Corporeal warming

It does matter how many chemicals I douse the cats with I can't get rid of the bloody fleas. My cats don't usually suffer such an infestation but they appeared around September and just won't go. I'm guessing it's because it has been so warm for so long, and has made the cats hot stuff and very attractive to fleas.

I've tried all sorts of stuff, that stuff you put between their shoulder blades, stuff you mix in their food and even attempted an aerosol flea spray which just caused the cat to rip me to shreds resulting in mass bloodshed (mine, obviously), as soon as I pressed the button and the tin hissed. I only tried THAT on one cat.

I comb them every day, sometimes several times if they're stupid enough to sit there, and pop the little buggers if I can pick them off the comb fast enough before they escape. Someone said to plunge them into boiling water.

Can anyone lend me a pan big enough to fit a chunky cat?

'Tis the season to be jolly

Well it's that time of year again.

Every year my mate Andrea-the-Viking and I go 'Christmas shopping'. On these expeditions I think we have only managed to buy Christmas presents once, and that was several years ago. Mainly we go for lunch and get pissed.

Today, I believe, we excelled ourselves.

We got the train into Leeds arriving in the station for 12.10, we hobbled up Park Row cos we both have knackered knees (and I have to wear high heels cos she's 6 foot tall) and arrived at Piccolino's by about 12.20 where we ate some very nice stuff and drank a couple of bottles of very nice stuff. And then we left there about 3.

Then we went 'Christmas shopping' by walking through M&S where Andrea the Viking bought a red evening dress for a 'do' and I bought a black lace frock cos I liked it. And then we went over the road aiming for Harvey Nic's coffee bar but there was a huge queue, so we went further down the arcade to Anthony's Patisserie (which actually had better, squidgier seats) where we had a couple of scones, a pot of tea and A-the-V had a Baileys and I had a Kir Royale.

Now that's my idea of a great shopping trip.

I told a lie..

...on Zoe's blog.

I didn't mean to. I said I didn't clean and now I remember that after clearing a shelf in one of the kitchen cupboards I wiped it with a bit of wet kitchen roll. Bloody filthy it was too. My mother-in-law used to empty all her kitchen cupboards every week and clean them inside and out.

My mother used to iron everything except tights (well she ironed the woolly kids sort) even though bras, especially, had Do Not Iron written inside them. The elastic in them used to melt after 2 wash/iron cycles. I don't iron at all. Jonathan does the kids school shirts and everything else I wash and dry very carefully so that it doesn't crease.

I have cooked (properly - from raw stuff) about 6 times this month, which is a record since I gave up all that crap.

But it wasn't always that way.

When I first got married I cleaned the house from top to bottom every week alternating skirting boards and windows every other week. I did all the washing and ironing. I did all the supermarket shopping. I did all the cooking. I worked full-time. I earned the most money.

Boy, was life shit.

Then, one Sunday evening I was doing the weekly ironing and I really wasn't well. Jonathan offered to finish it off for me. The shock nearly killed me, but I handed over and he did the last 2 items (yes, he timed it brilliantly). I was so mad when I saw that, not only did he do it in half the time I did it, he did it better than I did it. We had been married 5 years and 10 months before he'd offered to do any housework.

The bastard!

Creating a diversion

I went out on Friday night with Paul. It was sort of an early start for me, 8.30, and we got thru a lot of wine.

Now I've been drinking Magners lately and haven't been drunk for a while cos I can't fit enough volume of cider in to get pissed, and usually not getting out until almost 10 o'clock limits the amount of drinking time I have too, so, all in all, I've been reasonably well behaved. (Ha, ha - yeah right!!)

But not Friday. Oh no siree.

I got very pissed. Jonathan said he hadn't seen me that drunk for over a year (he's not very observant).

I collapsed in a heap - tittering like a mad woman which Ysabella found hilarious - fortunately I was at home at this point.

And then I did a sick - at least it was down the loo.

But how sad is this when you're 39 plus VAT plus postage and packing?

Well??

Still waiting for MKWM to tell me what I can do with my husband and with 2" of fun Mars bar.

Husband and/or Mars bar and/or 2" does not, in my book, equal fun of any kind.

Unless.....my husband eats the Mars bar and moves further over to his side of the bed to give me an extra 2 inches.

Not exactly fun, but a satisfactory solution.

Hurray, November at last.

I wouldn't normally get excited about it being Novemeber, but this year it signals an end to all the stuff that's been going on, costing me a fortune, making me tired - and - worse still - smoke again.

This is a bad thing cos in my non-smoking year I realised how much smokers do stink. It really is awful and I didn't want to join the stinky club again. However, having said that fags still taste fab, and I think smoking looks cool and grown-up (btw I am entitled to MY opinion).

To celebrate the wedding anniversary/Jonathan's birthday we went to Edinburgh for 4 days. I'd never been before. I liked it and I would love to go again (preferrably without the hormonal ones). We stayed in a fab hotel (Malmaison in Leith) which was the nicest hotel I've ever stayed in. Mind you, I think the staff were a bit forward cos by our second night they knew our bar order and one of the waiters kept whispering that he could do me a nice little Sauvignon at a bin-end price......

This month has been crazy, as wells as 3 weddings, our silver jobby, 4 birthdays, an exam, half-term, our little party-ette, 4 days in Edinburgh and a death, there was Halloween.

God how I hate this gift from the good old US of A. It's crap, they should have kept it. I bought 5 bags of 'fun-sized' things, (well I don't want cellulose paint on my car again) and it looks like I have about 4 bags left! Where were the buggers?

To round off the mad month I did something I haven't done for 6 or more years. I had a fun-sized Mars bar. They were as yukky and sickly as I remember.

And I'm still trying to work out what is 'fun' about something that is only 2 inches long.