Gurning...

O is gurning. This is not a new thing. I do have many pictures of him with his face pulled into various unedifying shapes. One noted example looks as if his face is stretched out with a coat hanger.

Notes to self re Pancake Day 2011...

1. Do not attempt to make pancakes on a gas hob whilst wearing a woolly poncho. The smell of burning wool will put you off pancakes for life.

2. Remember that your smoke alarm is as highly strung and sensitive as a thoroughbred racehorse and will emit piercing shrieks every time you open the kitchen door to hurl another slightly charred pancake at your offspring.

That is all...

The Cat's eye

We've been to the vet again this evening. The Cat has uveitis in her left eye and has been shuttled back and forth from the vet's since May last year with poorly eye-based traumas. It seems we are getting to the end of the road with treatment and we're on the final roll of the dice before we have to bow to the seemingly inevitable step of our brave kitty having her eye removed to save her any more pain.

Googolplexes, infinity and beyond...

I've had to come upstairs to bed to rest my head. I'd just enjoyed an episode of America's Next Top Model (don't judge me!) and then to instil a sense of balance into my viewing, I started watching the Horizon documentary which explored the troubling concept of infinity. I lasted ten minutes and then fled from the television, chased away by the mindblowing horror of a googolplex. My head is seriously woolly from being at a critical appraisal course all day - I am dazed by confidence intervals, P-values and absolute risk ratios and the googolplex has sent me over the edge. How can a number be too big to be written out because there isn't enough space in the universe?? *cries*

Driving through the fog with Jim Morrisson

It's reet foggy here in West Yorkshire tonight - a proper pea-souper, thick and ghostly. Me and O were driving over the hills on the way back from Granny and Grandad's and it was a wee bit scary. We were listening to the 'Best of the Doors', grooving to Roadhouse Blues and trying to follow the white line as we ploughed through the gloom.

The joy of....bubble baths

Before O was born, I used to love to soak my cares away in a big, deep soapy bubblebath. Such a cliche, but it was the one thing that could clear my frazzled mind, ease niggly period pains and generally put my little world to rights.

After O was born, luxuriating in the bath was not generally an option, but I'd take my opportunities when they arose, even having the odd 3am bath when the nights were long and the baby was wailing. I'd like to say these nocturnal baths were as mentally soothing as before, but sadly I think it would have taken more than a bubblebath to sort my post-natal head out...

The one where I sat next to the catflap

Last night I spent a freezing and fruitless half hour sat next to our back door, holding a cheesy chicken cat treat and trying in vain to coax the Cat to stick her head through the catflap...

Please let me explain. The Cat is eleven and is familiar with the concept of 'catflap'. However, the swaggering tom who has moved in next door is also au fait with the concept and is taking full advantage of this fact by coming into our kitchen and swiping my poor girl's meaty breakfasts. My elderly neighbours who are very fond of the cat (mine, not the swaggerer) told me that Netto's had a special magnetic catflap for sale. This magical device would stop Swaggering Tom from sauntering into my kitchen but allow ingress for the Cat as long as she wore a magnetic blob on her collar (red velvet, diamante - meeee-ow!).