My dream last night involved:

a load of scary evil witches [not you, subs!!!] who were in some sort of state of hibernation - I had to check their heartbeats;

a shed with complicated light switches;

a nasty man (like a baddie in a child's fairytale) trying to get me (hence, I woke up both morelearning and myself whimpering "help me! help me!");

several large sacks of root vegetables;

and Subville.

And Subs, I'm sorry I couldn't answer all your questions but I wouldn't really have thrown that parsnip at you.....

It's me hormones, I think. Dang and kerpiffle these freaky pregnancy dreams!! I need some SLEEP!!!

I hereby recount for your amusement the moment I told morelearning of his impending fatherhood.

Sixpence: How are you feeling this morning, darling?
Morelearning: I'm fine thanks. You?
Sixpence: I'm on a bit of a headfuck.
Morelearning: [immediately full of kind concern] Why so, my love? Talk to me.
Sixpence: I think I might be pregnant.
Morelearning: Oh. Gosh.
[Long pause]
Morelearning: So... who do you think the father is?

D D D D

He has almost recovered from his bruises.

Yes, you read that correctly.

More/Six Productions is scheduled to arrive some time around the middle of August.

You think you’re shocked. What about morelearning and me????

Let’s just get the facts straight:

I tried for 8 years to have a baby with Mr Expence.
There wasn’t anything wrong with either of us. It just didn’t happen.
We had 5 cycles of fertility treatment, all of which failed.
I did conceive naturally once, in 2003, but I lost the baby (no heartbeat at 2nd scan).
Not being able to have children was a significant factor in our marriage breaking up.
(Although obviously me running off with morelearning didn’t help).
My marriage ended in June.
Morelearning moved in at the end of August.
Three months later……………………………………………………...just like that.
Luckily I’m a fan of irony.
And a fan of morelearning.

For the record:
This, if you can bear it, is when it was conceived. (So how many babies have their conception blogged, huh?? )
And this is when I found out I was pregnant.
And this is when I lost loads of blood and thought we had lost the baby.

But I am now 14 weeks gone, and have a splendid wee bump (aka possibly just fat deposits due to having stuffed my face for the past 3 months under the guise of “it’s not for me, it’s for the baby”). And I have a scan picture and everything. So although I still can’t really believe it, I guess it’s actually in there, and it shall henceforward be known as Boco (long story).

This is partly why I’ve been so run down for the past 4 weeks, as my body doesn’t seem to be able to fight off this cough virus thing and they can’t prescribe me anything for it. But apart from that I am doing ok. Really, really ok. I was incredibly anxious for the first 12 weeks, in case I lost it. But here we are.

*shakes head in wonder at it all*

I am supposed to be working from home this morning, because after coughing incessantly for 4 weeks, according to my GP, the official medical diagnosis is that I have "a virus" and am "run down". (Gee, thanks doc! I sure wish I had your vast knowledge and expertise!)

Anyway. It's now 10 past 11. So far I have:

Had a bath & washed my hair.
Got dressed.
Reheated and eaten the remainder of the top quality chilli con carne I made 2 days ago. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

I quite like working from home.

But now I really DO have to go and do something!!! Tsk, tsk....

are the ones that sound perfectly harmless to anyone else?

When I was about five years old I had the worst nightmare I'd ever had. I dreamt that I was at a birthday party and a girl in my class called Sally was climbing over an armchair and her glasses fell off and smashed in the fireplace.

When I woke up I screamed and screamed, but nobody could understand why I was so scared. Not even me.

I just had a dream like that.

I was holding one of my cats, MumCat. It was so real. I could feel her in my arms. I was in a shed with lots of windows, or maybe a greenhouse, and my ex-husband was on the other side of the glass, but I couldn't reach him or speak to him.

When I woke up - only about 20 minutes after I'd got to sleep in the first place - I sobbed so hard I couldn't speak, for about 40 minutes on end. But if you want to know why this dream was so feckin awful, I couldn't even begin to tell you.

And now my eyes hurt from crying, and I'm wide awake, and I can still feel MumCat's fur against my neck.

The South Bank Centre wants to feature one of my poems on their website.

Whoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

That's all.

See you soon!

As I was leaving Brimstone Civic Centre today there was a sign saying "No glasses beyond this point".

So I took mine off, and darn near fell down the steps.

Went on a training course today at Brimstone Civic Centre. The subject was "Safeguarding Children".

We are assigned a groupwork exercise in which we are given cards with various scenarios described on them and have to decide what action we would take.

One of the cards says:

Aleysha, aged 8, has learning disabilities. She has a clumsy gait and is prone to falls and knocks. Recently you have noticed a large number of bruises.

During our discussion about possible courses of action, one of the members of our group, aged mid-40s?, says

"Well it might be as simple as seeing whether any of the agencies can help with the cost of a new gate".

I had to turn away and bite my lip, but we all politely pretend we hadn't heard and carried on the discussion.

When it comes to the part of the session where we have to feed back our group's conclusions to the rest of the trainees and trainers, I am silently praying for Gate Woman to keep her mouth shut.

But, ohhhh no. She presents her Gate theory as one of the conclusions our group has made.

Not once, but twice.

The shame!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday the Physical Activity Co-ordinator for Market Randomtown sat next to me to eat her lunch.

One of her responsibilities is "to promote a healthy workforce" at Market Randomtown District Council.

For her lunch she ate a Pepperami, a Jam Tart and a Chocolate Mousse with Whipped Cream.

Today at Market Randomtown District Council, at approximately 11am, an email was sent to 'All staff' that read as follows:

There is a blockage in the building's sewage system. Please do not use any of the staff toilets until further notice.

If absolutely necessary you may use the toilets in the Customer Service Centre.

That's three toilets, in case you were wondering. For a staff of three hundred. And, of course, the customers.

Please note also that I work on the top floor, and the customer services centre is on the bottom floor... through the magic door that separates the newly refurbished, funky, purple and turquoise, spotlit, laminate effect wood effect, smiley faced reception area from the concrete walled, stained brown carpeted series of dungeons where us smarmy evil bureaucrats work.

Note, too, that I have a chest infection, meaning that my legs can barely carry me from the bottom floor to the top floor, and my lungs run out of capacity somewhere between the two, causing me to haul myself wheezily up the final flight with the aid of the banister, collapsing on the top step with my bronchial tubes dragging ominously with the same sound littlun's Jungle Bus makes when he pulls it along our laminate floors at home.

So overall.... Good job the cough sweets o/d hadn't had the effect you predicted, eh, juzzzzzzz????

This morning I awoke at 3.30am.

I then proceeded to cough.

For the next 3 and a half hours.

The alarm went off at 7am just as my coughing fit was tailing off and I managed to grab all of 20 minutes' sleep while ml was in the shower.

Ml then had to bodily prise me out of the duvet and carry me to the bathroom in order to prompt me to start getting ready for work.

Perhaps I shouldn't have gone to work, but I've been off sick for nearly a week.

Ever tried rushing to get to work for a 9am meeting when you're that tired? It's like wading through mud.

Got to work and the 9am meeting had been postponed to 10am. Which was just as well, since I actually arrived at 9.30am.

Because I've been off sick for a week, my voicemail was crammed full of messages.

I dutifully attempted to return all the calls, only to discover that every time, every time the person on the other end lifted the receiver I was immediately struck down by a coughing fit, rendering me completely unable to converse.

I can summarise every one of the 'conversations' thus:

*Ring, ring*
Other person: Hello?
Sixpence: [croaks] hang on.......... [cough, cough, cough, cough]
Sixpence: [in husky, broken tones] It's Sixpence here from Market Randomtown District Council......... excuse me........... [cough, cough, cough]
Other person: Are you ok?
Sixpence: [gasps] Sorry it's taken me a while to get back to you. I've been off sick for a week. Hold on............ [cough, cough, cough]
Other person: Oh dear. Why don't you phone me back when you're better?
Sixpence: [with last breath] okthanksbye *collapses on desk, face purple with suppressed coughing, tears and snot streaming down face, body racked with consumptive hacking for next 10 minutes*

I am going to the doctor tomorrow!!!!!

PS. And why don't they make Halls Mentholyptus sweets in nice flavours any more? In the Olden Days you used to be able to get them in cherry, blackcurrant etc. Nowadays they only do 'original' aka Cack flavour. If I have to devour one more box of sickly sweet Tunes, all my teeth are going to fall out.

PPS. And I've twanged a nerve in my back with all the coughing. So now everytime I cough, as well as my chest and throat being ripped to shreds, a fiery pain shoots down my back and my entire body does an involuntary, violent jerking thing.