May 2007 - I beg of you... Come out, come out wherever you are Scoot.

[largeginandtonic]

We needed a new thread. It took blardy ages to load.

Now where are you Scoot?

And will x-twonk deign to turn up this time?

I don't say mean things about people and I try not to think them either but I will make an exception just this once. Your mother is behaving in an absolutely disgusting fashion Gin. She needs a holiday? I can think of several things she needs before a holiday like a lesson in tact and humility to start with. So that's bonding with her grandchildren and her son's follow up she's missing? I give you permission to step away from them absolved of any wrong doing. Draw a fat line underneath it for a wee while and believe not that anything will change. Can I tell you I'm sorry and I wish I could make her the mother you've deserved and needed just recently? What a shame MIL be away too. She's so lovely.

My brother's just phoned me to invite me to an Ann Summers party. Does he know me but at all? Well it's SIL hosting it and my brother has also invited his first wife along. I might go just to see Wife The Current garotte Wife The Deposed with a frilly garter.

Oh you must go and post secretly with a blow by blow account.

They are back for his follow up, just could not take any more time off. I was a bit upset.

When i text my sister arlier to say i would be back in court next week and was very worried she text back and said "why are you going to court?" Words fail me sometimes.

Just text her back and say it was prostitution and you know you shouldn't have done it but there's a recession on. FFS your family are mad.

Don't worry, am writing something to cheer you up.

I will write that blow by blow account (whilst tutting in the corner about pornography and the state of the world). Wife The Deposed will be referred to at all times as TPD (The Poisoned Dwarf), just so you know. We didn't get on on account of the fact that she was TPD and had a silly haircut and was permanently on transmit, never on receive.

And she had this dog. Yappy little fur ball it was. Used to throw parties for it, didn't cook food for the guests but would cook aforementioned pathetic rat of a dog a Whole Fecking Salmon and feed it to it from a china plate whilst cradling it in her arms and cooing at it. It wasn't even a dog. It was like a cat with none of the poise, grace or intellect, being dragged about on a string by its TPD Mummy Wummy Mumsy Wumsy or whatever she used to croon in its mangy little ear.

See Gin, I was mean about your family and now it's all pouring out in a black cloud of bile. I won't stop you know.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

Carry on my dear, am revelling in enjoying it

TPD sounds fantastic, tell me more.

I plan to steal your words to entertain my dh. Not that he needs it, he is in Chile atm, in a casino last night

I shouldn't should I?

Okay, her hair. She dyed it. A lot. I'm sure at some time in her woefully vacant brain she thought she was bleaching it but either she read the instructions wrong or just plain couldn't read and it just looked grey or colourless. And style? Well, I spit the word. What do you do when you have the biggest, frizziest hair in the world? Well let me tell you what you don't do. You don't dye it and magnify the frizz and you certainly don't cut it in a bob so that with the massive hair- in which I lost several small children and a lot of money by the way and the shortness of stature, in certain lights you look like a fecking mushroom wandering down your tastelessly decorated hallway. And you don't team it with a leopard print mostrosity of a blouse (is there a worse item of clothing known to man than a blouse?) so that not only do you look like a mushroom but a rare and deadly species of mushroom that has crossbred with a cheap and tacky feline. And you don't open your mouth to speak when you're that incapable of stringing a coherent sentence together in anything other than an accent that could melt paint away from your aforementioned tastelessly decorated house.

And what you absolutely do not do is cheat on my brother with that pseudo-American pop idol wannabe imbecile up the road, lie blatantly to my brother's face when I've caught you in flagrante and make out that I'm the one in the wrong.

And she was so short she had to sit on a cushion to see over her fur-covered leopard-print steering wheel.

Oh God, my cheeks ache from grinning so much.

I fear i may wake the children.

We must do a drive by when i come and stay, you know on our way to the dinosaur park.

A mushroom crossbred with a feline

You LOVED her then. Your brother had a lucky escape it seems.

What on earth possessed him?

She forced him into it with her wily ways. In all seriousness, I don't know. My brother was/is very sensitive and easily led. And she was a very pushy woman. Told him how to dress, what to say, how fast he was allowed to eat and drink. A few weeks before the wedding he called it all off. Told her he was unhappy, didn't love her and it wasn't fair to either of them to continue. Her mother phoned up every hour on the hour (he'd moved back in with Mum and Dad and me) and screeched/cried/swore/threatened/abused him. She turned up at my Dad's work and made a scene several times. My brother went back to TPD, got very drunk on his wedding day in order to go through with it and had a fairly unhappy marriage. Turns out she'd been seeing somebody else all along though, well before they got married in fact. She's married to him now and they have an Odd Looking Child. Which is a very cruel thing to say but it's true. She dresses him in the same clothes she had for the dog. True. He is also named after said dog. Again, true.

Now that is very I look forward to giving your brother a hug when i meet him.

Your Dad too,i reaaaally want to hug him. He sounds lurvely

My brother's a super star. The complete opposite to me in every single way but I love him dearly.

My Dad? Oh now he's a hero. Brave, kind, sensitive, sweet, humble, gracious, generous, interesting and very, very funny. I love him. And you know what, he loves me. Think I've mentioned it here before but he's always struggled with displaying emotions (was badly psychologically, emotionally and physically abused growing up) and has never been able to say he loves me. Then Mathilda came along and he wrote me a beautiful letter while I was in hospital telling me how much he loved me and how much it hurt him to see me so drained. And something changed then. He got a mobile phone you know and he texts me things like i lOv uyo (he can't work it at all, he's not dyslexic) and he never would have done that before. He's amazing, left school unable to read and write and he's starting a degree in English, Psychology and History this month at the grand old age of 52. I'm soooooo proud of him.

I thnki love him too Funny how some life events change us. Even after years of thinking you could never change.

I am always ready or it now. I find myself far more chilled out nowadays Well, some days anyway.

I am watching the Discovery Channel and just got completely conused as to what was real and what was actually good graphics.

It is about the inner Earth. They just cut to men in special suits in caves far under the Earth. I couldn't work out if it was real or not ReaL it turns out!

SOH - your descriptive talents are amazing. I have been grinning like a loon at your description of TPD and wiping tears away at your description of your Dad. My Dad is lovely as well, if a little misguided at times but he's desperately trying to make up for past mistakes now.

My mother is just a complete enigma to me (and I to her, I suspect). I thought I had reconciled myself to our relationship - had lots of counselling etc., but as soon as Tilly came along, it just magnified how strange it really is. I vividly remember being at the hospital about an hour or so after she was born and cuddling her and sobbing to dh that I already felt like I would kill or die for her and protect her to to the ends of the earth and being massively upset that my mother clearly never had those kind of feelings for me . She's a very bitter, resentful and jealous lady. I suppose I ought to be grateful that she only had the opportunity to mess up one child

Gin - your parents (and sister) sound incredibly selfish. I'll be thinking of you next Thursday xx

Now - AM ?! Time for you to sign in. I'm still going for the 7th though

Where's everyone else ??

Morning all!

Would love to tell you all that i was sitting holding a baby but that would be a lie Still only 11 days till edd so the end is almost in sight.

SOH your TPD sounds fabulous. My MIL has a 'thing' for rat dogs, she has 3 1) tiffany 2) bruno and a third that we dont officially know about. Waiting for dh to go round to the house and kick off about it (we bought a house for her 18mths ago and the rule was NO DOGS!!!)

I was a good girl at the weekend (sat pm and sun), I spent a lot of time sat down in the team motor home chatting to a certain former spice and cooing over her very gorgeous little girl. Only ventured out when it was a race. I then waddled my way to the grid and back, then plonked my bottom on a chair that had been put out ready for me.

Trying to think of something to do with ds this afternoon (mum has dd) that doesnt involve me going out anywhere. Am totally knackered this morning and as much as i would like to take him to a play place i'm not sure i can be bothered [bad mummy].

Fill a bowl with cornflour and water with a little food colouring and put him OUTSIDE naked

Hours of fun. I quite like it too actually.Or you could make some basic biscuits and let him decorate them while you SIT and watch.

Alternatively stick cbeebies on and give him a bowl of popcorn.

Tills poor you At least you recognise it and are not doing it all with Tills as can so often happen with these mother daughter relationships.

Tills is a lucky little girl

I feel terrible this morning for being mean about her and should counter it with some nice things about her. All I can come up with is at least she wasn't as bad as her mother (who once officially complained to the GP's surgery because (and try to imagine a very large and very indignant woman as I type this) "he said I was obeast. How dare he? I am NOT obeast". I may have cried with laughter).

She was quite good at making pastry. There.

Don't go out AM. Surely it's raining there. Can't you do crafty stuff? Or at least scribbling? Easy peasy.

Tills, that sounds tough for you. When I found out I was having a little girl, I was sad and a lot of it was to do with fears about replicating my own mother/daughter relationship. My Mum's not anything like as bad as you describe but our relationship is rather fraught at times. We muddle along and we love each other but she's a rather practical, critical and argumentative woman. She has an auditory processing disorder caused by a fractured skull when she was hit by a car and it intensifies some of her socialisation problems. It's mean to get so cross with her because she does struggle but she was like it before too but is just worse now. And it was frustrating trying to be a teen amidst the confusion. A conversation with my Mum goes a lot like this:

Mum where's the sellotape?
I haven't had it.
No, I know, I can't find it. Where do you keep it?
We've lived in this house for 25 years.
Bravo. Where's the sellotape.
I haven't had it.
I know you haven't. I just need to know where you keep it.
It's been kept in the same place for 25 years.
Clever. Where is that place?
If it's not there then I haven't moved it.
No, I'm not saying you have. I just want a piece of sellotape.
Are you accusing me?
I'm asking you to tell me where the sellotape is.
In 25 years I have never moved it from where it belongs.

This will go on for a long time until she eventually takes you to the sellotape drawer to prove she hasn't moved it. Other days you'll say 'where's the sellotape?' and she'll answer normally but jeez the days when it's bad. I sound mean but it's not just the auditory processing, she is deliberately obstructive. But she is generous and practical and hard working and kind and many things besides.

I worry all the time about my future relationship with M. And I work hard to be open and honest and demonstrative with her. I can't bear the idea that I will screw her up. Or screw us up.

Anyway, Mum and Dad coming today as they do every Thursday. Supposed to be going ghost hunting at the girl's request but the weather's interminable. Might have to hunt ghosts in the house. There is one. But he may not be here today, avoiding sellotape conversations with my Mum perhaps.

YAY YAY! YAY! YAY! YAY! joy!

MrsJB - am guessing that either the family have gone or the kids are back at school......

I LOL alot at the image of mamSOH!

Sorry about you and your mum tils

Mothers!! mine is on a mission to be a pain in the arse at the moment, they (parents) are buggering off to blighty for a couple of weeks at the end of September, can't bloody wait!!!!

AM cornflour? nah far too messy lg&t!!

Well, September is here, most of us return to MN but sadly we loose our little cherubs the teachers amongst us! just can't get the balance hey!

Remind me someone...... why did I have them, oh and more to the point why did I do it 3 fecking times? Love them really!

LOL Mrs JB - what are you planning to do with your new found freedom ?

SOH - I know I shouldn't laugh, but the sellotape conversation did make me chuckle.

I know exactly how you feel about being slightly scared/disappointed even, when finding out you were having a girl. I know I'm nothing like my mum, but its still worrying and on the occasions when Tils is very trying and I am screaming like a fishwife at her, I can't help thinking there's more of my mum in me than I'd like to admit .

Its hard because my mum has had quite a sad life and I can't help feeling sorry for her sometimes and feeling bad when she does drive me insane. I was a twin and my sister was stillborn Mum had awful PND/bereavement issues and had a breakdown after I was born. My lovely nan looked after me until I was 9 months old. I obviously feel nothing but sympathy for what happened to my mum but then she has done nothing but make me feel like the "wrong" twin died for the last 34 years I remember her telling me when I was quite young (about 7 I suspect) that she was sure the other one would have been a better/easier daughter

Anyway - sorry for clogging the thread up with self indulgent waffle It is good to "talk" sometimes

AM - my vote is for CBeebies and biscuits as well

Tils has got hiccups and has just asked me to take them out for her because she doesn't like them She also had a massive tantrum this morning because she couldn't fly like the birds in the garden

at TPD .

Oh Tills that is really so sad. I'm sorry. But I did then have to chuckle at T's comments.

I don't even want to go down that mother/daughter analysis route. Mine is great, but drives me insane a great deal. I already sound like her too Tills when I nag at dd. Sometimes dd irritates me, actually she irritates me far too often and then I feel bad at how I find her much more difficult than the boys and have ridiculous expectations for her instead of just being amazed at who and what she is and I must deal with this, after all she has been shaped by me and the way I treat her.....

Anyway this afternoon I am running away from them all to go to a lovely 25 wedding anniversary church service and party.

I'm going to open a bottle of wine turn into AM and become clean, tidy and organised.

Have fun TMAM, sounds lovely!

dh would find that comment VERY funny MrsJB!!

Morning all

Just wanted to send good luck vibes to Hugs for his first day at BIG school. Cant wait to see how gorgeous he looks in his school uniform

Had a very nice relaxing evening - ran a nice warm bath with some of that foul smelling clary sage, lit some candles and read a book. Was in the bath for over an hour and it was lovely. Slept like a log which was also very nice.

The full moon did NOTHING to bring on labour, nor did the bath, but am feeling more chilled about the whole thing now She will come when she is ready Am getting maybe 3/4 cx's every hour or so, so at least i know we are heading in the right direction. Am pretty much ignoring them after my fun day on Wednesday where they were every 6mins from 06.30 to midnight. Was most annoyed when i woke up yesterday morning to find that they had vanished and didnt return until late afternoon. Am almost in single figures to due date so thats a good thing

Tilly, sorry you are having issues with your mum. I dont know what i can say/add to what has been said by the others. I have always had a fairly good relationship with my mum (had our moments but then thats normal) i found that we became closer whilst we were planning the wedding and then after she was present at J's birth we got closer again. Although we have had some pretty rough times, especially this year with her and my step-dad divorcing and a few other bits and bobs. She was very strict with us when growing up and i have found it quite strange that she lets the kids do/get away with things that me and my siblings would have been totally bollocked for. I remember being quite shocked about 6months or so ago that ds was still sitting in a highchair to have his tea when he went to her house - she was almost gutted that he was having to grow up. There are a few other things that i think about but at least she does listen when i ask her to do or not to do certain things.

Sorry thats a bit of a ramble and probably totally irrelevant! I do hope that you are able to find a solution to it all xx

So how is everyone else?

Pg ladies - Tilly, Pink & Charley: How are your bumps coming along... i cant believe that 5/6mths has passed so quickly

MrsJB how did first day back go?

Hello
I just moved to Nairobi last saturday with my family. I have 3 children (3 years old, 2 and 9 months ). I live with my family on Wndy Ridge, in Karen and I am trying to find contacts to share informations about schools and kindergarten and other subjects.
if you have time, I would be happy to talk with you

douds, karibu! I have put my tel no on your living overseas thread.

Huuuuuuuuuggggggsssss good luck