Ingenious Inventions

Inventions are fantastic, aren’t they? I mean without some dude in an animal skin inventing the wheel, life would be all the more difficult on a daily basis, and if it wasn’t for Thomas Edison I would have a great deal more accidents with hot wax. And I reckon a lot less of them would be bikini line related.

But it does beg the question however, why can people not see that there are some things out there that just need inventing, pronto? Ill draw your attention to my first invention- less annoyance, tights. Call them what you will (pantyhose, stockings etc.) but the truth of the matter is that if you are female, at one time in your life you WILL have stuck your toe through them when rushing out the door to do something important. They say the only thing you can be sure of in life is death, but I can be pretty sure of this too. Important meeting, legs resembling the colour that Casper the Friendly Ghosts legs would be if he indeed had legs, tights needed. Oooh, slightly shimmery and brown enough to be convincing for your skin colour. Glamorous and confidence boosting… and now with a small, toe sized hole and a ladder from the calf upwards. And don’t believe the lie. No amount of clear nail varnish will help you in your predicament. You will just have a sticky mess of a tights hole, with a ladder sneaking out of it like a bolshy teenager on the way out for a cigarette. Defiantly sloping off. Stick to jeans and a hoodie if you ask me.

Shoes with detachable heels. This one is my friend Jo’s cunning plan, but after her revealing it, I can’t see why it hasn’t been done before. She recently got caught in a downpour on the high street, sans umbrella. Bad enough as it is, but then her heel snapped. And this spawned her fantastic idea; detachable heels. What a good one! If you get caught in the situation where one breaks, you could simply take the other one off and be in a fantastic pair of pumps. It would save the days of women across the world. Brilliant.

Grass that only grows so long. I mean come on, if they can genetically engineer micro pigs and miniature poodles, bonsai trees and plants that are dwarfed, then why can’t they make grass that only grows to a certain length? It doesn’t actually bother me as I live in a flat with no garden, but it would have made for a far more harmonious relationship with ex-boyfriend. I dealt with inside the house and the flower beds; he changed the cat litter and mowed the lawn. Apart from he didn’t, and we had these snippy conversations about it on a regular basis.

Me “what are you doing?” seeing that he was on his xbox.

Him “I’m on my xbox.”

Me “but you did say you would mow the lawn today so the lettings people don’t get on at us again. And it’s now 7pm and you have been on your xbox since about 10 this morning. And the cat litterbox smells of poo. And I’m not doing it because I have done everything else.”

Him “I’m on my xbox. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Me “yeswellyouDIDsayyouwoulddoit!! Tomorrow is Monday. You won’t do it tomorrow.”

Him “I’m on my xbox. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Me, in my head “I’ll do it. But when I’m done I will proceed to lawn mow your xbox. And then your face.”

After I had dealt with the lawn and the litter…..

Him “Oh I didn’t realise you were doing it. It really could have waited till tomorrow. I WAS going to do it.”

Me “I don’t want to live in a house where cats roam free in the jungle grass garden and I accidentally tread on mouse carcasses when going to find them because I can’t see anything. And I don’t like constantly smelling poo! I’m going to bed. Humf.”

The advent of stunted grass would have prevented this. Lol.

What fantastic inventions would you come up with?

Sanitary Insanity

I know that sometimes I get the devil in me and feel like causing a bit of mischief, but I think that’s fair enough and we all do it at some time or other. And when you are in one of those moods there is nothing better than sending your respective other out to buy you female products.

I first experienced this with first-boyfriend, when hanging out with my sister. He called to let me know he was going to the supermarket (innnnnnnteresting) and to see if there was anything I needed picking up. A chocolate orange? No, forgot, diabetic. Must be more careful. So I threw it out there to my sister, who responded “I need some tammehmehmeh” trailing off into a mumble. “Tampax”, she mouthed at me. Why are you mouthing?! He cannot see you. So I got back on the phone with instructions “tampax please. Green box, flowers on”. Why do they put flowers and other happy things on the box of sanitary products? It’s like they are acknowledging that if anyone comes within three feet of you you are trained to kill, and perhaps not in your most amused of moods, and then they are parading kittens and puppies and flowers in your vicinity. Not cool.

Anyway, the response was, to say the least, not amused. He whinged that not only was he not happy with picking them up for me, picking them up for my sister was all the more embarrassing. Build a bridge, get over it!

When living with ex-boyfriend, I had a similar problem. The weather was horrible and I felt like someone was trying to pull my internal organs out through my belly button (yeah.. let’s go with belly button). The cats were throwing themselves at the fridge through hunger and we also needed feeding. Short straw was drawn (“but my tuuuuuummmmmmmy hurts. But my baaaaaacccckkk hurts. But it’s raaaaaaaaining. But I WANT A BATH!) and he headed off with strict instructions of procuring me some tampax. “Do you desperately need them? Can you not wait till you can go? Can you not look like you are going to cry please? Okfinei’llgetthem!!”

But the funniest thing by far is being in the female aisle when a man is on a mission. You see them coming, like lambs to the slaughter, meandering hopelessly down the aisle, looking like they may be carrying a bomb. They stop and you wonder whether you will be on the news tomorrow as a victim of a supermarket terrorist attack, and then they gingerly reach for a box. Oh phew! They’ve just been sent out by the missus.

There are three types of male sanitary shopper; the on-the-phone, the smash and grab, and the hoverer. On the phone cannot purchase anything without approval and you can hear the girlfriend on the other end of the line “left, left, left, up a shelf. Does it say tampax? Then its tampax. Pink box? Sorted.” The smash and grab loiters in front of the products for what seems like an age, and then a hand shoots out and in one swift move grabs something and puts it in the basket, and makes off at speed. And the hoverer, like smash and grab, will loiter forever and then leave, defeated.

So come on guys, if your other half asks you to nip to the shop for girly bits, there’s no point in putting up a fight. Experience would tell me that she will normally win, so you might as well smile sweetly and earn a few brownie points. After all, if you bump into someone you know in the lady aisle, what do you think they think you are going to do with them? Exactly.

What Can I Do To Make You Love Me?

These really made me laugh. I found them on Schmitten Kitten, a blog that is too funny for words. What do you guys think? It seems to me the guy ones are a whole lot easier than the girl ones!

Wise Words From Mum

My mother is one of the most amusing people I know. When her and my sister get together, I spend hours in giggles until my sides hurt and my jaw locks. Often she doesn’t mean to be funny, and when she is trying to be funny she isn’t, but she has the sweetest sense of humour ever, and I love her.

So I thought I would share some of my mother’s mum-isms with you. In love. Because she is going to kill me!

Mum, on Pink’s Dirty Little Freaks “Oh I know this one it’s the dirty little tramps song!”

Mum, proudly getting involved with the younger culture of swearing “I don’t give a flying fig!”

When looking at a picture of three bed bugs on the internet “Ah it’s like the three little bears”.

When assuming her role as Dr Diagnosis when my sister was feeling unwell “It might be Lyme disease… have you been swimming?”
“What are you talking about Mum? Do you mean the rat wee disease?”
“Yes”.
“That’s called Weil’s disease.”
“Oh I thought it was Lyme disease as Lyme Regis is a coastal town and you get it from water.”

My sister “and she was all up in his face shouting at him and calling him a CU next Tuesday and it was terrible!! At the petrol station!”
Mum, after thinking a while “Well it can’t have been that bad an argument if she was planning on seeing him next Tuesday, I’m sure she will get over it.”

This was a snippet of quotes taken over a three hour period last Sunday, I’ll keep posting them as I collect them. Thanks Mum for brightening my days!

Spice Up Your Life?

I have a great memory for song lyrics. It’s a talent I wish I could use elsewhere, like for facts or for work or to be a genius, but no, my burden is my amazing talent is only reserved for songs. I’m also a pro at guess the intro, people would kill to have me on their pub quiz team!

I’ve had this talent since I was a child. One day my parents told me that I had to go with my dad to take his friend Nick to work. In London. On a Sunday. I couldn’t think of anything I would rather do less. I didn’t spot that a) no one works on Sunday and b) he probably would have got the train as he was a grown up and didn’t need his best mate and his two kids taking him to the office.

Danielle and I sat in the car for the whole journey merrily singing along to the Sunday top forty. Nick commented on my propensity to learn a song and then Spice Up Your Life came on. “Shimmy to the left…. if your having a good time, shake it to the right.. .If you know that you feel fine” me and my sister sang, and then were asked “do you like the spice girls?”

“God no!!” we commented. “They are, like, soooooooooo uncool!” of course we did, but we didn’t want to say it out loud in case it was being taped and would be played back at school. “They’re RUBBISH!” ultimate insult.

We got to Wembley Arena, and were offloaded. Turns out Nick was the bank manager for the Spice Girls, and he had managed to get tickets for the two ungrateful cherubs that he doted on. Awkward.

We LOVED IT. We zig ah zig aaaahed and spiced up our lives all over the place, until the end of the show, when we were asked if we would like to go backstage. By this time we had shrugged off any idea of being cool, and I was proudly wearing my animal print top like I was related to Mel B. (to give you a mental image, it was sort of like a female Harry Potter child dressed as a leopard).

My sister was so excited she threw up.

Have you ever met anyone famous?

Mischievous Movements of a Cherub ~ Part 1

After posting a little this week about my childhood particularly with reference to my little sister, the angelic looking cherub with a naughty streak a mile wide, I thought I could go somewhere with this. It had mileage. My little sister was naughty and reckless, and therefore often in trouble or up to no good, so I have hundreds of stories where I pointed the finger of blame at my sister. I was never an ally, always a grass. So hereby begins a series of posts named the Mischievous Movements of a Cherub.

When I was four years old, I was girly and pink and into nothing but ballet. I lived in my tutu, ate, slept and breathed dancing and was generally pretty content dreaming of the days I would follow in Darcey Bussell’s steps and dance Swan Lake. When asked what I wanted for my birthday I thought long and hard, and all I could muster was ‘flamingo pink tights’. They had to be this precise shade of pink, and this would make my heart content. I read Drina the Ballerina, watched Angelina Ballerina (the dancing mouse) on the TV, and danced EVERYWHERE.

So when my mum decided to throw me a joint fourth birthday party with a boy down my road, my cake was made in the shape of a four (my mother is by far the best cake maker in the land) and on it was two fondant ballet shoes, with ribbons and piping. I was so happy my heart could have burst.

It was, of course, ruined by my two year old sister. The night before my birthday party, when the house slept and a blanket of dark covered the room, my sister (obviously in early training to be the bane of my life) snuck down the stairs to the kitchen. I’m not sure how she managed to do this without making some sort of noise (we shared a bedroom at the time and it was like Beirut in there) but she did.

The next morning when I woke up, my beloved birthday cake was still there, with one and a half fondant ballet shoes. My chubby little toddler of a sister had snuck down the stairs and gorged on my ballet shoes. Utter. Devastation.

Still not forgiven.

Reasons To Be Cheerful

A girl will have different types of friends in her life, and this will never change regardless of her age, hair style or choice of partner. Men will come and go; sometimes at a rate of knots and sometimes at a leisurely pace, depending on where you are in your life. There will be births and deaths, high days and holidays, but your friends will remain consistent, like the changing of the seasons.

But there are different types of friends, aren’t there? There are the jellyfish ones, where they sneak in a sting which you don’t notice for a while, like “oh I love that dress. I have it! But a size smaller.” (“Oh I know, I like it, it’s….. B*@TCH!)” Or “you’ve lost weight!! Your wings look toned!” (“Why thank you… wings, what wings? Is she referring to my BINGO WINGS? B*@TCH!”), the ones who will go shopping with you and tell you that you look fantastic in those trousers that you are umming and aahing over, the ones that are bang on trend but you think make you look a little bit like you’ve been shoehorned into them, only for you to get home and your boyfriend laugh at you for a solid ten minutes uttering “no darling, they look great. I’m just remembering a joke from the pub”.

But then you have the other ones. The ones that are there for you in times of need, when you are crying so hard that there is snot all over their shoulder and you sound like Darth Vader, who will laugh with you once they have picked you up from falling face first in a very public place, or take you to the hospital when you have had one too many and walked into a lamp post. The ones who will support you whatever you do; fully ready to laugh with you when you reminisce, but defend your honour when necessary. The ones who are totally mental, but you love them. The ones who are ruthlessly inappropriate to the point that you laugh so much you feel a bit sick, and the ones that you would rush to their side and dust them down when their boyfriend “isn’t sure about a future”. And the ones who never change, no matter where in the world you are and who you become. The girls who stick by your side when times get tough.

So take the time to say thank you for their support. And if they are anything like my crones they’ll say “aaaaaah… stop being such a knob. Did someone interfere with your drink?!”

A Post To My Mother

Me and my mum always joke about her getting old, and she ribs me about the fact that I am turning into her and I am headed the same way. Im basically just like my mum on a thirty year delay. So when i read this list as part of a top ten lists post over at Elizabeth’s Mirth and Motivation page, I laughed till tears ran down my face.

Read and enjoy! and then please follow the link and read the rest of the post as it will give you lots of giggles 🙂

Life is tough. Perks of reaching 50 or being over 60 and heading towards 70!
01. Kidnappers are not very interested in you.
02.. In a hostage situation you are likely to be released first.
03. No one expects you to run–anywhere.
04. People call at 9 PM and ask,”did I wake you?”
05. People no longer view you as a hypochondriac.
06. There is nothing left to learn the hard way.
07. Things you buy now won’t wear out.
08. You can eat supper at 5 PM.
09. You can live without sex but not your glasses.
10. You get into heated arguments about pension plans.
11. You no longer think of speed limits as a challenge.
12. You quit trying to hold your stomach in no matter who walks into the room.
13. You sing along with elevator music.
14. Your eyes won’t get much worse.
15. Your investment in health insurance is finally beginning to pay off.
16. Your joints are more accurate meteorologists than the national weather service.
17. Your secrets are safe with your friends because they can’t remember them either.
18. Your supply of brain cells is finally down to manageable size.
19. You can’t remember who sent you this list.
20. What was the question again?

Its All In The DNA

Another of my friends has decided to dip her toe into the world of internet dating this week, with amusing consequences. I’m not going to go into it too much, but the conversations we have had, and prior conversations with other friends, not to mention my perception of people have made me think about what we, as girls, are really after. It’s like an experiment into human psychology, and I’m finding it really interesting.

 The only thing that I can deduce from the whole process is that us girls are a little bit barmy. OK, we might be pretty and smell nice and be smaller and daintier than our male counterparts, but we are much more complicated and I can see the confusion from a male point of view.
Take a conversation between me and one friend. She told me she had been talking to a guy who seemed nice, liked flowers and was visiting his Nan that day. My response? “Is he a man or a mouse?!” I automatically made myself laugh. Girls go on about how they want someone in touch with their feelings and who can be nice and thoughtful, yet it a bloke tells you too soon that they like knitting and cats, we run for the hills. Or maybe it’s just me. I like rugby players and boys who prefer to be outdoors, but come to mention it; she didn’t actually seem to think it was that strange.
Example 2. Another friend (seriously, everyone is at it) read the profile of a man who had sent her a message to me. The message was really funny, nice and simple, and made us laugh. She then went to see what his profile said, and was sad to see that his friend had gone into far too much detail about him, stating he wanted a wife, liked kids and cooking and was handy with a Hoover (I’m ad libbing on this one but it was along those lines). She tried to see the positive, although the look on her face said otherwise. “Aaah” she said “he likes kids. That must mean he wants a family”. Or he is a paedophile.
I think there is something to be said about keeping some of yourself a secret and not telling your entire life story in a public domain. But at the same time it’s interesting to know what people are ultimately looking for. A girl might be looking for someone to marry, but if the guy says on the first date that he is wanting to get married as a priority, she is more than likely to not see him again. Odd.

The way I see it is that when you go on a date you go home and think one of two things. 1) I liked him/ he seemed nice/ we had fun. Or 2) he was a nut-job/ the conversation was boring/ I wanted to gouge my eyes out with a spoon/my friend had to call me to get me out of it.

The next question in your mind is do I want to see him again? Yes? No? That’s it. all these stupid games of leaving it twenty eight and a half hours before responding to a message or only eating salad on a date (believe me, I’ve heard it) are incredibly ridiculous.
So I am making the rash decision to say that men, you are right. Sometimes us girls are a little bit mental. But at the same time it’s a completely different ball game when you are a fairly normal girl who eats more than two lettuce leaves and a sliver of tomato as standard and who comes across a man like this. It’s a whole ‘nother world out there with an over thinker, and they are on the rise. Apparently it’s due to oestrogen in plastic food packaging, and why you shouldn’t drink tap water as “girls dissolve their pills in it”. That’s a direct quote, I’ll have you know. That’s clearly the problem. We are not TAKING the pills we are prescribed to keep us baby free, but putting them down the sink. The mind boggles! 🙂

Ring of FIIIIIIIRE!!!

Drinking games are quite possibly the silliest thing ever. No one can remember the rules of new ones, so you always end up playing the same ones and getting slightly tiddly.
Ring of fire is the worst. Everyone knows different rules and there are different characters that people assume when playing the game.

Rule Hitler. The rule hitler knows the rules of the game and generally tries to ruin the fun for everyone else. For example, if a seven is a ‘pose master’ in their world, but someone else suggests that it might be ‘rhyme’ then the Rule Hitler gets upset. The Rule Hitler may also whip out a pen and paper that they have had concealed about their person and write down what they feel the rules are, so everyone is clear (and rolling their eyes with fun ruining desperation).

The Beer Bullies The Beer Bullies, normally boys, are the ones that psychically pick someone that they feel isn’t as drunk as everyone else of isn’t getting into the spirit of the game as much as they would like, and therefore choose that person to drink at every opportunity. Its normall y a team effort, and often ends in the victim having to go and have a lie down as they have peaked too soon.

The Stickler. The stickler is the one that imposes the rules through the game when people have become too drunk to stick to them.

The sound effects team. Often supporting the Beer Bullies, the sound effects team make oohing and aahing noises when people are drinking, “oh you must” when rules are being enforced, and shout “down it!!” when people are having to drink. Generally make the whole game more fun.

So, in case you are not familiar with the much loved Ring of Fire, there are some rules. I only have a faint grip on these as I normally rely on the fact that one of my friends falls into the Rule Hitler category (not a bad thing) and therefore I don’t have to know. Basically, its a pack of cards that are laid out in a ring. Under no circumstances are you allowed to break the ring (not sure why). You pick a card, turn it over and assume the rule assigned to the card. Five might be rhyme, so the person that turned the card starts with a word and it goes round the circle until you cant think of anymore rhyming words. The person that gets stuck has to drink. Seven might be pose master (hiliarious photo of us at the festival all saluting, with me commenting “why were we doing this?!!” and my friend wisely responding… posemaster.) the person who turns the posemaster card has free reign to strike a pose at any time, and if you arent paying attention and are the last to do it, you drink. So pretty much all rules make you drink. You never get to the end of the game; people get bored and as you get more drunk your own conversations spring up through the circle until it is abandoned.

Another boy rule that seemed to be adapted at the festival was not saying mine. Apparently the word mine is completely forbidden, and if you innocently said it (“whose cider is that?” “oh, its mine!”) you were screamed at to drop and give them twenty. Push ups. Im not sure why, and I cant do one press up without eating the grass so they soon got bored of trying to make me do it due to my pathetically weak upper body strength, but their attempts to con people were quite ingenious. Emma fell prey to it after she was asked “what was that thing called that those miners got stuck in? You know Em, under the ground??” Emma, pleased to know the answer said “it was a mine” and was attacked with shouts of “AHAHAHAHA!!! Drop and give me TWENTY!!!!”

Boys.