Lyvvie’s blog

My Mom is visiting from America and always comes with presents. I don't ask for much, whatever she wants for the kids, cinnamon sweets for Husband and I usually need new lounge wear (That's fancy sweatpants to you layfolks) and vaseline intensive care for dry skin unscented - they don't sell that type here and it's my favourite(That's my secret to being almost wrinkle free). But this time I did ask for some bento supplies, mini food cutters and lunchboxes. All of it very, very welcome.

Mom also brought me a surprise. She brought me some new underpants. She must have read in the blog how UK underpants are always too big, so I have to buy them two sizes smaller. She she's shown up with ten size ten underpants. People: These are humongous! I used to be a size ten American - those pants would never have fit me. At a UK sixteen those pants don't fit me. They would only have fit me in my last trimester of pregnancy. People: The pants are humongous!

I'm wondering if the USA has reordered the size charts? With the rise in obesity, maybe they thought to save some folks the shame of a wardrobe full of larger sizes by relabeling the sizes? Adjust an inch here and there, folks stay happy, maybe even loyal to the shop to sells the "truer" size. What's the hip measurement for a size ten these days, 40 inches?

Humongous, satin, full girl brief pants. I might stitch them together and make a kite parafoil.

As it's birthday prep time, with Shorty turning four on the 13th and Sassy turning nine on June 17th I've been made painfully aware about how diametrically different these girls are from each other, and how wonderful it is they don't see it or care.

Sassy my Tomboy and Shorty my Girly-girl.

Sassy is now starting to appreciate/fold to the peer pressure to be more feminine. I've not asked her why she's wanting pink combat trousers, or pink sweatshirts when she then wants black sneakers with Action Man and everything Justice League and Pokemon. She's loving her bento lunches but hating the ugly lunchbag I have for her (It's in Miami Dolphins colours, so I sympathize.) So when I was stockpiling at the grocery store yesterday I thought I'd get her a new lunchbag. Simple, nothing fussy. They had two types, a store own brand and a Thermos brand. The Thermos brand was £5.00 and came in black or magenta. The Tesco brand came in black for £1.30, but their pink one was £2.00! Why?! Why would you charge me an extra .70p for the pink one? Does pink plastic cost more? Not according to Thermos is doesn't. So tell me Tesco - what's with the sexism? Oh, it must be sexist - otherwise why not price match the same products?

Because you think I'm going to cowtow to your demands on the basis of my daughter's absolute need for gender advertising? Do you think my kid is going to go into gender identity crisis because I won't spend the extra .70p to get her the pink lunchbag? She'll become the butt of humiliating finger pointing from her girl-friends at school for being the poor kid with a black lunchbag? An object of pity because her mother doesn't think she's worth the pink lunchbag? Why Tesco do you charge more for the pink?

Oh and don't think Tesco is alone in this - have you ever noticed that a lot kid's toys charge more for the pink version of the exact same technologies - and it is tech toys primarily. Never noticed? I did. That's why Sassy has blue and green toys, because I wouldn't pay extra for the pink - it's fundamentally wrong. I'd have gone so far as to boycott the product all together but she really wanted her leapfrog talking book leappad thing.

Well I didn't buy Tesco's lunchbag. Sassy actually did want a pink lunchbag this time, so I bought her the Thermos one. Then I went and wrote a long complaint to Tesco on the scandalous, sexist pricing policy. I actually did use the phrase "Scandalous and sexist!". I don't care the price, £1.30 over £2.00 is nothing really but it's the fact people are being price gouged for feminized products. I'm on a search now to out the sexists and scandalous behavior because Tesco isn't alone in this. ToysRus also have same item/different colours price discrepancies, although granted not as bad as they did a few years ago. I will now challenge this whenever I find it and demand a price adjustment, or the details for the item's company complaints team.

I'll let you know if Tesco gets back to me - they should within 7 days by writing. I'm also writing to ToysRus to let them know that the Bop It toy in pink costs £3.05 more than the multi-coloured one (And it's way ugly!). Oh, and Tesco again is charging £4.00 more for the pink Vtech notebook over the blue one. (Shorty was looking over my shoulder for the searching shouting "I want the pink one!" and I shake my head at the situation I'm in. she wants it but I'm not paying extra for it. I'm not buying it at all. Get used to disappointment, kid.)

The real thing of it is I don't give a shit about the thing being pink over blue, I'd prefer neutral coloured toys anyways - but it's the unfairness to charge more for the girlish colour. That is just wrong unless there's a charitable reasons applied like donations to breast cancer research or something. But that's not the case with any of the items mentioned in this post.

So come here and out your sexist shop! Tell us where else you've found pink items overpriced as compared to the unisex/boys ones. I'm on a rampage now - I'm going to send letters to all of these companies. You should too - I can't be the only one annoyed by this.

A few years ago when I was Twenty-two (What?) I moved to Scotland to get married to Almost Husband. At the time I was 140lbs and just quit a three pack-a-day smoking habit. Husband doesn't smoke and never has - well the occasional cigar but it usually made him sick later. It was the perfect opportunity to quit; new country, new home, new friends, new routine. Nothing attached to smoking. I'll admit it was much easier. I relapsed later - as smokers are want to do, but never ever to the full steam of three packs-a-day. (I've quit and start several times. Currently non-smoker for nearly a year from a three smokes a week habit.)

In the early weeks of my living in Edinburgh, Almost Husband wanted to take a hike around Arthur's Seat, which is the highest hill in Edinburgh and has the best views. I figured why not. I had nothing better to do. We took the long path that winds around the hill and stopped to point at the birds in the various ponds that dot the area. When we got closer to the start of the peak - as it's an ancient volcano it has a very steep peak at its top as opposed to more comfortable hill-like mound of green-ness. I got halfway up and had to stop; lungs burning, legs trembling and coughing up charcoal. I knew there was no way I would make it to the top and I certainly didn't want Almost Husband to see me like that. We stopped, walked back down and went for lunch. I've never forgotten that private shame of having to say I couldn't go on. Almost Husband did try and make me feel better and told me of how he'd only climbed to the top once before himself, and it took hours and he was exhausted. Plus he did it alone so no one would see him huffing.

Yesterday, we'd gone shopping in Edinburgh for Shorty and Sassy birthday presents. By 2pm we were done and wondering, what next? We were driving along the back of Edinburgh and could see Arthur's Seat, and I said that one day we should take the kids for a walk around the ponds. The car, somehow, made its way there just then. We'd gone swimming, and shopping and had an onigiri lunch and were a bit tired. But there in front of us loomed the ascent to the top of Arthur's Seat. Sassy said "I want to see the top!" and so we went. I knew it would be awful, hard and the kids probably couldn't make it all the way, so for what it was worth, we'd humor them.

Up we went, stopping every thirty paces or so so the kids could sit, turn around, see how high they'd climbed, point out boats on the Forth, we could see our town across the water, up some more and the swans got smaller on the pond, up some more...waiting for it to get hard.

It never did. It never got hard. Husband and I kept looking around for signs that the hill had been altered to make the climb easier, but there was nothing but hundreds of years worth of rock and scree paths made by adventurous scramblers like us. The kids were amazing, a few times Sassy said she was getting too tired, or too scared and wanted to go back but when she saw her younger sister soldier on she followed. To think my almost four year old was fitter than I was at 22! I saw the slope I'd quit on all those years before - and I ran up it. So steep I could only run on my toes, but I did it with the kids shouting after me to slow down but I had a hill to beat!

We had to stop about 30 feet from the top because the peak is all rock and steep banks and we decided it was not safe for the girls to climb any higher. It never got too hard for us. Even Husband was commenting on how he was waiting for it to get hard; and it never came. His gym routine is doing wonders for him.

So, we felt sorry for our very out of shape younger selves. We were thinner sure, but today we are far healthier than we ever were. I went out for a shop last night after we got home (And treated the kids to happy meals) and bought a small bottle of Asti Spumanti, and after the girls were in bed, Husband and I made a toast to each other, to our continued good health.

I started sending Sassy-face off to school with packed lunches this week. The cost of groceries is getting high as they just announced an increase in school lunches so I decided to go back to the packed lunch.

Sassy never used to eat all of her lunch. Actually she ate very little of it and would just eat the snacks and none of the healthy stuff. In frustration I bought her school lunches instead - out of sight out of mind. This time around I thought the best way to encourage her to eat her lunch was to make it more appealing than the traditional.

Here comes Japan to the rescue with its exotic, eclectic and fun culture of Bento. All you have to do is do a google image/Flickr search bento and you'll get the idea of what these lunches are like. Some are art, some are fun, some are practical and some are an outlet for nouveau cuisine. Whatever your take on it, my hope was that I'd found the way to make lunch exciting. So I've been collecting bento boxes, accessories, pretty doo-dads and thingamagigies and a whole lot of ideas.

I didn't want to put them all here, so I started a Bento only blog called Obento Baby! so if you're curious about this bento fun and want to join in - go have a look!

I cannot get things to work smoothly and I'm distracted. I'm bordering on depressed, I can see the signs. I'm avoiding everything that needs to be done like house work, and getting bogged down in the mundane frustrations that are just now fucking plaguing me! Like the counters are always a mess in my kitchen because I have no space to put things so I'm always dropping things on the floor or shoving things out of the way to be able to prepare meals. I would like to just be able to pull something out of my cupboard - without a half dozen contents falling out - and just make something, tidy it up easy and have a neat kitchen when I'm done.

The sink backs up if there's so much as a kernel of corn in the drain.

I reorganized the cupboards last week, and now they look like they need done again.

My fridge is a nightmare. My freezer has an inch of ice in it.

The laundry is getting ridiculous, I'm considering sneaking a third of everyone's wardrobe off to the charity shop to reduce my workload. The worst part is I wash it, dry it, fold it and can never get it put away. So I have neat piles of clothes everywhere.

I have no storage. I have no storage. I have no storage in this fucking house.

I hate my body. I was supposed to do a HNT today, as it's Osbasso's anniversary but I tried many times and could not find an inch of half nekkid me that was not repellent. My body image is the worst it's ever been.

Husband is supposed to go for a business trip to Dubai but we don't know when. Was supposed to be leaving tomorrow but it's not looking likely. He's a mess over the office dicking him about. My Mom is coming over for a visit and Shorty has her 4th birthday on the 13th, and I have the Race For Life on the 18th and he may be away for all of it. He's so pissed off that I'm getting empathy pissed.

I've been eating sugar. Really I should just be a grown up and drink. Liquor, the harder the better. (but I hate to drink.)

When I try to write I suddenly remember the kitchen is a mess, there's a dish to wash, a pile of clothes to put away, a toilet to scrub (Everyday - the kids aren't big enough to drop the poop in the water so there's a poop smear down the inside of the bowl everyday, twice a day. Sometimes more.) a frige to tidy and so on and so on, and then the self-disappointment begins because I'm supposed to have done all that stuff already and if I had - I' be able to write. But you're bad so go do your chores. Then I rebel against myself and read a book.

All my tulips this year are yellow. Where did my pink ones go? And Shorty keeps calling them "Jewlips" which makes me cringe.

I'm struggling with dehydration. It's a ridiculous state to be in, I don't feel thirsty, and then I'm so thirsty I should've noticed it ages ago. The dark pee is my first sign, usually. I know the cutting out sugar and caffeine would make this go away, so I guess I'll suffer it for now. Sugar is my crack. Can one go to a rehab for sugar addiction? Can I get dried out from sugar?

Today I will:

tidy the kitchen
put the clean clothes away.
Bully the kids to put their clean clothes away
make bento box treats for freezing
after I defrost the frige
probably after I run and go to the gym
nag the kids and threaten with removal of TV and DS if they don't clean their room
play the lottery - one bit of optimism is needed.

Ok. I'm going. Pity party over.

Did I mention the really fucked up dreams I had last night? Just fucked up. And gross. I remember two. The first was Husband and I up on the top of this rickety wooden staircase that was high as a bridge. It was dark and we had to get down fast because bad guys were chasing us. I'm not good as going down stairs (weird phobia of tumbling down so I'm a rail gripper and two feet per step sort) and Hub was behind me, and he nudges me and I tell him to stop it, and he keeps getting impatient until he picks me up from behind and runs down the stairs holding me (This in reality is impossible and in the dream I felt quite small and childlike) and then he dumps me on my butt at the bottom of the stairs and tells me shut up or the bad guys will hear us. I was so pissed at him for treating me like a child.

Then the other dream was full on gross (but puts me in mind my period is probably due). I was sinking into a hot bath, on a bright and sunny afternoon, ready for the relaxation. The moment my skin touched the water it turned red and I was bleeding, just dripping blood from every pore, but it didn't phase me as I sank into the water and watched the water turn so red it was almost purple. I thought to myself "Oh well, if I'm going to die, this way isn't so bad." and closed my eyes and felt rather peaceful. But I didn't die. When I thought I'd soaked long enough I pulled the plug and watched the water go down the drain, and then was annoyed I'd left all these bloody chunks of meaty jelly in the tub that I then had to clean up.

Now that I've depressed you and put you off your meals, I'm away to clean the kitchen and defrost the frige.

You're feeling: Dehydrated and cranky.

To your left: The shelves of DVDs and CDs.

On your mind: Coffee and chicken and lemon water.

Last meal included: Rice and chicken.

You sometimes find it hard to: Give a rat's ass.

The weather: Wet but nice.

Something you have a collection of: Dvd, cd, books and notebooks full of synopsises (Synopsi?)

A smell that cheers you up: Newborn baby's hair, bacon.

A smell that can ruin your mood: Dog poop.

How long since you last shaved: Tuesday. (That was armpits)

The current state of your hair: It's sporting that "BedHead" look.

The largest item on your desk/workspace (not computer): Bamboo writing tablet, No sorry it's the damned printer.

Your skill with chopsticks: I get by but do cheat and spear things with them.

Which section to head for first in a bookstore: New Releases.

Something you're craving: Breakfast and water.

Your general thoughts on the presidential race: If only I could just make that noise Lurch makes on The Addams Family...

Favorite place to go for a quiet moment: Quick access: the shower, long time access: the woods.

You've always secretly thought you'd be a good: Judge.

Something that freaks you out a little: Going backwards.

Something you've eaten too much of lately: Rice

You have never: Damn, the list is way longer than it should be (for now). (I liked chick's answer)

You never want to: Be bad, but sometimes it just happens.

I followed this from The Phantom Professor. Go on and read then come back and discuss.

Back yet? Oh, ok.

Yet?

Ok ok, if you're too lazy to follow the link here is the story in summary from Gawker "A Dartmouth lecturer is suing her class for discrimination, as she revealed in a series of regrettable and bizarre emails that promptly ended up all over Dartmouth blogs. Priya Venkatesan (Dartmouth '90, MS in Genetics, PhD in literature) emailed members of her Winter '08 Writing 5 class Saturday night to announce her intention to seek damages from them for their being mean to her."

Great WTF, huh?! Can you believe the e-mails? If I'd gotten one of those I'd have shit myself, regardless of the fact I thought my teacher was a dipshit - oh and I've had plenty of dipshit, full-of-themselves, incompetent profs. But, when I found out the prof was a dick/twat I dropped the class. So I'm not sure what the T&C's of Dartmouth's class dropping but if I was confronted with such a confrontational prof I'd do my best to get clear of her before my GPA was affected - not to mention my sanity. (Currently having a cold sweat from flashbacks of UMASS Lowell's statistics class. Fucking prick of a prof he was - who was engaged (sexually not with a ring) to a former student. Sexist pig-beast who thought he was a mutton-chopped God) Ahem.

But when I read this excerpt from Venkatesan's e-mail:

"The feeling that I am getting from the outside world is that Dartmouth is considered a bigoted place, so this may not be news and I may be successful in this lawsuit. I am also writing a book detailing my experiences as your instructor, which will "name names" so to speak. I have all of your evaluation and these will be reproduced in the book.

Have a nice day."

I mean - whoa! What a Cow. No wonder she got no respect. She's a raving LooneyBitch. I'm going to sue you and then write a story about my whole experience and name names, have a nice day. I wonder if she's got a publisher all lined up?And feelings of the "outside world" regarding bigotry really should have no importance unless the feeling inside Dartmouth was the same.

Anyways, from what I read, this centers around one day in class when a student went on a "diatribe" of contrary opinion that earned him an applause from a few other students. So some of these kids are being sued for: clapping. And let's look a bit out-the-box; The class was talking about post-modern patriarchal society blah blah, but they listened to her, a student offered a different/oppositional opinion, and the class applauded his argument; doesn't that sound like they were engaged in subject? Offering up a difference of opinions, weighing the subject, absorbing the information? Where exactly is the fault? If anything this almost works in her favour as a Prof because: isn't that the definition of a good class?? Well, apparently not when you have a Prof who thinks that anyone who doesn't think the same as her will get lower grades and humiliated in class. (So they say)

For the full Sark, go read what IvyGate has to say. Brilliant.

OH - and she teaches a writing class? Yeah. Scary fucking biscuits, Batman.

Yeah that's me. Currently my head is in creative overdrive. I don't know what's flicked the switch but I'm writing and I'm in creative food creation mode as well. I've spent hours trawling bento box websites, and flickr pics to find inspiration on getting my kids into the bento lunch trend. They are rather excited about it so perhaps I'm contagious.

I sent Sassy-face away with her first properly made bento this morning. It contained less Japanese focussed foods - not that she minds Japanese food, she loves Japanese food - and more typical lunch items with a twist. Like I made ham, cheese and red pepper sushi rolls and a hard boiled egg that I cracked the shell of and soaked in red food dye to give it a marbled look. To be honest it looked like a bloodshot eyeball which she Loved! She even ate the yolk which she normally throws away. Along with a box of raisins, some spinach leaves, cherry tomatoes, carrot shapes and a babybel cheese. She's just psyched to eat the egg-eye in front of her friends. She's like that.

I'm wanting to get some good bento recipes under my belt and into habit. Things like mini quiches (egg and tofu types), mini muffins, mini meat and veg cakes that can be eaten cold, meatballs of various concoctions. The best part of this is it plays into my money saving venture seeing as groceries have skyrocketed in price, and the school lunches have just gone up in price too. It's getting expensive to eat - unless you eat rubbish. Anything that will make you fat, ill and unhealthy is still cheap. Loaded full of chemicals. I think it's a plot to eradicate the poor. Damn them to a chemically induced, fat laden, sugar addicted early death. Don't Become A Victim! So anyway, apart from the mild paranoia, I've been recipe hunting for things I can make into miniature and can be eaten cold.

I haven't read anything this week which is a disappointment even to me. I was waiting around for the Nora Roberts books to come from the the other libraries and they're still not here. I went into the library this morning, because I got the time wrong for my Dr's appointment and the calendar on my phone didn't alert me to this fact because I'd let the battery die again. But when in the library I did pick up three books, one was Perfume by Patrick Suskind which I keep reading about on the internet, Sweetmeat by Luke Sutherland which I'd picked up once before and got one chapter in before something distracted me and then it was due back to the library for someone else and a collection of short stories by Neil Gaiman titled Fragile Things.

I've remade my appointment for Thursday. Not looking forward to it because it'll be an internal one and I hate those. I think both areas are going to get looked at. I keep having really really bad painful cramps whenever I have a bowel movement during my period. Drop me to the floor like a sack of potatoes unable to unclench kind of cramps. And they're getting worse. I hope I don't have to poop in a cup or anything, but I know those bum doctors like nothing more than fresh samples. I'll probably be told it's IBS. I'm not prepared for anything worse and don't think my runaway creative mind isn't trying to help me out!

It's Bizness Time!

I'm buying their album. I must have it. Hell where can I buy their series?

Ok. One more.

"I'm not gonna kill her, man."