…Especially my own.

Tonight Jarrod has taken Char to see her first concert, which is My Chemical Romance, and I’m sitting here all alone - except for the company of several cats and a fridge that is DRIVING ME UP THE WALL WITH IT’S SANITY-SHATTERING DRONE. AAARRGH!  Dear gods, between the sandpaper rasp of “one or two” cats licking themselves in unison, and the fridge that won’t stop making that freakin’ sanity-shattering hive-of-bees-stuck-up-it’s-arse drone, I could only experience the bliss of silence if smack my head hard enough against this desk to knock myself out.

 Can you hear the lambs screaming?  CAN YOU?!

But anyway, what was my point?  Oh yes.  My Chemical Romance.  

Jarrod was about as happy as a slow boiling frog to go along to an emo event packed with 10 billion teeny-boppers a fraction of his age, but I was on to a great line of reasoning.  Well, I reassured the lad, at least it’s better than Justin Timberlake.  

And as it turns out, I’m right!  Because every now and then he calls to play a song down the phone.  Anyway, if all else fails, Gerard Way is hot.  Not that Jarrod will necessarily appreciate this fact.

I wish I could have gone too.  I thought they were pretty good at the BDO (what little I saw of them from waaay over the wrong side of the cattle pen).  And what a way to smuggle a fourth person in for free! In my belly!

Okay I’m really tired and it’s time to pick up the munsters. I just hope they’ve enjoyed it, because we paid twice the price for those bloody tickets on Trade Me! 

Oh, and how could I almost forget? Here’s the pre-gig pictures I snapped before dropping them off…

That girl has great poses.  And eventually that semi-permanent red I chucked in her hair for the occassion will wash out…

(Yeah, somehow I think I’ve started her on to something now.  Good bye natural hair colour I’m guessing.)

Where has my shy lil’ girl gone?  This girl is going to cause me some serious headaches…

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…

There is a bird outside in the willow tree that keeps whistling the first line of the Barbie Girl song.  Honestly, I thought I was deluded too, until J asked me tonight, ‘have you heard that bloody bird whistling Barbie Girl?’

Least it’s no longer whistling the beep my washing machine makes when it’s off-balance.  Or a cell phone.  …The amount of times I used to run around looking for my phone before I realised the noise was coming from the tree.

My dearly beloved other-half is cooking chilli sausage, baked beans and eggs.  Dear gods, the last time he ate this, he spent the night farting out little nuclear bomb bursts.  I was hoping to get some action tonight (yes, my big pregnant belly is almost impossible to resist *note sarcasm*) but I think the closest to action I’m gonna get is running, gagging, out of the room throughout the night.  Hell, if his arse is gonna be anything like the last time, I might just sleep on the couch.

I’ve just had a realisation.  He’s not eating Fart Food because he enjoys it.  He’s eating it because it’s a Callie Repellant.

Well mister, I hope the 3am gut ache is worth it.

Finally! I have wedged J off the computer long enough to install wordpress and begin customising the layout I downloaded. (Like I have the time or energy to create my own from scratch. Pfft.)

I know, I know… The ‘hiatus’ sign was up here for so long, even the graphic I created for it got sick and tired of hanging around and disappeared - leaving nothing behind but a little red X to mark the spot where it once was. It’s a ghost town round here.

But anyway, Not-Quite-Human.net is up and running once more. That’s right folks, the bitch is back! Well, the bitch is now off to bed because it’s taken all night to get this far, and her eyes are hanging out of her head.

Next task is to import the last year’s worth of blog entries I’ve had hosted elsewhere.  And as much as I’d love to say I’ll find some time tomorrow night to come back and continue setting up house again round here, I have antenatal classes to attend. (If you haven’t already heard, I’m mammothly pregnant with sproggin no. 2, and as sproggin no. 1 is 12, it really does feel like I’m doing it all over again for the first time. For J, it is the first time. Trust me, we need these classes. :P)

Goodnight!

After working late night Thursday, J came home dragging his feet and complaining of his aches and pains.

“… my legs are so sore and my back is killing me and I think I have a pinched nerve or something because damn …”

 ”… and at one point I bent over and my back just locked up and didn’t think I could get up again …”

All I could do was stand there grinning like a villiage idiot, chuckling “now you know MY pain!”

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!

Last night I dreamt my mother was pregnant.  My mother, at the grand old age of ANCIENT, was hugely pregnant and gloating about how much smaller she was through her pregnancy than me.  It’s a dream that has continued to disturb me throughout the day.  And probably always will. *shudder*

In other exceptionally mundane news: Today I finally admitted my size 10 jeans are too tight, and hauled my sorry ass into a comfortable, spacious 12.  Dear Gods.  I’m only touching upon the 15 week point and already I’m shedding sizes like a snake that’s over-indulged on too much hippo.  I’m not sure if it’s really a baby I have in there or a pair of conjoined taniwhas?  Or maybe (and most likely) it’s all the damn-it-I’m-now-30 comfort eating I’ve been doing since, like, two months ago (gotta start these celebrations early y’know).  Whatever.  I want to die.

Tomorrow I will go to Mitre10 and buy a tarpaulin.  Give me another month and I’ll be fitting it quite nicely.

A night or so ago J said, “Mum suggested that when we move to Marton, you can go along to Mainly Music one morning and meet other mums.”

The scary thing is, he seemed really enthused by this notion.

Dumbfounded, I replied,  “yeah I dunno. I don’t do the ‘other mums’ thing. I don’t do the ‘Mainly Music’ thing either.”

He suggested it would be a great way to “network” and “make new friends” and that our wee little Wurzel would “benefit greatly from the activity and social stimulation”. I suggested - through gritted teeth - that he organise a day off during the week so HE can take the sproggin to all those mumsy bubsy activity groups he’s so intent upon.

The thought of trying to ‘fit in’ to such a scene, quite frankly, horrifies me.

Long time, no blog. Life has been hectic.

Not so many weeks ago (yet it feel like forever), our little household decided to uproot ourselves from this West Auckland shoebox, and haul ourselves 800km down the North Island to a lil’ town called Marton.  We’re still here in our AK shoebox, but the wheels at least are turning. (Even if it is just to fall off the wagon and roll down the hill.)

In late June I drove J down to Marton for a job interview and we returned home to find my mother (who was house/pet/daughter-sitting) couldn’t walk.  She’d been that way since the previous day, but hadn’t wanted to alarm us by letting us know.  She insisted this had happened before and that she’d always come right after a few days, but I took her to the A&E where she was prescribed with a “possible stroke” and we were then sent on to North Shore hospital -which was completely overflowing with people on stretchers in the corridors.

Waitakere hosp had closed its emergency department to incoming and diverted everyone to Nth Shore, so it wasn’t the best time for mum to find herself there.  Three days later she was still in a ward waiting for a CT scan, and when she did indeed begin walking again of her own accord, the docs decided she must be fine and sent her home.  We still don’t know whether she’s been having the progressive strokes the doctors suspect have been the case, but perhaps we’ll find out when it happens next time…

Between worrying about mum’s health, working six day weeks, having a compacted wisdom tooth pulled out and my beloved cat Blackie (yeah I know, really original name) nearly put down because of the reoccurrence of a reoccurring condition, I’ve been feeling like life is closing in on me lately.

Since making this decision to move, J’s twice travelled to Palmerston North for interviews. He was offered the first job, but decided he didn’t want it.  The second interview seemed really positive, but yesterday he was told someone else had been chosen for it.  This process of travelling down to Palmerston every few weeks for an interview is getting expensive.  It’s starting to feel as if Fate likes to open doors simply to slam them shut again as we begin to step through.  Whatever. The packing has begun, and hopefully everything else will fall into place.

My 12 week scan on Tuesday revealed that the Little Parasite (whose name we have inexplicably changed to The Wurzel) has the right amount of arms and legs.  That at least, is comforting.