Remember those old Caption This competitions? Well, when Dredd was young they were rife in the Mauritanian newspapers.. Answers on a postcard comment please!



One day, me and you are going to crush some faces

As far as I'm concerned there will never be a "team Lu" or a "team Chris" we both need our friends, if you're a mutual friend I'm sure we have better things to talk about than our exes.

In public I will always be civil to him and if we attend the same parties I will never cause a scene or a drama - parties tend to have better things happening than arguments or cold shoulders.

I will never argue with anyone in front of my son, least of all with his father.

I like my problems to stay private, don't take it personally if I don't want to talk about things, I have major trust issues that have not been made better by being emotionally raped all over the internet by a man that I loved for a very long time.

Don't believe everything you read on facebook. Most of you know me better than to believe some things but equally I know that it's very easy to be drawn in to such a public declaration.

Chris is angry and lashing out in ways that he knows will hurt me most. Don't be angry with him for doing so, he still needs his friends and it's only me that he's trying to upset. Equally, please don't be drawn in.

Chris can and will read this, I am not acting behind his back.

If you desperately need to know more or aren't sure whether something is true please ask me, gossip and rumours don't help anything.

 Winter is drawing in again so it's time for some yummy winter soup recipes. First one of the year is carrot and orange soup which has a lovely christmassy feel to it and if use a low-salt stock it's suitable for babies from 6months+.

( Recipe )

Very simple and very yummy :)

 I'm intrigued, what items do you own that would probably mean nothing to anybody else but mean everything to you?

For me it's a cheap plastic Captain Jack Sparrow keyring that flashes if you squeeze it - a friend won it on a penny arcade and it's been attached to my keys ever since - not because the keyring itself is so precious but because now every time I open my front door I remember how happy me and my friends were all at the same time on that amazing weekend.

Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. You can't use the artist I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name)".


Pick your Artist: The Darkness

Are you a male or female: Knockers

Describe yourself: I believe in a thing called love

How do you feel: Love is only a feeling

Describe where you currently live: Invasion Sector 12

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: Faded pictures

Your favorite form of transportation: One Way Ticket

Your best friend is: Girlfriend

You and your best friends are: Phantasmagoria (I couldn't have thought of a better word, thankoo meme)

What's the weather like: Burial at Sea

Favorite time of day: Friday Night

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: Seemed like a good idea at the time

What is life to you: Growing on me

Your relationship: Get your hands off my woman

Your fear: Is it just me?

What is the best advice you have to give: Iron Force

Thought for the Day: Staatsfiend

How I would like to die: Death Squad

My soul's present condition: Critical Threshold 

Hey, most of them even made sense.. and with the exception of Dinner Lady Arms, Tarsman of Chor (what the hell does that mean anyway?) and Hazel Eyes I think I gave a full discography..

Where shall I begin? Bubbles, singing nursery rhymes, We're going on a Bear Hunt, The Gruffalo (and his daughter), many, many children's stories, being a princess, bouncy castles, ball pools, soft play, water fights, easter egg hunts, BIG boxes that you can make dens out of, fromage frais, alphabetti spaghetti (although now I know ruder words to spell out),  finger painting, messy play... If I ever grow up people will worry about me.

  Last night's duck was mostly a success! The skin was really crispy and the meat was slightly pink in the middle as advised by internets although because it was a thigh/ leg joint it was quite hard to get off the bones and since the skin was so crispy it was hard to get through. Next time I think I'll just have to search harder to find duck breasts rather than quarters.

The recipe was:
Ingredients:
2 Duck Breasts (well, quarters but next time breasts)
100g Marmalade
3 Tablespoons Soy sauce
Sea salt and 5-spice to season

Method:
1. Preheat the oven to 220C/ 200c fan, heat a frying pan with a small amount of butter or low cal spray.
2. Score the skin of the duck in a criss-cross pattern and season with sea salt and 5-spice. Sear for 2-3 minutes on each side over a high heat.
3. Meanwhile, mix the marmalade and soy sauce in a small roasting tin. Add the duck and smear the sauce all over so the duck is marinated. Pop in the oven for 8-10 minutes.

I chose to serve it on a bed of noodles fried in the left over duck fat from searing and a bit of the orange sauce but it's also good with a herb leaf salad.

Today I will be attempting to roast the other half of the duck. I seasoned it and marinated it overnight in a teriyaki marinade so today I just need to pop it in the oven with some carrots and some parsnips and maybe some potatoes for a proper roast dinner.

 Not as easy as you might think! Now forward, change the answers to suit you and pass it on. It's really hard to only use one word answers. Be sure to send back to the person you received it from!

( Long list of questions )

Blame gemz_lee  for this one.

 I want all my wonderful lovely friends (and you, Lee, my secret watcher) to participate in this here little meme - just answer a few little questions for me. It'll be fun. = ) Pretty please?

1. Your Middle Name:
2. Age:
3. Single or Taken:
4. Favorite Movie:
5. Favorite Song or Album:
6. Favorite Band/Artist:
7. Dirty or Clean:
8. Tattoos and/or Piercings:
9. Do we know each other outside of LJ?
10. What's your philosophy on life?
11. Is the bottle half-full or half-empty?
12. Would you keep a secret from me if you thought it was in my best interest?
13. What is your favorite memory of us?
14. What is your favorite guilty pleasure?
15. Tell me one odd/interesting fact about you:
16. You can have three wishes (for yourself, so forget all the 'world peace etc' malarky) - what are they?
17. Can we get together and make a cake?
18. Which country is your spiritual home?
19. What is your big weakness?
20. Do you think I'm a good person?
21. What was your best/favorite subject at school?
22. Describe your accent:
23. If you could change anything about me, would you?
24. What do you wear to sleep?
25. Trousers or skirts?
26. Cigarettes or alcohol?
27. If I only had one day to live, what would we do together? (If you have no idea, just say something crazy, it'll entertain me!)
28. Will you repost this so I can fill it out for you?

All the rest of my friends were wise.. I'm special!

You Are Intuitive

You are very sharp and shrewd. You can see the best and worst sides of people. Right now, you are seeking peace and tranquility in your life. You are drawn to people who are passionate and deep. You feel like there are a few minor things in your life that need to be changed. You find that any decision you have to make needs to be slept on... often for multiple nights.

 I'm not good at showers. Last night I managed to cut myself with the plastic spatula thing that you use to remove veet. Today I discovered that I have both the wrong type of shampoo AND the wrong type of conditioner for my hair - if my colour looks really weird for a month or so it's because the shampoo is for really light brown hair whilst the conditioner is for really dark brown/ black hair. Naturally my hair is a medium brown so it might balance out, you never know.

Child has decided that he wants to sleep at a 90 degree angle to where I put him in his cot so he turned himself so that his head is pushed right up against the cot bumper and his feet are through the bars of the other side. I would turn him but he is obviously comfortable and you know what they say about letting sleeping babies lie.

As an additional fail the only programs I can now run on my laptop are warcrack, chrome, internet explorer (because I couldn't delete it), Outlook (because I couldn't delete it) and the MS games (half because I couldn't delete them, half because I quite like solitaire and minesweeper). This means that I can no longer play with pretty art work or edit photos so all pictures of Damien will henceforth have red eyes until I get a new laptop with a big enough hard drive to take warcrack AND other software.

 Today has been interesting. Took Damien for his injections, ended up doubled up in pain and throwing up in the GP loos so poor needle-phobic Chris had to take Damien in and hold him while he got stabbed. The receptionist was clearly an idiot as she wouldn't let me see the GP while I was there because he was only seeing babies (the waiting room was devoid of babies) Now, I've been having this problem for months and so far the doctors have done bugger all but pass me from pillar to post and haven't told me any possibilities of what might be wrong or what I can do to help myself. They've never seen me with the pain so they couldn't have a poke of the sore bits whereas today they would have had the chance had the receptionist not have been a bit of a jobsworth.

We ended up going to a walk-in centre and I'm really glad we did. I was seen within 15 minutes, the nurse was lovely, done a few tests that my GP hadn't bothered with, double checked her findings with a physician because she wasn't sure and came back within 5 minutes with a diagnosis. She printed out a load of information for me, referred me to a surgeon at a different hospital who could see me more or less straight away and within three hours (half of which was waiting for blood test results) I walked out having had an ultrasound, a full assessment, blood tests, a shed load of painkillers and I got to play with stickle bricks while I was waiting for the bloods to come back. Win all round I feel.

The downside of this is that I'm going to have to have my gall bladder removed in the next few weeks which may affect my lovingly planned events this year, there's a huge possibility that I won't be able to do the unimoot which I've been really looking forward to :( At the end of the day though it wouldn't be much fun to be doubled over in pain and vomitting in the corner of a field and once my gb's out the problem's gone.

Add this to the list of wonderful things they don't teach you about pregnancy. Most people don't get gallstones til they're old :(

I never use it but it reminds of the day it was taken. Keelan (in the picture) turned 7 within days of Adam turning 3. We had a massive party and my step mother nearly got hit in the face with a hurley stick by a child trying to kill the pinata. I think the pinata looks edgy, suspicious.. definitely guilty of something.

Some things that have amused me this week:
* Damien giggling in his sleep
* This screen shot http://i40.tinypic.com/2r7r8co.jpg
* Being told to be gentle with a black belt twice my size in Aikido
* Damien talking and playing with mirror babies then telling me all about it with guestures and everything.

Mostly that screen shot actually. I like it when news pages have sense of humour.

My little monster is sleeping in so I have a chance to update at last!

Little monster himself is getting much easier to get along with now. We've stopped breastfeeding so he can go three hours between feeds rather than the hour or so that we were managing before and he's sleeping much longer at night. W00t for sleep! I'd almost forgotten what it was like to have more than four hours kip at a time :D

It seems like every time I look at him he's grown a bit more and I honestly can't believe how much bigger he's getting. He's grown out of nearly all of his newborn clothes so he's about three clothe sizes bigger than when he was born and into 0-3 months stuff. Saying that, since we've put him on bottles he goes through about three outfits a day so although I do love all the cute outfits he has I'd much rather not having to wash them every day :P

In other news, I went out last weekend and saw Gemz, Nadsy, Richy, Andy, Craig, Kev and 404 Error amongst a few others I hadn't seen in about a year so I stayed out way past my bedtime and got well and truely tiddled on a very slim budget :D The drama llama was lurking as it usually does at these types of events.. or sorry, not so much lurking but trying to get centre stage while the rest of us try to ignore her and enjoy the banter with the band. It did sort of put a dampner on the night because the band didn't get to finish their set and there was a lot of shite that really shouldn't have happened but we had a good night nonetheless and from what I hear it's all been sorted now.

Chris is working full time now and when he gets home he's usually knackered but on the bright side he's earning way more money than he was before and it's a huge weight off our shoulders to have money coming in. Despite being knackered he usually manages to do the bedtime shift and first thing in the morning he brings me a bottle so I don't have to get out of bed - this is about the most romantic and wonderful thing he could do for me at the moment as I tend to struggle with the whole getting up before 8:30am thing even if baby is screaming in my ear :P I still do the middle of the night shift in the hope that Chris will sleep through it, and mostly he does so he's not too worn out in the morning.

Master is waking, I'd better prepare for the nappy of euch that awaits me -_-

Last night I was quite ill and in quite a lot of pain but since I could take painkillers and sleep it off I didn't think anything of breastfeeding today. Now my baby is screaming in agony and he can't take painkillers (not even kiddie calpol yet) or sleep it off because, well, how do you sleep when your stomach is in agony? I hate it when he cries like this and this time neither of us can do anything about it and it's all my fault.

Feel like crap, luckily Chris is more tolerant of crying than I am (or at the very least it doesn't make him cry too)

How To Choose A Band Name, Album Title, And Cover Picture

1 - Go to random wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random)

The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations:

random quote (http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3)

The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album (you'll need to refresh the page).

3 - Go to flickr and click on "explore the last seven days"

flikr (http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/)

Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that's your first album.

my band is called: Hubcap
the first album was called: Better than we deserve
and the album cover is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/anneacaso/3064965452/

Note to self: sometimes, if you're very, very pregnant "I haz hurts" can turn into "I can haz baby now?" after a few hours. Whoops, after gribbling about everyone asking about baby he decided to make an appearance. If you're faint-hearted or don't want to hear all the gory details don't click the cut, I'll post the important parts underneath.

( Labour, birth and hospital food. )
So there we go, one healthy happy baby born at 10:10am on 19th November 2008. Damien James Lewis weighed just 5lb15oz which is just as well given the way he was delivered!

I have to say, the staff at the RVI are absolutely fantastic although after 3 days of limited company, having to read a menu to see what was on the plate in front of me and being woken up by four babies who set each other off rather than just my little one, I'm glad to be home, resting and having lots of cuddles with my son :)

I'll post a couple of photos soon, right now it's boob in the face time for Damien.