stubblemuff™

I am a very lucky girl really.  I am very much in love (Still.  After a lot longer than I thought it would last.)  And I am apparently meant to be very pleased that The Man loves me loads and can’t keep away from me (yeah, apparently this is a good thing).

Anyway, this causes me all sorts of problems as he insists on kissing me, and yet he doesn’t appear to enjoy shaving very often, so I end up being poked and prodded and generally rashed by his horrible pokey, proddy, scratchy stubble!  yuck!!  I hate it!

So, this morning, I came up with the ingenious idea of the StubbleMuff™ and promptly went into the time-consuming artistically-demanding effort of coming up with a design.

As gloriously modelled by Jack from Lost below, the StubbleMuff™ will be made from lightly padded cotton, which will hook tightly over the ears with elasticated loops, with an elasticated border keeping it in place under the chin.  A little like a surgeon’s mask, but not covering the nose, and with a mouth hole cut out, so that proper snogs can take place!

The StubbleMuff™ could come in a range of colours, or even have special pictures on them – perhaps even ones that replicate a clean-shaven face (which I would mock-up in Photoshop if I wasn’t on my laptop!)

I would patent it, but I’m rather lazy.  So go, run with the idea…just give me a credit 😉

Cute, but not for an extended-snogging sesh

Ahhh, that's better Jack. now gimme your tongue!

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and that’s why i love him

This is like a food porn machine!

Me and The Man recently celebrated six years together, and having been very careful with my Christmas bonus, I decicded to treat him to something that he had been coveting for many many years – a Magimix food processor.

Since buying it, he has used it near enough every day – the gorgeous food that has made its way out of our kitchen recently is something to be seen to be believed – he has perfected pastry – both sweet and savoury shortcrust; he has made the most gorgeous quiches (sorry, ‘tarts’ – he is a Northerner and ‘real men don’t eat quiche’ let alone make it) – my favourite being a wonderful smokey bacon, caramelised onion and gruyere cheese; he has made a yummy lamb and mint pie; a deliciously light victoria sponge…all sorts of yumminess.

So, tonight, I turned to him and said “So, how long do you reckon until you get bored of your Magimix?” and without missing a heartbeat he replied “Well, I’m not bored with you yet, and you’ve got far less functionality.”

Bastard.  Someone remind me what I see in him.

conversations with my daughter (pt 1)

Yep - this is the source of all my surreal entertainment!

The Girl can be very soppy, and she often comes up to one of us randomly and says the like of the first sentence below…although we don’t generally respond toher crawly-bumlick-ness!

TG:  Who’s the best mum in the whole wide world?

Me:  Mine

TG:  Ok, who’s MY best mum in the whole wide world

Me:  Well, I assume it would be me

TG:  I DO have a stepmum, but she’s not my real mum, so she doesn’t really count.  dad can marry a whole string of women, and they will never be my real mum, cos that’s you.

Me:  Erm, yes.

TG:  and you will be there no matter what, whenever I need you, whatever I need you for

Me:  Yes, of course – but you’re never going to NEED me darling, you’re going to do just fine.

TG:  I might need you one day

Me:  What do you think you might need me for

TG:  Well, maybe one day I’ll need to go somewhere and wont have any money for a bus or a cab

Me:  You want me for Oyster top-ups?!?

TG:  No, don’t be silly, I wouldn’t want money – I’d want you to give me a lift!

Me:  Well, i can tell you now, that isn’t goign to be happening!  I’d rather give you the bus fare!  Cheeky bint!

At least I know what I have in store for me I guess!

in the words of howard jones…

awww cutesy ootsy wuv hearts

…what is love anyway?  well, what is the deal with relationships, anyway.

I know that I have a lot of friends who think that I’m unromantic etc because of my attitude to Valentine’s Day and the such like.

I don’t think that this is true, as I said in my post, because I think that romance is a far more personal and thoughtful thing.

However, I know that I have another attitude to love and relationships that also doesn’t seem to be regarded as ‘normal’.  In fact, even though The Man knows my feelings, when we were chatting yesterday, he got into a major sulk about it (you have to remember he’s a great big strapping, brusque, scathing Northern lad, so his flounces, sulks and general sappiness always amuse me).

So, what is it that upsets him so much?  Given the choice, I would always prefer to be single than in a relationship.

He seems to take that personally, and I can’t actually get him to see that he should take it as a compliment.  Next month I will have been with him for 6 years, and that’s my longest relationship ever, and yet still he takes it as a personal insult!

I find being single far easier, and far freer.  I generally feel more in control of my life when I’m single.  I also don’t feel that I NEED to be in a relationship., and I have never believed that any relationship is ‘forever’.  Yes, I know getting married twice seems to contradict that, but then, I’ve been divorced twice too – so obviously I was right.

I’ve only ever ‘been in love’ twice (and that was neither of my hubbies), and apart from them (one of which is The Man, you’ll be pleased to know), I have always had A Reason to be with the person I’m with.  I don’t have A Reason to be with The Man (in fact there’s probably loads of reasons why I shouldn’t be with him, lol).  I choose to be with him because I love him.

He says I run away too easily, because I get out of relationships…he was in a passionless marriage for many many years.  I know which one I think is worse.

I know that I am in the nearest you get to a perfect relationship.  I know I am bloody lucky.  But I’m not going to kid myself that it will last ’til death us do part’ – who knows what’s around the corner?  If the love/passion fades, then I will not see the point in hanging about,  just co-existing.  And that is my point, I’d rather be single (and don’t think being single means being celibate – it totally doesn’t!!).

So surely he should feel really really happy that they are my feelings and I’m with him, rather than seeing it as a reason to sulk and call me a commitophobe!

the mid-feb curse

Never a truer word...

Today, I have received no less than THREE emails from various websites informing me that a) there is still time to book a restaurant, b) not to forget to buy my ‘sweetheart’ *vomit* a card, and c) that there are many saucy ‘intimate’  gifts available…all for the dreaded Valentine’s Day.

Now, for starters, I am pretty sure that by my reckoning, Valentine’s Day is at least 3 weeks away – and hell, my birthday is before then, which is WAY more important!  All of that apart, why the HELL would I want to go out for dinner on Valentine’s Day?  Why pay more when you can pay less?  Even Toptable states that reward points can’t be spent on the 12th – 14th February.

Retailers/hospitality just know that they’re going to rake it in from all those poor unfortunate souls who don’t have a romantic bone in their body.

And yes, I do mean that!  Where the hell is the romance in undergoing the same formulaic ritual as millions of other couples?  Meal, flowers, wine/champagne, chocolates, cuddly toys, candles, cards, maybe a hotel.  I mean, really – don’t people do this on other nights of the year?  If you really love someone, why choose the same day as everyone else to show it?

This isn’t because I’m a smug (nearly) married or anything – I’ve always been like this.  I have never felt the looming dread of a Valentine’s Day hanging over me just because I’m single and that I’m suddenly going to feel inadequate because of all the couples, and on the flip-side I have never felt the need to be all coupley when I haven’t been single!  Last year, me and The Man did a big posh meal for our two closest mates – one who has always been single for as long as I’ve known him (15 years), and the other who was single at the time and always feels a failure when she is.  It was a great night!  I remember a couple of years before that (still while I’ve been with The Man) I took the same girlie friend out to a club so that she wouldn’t have a chance to feel sorry for herself.

When I mention my views to friends, they accuse me of not being romantic, and that really isn’t true.  I am romantic, terribly so, and The Man is even more romantic than me.  But we feel happy that we love each other every day (even though sometimes we hate each other) and our romantic gestures are personal, thoughtful and at a time that means something to us if we feel the lure of ‘an occasion’ to look forward to – eg birthdays and anniversaries.

The only very Valentine’s Day gesture that I ever really bought into, that genuinely brought a smile to my face was about 13 years ago when a huge bunch of my favourite flowers were left on my doorstep first thing in the morning with no card.  I was very single at the time and to this day, I am unsure of who left them there, although I had a vague inkling. But that is very different to the commercial expectation of people who are already coupled-up!

So, if not buying into the hugely lucrative commercial aspect of Valentine’s Day makes me unromantic, I guess I must be.  And nothing will change that.

farewell to the noughties!

Yes - people will be making my 2010

So – it’s farewell to the noughties (obviously sung to the tune of Farewell to the Fairground by White Lies who I saw at Brixton a few weeks ago).

I love New Year’s Eve/Day.  I always have.  It means more to me than Christmas that I have never really been that keen on.  I love the idea of a shiny new year – one that can be full of anything.  I love the fact that everything that happened in the last 12 months is now definitely behind me and can be classified as ‘last year’.  New Year’s Eve is like a final full stop at the end of a chapter that you have now finished editing.  that probably makes no sense, but it always fills me with a little frisson of excitement to be on a new page of life.

2009 had some very hard parts for me, but I think it will probably go down as the year that me, my other half and my daughter really got so much closer.  That’s something I really want to build on in 2010.

Last night was bloody marvellous – our local must be one of the few pubs in London that doesn’t charge entry on New Year’s Eve, and seeing as it takes us less than a minute to get from our front door to theirs, it’s always a favourite haunt of ours.  So, our mate came round first and we had a few swifties and went over there about 9ish, by which time most of the regulars were there anyway, so we were in brilliant company.

There was a live swing band there who weren’t too bad either.  And my friend also came down that I wrote about yesterday – the one where i’m trying to put an elastoplast over our slightly broken relationship.  So that was nice.  the disco went on til about 3 so I had a good boogie and came home feeling happy, full of love, laughter, vodka and the excitement of a new decade.

Although what the hell IS this decade?  It can’t be the teenies as 10, 11 & 12 are ‘teens’ – they’re ‘tweens’.  Do we call it the tens?  It’s just very confusing, and I don’t like unanswered questions!