Valentine's Day Eve lament

It's Valentine's Day eve and it occurred to me, as I was watching DS2s custard catapult across the room in a perfect arc from his spoon, that it's almost three years since I've been on a date.
I don't know why this reminded me, I've had some bad dates in my time, but no one has yet thrown food - in fact that would definitely have improved some of the duller ones. In not unrelated news, it's also about 3 weeks since I shaved my legs and about two days since I had a shower - it's half term, I'm allowed. I like to think that I do this because I don't have dates, rather than I don't have dates because I do this - trust me, no one ever looks at my legs, and I promise I'll shower before I leave the house, or when the kids start complaining I smell.

As avid followers will know, I'm all for the upside of parenting alone, so it's not something I really give much thought to. I was discussing my plan for waiting until the kids grew up and meeting someone in my retirement home, with my counsellor. Well, I say counsellor, because technically she is, but practically she's just someone I go and verbally blog at once a month, who prompts, supports and questions occasionally. This month she questioned. She was saying that eighteen years was a long time to go without an adult intimate relationship, and there are things - apart from the obvious - that I would get from that that you can't get from other relationships. She talked about finding parts of yourself in other people - no sniggering at the back there. Cheap innuendo aside, I do know what she means, but I do wonder whether I'm allowed to say, 'Do you know what? I think I've found enough of myself already - and it was incredibly tiring doing that, can I just leave the rest of myself undiscovered?'

Name dropping to myself on a Lucozade high...

The problem with drinking Lucozade late at night, when your mind is still spinning from a run in with an arse of a headmaster, is that your brain ends up trying to distract you at 3am by going through a list of famous people you have known.

Or perhaps that is just me.

I think it was the Lucozade anyway.

An Oxbridge education and a short career in stand up has meant that watching panel shows for me is like watching a parade of people I once knew a bit. I mean, imagine if a whole load of people you vaguely knew at some earlier point in your life just moved into your living room. It is freaky. I've sort of got used to it over the years though. At this very moment I've got an ex on BBC3, someone I once shared a stage with on BBC2 and a friend of a friend hanging out on ITV.

Australian Soaps and Facebook - better than Prozac?

As usual, I've been stressing about the lack of time I have and the list as long as several arms of things I have to do. When I get like this I always think that if I just worked a bit harder, or watched a bit less TV, or was on Facebook a bit less that I would have more time (see The Trouble with...).

I've been testing this out recently though, and I've realised three things:

1. I do work bloody hard, much harder than I give myself credit for.
2. I'm very rarely just watching TV. I'm usually breastfeeding or e-mailing or sorting washing or eating, or its after 10 o'clock at night when I'm so tired and zoned out that my brain couldn't cope with anything else anyway.
3. Neighbours is about the only thing I watch without doing anything else, and, along with Facebook, I think its responsible for keeping me (mostly) sane.

Of speech, circles, musical theatre and an unfeasibly large spider

DS2 weekend this weekend, DS1 at his Dad's. It's been a busy one - he is becoming more wilful by the second! Currently he is sleeping and has a big graze on his nose and forehead from falling out of the back door onto the concrete - that'll teach me to try and get some gardening done. I've finally got rid of the cherry tomato plants that he stands by going 'uh, uh' and pointing at every time he's in the garden. I think he's eaten 90% of those tomatoes - DS1 and I did not get a look in.

He's chosen this weekend to start using words. He opened on Saturday morning with 'emur' for the cuddly lemur in my bed (my lemur note, not the kids - sometimes a girl just needs a cuddly lemur). He then decided to say 'big dog there' to a big dog going down the road, and ended the day with the classic baby utterance 'nana' - for banana, of course. Getting dressed after bath time he added 'next foot there' - which is what I always say to him to put his other foot in his pyjama bottoms. So clearly, he can speak, which is good as I was getting a bit concerned. I went to a friend's on Friday, whose little boy, the same age, has a definite vocabulary of recognisable words he uses appropriately - where as up until this point DS1 would only utter 'bruvva' at his brother, other children and, with a slightly different inflection, at trees blowing in the wind - I have interpreted this as 'flower' but to be honest the difference is imperceptible to the non-mum ear. I can only assume that DS2 picked up on my concern and chose yesterday to tell me that he could use these things I called words, he just preferred to express himself through the medium of song and expressive dance - which he does all the time. I have created a musical theatre baby - somewhat unexpected, but who knows, he could go far...