NYE

For the last few days I've been trying to find something to do tonight, but every suggestion that's been made to me has left me feeling a bit.....well......meh. The fact is that I really don't like New Years Eve, and I don't want to celebrate it. So I'm not going to. I'm going to stay at home and watch the telly. I may even go to bed before midnight if I feel so inclined.

The problem with NYE is that it so emphatically marks the passing of time. It draws a big fat line under the year that was, and forces you to consider all your acheivements and failures, every decision and mistake that you've made over the course of the last 365 days. It also makes you look ahead to the following year, and all the things you have to look forward to or to dread. I seem to remember that I mentioned all this last year, and I will probably bring it up every year to come, because I'm a creature of habit. In fact, this is what I said of 2010 at its beginning:

This year will be the year I graduate from university. It will also, I hope, be the year when I get a permanent, full-time job, and the year when I move to a place of my own, which nobody can tell me not to decorate or fill with cats

Well....I graduated. I got a job. I haven't moved yet, but we have started getting estate agents round to value the place, so those wheels are in motion, and two out of three aint bad, as the Loaf says. It feels slightly affected to look back at my acheivements with pride gleaming from between the lines. Perhaps I should have sent Christmas cards after all. Then I could have included a little newsletter so that people I never see and who couldn't care less could read all about my year. But then, why bother? I can just direct them here and they can read all about it as it happens. Of course there are things I don't write about here. I've made more than my fair share of mistakes this year, and done things I'm not proud of, but I've learned from them. It's unrealistic to expect that I will never make a mistake again, so I suppose all anyone can hope for is not to make the same mistakes they made in the past. I wasn't going to make a resolution this year, but actually that's a pretty good one, and it seems a shame to waste it.

So......my resolution for 2011 is to Make Brand New Mistakes!

Not for a few years yet

My mum: Right, I'm going to get in the shower.
Baby: Nanny need change nappy?

Well that told me

Me (blowing raspberries on a baby's tummy): I spy a belly! Gonna get your belly!
Baby: Go way Ardie Megs. My belly.

To you. Merry Christmas. Love from me.

I never send Christmas cards. This is because I'm useless. This year, however, I'm making a conscious decision to not send Christmas cards, as opposed to just forgetting, leaving it too late or not being bothered. Instead I have followed the example of some charitably minded friends, and donated my Christmas card money to Shelter. So you won't be receiving a card from me. This won't surprise you, as you almost certainly haven't for several years if ever, but this year you can rest safe in the knowledge that it is both intentional and aiding a very worthwhile cause.

An early Christmas present

One of my Christmas wishes has already come true. The radiator in my room has been fixed! Technically it wasn't so much an elf that repaired it as a man from British Gas, but he got the job done in a handy elf-like fashion. Of course, there is one little fly in the ointment (I mean come on! It wouldn't be me unless there were fly-ridden ointment involved), and that is the fact that the radiator has been broken for years, and I hadn't had it fixed because I couldn't afford to do so. Or so I thought.......

It was free.

Yep.

I've been piling blankets on my bed, and shivering my way into and out of my clothes for years for absolutely no good reason whatsoever. Why did it never occur to me at any point to just call them and enquire as to how much it would cost? They would have told me it was free and the problem could have been solved.

Lesson learned: even if you pride yourself on being a die-hard pessimist, it's always worth checking whether something is possible. Occasionally people - and, indeed, utility companies - can surprise you.

All I want for Christmas is you......and some other stuff

Things I want for Christmas:


1) Boots that don't fall apart / make me skid everywhere / let my feet get wet if I so much as look at a puddle

2) A new laptop - shrieks of mirth! Santa doesn't love me that much

3) More chocolate than anyone can reasonably eat, since I'll be embracing the 'Christmas doesn't count' rule this year

4) For Santa to bring an elf with him to my house, and get it to repair the radiator in my room. If they can build etch-a-sketches they can fix plumbing.

5) This ring in gold. I can't really justify spending that much on a ring for myself, but I've wanted it for aaaaaaages. I would call him Fiver.

6) World peace or some such hippyish sop to the universe, to make me feel less guilty for being a materialistic cow


..........Oh, and a pony. Always and forever a pony.

Overheard on the bus

"I find women really pretty when they cry. Seriously. They go all pink and shiny-eyed. It makes me want to be mean to them so they cry more."

I will not be surprised when this man's photo turns up on the evening news.

Quote of the day

"Megan, sometimes you say words and I'm like.....yeah......ok.....I have no idea what you just said"

My life as a penguin

Everywhere is cold.......outside, in my house, in the office.......if I were a penguin, I would be so much more comfortable. Someone would have to lift me onto my chair at work, but once I was up there I could quite happily slap away at the keyboard with my wings, and honk down the phone, and all would be well. Then I could come home through the Arctic weather without feeling like bits of me were about to drop off. Once home, and having been assisted to open the baby gate, I would be entirely comfortable in my bed, which is, after all, approximately the same temperature as a snow drift. Why has nobody lauded this already as a flawless solution to Winter?

Things that make me smile No.70

Daddy: What are you doing? We don't draw on giraffes. Do we draw on giraffes?
Baby: Yes.

Things that make me smile No.69

A couple of days ago I received a letter from a concerned reader (trans: a facebook message from a mate) asking "Why has nothing made you smile in the last two months?". How remiss of me to lead my readers to believe that I haven't cracked a smile since September. So just to reassure you all:

Yesterday I saw a builder on the tube. He had tattoos all up his massive arms, paint-spattered clothes and a belly that bore testament to a lifetime's enjoyment of beer. And he was utterly engrossed in a book entitled "Baby Led Weaning". Aw!

And today I have learned...

.....that drinking the best part of a bottle of champagne is not the way to convince people that you ought to be allowed to wield a jigsaw. After much whining, I was eventually permitted to cut out an apostrophe, and made a sterling job of it, if I do say so myself. Ahem. I might have cut into the table a little bit, but the boys did that too, cutting out the rest of the sign. It's still the best apostrophe ever cut out by a drunk girl called Megan in a warehouse in Manor House tonight.