Hellloooooooo stranger

Okay so it has been a while. This is mainly because I've been doing my emu impersonation (burying, head, sand, all that) and avoiding the issues of what the scales say. Actually, I've not done a horrendous job as I seem to be maintaining the same weight, but it's fair to say that I'm not losing anything either.

It's just an excuse really, but I've also been incredibly busy. I won't bore you with details but if I say Abba night, Bingo night, committee meetings, mother, school trips, school visits, pantomimes, mother, Brownie camp nights, badminton, dental hospital, wart clinic, mother, vomiting and diarrhoea, missed bus, M&S sale, candle party, sleepover, mother and trains you'll get the picture. There's not really any requirement that I elaborate I don't think.

My mantra these days is "I will do better." And so I hope I will.

Mental Dental

Today saw us taking a trip up to the Glasgow Dental Hospital. Kid-the-Eldest has, appropriately for halloween, produced some very crooked gravestone effect teeth as he has grown. He finds them very difficult to brush and consequently now has rather inflamed looking gums.

Parking at the hospital is hopeless so we took the train. I used to quite like taking the train up to Glasgow, but it's not so relaxing when you've got an 11 year old with Aspergers by your side.

We got into our carriage and took the only available two seats together. Sitting next to the window on my side was a young man of about 18 or 19 years of age. There were several things that struck me about him, but most notably, the badly tattooed knuckles and the unmistakable reek of Buckfast at 8.40am.

Just after we moved off, the ticket inspector came round and blokey next to me asked for a ticket to Glasgow from our stop, not the one he'd obviously been travelling from. I had to kick my son in the shins to stop him pointing out that this was an inaccuracy.

A few stops down the line, another young man careered up the wagon towards my neighbour. He muttered a greeting, but neither we, nor Mr Heroin Chic next to me could quite make out what he was saying because he was sporting a fairly fresh Glasgow Smile (google will help you out if you don't know what that is), and could barely move what was left of his mouth. Another sharp kick in the shins stopped blabbermouth from commenting. Charing X has never seemed more welcoming.

The Dental Hospital itself is not the most welcoming of places. The unmanned Reception Desk gave me no clue as to where we were meant to be going, but thankfully I'd remembered the appointment sheet this time and was able to figure it all out. We waited for about 40 minutes, during which time I completed the three Sudokus in today's Metro and Kid-the Eldest talked at me about his "Moon Hotel". Eventually we were seen by a very nice consultant, who asked my beloved son who lived at home with him. "Well there's me, my dad when he's not away on a business trip, my two annoying little sisters, my eight fish and my mum, who for some reason has done nothing but kick me this morning."

And today I am wearing:

Wide legged jeans, size 16 - they fit at last!
Opal Fruit Green vest top - Size 14
Opal Fruit Green cardigan - Size 16
Brown suede wedge heeled boots
My new red coat!
Green earrings from Funky Blue Fish jewellery
Green bangles from Primada
Big red chunky necklace from Chavsda

Tis the season to get spooky....

Today's weigh-in, as expected, wasn't the roaring success I'd been hoping for a week ago. However, all is not lost, for while the scales weren't particularly complimentary, the tape measure gave me a much more postive reading. I simply need to apply myself this week and remember why I'm doing all this!

One good thing...the lovely dark maroon velour dress that I purchased in a Monsoon sale a few years back, now fits again. It could do with some super-strength spanx-type underwear to smooth out the inevitable lumps and bumps, but it is going to form the basis of my utterly fabulous outfit for the Halloween disco on Friday. I intend to be the most glamorous witch this side of Eastwick.

Talking of Halloween...who has hidden my pumkin carving set? I have four pumpkins awaiting creative genius and nothing with which to perform the magical transformation from bulbous orange vegetable to spookily shining lantern. I also need to go up to the attic to find the other halloween decorations - we have ghosties and cats, witches and bats. And spiders. Lots of those, and not made out of paper either.

I am afraid of spiders. When I see one, or even if I just think I see one, my heart races, I go cold and sweaty and want to run/scream/throw up. The-man-I-married seems to think this is funny and he jokes about "What do you do when I'm not here" as if he doesn't know that I haven't been in the office upstairs for nearly two weeks because somewhere I know there's a spider lurking. In fact, just thinking about it is making me feel decidedly nauseous.

There are many things that I love about halloween..dooking for apples, getting dressed up, an excuse to light lots of candles, among them. The prevalance of fake spider's webs complete with fake arachnids isn't so good. Last year, Kid-in-the-middle brought home a cake she'd made with a big black plastic monstrosity embedded in the top. Once she'd eaten the cake, the spider kept finding its way into my line of vision and for about a fortnight I could be seen periodically leaping into the air in fright. Eventually, it went the way of most spiders in this house and got sucked into my vacuum cleaner. Ergh.

BTW - that pic at the top is Kid-at-the-Bottom-of-the-Heap in her first halloween costume. I may update it with something more recent once I'm done sewing and sticking things together!

Today I am wearing:

New, bootleg, indigo jeans, size 16...very comfy, verging on being too big, but the size 14s gave me a muffin top.
Apple green smock top, size 16 which no longer makes me look pregnant
Mushroom zip up hooded fleecy cardigan type thing. It used to be a size 10 in a previous life but has obviously grown with me.
Utterly gorgeous tan suede winklepicker boots with fringing and heels that could take your eye out.
Jewellery from a selection at a carboot sale near you.
Make up - not so much. My face feels a bit "rashy" - I'm having a cosmetic-free day to help it calm down a bit.

BTW....on Friday, my mother, ever complimentary said "Is that a new coat?" I told her the story. "It must be a big size 14!"

Thanks for that.

Find me, somebody to lo-ove....

So, I have been trawling through contacts and links this week, and here are the seven other blogs that I'd like to award with an I Love Your Blog Award:

1. The Happy Snapper Chronicals
2. Miss Frugality
3. Over the Pondlife
4. Three Buttons
5. Just Stuff
6. Such a pretty face
7. Inside a black apple

I haven't managed to be all clever like Wendy was and provide snazzy links within this post. I did try, but I gave myself toothache and gave up. All of them are now listed down the left hand side of my own blog, so you should be able to go and give them all a gander!!

Read this very carefully. I may be asking questions.

Diet-wise this week could have been better. That's a round-about, mealy-mouthed, politically-correct way of saying it has been a tad on the less-than-successful side. Okay, so it has been disastrous.

At the beginning of the week I was hoping to lose another two pounds so that I could officially say that I'd lost two stone. The way things are going, I'm busy praying that I can at least maintain the same weight as last week. I've been out to lunch, invited friends over, succumbed to chocolate cravings and consumed too much wine for any actual loss to have occurred. But hey, one bad week does not a diet wreck. It's a pause, not a stoppage. And besides, I'm thankful that I have friends with whom to sabotage my diet. Life without wine, gossip, chocolate and laughter would be a bit less fun. And this attempt at being healthier and more comfortable in my own skin isn't intended to turn me into a puritanical misery guts who can't let go occasionally.

So, what else has been going on? Kid-in-the-middle was accepted for tuition in the brass section of the band, and this week brought home a lovely shiny Eb Tenor Horn. It's noisy. How anyone is supposed to get a tune out of it that doesn't resemble bovine farting I really can't imagine. I guess I'm to have the pleasure of standing by with my fingers in my ears as she tries!

Also on the school front, this was the week that Kid-at-the-bottom-of-the-heap started going in for the full session. This means school lunches. We spent a good few minutes last week going over the menu options and carefully picking out things that I thought she'd like. I needn't have worried. School chicken curry? Yum. Tuna bagette and salad? Lovely. Macaroni cheese? Superb. By the end of the week, I'd forgotten what choices we'd made and had to ask her what she'd had. Apparently it was something "A bit like a sandwich, but not bread, more like a rolled up pancake and I think it had egg in it and it was hot and tasted a bit like that thing that's not lemon chicken that I sometimes have from the chinese restaurant only not chopped." (It was an omelette!)

Kid-the-eldest has been inventing a moon city. He is going to build a city on the moon and ferry tourists to his space hotel. I'm to get the blue presidential suite when I visit. Apparently, if he dies, he's bequeathing it all to Gordon Brown so that Mr Brown can have another go at getting things right. And they say kids with Aspergers don't have any imagination!

Also this week, our church has been busy raising money for a school in India. It was decided to hold a quiz night. This was a village affair, involving teams from the Guides, Scouts, School and Church, and the tagline for the event was "Are You Smarter Than The Sunday School?" Yes, as it turned out. They all were. It probably didn't help that every other group had at least four adults whereas The Sunday School consisted of me, one adult friend, her eight year old and my three. I think we were at a disadvantage even before you take into account the fact that I know nothing and can't recall the rest.

I felt like one of those elderly people who can witter on for hours about events that happened fifty years ago but who have no idea what they had for breakfast. The number of times a question was asked and I went "Oh, I know this, I really do. If only I could remember...." I did manage to delve deep and come up with a number of chemical symbols, retained from the days of cramming for O'Levels. And my maths was better than I'd realised. But music, drama and sport? Oh dear. What events make up a decathlon? Apparently my answer, (running, jumping, and throwing things) wasn't specific enough. I'd argue that the name of Shakespeare's wife might well have been Mrs Shakespeare, but that wasn't what they were looking for. And it took until midnight, as I was going to bed before I remembered the name of the lead singer of Pulp. It did cause me to ponder on how many other women snuggled under their duvets last night and suddenly screeched "Jarvis Cocker!"