birthdays, vomit and heart failure

I'm very sad that my poor boy is feeling too ill to have his birthday cake, and he's got to go back to school in a bit to be a toga-clad narrator in the school play. I do hope he doesn't vomit on stage - it would trump Twin 2 doing a wee on stage last year, though.
I'm very happy that Hubby appears to have got through the financial year-end without having a heart attack, although the day's not over (it's still only about 10am in the UK), so there's still time for a bit of a cardiac catastrophe (perhaps it would also happen whilst we're watching the school play, which would even trump Son's vomit). This time last year he was having palpitations in Disneyland Hong Kong, as I recall...
Anyway, better get a move on or Aesop's Fables will be without their star performer.
Cheerio
ps - Gary keeps skulking around and stealing grapes out of the fruit bowl. Him and his evil lupine ways - no fruit is safe from his salivating jaws. Right, better go x

a weekend of single parenthood

I have been mostly a single parent this weekend. On Saturday a very important minister of some description (nobody seems to remember the details, or even his name - and he didn't seem to be quite sure what he was doing here either, but suits were worn and lunches were had, so I guess it was an effective use of taxpayers money to send him to Nepal?) arrived in BGN, so Hubby had to get all suited up and go to work for the morning.
Luckily it was the super dooper spring fair at school, so I had something else to do with the rest of the family. The kids had overpriced candyfloss and samosas, and I got to sit on the PTA stall and sell old books. By the time I got to the book stall, however, only the literary dregs were left, so I had to resort to the hard selling tactics (reducing everything to ten rupees - about nine pence). I'll give you a couple of examples:
How to pass your civil service exams; The benefits of urine therapy (this means drinking your own wee, by the way); Finding God in unexpected places (where? behind the sofa with the broken remote? And also, as someone pointed out, if God is supposed to be everywhere, surely nowhere should be unexpected?) and many, many more of a similar quality. At the end of the fair the unsold books were boxed up and taken back inside. I think they may get rolled out again in the summer fair - in which case I might have to buy up a few titles to spice up my bookshelves and make random visitors think I'm more interesting than I actually am.

Picture this, if you will:

Guest arrives and I scurry into the kitchen to put the kettle on. In the meantime, Guest checks out my newly souped-up bookshelves and thinks: this is the first time I've been to this house, let's have a neb and see what she's really like...oh my! She is an evangelical wee drinker with aspirations to become a civil servant. I never knew - what a dark horse indeed!
I turn up with a cup of tea and Guest looks at me in an entirely new light, as a hostess with hidden depths and interesting hobbies and a life outside of just being a cashmere-addicted army wife.

Hmmm...although this would only work were we actually to have guests over, which, let's be honest, is an extreme rarity. One couple did attempt it this weekend, but had to contend with Gary stalking the chocolate chip cookies and Twin 2 showing her pants, and having to shout over the sound of the generator, so not sure whether they will ever come back...

On Saturday night I stayed in, just in case anyone else in the family succumbed to the scary green D&V lurgy, and Hubby went out to Thamel for a goodbye get-together for a friend. None of the kids were ill and I finished off the Bombay Saphire, hurrah. Hubby then returned and hurled his guts up all night. He swears it was the mushroom carbonara, and nothing to do with the quantity of whisky imbibed.

So today he was ill in bed, and I was a single parent again, curses!

So that was my weekend - how about yours? x

flying river

Son's talk on the imaginary circus of torture didn't go down too well - it was too short, apparently. He did another one today about 'thinking' and specifically about a future earth project that will use directed gravity fields to take rivers to deserts, where they're really needed, rather than just going straight to the sea. I think all the environmental messages from school assemblies have morphed together with Dr Who in his brain and fused in an attempt to try to use science fiction to make the world a better place. If only imaginary flying rivers was all it took...

Poor old Twin 1 has D&V at the moment, and, because I've been encouraging her to drink flat Coke in order to rehydrate, her vomit is nice and black. She's been sick twice already (plus three times the other end), so I think I'm in for quite an exciting night.

Better sign off before the next projectile episode. xx

the eagle has landed, Danny boy, over!

Someone in China reads this blog - I just checked the (fairly paltry) stats. I suspect that as I have 'army' in the blog title and its written in English, that some poor underpaid government worker is having to trawl through all my tedious navel gazing in the hope of stumbling on some nugget of military intelligence. Poor thing. Well, just for you...the eagle has landed, Danny boy, over!

field of dreams

Ah, yes, I knew I would remember eventually.

It's about my parents' dog. Mum and Dad had a lovely dog, who very sadly died whilst chasing a deer last year. In his memory, they have had one of the fields near their house planted with trees in the shape of a running dog.

This is a beautiful thing.

However.

They also have three daughters.

Do you think when one of us cops it they will have woodland in the shape of a lady planted (perhaps they could model it on one of those toilet doors and give us nice round heads and triangular skirts)?

Hubby suggested that they should have one field planted with a running dog, the next with a lying down dog, and the next with the vet's van coming, with sirens and lights etc.

But that would just be silly, wouldn't it?

Ta ra for now x

ps. Do you think they could plant one of me doing one of my super kung fu fighting in my tarty ball dress?

Just a thought....

pouf!

I weighed myself at the gym this morning, which was a bad idea. I had just been for a run, and put the running machine up one level, so I was feeling pretty good, but I guess all those glasses of wine and chocolate brownies whilst watching Corrie last night probably put paid to my measly half-hour of cardio. Still, I can't go on I diet. They don't sell Muller yoghurts or Special K in Kathmandu, therefore it is impossible to diet. Yes, it is. Don't argue with me. You can't make me diet.

There was something marginally more interesting than my weight to tell you about, but I have forgotten already. Der...I'm casting my mind about, but no, the thought has vanished, like a soap bubble on a rose bush - pouf!

I will have a think, and get back to you...

emergency spa

Had to have emergency session at spa this morning, after a particularly hormonal weekend (at least the swimming pool was open, so I could actually take the kids somewhere whilst I stared, grim-faced and morose, into the middle distance. From today, the swimming pool will be closed, just as it's starting to get lovely and hot, and Twin 2 has begun to learn to swim. Why? Because BGN, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to re-employ the lifeguard as a gate guard and has not got anyone to replace him...we shall now have to wait for HQ to bid for funding and get a lifeguard trainer flown out from the UK to train up someone else. Let's just hope they manage to do it well before the next time I'm hormonal and unstable, or someone may get hurt!)

Anyway, I have at least planned the next twenty-odd scenes of the book this morning (see how much more productive I am after an hour in the spa - it's totally worth the money!), so there is hope in sight for my hapless heroine. I'm also hoping to get some constructive crit from a friend of mine who has been reading the manuscript so far. Lets just hope she's as good at feedback as she is at baking cupcakes...and that I don't cry when she hits me with the amount of holes in my plot and character flaws necessary to revise.

Right now I have a date with the bread maker, or there will be no packed lunches tomorrow.

Cheerio x