And you think you're having a bad day .....

Rum, Sodomy & The Lash ...

My three-year-old nephew - a notoriously fussy eater - sat at the dining table.

"I don't think you'll like that sweetheart," I said, as he reached for the Thai chilli sauce and made to pour it all over his plate of food.

"I've had it before," he said airily.

"Oh? When?"

"When I was in jail," he said.

Fair enough.

Let's Hear It For The Boy

I really must come up with some incredibly witty nom-de-plume for The Boy,which is how I used to refer to him in the early days of our romance. Then again, he's no boy. In fact I'm very tempted to say, in my apparently-continuing besottedness, that he's the first man I've dated after a steady string of man-boys. Which is another post all in itself.

The problem is that it's difficult to come up with something that's not going to make me cringe every time I type it. Which means that Snookums is out. (Not that it was ever in. The Boy is definitely not the Snookums type). This photograph cries out for a 007-style moniker, which no doubt he'd like, but the pose is cheesy enough. Kind of Best-Man-At-The-Wedding-ish. Which is not really a surprise, given that's exactly what he was when this was taken.

Cute though, huh? It seems I have a thing for receding hairlines in my rapidly-approaching middle age. Or at least this particular receding hairline. Funny how men are so sensitive about their hairline when to be honest, most women I know could care less.

I mean, I get the whole "size counts" thing. Because - well, there's not really any sensitive way to say this, but it does. Sorry. After lengthy late night discussions with my girlfriends, I can state empirically that while we're not after the whole John Holmes experience, none of us really ever wants to stop ourselves from asking if it's in yet. Anyway, The Boy has no problems in that department, just in case you were wondering. And, as usual, I have digressed.

How did we meet? Well, that's really another of my deep dark secrets. I'm not sure why, other than it still seems kind of desperate to have met online. Which we did. One night of IM'ing, a dinner date, and suddenly we were a couple. Even my head was spinning with the speed of it all - and I'm a fast girl. So we invented a story for our various friends, about having known each other through work years ago, and then bumping into each other in a bookshop, exchanging cards, getting together for a drink, blah blah blah babycakes.

Actually the story on which we agreed as we lay there one night in post-coital bliss was actually much more complex. It was so complex that the first time I was asked I blushed and stammered and completely forgot half of the details while mixing the other half up. I'm a much better liar now.

Which kind of annoys me. Why do people even care how we met? Why is it one of the first questions people asked when we started seeing each other? And why did it irritate me so much? Well, I know why it irritated me. It's because then I felt I had to trot out the lie yet again, and even though I got it right after the first couple of times, I didn't really like doing it. Not because I'm so morally upright or anything - just that the incredibly, disturbingly comples details of the lie wasted space in my already overcrowded brain.

Thank You for Smoking

And thank you, oh Lord of the Files, for dumping so much work on my desk that I ate my breakfast (at my desk) at 8am, my lunch (at my desk) at 5.50pm and kept me at the office until 8pm... only to come home and sit at another desk for the next three hours or so while I draft a media plan for an event in two days time which is required to obtain major metro coverage.

Happy days.

Then again, I always work late Mondays. Not that my life is overly structured or anything, but I can tell the day of the week by what I'm doing. It's working-late-Monday, dinner-with-the-folks-Tuesday, sleepover-with-the-Boy-Wednesday, late-night-shopping-Thursday, and Date-Night-Sleepover-Friday.

Inevitably followed by Night-at-Home-with-the-Boy-watching-Iron-Chef/Rock Kwiz-and-drinking-too-much-because-nobody-has-to-drive Saturday, and Hungover-Try-And-Get-the-Chores-Done-While-Paying-Bills-and- Taking-Care-Of-Personal-Grooming Sunday.

Actually I lie. Sometimes we set the VCR to record Iron Chef and watch it in bed Sunday morning instead of Meet The Press. But only when we're feeling really really rebellious and we've actually bestirred ourselves to get tickets for something the night before.

God it's exciting to be me.

Hi!

Yes you!

Hi!

You're pretty! I like you!

Welcome to The Laptop Dance ... let's get into our shorty pjs and giggle and squeal and tell each other secrets!

Here's one from me -

I'm not really a blogging virgin.

Yup. This is not the original Laptop Dance, which no longer exists - except on a web host somewhere in the cybersphere. It was an innocent experiment, way back in the days when we actually called them online journals. Of course, after that it was hard to stick to just one. I'll even admit I started putting it about a bit, what with a news blog I filed from work, and a password-protected journal and a site for writing - fabulist, fabulous and otherwise. Looking back I guess it would have been fair to call me a bit of a blo' ho. I started off slipping off my Mary Janes and white cotton ankle socks to dip my toe into the water and before I knew it my first pale pink site had morphed into Dirty Girls and Cold Beer.


But now I'm back. I'm still not sure what it is I'm going to say, exactly. I'm older, if not wiser. I've found my first grey hair ... and pulled it out. Now only my hairdresser knows the truth. I wear reading glasses. I have an apartment and a Very. Serious. Job in a Very. Serious. Office. I worry about politics and global warming. I stopped overdrawing my account and biting my nails - oh, and I quit smoking. For about a week. Now I'm an aspiring non-smoker; pure as snow during the week, melting to slush on weekends.


I'm a bad girl turned good, in love with a former bad boy. We use the L word and plan for the future. Sometimes I think he's The One.


So I guess I can write about all that sort of stuff.