Bits and Bobs. (The Bits are tucked away, thankfully).

I feel like I have a lot to tell you all, but every time I sit down to write something – puff – it’s gone.  When I think of what I’ve done in the past week, all that really springs to mind is more shouting and getting beyond annoyed at a variety of  useless and possibly negligent service providers, and wondering why it is I get so terribly het up (is that a global expression, or just an Irish one?  Whatever - it means teeth-grindingly riled and agitated) by people failing to meet my expectations.  And I don’t think my expectations are particularly high – eg try to employ someone who won’t bully and intimidate my kids (ESPECIALLY IF I’M PAYING YOU AN ARM AND A LEG TO DO IT), or put sunscreen on them when you said you would (or else don’t but then don’t lie about it when I return and they’re burnt to a cinder), or even simply bring me the fucking bill within fifteen minutes of my asking for it – but I just get really really annoyed by bad service.  I always have done, but particularly so here.  I suspect because I’m not working I have time to get embroiled in the minutiae and even more time to get worked up. 

What else... Oh yes, I have been confounded by my emotional reaction  to the Baby starting nursery, which was initially “ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”, but then – wholly unexpectedly – I WANT TO HAVE ANOTHER BABY.  I know!  Me! Jesus wept.  And just as suddenly as I’m yearning, with every fibre of my being, for a newborn to hold and stroke, it’s gone, and I’m left thinking – what the fuck? This has happened three times in the past few days, including a pang of jealousy when my new yoga teacher (oh yes, I’ve started yoga) announced she was pregnant, and I looked at her teeny bump and thought “I want your teeny bump”.  Seriously folks, what the actual fuck? Is this the so-called “baby hunger”?  (I’M NOT HUNGRY.  I have had a very very large meal, thank you. In fact I continue to be fed intravenously, and I am replete.)  Or maybe it’s just the after-dinner mint of baby-hunger?  

Anyway, what with the shouting and the yearning, it hasn’t been a good time to be in my vicinity.

Other things I have done this week:

• Rung a person about a job (I know [again]!). 
• Gone to TWO yoga classes (I am taking India Knight’s advice in In Your Prime very seriously).
• Thought about joining a club (but then they scorched my children alive and LIED ABOUT IT (see above) so I am revising these thoughts)
• Joined a French conversational class – which is wonderful.  The teacher looks just like the woman who played Amelie, and is deeply Parisian and chic and lovely, and it’s just great.  (I have images of self cycling gently along one of Singapore’s many motorways, my Chinese produce glowing radioactively in the front basket, the air fragrant with exhaust fumes wafting through my face mask.)
• Oh, sent the Baby to nursery.  Which was not in itself an emotional event - the Baby is the Margaret Thatcher of small people  (there is no emotion, other than fury, ever. Also – thin wispy hair.) –  but I outdid myself by being late for both drop off and pick up.  On both days.
• Failed to find any wellies in all of Singapore for the Baby (wellies required for the nursery garden play, I assume to fend off both mud and snakes)  except for one pair for $70. Which is about twice what the anti-venom shot costs, so I’m willing to take my chances.
• Marvelled at this:
• which is one half of the nest’s occupants, the other half having – literally – flown the nest already.  Who knew that a two-week-old bird could resemble Winston Churchill?

I will leave you with this, at which I laughed myself stupid - which I call “What colour is this dress?” (The only answer to which can be, as one of my friends put it – “What dress?” Also, when did Buffalo Bill get out of jail?):