back to school

Kids are back at school tomorrow, woo-hoo. As a special treat for the last day of the holidays I said they could choose what they wanted to do today. There isn't an awful lot in terms of days out here, so we settled on going to the Garden of Dreams. I had visions of enjoying the sunshine and sipping a latte to the sound of children's laughter. However, once we got there the dreaminess evaporated after about ten minutes. Son was quite happy being an alien and zooming around climbing up inappropriate things (handily the garden security guard wasn't quick enough to catch him - I pretended he was nothing to do with me, although I think his blonde hair and blue eyes were a bit of a giveaway, as I was the only non-Nepali there). Twin 2 had a fake plait in her hair and was content just for me to say 'Who is that beautiful girl with the long, long hair? Oh, it's Rapunzel!"every so often. But Twin 1 was not happy. She didn't want to play alien space invaders, but being a real tomboy, couldn't allow herself to want to play Rapunzel with her girly sister either, so she moped about telling me alternately that she was feeling hungry or sick, until I gave up my little fantasy about sitting on a sunny bench in a beautiful garden whilst my children played nicely together some distance away, and ordered them all across the road to the pizza place. Everyone was happier after pizza and ice cream and all fell asleep in the taxi on the way home. Once home I let them watch Beauty and the Beast/ play Star Wars on the play station, and I quickly enlisted Sanu to babysit so that I could escape and buy things I didn't know I needed until I saw them in the shop. I now have a lovely blue Mexx cotton cardi that only cost nine hundred rupees (about £8) and a lipliner to match my new lipstick, that hasn't arrived yet but Amazon assures me is on its way. Also, Twin 1 has some new blue jeans, I have stocked up on chocolate coins for the next treasure hunt and, best of all, Hubby has a new microwaveable plate (the army issue ones have a metallic painted rim and they zip and fizz when you try to heat up food on them: it's most irritating) for when he's late home from work (which he says almost never happens, but we all know otherwise).
So tomorrow I suppose I should get on and do something productive with my life, instead of just shopping and watching Disney.
I have bought a new notebook, and there's plenty of ink in the inkwell so it's time for Wait and See Pudding to get cooked!

ps

Hubby has finally staggered in (ten past nine). He said firstly that I was a top bird and secondly that he thought Raj had spike his drink. And now (twelve minutes past nine) he's in bed.
Don't feel even remotely guilty about the lipstick. May even log onto Amazon now and buy another one...

Freaky Friday

Twin 1 has decided to be a boy. She says she hates pink and Barbies and wants to wear blue and play with guns. I've said that of course she can be a tomboy, if she wants, and that's fine with me. And in fact it's been quite nice to go shopping for blue and green things for her. Twin 2 is delighted because she has doubled her wardrobe of pink spangly dresses overnight.

However, Twin 1 is adamant that she doesn't want to be a tomboy, she wants to be a real boy (you would have thought that sharing a house with Hubby, Son and their tedious Star Wars obsession would be enough to put any sane person off sharing their gender - must say it makes me glad to be a girl). Girls can become boys, you know, Mummy, she said importantly this morning. Luckily Son put her straight by bursting out laughing and telling her she couldn't possibly become a boy without a willy.

You see, Hubby and I try to answer all the kids' questions honestly and openly, but the problem with being liberal parents is that you find yourself explaining about gender realignment and same-sex marriages in a non-judgmental and matter-of-fact tone and then it comes back to bite you on the bum when your beautiful bundle of four-year-old sugar-and-spice tells you she wants to be a boy.

I'm off to pour myself another whisky and ginger and wonder where Hubby could be as it's already nearly nine o'clock and he texted me at seven to say he was just going to have one more quick drink in the bar and then he'd be home (luckily for him I've decided to go down the non-judgemental route this time, as I bought myself an Yves Saint Laurent lipstick on Amazon last night and I'm feeling a bit guilty about the extravagance - his inability to make it home in time to put the kids to bed is full justification for a ten pound lipstick*, don't you think?)

*Yes, half price!!

glad I'm not important

Yesterday we had a posh lunch in the mess for a very important general and his wife. I'm not sure why they were important, but they were thrust upon us like royalty, and I felt I had no choice but to don black skirt and opaque tights and vacant smile and join the happy BGN family. Feel sorry for wives of generals and the like. I mean, if you're a celebrity wife, you have to do the inane chat and cheesy photocall thing, but you also get to stay in nice hotels and get lots of freebies. What do you get as a general's wife? A draughty old mess, a cup of tepid tea with 'the wives' and lockjaw from all that smiling. Perhaps I'm being unfair, but I'm still quite glad that my husband is a military nonentity (don't tell him I said that).

Anyhow, as hubby and I are nonentities, we were sat nowhere near the very important general and his wife at lunch and so could talk about pretty much what we liked. The conversation turned to our 'celebrity one night stand' agreement (Kylie for him, George Clooney for me). Our lovely and long-suffering camp doctor (camp in that she is the doctor for the army camp, not that she walks around like Larry Grayson circa 1978, you understand) chipped in that she had a defunct anal probe, should Hubby be interested in it for his night with Kylie. Hubby had a worrying glint in his eye at that juncture. We then swiftly moved onto more suitable topics, such as why Jordan left I'm a celebrity... and whether Heat magazine has gone downmarket recently?

I bet the general was gutted to be sat with the other important people discussing Gurkha recruitment, when he could have been pontificating on Lindsay Lohan's latest outrage or whether Jennifer Anniston has got cellulite.

Anyhow, should probably go. I need a hairwash (smell like a sheep). Hubby is in Pokhara (quite possibly with Kylie now he's given Anna Kournikova the heave-ho), so I'm going to ablute and have a large G&T and a whole packet of dried strawberries. Oh yes.

I blame the egg salad

Hubby has been busy planning his next trek. It's the other half of a big circuit of the Annapurna mountains (part of the Himalayas). He went last year and did one half with his best mate. This year he's planning to do the other half with his mate and sister. However, there has just been a big snowfall up in the mountains, which has turned the region into avalanche territory, so good luck to them all. I shall stay in Kathmandu and drink pretend cups of tea from the pink-and-green tea set, admire newly-made Bionicles and periodically ask the housekeeper to babysit so I can take full advantage of the half-price offer currently on at the spa. Hubby is currently trying to work out how to avoid avalanches and altitude sickness (where if you're not careful your brain explodes like the martians in Mars Attacks - do you remember that film?), whilst doing an eleven day trek in eight days. Rather them than me.

At the moment I'm recovering from yet another exploding bottom incident. Hubby blames the egg salad at Hattiban resort on Saturday. I had to have almost the whole day in bed on Sunday as I was properly ill. The good thing was it gave me a chance to finish the book I was reading and plan my next book, which I'm pretty excited about. I even have a title: Wait-and-see pudding.

I'm hoping that the whole excruciating stomach cramps, vomiting and all that stuff might mean that the scales tip ever so slightly the other way the next time I go to the gym, and all the suffering will have been worth it.

Oh, and talking of excruciating suffering - do you remember the Nepali dance I had to do at Deshain for Hubby's work colleagues? Well, bless 'em, they all clubbed together to buy me a trophy for my efforts. It's a Nepali metal teapot type thing on a wooden plinth. It says A token of love from Defence Estates Nepal on it. Ah, that's the kind of thing that gives me a warm glow about being an army wife! I think it's the first time I've been awarded a trophy for anything. And as some friend quite rightly pointed out, I'm now officially a 'trophy wife' which of course necessitates more trips to the spa and cashmere shop in order to maintain the trophy status, don't you think?

what to do in 2010

Hubby has gone to bed early because he is feeling grumpy, and I was going to try to do geeky things with the scary new phone but got sucked into looking at shoes on Amazon. No, I didn't buy any. Instead I bought twelve pairs of socks for Hubby, as he complains every single morning that his socks have holes in. Now he will have to find something else to complain about. I also bought a nice blue pair of sports socks for me in the hope that they will entice me to the gym in the mornings. Hmmm.

So, I'm just about to print out my Romantic Novelist's Association New Writer's Scheme application (sending the book there for appraisal), and should be sending the manuscript off in a couple of weeks, I guess. Which now leaves me with a bit of a hole in my life. I've been spending all this time stressing about not having enough time in which to write, and now, blimey, it's all done, and I can see the year stretching out ahead of me with lost of spaces in the calendar, which I really should fill with something productive.

Any ideas? Freelancing? Short stories? Another book? Public Relations for NGOs? Or just doing a bit of drawing and going to the spa a lot?

Choices, choices!

I'm tempted to do nothing at all for a bit and see what it's like, but I'm worried I might get too used to it and get tempted to do nothing at all ever again and become one of those women who obsesses about dust on the dido rails or floral muffin cases, in which case Hubby would divorce me and I would be forced out to work, although I can't think of any job I'd be remotely useful for these days. Hubby said I should become a freelance cafe critic, as I seem to spend an awful lot of time in cafes when he's at work and the kids are at school. He was serious.

Anyway, if you have any idea what I should be doing in 2010, then let me know, as I will have at least a couple of months to fill until my manuscript gets sent back with red pen all over it.

Enjoy the weekend! x

HNY

We did find somewhere that did pasta and wine and there wasn't an exotic cultural dancer or noisy nepali band playing eighties pop music in sight. And we were in bed by midnight. What a couple of saddos. Still, new years just hasn't had the same thrill for me, since I hit, oh I dunno, twenty. I mean, after that you don't really want to get older and older, and see the world inch ever closer to climate calamity and so forth. Take me back to 1989, when we were all jolly happy about the whole Berlin Wall thing, and I looked good in opaque tights and cut-off denim hot pants (or at least I thought I looked good - thankfully no photographic evidence survived). Now the world seems permanently on the brink of disaster and no amount of cashmere will disguise the fact that my thighs just aren't what they used to be. Also, I had just discovered the Stone Roses, and the fact that if you down a mini bottle of Thunderbird before you go out, you hardly have to spend anything in the pub. Where have the last twenty years gone?

But, enough nostalgia. Let's look forward to the future with optimism and hope. Why, 2010 may even be the year when I get published and perhaps I will fit back into those 28/34 jeans at some point. Yeah, well maybe...

Happy New Year xxx