So all the BlogHer excitement and hype finally got to me and my mindstate shifted from 'Yay! I'm going to be reading!' to "There's going to be a thousand people witnessing the fact that I have terrible hair and this will be recorded on the internet for posterity and For All The World To See Forever, Dear God".

And then after a prolonged faff about Brands in which I read lots of blurbs of people talking about Their Brand and How You Promote Your Blogging Brand, I started to feel more and more inadequate because I'm fairly sure I have no Brand unless you're looking for "People Who Injure Themselves In Ridiculous Ways" (and if you are then step right up because I'm your girl).

Therefore, the only logical solution seemed to be disregard my history of Terrible Hair Karma and go consult a scissor wielding professional to even out my mop and make it sleek. Ahahahahahahahaha That's the sound I imagine that the Universe makes when it laughs. Ahahahahahahahahahha, you poor dumb tool.

I don't know what it is about me that renders me anathema to hairdressers. I thought that hairdressers are meant to be chatty people but around me they simply lapse into a deep and sinister silence and don't so much as ask me about holidays which is probably Official Hairdresser Code for: "We hate you and we want you to suffer".

This latest in Nina's Hairdressing Disasters involved a 2 HOUR HAIRCUT (pretty much 1 hour per inch of hair) in which an OCD hairdresser obsessively snipped and snipped and snipped and even though I couldn't see anything on account of having removed my glasses I had a sinking feeling that it was going to be terrible and my God how right I was.

Somehow instead of a sleek assymetrical bob (shorter in the back, longer in the front) what I ended up with was looking like someone had stuck a bowl on my head and cut around it. Dear Lord it is bad. And the worst thing about this prolonged butchery was that in the end I felt so sorry for the hairdresser who was clearly investing so much effort into the creation of something apalling that in the end when he asked me how I liked it I didn't have the heart to say anything but "It's lovely!"

Does The Poster Child For Bad Haircuts sound like a catchy brand?

Introducing:

Imaginary Fish the site that I wished to make in order to appear more professional than I really am. (And if you think it looks nifty and pretty it's entirely down to Romany who made it so).

It's currently got a selection of my favourite LJ entries, but in principle it will be a photo/travel blog and an artwork blog once I figure out how to transfer the pictures from my phone.

First one of my earrings fell down the toilet. Now i've been shat on by a bird. Coincidence? Or am i about to be brained by blue ice from a plane?

Parenthood seems like a daily embodiment of Stockholm Syndrome, in which you passionately love your tormentor even though they wish you never to sleep, eat, use the bathroom or have sex in peace as long as they can help it. And you, sad tool, grow to like it or at least stop questioning it as something intrinsically wrong so that when you find youself facing an extended stretch of babyfree time you still wake up at 6:20 am because a timezone and several countries away your son is doing the same thing.

Since he was born I have not spent more than half-a-day away from Matei (in the early days
not so much a cause of celebration as BITTER ANGST and REGRET) and being apart now feels like having my heart scraped with sandpaper and then kicked for good measure. I am bereft and everything stabs at me - the sight of toddlers in supermarkets, the sound of a child crying, the scattered toys.

It feels strange to speak of loss in a context in which one's child is neither lost nor dead, but merely on vacation, but I am heartbroken all the same. Z is very understanding of my sadness and coping mechanisms of choice (extended love affair with the internet, interrupted by occasioannal thoughts about cleaning) and he assures me that I will soon adapt to this punishing schedule of sleeping-in and evenings out and being responsible only for my own hygiene needs. That I will have the things that I most longed for - alcohol, freedom and the ability to restore television to its rightful place in my life.

Everyone else tells me how the baby's longing for me has quickly been replaced by the baby's crush on the workmen in the Belgrade flat (they let him climb the ladder and showed him everything in their toolbox). In short, my anxious ghost is being reassured on all fronts that there is nothing to worry about.

I'm glad to know he's fine. I'm delighted he's being so well looked after and having a better time than I could offer him and yes, I am ecstatic to be spending some alone-time with my husband and not worrying that our personal crescendo of joy will be interrupted by a crescendo from the other room.

For most of the working week I only spend about three-four hours a day with Matei and I thought 'it's not like I see him that much and that he will miss me putting him to bed and playing in the morning, and look how much better it will be for me to get all my work done and for him to spend three months running around in fresh air on the seaside' except that I never thought how much I would miss those three hours per day.

He is my son. No matter how far he is I am still connected to him. My thoughts surround him. He is my heart incarnate and his absence is like the aching of a phantom limb.

Travelling to the Old Country with an 18 month old was traumatic in many ways that travelling with a 9 month old wasn't. Certainly as an infant he had a shorter attention span and was more difficult to contain and entertain, but he was also happy to be taken whenever, however, like a more or less sentient piece of hand luggage.

But last week was a Tale of Terror, starting with checking in the baggage (he watched the bags being loaded, tagged with a sticker and sent off to the Dark Unknown) which was all fine until he saw the attendant put stickers on his buggy and burst into immediate tears of terror that he was also going to be sent off to the Dark Unknown. Then he failed to understand why Daddy was not coming with us (cue more crying and pitiful holding out of arms and long mournful wailing of Daaa....Daaaaaa). The biggest insult of all was security, where the entire procedure (from having his shoes removed and being removed from the buggy) caused him to shriek with indignation and anxiety, which only increased when he and I were frisked. While he considered being felt up by a perfect stranger merely hateful, being separated from me and held by strangers while I was touched by strangers was not something he was prepared to tolerate and defended me with desperate body flipping and his most piercing screams.

I had expected to do a lot of running after him on the plane, but actually he was so traumatised by the entire experience of getting there that he clung to me with all the power in his body and all the determination of a Capricorn and (so long as I did not attempt to do anything outrageous like shift position) he was impeccably behaved.

In the 5 days since he has adapted to the Old Country and stopped being terrified of everyone and everything (the dog! the people! the elevator!) and has for the most part un-grafted himself from my person. Nonetheless there are still many things that worry him and if he loses sight of me or his grandmother he becomes very upset - as though only his vigilance is holding the family in place and without constant monitoring we might all dissappear.

You can imagine how good this makes me feel since I am effectively dissapearing tomorrow for a month and a half (although I'm confident he'll settle down within a day since he is left with beloved and familiar carers).I don't want to think about walking out of the house tomorrow, so mostly I don't (and what better time to indulge a pent-up crying jag than a plane journey?)

The novelty of toddler worship still hasn't worn off. Mostly he shows this in two ways:
1)Singling me out for attention and special tasks
2)Trying to defend me from perceived dangers and slights.

The three most common manifestations of 1 are

a)having him want to involve me in whatever he is doing, usually by coming and tugging at my arm while chanting (Za! Za! - from zajedno meaning together in our language) and then either assigning me special tasks (cleaning spiderwebs from the top of the shed) or going for a stroll around the house or showing me points of interest (some spilled water, a ladybird, an ant).

b)selecting me as the recepient of gifts (usually stray pens, socks, his books and toys) or asking whether he can draw on me with his pens (this is my favourite as it involves so much studious scribbling and standing back to admire his handiwork).

c) demanding my company during important moments (he will only agree to have a bath if I have one with him. I'm only allowed to wash his belly if he pours water on my head).

2. Defending me from insults is a noble gesture and a full-time job, since the world contains so many things that Matei considers objectionable and dangerous, particularly: bedcovers, toothbrushes and unaccompanied stays in the bathroom.

A solo bathroom visit invariably ends with a toddler weeping brokenly in front of the door: Maaaaaa.... maaaaaaaa. Any visitor who expresses a desire to bathe is met usually by a furious toddler who informs him that the bath is No! Maaa maa's! and the terrifying sight of me brushing my teeth with an electric toothbrush has made him burst into tears and run to all available peopče in hysterics sobbing about Maaaa! In Peril! Help! Anyone attempting to take anything of mine is met with a particular firewall of fury and loud shrieks of No! Maaamaaa's! and currently no one is allowed to drink, eat, smoke, phone or watch television without Matei in some way trying to secure my share (usually by stealing the object in question and bringing it to me).

I'm enjoying him so much now, and the thought of leaving him tomorrow and being apart from him for the next three months feels like a loss so vivid it might as well be a hole in space.

Sometimes the only cure for a blinding headache is to eat trifle at 2am. Now you know.

Matei has recently fallen deeply in love with me and likes to spend his leisure time chanting MaMa MaMa MaMa and bringing me little gifts (mainly weeds and stones from the garden. Sometimes snacks of fruit and toast. Occasionally handfuls of cathair).

Meanwhile my new found pedestal is accompanied by being the person of choice to do everything, although this is a very minor irritant and really I find it hard to surpress my glee and the desire to run around the house shouting I'm Number 1!

(Z is being delighted with these developments because a) he is a nice man and b) I had spent so long agonising that Matei prefers other people to me).

It is hard to describe how delightful I find this kid, especially now that he is talking. (He has twigged that the cry of 'Who's there?') is proceeded by doors being opened, so now when he wakes up and wants to be released from his room he starts chanting 'Who's there? Who's there?' with plaintiveness and/or passion until someone wakes up and takes pity.

He retains a forceful and determined personality, and being forced to put on dry clothes and clean nappies invariably provokes a rigid-bodied crisis (which is also liable to come when he's denied the fifth millionth serving of fruit, or coerced into a nap, or shackled with a bib).

Tomorrow I'm taking him to the Old Country to spend three months running around on the seaside (being catered to by his coterie of loving relatives and groupies) while Z and I stay in the UK and work (and go on a Man-And-Wife vacation) and experiment with sleeping-in on weekends and going out in the week (but let's face it, mostly mope and mourn).

Matei senses something is up (which possibly helps explain his newfound attachment to me) and has come up with all kinds of new rituals (including an insistence that whenever he and I part company he takes something of mine to carry with him and gives me something of his). I currently have an orange plastic ball sitting in my bag from just such an I-carry-your-heart-in-my-heart exchange, making me feel in equal measure elated and tearful.

Children are sneaky, like that. Not content with merely terrorising you and turning your life upside down, they then colonise your heart and make themselves indispensible and no matter what you lead yourself to believe you are never the same in their wake.

Apparently the morbid curiosity of the internet IS more powerful than propriety. So, as requested, here is a picture of my severely bruised ass and let that be a lesson to you all in how NOT to descend stairs . I am all about service to the community and teaching by example.

Also, if you ever wanted to know how to trouble your husband AND convince him that your relationship with the internet is unhealthy, then asking him to take a picture of your ass so that you can share it with the www will probably achieve that.

On the other hand, I have just finished my last exam and am therefore a happy happy woman who no longer needs to wake up at ridiculous o'clock in order to study. I am planning to shepard all stray cups into the kitchen to celebrate and thank my family for not divorcing me on the grounds of absenteeism.

ETA And since I'm especially a slave to the whims of Belgian Waffle, here's a pictoral representation of my brain post-viva. You should do one too.

Yesterday an episode of me chasing the ball in the garden ended with me falling down the stairs, having first landed on the sharp edge of said stairs with my gluteal/lower back region.

Sometimes it is difficult to talk when you are blinded by exploding fireballs of pain, but I managed quite admirably to release a torrent of swearwords so prolific that the baby's vocabulary is sure to advance in leaps and bounds.

Despite the awesome cushioning capacity of my ass, the force of the blow was enough to move my pelvis slightly out of position and send my muscles into spasm, but thankfully my trusted beloved osteopath (whose children's college education is undoubtedly being financed by my inability to remain perpendicular when confronted with obstacles) managed to correct the damage and undoubtedly saved me from having to be ferried to my exam tomorrow in a wheelbarrow.

There are bruises of such size and lurid colouring covering my ass that propriety is the only thing that stands between me and their appearance on the internet.

While babies aren't accompanied by manuals, health professionals still make sure that you pick up a few things like: feed them when they're hungry, don't shake them when they drive you crazy and if you see a rash that doesn't dissappear when you press a glass over it freak the fuck out.

Also, this:
Correct


Incorrect


So last week when Matei with no breathing difficulties suddenly acquired blue lips and an azure cast to his skin I consulted these handy notes and thought to myself "Something isn't right!" and proceeded with Z to A&E with some haste.

It was 7pm when we got there - not quite the witching hour - but already full enough of crying children and surly flirting teenagers (Teenager 1: Shut aaaaaap! You're such a wanker. Teenager 2: You shut aaaaaaaap, slag!) to promise a lively evening even before Matei launched into his own operatic recital (Ode: How I hate all thee).

So I walked the hallways up and down with a wailing feverish overtired baby waiting to be seen by medical professionals or for Surly Teenagers to relocate their bonding rituals (now with shoving and mock-sulking!)off the only available seating. After a precarious nappy change and an unsuccesful attempt to distract Matei with bubbles from the horrors of having his pulse rate measured we were ushered into a room of our very own with instructions to make the baby nekkid and collect a urine sample in a receptacle about the size and shape of a test tube.

We took off his nappy. He peed for 0.03 seconds. Unfortunately my human reflexes were not able to catch it. Z berated me. I berated him back. To present a united front we gave the baby a bottle of watered apple juice (240 mls) and a bottle of milk (240mls) delegated tasks and settled down for a grim stakeout.

I can think of a number of tasks more rewarding than waiting for an overtired, pissed-off infant to pee (such as tilling fields, and rolling a rock up a mountain) but alas none of these options were available to me. Instead there was waiting. And more waiting. And then more waiting after that interspersed with some screaming and protesting. Matei refused to pee. We decided to step up the offensive by making him drink another 200 mls of water by serving it up in a syringe. Matei still refused to pee.

The doctor came and tried to listen to our son's breathing. Matei fought this insult by becoming possessed by demons. The doctor left. No pee came. Another hour passed. Then another hour.

I re-read the same three books fifty times. Z made balloons out of latex gloves. Matei burst them. His cast-iron bladder remained unmoved. We jiggled him up and down but this made no difference. We turned on the tap in the room but this did nothing except add to the world's water wastage problem. Matei's stomach was so swollen from all the liquid that it looked like a mountain and he couldn't move without making a sloshing sound but still, he didn't pee.

The doctor came to take a look at his ears and throat. There was much infant Resisting Authority and Fighting and Terror and Screaming but no pee. We waited some more. My despair took on the colour of NHS hospital rooms. We tried whispering Pshhhhhhhhh psshhhhhhhhh to our son but it made no difference. Z and I passed the time by bickering. Jesus wept.

Finally like a light in a thankless tunnel I managed to scavange a chair from somewhere and stand Matei up on it so that we could stick his hand under warm running water. He peed gallons. I nearly peed myself with happiness.

Matei was diagnosed with gastro virus NOS, we were told that his blue episode was Just One Of Those Unexplicable Things but most importantly we were told we could leave. We did. It was nearly midnight. Then we all got home and slept like the dead although no one actually died.

Happy The End.

A month or so ago, I had a vivid dream of a friend from my course, in which he had asked his girlfriend to marry him. I told him about it when I saw him the next day, but he didn't smile or reply.

A week later he told me had had asked her to marry him over the weekend, and the day I'd shared my dream he had the engagement ring in his bag.

Yesterday I got a bone-deep powerful urge to talk to a friend of mine I had lost touch with a few years ago but not knowing how to go about it as I no longer had his contact details and I couldn't remember his last name. This morning, I woke up to find a message from him.

And I love moments like this and I love how we are each of us like radio transmitters beaming and receiving waves, meeting and connecting in space.

I have still to commit to social commentary the whole Matei Turning Blue, Spending 6 billion hours in A&E of which 5 Billion were spent waiting for him to Pee, episode from last week because I still feel vaguely traumatised by the whole experience. Instead, let us have Internet Links! And Humor.

A friend recently sent me a link to this place in Montenegro where we spent all formative summers, and indeed where Matei will be running shortly. Now I love Montenegro unreservedly, one might say unconditionally, considering how charming I find their lawlessness and creative approach to the truth - and that link contains the best of many worlds.

Let me give you the guided tour.
Here's some brief history It was used as a port since the 18th Century and in the 19th Century Russians tried to make it a legal port which European Forces opposed due to determined efforts to keep Russians away from their seas. Two stone storing houses were built to hold corn and supplies for sailing ships in the 16th Century. Nobody destroyed them.

Here's a map and a segment about the climate which informs me that average daily temperatures in July are 24 C, which will make a nice change from July temperatures of 40C I remember experiencing as recently as last year.

Under the heading Outings and Transport we have.... a taxi rank. And a parking lot.

Afterwards, you might like to shop in the Shops and Newsagents which contain a teeny supermarket historically staffed by grumpy middle aged women or bored teenagers who project a dedicated manevolence and consider the height of customer service not telling you to fuck yourself to your face.

But my favourite category is Parks. It says: Canj is full of beautiful parks and then offers photos of same park from three different angles and a shot of the hillside. (I'm waiting for the next category to go up called Nature Reserve featuring same hillside and calling it a Safari Park in which you can observe snakes, discarded rubbish and packs of stray dogs in their natural environment).

Incidentally, the two blue bridges in the third and fourth photograph are footpaths over the aqueduct, and I don't know about you, but nothing says picturesque to me quite like the presence of dirty water/sewage.

Before I get onto the subject of this post, I need to do a SQUUUUUUUEEEEEEEEEEEEE of joy and utter disbelief as I'm going to be reading at BlogHer 09 Community Keynote. Now, excuse me while I go and have a faint in the corner. To distract you, here's a post I wrote earlier.

If coursework while parenting is to blogging what Jaws was to my swimming, then annual leave comes as a welcome oasis in a desert for arsing around on the internet and concocting ambitious plans that are almost guaranteed to fail.

Like, take yesterday morning. Waking up to child, birdsong and a dirty laundry basket so overflowing that it was threatening to crush us all, I leapt up with good cheer and enlisted help of child into feeding the washing machine and then when it was done I bounced gaily into the garden with him in order to hang the clothes to dry all over his play equipment.

By midafternoon the clothes were mostly dry and smelling wonderful. Hahaha! I crowed to myself with smugness. These clothes smell of sunlight and fresh air! I rule at housewifing! I may yet conquer ironing! Tralalala!

Of course not long after I thought that (but long before I had the opportunity to take the laundry in) the heavens opened up in a thunderstorm of such thrilling magnitude that both cats tried concussing themselves in their hurry to get inside the house.

Acid rain will make my whites brilliantly white, right?

In other news I cannot find Important Document, but I did stumble across a Belgrade photoblog by an American ex-pat. I love photoblogs since they cater to both my voyeuristic impulses and short attention span, and this one manages to capture the excellent things I see but never have a camera on hand for. Such as health and safety breaches and customised transportation galore. There is indeed no place like home.

If I could have my way, I would confine my encounters with post and politics to reading birthday cards and webofevil.

My aversion to the post is so extreme that one might guess I had spent a childhood as an indentured servant made to lick mountains of envelopes, or that my mailbox administered electric shocks. In truth, what terrifies me about post is the weight of expectation that it comes with: whether it's to pay another extortionate yet unexpected bill from my council, respond to urgent queries, send (and locate!) obscure haunting documents from Home Office or Institutions of Higher Learning, or deal with the haunting guilt of not responding to my pen-pals speedily enough (if at all). The postal service is as a long ode to my failure, interspersed here and there with bittersweet memories of my grandmother and the increasingly unreadable letters she wrote me when I moved to England, each of which began with "This is surely the last letter I will write to you, because I will die soon."

Post and its pushers terrify me, but it remains inescapable (down to the fact that two of my neighbours are postmen, which doesn't seem to increase the frequency of the right post actually getting delivered to my address), forcing me to engage in elaborate rituals of avoidance and confrontation, wrapped in futility and stapled with anxiety. The weight of unopened envelopes with Generally Threatening Contents is heavy on my conscience, and afixes me with its humorless malevolent eye every single time I exit the front door (to outwit it, I haven't left the house in two days).

The only thing guaranteed to raise my blood pressure higher than encounters with mail are encounters with current events. Therefore I don't watch the news, I spurn broadsheets, I immerse myself in reality television - and largely this works well for me, as I drift through the world in a state of what I would like to consider as benign ignorance.

However, despite my efforts, the real world frequently breaks through and (as last Friday) I find myself googling news sites attempting to discover why an angry mob and a Police Presence are congregated not far from my office shouting in a lively but disconcerting manner. (It was something to do with the Iranian elections, as it turned out. Although why they had picked as the focal point for the frenzy an Iranian Corner Shop I suspect I will never find out).

What is your most ridiculous phobia?

If my life (or, more accurately my sanity) were a WWF match, in one corner there would be


Towering Piles Of Coursework And Deadlines

while in the opposite corner stands
Toddler Who Has The Energy Of Bunny On Crack and the Malleability Of A Filing Cabinet, but No Concept Of Hazard Or Own Mortality


Toddlers and Coursework are inimicable, implacable forces whose soul uniting aspect is that they are both corrosive nemeses of a harmonious mind. Each is needy and makes endless demands on my time, each constantly distracts from the other and between their Campaigns Of Terror I can't remember the last time I slept.

I love doing my course, but it is brutally stressful at times and it very much leaves Z picking up the pieces as far as childcare is concerned. On one hand I long for a time when I could wake up and spend a leisurly weekend with my family, but on the other hand my clientwork is both enjoyable and necessary.

I've written before about my Matei-related challenges and anxiety - how I often feel on the outskirts of his life - that I am the person whom he gets along with least, the person who struggles hardest to find Fun Ways Of Spending Time Together. It's painful. Some days motherhood feels like dental procedures without anesthesia. It brings up every raw, unhealed place, every ghost I thought I'd left behind. Sometimes it revisits wounds I did not know I had. Sometimes I feel myself playing out my mother's life and it makes me sad immesurably, to be the person who cannot lift him up and throw him in the air, to be the person who is least around, to be the person whom he runs towards least.

Yesterday he didn't fall asleep until midnight (a combination of teething and the desire to point out every thing in the world keeping him awake) and while normally that sort of thing would drive me crazy (because there are Things! So many other Things I need to be doing!) yesterday I just let go and made us a nest in the garden and enjoyed the feel of him lying on my chest and I pointed out cats and planes and rustling leaves and I gloried in his little warm face on my neck and the feeling of love that takes residence in your stomach and speaks, and is spoken to in the space between, without words.

I am attempting to recalibrate my mind. Instead of assuming that things will go well and that I will feel good and then feeling dissapointed and self-flaggelating every time they don't, I'm going to focus on the good moments instead. Feel each one as a victory. Remember it and glory in it and set each one to shine in my mind's keepsakes, like a star against a cobalt sky.

Lives are long. Hearts are resilient. Relationships are dented, but endure. As long as there is breath in me, I will not stop trying.

Dear Z,

Happy third wedding anniversary! Yay!

I had lofty plans of waking you up this morning with kisses, but then they were trumped by our son's plans of waking us both with screaming at 4:30 am and staying up to chatter like a chipmunk for the next two hours. However, when I kicked you repeatedly at 8:30 this morning to inform you that you are late for work, it was with great fondness and romantic sentiment which I'd like to think was apparent to you and your acknowledging grunt was as music to my heart.

Love you baby. You have given me the happiest years of my life. Rock on.

N xxx

Your spouse cheerfully makes a thoughtless comment that you find hurtful/offensive and then feels surprised at your emotional response.

Your spouse equally cheerfully organises a Marvellous Secret day out in which you leave your child in the care of excellent friends, drives you for 3 hours to Bath, deposits you both in a spa in which pampering treatments have been booked for you and then after these and dinner drives you back 3 hours to London to pick up child and go home and does all this like it's no big deal.

Congratulations. You are married to Sagittarius.

You have given birth to a child with the ambitious stubborness of Napoleon, the malleability of a filing cabinet, who alternates between heart-stopping, parent-aging climbs and deep civic responsibility. Well done, you have spawned Capricorn. Your parenting should probably involve getting out of his/her way. You may also want to invest in some colourful hats to detract from all the bruises on his face from Colonization Of The Furniture Gone Wrong.

On the other hand, at least the bruises on his head nicely coordinate with My Twilight-Coloured Knee. A knee which was achieved when my foot met a slippery bathroom floor - in the terrible frozen tableau that unfolded I looked like I was about to ask the towelracks for their hand in marriage before I looked like I was going to be sick from pain and the thought of this incident occurring in the bathroom of dear friends, and not say a public building in America where I would at least stand a chance of receiving a nice settlement, instead of merely sympathy; for about a day I had a kneecap the size of an egg and my journey to work on Monday was enhanced by crutches. Still there are worse things than medically ordained Rest, and my extended unscheduled time at home is being all kinds of better by the fact that Matei has taken up both mime and opera.

I can't wait to see what kind of improving influence Eurovision Song Contest will have on him.

Z has planned some Mysterious Child-Free Getaway for us tomorrow, which is surprising, thrilling, deeply romantic and the stress equivalent of those dreams in which you have to sit an exam you haven't studied for.

He keeps dropping hints such as 'Pack your sunglasses' but telling me I have half an hour to find an accessory in a house whose filing system consists of 'Move things randomly out of the baby's reach' is essentially a nice way of saying: 'I hope you enjoy heart attacks'.

On the other hand a whole day of romantic childlessness at an unspecified enticing destination (Z: "You will need your bikini") sounds exciting enough to risk seeing with an unprotected eye.

To compensate for my spectacular failure to know where my glasses or my keys are I have painted in the chipped bits of my toenail polish and am wearing a turqoise scarf as an alice band and am prepared to sashay hard and with flair.

xxx

Yesterday someone made Z sad because they nicked his bike from in front of our house, so today I have resolved to make him happy by packing away all our winter coats so that our hallway is less of a mess. I am also starting a second Cheer Up Your Husband project - I have gone through my wardrobes to take out the good stuff I've hardly worn (M&S skirts, mostly) and sell it on ebay to see if it generates enough cash to buy him another bike. Normally I prefer to just give stuff away since a trip to the Post Office eats my soul, but these are trying financial times and between the service charges for the house and the nice hotel reservations for my birthday there aint's a lot of cash to throw around.

I haven't been this underslept since Matei was a newborn. I've been averaging 4 hours sleep per day the last two weeks, and the trend is set to continue until July - which is an awful lot of undersleptedness on one hand, but a surprisingly short time in which to prepare and write the further thousands of words I need to hand in. Hmmmm.

I am turning six hours worth of meetings into minutes and the process is mind-crushing enough to make me turn to Food Roulette - mozarella cheese that went off yesterday and tortellini with pancetta which expired on Monday. Dubious and delicious.

It's also why I will always be fat. My lazy metabolism is no match for my enthusiastic apetite.

N:Our plants seem diminished and sad. Perhaps I should pull up some of these weeds that have conquered the flowerbeds.

Z:Yes, it's a possibility. On the other hand, our plants are so ungrateful, all: This soil is too hard! You don't water me enough! Angle me more prosperously towards the sun! At least the bloody weeds prosper and don't complain. Maybe we should keep them.

N:I wish there was a Lazy Gardener's Question Time.

Words. I am writing deadline-driven words while the rest of my family is out playing in parks.

Words are being written in a state of partial delirium, as I have just started inventing language in an attempt to describe therapeutic dilemmas. Will see if the coining and liberal use of phrase 'respectful disrespect' spells out a masterstroke of creative genius or the hour of my undoing.