Go to the light.............

Do you remember that scene in Friends? Phoebe is at Carol and Susan's wedding and is possessed by the wife of an elderly man who cannot move to the other side as she has still got to "see it all". Phoebe takes it upon herself to try to find the one things this woman needed to see to finalize her life in limbo. As it turns out, it is in fact the wedding of Carol and Susan that seems to be it.

This morning I awoke.......prodding Mr Beehive I hissed, "Are we alone?" (poor bugger, thought his luck was in!). As it turns out, we were. No midnight visitors and no child to fall over asleep on the mattress beside me. I showered - for ten complete minutes, even enough time to remove the fuzz from my legs, still no visitors. Both Master Beehive the elder and younger came in with smiles on their faces to bid me a good morning and then proceeded to lay the table and prepare their own breakfasts with out beating seven shades of s**t out of each other. I actually fell over my mouth rather than the washing on the stairs when I came down to a peaceful kitchen.



Where in the hell was I? I have been having some rather odd dreams of late, so I was initially convinced that I actually was probably still asleep upstairs in some evil and vile trick of a dream! Or maybe I had passed into no man's land, dying in my sleep, and this was the one thing that I needed to see to "see it all"?



Giving the usual five minute warning, I was knocked over by all three (you did read that correctly) Beehives appropriately dressed, no Snow White or Samurai, most clothing on the correct way around and not inside out, minty fresh breath and combed hair. All three continued to the next level of my gratitude by putting on shoes and coats without fuss and proceeding to the car.......in fact I do declare I even heard an "after you...." - Nah! probably not!

Given that most mornings the five minute warning tends to take over fifteen to fully appreciate, we were all sat in the car in the drive in stunned silence at 8am wondering what to do next. Could we really drive to school this early? Perhaps a maths problem would be in order: If I had to drive 4 miles in half an hour, how slow did I need to go??? Did I need gas?? No!

Later on after drop off I went to get my hair done. We have a cocktail party tonight at school and I felt that the new Sporty Spice look from the 90's with the high scraped back ponytail, was a touch rough around the edges.

My hairdresser, Jennie, really should be named Midas. She can perform wonders and not only that, anyone who is prepared to let their fingers get remotely near my three day old, unwashed bar net, deserves a medal in my book! Anyway, as she left me with a stunning coiffure that even looked a shade or two lighter (perhaps I shouldn't be confessing that out loud!) I noticed that God, in his infinite wisdom had chosen that precise moment to press the "rain" button. I had had to park quite a way from the salon as they are having renovations carried out at the moment, so knew this was a disaster for the new Aniston wig!



"Do you have a hood?" Jennie asked



Shaking my head she disappeared to the back of the salon, returning with........... a nice plastic shower cap.



Weighing up my options: either a great poodle frizz from the rain and humidity, or a five minute walk through the town sporting the latest, hot of the catwalk, head gear.



Well, what can I say, I only hope that some poor old biddy was able to use that comedy moment to find their way to the other side having finally "seen it all"!

Equity calling?????

It is no use. There are no amount of creams or gels or cow innards on the market that are going to help the bags under my eyes. The nightly goings on in the Beehive are starting to be nearly as active as the daytime ones.

Take last night for example: By midnight I am awoken by the chorus of coyotes who have decided to make our back yard the next venue for the Gilbert and Sullivan auditions ! Three times they were howling over that nice piece of venison (okay, this is where someone corrects me and tells me that they are like cats and howl when they are getting a piece of the action!). Of course, by now, my mind is well awake - BLING! Am I hot? Am I cold? Why is he snoring when I am awake? This way, that way, toss, turn........eventually I start to feel like I am falling.........falling........falling - PING! That was LMB! Although she is not talking, I am sure, in my subconscious I have heard her door open. I creep out to check and yes, lo' and behold, she is sat cross legged on the boundary between her door and the landing!!!!!

The story is that LMB has just moved into her own big bed!!!!! I know, scold away! She is nearly three, but we have been trying believe me. The interest has not been there. With this development however, has come a few hiccups, namely the visitation rights of LMB to our bed at any hour of the night. Only.........being LMB, she doesn't just crawl into our bed quietely and fall back asleep, she sits and stares from the periphary or sits, as per last night, just waiting , making no sound, rather like Damien in The Omen (not that I have actually seen this in full, but this is how I imagine him, to stand and just ..........watch!).

So, after a lot of coercing on my part and lots of resistance on hers, to get her back to her bed, she is, once again, in her favourite place............Daddy's warm spot and Daddy has been henceforth banished to the realms of pink sheets, butterflies, fairies and lots of stuffed bed partners.

But it doesn't stop there. LMB then has to get it all just........... "so"......This involves several rounds of forcing her feet with their sharp nails (note to self - cut the buggers!) under my body to keep them warm, intermittent slapping of my face to ensure I am still there! Scratching, pulling the covers off, sitting up and trying to climb on top of me. By all accounts by 3.30am I am exhausted, debating whether getting up to make a cup of tea will actually wake her (yup, NOW she falls asleep!) when finally the sandman comes.........and then it is 6.20 and I am awake again staring at two pairs of eyes very close up! aaaaaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhh!!!

Yesterday I went to a class night for Master Beehive the younger. Each year the school has an evening with a social and then information about the running and layout of each class. Of course with three of them, these all fall on different nights, different weeks etc and this year I managed to successfully get to 2 of the 3 (I totally forgot about Master Beehive the elder's classnight and found myself having to write a grovelly note to his teacher about my complete incompetence as a parent and begging her not to put a blot in my copybook just yet! Master Beehive, however, has still not let me forget!!).

Master Beehive the younger's classnight was always going to be the stickler of the three. For starters one of the dads in the class has a child with the same name as my own. Everytime he calls her name sharply in the corridor I find myself jumping, checking my shoes are tied and my coat is on the right way around, it doesn't help that his wife and Mr Beehive work for the same company so there is always that desire to talk shop and wine! (Oh life you treat me soooooo bad!) But this year..........we started with a song!!

For those of you who know me a little better than some, I am never one for sitting back in the karaoke or not taking the lead role in a few school or university musicals...........but put me in an ice breaker situation where I have to sing my way out..............The embarassment always takes a hold......I feel the need to crack a shitty joke or fart out loud and blame it on my neighbour! Somewhat like a 7 year old kid really.

So, my question is this - why do group events feel the need to do such ice breakers. Just stick to the name telling games - really - that is fine, we are all happy with that. If anyone feels the need for a rendition of Tit Willow from the Mikado - well, I hear that some Coyotes are looking for participants!!!!!!!

Yours warbly

The Beehive

How YOU doin'??

I think I might just still have it........well a very little bit of it anyway!

Of course, it is a nice, hot sunny day, there is every possiblity that I may have heatstroke, but this morning...........I made men (yes not one, but TWO!) look twice and one trip over his words hee hee!


Okay, so to the small print:

I was in the coffee shop (note to self - this blog should be renamed "The Coffee Shop Memoirs" note to others - I don't spend ALL day there but JK had to start somewhere and there is nothing so good for the leetle grey cells than killing them with caffeine!) trying to order my grande, non-fat, no milk, extra soy, extra espresso, no sugar, no whip, some caramel (but not tooo much), more ice, easy on the price frappucino when cute boy behind the bar attempting to memorise this order while looking in the cash till, looks up, then down, then up again

"I'm sorry, what?"

Frantically I check myself for signs of slug trails on my top or a piece of escaping boob from the new push-em-in-suck-it-out-breathe-in wonder bra I doned this morning in a moment of madness. Negative and there is no one behind me either!! I do declare, it might have been a double take - and for me!!

Smiling and in my poshest English accent (that tends to win lots of brownie points when needs must *sheepish grin*) I repeat my order. He then nervously repeats it back to me.......oh my, see what marriage has saved me from (large wink there for Mr Beehive!!)

With a small (it was small........yes .........really!) flick of my hair and a withering look ....................(oh crap, I made that bit up!) I turn my back on him and hurridly read the information laid out on how this particular coffee shop is saving the environment and how I can help (yeah, yeah, I know all that stuff, but I am a tart with a heart afterall!).

Feeling immensely confident in this new, dreamed up ability to turn a head, in walks Dr McDreamy..........okay, so not the REAL one, this one is probably at least 10 years.............11?..............alright ........................12 years younger than me, they make them so fit these days!!

It was the bra that made me do it!

Cutting off the oxygen supply to my brain, I look him straight in the eye, smile, and sashay right outta that joint, leaving a trail in my wake (hopefully not of coffee cups and bottles of water!)

Celebrate your mother dammit!

It's nearly Mother's Day, that is, here, in the US. Mother's Day in the UK was celebrated in March. Which, because I don't have a UK calendar anymore, I was reminded about three days prior, due to my sister asking if I wanted "in" on the gift she had bought mum ?

" Er? Yes, thanks, that will save me posting"
I lied - actually, it would save me the guilt of forgetting hmmm, thanks sis!

So what will it be this year? Breakfast in bed? A box of chocs? A day at the spa - ya ha, so getting above my station now!

No, my needs are small and so therefore I have created my wishlist. This is my Top ten (in no particular order!)

• The chance to lie in long enough to actually see the little and long hands hit the six together.
• The opportunity to wear the same shirt for a whole day without it being covered in weetabix or snot by 10.30am.
• The opportunity to pee without a peering face around the door asking me "wasat mama?" and pointing somewhere toward my nether regions, when trying hard to perform daily ablutions and following from that, the opportunity to help with homework for the elder Master Beehive without my knickers around my ankles because yet again, this little hiding place has been discovered and choosen as the right place to find mummy sitting still long enough to answer the questions!
• A hot cup of tea rather than a cold one that I find three days later where I left it, wearing a shiny layer of scum and dust, after promising myself that I would drink it just as soon as I had picked up the laundry and preceded to get completely distracted.
• The ability to cook dinner whilst falling over a dog, toys, shoes and skidding in pee that a toilet training Little Miss Beehive is frantically trying to show me, midst distractedly stuffing the innards of a chicken with the telephone, on which I was originally trying to make an appointment for my annual exam without having to mention and then explain the word "smear test" in front of inquisitively listening 4 and 7 year olds!
• The ability to plan for in advance, prepare leisurely and serve with a flourish, perfect meals without the hint of rush, last minute-ness or stress, and to be able to cook the perfect meals that get polished off by all my children including the vege-a-phobe, rather than feeling an incessant guilt for the amount of waste we have after each meal and all the hungry kids there are in the world - wahay, there goes another flying pig!
• Mail - yes, that's right, mail - FOR ME! Not party invitations for my kids' social lives, not junk asking if : I want my roof painted purple, want to buy the latest innovative push up, super-velocity humunga-bra, or need liposuction for fuck's sake, I don't need reminding! Just a little letter will do.
• The opportunity to be allowed to dream about snogging Brad Pitt or Orlando Bloom in a hot and steamy clinch without my darling other half standing over my shoulder sniggering over my current purchase of OK magazine!
• The ability to hold a coherent adult conversation for longer than 0.6 of a second with anyone in the world other than an answerphone (time differences or workaholic other half!!) or crap drivers on the road - (okay so the latter is more a one sided haranging on my behalf!)
• Children who, for the whole day, don't whine, ask 1,000000 questions that I can't answer or am too mentally exhausted to answer (or at least keep it to less than 100 questions per day!) and don't argue with each other........just for one day........pretty please???

So, that's it really - simple. Now, where did my fairy godmother go................. come back!

From mice and tree rings

They're back...the mice that is!

Unfortunately this morning, I had to tell Master B, the younger, that the mice had very cleverly opened my pantry, got up on the stool, taken down the remaining easter eggs, removed the stool, closed the pantry door again and taken them upstairs to eat in his wardrobe sometime yesterday afternoon or evening when I wasn't around. It was most unfortunate as one of these eggs was so nibbled that it needed to be discarded because of the germs!! He was, naturally sad about this, but understood that if he saw the mouse again, he needed to ask the mouse to ask me about chocolate and then it could be shared.



The catalog is done, 'tis over, fini, terminado!! So as a treat today, nails have been polished.

Whilst I was paying, my pedicurist noticed the picture of the mini Beehives in my purse.........

"They you children? No? They no you children, you no look like mommy, you too........"

The sentence was left unfinished as she took my upper arm and pinched it, then circled her hands around it............OMG, is this like tree rings? Perhaps the more rings I have the older I am? Anyway, at least she didn't catch me five minutes earlier receiving a complimentary massage from her colleague and dribbling into my lap whilst I fell asleep - hand me that bus pass!

Salivatory yours!
The Beehive

Fishing and Placentas

This is me
Well, okay, hopefully less of the elephant but I have just managed to find five minutes amidst the giddyness and squealing and basket of ironing.
I think I deserve a cup of tea too, but that would waste my five......by the time they have sniffed me out and tracked me down, my five minutes would be up! It has been a long day too. R is going through year end at the moment (yawn!) so he has been working every night for the past three weeks, so I have hardly had much time to see him. It has also meant he has come to bed really late, woken me up, and is then restless in the night because he has a lot on. Last night he woke up at 2.30, and went downstairs so he wouldn't disturb me.......He is so thoughtful - problem is, he had already woken me up and then proceeded to tell me why he is going !? He then returned at 3.30 and then woke up to go deep sea fishing at 5.30 am !!

yes, you did read that right deep sea fishing is what I said! Anyhow, he has texted me from the boat to say that he has caught his tea! 29.5" of it whatever breed it might be and also around 20 bluefish which they are going to all share between them. Good job my freezer is not full, mind you, I think I will let him gut them. A placenta is about as bloody as I can get and that is without the thought of how I might then "eat" it. That never really tickled my fancy I have to say but I understand it is quite delicious lightly fried with garlic and herbs and is full of nutrition (well, that part is obvious!). There are quite a few things you can do with your placenta though - should the desire take you of course!
Still, I am going out tonight with a friend so there is no need for me to spectate!

Yesterday I went along to the salon to have my eyebrows waxed and took T along for the experience! He wanted to know why ladies choose to have their noses decorated and their eyes polished! I have funny little visions running around in my head of a selection of finishes somewhat like the car-wash. He did then say he was really glad he wasn't a woman!