well, yeah. you could say that twitter has eaten this blog. let's face it; typing 140 character tweets is really quite undemanding, so when i get round to blogging, i'm totally overwhelmed at the vast amount of SPACE available and the vast amount of THINGS that i could/should/would have said.

youl'll have to forgive my typing - the boy is asleep under my right arm at the mo, which is mostly* a wondrous thing that we never thought possible during the crazy, sleep deprived time we had last night.

* except i need a wee, but we won't dwell on that.

so anyway.

we've all been ill in our house - the boy still is, poor love, which means lots of grumpy and several breathtakingly full nappies - and have descended into a state of utter disarray as a result (which is why i'm blogging; there's not a lot else i can do while trapped on the sofa with only my left arm free).

... and in the present moment ...

Woo, I feel like Dr Who. Yup, the tardis called me so I could not finish the above. I'm not quite sure what happened, except it involved The Boy being diagnosed with gastroenteritis (he's finally recovering, but not QUITE there yet), and lots of rushing around looking after him and doing lots of washing, and working, and quite a few other things in between.

I owe lots of people emails and need to tidy my desk. I have, however, managed to Tweet several times. Of course I've managed to Tweet! Twitter ate my blog.

More soon, maybe. You know where I am in the meantime...

Hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas and new year... me, C and The Boy did, although sadly we have yet to make it up to Berwick, which is covered in knee deep snow; perhaps the third time we try will be the lucky time? It had better be! We'll see.

So anyway, I don't have many words today because I am officially a Crap Blogger. However, I do have photos, so feast your eyes below (of course, The Boy can always be seen here. I'm not THAT crap!):

Unsurprisingly, it's snowed a lot here.

Many times!

And our back garden looked pristine and perfect (until Harrythedog and the window cleaner stomped all over it - YES! THE WINDOW CLEANER! No shorts, thankfully).

We've seen loads and loads of geese; flying in the air (as seen in my new 2010 header!); camping behind our house, where the grass is, apparently, tastier...

... and clustered in the canal.

Yes, I am a geese geek. So what?

Oh, and our good old car reached 100,000 miles. Hooray!

2) Ignore the fact that you also have two freestanding bookshelves in your living room.

3) Claim TV stand WITH DOORS from nice Freecycler.

4) Pick up TV stand WITH DOORS and decide it needs sanding down.

5) Try in vain to obtain sanding machine from Freecycle.

6) Successfully borrow friend's sander.

7) Realise friend's sander needs sanding pads.

8) Google sanding pads.

9) Drive to local hardware shop, which does not stock correct sanding pads.

10) Drive to another local hardware shop, which also does not stock correct sanding pads, but employs a creative man who sells you two long strips of sandpaper instead.

11) Arrive home. Stick sandpaper in sander.

12) Attempt sanding. Lose interest.

13) Decide TV stand WITH DOORS is OK as it is; move into living room.

14) Realise the shelf inside TV stand WITH DOORS is broken.

15) Sulk while wife fixes shelf.

16) Sulk again, upon realising DVD player is TOO BIG for shelf.

17) Move TV stand WITH DOORS into hallway while wife re-assembles original TV/DVD/Freesat set up.

18) Stick TV stand WITH DOORS on Freecycle. Decide no one will want it.

19) Buy Christmas tree.

20) Decide TV stand WITH DOORS will make an excellent Christmas tree holder.

21) Receive emails from Freecyclers wanting TV stand WITH DOORS.

22) Give up. Blog.

I guess I just don't feel much like blogging at the moment - blame Twitter and its social-ness; blame work and the pre-Christmas rush, which sucks up time like there's no tomorrow; blame The Boy and his extreme cuteness; blame something else - c'est la vie.

At least I've been updating The Boy's blog regularly, and have just uploaded his first subtitled video (subtitled by C, of course!)... if you're in search of cuteness, click here!

Happy weekends, all!

Otherwise - there's nothing to see here, so move along nicely, now.

And this week, somehow, I stumbled upon Douglas Coupland and almost fainted in excitement. For those not in the know, Mr Coupland is my favouritest author ever - I, who rarely read books, have read almost all of his (the one or two I haven't read have been avoided for REASONS), and I usually buy his latest novel as soon as it's published.

So, I immediately became one of DC's religious Twitter followers, coming over all star struck when I got my first DC Tweet, which was something about coffee; "OH MY GOD! DOUGLAS COUPLAND TWEETED ABOUT COFFEE!" etc.

Of course, he is a good value Tweeter, posting links to brilliant videos like this, which was made entirely out of Lego, and saying gloomy stuff like "Life is like homework." which instantly becomes quotable. And I know this because I searched. Yes.

See? Even grumpy old me has idols too.

For now, I am trying to persuade C to watch the scary gory DVD which I bought because it was only £2.50. I don't even like gore...

1) Triumphant: My PGDip British Sign Language/English Interpreting and Translation portfolio PASSED, which means I am now a qualified BSL/English Interpreter/Translator. Hooray!

2) Disgusted: Bloody BBC. Allowing freedom of speech is not the same as allowing a racist to try and brainwash the nation. Non-biased, my arse.

3) Relieved: Bloody Nick Griffin. Glad he showed his true colours. Don't think he's clever enough not to. The KKK are non-violent?! Please!

4) Annoyed: Bloody Sainsbury's swanned into Hebden this afternoon to spray the town square with fake snow and film an advert with Jamie Oliver, spurring the area's hetero females to surround him in glee, and me to try not to grumble about male chefs too much (purely for C's benefit).

5) Amused: C occasionally wishes I was hearing, but only for practical reasons. Like today, for example, when she and The Boy were in a different room from me and he threw up... she managed to catch it in his bib, but was powerless to do anything or move because she had him in one hand, and his puke-filled bib in the other. Got that? And what did The Boy do? He leaned forward and started lapping up the puke, just like Harrythedog loves to do.*

* C says I have to make it clear that the puke consisted of fresh breastmilk. Yeah.

I'm writing this on the playmat in the living room, with, of course, The Boy sitting in front of me, playing with the mounds of brightly coloured plastic that Every Baby Must Own - you can avoid it, but it will find you in the end - occasionally shouting his favourite new word; "AAAAH!" Because that's what The Boy loves to do; shout. Without warning. I think he may have got that one from his Mummy J.

I do have a good reason for not blogging, however. We've all had colds, which has meant The Boy's sleeping pattern has been downright weird, which, coupled with the fact we have a lot of work on at the moment, has been knackering. I salute the inventor of the snot sucker, however. Yes, there has been screaming, but without it, there would have been more screaming and more blockages than we knew what to do with - and all the mummies we've told about it agree. One said that when she asked for one in a chemist, the bloke who worked there looked at her funny and said, "Ooh, I don't think you should be using one of those. They sound dangerous!" Please.

BUT *I* know where you can get one, and when I told another mummy, she rushed off immediately with a determined look in her eye, declaring that she was going to get one "straight away." I felt like some kind of illegal arms dealer or something, not a mummy from Mytholmroyd who feels sorry for babies because they can't blow their own noses yet.

In other news, yesterday we went to The Evil That Is IKEA, where we rushed around frantically trying to find things to buy before The Boy had a meltdown (he didn't, as it happened, and we only didn't find one item, which is probably a record - and that was because it only exists in my imagination and not in real life). This frantic rushing involved using those shortcuts that IKEA helpfully lays out between "zones" - but my excellent spatial memory does not work properly in IKEA because everything looks the same, so we kept running around in circles, with C pushing The Boy in his buggy and me purposefully leading them through corridors and secret doors, only for C to look confused and ask me, "Haven't we been here already?"

It was kind of like groundhog day, except we were surrounded by sofas.

Afterwards, I realised that I've never been to IKEA without getting lost.

Get me and my gay abandon!

On a completely different note, this week I've been getting annoying emails. One thing that REALLY gets on my nerves is people who are full of shit or who bullshit others (not quite the same thing). Surprisingly, Oxfam have fallen into this category. The other day, I got an email from them with the subject header "PM Gordon Brown is waiting for your call."

No he is not! YOU want me to phone Gordon Brown about something political, which is why I've received this email from you - and I received this email because I'm on one of your marketing lists. So please do not insult my intelligence by pretending our Gordy is one of my mates and I know him so well that he's waiting for me to phone him (or rather, send him a text message because I don't do phones).

*Bins message*

And then I got ANOTHER email two days later entitled "The Prime Minister is STILL waiting for your call." I give up.

Yesterday brought about another annoying moment, when I got a bill from TalkTalk, who we've just signed up with for broadband/phone because Eclipse were really, really crap. And expensive, but that's another story.

"Sign up for online billing and save £1.25 a month" the paper bill advised me. So I did that, signing into my account, where I was told that I would have to PAY £1.25 a month if I wanted the priviledge of receiving a paper bill (wasting a few tree branches in the process). See what they did there?!

I won't even mention how we're mysteriously paying TalkTalk £6.49 for something that we didn't ask for, and therefore didn't want, that cannot be identified because I couldn't understand the rambling explanation I was given, and because C isn't going to phone them until Monday because we reckon everyone else will be phoning them at the weekend. Sigh.

The moral of this story? Always read the small print; even when you think you've done so already.

And now! It is the weekend! So I am going off to enjoy it.

It's f*ing brilliant, if you ask me. Although, quite frankly, any excuse not to use Typetalk is brilliant, especially as minicoms are so last year. Funnily enough, when we visited E last Sunday, I noticed she HAD A MINICOM in her living room and asked if she actually used it.

She said it was "for display only." Ha.

Emergency SMS - woo!

at 09.09am on 09/09/09, i was bathing the baby because he was covered in nectarines.
9:39 AM Sep 9th

just been under the bath in a plumbing emergency. yikes!
10:15 AM Sep 9th

for those interested in the bath emergency(!) i was tightening a loose nut after water sprayed everywhere..! nowt to do with nectarines.
7:06 PM Sep 9th

if i disappear off the face of the net tmw, that's cos we're switching BB provider and i'm not ready, & the dongle isn't working. just fyi!
7:20 PM Sep 9th

excellent running weather! woo!
about 11 hours ago

run, robert, run, robert, run run run.
about 3 hours ago

blogging my tweets, just to see how insane they make me look.
less than 5 seconds ago

Now you know what you're missing(!)

In the meantime, here is a brief snippet of my life in links:

Fun, weird and generally eccentric.

I keep meaning to watch this soon, and this.

Finally, I can't believe I haven't linked to The Boy's blog on here before, but, well, I have now. My, hasn't he grown?

Um, yeah. Something like that, anywyay.

Of course I haven't. In the last 17 days since I updated this blog *gasp* I've almost finished my PGDip portfolio, *double gasp* except for two pieces of evidence *sigh* that are taking forever to arrange, despite the kindness of many people *double sigh*. Like popping out of a vacuum, I'm sure I'll get there in the end.

And apart from being mummies (which involves attending a multitude of baby groups where The Boy loves to shove everything in sight into his mouth and leave trails of drool everywhere - Swine Flu alerts, anyone?), it seems that C and I have been doing just about everything online.

To start with, we've been Freecycling AND eBaying like mad, which involves selling all of our unneccessary items - of which there are MANY - and giving away anything that's too obscure to sell. This means that we've been going back and forth to the post office and weighing random items wrapped in bubble wrap, finding out how much it would cost to post them to France, Germany or the West Midlands. We've also been going back and forth to our front door and handing over debris to locals who value it.

I've also had my head in Twitter and F@cebook (there, I admitted it, but it still drives me nuts and I enjoyed my two weeks off), largely because I set up a F@cebook group and I like counting how many people have joined. It's a double edged sword, though, F@cebook, because some annoying ex-classmate uploaded a pile of old school photos this week too, and it's kind of hard to promote your business at the same time as your name's being dragged through retro mud. Mind you, some of them have been hysterical.

So, when Ce told me she'd bought a travel journal to document her travels in Taiwan, I was kind of amazed.

Me: You mean, a journal, like with paper?

Ce: Yes.

Me: And you're going to be writing in it with ... a pen?

Ce: Yes!

Me: Wow.

C (chipping in): It has been known, you know.

Me: And you're not going to upload any photos to F@cebook, or, maybe even ... a blog.

Ce: No, can't be bothered with all that. I'm fine with my book!

Me (panicking): But how will we know that you're OK?!

Ce: Oh, I might email you. And I might use my journal to help me create a photo DVD later on.

C: See, she's got the right idea!

Me: I'm going to have to blog that.

Andf it must be said; I think Ce has the right idea indeed.

[*Special mention must be given to my lovely wife, who chased me, laughing evilly and waving a piece of horse's toenail, after one of my supposed-friends had told me it was a dead snake. Yes, I screamed.]

And yes, we could have taken The Boy up and down hills in a sling - we did, part of the way, just in case you were wondering - but can I just point out that in the hot weather, it feels a bit like having a leaky hot water bottle strapped across your chest. A very cute leaky hot water bottle, but still.

Anyway, whatever goes up must come down, and when we were on our way down the very steep hill, shuffling and bumping down a loose track that was not for the faint hearted, we passed a very old lady who was slowly and carefully making her way amongst the stones and dust, using two of those special pro walkers' walking sticks. As we passed, she said, "I can't manage much these days, but I do try my best."

RE-SPECT.

Umm yes, Hebden Bridge is a dangerous, dodgy place where gangs throw trainers on telephone lines to show where crack dealers live - as evidenced here, and believed by C (my theory is that someone took the piss out of a drunken teenager).

That was just an overdue random observation of no significance, by the way.

Another random issue: The wedding video which 'disappeared' off my last post can be seen on YouTube here. Enjoy!

My brain is too full to throw up any other news of importance, apart from the fact that I currently have Office Rage. My PGDip portfolio is drawing to an end (hoof*ingray!), which has had a direct impact on the office, which is currently a disorganised, slightly dishevelled heap of cables, filming and computer equipment, papers, books, more papers, baby clothes for Freecycle, and, er, a trampoline.

Don't ask. Just call Kim and Aggie.