Remember how I've had a really stressy, knackering week with Alex being sick? Remember how much I was looking forward to a relaxing, sleep-filled weekend?

Yeah... doesn't really happen when you've got kids.

Was having a nice Friday night - a bit of wine, a bit of Afterlife - had just fed Alex at about 11.30 and managed to put him down awake & was feeling all smug about it and starting to think about bed at midnight when I heard a really loud, repetitive, barking cough from upstairs. 'Poor Alex', I thought, 'that cough's no better'. Only, after 30 seconds or so I realised it wasn't Alex, it was Vi. When I got to her room she was crying & struggling to breathe. a 999 call later, the paramedics arrived, diagnosed Croup and took me and her to the nearest Hospital with a proper A&E - in Ashford, 40 mins drive away. She was able to breathe better by that point but still very uncomfortable. Long & short of it, she was given steroids at half 1 which soon made her feel better but we still needed to wait for one of the handful of Doctors in the packed A&E (BTW - hey, drunks! That's some nice straining of NHS Resources you're doing there! I really like the way your self-inflicted maladies take space and medical attention away from those who are genuinely sick or badly hurt - please, keep that up!) to check her over and sign us out & that didn't happen til nearly 3.30. And after that I needed to call Hubs to sling Alex in the car & drive all the way over and pick us up. Got to bed at 5. I'm not too bad after sleeping til noon and Hubs is surprisingly chipper, but poor Vi is exhausted. Bah.

Anyway, thanks to Albino Cavewoman for sending me this last night. Really cheered me up. 'Warp me to Halifax!'

I can't believe I never posted about my escape to Colch with violetcreme last weekend! Probably because as soon as I returned home I had to go and join the rest of my family for the long wait in A&E because Vi had tripped and whacked her face on the bottom stair as I was driving back (don't worry, she's fine) and was therefore distracted away from the previous 24 hours, which were epic and awesome and various other annoying Americanised enthusiasms.

Miss C, you see, lives, as those who know Miss C might expect her to, in a fucking MANSION. Admittedly, it's a mansion that's been turned into flats, but they're lovely flats that are probably a little bigger than our house and they have Grounds. I believe my first words of greeting were 'You have fucking squirrels! They're frolicking!'

Missy C also has an iPod full of Kids TV Themes. We kicked off the weekend headbanging to the Knightmare theme while driving to Sainsburys. It's a very good way to commence a Saturday night. There was pizza, tiffin, a whole champers bottle worth of Bucks Fizz, I actually got into Strictly for the first and probably only time. (Highlights: 'He looks like a drunken uncle at a wedding'... 'he's a bit spasmodic... you're a bit Spasmodic.') There was also rather a lot of Quantum Leap, the 'Die Hard' TNG episode, which prompted a loud 'Oh my GOD' from Missy C once Picard got into his jodhpurs, thus exposing the Captain's Log, and we wrote a manifesto that was going to save British Journalism & TV Drama. I don't remember a lot of it, but I think it involved Terry Wogan.

Needless to say, it was brilliant, and plans are afoot to do it again on a bigger scale. Hurrah!

'We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!' 'You don't understand - I coulda had class.'

So Hubs bought me The Sims 3 for our shiny new Mac, which may explain why I haven't posted much recently. Dollis Hill, everybody's favourite bisexual, artistic clown, was doing so well in her music career until she got pregnant. Found Sims weirdly imitating life for a while when Dollis was having to get up constantly to do night feeds and changes as I played while night feeding my own kid. As a result of spending all her time mummying, Dollis now has no friends any more. Eerily accurate. Currently have the game on perma-pause while I spend hours and hours building a dream house by the sea for them that they'll never be able to afford. Happy days.

I've just been pointed the way of this website on Twitter and it's delightful. Vi's really into The Music Box at the moment, so I've been watching a lot of Stan Laurel in his prime lately. He comes across as a very sweet old gent in the letters, and a little sad, kicking about after making the decision never to act again after losing Oliver Hardy to a stroke. It's impossible not to read the letters in his voice.

Oh, and Gameswipe! Gameswipe, Gameswipe! Anyone else see it?

This is beautiful. And you thought the people marching to oppose Obama were all a bunch of reactionary, illiterate Racist Rednecks. Shame on you!

Worth zooming in on the smaller placards. My personal favourites: 'Get a brain, Morans', 'Thank you, Fox News for infroming us', 'Respect are country - learn English' and of course 'Youth In Asia', which is so brilliant I think it might actually be a deliberate piss-take. No one's that thick, are they?

Are they?

This is the best thing you will see today - I promise.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1184614595?bctid=37862450001

Just because. Enjoy.

Went to Farming World *again* today - with lady next door and her Granddaughter this time, as well as Hubs & a very well behaved Alex. Vi & the granddaughter (let's call her E, for the sake of her privacy) get along like a house on fire, and they played together beautifully for hours on end. Vi is starting to act like a proper little girl around her peers & was holding hands, chatting and laughing with E, sitting together and sharing their chips at lunch and playing pirates on a little boat. Beyond adorable. Luckily, it was really sunny today too, and we've all gone a little bit pink this evening.

Nice to be able to go out all day as a family. Can't wait til Alex is old enough to start actually enjoying stuff like this, too.

We've had the InLaws over today and all went out for a day trip to Farming World. Me & Vi went before, with Playgroup, but because there were more people to run around with Vi we were able to stay out much longer today. So. Much. Fun.

The B-i-L is currently obsessed with goats and spent ages cooing over various different breeds. Vi really liked the piglets, the rabbits, the shire horses and the shetland ponies. She's spent most of the rest of the day telling us that she fed the rabbit some grass and that one of the horses was lying down. She also loved the various climbing frames and spent well over an hour on them - much easier for me to sit on the grass and watch someone else scampering after her on them than to try to haul myself up there with her. Oh, and she loved my ice cream too - so much so that I had to abandon it and buy myself another, even though we'd got her a perfectly good Mini Milk.

She now has an adorable pink line over her cheeks and nose where she caught the sun.

It knackered me well out, though. I had to have a nap this afternoon.

Busy day. Cream crackered, and about to give Vi her bath. For now, the only update I have time for is this:

The Wrath Of Khan, The Opera.



Via Graham-Linehan-Who-Should-Be-Working.

My husband's always loved this song, and found it on the youtubes for us. There's a few countries missed out, and a few listed that aren't technically countries in their own right... plus, the world map has changed considerably since even this was on TV. It's fun, though.

Awkward Family Photos. The best site I've seen since 'Cake Wrecks'. Enjoy, friends!

Beautiful. Thanks to stovetop00 for the link.

Ah, my fetish for Interracial Bromances just goes on and on. If I still had the wherewithall to do vids, there would be one awesome soft-focus Data/Geordi vid to this song. 'It's like I married my best friend, but in a totally manly way... LET'S GO!'

This is brilliant.



Thanks to Missy C for the link. Big old lesbian, mMrmitey kisses coming your way, petal!

Before I go to beddy, I must share my absolute highlight of my days slumped in front of the TV last week - the More 4 Pub Quiz Advert. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZkAid9JIxw

Jon Snow + Kevin Macleod in frocks = Pure Joy.

Escape to London today was well worth
a, the guilt of leaving the house just as Vi, who had been doing really well all morning, puked up her breakfast
b, possibly the worst Coach journey ever, on a completely packed coach. Picked a sleepy lady to sit next to, which was good, but ended up sitting the other side of the aisle to two massive charvers who spent 2 hours loudly and swearily sort-of chatting each other up as the girl (overweight and dressed head to toe in skintight white clothes so that she looked like the Michelin Man) simultaneously chatted with various people on her mobile - including her boyfriend so that ChavvyMan (who got on board with a can of Special Brew... if you're not pissed by 11am you're obviously not trying hard enough... and twice 'went to the toilet' for 5 minutes, during which time the whole coach mysteriously smelled of fag ash) ended up having a loud, sweary argument with Phone Boyfriend that 'they were only sitting next to each other on the fucking bus, for fuck's sake'. Actually, I was quite glad of Chavvygirl as she stopped Chavvyman from trying to talk to anyone else - apart from taking a few moments to ask the foreign students behind him some random questions and then take the piss out of them for not being able to understand his weird, slurred ramblings while Chavvygirl laughed her arse off. Having sworn that there was nothing going on they then kissed as the coach pulled up and exchanged numbers, Chavvyman leaving her with the immortally romantic line 'Just put me down as "Paul Coach". Now I've got to get off. I've got to get one of them... fucking... things...' He pushed me in the back several times as we were getting off. He was a CHARMER.
c, braving Victoria's alfresco ticket 'office' (aka the worst ticket booth in the world) for five minutes, then discovering that the Viccy line was closed so what should have been a quick hop to St Pauls ended up involving three different tube lines. It was quite fun playing 'how long before somebody offers me a seat', though - and impressively I was offered a seat on every tube I got on on the way there. None on the way back, mind.

But as I say, it was all worth it. I had a lovely escape with Miss C, la Nunn and 'Brickwork' Kahn, who we only invited to look more multicultural but impressively ate with a knife and fork and didn't even try to blow us up once. She did have a bit of a headache since we were eating in the shadow of St Paul's and everybody knows that Cathedrals are built out of Muslim Kryptonite. Jokes were made. Fun was poked. Plans were planned. Some children stared at La Nunn in a Village of the Damned sort of a way. Two old people pressed their noses against the door of the restaurant like tramps in a silent movie until our mockery of them caused them to move on. We saw two brides and compared their tits. I got terribly hot, but that might have been a Preggo thing.

Vi's illness these last few days seems to have turned me into my mother. I fretted and phoned a lot, but was happy to see that she was in a far more cheerful mood by the time I got back. Fingers crossed for her being more back to normal tomorrow.

Right - washing up and laundry to do! Saturday nights are a blast!

Thanks to Ian. I lolled. Now all I need to find is Lol Magazine.

Hee! Thanks to tlshull for the link to The Hero Factory!




I think I come across as a bit more Goffy here than I really am! Hey-ho.