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Moving…the other side.

You may be idly pondering, between figuring out what to do with all the gift wrap left lying around after a veritable present opening orgy, ‘How did the move go for Geohde avec twins at the Silly Season?’. Perhaps. Maybe you’re enjoying your Christmas instead rather more than I am. The move, searching for something positive to say, went.

Fairly rapidly, actually. The Big Men With Truck had us out and in within three sweaty hours.

But.

The wrinkles it has given me shall require the Ponds Institute to really get cracking on a solution rather better than their current set.

 I hate moving.

 HATE it.

To be completely clear as to how I feel, I lothe with passion reserved for root canals, tax audits, tin-shaking charity collections when imprisoned at red traffic lights, and end of shift requests to review a patient with new rectal bleeding because I’m going to have to stick my finger up their bum and then go home and eat.

Anyway. I got distracted there for a minute. Many apologies.

Lest I forget the ongoing horror, the NEXT TIME I talk about moving house, remind me of this post, will you?

In summary, the new house = lovely. Well the constructed bits are.

Unfortunately we still have no mirrors, paint seems to be an optional extra despite it being firmly in the contract, and just for kicks nobody actually connected any hot water to the bathrooms.

Invigorating cold showers it is Chez MII until the plumber gets back from their yearly holiday somewhere where the temperature of water isn’t a problem. Arsehole.

At least there is one problem we shan’t have. Bathroom Issues. Add to the two thirty-something pack of bog rolls I brought to stuff the new house with (painful lesson learned on another move), all the rolls from the old place and, well, it’s safe to have your attack of dysentery here.

I hate moving house.

Of Bandaids and Vodka

A conversation between Geohde and friend via the electric telephone this very morning:

 

Geohde:  Fuck. Settlement on house done. Owe bank firstborn child and future happiness now. Now can somebody please tell me why I have visions of the fecking builders who, by the way have yet to FINISH unless you consider grout in tiles and mirrors in bathrooms elective items (I’m much too vain for that), diving and merrily swimming and generally sodding gambolling happily in a giant pool full of my hard-earned moulah? Bet they’re using it to light cigars, too. Pricks.

Friend: Why, fuck. That’s clearly shite. I hate to be aggressively reasonable or Captain Obvious for this one, but may I enquire why did you pay them?

Geohde: Because of Clause 50 million in subclause five hundred and forty kazillion in the print only readable with a microsocpe at a gibbous moon in the back of the contract in invisible ink that says ‘Certificate of occupancy (issued by aforementioned fuckers who are as we speak making daisy chains with my cash) = must pay or Thou Shall Be In Default. Sucker.’ Even if ‘occupancy’ status is debatable.

They pointed that one out last week with great satisfaction, furthermore I swear one of them made a money sign and sniggered in the background.

Geohde: ‘Oh, and as bonus item, empty house full of shiny steal-able goodies over silly season ripe for picking for those who would like free upgrade status on their dishwasher.’

Friend: ‘Ah. Yes. I can make a firm diagnosis of  ‘you’re fucked’. Does that help?’

Geohde:  ‘Knowing my luck….no’

Freind: ‘Hmm..’

Geohde:  ‘…..so have booked truck for Saturday.’

Friend: ‘Whaaaaa…THIS Sat? After xmas Sat? Not, say, mid January Sat? They have at least four in January for you to choose from, you know.’

Geohde: ‘I figured perhaps it was like ripping a bandaid off fast versus slow.’

Friend: ‘I see…and the twins..?’

Geohde:  (nothing like going for broke in fits of optimism) ‘Yes, thanks for that! You ARE their favourite Honorary Babysitting Auntie.’

Friend: ’Um. I have legitimate employment Saturday. I can come after 3pm to watch your spawn vomit, is that any good?’

Geohde: ‘Yes! If only for vodka drinking company if all goes pear.’

Friend: ‘My advice would be to pack it last on the top of a box then.’

Geohde: ‘Pack it? It’ll be in a hip flask, mate…’

 

I may go quiet for a while, Internet! Merry Christmas.

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Brief missives from the Land Of Bah Humbug…

Otherwise entitled One Should Absolutely Not Go Grocery Shopping Anywhere Between December and, say, March.

Especially if you want to find a carparking space within an hour’s route march of the bloody shopping centre anyway. With twins. AND public nimrods stopping you every twenty metres with the usual daft questions.

Sigh.

I shan’t say any more on the matter other than to remark that my fridge is now rather well stocked with the makings of a truly gluttonous celebration. So is my drinks cabinet. Fortunately. Sometimes I need a drink or fifty, especially at this time of year. Especially when it was on par with a particularly vicious rugby scrum to beat down the competition for that last bloody pudding with fruity bits in.

Humbug, I tell you. Humbug!

Anyway, in other matters far more superficialimportant, I found a way to stop at least one of my Spawn’s favourite games cold. The hair pulling one.

I cut it all off. Cold turkey, even.

Honestly. I had positively enough, and being a woman who knows her own mind (and rather a bloody minded one to boot), I got on with it.

I just waltzed into a random bargain basement salon and uttered ‘Off with my hair!’

I’m actually quite pleased with the result given the dodgy environs I was shorn in, and if you’re all really really curious I can post my best left handed camera operation of the results. With a suitable password, of course, not the usual one. To whet your appetite I shall merely observe that I don’t even need to own a hairbrush anymore. Pull that you little buggers (Spawn Of Mine and not you, Internet).

Here’s the kicker.

Would you believe the hairdresser had twins, too?

After the obligatory twenty minutes spent discussing shared pet peeves about feeling like a public zoo/freak show and how it is NOT okay for strangers to pet our progeny without at least asking first (especially whilst holding a cigarette in one hand or coughing), I thought she’d get on with it.

But no.

Apparently hairdressers are worse than the dentist who likes to cheerily supply both sides of the conversation while happily investigating you cavities. A question for you, Internet, are they all so dis-inhibited or is it just me who strikes gold?

To make my point further, I can tell you all  the gory details about her delivery experience and to be honest I’m not even sure what her first name is. Does anything about that strike you as odd, even slightly?

Because it wasn’t the dentist after all, I had to attempt to reciprocate, but it was hard, hard work. I love to talk about my babies as much as the next obsessed mother, but 50 minutes for a twenty minute clipper job was pushing it. I nearly resorted to Poo Talk.

Sigh. I am a social retard, I know. I must be.

Saag and Naan go to the slammer…

….and hopefully it’s the last time they ever do.

I hope.

Please don’t tell me the horror stories of what teenagers get up to which may end up in this wish being comprehensively ruined. I may just have to put both fingers in my earholes and sing ‘Lalala’ until you give up and go away if you do.

So there.

Now, with a title as salacious as this one, I better get on with explaining just what it is two four months olds can do to attract the attention of The Law. After all I don’t think there’s any statutes to breach with respect to the following items:

• Provocatively naughty, and in the interests of full disclosure, slightly irritating massive dumps taken right after a particularly messy nappy change. Even if they do seem to smile with what I like to think is ‘I know what I’m doing and I know it’s cheeky’ grins while they do it. Clearly they’re too young to deliberately Shit On My Parade, yes?
• Looking deep and meaningfully into my eyes as they grunt and intermittently flush in their expulsive efforts.
• Having overflow crap run down their leg and swiping a hand through it before Mama notices. Then putting it on her face in cheery greeting.
• Vomiting all over their parental units in manners and locations too innumerable to describe further (Power Chuck, Cheeky Little Puke Down Mama’s Back, Sly Spew in Cot Overnight So Are Ringed In Chuck Come The Morning Feed, The Spew That Keeps Going And Going Just When I Think It Might Have Stopped, The Vomit On The Carpet, The Vomit At Nappy Change Time, The Vomit They Chew Back Down With Every Sign Of Enjoying It….you get the idea).

Anyway, to be honest, the reality was rather more mundane. Put simply, we had a billion bits of red tape (for mortgage acquisition thereof) that needed witnessing. By a Judge, Doctor, Pharmacist, Cop etc (and no, LS and I were not allowed to be witness to each other’s signature. Apparently signing off on your spouse counts as cheating. Spoilsports).

I didn’t think I had misplaced a convenient judge in my jeans pocket lately, so that option was out.

Pharmacists usually sneer and refuse to do the helpful thing these days because they don’t get paid for it. I guess that’s not unreasonable. I’d prefer to issue prescriptions for simvastatin, too. Our local cop shop was conveniently closed….

…..prompting me to bitterly observe that why oh why in one of the more crime-ridden neighbourhoods of my city are the police leaving work at 4pm every day? It’s not like the criminals keep their activities carefully to 9 am to 4 pm. Quite the converse in my experience….

…So we went to the police station in a rather nicer part of town, where they do open late. Of course.

We took the babies with us, by this time (8pm) snuggled up in their sleep sacks. I did tell Naan rather loudly that if she had sins to confess and she was honest about them now, they might just let her off with a night in the cells. Otherwise, she’d have to see the judge in the morning.

The policeman was carefully Not Amused. But he did sign our documents.

The face game.

Saag and Naan here, Internet. Listen up because we’re hungry and in somewhat of a rush. Plus we’ll be in trouble if we get any spew in the keyboard. Mama hates that.

We have a new game.

Oh, yes, we do.

We like to coo until Mama puts her face nice and near. Then we go for the glasses, the hair in as many clumps as we can rend asunder, and the eyeballs (of course only if we achieve our dastardly goal with regard to removing and flinging with enthusiasm around the room item ‘glasses’).

It’s a great  game, Internet.

Especially the high favour we impart on Mama by heavily slobbering our paws in as much juicy saliva as we can manage and then shoving them in her gob.

Internet, we wondered if you could help explain the following….why doesn’t she seem to like that part? And are we possibly the reason she went and cut off all that stuff we like to pull on?

Just wondering, Internet.

Now we were never here, okay?

Yes, I know.

Dear Babies,

May I, your ever patient Mama, please gently clear the air with regard to your utilisation of extremities?

• Yes, I know you’ve only recently worked out that your arms are in fact yours and things you do with them have real-world effect, like for example, putting anything within reach that does not have the good sense to move away rapidly into your ever-damp yell-holes.
• Yes, I realise this is supremely slurpy fun, especially with regard to items such as your sibling’s unguarded body parts, your own clothing, bedding, discarded socks and the like.
• Yes, it is even cute the you regard me highly enough to share the soggy joy by enthusiastically chewing your hands and then shoving the dripping result in my mouth. Or up my nose.

But.

Enough is enough, oh spawn of mine.

For the love of g-d, please, please, PLEASE stop repeatedly substituting your hands for the bottle at chow time and then screaming at me in pissed fury when the milk stops.

Much love,

Your Mother.

Humbug!

Really.

I’ll even throw in the ‘bah’ in front, just for the sake of completeness.

I’m pissed, dear Internet.

Yes, this time I believe with provocation.

Here’s what has happened to Chez MII in the last, say, 36 hours:

• Routine update email from developer with regard to new digs for the Spewy Clan has sudden change of slated completion date from March to end December.
• Cue shocked ‘eek!’. No truck book, no finance organised, no notice given here. Um. Surely they wouldn’t move completion up three months without more notice? Was planning to organise all the red tape after the silly season.
• Querying the email, politely, about whether this was a typo results in a curt reminder that legally developer are not required to tell us anything but out two week final notice.
• Send quick riposte back that had they realised that this WOULD in fact be two weeks, given it’s already, you know, mid December and all.
• Hear nothing.
• Get formal word from our solicitor that pricks have filed settlement- our two weeks is now ticking.
• Swear creatively….

The fuckers. Pardon my French, but I’m fairly sure we won’t have our finance in time now, and who wants to take bets that they’re rushing it through so that Father Christmas can give all the builders a nice, fat bonus courtesy of the Geohde Household?

Additionally, I drove by and to me it looks far from complete. I emailed them again with regard to this and received a charming missive pointing out that sub-clause xyz says it doesn’t have to be, as long as they pinky promise to finish it eventually.

Can Is say it again? Fuckers!

Roses really smell like what?

I’m assuming you all know the song to which I refer.

If you don’t, it’s a rather charming ditty. Not. I nearly clean fell over the first time I heard ‘poo-o-oo-oooh’ crooned lovingly on the radio. I mean, honestly?

I have a point, albeit a brief one (being all snowed under with Other Matters here Chez MII. Well as snowed under as one gets in the southern hemisphere at this time of year. Perhaps I mean NOT snowed under).

But I digress.

Saag did a real stinker of a you-can-guess-what today. It was absolutely, without a doubt, one of the most horrific smells I’ve ever smelled wafting out of the confines of a nappy. I’ve smelled a lot of bad smells in the last four months. I know of what I speak.

Even her father recoiled in horror when presented with a full on assault on his nasal passages of his firstborn daughter’s stinky arse . Yes, I waved her butt under his nose without warning. That act probably breached some international convention with regards to the use of biological warfare, because honestly I am struggling to describe the full horror. It smelled like something died in there. Last winter.

Anyway, my mother in law also called today and I recounted my Stinky Butt tale (yes, I live a life of high excitement, I know). Her reply?

‘I always loved the smell of my children’s faeces!’

Well, most emphatically, not this little black duck. Hope that doesn’t make me a Bad Mother, but I never want to smell that particular odour again.

Ever.

Uncharitable.

Perhaps it’s the impending season of bah-humbug-gimmicky-gift-giving-for-the-sake-of-obligation, otherwise known in more polite circles as Christmas at work.

You know, the season that all Entities Commercial merrily exploit in order to ruthlessly wring  every penny they can out of our poor moth-eaten wallets, armed with the aid of Flashy Ads On The Television. The ads that we all succumb to when thinking desperately ‘What the fuck do I get for Aunt Flora, since I haven’t seen her in about twenty bazillion years anyway? Hang on…..I know ten kinds of shite she’ll never use, a knife set, bath salts, a shoulder massager, an epilator, AND a foot spa! Brilliant!’.

Socially awkward crisis averted, etc. etc.

I’m probably a little more cantankerous than usual since I’m really, really broke. Unless Aunt Flora wants a bunch of overdue phone bills and a Hail Mary, I’m all out of meaningful input. All those bloody yuletide carols the supermarket persist in playing over their PA systems notwithstanding. Really. Humbug to the lot of it.

I’ll jingle their sodding bells, just you wait, dear Internet.

I am gong somewhere with this, I think.

Today, whilst making a mercy dash for cash, otherwise known as enthusiastically claiming IN PERSON a payment owed to myself by a certain government body who could effing well just pay up already (having already negotiated the layers of red-tape placed strategically in my way by virtue of Forms. In triplicate, no less. Requiring identification numbers and codes of daft proportions), I probably did a Bad Thing.

In my efforts to sprint as fast as possible to The Money At The End Of The Loud Dispute about File Numbers, I probably shocked an innocent, underpaid spruiker. For donations to charity thereof.

Oops.

Let me explain. and then feel free to judge heavily in the comment section. Here’s what transpired:

Money-Grubber-On-Commission: ‘Hi there!!’. With bonus sh!t eating grin.

Geohde-on-a-mission: ‘Yes?’

MGOC: ‘How are you feeling today?’. Prominently in front of picture of presumably starving masses in Africa.

Geohde: ‘Distictly uncharitable”.

MGOC: ‘………’. Look of startled shock.

For what it is worth, poor student on commission in a distinctly crappy job, I am sorry. I was honest, instead of tactful. Shall work much harder on lying politely next time.

Blurp!

Or perhaps gulp, gargle, spit-up with enthusiasm, and then just for kicks happy gurgling on the remaining partly digested milk in the mouth. Yum.

I’m talking about Mz Naan and her pathetically useless lower esophageal sphincter. Naan likes to regurgitate. She’s bloody good at it.

I usually wear the fragrant aroma of several efforts on her part by midday. We go through about five bibs a day.

Sometimes, to be completely honest, I wonder if we’re actually achieving net throughput given her weight gain remains so measly. The Determined Foot Stamping Titch still fits in newborn clothes at four months of age would you believe.

Ah well.

At least I have made the serendipitous discovery that the sucking stimulated by a well applied dum-dum at such times will result in re-swallowing of aforementioned milky vomitus.

Waste not, want not, right? Even if it does sound a little bit revolting, it saves a re-feed.

I did suggest to the fellow Mother of a Puker Extrodinaire that we should let the two of them go at it in an enclosed space, Vomit-to-Vomit, and crown the least coated infant the winner in Spewfest 2008, but she (alas) politely declined.

Ah well. There’s always next year.

Yes, I did.

It’s probably kind of obvious that I like to write.

I suspect it’s very obvious that the material I enjoy writing the most has a certain element of square-peg-in-a-round-hole, travelling-up-on the-down-escalator kind of bloody minded sideways quirk to the world at large.

Yes, I fully confess I am a slightly awkward soul, but despite this handicap I have no trouble whatsoever getting my point across.

Although I AM quite sure I cause vaguely horrified bemusement in others who are rather more conventionally polite all the time. Just revisit my charming letter to my desired ISP.

Yes, I really sent that.

Yes, I did get several shocked sounding phone calls from people escalatingly senior in their company (as it made it’s inexorable way up the food chain) over that one.  It was even fun.

See? No trouble at all expressing my needs here Chez MII. I don’t just whine to my computer. I Get Things Done one porcupine of a communication at a time.

With all of that in mind I am sure the following brief communication which was lovingly taped to the lid of my overstuffed garbage bin shall be no surprise.

To set the scene, the local bloody garbos had only had a half-arsed shake at emptying the darn thing each time in the last month of collection. To really set the scene I must add that the bin is small, twins produce a startling amount of shitty nappies, and it is summer where I live.

 To put it bluntly, we were up to our eyeballs in old turd Chez MII.

On that note, please enjoy my missive:

Dear Garbologists,

I am but a small bin.

Please take mercy on my sad owners and fully empty me when you visit.

I know you are busy people, and it is not your fault that I have been left half full for the last month. You were not to know that the people who attempt to slumber peacefully as you make your ungodly early rounds have twins. Twins who have yet to discover Potty Time if you get my drift.

I would simply like to lose the remaining rubbish weight I have been carrying around all this time. Quite frankly, I am worried it is starting to make my arse look big. Perhaps it’s the blowflies.

Yours sincerely,

The Bin’s Grateful Owners a.k.a The Family Drowning In An Impressive Amount Of Really Old  Shitty Nappies.

It’s the weekend.

So I shall merely observe that as I type this missive Naan is trying to tear asunder (rending limb from limb in a somewhat medieval manner) her demonic flashy eyed toy, armed solely with her mouth, hands, and lest I forget feet.

Fortunately she’s not strong enough, yet. Especially since Saag is also quite partial to aforementioned Devil Toy.

Why, only yesterday I amused myself taking a swag of photos of Naan having a hearty suck on the side of Saag’s head as a consolation prize for losing out to her bigger companion with Satan’s Stuffed Likeness. Poor Saag had a rather damp hair-do for some hours after, needless to say.

Sigh. Please tell me saliva is good for hair, yes?

I think I shall have to make a unilateral decision in favour of naptime shortly, given I rather badly need a shower (don’t ask, yes I think I smell). I don’t think it’s safe for poor Saag to be left within half a mile of her sister without some sort of fence to keep them in their respective corners or I may just return to a hickey-covered baby and a guilty looking Naan.

Tomorrow, a post with actual meaning, as opposed to this inconsiquential drivel.

BOTW, edition 5.

And so it begins again, the fifth edition of BOTW. 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 (ish, lest I ever forget. I am nothing if not scrupulously honest about my likely inability to keep strictly to my intended weekly frequency like for example, THIS week), I choose to review:

Duck’s Big ‘Ol Blog Of How To Build A Nest* (By Duck, a blogger who used to blog at another URL)

May I call you and your blog  ’Quack’, dear Duck, for the sake of this review? Otherwise there is an unnacceptably high likelihood of my mangling your blog name into unrecognisable mess, sadly. My apologies in advance.

Firstly, the quickfire version:

In a nutshell?

On the road to surrogacy, having taken heavy fire in the alleyways of IVF and cancelled transfer-ville. May this road not be unduly long and winding.

The clever search terms version?:

Endometriosis (severe), Laparoscopy, Laporotomy, Medical Treatment of Endometriosis, Surgical Treatment of Endometriosis, Frozen Pelvis, Injectibles, IUI, Cervical Factor, IVF, FET, Cancelled Transfer, Thin Lining, Vi.agra (no, not for that use), Gestational Surrgoacy.

In more detail:

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

Quack was diagnosed with advanced endometriosis at an unusually young age, being merely in her late teens. Whilst her friends were out partying, Quack got a sneak preview of menopause- complete with hot flashes- due to medical treatment of her condition. She also had a bunch of surgeries and then took the pill continuously for some years.

Back in 2005, after finding Mr Duck, Quack stopped taking the pill and waited to get pregnant. She even tried relaxing. It didn’t work.

Upon consulting with an RE, Quack discovered that there is probably a good reason she has not been conceiving despite aforementioned relaxation. Her endometriosis has quietly gone and bitten her in the bowel, the ovaries, and the uterus i.e. her pelvis is a frozen mass of scar tissue. Thank you, endometriosis.

She tried an injectible IUI cycle, but gained a bonus diagnosis along the way, becoming the resigned owner of a cervix a corkscrew would have trouble negotiating. It certainly gives her RE’s (who presumably see a lot of cervixii? cervixes? and are therefore somewhat expert on this point) more than a little difficulty.

Quack and Mr Duck move on to IVF, and unfortunately learned the hard way that injectible FSH  can cause endometriosis to become worse, because her ovaries are now riddled with endometriomas. Enter from left stage six months of medical therapy with progesterone.

By this time it is now 2008 and time to give it another burl. I think this is where I first picked up Quack’s story. Everything about this IVF was unremarkable, except for the fact that Quack’s uterus for reasons that shall remain somewhat mysterious never grew a lining. She topped out at a freeze-all-your-embryo’s 2.5mm.

After two failed attempts at an FET (including maximum estrogen and vi.agra to stimulate the uterine lining as much as possible) where things remained a No Go on the transfer front and hysteroscopic confirmation that the lining remained atrophic, Quack ended her TTC journey with her uterus.

She is now beginning anew with surrogacy and could do with some company along the bloggy way.

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.

In which I rip the unwary a new one.

Well, in which I’d like to rip the unwary a new one, if I had my druthers and rather less manners. Instead I plan to do it virtually. Or, for variety, fantasise about ripping limbs off and walloping rude faces with the wet end.

Otherwise entitled ‘Twin Assvice Edition 2: A Guide For Non-parents, Geohde’s Helpful List Of Things It Is Never Appropriate to Do’.

Sigh. Because all of these just happened to me today and I’m feeling a little browned off. Can you tell?

Here we go:

1. Ask any of the following daft questions:

These have been covered before, but I shall link them for the sake of completion. Basically, if you wouldn’t ask it about a singleton because you’d be being rather impolitely nosey, it’s not really fair game for a twin either.

2. Poke my babies or lift the pram covers to check they are in fact twins in there.

There are. Now go away.

3. Have a blind and enthusiastic pre-emptive stab at the genders.

Trust me, I know what I have. (‘I am not a boy!’ onesie notwithstanding, thanks for the help Jen). Try asking me, instead.

4. Point out and real or imagined similarities or differences between the babies as evidence of your personal analysis of the zygosity of my children.

Saag is a lot bigger. 

They have quite different hair colours and amounts thereof.

These facts are indisputable.

For reasons I thought were bleedingly obvious, this means they are not identical. 

But in slightly horrified curiosity, may I inquire why you asked when you thought Naan was a boy anyway? Identical twins usually come with matching genitals. If one has a peni.s, then so does the other. That’s just the way it is.

Oh, and feel free to talk to the nimrods who are equally as insistent that they look gasp identical. Come up with a consensus, will you?

5. Feed my child.

Yes, only today, a complete stranger without any bidding on my part and completely without permission walked up, took the bottle out of my hand and continued feeding Naan. My tiny mind boggled as to what culture this may not be horridly rude in but as yet I have drawn a blank.

6. Ask any permutation out of the blue in the godsdamn street on the naturalness of delivery, conception or feeding.

It’s not your business.

To turn the tables, I didn’t ask you if you’d taken a particularly satisfying dump lately or what colour your underwear is. I don’t ask if you scrunch or fold. I don’t want to know if you read the paper while doing your business.

Some stuff is personal, you know?

Wait until you at least know my, and my children’s bloody names before you start asking about my vagina and what I’ve squeezed out of it (or not).

7. Tell me how full my hands must be. Especially with that knowing smirk I just itch to rearrange.

They’d be a lot less full if I wasn’t spending significant amounts of time dealing with The Stupid I encounter every single time I go out in public. Think on how it feels to be a travelling freak show that everybody is mysteriously automatically entitled to make knowing quips at (when you really have no idea at all).

8. Tell me I look ‘so natural’ with them.

They’re my bloody babies, I’d be worried if I didn’t quite frankly. Besides, what constitutes ‘unnatural’ and what would you say then?

9. Stare.

Stare hard and also point enthusiastically and loudly draw your surrounding friends attention to the poor freak with two babies. Just don’t.

Need I elaborate further? Okay, I will.

Try and be subtle about it. Just because I don’t speak your language doesn’t mean I’m an utter cretin and can’t work out what you’re gibbering on about. I think I’ve picked up how to garble ’LOOK! Twiiiiiinnnnssss!’ in about fifty dialects by now.

Finally all nosey parkers at-large, should you find yourself really, really struggling not to poke, prod, feed or otherwise touch my children AND you’re burning up to know all about my vagina and breasts and what I may or may not do with them, remember my final piece of advice: Just don’t. Sit on your hands and think of single babies until the urge goes away or I’ve left the building, whichever comes first. Many thanks in advance for your understanding.

Thank you for listening, Internet. I think what I most needed was to say ‘nimrod’ until the urge to violence receded. Nimrod, nimrod, nimrod.

So yesterday.

Hands.

Oh yes, they are.

Despite only last week indulging in simply hours of contented staring at the ceiling enthralled by the view through their interlacing fingers (like the world’s tiniest magic mushroom consuming fiends), the Terrible Twosome have most emphatically moved on.

To their feet.

Honestly, it’s truly ridiculous. Saag has developed a real squeal-with-excitement thing about being patiently propped by her poor…

Tired, lest I forget to mention it. Naan is firmly maintaining her position that Sleep Is For Losers, to my continued detriment.

…Mama in the seated position because THAT was she can See Her Feet. I don’t think she’s quite worked out that she could see them any time merely by examining the ends of her legs. My god, I didn’t think that watching your own toes wiggle (flex-extend-flex-extend! Fllleeeex!!! Whee!) could be thrilling. But judging by all the dental-drill shrieks and enthusiastic dribbling it clearly is.

Personally, when I look at my toes, all I think is that it’s about time I broke out the nail clippers, and perhaps the file, oh, and a pumice stone or ten. Nail polish? Ha!

As for Naan, she knows where her feet live and likes to pull as hard as she can muster on her trouser legs in a vain attempt to get the Wiggly Sausages in her eternally damp gob. Mostly she only succeeds in achieving a rather painful looking auto-wedgie, so thank goodness for the padding in the groinal location the good people at Snu.gglers provide is all I can say, or the poor child would get a rather interesting surprise about fifty million times a day.

May I also observe that both children have discovered how fun it is to kick Mama in the groin, abdomen or face (depending on availability) in addition to pinching, pulling out hair by the handful and ripping my spectacles asunder?

I am still trying to think of suitable revenge, and unless inspiration hits I think I shall have to settle for naked bath-time photos. Yes, I may be about thirteen years delayed in getting my own back, but the revenge shall be spectacular. Trust me. Nothing says ‘Clean your room more often or else’  like threatening to hand out birthday party invites to the entire school with your four-month old unclothed bum on it.

You don’t say?

Yet another brief, sleep deprived missive from the land of Geohde:

Scene: In bed. Children snoring peacefully in the background. Neither parent with detectable vomitus upon their person at the current point in time. Surprisingly.

LS: Nuzzles Geohde optimistically on the neck, ‘You’re a pretty good wife, you know that?’.

Geohde: Full of boundless confidence that actually I AM kind of bloody brilliant ,‘Yep’.

LS: Kisses aforementioned neck while continuing, ‘Well, I mean you do the washing at least, I suppose….’

Geohde: Pause, ‘Hold it, can I say ‘eh’ without looking like a retard?’

LS: Clearly possessing a potent deathwish plows onwards to his no-nookie-for-YOU fate, ‘But I’ve never seen you actually iron anything, and quite frankly….’

Geohde: Getting the shape of where this is headed ‘Yeeeeeeees? Do continue, my love.’

LS: ‘Well the fucking isn’t precisely up to, um, well…’

Geohde: ‘Aaaand?’

LS: ‘I guess you’re pretty good at ‘etc’. Washing, Ironing, Fucking, Etc…geddit?’

Geohde: ‘Goodnight’.