Sorted!

Well the past week was possibly one of the most emotional weeks on record and whilst coming to terms with and beginning to enjoy a new situation, I have become an auntie for the 4th time. My sister-in-law, the one who now has 4 children with 3 different men popped another little girl out within 3 hours of her waters breaking. I don’t want to mention the word ‘bucket’ to her, but come on…!

So this baby has broken the wave of typically chavvy girls names that Sharon would give her children; Chantelle, Shanese and Aleesha and now gone for Jacqueline. Can’t say the name is much better, but at least the poor kid might not get type cast for the rest of her life. Well this news was very exciting so I quickly dragged my husband around the shops looking at pretty baby clothes to take on our visit in the next couple of weeks to cuddle the new sprog and make the other 3 remember that they are still loved of course… and show that Uncle Martin still can be very generous with his debit card in my hands!

Making the most of the last day of the summer sunshine yesterday we managed to have a BBQ and a quiet (in fact mute) celebration of the fact my best friend may also be pregnant!! She did a test at home the other day and one with me when she came over and though faint, the line was there! Wow, what fabulous news, couldn’t have timed it better if we actually tried! We are now just waiting for her all important final test before accepting and mentioning the news, but it is all incredibly exciting and keeping my fingers crossed for her. We left the 3 men to it and she I went and had a girly chat and needless to say the nursery is planned and the names are already chosen, so I think she knows the answer. Then it’s just another 8 weeks until the scan. 8 long weeks full of paranoia, hormonal mood swings, toilet trips and sheer worry over every ache or twinge in case it says so much more. All pretty terrifying really.

Well speaking of babies, my current babies (cats) have been playing up. My lovely dining room plants have been shredded at the ends from one little sh*t eating it, even when I was in the room painting he had the audacity to stand there doing it knowing I couldn’t get up quick enough to kick his little white arse into oblivion. Another one was in a horrific fight this morning in next doors garden with the neighbourhood bully. He did come off worse unfortunately with 2 claws ripped out and a gash in his neck, but he’ll survive. Another felt it would be fun to go mental and jump on my sore bloated stomach from the windowsill (I nearly killed her) and the other one has shunned me for spending the majority of the day painting rather than tickling her chin. Tut, get over it!

Actually the whole attention seeking thing sounds a bit like my husband this week too. It was his attention seeking that got me into this situation in the first place, I think he’s forgotten that! Fair enough, he did buy me a massive bunch of gorgeous flowers for when I got home on Friday and we have either spent the rest of the weekend with other people or I have shut myself away to contemplate. Only natural that he may attention seek I suppose. I was having none of it and decided to ignore him in the hope he would get bored and find something else constructive to do. Seeing my disinterest he stood in front of me and pulled up his top to show me his bulging belly from overeating, nice. Then he lifted it further to repeatedly show me his nipples, which I’m not a particular fan of, especially when trying to concentrate on something else. I’m not sure why he felt the need to do that to be honest, but worse than that… while I tried to contain my queasiness at having to admire his nipples he decided to pull his pants down and give me a full on moony,… brilliant! If I wasn’t feeling sick before, I am now… ewww!!!

Well that is how it has been over the past week… lots of highs and very scary stuff going on but all in all things are well.

So Friday morning I got to work feeling tired, though not out of the ordinary and continued as always when I got into a riveting conversation with two of my colleagues about SOX (yawn), immigration rights (yawn), work permits in the EEA (yawn) and how we are going to ensure we follow due process (yawn yawn yawn).

So on this lively and highly exciting debate we were having, something funny happened to me. Not funny ha ha, no that came later with me trying to deal with it in some deranged Elton John impersonation… bear with me; I actually lost part of my vision, in both eyes. Now this in itself is slightly odd, never heard of immigration induced vision loss before. My colleague came to the rescue and I was marched into a darkened room with a bottle of water until I could see enough to be able to stumble back to my desk. Apparently I was blinded by her beauty… hmm not sure about that but if you get my vision back I’ll tell anything you want to hear!

The Elton John bit came in when I did get back to my desk, still partially blind, developing a head ache and feeling really queasy, the only thing left to do was to put on some dark shades to block out the light, however the only ones I could find in my magic drawer were novelty gold rimmed glasses in the shape of stars! Yes the word ‘twat’ did come to mind on quite a few occasions, particularly when unexpected visitors would think I was off my rocker not knowing the ‘valid medical reason’ for why I may need to wear them. Then I started having hot and cold flushes so the dodgy engineer fleece was on then off, then I was running for the loo in a queasy spell and drugging up. Finally I succumbed to really not feeling well and it not being appropriate for me to bring the professionalism of the department right down (whatever!) and I was told to clear off, so I went home.

I was really scared about this incident, I called my husband and told him, he then shouted at me and gave me a royal telling off for letting him know sooner, he packed up and came straight home to my aid. Lovely thought that he cared that much to come and see me, but I was comatose for 16 hours in sheer exhaustion so it was a bit of a wasted journey after I made him walk back from the station and all! Still, I could command pretty much whatever I wanted all weekend, so it was worth it!!!

Sight back in tact, I was on the mend and other than a few aches everything seemed back to normal. And then I found out something yesterday I wasn’t expecting and today has been a bit of a blur, though fortunately for all, not in the embarrassing Elton John kind of way!

So it has been an emotional past week, a colleague has also had a lovely baby and today I was sent some gorgeous pictures of 3 kittens up for grabs. I immediately called my husband to tell him about the great opportunity only to be told a cold “YOU COME HOME WITH ONE MORE CAT AND I WILL FLUSH THE F**KER DOWN THE TOILET” Jesus, only asking, I take it that means no then?!

Fair enough, we do have 5 cats already, one of which just won’t leave me alone, she has been literally attached to my hip for the last couple of weeks, not even leaving my side in bed. When I say in bed, I don’t mean IN bed, I mean when I am in bed she has to be with me. This has in the past acted as an occasional contraceptive whereby any late night attempt my husband made to get near me, she would fend off… which to be fair saved the headache situation occurring when I couldn’t be arsed, though I do question its effectiveness! Anyway, she really loves me I’m sure, it can’t be about food all the time. Last night on one of my many hundred trips for the loo, I asked her politely to move, obviously she didn’t, then I did the hug and role trick, still nothing, then I put my hand under her belly which normally gets her to slowly move away but instead she jumped up in a huff, turned to hiss and then spat at me! Charming, I make myself uncomfortable so as she can be all cute and cuddled up and that’s how she repays me. Well she can forget it… tonight Matthew, we are sleeping cat free!

Beyond all hope, beyond all possibility my Sharkey has sprung back to full life! I am so happy. He’s gone from minutes to death to normal health as I cared for him, watched him, cleaned him, I gave him his medicine and I spoke to him and he has responded like the amazing goldfish he is!! God, I need to get out more!

On another note, my colleague has trusted me with her plants. I warned her that I am great with animals but rubbish with plants. I kill them. I don’t intend to, I really don’t, but there is something in me that completely blocks my mind to think that plants need to be fed too. If a cat is hungry it will annoy the hell out of me so much that I can’t ignore it. If a plant is hungry it wilts a bit, but I don’t notice until it’s too late.

My colleague's brother grew her these tomato plants and they normally stand proudly on her balcony. She has gone on holiday and is so deeply attached to these sodding plants that she held me at gun point to take care of them for her. I was only expecting one little tomato plant and in she walks with an entire nursery I have to care for! What am I supposed to do? If I kill them she will go mad, but worse than that, she will be very emotional about the whole thing which will be no fault of my own. Alright maybe a little of my fault, but I did say I wasn’t very good at it.

I got home from work tonight and the precious tomato plant (unsurprisingly called Tommy) was not very happy. I don’t know why, we have had torrential rain for the past 2 weeks and it’s been reasonably humid. Alright the frost, arctic wind and lack of sun may have had a little impact, but I can’t be held responsible for that. Bit worried though. I asked if one plant died and I replaced it with one the same size would that be OK, and her words were “I KNOW EVERY F**KING TOMATO, EVERY LEAF AND EVERY LITTLE STEM OF THAT PLANT, SO DON’T EVEN TRY IT!” Tut, I only asked…!

Here’s another situation I got myself into. For some reason, I don’t know why, I decided to mention to my boss about how much I love art and that I am not bad at it. Well I used to be much better at it and that is becoming evident in my new project… My boss is buying a new house and I said as a very personal house warming gift I would paint her a picture. In principal it all sounded good, I was very excited to have a new project to concentrate on as I was getting bored of doing things for myself and my parents, so, enthusiastically I have embraced my new canvas… not literally, obviously. I sketched it all out and have so far done the first base coat of half of it. I think it looks OK, but I’m no fine artist. With my attention to detail and need for things be perfect and tidy it is like a piece of magazine print which I know she will hate, so I have to work out a way of making it still look abstract, but also messy to appeal to her…mm... creative mind!. Not sure how I am going to cope with that, I am already feeling over anxious that my dining room now looks like an art studio and is as cluttered as one! My poor mojo!!

Well on a work note, it has been the 2 weeks from hell. Actually it has been a great 2 weeks, just stupidly busy. We had a scary pre-audit take place which we thought we had done everything for. I happily accepted my invitation for the audit interview which at first seemed pretty straight forward. She asked me everything but the colour of my underwear and I think that may have been next on the list if I hadn’t made such a speedy exit! Been a little stressful since this trying to get everything in place for the double scary audit in a couple of months. Maybe I will go commando for that one just in case, it will make the answers easier!!

There was a bit of a calamity with another colleague and a shoe incident yesterday. A text come through to me saying “sorry, I’m going to be late, shoe fell off, sat in gutter, ran for bus but missed it, there soon…” Very intriguing and sounded strangely like the sort of texts I would get from my boss. Such as going on holiday to relax to text me to say that they messed up her room bookings, she got locked in one of the rooms and had to be rescued, she had to spend thousands more to move to another room and then to another hotel, that 3 visits to the doctors was required and that the Doctor thinks she fancies him…etc! I think it is catching!

Anyway, back to the shoe thing. The problem was with a strap that fell off so her shoe wouldn’t stay on. The incident occurred when hurriedly crossing the road to avoid being hit by a lorry which then required some speedy hopping to the other side resulting in a plummet to the gutter and the entire bus stop laughing at her! This is the person that when embarrassed has a tendency to faint, so that was my first concern when I got the text (after laughing hysterically at her misfortune!). Sitting in the gutter embarrassed and bruised whilst being laughed at in the rain on the way to the office, is probably not the best time or place to faint! She made it in shortly after avoiding the learner bus driver and we went about a fix for the shoe. Finally a paper clip twisted into the button hole did the trick which luckily enough could double up as a lightning conductor earthing device. Something that she could be thankful for as we all watched the flats in front of the office get struck by lightning and see the top of the roof fall off! It kept 3000 people in the office occupied as we all watched the fire service come and sort it out. The little things!

I also think I have put on at least 2 stone in the past 2 weeks as at least 6 people have celebrated their Birthday, plus one wedding and one departure. It has also made me very poor. I really don’t need to be eating so much crap, I’m fat enough as it is without an additional 3 inch layer of chocolate lard being deposited in my arse. Oh well, guess you only live once!