A bit more.

I'm feeling all Bridget Jones. Only I don't count calories (wibblies points only) and I don't really drink alcohol on a Bridget level and I am obviously not on the hunt for a boyfriend. So, I shall begin with bank balance, gas meter, Weight watchers points and employed adults in the household.
BB - Child Benefit - yippee!
GM - £6.31
WW - 27 (possible daily 29)
EAH - 0

I hope this sets the scene. The tax rebate has been and gone. I find that once money is in the bank it usually dives out pretty damn quickly. Especially when I managed to get to Primark on Sunday sans children. Oh yes. Such excitement does not happen often. Even the bored girl behind the checkout looked mildly interested in the amount I had managed to spend in such an amazingly cheap shop. I find it is the 'Ikea' effect. Ikea and Primark have an uncanny knack of befuddling my brain so that when I add up all the excitingly cheap, mass produced products as I walk around, it is at least half what they make the amount owed when I reach the checkout. Although to be fair to Primark I'm pretty sure Ikea wins hands down in that department.

Now that I have spent all our money K is feeling the pressure to find a more profitable employment than being my manny.  We hope he is quite close already, although I must keep shtum (sp?) for now obviously, I believe heartily in 'jinxing' things. I'm pretty sure it must actually be a science, because it is so accurate. If you even think about how nice a time you are having whilst your baby is asleep then they will awake. When out for a meal if the babysitter says they are all fine and not to worry, there will shortly follow a problem. If I think I have lost loads of weight, I will have put on half a pound. If I think, oooh isn't it nice the neighbours haven't heard K and I argue in ages, we will have the mother of all arguments and the neighbours will most certainly be at home. In Australian soap operas if they say, nothing can go wrong, everything most certainly will. Et voila - I rest my case.

Whilst I was happily shopping on Sunday K took the boys (Bea was at a friend's) to Essex to see his family and, thanks to an agricultural college open day in Writtle, we are now equipped with a small arsenal of weaponry. I am not entirely sure how the two correlate as I wasn't with the boys at the time but K insists he had nothing to do with the choices and that it was entirely down to the boys which toys they acquired so, we now have an AK-47, a hand gun and a bow and arrow.  For those one or two readers who might not know me, I can reassure you that whilst my views on toy weapons are not conservative, I prefer brightly coloured noisy things that are more Disney than Rwanda. These ones are very black and realistic and when Ted runs at you firing the AK-47 which makes a shooting noise, it is unnerving. He keeps shooting until you 'die' upon which he cackles with laughter and then comes over to offload one or two more at point blank range before offering his victim a pistol whip to the head to make sure the job is done. I am more than a little concerned. He is unlikely to have seen such violence from Auntie Mabel or Iggle Piggle. Although for some reason when the TV in the playroom is switched on, it does automatically turn on to ITV3 which shows a lot of crime programmes during the day, but he would normally shout and hand me the remote rather than watch and take notes. My mind boggles.

It is weigh in tomorrow morning and once again I am dreading it. Since I signed up for the Leader training I am feeling a huge amount of pressure which just makes me want to eat more.  I spoke to my leader today and she is very keen for me to shift the last stone and get 'ordained' (my word, not theirs) as a leader and has suggested we go jogging together (dramatic pause). The mere thought of being forced into running is enough to make me hand back the confirmation of my weekend away and order a takeaway. I do not really do physical exercise (I flirted with Zumba for a while but had to give up due to a broken toe). Principally because exercise is actually so jolly bad for you. I think it will eventually be the cigarette health scare of the future - all this running and jumping around - it is quite obviously not good for your bones and in the next 30 years or so all exercise obsessives will be crippled and bedridden by their painful joints and bones and only the lazy will survive to launch lucrative lawsuits against the gyms and Government for peddling their filthy lies.

Whilst I'm on my soapbox, it would seem that every silver lining has its cloud. Along with the first ice cream on the way home from school, the sudden warmer weather seems to have also heralded a sharp rise in dog mess on the pavements. Perhaps all irresponsible dog owners have crept out from under their rocks and let the dogs loose. Literally. (There are exceptionally few things wrong with Honor Oak Park but I think we may lead the Country in the number of stupid dog owners per sq mile of pavement.) As pretty as the crapping dogs stenciled on to the pavements are, they do not seem to be acting as an efficient deterrent to dog owners (although the children are most keen on them) and it would also appear that people are not generally brave enough to approach an owner of an unleashed pit bull and ask them to shovel their dog's shit, SO here's my big idea. A defecation station. It's genius. Every street would have regularly spaced, built in litter boxes for dog defecation, which would be emptied and refilled by the street cleaners on their rounds. The cost involved is minimal. Admittedly the defecation stations would be a health hazard for children, but then they would also be slightly easier to avoid than the random poo patterns that litter the pavements at the moment. I am thinking of taking it to dragon's den and then offering it to all London Boroughs. I may get an OBE.

On that note, I shall leave you to ponder all things defecation as I settle down to catch up on Grey's Anatomy. K is out so the remote is ALL MINE.

Adieu, to you and you and you, as they say in Austrian families with lots of singing children in. x