What ever happened to the blossoming glow of pregnancy?  I’ve been looking forward to experiencing all those happy clucky feelings I never experienced the first time around (too busy being an angst teenager) but so far the only parts of me which are blossoming are my boobs and my belly!

I figured I’d defeat morning sickness and tiredness with a positive attitude.  Yup.  The good old mind-over-matter.  Somehow I had completely forgotten that I am a really negative person.  Heh… Kinda threw me out there when I was trying to summon a bit of positivity. Pfft.

And talking myself out of the good old 1st trimester tiredness? Right!  I wake each day feeling like Sisyphus.  Groaning at the eternal task of pushing shit uphill.  Clawing through each day on my hands and knees. Planning little nesting corners where I can sleep through my lunch breaks, and near-crying with the sheer frustration of making every blunder imaginable on the til as I battle to keep my eyes open and my mind and body connected.  Struggling not to throw up all over each approaching customer…

Wait, I’m describing every working day here.  Perhaps with a tad more in the way of tiredness.

I was twice checked over by co-workers for a ‘baby belly’ yesterday.  Donna kept glancing at my stomach with a grin, and as icing to the cake, Mike (who, in a DOOL moment, has returned from the dead) asked if I’d named the “baby-bump” yet.

“Eh? Oh no, this isn’t a baby-bump.  It’s just my belly.”

He spent a moment apologising and trying to backtrack, but it was all good. I’ve been carting around that lil’ pot-belly for my entire life, and I guess no one’s really been that conscious of it before until now.

Though, it does make me think: Maybe I have developed a baby-bump already? After all, I saw a regular customer in the supermarket tonight and as we stopped to chat she was sneaking glances at the belly too.  (Should I be calling it The Belly?) J later agreed my ‘natural pot’ seems to have well, altered shape somewhat.

Good gods, I’m only closing in on eight weeks! Kill me now…

No, I think it’s just that I’ve dumped cravings for fresh fruit salad & spirilina smoothies in favour of chocolate-self saucing pudding and peanut slabs (they’re not really cravings, that’s just my excuse.)

On a plus side, I don’t think my boobs have been this big in a long, long time.

Yes Nicky, to answer the question you posed earlier; I’m pregnant.:P

It was planned, although we didn’t really believe it was going to happen quite so soon…

I’m a little concerned that it’s not actually human.  I mean, the IUD only came out at the beginning of May! (Maybe you didn’t really want to know that?  I’m never quite sure what should and shouldn’t be spoken of in polite society. I just tend to say whatever comes into my head.  Which means, I only speak a few times a day, and it’s usually on the topic of bowel movements.  Or lack of.)

Infact so filled with disbelief was I, that I took three pregnancy tests, gave one to J (his came out invalid.  D’uh), one to my boss (hers was a negative), then asked the doctor for one of their tests in case mine were somehow faulty.

While going over the importance of maintaining optimum nutrition, my doctor described the wee little sproggin within as “a parasite that will take and take and take from you until you have nothing left to give.  And then it will take some more.”  Therefore, little sproggin will from now on be affectionately referred to as ‘The Little Parasite’.

Char’s glad that she’s finally going to get the sibling she’s been nagging on and on and on about for the past 8 of 12 years, although she’s finding it hard to jump with joy at the moment, being that she’s recovering from having her appendix removed.

Recovering rather well on the couch with her feet on the coffee table, her choice of anything to eat/drink/watch, and a minion who materialises beside her to do her bidding whenever she utters “Hey Muuuum…”  Little poo.  The appendicitis dealio was all a convenient excuse to get out of tidying her room.

The fantastically disgusting thing about her surgery is that we now have really graphic and gory photos of her large intestine.  Or whatever that spaghetti bolognase was meant to be.  It was the next best thing to taking the appendix home in a jar. (A doctor suggested we keep it in the freezer as a memento, but we figured one of us would eventually forget and use it in a stri-fry.)

You know, I’m feeling kind of queasy over intestines.  Oh dear gods no… will the Little Parasite leech me of my morbid curiosity?! *drops to knees*  What will I have left?!!

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?)

Long time, no update.  I don’t think I can be bothered doing this secret diary of adrian mole crap where I spout on and on about my life.  Then again, the narcissist in me says I can, and so I will…

So, Charlotte is in Nelson for this last week of the school holidays and arrives home tomorrow.  It’s Saturday and Charlotte’s not home - once upon a time this would have meant something. Like, going out and getting shit-faced.  Now being the boring fart I am, it simply means junk food for dinner and whatever’s on telly.  Besides, I’m broke.  My car failed it’s WOF over some trivial little brakes issue.  Guess I’ll be taking the work van to the airport tomorrow…

What else? Oh, I remembered today how once upon a time, my mother and I wished my step-father dead.  Mum was pissed that it had been his turn to mow the lawns for months and he wouldn’t do it, and she was generally unhappy and wishing him dead, and had come over to my place to get away from it all.  She said, “I wish he’d just bloody well die.”  To which I replied, “hey you never know, maybe he will.”  Then, two days later he did.  He died.

While mowing the lawns.

Seems Death has a biting wit.

Anyway, this nugget of recollection forced it’s way out of the blue and into my conscience today, and I cried because of it.  Guilt and all.  Only what, three and a half years later?  Talk about delayed reaction.  (Talk about ‘issues’…)

I can’t speak for mum, but I never really meant it.  Not literally.

And that, my dears, is that.

Here’s the BDO update the universe has been holding it’s breath for..

So, here we are on the morning of the Big Day, all happily getting rollocking drunk over at Nicky’s place as is the BDO custom, before heading off into the fray.

As per usual, Jarrod and I lost each other within about 20 minutes of arriving at the venue, somewhere in the crush of Trivium.

This time I was with his friend Andrew, and Andrew had Jarrod’s cell phone and all of his money in his pocket. Poor Jarrod spent the day rather parched.  I on the other hand, had a chipper time in the beer area where I spent a large part of the day thinking I was Jim Morrison and Andrew was the Indian in the desert.  That little jem had nothing to do with the beer and more to do with some other mysterious substance.  In fact, I had to get someone to take the following photo of us, just to be sure that Jarrod’s friend was actually there, and I wasn’t in fact conversing with a figment of my imagination.

Andrew - being the dilligent Wise Old Indian that he was - dropped some amazing pearls of insight while we were sitting around waiting for a Jarrod who never arrived (it turned out he was metres away on the other side of the fence but we never noticed each other) and I made a mental note to remember all of these profound life revelations.  Which of course, I forgot.  (Melissa on other other hand had spent her night wondering whether to watch Tool, or watch a pebble on the ground.  It was indeed a day for being at one with the world.)

Eventually I wandered away from Andrew (his wisdom went out the window when he found he was missing the bands he’d come for) and being on my path to self-realisation, I decided I’d find more insights into life if I could track down Boudica’s reincarnation, who I felt sure would be somewhere near the Boiler Room.

Boudica was no where to be found, but I did find Nicky. Or rather, she found me. And then she found Jarrod.  What a pal! After that, Jarrod vowed never to lose the beer ever again.  The end.

Oh, and as I never gave much of a shyte for any of the bands, I wasn’t dissapointed when I never got around to seeing any.  The organisers had devised this annoying cattle-pen system which meant first come first serve.  I was waiting in a toilet que when Tool were on anyway.  Basically, I’m too old and boring for this shit…

With under two weeks to go until the Big Day Out, I had to go and get 20% of my body massively sunburnt.   Yup.  Somehow, defying all odds, I managed to quite possibly be the only person in this part of the Southern Hemisphere who stumbled upon and soaked up enough UV rays on the weekend to cause parked cars, gas stations and small kittens to combust whenever I get within 50 metres of them.  (I know, I’m sounding more illiterate than usual…)

I had all the intentions of staying out of the sun this summer and maintaining my pasty-white glow, but then I developed driver’s arm and the mental image of me being all pale white except for one tanned arm was worse than that of me being tanned. So I figured, blow it, I’ll saute the rest of my flesh. It’s just rather unfortunate that I sunbathe in the same manner that I cook dinner. I’m sure you get the picture…

Nicky will probably be inclined to say “I told you so”, being that she was the one who took a sheltered position in my backyard during my three hour vigil under the sun, and wisely suggested I “put some sunblock on at least”.  Little gemstones of wisdom to which of course, I paid absolutely no attention.  Snotty-faced little know-it-all that I am.

Three days on, and I’m still being informed of my radioactive condition by customers who seem to think they’re doing me a favour by declaring “well! That’s a bit of sunburn you’ve got there! You’ve cooked like a lobster!”
Really? I’m sunburnt? Holy shit, so I am! You know, if you hadn’t have told me, I’d never’ve known…

On what may be an entirely unrelated matter, through the course of the day my throat and lower right side of my face has broken out into some kind of heat rash. I slathered myself in antiseptic goop, but with the way things stand at the moment between me and old Murphy, I’ll probably wake up tomorrow morning to discover Necrotising fasciitis fighting sunburn for landrights.Regardless of whether or not I loose my facial muscles to a flesh eating disease, in a few more days when the sunburn has settled, I’m going to begin shedding skin like an alien out of V. I’m going to be a leper.

But at least this solves the problem of what to wear to the Big Day Out. I will be dressing myself like a Muslim suicide bomber.

I suppose I’m glad we’re living in the digital age, otherwise Nicky and I would have gone through half a roll of film in effort to capture a half-okay pic of us on Sunday.

It started when the gal slung an arm around me, held up her camera and said something upon the lines of “say cheese”.  Somehow, that pic didn’t turn out right, so we took another snap. Still didn’t look right.  Another snap.  What’s wrong with this camera? Damn thing’s broken or something. Another snap.

We finally figured out the problem.  And it was so much worse than a malfunctioning camera.  It was us.  We no longer look the way we think we should inside our heads.  We’re aging.

Deteriorating.

Well, I can’t speak for Nicky, she’s three years younger than me. She can still pull off the whole young thing. Bitch. (Yeah yeah, I meant that affectionately.)

For me personally, I preview a pic of myself and think “wait that’s not right, I must’ve been holding my face funny. Let’s try that again”, and take another shot.  Again with the “wait, that’s not right…” And on and on it goes.

…Until at last I realise; No, the camera’s not simply catching me at a bad moment, this is in fact what I look like.

Okay I know, I was never much of a catch in the first place.  But that’s not the point. The point is; holy crap, I’ve aged.  More than that - I’ve lost several years of my life!  On the eve of my 25th, I took a pause in breath and didn’t exhale again for another four years.  No wonder I can’t remember what I did last week.  I still think I’m 24!  That is, until I see a photo of myself and discover I’m actually closing in on 30.  Then, in denial, I figure there must be something wrong with the bloody camera! Stupid girl.  *facepalm*

Sometimes when a person is drunk enough, you can shave off their eyebrows while they’re sleeping and stick cigerette butts up their nostrils.  In my case, someone glued eye-wrinkles to my face, then put a lipo machine on ‘blower’ and fed an extra 10 kilos into my body.  Much of which appears to have gone into my face.

When did my face get so fat? Was it always this fat? Did I just never notice before? Am I already developing the sagging jowls of the elderly?

Oh dear gods.  Ten billion photos later, and that was the only one that was part-way viewable. I wasn’t trying to smile. I was cringing.  And that was before I realised the great doom of my lost youth.

I think I’ll go to bed now, and hope to wake in an alternative universe where a more fortunate Callie Taylor has made a successful career choice and earnt enough money for cosmetic surgery. Goodnight!

In attempt to capture this so-called “Christmas spirit” I hear so much about, I allowed myself to be dragged kicking and screaming to Christmas in the Park on the weekend.

Once upon a time, only copious amounts of alcohol could get me there (actually, I’ve never been before, but in theory, had I been before, it would have taken a lot of grog. You know?). These days, it was the repeatitive, weekly, monthly chant of “so, are we going to Christmas in the Park this year mum? You said we would remember? Don’t forget you said…”

Ah, for the love of…

YES ALREADY!

Yes. For crying out loud we will go, yes. If only to subdue my conscience which is feeling guilty for falling through on my promise to go the previous year. And quite possibly, the year before that.

So, Jarrod suggests we get there early so we can get a good place to park our butts up close to the stage. I suggest we roll on in at the last minute because who needs to be that close to crappy NZ celebs attempting a slightly grander version of kareoke anyway? And of course I won, because I’m the one driving the car. Bah!

I am a terrible, terrible person.

So, this is the outcome of our fun family day at the Domain. It’s photographic evidence that we did go. And as you’ll see, we had a ROLLOCKING great time.

Here’s Char and her cousin Matt…

They’re happy, smiling, laughing, waving…

And here’s Jarrod:

(He’d rather be at speedway)

And then there’s me. Unforunately.

Behold my wide beaming happy smile! (I wore it on the inside.)

Oh, and half an hour later…

Yes yes, I cut and pasted Matt and Char into the same pic because I couldn’t be naffed posting them individually.

But the point is, half an hour after arriving, it started RAINING. And, despite my naggings of “DON’T FORGET A JACKET CHARLOTTE”, she FORGOT HER JACKET. Therefore, if you’re observant enough to have noted the picture above this one, she’s now WEARING MINE.

An hour later when I’m shivering my ass off and insisting “okay, we’re a bunch of miserable drowned rats, let’s call it a night and go home”. She declares, “I’m quite snug actually.”

Of course you are, you little toe-rag! (And I mean that quite affectionately) YOU’RE WEARING MY JACKET!

Being that I’m the one driving the car, I won. Maybe we’ll try this again next year. And we’ll remember umbrellas. Or um, copious amounts of alcohol?