I am very excited. Tonight I am going out. I am heading OUT to see live music with a friend.

We are going to listen to the lovely sounds that come from this man.

She has a baby girl 6 weeks younger than Grub.

It is very telling that we were both quite shocked, when we checked our tickets, to see that the doors opened at 9.30pm.

I got this email from her this morning:

We don’t get out much.

I must have been feeling particularly stupid when I forgot the sort of times live gigs usually happen. The ex-husband is a sound engineer for flips sake. I am all too aware of how these things work. Or at least I used to be, before my brain melted.

So, she will collect me at 9pm, we will be dressed nicely, we will venture out, unchaperoned.

Wish us luck.

It turns out that being pain-free has it’s pros and cons. I am much less sore and swollen today than I have been in weeks, thanks to large doses of anti-inflammatory yesterday. However,  it would appear that nasties in my system also muck around with my ability to sleep, which I obviously need, not at all. Also, just, well, last night sucked. Let’s just run through my evening for those of you who are interested (which I assume is everyone because really, who wouldn’t be).

5.45pm (just before dinner time for us): Power goes off. Power company website says it will remain this way until at least 8pm.

6.10 pm: Dinner will now be chicken and chips from the chicken shop around the corner.

6.30pm: Beefcake arrives home with dinner, narrowly avoiding mad run on chicken shop as all residents of surrounding neighbourhoods rush to feed themselves in absence of electricity.

6.45pm: We finish eating. Power comes back on. We feel foolish.

7.00pm: Grub loudly protesting getting out of bath as she is cutting four teeth at once and in desperate need of comfort any way she can get it. She hates us. Frustrating blur of child wrangling and noise. Breastfeed.

7.45pm: Pudding in bed. Poss decides she must print out 11 pages of ‘art’ she has made for school on the computer. I say ‘no’. I am evil.

8.45pm: Poss in bed, Grub asleep in my arms. I start to drift off on the couch.

9.00pm: I tell Beefcake I might just have a wee lie down in bed with Grub. Breastfeed, breastfeed, breastfeed again.

12.30am: Grub wakes up, I need to wee. Stagger in to lounge room. Beefcake still working. Grub will not return to sleep once I have relieved myself. I browse the internet while she plays.

1.30am: Pudding up. Needs to sleep in our bed. Scared. Needs torch. Put him back to bed with torch.

1.45am: Pudding cold, needs jumper. Threaten removal of bed curtains if he doesn’t stay in bed. Grub still awake.

2.20am: Annoying rant from Beefcake about my inability to sleep and/or stay in bed. Bicker for a short while. Make sarcastic response about acquiring his permission next time I wish to be up at odd hours. Breastfeed. Grub drifts off.

3.00am: Head to bed with Beefcake. Chat briefly. He falls asleep. Lie awake and stare at wall.

3.35am: Breastfeed.

4.15am: Lie awake and stare at wall planning witty and clever blog post now long forgotten.

4.30am: Worry that some food was not put away in kitchen. Get up to check. Food had been put away.

5.00am: Drift off to sleep. Breastfeed.

5.45am: Awoken by garbage truck emptying our bins.

6.00am: Breastfeed.

7.00am: Alarm goes off. Tell Beefcake to stay in bed. Breastfeed. Get up to make breakfasts/lunches/drive people to school.

Despite it all, I felt quite chipper this morning then, during Pudding’s swimming lesson, Grub killed my phone. You see, last time she killed it, Beefcake was able to take it apart and fix it so that I didn’t get to have to buy a new one (bastard). Thanks to my quick thinking, I was able to avoid a repeat performance of Beefcake as Mr Fixit this morning and score myself one of these (seeing as we were walking right past the phone shop and everything).

I am thrilled. It is shiny and I can do fun things with it.

I am in lurve.

Beefcake is jealous. He won’t admit it but I can tell.

So, on to pictures – taken using my new toy. Which is actually quite hard to hold still and take photos with. I do not have a steady hand.

Badness, who incidentally is clever and artistic and creative, has asked to see what I did, as has Magic Marker Mom, so you can blame them. Anyway, this is Grub’s blankie. I have shaped it so that she can hold each of the pointy bits for her to grip in her chubby little fist……..

And here is the other side, with the strokable satin side, which she already loves to touch and hold to her face….

I haven’t shown it but I have sewn around the edges of some of the birds so that it holds together, instead of having the two layers pull apart.

Finally, the bed curtains, these are definetely not a sewing masterpiece. We picked up some cheap fabric from Ikea. Pudding’s bed sits partly underneath Poss’ loft bed, which makes it easy for us to create a “bed tent” for him.

So, there you have it, really. Photographic proof that I have put needle to fabric.

Aren’t you glad I showed you?

Yesterday I had some sort of creative brain spasm, which prompted me to undertake some sewing. Yes, sewing. I have gone through various creative “phases” in my life. When Rhubarb and Poss were small I sewed all of their clothing (I know, what was wrong with me?) and much of my own as well. I can’t say I was ever terribly good at it. Seams were always a bit wonky and I didn’t trouble myself with following patterns and pinning things too much. I was a bit of a maverick. Yes, a maverick seamstress. Anyhow, I became bored with that at some point and only sew now to adjust hems or make repairs really. A friend made me turn her maxi dress into a skirt last week and consequently my sewing machine was still on the dining room table and I lost all sense of reason.

I sewed some bed curtains for Pudding, so that he can pretend his bed is a tent. He is thrilled but it still didn’t stop him from coming into our bed at 2am. Then I sewed a new attachment blankie for Grub. Now, I had bought this gorgeous Alexander Henry fabric to make a blanket for her weeks ago (by which I mean prior to Christmas). I have been meaning to do something with it and lately she has taken to pulling out my hair as she drifts off to sleep. I couldn’t cope anymore. I am quite pleased with it actually. I paired with some purdy limey green satin for strokeability and she seems to like it enough to consider relinquishing her fistfuls of hair.

I have decided that, although the sewing was reasonably successful, it is actually a force for disharmony in my body. I has quite a sore pelvis last night and today I have been quite bad. I can see no other cause. It has to be the sewing, I have to make some small adjustments to her blankie and then I am burying the sewing machine in the linen cupboard and never getting it out again. I should be grateful I suppose, I am currently floating on a sea of pain free happy thoughts. I have taken the good painkillers. My doctor assures me that they are safe for breastfeeding and having consulted the Great Google, I can see that they are. However, I have irrational paranoias that I will cause Grub to grow a second head or that her brain will leak out of her ears so I never do. It all go too much for me this afternoon – a trip to playgroup and the supermarket left me barely able to walk – and I have allowed Beefcake to dose me with drugs. It is wonderful to be pain-free for a short while. I can move my hips in ways that are appropriate to a woman in her early thirties, not an arthritic octogenarian.

The only problem is, I am not that used to strange things in my system and it sends me a bit funny in the head.

I should not be allowed near my laptop, to interact with the outside world. I know this and yet, here I am.

Right, I;ve just read through that and I can see that it is about as coherent as a Neighbours plotline but I can not fathom how I would fix it. See?

I might go for a nice lie down.

Regular readers will remember that Pudding recently declared that he had power. IN HIS EYES. You need to add this to a rather long list of special talents my three-year-old possesses. He can fly. He has special ‘moves’ which involve a lot of rolling around on the floor and jumping and leaping off of furniture and striking poses. He is the world’s greatest talent in a martial art known as “Ha Fu”. Not to be pigeonholed, lately he has developed a fascination with the ballet, performing graceful leaps about the lounge room (although his style of ballet does incorporate rather more Ha Fu punches and kicks than the stuff I’ve seen before).

His talents are many and varied but none are so odd as the one I discovered during the week.

I was walking to the laundry and as I passed him I rubbed the back of his head, just ruffled his hair at the back, as I often do.

Pudding: Yes Mummy, that’s just my star.

Me: What was that, darling?

P: It’s my star back there, it shines really brightly, my star.

Me: There’s a star on the back of your head?

P: Yeah, it shines really brightly, for everyone to see.