Mr and Mrs McMuffin

faking it...

So you think you know people? Via the BBC, you can contribute to some psychological research here

so cold...

...We won't be blogging much tonight as our boiler has stopped working. We only have a tiny fan heater, and my fingers are too cold to type for long. Mr McMuffin is trying to get it going, so I fear for our safety. I also fear that I shall get frozen to the bed tonight. Why couldn't it have given some warning, or waited until it was warmer? The only considerate part of this is that Gypsy Tart and Rock Cake are going to Egypt tomorrow, so we can nip over and use their bathroom.

I take it all back, Mr McMuffin done fix it! He is boy wonder and I love him more that ever, I just want to know why he didn't wave his magic wand 3 hours ago. I am eternally ungrateful.

oh, my god!

I tried the Death Clock thing. Imagine my surprise to find that I had been dead for some weeks. I must admit that this might help to explain the slight lethargy that I have been feeling recently. It seems a shame that I have finally found a way to make myself very, very rich, only to discover that I am dead. Mrs McMuffin was a little surprised too, although not as surprised as I had expected.

i am not a doctor

I can't find anything to assist the poor Profiteroles. NHS direct didn't give me anything, or a search on headaches and confusion. However I can confirm that my doctor successfully diagnosed migraine in me (common, although I've had one classic attack, for any snobs reading this) and I can be treated for menstrual migraine.

Why didn't my GP tell me all those years ago? I wouldn't have had to suffer the half skull hell with vomiting and intolerance of light and sound that have plagued me for more years than I care to recount. Is is because it's just a 'woman's thing?' and a little bit suspect as you can't actually see it? Well actually you can see it, when I vomit over whatever gets in my way. I astounded a coworker one night when I was too sick to drive home and he kindly gave me a lift, by vomiting all over his car door. I have also vomited into a lunchbox on a train and a plastic paper wallet on the tube. I think my white sweaty face, inability to stand or hold a conversation and passing out rather give the game away too.

Well I'll just have to call myself 'Me-Me' McMuffin again, and remind myself that this started as concern for friends, not a rant against the male dominated medical model.

Thanks for your comments about Mr McMuffin's thoughts about blogging and trackbacks. I'm sure he'll make good use of your explanations. I have tried to understand them, but I felt a bit like the girl in the L'Oreal ad when the science goes whooshing right over her head. I know this stuff can't be hard, but I can't really work up an interest. It's a bit like when I had a motorbike. I loved riding it, but really couldn't bear getting grease on my hands, or fixing it. Obviously I did when I couldn't persuade my then boyfriend to do so, but I hated every second. I think there are some parallels here!

The sad thing is I really wanted to be one of the many women who can strip and rebuild an engine in an afternoon (took me weeks, and I was closely supervised) and be a computer expert. I just have to accept that interest and learning makes competence, and I have neither.

morality...

Mrs McMuffin has been on at me to do this morality survey for days nows. It takes about 10 or 15 minutes and I just couldn't be bothered. I finally bowed to the pressure last night, and it turns out that I am a pretty nice chap. Looks a lot more like a personality test than a survey of morality, but hey, who cares. I am not too sure about my leanings towards being disagreeable, I think this is supposed to mean that I argue a lot rather than I am mean, or at least I hope so.

electricity

I was in the garden earlier on prancing around as the first fat raindrops started to fall. I saw an incredibly bright flash and heard a sizzling sound from about twelve feet away, then the thunderclap sounded. Yes, I was almost barbecued today in my own garden.

Rock Cake wasn't very impressed as he has actually been hit by lightning, but I was still shaky when Ms Ginger cake came round and she must have thought I was drunk, until I explained. This is probably one of the more interesting 'near death' things that has happened to me.

shriek

Mr McMuffin forgot to mention the solitary cheesy bug under the sink which rode out the flood rather like SPG in the 'Young Ones'. I swear the little creature had a tiny little olive branch in what passes for its mouth.

I am becoming a 1950's housewife as the second thing which went through my head was that I would have to soak the towels in a mild bleach solution and boil wash them. Exactly when did I become my mother? Actually for the sake of accuracy I have to say that my Mum only ever used bleach in the toilet. She seemed to think that bleach was for dirty people, everything else could be cleaned by scrubbing or as a last resort, boiling in a vinegar solution. I blame her for us not having a mop, in my view the floor is not clean unless I do it on my hands and knees. It never actually looks clean, mind you, but it feels clean.

handyman, me...

Mostly today I have been a handyman. I have just fitted a telephone extention. It is goes all around the skirting board, around doors, under radiators, coming to a lovely little switch box thingy that I screwed to the wall and everything. It is all very neat. The only problem is...it doesn't work. I cannot work out what is wrong. I am going to do what every good handyman does when they are stumped...I am giving up. Didn't really need it anyway. The only problem is, I have ripped out all the old wiring. We've got mobiles and we can still get on the internet. We'll survive.

infinity on my mac...

I have been able to capture infinity on my Mac. It has kept me occupied for about two hours this morning, when I should have been doing other things. It is a high tech version of what I used to do with mirrors when I was a kid. I imagine everyone has done it at some point. Only this time I pointed my iSight camera at my screen and recorded it. I am not sure where the flashing lights come from, but I think it probably has something to do with iSight trying to focus on the image. You can download the whole movie, complete with soundtrack, from here.

feline depression...

I managed to catch the moment Slinky heard the news that TypePad wasn't working properly. I have diagnosed his condition as Feline Depression.

ants in our plants

Mrs McMuffin has made an amazing discovery. She was about to tip out a dead plant from a flower pot when she discovered that it contained an ant's nest. They have built their home in the flower pot. The earth in the pot has been excavated and is honeycombed with little ant tunnels. I took a couple of photos, but the little buggers move so fast it was hard to photograph them. There are ants in the top photo, but they are little blurs of motion. I love the second picture, that is them climbing around the flower pot, because you can get a sense of the scale of the pot. These must be special mountaineering ants. Ain't nature grand?

[I (Mrs McM) just wanted to let you know that we didn't actually evict the ants from their new home. The nest in a pot has pride of place on our doorstep, with a bit of straggly couch grass growing out of the top of it. Beautiful it isn't, but it is useful.]

anyone...

...would think Mr McMuffin had nothing else to do all day. He has prepared a three course meal for four people, but as he is good at this has just been realxing the rest of the day. I haven't really stopped. I think he's just a bit better at time management and not being bothered by heaps of laundry.

it was broke but i fix it...

I can't remember if Mrs McMuffin told you that when we had the garden shed and outside toilet knocked down, it revealed an old lead pipe that was gushing water. It started off as a trickle but has gradually got worse. We tried to get the water board to fix it, but today they finally arrived, their second attempt, and they took one look at it and said, "nothing we can do mate, it's on your property." Or at least they said words to that effect to my lovely sister-in-law who stayed home to see to them. Despite her offer to give him a blow job, he refused to fix it, and left it gushing water into our already sodden garden. Anyway, I hammered it closed, and it is now fixed, or at least bodged. Just remember this moment, the next time Mrs McMuffin tries to persuade you that I am useless around the house.

[ I just have to comment on Mr McMuffin's suggestion that my own flesh and blood would consider offering sexual favours for services. It is untrue and tasteless, although Gypsy Tart did laugh when she read it.

The water board are now on my hit list. This is a very long list of people and organisations who have crossed me and will suffer the consequences when I am powerful enough to inflict them on them. I realise that this may take some time, but I am willing to wait. I am not a nice person when offended.

I have explained to the water people three times exactly what the problem was and even said that if they were unable to offer a service because the leak was on our property (although not from our water supply) I would call a plumber. They assured me that they would send someone to take a look and they would be likely to sort the problem out. We even made complicated arrangements about how their worker would gain access to our property, so it's hard to see how this man didn't have a clue that he might be going to look at a leak on private property. I can't beleive I paid the bill until October. Bastards.

Mr McMuffin is now my DIY hero. He's not Handy Andy, but he did fix it.]

god bless us all...

Ms Victoria Sponge sent us this email, which she had received from a friend. It made us titter.

"With all the news on TV lately about the extreme weather conditions affecting the East Coast of the US, the mud slides in the Middle East and South America, along with the dire predictions made by such films as The Day After Tomorrow, we shouldn't forget that England has its share of devastating weather too. I've attached a photo illustrating the damage caused to a friend's home from a storm that passed through Southern England last night. It really makes you cherish what you have, and reminds us not to take things for granted. God bless us all."

said the spider to the fly...

I found this in the garden. An odd looking spider eating a Dragon Fly. I love my camera.