

G