you know your on a diet when

for the last two months i have been on a calorie controlled diet thingy. Now for a chocolate and cake loving fatso like myself this is no mean feet. But it seems to have worked. For the first month i was perminantly starving, grumpy , and muttering to myself about how sodding unfair it all was and in a total panic about what to eat. Then my clothes began to let me breath. Instead of eating chocolate, i would sniff it longingly and then actually give it back and not ram it into my podgy little mouth. So far i have lost just over a stone. Two weeks ago i slipped and fell straight into a domino's pizza offer, but apart from that i think i have survived this relatively unscathed.
some things have changed mind you.
You know your on a diet when,
In iceland doing the weekly shop you start to check the calorie content on the packets of biscuits before sighing and putting them back.
When someone says a type of food you can immediately tell them exactly how many calories are in it.
If someone asks you if you want a bite of something, you reply " no but can i have a sniff"
Your plate of carefully measured out food looks like everyone else s left overs.
Instead of just serving up tea You have to carefully weigh out everything and then panic if it goes one over your allotted amount.
You find a new respect for vegetables and your one veg a day  becomes, six pieces of fruit and two lots of veg a day.
see i'm not obsessed honest, well maybe a bit.

that certain day that comes once a year

yesterday i turned forty . i also waved my son off to yet more karate practice and swimming. i fed cats i did two loads of washing and caught up on all the things i had recorded on the sky box. i tidied the house well when i say tidied that just means i moved piles of mess from one room to another where i wouldn't have to look at it.
You see i don't do birthdays. I havent done birthdays for years now. It has also taken that amount of time for me to train the people near me not to ask the " what do you want for your birthday ?" question. I hate that question. it annoys me to my very core. If i want anything i will either save up and get it myself or i will go without, it's that simple. Birthdays have always been a disaster.
When i was younger and was still looking forward to them, my parentals would hide the gifts in the bottom of an old 1920's wardrobe they had. Until one year that is when the key broke in the lock and no one could get the presents out. It took hours, when your a child no presents on that so called special day pretty much equals the end of your world. It only happened to me, never my siblings.
Then there were the children's parties where you have to invite your class mates to celebrate with you. I was not a popular child at school. I was the fat awkward one who was painfully shy. the teachers thought i was a joy, the children didn't. But when you invite them they will come and pretend that they like you. Funny what cake can do isn't it. I remember one year i had been given roller skates, i loved these things and hadn't even had a chance to try them on. i was saving them for a quiet moment. I didnt want them spoilt, so they had stayed in the box. Then the class mates descended, routed through the things i had been given. The thing with children , well these ones anyway was that even though most of these things were still in boxes and i hadn't had time to play with them that didn't matter. boxes were opened things were taken and played with , my roller skates were worn and then broken before i had had a chance to enjoy them. That was the last party i ever had.
So when anyone asks me what i intend to do for my birthday, i don't give them an answer. I'm not about to go out and drink myself into a coma. I'm not about to party the night away. After all it's just another day.

the cat poo chronicles

Fluffy was not at school today, apparently there was a teachers training day. So yesterday he went off with a friend of his armed with his karate kit, his swimming kit, two tennis rackets and a football. They had so much fun that he ended up staying the night. So what has this got to do with cat poo i hear you ask. Well this morning we get up, throw on some clothes and wander down stairs where the cats have been all night.
As soon as we open the door to the front room the smell hits us. The squiting kitten has done it again but none of us can see where. Slowly we come into the room , each of us studying the furniture with a sense of dread.
the cats are circling our feet meowing " feed me " sir looks across at me and mumbles half asleep,
"Can't see any of the furniture." and we continue on slowly watching the floor for tell tale splats. That's when my phone rings. It's fluffy asking if his friend can come round for the day. I had to say yes after all if was only fair. he had spent the day and night over at his friends. We had half an hour to discover the mess and air out the whole of downstairs.
I opened as many windows as i could find, while still on the phone. Sir disappeared into the kitchen and came back armed with cleaning wipes kitchen roll and gloves. I watched as he knelt under my desk and pointed to the source of the smell. the kitten had crapped right under my desk. we had less than twenty minutes to clear it and pray the smell went away.
The thing with poo is once you find the main problem you end up finding a map of wear it has been walked over the floor boards and then lovingly squashed into the cat blanket. cat blanket was thrown into the washing machine, floor was scrubbed, poo was scraped , words were said mostly along the lines of " that fucking cat will end up as bloody dog food." and " the smell isn't going "
It got to the point where we were leaving the room waiting for a few seconds and then coming back into it sniffing and then spraying a bit more. it seemed like seconds to go and finally the smell was cleared. we had gotten away with it. Just as fluffy and his friend turned up. Luckily no one said anything about the smell.
kittens are cute but my god are they hard work.