Meet the parents...

Well, we decided to tell the parents our little secret today as we'd be seeing both sets. (And it's becoming increasingly difficult to answer questions honestly when they ask what's new and how things are going...plus I can't always remember which white lies I've told them so things could potentially get a tad confused.) Anyway, they were all delighted. Although my dad didn't say much at first, and did look The Other Half up and down in a suspicious 'what have you been doing to my daughter?' manner. Yes, Dad - we've been married for almost three years, did you not see this coming eventually?

In other news, I'm very proud of The Other Half. 'Twas his last day at work on Friday but he starts his new job in just over a week. Good on ya, lad.

Like that bit in Superman when the Hoover Dam bursts...

Back in early March, I somewhat stupidly wrote a post about how well our bathroom renovation seems to be going. What in the name of all that is good and holy was I thinking of?! I've cursed my house! Well, you might have gathered that things aren't in fact running smoothly at all. For starters, it's taken almost a month to reach a point that's somewhere near a finished product (and almost a month of strategically planning when is a safe time to nip for a wee amongst the building rubble that has taken over the place), and just when we thought everything was pretty much finished last night and therefore safe to turn the water back on...it turns out it wasn't. Oh no.

Water erupted from every possible mechanical orifice that it could. Like geysers, only colder. And indoors. The bathroom is flooded, and in turn - so is the kitchen as that's the room directly below the bathroom and the laws of gravity had to carry the water somewhere. Then, we tried turned the water off completely at the stopcock in the kitchen - alas, to no avail. It just kept turning! And water kept gushing! There's now a tidal wave downstairs being haphazardly collected by a bucket wedged under the leaking tap, while people who I hope know what they are doing are busy freezing pipes to replace the broken stopcock. And have dug up several floorboards in the process. Argh!

This has resulted in me having to work from home today in order to empty out the overflowing bucket of water from the busted pipe every twenty minutes - and an email of much ambiguity went around my colleagues proclaiming that I wasn't in the office today "due to plumbing problems". I foresee having to explain several times over tomorrow that this was not a euphemism. Sigh. I hope this is fixable sharpish. All I wanted was a working bathroom - that's not too much to ask for, is it?

Wig Wham Bam...

Well, this week I did something I've certainly never done before. No, not swimming with dolphins (although I'd like to one day); not skydiving from a hot air balloon (can't say I've ever really thought about that one) and not even finally sitting through the whole Lord of The Rings Trilogy (I managed half an hour of part one and fell asleep, and have never attempted again). No. This was neither exciting nor daredevil, but it was something I wouldn't care to repeat. Namely, having a domestic with The Other Half over a grey wig in the middle of a fancy dress shop. I kid you not.

On Monday, we went shopping for some bits and pieces (namely a wig for him) for the imminent TedFest party we're attending. Since he is going as old Father Jack, a quick bit of research on t'interweb told us we probably wouldn't get a Father Jack-specific wig, but something along the lines of a mad scientist/Beetlejuice-looking grey wig would do, especially as we could do the finishing touches to the costume ourselves to make everything more Jack-esque. So, off to the shopping centre we trotted to have a trying on session in every costume shop we could find. And by god, it was trying.

Tensions started to fray when we kept having to go backwards and forwards between different shops to compare wigs. Which pretty much all looked (and cost) the same. I'm not sure what The Other Half had a picture of in his head - I'm guessing he was looking for a packet labelled 'Father Jack wig', which I calmly explained several times over we were never going to find and we'd just have to get something as close as we could. Then the argument started when I found a Beetlejuice grey wig - which ok, didn't look exactly like Jack's hair, but we could trim it and it would be ideal. Apparently not good enough, despite the fact that nobody except our friends would see this, and nobody would care anyway if it wasn't an EXACT replica of Jack's mangy locks as they all knew who he was supposed to be going as.

It continued. The Beetlejuice wig just wasn't going to cut it as the picture on the front showed that the scalp of the wig was grey, when it should have been pink. This is when I lost it, there and then in the wig shop with a comedy polystyrene brick in one hand and a giant fake priest's cross in the other. The staff were so bemused by this weird couple shouting at each other over the colour of a wig's scalp that I left the shop and went off to buy a cup off coffee. On my return, I found a sheepish-looking Other Half with a bag in his hand. Turns out, he'd tried on the flamin' wig after I stormed out, only to find that the scalp was in fact pink, not grey. And it did look rather Father Jack-like after all.

I have no words.

I have a bandage and I'm not afraid to use it...

Today, I'm feeling quite proud of myself. Small things. And I know anyone can do it, and it's not a big deal or anything, but I do feel like I've accomplished something of a personal goal. For as of this fine afternoon, I am a newly qualified first aider at work. Yes - be afraid, be very afraid. This week has been fun, actually. I wasn't expecting it to be quite so entertaining. There's the added bonus of being out of the office for almost a week (woohoo!), and the fact that you are learning a new skill...but it's been most amusing taking my blood and bandages homework home with me to practice slings on my bemused Other Half and swap horror stories with my fellow trainees and our teacher.

Here's hoping I never actually have an emergency to contend with, though. Blood I can cope with. Sticking my finger in my eye, no problem. Nailed the correct manner to dress a wound with a foreign body in it. Protruding bones through skin, however - well, you can keep those, thank you very much. My class have had to sit through some truly horrendous videos this week - burns, falls, chemical spills, spurting arteries, the works...but the only things to truly turn my stomach were the photos of footballers with snapped tibia bones jutting out their pointing-the-wrong-way legs. Hurltastic.

In true me-style, though, this week has not been free from catastrophe. Did you really expect it to be? Of course not. Monday morning, I left the house in a hurry. It was washing day and all my jeans were in the laundry basket, so I shoved on my denim skirt without thinking too much of it. Only to get into my course and realise with a jolt of horror that we'd all be role playing and practicing exactly what to do in various emergencies. Yep, you guessed it. There I was in the middle of a room full of strangers, demonstrating the recovery position and flashing my polka-dot kecks to all and sundry.

At least I was wearing tights, I suppose. And knickers. It would have been far worse if not.

Sing when you're winning...

Some people should never be allowed to sing in public. This includes the majority of the damned X-Factor gang, but also Yours Truly. I just can't hold a tune - never have been able to. My sister claimed my share of any musical genes I might have had. The witch can turn her hand to almost any instrument. Even at school I was so tone-deaf that playing an instrument was something that was always going to be beyond my reach. A few chords of 'Silent Night' on the keyboard and the baseline of 'Under Pressure' was about all I could manage, sadly. I was always that kid in school ensembles who was given the tambourine or third triangle just so they had something to play. And last night proved to me that I should definitely be gagged.

Thankfully, not a picture of me singing...but equally as cat-strangling I'm sure.

I've had a couple of just-what-I-needed get-togethers with friends recently (the last was a very nice affair at the weekend with my good buds C and J - we had slightly crispy lasagna and melt-in-the-middle chocolate puds and the works) and last night was no exception. But someone should really have stopped me. It started off innocently enough - a load of us piled into my friend V's lounge playing a really good interactive quiz thing on her games console with individual buzzers everything (the excitement at having individual buzzers became too much at one point and everyone was pressing everything) - then the wine was cracked open and the karaoke game was unleashed.

At least I wasn't alone though, my murderous renditions were always as part of a duet. I just don't know why I thought it was a good idea at all, never mind three times! First up was a cat-strangling version of 'Daydream Believer' with J. She can hold a note. I cannot. The came 'California Dreaming', also with J. You'd think both of us would have learnt our lessons. Apparently not. And lastly, a festive performance of Wizzard's 'I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday' with C. Turns out even with the words on screen, I still don't know them. I didn't take the crown for most embarrassing song of the evening though, oh no. that was left to our (straight) male pals J and C, whose convincing interpretation of Sonny and Cher's 'I Got You Babe', complete with adoring gazes at one another was the vocal highlight of the night. I think wine came out of my nose.

Karaoke. An evil word indeed. Wine. And even eviller one.

Oh, that looks like a nice book...

I recently reported about my abhorrent lack of sleep. Well, it's driven me to edge. Not by the way of Class A drugs or anything - but by the way of literature. I'm absolutely devouring books. For the most part it's working - frivolous tales and the odd re-read of a Stephen King or something are helping to take my mind off things and send me off into the Land of Nod gently. Or it was working, until I picked up Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. Christ on a bike. I wasn't expecting that. Talk about devastation.

I won't give the plot away (what I'm about to tell you is in the blurb anyway), but it's about a young girl who was murdered, and she is telling her story from heaven while watching the destructive effects this has on her family as the years go by. I don't think I've ever been so completely captivated by a book. My Other Half actually woke up and came to see what was wrong as I was so inconsolable halfway through reading. I put myself to sleep with a headache from crying, I was so bad. But after discussing this little novel at work, I was glad to discover that I wasn't the only emotional wet sponge to be completely floored by this book.

And apparently, the film is due out next year. Great. I think perhaps I'll wait for the DVD to come out so at least if my face dissolves into my popcorn, it'll be in the privacy of my own front room. My friends will agree with me that none of us want a repeat of what became known as The 'Titanic' Incident. (My 15 year-old self was taken under protest to the flicks to see this crime against cinema by mates who loved Leo. While I'd love to say I wept over the shocking state of the script, I'm ashamed to admit that I sobbed so uncontrollably as the Strauss couple prepared to drown that my mascara streaked onto my t-shirt so I resembled a zebra, and a woman I didn't know came over and asked if I was alright when I started to hyperventilate.)

I've never had any poise when it comes to tears.