Yes today has been a GOOD one.

Slept well, including one stint of a whole four hours without waking up and headed out to aqua-natal. It was a given we were all having coffee after - brilliant, I haven’t been able to persuade anyone to do that before so it’s obviously improved over the 3 weeks I’ve missed.

During our lengthy chat - very nice and sociable - one woman said I could get free re-usable nappies from the council, I rang and sure enough I am now the proud owner of 4 brand-new medium sized Motherese Rikki outer pants, 4 little pants made by someone else but they look pretty good, 12 terry cloth foldy things to go inside them, 600 biodegradeable liners (!) and a nappy pail. So combined with the stuff I already have that’s another item ticked on the must have list.

Even better, with the ones I have already bought at a car boot - used once, sterilised by the seller and then twice more by me - I now have the prerequisite 24 sets of nappies with a blessed 4 of the terry cloths in hand so yes, I’ve also sorted my muslin squares. All this stuff would be about £230 or more new and I’ve spent the grand total of £7 for £188’s worth and scored the rest absolutely free.

Booyacka!

I guess the moral of this story is that help comes from the most unexpected of places.  Who’d have thought that if you want some free nappies, the thing to do was ask your local council.

I’ve also managed to get rid of the giant computer which was cluttering up my office… god bless Freecycle and all who sail in her! I’ve got at least five takers on that one and I’m very pleased as it means I will have a new place to start storing my boxes of packed stuff ahead of our smashing attic floor-o-rama.

On to my next topic.

Dreams.

I dreamt a lot the other night. I can’t remember all of them but a couple spring to mind, one because it was possibly the bizarrest thing I’ve ever dreamt and the other because I remembered it. I wear a couple of those bead bangles, a brown one - tiger’s eye, a whatever volcanic glass is called (can’t remember) and amethyst. I dreamt I lost them the other day and found them… wait for it…

Yes…

Up my arse!

I had to pull them out and wash them off before I could put them back on.

How fricking odd is that?

I also dreamed some very good looking and most buff hunk wanted to shag me but all I wanted was to shag Mr BC. Mr BC didn’t want to shag me though, which is par for the course, he doesn’t at the moment, I freak him out. He is clearly not into shagging truckers. It’s that kind of wank seance thing, too where you feel like the baby is watching. Even so, he was clearly happy when I told him about it and that despite feeling a bit of nooky would be nice I only wanted it with him.

That said, of course, although I’d kind of like a bit of bedroom action er… on paper, so to speak, when it actually comes to it (phnar phnar) I feel less in the mood for sex than I ever have in my life. I ache too much, if you’ve ever tried to have a shag after some major surgery or at least, when some bit of your bod is really hurting, you’ll know you think it sounds like a great idea until you try and then find it’s not really all it’s cracked (gnurk) up to be.

Sorry. Channelling Finbarr Saunders there.

I am enjoying three blissful days with no appointments, no social stuff, nothing. It’s been blissful becasue I’ve finally have some time to get my head round what I’ve done… and er what needs to be done to ameliorate the impact. What needs packed, what needs unpacked, what’s still to buy… etc.

Just been discussing a party I’m going to with a friend - her 40th. It’s the second 40th this year - it’s all go!

There’s a cabbal of 4 of us who were really close at school and one had her’s last year on her 39th and her husband’s 40th and since the Muffin will be arriving on or around my 40th birthday I’ve decided I will have to have mine later. Friend thought this was great as it would spread them out. I do too, dancing and pregnancy are not a match made in heaven.

We were chuckling about how Mr BC and I would have to have a 42, Meaning of Life and 50 for Mr BC Science Fiction party or, if I have produced another sprog in two years time, it will have to wait until I’m 44 and then we’ll have an Almost The Meaning of Life (52) For Mr BC and 40th Birthday that I’ve been Meaning to Have for Years but Couldn’t Because I Kept Having Children at Bloody Inconvenient Times Science Fiction Party.

Snappy titles huh?

She reckons she’d go as Wharf and I reckoned I’d go as Darth Vader. No looking pretty as Princess Leia or Uhuru for us. She’s got an excuse, though, she’s gay! I’m just a spanner!

Lots of contact about my art, too - links with craft fairs and other artists, all people contacting me, all useful… bread on the waters if you like.

I have 8 to 10 weeks to ready the house, let alone myself, for motherhood. Yikes. Will I get everything sorted in time?

Million dollar question! You know me though, don’t you so I think we can all answer it with a certain amount of confidence? Not in a million years, mate but it’ll be fine.

I spent some time in my studio today and packed up two boxes of my precious toys. Only about another 30 or so and I’ll have them all sorted. I really enjoyed doing that, it was great to look at them all again.

Many are new and still boxed, although I much prefer it when I’m able to get them unboxed as they’re more fun then. On the up side, if they’re all boxed at least the process doesn’t get held up when I keep stopping to play. Trying to stick to themes and packing all the boxed ones first so we now have three boxes of Dr Whos stuff packed with a few extra overflow items which fitted better in the holes left between the packed boxes. Only supermarionation, StarTrek, StarWars, JamesBond and “sundries” to go then!

Despite their being boxed boxes, so to speak, each one contains one or two loose figures so that there is somebody to let the others out when they all come alive at night.

This is the way I think. Welcome to my world.

I also managed to sort out my old computer so I can put it on Freecycle. Oh how much easier it would have been if I could have just done “format C” but nobody would want a 1998 computer without a little bit of a carrot. I’m hoping the aged versions of Macromedia Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Pagemaker it contains will appeal, despite their age.

I guess there might be some poor cash strapped student somewhere who would appreciate it with an external drive for extra storage.

On the pregnancy front, the SPD is still there, still painful and still annoying but a lot better. I have grown out of one of my last two pairs of trousers though. Just call me 101. Not so great. I have one more pair but they are cotton three quarter length - there’s me thinking they’d be useful if there was any warm weather. There hasn’t been.

Anyhow, I am now down to a pair of purple chords and a huge orange skirt which presents similar difficulties to the trousers - ie not tenable without thermal underwear! Mwa ha ha haargh!

Never mind, deciding what to wear has never been easier.

I do find myself wishing more and more that I could have just laid a giant egg, like a crocodile, left it on the spare room bed and then come back 9 months later to be around when it hatched. Although with Mr Cat in the house I’d have had to watch out for preditors.

We’re pretty near tooled up though, I just need to get a straight run when I’m here long enough to order the rest of the stuff I need off the internet and able to be confident I’ll be in the country when it arrives. There’s a lot of fun stuff going on in April but it’s going to be a struggle. I have contented myself with working out exactly what I want, where from and writing lists… with links to the pages where I can find everything.

Spudorama!

Right, better go make supper.

A couple of nights ago we watched a documentary about tigers.

As you can see, nobody in the room was more interested than Mr Cat, who leapt off my lap and scurried over to the screen to get a closer look.  He showed the tigers a lot of respect, clearly, despite being on TV, he realised they were big bad muthas…

He also enjoys football - that’s soccer to my American chums.

Please note, the not while you’re eating tab is switched on. Those who are a bit prissy about bodily functions and stuff should leave now.

Yes, today I am going to talk about a night terror so horrific I can hardly type the words…

Are you quaking in your shoes? I know I am.

Here goes.

When I go to the bog in the night, which, being a pregnant lady is practically a hobby for me, I don’t usually turn on the light. I live in a town so there is quite enough light coming through the windows for me to see my way to the bathroom, have a wee and come back without danger of waking Mr BC or Mr Cat, both of whom are light sensitive and once woken tend to stay awake, the one tossing and turning, the other noisily galloping about, after I’ve been.

Neither is conducive to a good night’s sleep and anyway, if they don’t wake me up, the light does. Wee in the dark and it’s all done in a kind of dreamy doze… I never really regain consciousness and go straight back to sleep when I get back to bed.

Since I’ve been pregnant though, another evil has reared it’s ugly head.

(Insert psycho music here. I’m not computer savvy enough to do it for you so you’ll have to imagine it in. )

You see, all these hormones have put my poor bowels in a quandary. Where before you could set your watch by them, these last 7 months or so, I’ve been very irregular. I still do fourteen poohs a week it’s just that there are occasions when I do them all on the same day! So sometimes, I blunder into the darkened bathroom at night and suddenly. It happens.

THE NIGHT POOH

Stealthily, without warning it creeps up on me and I am left to wipe - in a situation when I really do need to see - in the dark.

Worse, there is no dozing back to sleep and erasing the horror from my memory because clearly, having wiped a lot, I then have to go over to the other side of the room and turn the light on to check that I’ve wiped enough.

…And that wakes me up.

Mmm… it’s a tough life. *

* That was irony.

I will be away from my computer for the week, now, but maybe next time, I’ll tell you about Dick Dastardly and the Sharp Poohs… where other children had monsters under the bed, we had…

I’m sure you are all looking forward to that!

Another smashing waste of time test for you all to play with!

Enjoy!

Your Vocabulary Score: A

Congratulations on your multifarious vocabulary! You must be quite an erudite person.