Please note: 90% of this journal is locked.

Oh you know what? One more thing: I'm going to share The Moth podcast: "True stories told live on stage, without notes". There is a real mixed bag there, and some of them are amazing. Recommended.

The fault was traced to the boiler plug, the wiring of which apparently had rotted (rusted?) through. So power is restored, thank goodness, and I am grateful if a little concerned that it will happen again.

We woke up to discover that we had no power in the flat. Immediate effects:
- I couldn't check my email on my iPod while waking up in bed, as I am wont to do
- I was a little worried that I'd come to work having dressed in the dark and discover that I'd put on something dirty or unmatching, but it seems to be ok (or no worse than usual, shall we say)
- Item couldn't watch Go, Diego, Go at 7am as she likes to, but despite our fears of a resultant meltdown, seemed quite satisfied with my suggestion that we'd have to make up our own Diego stories (which I then wriggled out of doing, as it's one of my least favourite tasks; hope The Boy stepped in after I'd gone to work)
- No coffee for me before leaving the house; Item had cereal so that was ok.

We found our torches, checked the fuses, all of which were fine, tried the trip switch with no effect, and looked out onto the street to see that our neighbours, including the upstairs ones, had power.

I rang nPower and they said someone would be round this morning. The Boy has just rung to say that they've been, can't find a fault with their own supply, and have suggested that we bring in a domestic electrician to find the fault. How weird.

Bit concerned now that we won't have power (or hot water or heating) for the evening... and gaining a new understanding of what onelargecat's family have just been through.

This post is one for the ladies, really. Just wanted to note that the top I bought for my interview from Kew is really satisfyingly flattering on my bosomy figure (esp now that I have more of a waist. More on that later, while I'm doing a ladypost).

They haven't got all their clothes online, but it's like an integral wrap top (no tying involved; the two elements are threaded through one another) in jersey. I'm tempted to go back and buy the same shape in lots of different colours, especially the kind of hazy mauve.

Kew is a sister company to Jigsaw, and noticably cheaper (like £24 for a top instead of Jigsaw's £49). The astonishing thing to me, though, is that this is the first time either a Jigsaw or Kew piece has even fitted me. I'd had them on my blacklist of shops that don't know women have bosoms (hello, Zara, Benetton, Mango, French Connection, Gap).

On the weight thing: I've lost I think 12lbs so far (I'm a bit vague because I'm at work; I've never had a total grip on how many lbs are in a stone; and the tracker I'm using only talks in lbs; plus I haven't weighed myself for a couple of days). Anyway, the difference is palpable. For me, the nicest thing is that I feel like my waist is really visible after years of having a thick up-and-down torso. The diet's been surpremely easy to follow and I don't feel hungry or that I'm missing out on nice food.

The really astonishing thing though, is that I'm also a member of a small weight-loss LJ community, and I looked back at previous entries I'd made there, only to find that I was despairing about my figure and determining to lose weight back in April 2007. When I weighed a *disgusting* (to me at that point)... 4 lbs less than I do now.

Just goes to show how much of it is in the mind.

Bah, no time to update properly, as I'm just off to pick up Item from nursery - but I believe it all went well. Full details later, no doubt.

Instructions: Comment on this entry to be given a letter. Then post in your journal with 10 of your favorite things starting with that letter. lady_mitzi gave me T. ( Read more... )

I popped into a charity shop today, and one of the books I noticed, but did not pick up, was What to Expect: the Toddler Years. After all, meh, who needs instruction at this advanced stage of parenting, right?

I arrived home thinking it had been an uneventful day: work ticked by; I walked home up Southover Street listening to the Jonathan Ross podcast; from here on it was going to be a quiet winding down and another day disappearing into obscurity.

Item expressed a desire for tomato soup for her tea, so I suggested that we all walk to the corner shop to buy some. The shop's two blocks away, and you can either go out of our back door and down the street, or out of the front door and down a steep hill into the valley.

While we were walking (and Item running full pelt), The Boy told me she'd been difficult all day: not naughty, but irksome. We went into the shop; the assistant recognised Ites and said hello; Item proudly put the tin of soup on the counter and handed a coin over.

We were half way back up the hill before Item announced that she wanted to go home via the back way. Naturally, we refused to indulge her whim, which would have meant retracing our steps and adding another ten minutes to what was only a five-minute walk in the first place.

She sucked it up for a short while, and then, only a few doors from home, started walking backwards with a defiant stare. When I walked towards her to get her, she began to run, incredibly fast, down our road and round the corner, where she disappeared out of view: her intention was clearly to go back and take the route she wanted.

I had started out just walking quickly towards her, assuming she was just acting up and needed some encouragement; but she ran so quickly that I soon had to step up my pace. As I turned the corner, I saw a mum of our acquaintance, who looked half amused, half worried to have seen Ites speeding down the road and no adult with her.

Item was at the bottom of the hill before I caught her. My word, she got a good telling off for that - and once she realised how naughty she'd been, of course she was, as usual, mortified. So that was my quiet evening; it actually turned into one I am sure we'll remember - the first time Item ran away (and, I hope, the last).

I don't think 'What to Expect - the Toddler Years' would have been especially useful. Possibly her choice of clothes for the short trip should have alerted us to her state of mind.

---

On a more pleasant note, I forgot to mention that yesterday she achieved another first - proper swimming with nothing but arm-bands. Although I regularly take her swimming, and have done since she was only a couple of months old, we never went for the 'little dippers' style of baby underwater swimming, and up until now she's been too young to take direction. Seems like at three and a half, the desire to do things (everything) on your own kicks in, and a sense of pride impels children to achieve.

File under 'Aw, that's nice': the artist favourited a (poor) photo of The Boy admiring one of his pictures.

File under 'My word, weren't jeans high-waisted in those days': another photo from my past emerges on Facebook. It's in a friend's aptly-named 'When we were thin' album.

( I've stuck it under the cut for those who want a quick peek, then )

I have rather a lot to catch up on, but I'm not in the mood for the long and detailed post that is required, thus, I give you the highlights:

1) My Delicious tags from yesterday's Brighton Art Fair - the artists that stood out from the rest, for me.

My pervasive feelings:
i) There was no art I desperately wanted to buy. The nearest was Steve McPherson's beautiful collections of pieces of broken plastic, arranged and mounted by colour. With time, of course, you could do it yourself, rather than pay £650 and up.
ii) It's incredible how many apparently successful artists working in the realist vernacular simply can't paint people.
iii) £5 entry is a rip-off, although plenty of people seemed happy to pay it, so I guess you would.

2) Photos from No Car Day in Brighton (plus explanatory captions). It was unexpectedly joyous: Item did ten different activities at least, and it didn't cost us a bean. It did work as a depiction of how playful and safe the streets could be without cars, but the radical in me says, why only three streets; why on *half* a *Sunday*, and why don't we just bin all the cars in the world?

But to be honest, this event was an absolute saviour on a day when Item was bent on having a string of inexcusable meltdowns.




3) Look how handsome The Boy is in this picture.

4) Item got the best torch ever.

We ran into a mum and her small daughter at the library truck.
Later, I asked The Boy if he thought she was pregnant again.
The Boy: I don't know- but you should never ask a woman unless you are sure.
Item: Believe me, I know.

..except my wedding shoes, which I can't remember whether I gave them away.

Not as many as I'd feared. In fact, it's quite reasonable, is it not? Especially for someone who loves shoes so.

You'll spot a theme: flat. Round-toed. Comfortable. Well worn. Grubby. Er, sorry about that - they look worse here than they do in real life.


(For those of you not on kristenlou's friendslist, I should just say that she's started a Thing where you photograph your shoes (and then justify why you need to buy some more, it seems).

I just added this to Guess Where Brighton - a fun Flickr group.

I thought it'd make a good userpic too, but when shrunk down to 100x100 it just looks like I've written it on a piece of pink paper. Shame, would have been great for all those UBoss entries.

Everyone has this picture, but not everyone has the man in it. :/

I was tagged in a Facebook photo last night: my graduation. Spot the me. The Boy couldn't. Through the power of tagging, you'll probably be able to.

The person who posted it, a bloke who was in the same year as me at uni, seems to have been able to remember every single person's name. Remarkable. This has given me new Google-fodder for those long dark evenings. Can you remember the names of everyone in your year at uni? Who's more unusual - him or me? We are talking 18 years ago.

Richard Gunson, rockabilly boy, where are you now? Henrik Wager - well I know where he is - he's got a scary website to tell me. Gerry McCarthy and Robert Leach, Socialist heroes first and denim-clad university lecturers second? Well, they're academics, thus Google gives lists of the books they've authored, prefaced, co-written, when what I really want are juicy details of their private lives. Seeing us all lined up like that has made me wonder about the little network of friends I made at uni. It was a small proportion of my year, but the friendships I did make were fierce and meaningful. Why, I wonder, did I automatically ignore 80% of my year, and continue to do so for the whole time I was there? This might explain why I have a problem remembering most of their names.

Also, I enjoyed remembering how the productions we put on (it was a Drama degree; we had our own fully-functioning studio theatre and did a proper season each term, taking turns to act, direct, do the lighting, build the sets, etc) were actually pretty professional-looking. Or at least the stills from them were. Or maybe they just looked better on the small screen of my iPod.

Moving swiftly on. Check out this in-flat cat playground:


Last night, instead of going home, I went to see David Sedaris give a reading at the Old Market. On the way, I had time to wander through a few shops, including the Shelter charity shop, where they seem to have given up selling second-hand clothes and are now selling primarily clothes (seconds?) donated from major shops like Monsoon and M&S. For Item (I am putting that clause at the beginning of the sentence, just in case even for a split second you think these were for me) I bought two kaftan-style boho dresses, a red towelling long hooded top with polka-dot hood, and a denim jacket with integral grey hood, all for 99p each. The latter fits her; the rest will do within the year (jinx).

Funny - talking of the time when I was at uni - a denim jacket with a hooded top under it was my habitual wear. If I'd put Item in either a) faded jeans with substantial turn-ups or b) a little over-the-knee flared skirt, and teamed that with DMs, I'd have been looking at a 2' high version of my younger self. As it was she looked pretty like me back then.

I am not sure what I was expecting, but the Old Market was packed - people were standing outside hoping for return tickets. It seems every wittily-dressed member of Brighton's reading population was there. And in this seething mass of appreciators of gentle humour, there was one person I knew.

David Sedaris was extremely warm and personable. I don't think it would be going too far to say that he's made a decent living from epitomising personableness, and teaming it with a wicked humour. That's some skill, to stand before an audience and project amiability, make you feel like you're in on his very special brand of wit - make that wit sound, indeed, as if it's entirely spontaneous (a quick Google to corroborate the fact that he said he's recently obtained British citizenship reveals how much of an artifice the spontaneity - of course - is. The same stories he told, without notes and off the cuff, in answer to audience questions, are faithfully recounted on other blogs from Boston, from Melbourne. How else would you sustain a world tour?)

I enjoyed listening to him read a piece that didn't make the book, or NPR either, about the pretentious way some people sprinkle their conversation with the native pronunciation of foreign words (he said, probably because it has to be read to see its potential; on the page, it's flat). He's had a world's-worth of practice in pitching his 'NiCHarrAgoooA' (Nicaragua in a Latino accent) for maximum laughs. I am not complaining, any more than I would if I saw a band at the end of a long tour in which they'd had time to settle in to their music.

In addition, he read from his new book, an amusing piece about accidentally sneezing a lozenge into his neighbour's lap on a plane ride, and some diary entries. He IS a wit, and it's good for him that he has made such a career out of it.

( I'm sticking that graduation photo behind a cut for my own reference. )

It is the most piercing pain, all in the head, somehow feeling like an intolerable whistle focused and drilling at speed into your brain. It came on so suddenly last night that I almost vomited. The world shrank to a blinkered pinhole and I zoned out so completely that I only came back to reality twenty minutes after taking two Ibuprofen, and numbing the top-notes of the pain. I went to bed with a hot gel pack against my jaw, and woke twice to take more painkillers. Strangely, in the morning, the pain had receded to a dull, persistent ache, but I feel as if I've been put through a mangle. I am not sure if that is the after-effect of the pain, or of the painkillers, which I don't take very often.

So we've decided that I'll try to get an emergency dentist's appointment on Monday. I'm kind of dreading it: last time this happened, it was an under-tooth abscess and the choice was between having it out and paying £600 for root canal surgery. Things were admittedly worse then, because I was also breastfeeding and the dentist couldn't prescribe me any strong painkillers to get me through while I waited for an appointment for the surgery. So I had the tooth out, which was at least painless, immediate and free - but I'm loath to lose another tooth now. I'm also loath to undergo complicated dentistry. I suppose we could go into debt for it, but I'm dreading the actual treatment. The most stupid thing is that I always need to swallow and start to panic when I can't, even (especially) when they are using that kind of spit-vacuum thing.

We went into town this morning despite the horrible weather and my general spaciness, but I started feeling quite ill, and the Boy was kind enough to let me go home and have a sleep while he entertained Item. I took the bus home and it was only as I was walking from the bus stop to the front door, doing my habitual rummage for my keys, that I realised I didn't have them with me.

I went round to the back door and, rather alarmingly, found everything I needed to let me break in within 5 minutes: Item's fishing net, a length of string, and a dead head of buddleia, poked through the cat door, dislodged the key from the light-switch where we keep it (not any more, after this). I was watched by an interested Iggy.

I slept deeply all afternoon, giving me the energy for drawing and making pictures with stick-back plastic with Item on her return. But it's been a long day.

Aaaaargh.
Suddenly while eating soup, extreme pain up one side of my face. *Really* extreme pain. I suspect an abcess under the tooth and emergency dentist tomorrow.
Was meant to be meeting amuchmoreexotic but put it off due to forecast torrential rain. Prob for the best.

Why can't every day be like today?

UBoss reacted to my elephantine hints about the extra hours I put in pre-launch, and urged me to take a day off; instead (because I can't bear to do anything the man tells me, ha) I am having two mornings off. Thus, today went:

8.00 Rise
9.00 Clean the toilet - believe it or not, this counts as a bit of a treat, simply to have the time to attend to dusty skirting boards, etc, that have been bugging me
10.00 Swim 42* lengths in the local pool, before relaxing in sauna
11.00 Quick look around a few shops, including White Stuff where I tried on a UK size 14 top that fit me (well, ok, it was stretch. And it didn't look that great. But, you know)
12.00 Healthy lunch in Infinity Foods cafe
12.15 Purchase gorgeous necklace on a whim
12.45 Wander into work, do a three-and-three-quarters hour day while still beautifully relaxed from swim and sauna.

All working days should be like this. And tomorrow pretty much will be again, with the addition of a hairdressers' appointment.

On the way home, I was in Sainsburys, at the checkout, when my mobile rang. It was a young woman from an employment agency who wanted to speak to me about my availability for a Web Editor job. I was a little confused, because as far as I know, I only have one application pending, and that's the 24hourmuseum one, which won't be notifying until Sept 21st.

She said it was about a job I'd applied for *today* and she was just ringing to ensure that I knew it was a contract position. Well, woolly-minded I may be, but I knew for sure I hadn't applied for any jobs today. It took *me* to explain to *her* that what had probably happened was that one of the online job sites my CV is lodged with had sent her an immediate response to a job ad she'd posted today, because it was an automatic match on the phrase 'Web Editor'. Sure enough, they have an agreement with both CW Jobs and Jobseeker. I am certain that any CVs sent through this way must say so, so my only conclusion is that this was a particularly dense office junior. Ah well.



* Silly number, I know, but I got that far and stupidly thought, ah, this is the first proper swim I've had pretty much since Item was born - maybe I shouldn't go straight back to the number of lengths I habitually used to do when I was swimming three times a week. Which might be a valid thought, but I'm hardly Duncan Goodhew, and I could have easily made it to 50 if not 60. I think what I really meant was, oops, better allow time for shopping. *shame*

An article in the Guardian yesterday referred casually to Google Chrome's "porn mode", which made me think, wow, Google really are progressive and liberal. Interesting that if you Google it, this result is returned. No mention of porn, just much more wholesome activities:

For times when you want to browse in stealth mode, for example, to plan surprises like gifts or birthdays, Google Chrome offers the incognito browsing mode.

But a lot of people must be pointing at that page with the word 'porn mode', huh.

Oh, by the way. That bill for the sandwiches and mezze plate? ( Read more... )