Sleepless Nights

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  • Alternative uses for Chupa-Chups

    Chuck’s Life Less Serious Champion Challenge

    Earlier this week, I was approached by Maria on behalf of ChupaChups, asking if I’d be interested in a competition. OF COURSE I said, because I mean, what is better than competitions?

    So she sent me out a tub of ChupaChups and a Chuck Doll and asked me to write a blog post in a category of my choosing. Of course, the category that humour fits into won. Sometimes I’m funny.

    This is Chuck:

    Chuck is challenging people to get Less Serious over on his website. There are competions and prizes to win, so go and check it out.

    So yes. Let’s talk about alternate uses for ChupaChups. They’re handy little things, round and tasty. You can use them for all sorts of things!

    Like holding up the TV cabinet:

    TV cabinet

    I call this one the mousetrap. It sits under there, attracting mice so I can schwack them.

    Mousetrap

    Barbie was unhappy with what life gave her. She felt dowdy and small; like you could walk past her in a crowd and not even notice. Not now though. Now? Barbie STANDS OUT.

    (I should say though, Barbie probably shouldn’t have gone the cheap route. She looks a little lopsided…)

    Barbie

    You can make ChupaChup soup. (Chuck’s favourite dinner. And lunch. And breakfast)

    Soup

    Chuck delights in growing new and exciting varieties of ChupaChup. I must say, I want some of those seeds he’s using!

    Garden

    What’s that you say? The baby won’t sleep? Well, I found the cure for that. Just use The Pacifier and he will be out like a light.

    Sleep

    And last but not least, what they were designed for. Surfing the internet of course!

    Chuck Internet

    Hehe.

  • Can I just say…

    NO MORE GLUTEN!

    YAY!!!

    Suddenly, the world looks so much brighter. This last three weeks has felt interminable. It’s been horrid. Horrid I say.

    She has a blood test tomorrow, this daughter of mine who won’t sit still to have a splinter pulled. We will head to the hospital and arrive 20 minutes early so they can put numbing cream on her arm. Then we will do everything we can to get a little blood out of her.

    Then we’ll need to work out what to celebrate with.

    Suggestions?

  • This gluten challenge is killing me

    Bleurgh. This gluten challenge has sucked all the energy out of me. Amy has been …. a nightmare.

    Case in point:

    I baked the test wedding cake this weekend. Leveled the layers, wrapped them and left them on the bench. I also left the levelled bits wrapped on top of everything. I’d made lemon curd for the filling, straining eggs, stirring for ages and finally straining and cooling.

    So when I woke up to tears and tantrums at 5.50am and stumbled out to the lounge room, only to discover that the tantrums were over the fact she couldn’t carry the bowl of lemon curd back to bed with her, I was a little upset.

    There were also cake crumbs all over the house and lemon curd all over the floor and just ugh. She’d also stirred greek dressing into the curd and well, we’re just not thinking about that. (I couldn’t taste it after I strained it again and gave it a good stir. We’ll just ignore that fact.)

    I nearly cried.

    She tipped pine-o-clean on Isaac, she’s been racing to do things FASTER as I yell NO! and run for her and just ohmigod.

    OhMYgod.

    I’m ready to be done.

    I feel like I’ve had all the energy sucked right out of me. Shhhhhlrp. Gone.

    On the upside, the blood test is on Friday and Thursday will be the last day of gluten.

    So um yeah, WOO HOO!

  • I have a confession

    I have a confession.

    You know how a lot of people worry about messing up their kids? Yes? Well… I don’t. I never soul searched while pregnant with Amy, wondering how it would go if I did everything wrong. How she’d grow up if I fucked it up.

    Never. Not once. I still don’t. Somehow, I trust implicitly that I’m not going to fuck it up, that even if I make mistakes, I’m pretty sure both kids are going to be okay. I love them unconditionally and I’m happy that some days, that’s enough.

    However, I worry that I’m going to fuck up these horses.

    I worry about that a lot.

    I think part of that is the fact that I haven’t actually ridden in oh, about 6 years? And that now I’ve got horses that I am responsible for and ohmigod, I think I’ve forgotten how to put a bridle on. How am I meant to be the ‘alpha mare’ if I’ve completely forgotten what I’m meant to be doing?

    Emma is forgiving. Belle, probably not so much. Belle is highly strung. She’s more interested in being a horse than having human interaction. Getting a halter on her the other day was an exercise in patience.

    Cue minor panic attacks.

    And it’s stupid, truly it is, to be having panic attacks over horses. Horses for goodness sake.

    I think I just need to remind myself  that everything will be fine. That doing something wrong once is not going to fuck everything up forever.

    You know, as long as the ‘something wrong’ is not something major. Like uh, forgetting everything I’ve ever known.

    I wish Nan were still alive.

    And breathe.

    ***

    I suppose this is as good a time as any to announce that my other website ‘Two Mares‘ is live. I’m over there writing about the horses and the issues I’m having/not having with them.

    Feel free to click over and have a look. I’ll be editing this post for language and cross-posting it there too.

    You could even subscribe for me…

    If you’re interested that is.

  • The new floor.

    As promised a few days ago, I give you …

    THE NEW FLOOR!

    New Floor 2

    New Floor

    Again

    It’s been in for almost a week now and I’m still loving it. It makes the kitchen look so much better, even if it shows off the extreme crappiness of the rest of the kitchen.

    It’s wood look vinyl and it was installed by Hayes Flooring, who sadly, don’t have a website. They should fix that. Every business should have an easily found website. No really, they should who apparently have got themselves a website in the last few weeks. Yay! I’ve got no complaints about the installation, all up it took 3 days, for the tearing up of the floor and then the laying of the new vinyl. I’d recommend Hayes to everyone.

    (It probably helps that Hayes worked with my insurance so I personally didn’t have to pay a cent for the installation. Just the excess fees. Although, that probably counts. Hell, I’m not complaining. Brand new floor people!)

    Even better though? It means Isaac can play in the bathroom while I shower, so I’m not worrying about him choking and dying while I stand under the hot water. The old floor was full of staples and nails and poky bits and it was just hideous.

    Here’s some photos from the pulling up.

    Old floor

    Newspaper underneath

    It was a mess the first day. The guy who pulled everything up did a good job getting all the newspaper up. A good portion of it looked like it had been glued down. it was a bit of a nightmare.

    Oh and these photos for the hell of it.

    Amy in the TV cabinet

    Amy likes to pull all the magazines out of my TV cabinet and hide in there. In this photo she’s shouting HEY! after I opened the door and snapped her photo. She’s very cute.

    Isaac 8.5mths

    And Isaac. He got his first tooth yesterday night. It’s very exciting. At least it was, until he bit my nipple today. I’m slightly less excited about his tooth. It’s very SHARP and NIPPY and he tries to chew on me. ‘

    Not fun Isaac.