Do We Have Any More Pudding Left?

Julian Barnes is by far my favourite novelist. In one of his novels he describes marriage as like 'A long drawn out meal with the pudding at the start'. Having been married for four and half years I can truly say this is only totally partially correct. However every time we go to weddings now I can't help but tell the newlyweds this statement and they're generally not sure what to make of it. This is probably quite mean of me on the happiest day of their life. In a few years though I'm sure they'll tell newlyweds the same thing.

Anyway last night The Chancellor and I had fun at the latest wedding and even though I have a pregnant wife who can't drink I still drove home. I think I can now count with two fingers the amounts of time I haven't got stinking drunk at a wedding. Hoorah and by George do I feel great today while everyone else skips another Sunday.

The wee man had fun too with his grandparents and decided to save all his crying until we got home, which was very kind of him. Even though his spots are decreasing he still finds it uncomfortable when he gets hot at night and wants to itch the crap out of his face. But he does look much better today.

Our rehabilitation starts tomorrow and we are going to a populated area where there might be other children. We will attempt to go to our usual Monday playgroup and hope that the parents there don't make their children or the wee man wear a face mask.

I think we're past the infectious stage but to be honest I'm done with staying away from people, I never thought I would ever say this but it's true. So I shout out to my friends, "Do you want to come an play next week?"- please respond to the usual places. If you don't respond I will take it that a). you haven't read the blog or b). you don't trust me when I say we're past the infectious stage. Would I trust me? Ummmm...


jpr

You Can be My Wing Man Anytime

I had it all planned. A day and night away by myself but...The Chancellor and the wee man have now decided to join me on my trip away. This of course is sad lovely but it puts a dampener on my plans to sit in peace and watch the cricket and maybe have a snooze in a fully reclining chair as I do so. This was going to be delightful as there would be no child climbing over me or wife telling me it was time to take the bins out.

I had it all planned but alas this will not be happening. Sad times. Instead I now have to listen to the wee man throwing his toys around and getting up to mischief. Already in the space of an hour he has managed to soak himself by pouring a full watering can over himself. And The Chancellor has juts walked past me trying to hide some garden scissors that I guess the wee man has been playing with. I had it all planned...

But what I do have now is a wing man for the wedding I'm attending tonight. Going to such events by yourself can sometimes be hard, especially when you can't drink. Having a wing man makes life a bit easier and there now is the possibility that I can drink, though I need to alert The Chancellor to the fact that she may have to will have to drive tonight. Always the way.

My parents have the delight of looking after the chickenpox boy tonight though his spots are going down which is a relief for all of us. Some are still very sore but he looks less like some social outcast now. He also seems much happier generally as he charges around his grand parent's house without any trouble. Up and down the stairs he goes without any cause for concern. All back to normal? We can only hope.

Whether he is good for his grand parents or not tonight is anyone's guess but we'll be an hour away so I'm not really going to be thinking about it. Plus once you arrive at a wedding you can't just leave straight away so even if a phone call did come through that he was being troublesome we would have to take our time coming home. Who put my phone on silent?

jpr



 

Have You Seen The Gruffalo In North Shields?

You'll be pleased to know that today the wee man has mainly been morphing steadily from one giant spot to one giant scab. This is good news for us as we may, come next week, be slowly allowed to reintroduce ourselves into society. Does anybody want to play with us? Please?????? I'll pay you...

I mentioned yesterday that the last sanctuary for us would be a deep dark wood. So with this in mind, where do you think we went today? Well it wasn't just one but two fairly dark woods. Alas as we took a stroll through the deep dark wood we did not see The Gruffalo. Though I'm not sure what my reaction would be if such a beast came at me from behind a tree. Surprise for one I would imagine but seeing as one of the place we went today was near North Shields anything is possible I suppose.

I may have been a bit sluggish with a Gruffalo as last night I came home early from my pub quiz on the request of The Chancellor as the wee man had gone to sleep and woken and cried for a couple of hours while rubbing all his spots. After a few pints of strong lager this was fun to come home to but luckily the smell of my breath quietened him down but it took him a while to finally get to sleep.

Hopefully by the time I come home on Sunday we should be fully on the way to recovery and I hope some of the spots will have finally dropped off. Luckily we won't have to go through this again with him but the whole thing has made me a dash philosophical. As the wee man stands next to me naked, covered in so much anti itch cream that he looks like an albino man, I have come to the conclusion that children exist solely to give you a sense of perspective in life.

I mean if you are a parent you will know that life with a child can be utterly absurd. Does anything else really matter when your son is standing there dancing to In the Night Garden while covered head to toe in a brighter than white calamine cream? Probably not. Recession? Nope. My fantasy football team? Nope. Our new home? Nope. The only thing that matters is getting your child well again.

jpr

Calling Dr Ranj?

Happy Yorkshire Day everyone! The greatest county in the country celebrates its very own day today and rightly so. I might have been born in Edinburgh but I did spend a good chunk of my childhood in Leeds so I feel that I'm at least part Yorkshire man as well as part Geordie and part Scot. So drink a good Yorkshire ale tonight in celebration and thank that deity you worship for the county that once almost (not really) got independence.

Anyway the days here at HQ are getting quite repetitive as are I would imagine your views of this blog. Chicken Pox again? Well yes Chicken Pox again as it doesn't appear to going away. We have been to the beach three days in a row now and as much as I love the beach having no one to talk to is getting a little annoying. The wee man's face is now covered in spots and it's pretty obvious what he has so I'm doing my best to keep his away from people. The next location we'll visit will be the deep dark wood and then the underneath of a bridge.

I bet if I went to see Dr. Ranj (Get Well Soon fame) he would get rid of this straight away with a cheery song and some under the counter drugs. Is he a real doctor anyway? Who knows, I'm not going to waste my time finding out. Anyway all his patients despite being puppets seem to get cured right away with no questions asked. How does he do it apart from being horrendously smiley and having a lovely singing voice? I wish I could style my hair like his.

Anyway I promise from tomorrow to talk about something other than spots and I actually get a break from the pox this weekend as I alone sans family am going to a wedding somewhere in Lancashire (boooooo. The county not the wedding). It will be nice to get away from creams and spots for a while. The Chancellor can handle calamine duties for a while as I rest my weary head. It's a hard life.


jpr

We Wandered Lonely As A Cloud

Evening all, Wednesday wouldn't be Wednesday with a Baby Centre blog for you. http://www.baby.co.uk/mum_stories/anyone-for-a-chickenpox-party/. It's basically about everything I've been moaning about and everything I probably will be moaning about for the foreseeable future.

I wandered lonely as a cloud or perhaps that should be 'we wandered'. The quarantine continues and the wee man looks even worse than he did yesterday. The spots have now progressed to the face and in particular to his eye and let me tell you they look sore. I've been banned from putting pictures of it in this blog as it's actually quite mean and I don't want to embarrass him forever. I really feel for him and life must be pretty sore right now.

More than anything else at the moment we are bored. Some of our friends are meeting tomorrow and this weekend and we can't go. *Sad face*. There are lots of things I want to do, swimming for instance but any parents at the first sight of the wee man will go scurrying for protection covering their eyes. This however may be useful for swimming as it could clear the pool for me. I want to take him to a playground but we will be kicked out by overly concerned parents.

I now am looking for any strip of open land which has no children, is in the middle of nowhere and there's something to do on it. I think this is mission impossible and we're destined to wander the streets alone like the social outcasts we are.

We were told by the doctor that the spots will continue for a wee while before scabbing over and eventually falling off. Then once this happens we can see our friends again tough I imagine they will want to stay a good distance away from us for a while. Poor wee man.


jpr   

Play-Doh

With the wee man get spottier by the day The Chancellor and I have been finding new ways of entertaining him without interacting with any other children. Our newest idea is Play-Doh.

The Chancellor went a bit mad this morning and got not just Play-Doh but the kitchen set that goes with it. I must say that's all very exciting and I've already mad multiple ice cream cones and other weird shaped things.

However the thing I'd forgotten was just how strangely the stuff smelt. It has a wonderful chemical smell about it which makes you wonder just what's in it and how it's made. I seem to remember as a child eating the stuff and thinking it was incredibly salty, again I wonder what's in it and hope it's not human. Already I think the wee man has sampled its delights, the telling green speckles on his lips gave him away. Also the fact that he's just thrown up dinner is another clue.

I'll let him off though because he's having a pretty rough time of it. Every five minutes we find more spots and now he looks like...well I'm not sure what but it isn't nice. Poor little man. A week of this doesn't sound good and with The Chancellor going back to work tomorrow it's going to be a long week. Some of his spots have popped and actually look quite sore so we'll have a child covered in cream by the end of the night. Not even a Play-Doh kitchen is worth this...

jpr    

 

The Pox Attacks

The pox has hit our household, the chicken variety. As we want to keep our friends we have to now avoid them for a while or at least until the wee man becomes one giant scab. So picking places to go where the wee man won't spread his diseases is quite tough. Naturally soft plays and the like are out of the question as are most other things in the world seeing as it's the school holidays. My mental list of things to do has become very very short, so we decided today to go somewhere new. Today for the very first time I visited a retail outlet centre and let me tell you it really was a different world.

Now I'm not really one for retail worlds or retail estates as generally they're very busy and very loud but my snobbery lessened ever so slightly today.

The wee man did need new shoes after all and my friend Funny Mummy has been going on about the cheap prices of the shoes there for a while. And in truth she was right as we got some shoes for a fraction of the price as they are in the city! Wow, who would have thought that a). I would have visited such a place today and b). I get ace shoes for such a cheap price! Mind blowing.

Anyway enough from me about shoes, I have to remember that there are more important things like the wee man being his very own biological weapon. I know know why he was being such a mardy bum the last few days. Really should have given him some sympathy, The Chancellor certainly is giving him some now. Bad daddy.

jpr