Thursday, January 18, 2007

Stage Mother


Well here she is - doing her best "leave me alone, get away you pesky paparazzi" pose. Young baby Browne-Holmes revealed herself to be a girl flavoured baby last week during her scan. She also revealed that she may have a few of my characteristics already. After the u/sound operator scanned all the usual things like the heart, fingers and toes we all had a look at her girls bits. As if offended she rolled onto her stomach and assumed the above 'bugger off and leave me alone' position. Ed said it reminded him of me when I'm refusing to get out of bed in the mornings.....no doubt I will see more of this behaviour from my little nipper-ette when she's a bratty teenager. I have been forewarned...

In keeping with this paparazzi style shot I am already exploiting my child in true stage mother style. An agency contacted me yesterday wanting to know if I would interested in a days work doing some photo shoot about working from home along with the requisite fake husband, fake dog etc etc. I dropped the news that I was up the duff and fully expected them to say forget it we'll have to use someone else. Instead they said "you're kidding, we were just saying that we would love the woman in the shoot to be pregnant but thought it would be too hard to find someone." So they requested a few shots of me and my ever growing gut and hey presto! Me and the baby Browne are in like Flynn.

This could be the start of great things - maybe in a years time I will be one of those hideous mothers taking their brats to auditions, baby dance classes, beauty pagents and the like. If I've already scammed the baby a gig at the tender age of 5 months in utero, anything's possible. Actually, I think I need to sit down, calm down, watch Little Miss Sunshine again and get a grip.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Cats in sinks


Just found a brilliantly specialised blog - http://catsinsinks.com which as the intro explains- it's about cats in sinks, or to further clarify: it's about cats. and kittens. Who like sinks. And basins.

I must show this to Chloe who hasn't caught on to what is clearly quite a feline trend. This site has hundreds of cats looking stupidly pleased with themselves having found a perfectly shaped feline hidey hole that they probably think was invented just for them. I just wonder if any of their owners have been tempted to flick on the tap that hangs above, so tantalising close?


Me and Toni

My agent called yesterday and told me that the casting director of a new film had seen my headshot and thought I had a 'lovely warm face' and wanted to know if I was interested in 3 weeks work as Toni Collettes stand in. Interesting, my measurements must be quite similar to hers.

I had to say no cause I've got to work and didn't have the heart to mention that my body shape is probably a little different to Toni Collettes these days unless she has swallowed a bowling ball or is back to her Muriels Wedding proportions - oh well, it sounded kind of fun. But what I think is weird is that the casting director liked my face, what on earth has that got to do with being a stand in, surely the whole point is to hide the face?

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Heartbeat

Went to the doctors today for a checkup. All just the usual stuff until she got me to hop up on the table so she could check my ever growing tummy.

She produced a device with a speaker to listen to the heartbeat. At first there was this loud constant 'whup whup whup' pounding out of the speaker - I look expectant and she shakes her head 'nah that's just you'. She moves it around looking for the little nipper and still all I can hear is my own heart whumping away loudly and steadily. She moves the device further down, to one side and then there it is, a faint echo from deep, deep down inside. A faster, softer little "whop whop whop" thumps along in double time to the deep bass of my own heart, a lovely percussive duet.

Two hearts beating in one body, quite amazing.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Overheard in the tearoom


Three grown men, sipping coffee:

Man number one: "Well everybody knows that danishes made in Denmark are far superior to the ones we get here."

Men two and three nodding enthusiastically:"oh yes , yes of course."

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

The resolution

New Year - who gives a toss? Well I guess some people do and like to make resolutions and all that. Ed went for a run this morning and was delighted to see all the NY resolution-ers there trying to jog, power walk and make up for 11 months of sinning and slothing. Bless 'em, guaranteed by the 1st of Feb those barely worn sneakers will be relegated to the back of the cupboard until they are dusted off and popped on in a fit on 2008 resolutions.

As for me? I took a leaf out of Chloe's book and took a far more cat like approach to 2007. We lolled around in bed all morning long.

Who says teenage boys are useless?

Christmas day began traditionally, with me having a loud and spectacular vomit. Shortly before that I had been awoken by a set of shining blue eyes and the question "should we open the presents now?" by a very excited Ed at 7am. Who needs kids? Ed managed to be more excited than a bus load of five year olds.

So it was off to the Christmas tree to let the unwrapping begin. Chloe decided to supervise the proceedings from the back of the couch and all was good. Santa (Ed) was very good to me this year and I was the lucky recipient of all kinds of goodies from some very nice perfume to a wee tin bicycle made in Madagascar.

After brekky it was goodbye to Ed for the day and hello to the rellies. This was my first go at hosting and feeding the masses so I was a little nervous but had made sure everything was prepared and had delegated duties to who I thought were the more responsible members of the family. While my sister came through with the goods, bringing all the food discussed as well as some tasty extras, my forty something brothers fared less well. Brother number one arrived with four pots of dip as discussed but announced he had 'forgotten' to buy bread to scoop it up with. Brother number 2 turned up with cheese as discussed, but no sausages as discussed and instead offered up two cobs of corn and a small pile of ham - hmmmmm, creative but not quite what I was coutning on in terms of catering.

In the meantime I was faced with a mountain of food to barbeque and little in the way of help until Alec, my long haired fourteen year old nephew appeared in the kitchen, grabbed a knife and got to work. Then before I could say "do you know how to use a barbeque?" he had whipped outside and busied himself flame grilling vegies and lamb chops for the masses. Brother number two who had actually said that he would help with the barbequeing then spent all his time playing with his baby. In the meantime my other nephew wandered in and asked if he could help. He then sorted out the salads, took all the food out to the table and grabbed cutlery and plates.

Thanks to the the boys lunch was delicicious and stress free. I say hurrah for teenage boys today - and here I was thinking that all they did was sit around being smelly, playing playstation and watching the Simpsons. Shame on me.