Gosh, I’m so full of exciting news, I could wet my pants.

First up, about that rotting carcass… A couple of staff members had to fish it out of the skip and stick it in a wheelie recycle bin to try and stifle the stench until the police could turn up and tell us if it was human or not. (Turns out it was bigger than a dog, which provoked much speculation between a call to the cops in the morning, and their arrival some time that afternoon.)

As much as I kind of hoped it would be human on the chance the ensuing investigation would grant an afternoon off work, it just turned out to be a cow.

There.  Wasn’t that exciting?  I know, I know, now stop trying to hump my leg.

Now for the next ground breaking news story…

A short while ago, our fridge finally gave up the ghost.  It was to be expected, being that it was old enough to defy carbon dating.  So we forked out $600 from our savings and bought a new fridge (hooray for J’s staff price at NL.  Hooray for savings).

A couple of weeks later, that fridge died, so  they sent out a replacement fridge.

This weekend, that fridge also died.  (We’d only had it a week.)

And in the same weekend, so did the washing machine.

Next it was the vacuum cleaner’s turn to pack it in.  Again same weekend.

Oh, and I spent all of Sunday wrapped around the toilet bowl and begging for death in recovery of whatever terrible thing I ate the night before.

The lesson in this? I had a suck weekend, and household appliances hate me.  That’s right folks, I am not destined to be a house-wifey domestic goddess.  Well, that’s a crying shame.

Oh, did I mention the car cost us $650 when we took it to get serviced - somewhere in between fridge two and fridge three packing it in?

But wait! There’s good news!

I saved a lil’ baby bird on Friday night from the deadly clutches of my feline familiars.  And rather than die of shock in the nest I’d made for it in the bedroom, it actually survived to wake me up chirping the next morning! An incredible tale of survival really, considering it’s make-shift nest was made of the last of J’s clean socks.  (See, even when clean, they can be deadly.  That bird defied all odds.)

Of course, as I was leaving to take little Chirpy Chirp Chirpy-Pants (or whatever Char had named it) to the bird lady, Char’s cat shot inside with a dead blackbird in her mouth.  …Which kind of reverses karma a little, especially when the fledgeling was also a blackbird.  Mummy blackbird perhaps? So umm… I guess we’ll be seeing more lil’ dead blackbirds around sometime soon…

Hmm, I remember a nursery rhyme about blackbirds being bloody tasty in a pie?  Just kidding, I’m no slack-jawed Joe.  Really.  But well, Christmas is just around the corner, and now that the grand old Xmas ham we didn’t have got spoiled in the broken fridge, we gotta eat somethin’. Right? Here kitty kitty…

Something dead has been dumped in our cardboard skip at work.  It’s in a black rubbish bag.  No one quite has the guts to get close enough and find out what it is.  Myself included.  Of course it’s unlikely to be anything much more than a dog someone couldn’t be bothered burying, but if by some slim chance it turns out to be human, does that mean we’ll get the rest of the week off work while police investigate? I could really do with the break…

I.  Am.  Sore.  Today was the shop’s stock change, and if I thought packing up the hall after our monthly sale was becoming a challenge, the humble fortnightly stock change may well be the straw which will break this camel’s back.

Every last inch of me feels as if it’s been through the tumble dryer twice over.  Imagine mowing your lawns, going on a long hike through the length and breadth of the Waitakere Ranges then coming home to mow the lawns again.  By lunch time.  Now you have an inkling of my pain.

Oh blah blah woof woof, I know what a whinge bag I am, but I’m not exaggerating! I am a pregnant hippo in pain!  I came home from work today and blubbered on to the family about how I can’t bear another day of this.  (Tears and all!)  My pelvis feels as if it is splitting, if ripping out my spine could stop my back from aching I’d fillet myself now, my sciatic nerve almost stops me in my tracks every time I take a step, my legs are stiff from the muscle cramps that I wake to each night…

… But every time I walk past my boss I tell myself to suck it up and stop waddling like a penguin, least I give her the satisfaction of saying “I told you so”.  (Anything but that!)

And then there’s the rapid pulse and heart palpatations that kick in for no apparent reason and make me feel as if I’m spacing out, the shortness of breath that likes to strike when I’m trying to sleep, the heartburn, the… did I mention leg cramps?

Urgh, I really want to enjoy this pregnancy, and for the most part, I am. Really, I am.  Most days, I can handle the aches and pains, knowing it’s all ‘pain with a purpose’ and the baby’s ‘reality kick’ to the ribs reminds me of the aspects of this pregnancy that I enjoy.

But some days (like today), it just hurts so much.  And I can only grin and bear it for so long before I realise the grin is actually a grimace and the continual aches and pains are for the moment, not so bearable after all.  Especially when I grizzle to J and he says “oh dear” in his best sympathetic voice, but in reality has absolutely no idea. He tries to get it, but I don’t think he can really grasp just how exhausted I feel when I say “I can’t endure this anymore”, knowing that I must.  Sometimes the realisation of this almost defeats me.

But there are some fantastic aspects to being pregnant. Like, the weird alien feeling of having the shit kicked out of you from the inside.  :P  Nothing like a good swift boot to the bowels to remind you you’re not alone!

It’s a sad day when I find I’m no longer the spry limber young thing I once was. Yeah I know, I was never too limber to begin with, nor particularly spry. But when it takes nearly as long to stand upright from a cross-legged position as it did to get through the seventh stage of the Dark Angel PS2 game, it’s really only a small matter of time now before I put aside the Subaru and purchase a mobility scooter.  I’ve begun looking into walking frames, and I’m thinking I’ll go for the one with a seat that lifts up to reveal a bed pan. How freakin’ handy is that?!

This aging spiel is one I’ve been on before, but little did I realise that while I was using pancake foundation as a filler for my eye-wrinkles and considering a burka to hide my expanding chin, the joints and ligaments were beginning to wizzen up like gnarled old rubber bands.  If I spend too long sitting on the floor, I have to rise in a series of steps (Step 1: kneel; Step 2: right leg forward; Step 3: Rest.) and then shuffle across the room at a 75% slant until I can at last stand up straight.

I realise I’ve become a complete hypochondriac about it, but I can’t help it.  Ooh, shooting pain down my right leg! Gah, I have sciatica! Must’ve popped a disc when incorrectly bending to pick a peg up from the ground or whatever menial task it was that causes old people to start breaking down.

Mysterious aches and pains are not meant to kick in until I’m well into my dotage.  Of course it’s not a simple case of being unfit. I do shiploads of exercise.  I pace rooms in nervous anxiety on a daily basis. That’s exercise.  I use my go-go-gadget extendable arms and legs to perform the million-in-one tasks that my boss insists must all take place NOW.  That’s exercise.  (Hmm. That’s probably also the cause of all those aches and pains.)  And, most importantly, I have a lateral thigh trimmer which on occasion, I glance at. Glancing is exercise.  For my eyes.  Good enough.

Now to go entirely off-topic, our bloke who does the heavy lifting decided to walk off the job on Thursday. Leaving me with the heavy lifting. Weak little pensioner that I am!   Though, I’m relieved that he’s gone.  Don’t have to put up with his sleazy cheesy little comments and innuendos anymore. Yay! No more, “Mmmm.. Bet you were a bit of a bad girl when you were a teen eh? I can just see you in a bit of goth bondage gear and a studded collar. Mmm…”

Urgh, those mmmmm’s of his were the skin-crawling worst. There’d be the “mmmmm” if he walked past while I was bending to plug in the vaccum cleaner, or an “mmmm” if he caught me leaning over a piece of furniture in contemplation of where to shift it to.  I’d clench my teeth and berate myself for bending over at all with him in the vicinity, but he didn’t need any kind of provocation.  He could be standing across the room silently drinking a coffee, then look over at me holding a pricing gun and go “mmmmm…” as if I were Homer Simpson’s next meal.  Always these things when no one else was around, of course.

Unfortunately his sudden decision to scarper off without notice has left us to try and pick up his slack when we’re already short-staffed. My own work is now two days behind, and with Char going into hospital to have her appendix removed on Thursday, I’m going to need the shoe-maker’s elves to get back on track the following week.  Stress stress stress!

I dreamt I was at work this morning.  Or rather, a nightmare.  Falling further behind on tasksI couldn’t catch up on.  Thankfully the phone rang and woke me up, or I could have hit rock bottom and died.  (Doesn’t that happen if you dream of falling?)