Two Years On and Counting

It's my BLOG BIRTHDAY!! Yes, I know, I know. Have just bored the bollocks off you with my 'I am 50 and going to enjoy EVERY MINUTE of my life, etc etc, snore, blah, blah...'
But...
It really is two blinking years. On October 1st. Two years of knowing that ANYTHING on the silly/funny/weird/nonsensical/strange/curious/mad/heart-warming scale can be used IMMEDIATELY, put into words, and kept fresh as a daisy on this blog of mine. And I look back sometimes to see those memories and am hugely thankful, because I just KNOW that so much of what I have written would have been forgotten.
I do feel sorry for you sometimes, dear lovely readers. Another tale of Poo or Vomit can't mix well with that nice cup of coffee you're sipping at, in a peaceful sort of way. At the CyberMummy conference I went to this summer, I attended a little seminar on how to get more readers onto your blog.
Hah!! More readers? I think I need to think of ways to have LESS. Poor POOR folk having to wrestle with lavatories and huge turds. Vomit in handbags. I mean, it's just not NICE. The very kind lady at the conference talked about Key Words and Links and such. I decided there and then to have none of that nonsense. I just want my Blog Mates (and you REALLY ARE!)to come along and read my Bollocks, and then I'll come along and read Yours. If you see what I mean.
So.
Thanks for tolerating such drivel and actually encouraging more of the same.
You mad, mad people.
Hugs. x

Youngest the new Alan Sugar?

Youngest doesn't seem to have the Brightest of Ideas concerning Commerce.
After lots of chat over breakfast about how to make Loadsa Cash, he had a Thought.
'I've an idea for how to make money,' he said, snuggled on my knee after breakfast.
'How?' I asked, with quite Low Expectations, really.
'Well, you buy loads of Playstations 2.'
'Yes...' we all said, getting quite impressed so far.
'And you smash them all up...'
'Yes...' we went, a little Less Certain now.
'And then you mend them and sell them on Ebay!' he finished with Gusto.
And was suitably crushed when we all howled with laughter for ten minutes.

Poor Youngest

There is always a programme about 9/11 this time of year. The sheer sound of the programme has me sweating and panicky.
Was watching one this evening, not wanting to at all, but drawn inevitably to the bloody awfulness of it, and the dreadful knowledge of what is about to happen.
Youngest came into the room. I kept it on, thinking that he would not get it. That he would wander out again. He did neither. At that point in the programme it was all dust and people running about. Nothing to worry his little mind. Or so I thought. After a few minutes, five at the most, I turned the telly off and announced that it was bath time.
Youngest looked downcast.
'What's up?' I asked him.
'Mummy, why did you have to watch that thing?' he asked, tears starting in his eyes.
'What thing?' I was a little puzzled as to which programme, as it hadn't been long since we had turned X-Factor firmly Off.
'THAT thing,' he replied, looking hard at the telly. 'With those people. Now you have made my feelings bad.'
Oh, the poor mite.
'Come over here for a cuddle,' I cajoled, and budged up for him to cuddle up close.
'What bad feeling?'
'I don't know,' he answered.
We went through a few Bad Feelings, and came up trumps with Scared.
Oh, God.
The very last thing I want to create in my darling children is anxiety and fear.
But that bloody programme did the job and instilled that insipid and fearful thing. That Mummy can't make the bad people go away. That awful things happen and we can't stop them.
And he's only six.
What an idiot I was to think that he wouldn't Get It. Of COURSE he will. He gets just about everything else.
Will be ultra diligent now, and watch stuff that he will be utterly safe with. It's a long time being a grown up. And such a short time to be a child.
God love him.

Please, God. Is it the End of the Holidays yet?

Have Crawled my way through to the end of the Summer Holidays.
I look a complete Fright. Hair on end. Don't even MENTION where.
Eyes hollowed out, clothes old and worn, sense of humour long gone.
Added to which I have just celebrated my 50th birthday.
For God's sake.
I'm not fifty!
I am merely seventeen with a few lines and sags here and there. And those wretched hairs in places they just Shouldn't Be.
I lay awake on the night before my birthday, fretting about leaving the haven that was my 40's. The comfort that there was That Big Number which I hadn't yet reached. The knowing that the Saga Age of tweed and cheap weekday pub meals was some way off yet.
But then I woke up, and found that I WAS one of those.
Bugger it.
Husband leaned over when he saw that I was awake.
'Happy birthday!' he said. And gave me the first kiss of the next half century.
Which was nice, and felt quite like it had when I was 49.
So. Fifty. Ker-ist.
I'm not going to get into the Saga Holidays and the Meal Deals at the pub. Or Tweed. (Hate Tweed. Would rather wear Nothing.)
I'm still going to wear the occasional short skirt. I will still behave a little badly at the odd party by dancing till I drop and shouting out the words to 'High Ho Silver Lining'.
I won't be such a bloody Wuss about growing older.
And I will remember that now that I am FIFTY I can be a right old Bossy Cow.
Just like that woman on 'Ladette to Lady'.
You know, the one with all the teeth.
Who says 'Sluttish' quite a lot.
(She actually looks like a caricature of herself. Which is quite an achievement. The only other person to do that was Barbara Cartland. One of the best laughs you could get when she was on telly was to turn up the colour. Brilliant!)
Anyway, I am off to Pot some Roses, or whatever else you do when you are FIFTY.
And better find some reading glasses. And slippers. Oh, and a nice Pac-a-mac.
Oh, sod all of that. Am going to watch the Simpsons with the children and then bounce on the trampoline for a bit.
Have at least ten years to grow up before I am sixty.
So that's OK.