Maths, French and speed nappy trials.........

 Firstly I would like to start with a slightly belated Birthday wish to my lovely Flat 19, into which we moved three years ago yesterday. Happy Birthday!!!!! (I should've written the blog yesterday but cocktails happened and the motion of typing would definitely not have happened after I got back. Oh dear lord, no!)

Three years ago when we first moved in, we were graced with a snow day on the following day, 1st Feb. No such luck today. A Baltic day but no snow.

We've managed to live through the terrible two tantrums which have left us with broken taps in the bathroom, leaking pipes and a busted toilet flush. Not to mention all the appliances that broke recently, suddenly no longer compatible with our aging apartment. But it is still as wonderfully red, black and pretty as it always has been (and of course rammed packed with stuff!).

I am very excited for this next year, to add to my cloud wall in the bathroom, with some more of my cloud photographs. I'm just attempting to buy frames. And in true Helen form am being extremely picky. (No. Me? Never!) What I actually want is driftwood frames, but am struggling to find any and may have to give up the search and settle for white wood frames instead......We'll see.

Well Flat 19. Here's to the next 3 years and all the friends that will visit us, and all the people we will feed until they're close to death and all the writing I will do and all the holidays we will plan. We love you! You're an awesome place to live!!!!! (Could you just try and not incur anymore breakages please? Thank you.)

And now for a maths problem:

There are 5 ladies out for ladies night and 10 pitchers of cocktail. How much did the ladies drink each???
Now that's a maths question I can get on board with and I did with four lovely ladies last night -  thus the lack of Birthday blog.

Man we had a good night and a ridiculous amount of alcohol. But it was amazing and sort of their fault for making the alcohol so cheap and the happy hour run all night. Whoop!!!!! The Long Island Iced Tea was flowing as well as the apple fruity vodka thing that I can't remember the name of. And it was definitely what the Doctor ordered.

The food was awesome too. Big stodgy South American stuff! Yum Yum Yum! It definitely soaked up some of that alcohol, as I had to be up at 6am for work and I didn't have a hangover. Oh and I wore my new Irregular Choice shoes that I treated myself to at the weekend and they are so god darn pretty. (There is a pic on facebook and maybe one day I will learn how to put photos on here. I am a rem though when it comes to technology, as most of you know very well.)

Thank you L and T and J and J for a wonderful night and allowing me to tell the playdoughisms story again, twice!

One idea that was bandied about last night which I thought was genius, was that we should open a Coyote Ugly style bar, where they would all dance on the bar and I would sit in the corner singing. Ha ha. (Okay so the sitting in the corner singing thing was my idea...shock horror!) Definitely on to a winner there. We will discuss further over the next round of cocktails.

And the most amazing thing was when the bill came and we only owed 20 quid each and that was including tip! Whoop! Another ridiculously cheap and wonderful night out. And what's even better is that I'm gonna see L on Friday too! Twice in a week . Yipee!!!!!

Okay, so anyone else thinking this blog has been far too nice and not particularly ranty at all?????


I had to top up my monthly travel card this morning and had a nasty little shock. £112.60! Are you taking the piss??? I was told it wasn't going up this year because it went up last year and it's normally every other year it goes up. Freakin' scoundrels. An extra £6 a month when you get paid frick all, is actually quite a lot and a very nasty shock first thing on a Wednesday morning. TFL bastards.

It's feckin' freezing! Finally winter hit but a little late. It's supposed to be Spring in a month. The little baby animals ain't gonna be coming out, they're gonna take one step and freeze in their tracks. The flowers and leaves are gonna refuse to open out and the people are gonna get more and more miserable.

I knew it was cold today as I had to keep my coat on on the tube. (I hear you all gasp in shock). Granted it was unbuttoned and I had removed my scarf and hat, but still......Four layers of clothing and a coat and I wasn't sweating like a P I G........unheard of.

And now for an extremely rude French teacher. Oh my God. Some of the children take a French lesson on a Wednesday morning and today I was running around doing nappies at the speed of light to make sure they were all done on time. And when I went out to take another child one of the staff had a panic that one of the children was missing from the French lesson. So I just quickly peeped through the window and checked. "No. There are 7 and there are supposed to be 7." Okay, so everything was fine..................

Or not..........The French teacher came out and was all, "Can you please not look through the window, I'm trying to do a lesson here and the children are getting distracted."

So I said, "Oh I'm sorry but I just needed to quickly count the children."

Then she went off on one. "I am trying to do a lesson and you are watching like a show. I am not putting on a show for you to watch...." Blah blah blah fucking blah. Grumpy Bitch!

And then she finished with the extremely mature (baring in mind she must be at least mid thirties - not that that's old, I'm simply making the point that she ain't a little kid). "Do you get it?!" And stormed back in slamming the door behind her.

Oh, it's a good job I work with kids because if I was surrounded by adults at that point and she had spoken to my and my staff like that, I would have flipped. My temper flared and I could feel myself tensing. But typical Helen said nothing just went away muttering to myself that, "if she ever speaks to me or my staff like that again, I'll be lodging a formal complaint."

What a fucking cow. It's my classroom, my kids and my staff. I am in charge of the place and if I need to do a head count then she can just fuck off.

But then the funniest thing was that after she finished the lesson she sat on the carpet and was rude to another member of staff and then didn't move for about 10 minutes, whilst I continued the nappies, got the beds ready and started them washing their hands for lunch. I could tell she wanted to speak to me or say something, but again I was worried about having an outburst in front of the children, so I carried on doing what I was doing and ignored her.

Well, at the end of the day, if she wants to speak to me adult to adult, like a real person would, then all she has to say is, "Can I have a word please?" But sulking around on the carpet area and being a stuck up grumpy bitch means you don't deserve my time of day. And so eventually she got up and used the bathroom before leaving in a strop. Ahhh teenagers.........

So, I told my managers just in case she tried to lodge some sort of complaint about us and they completely agreed with me and said that if it happens again I can request a new teacher and say we don't want her anymore. Ha! In your face French teacher. Just try and cross me again next week. Muhahahahahahahahaha.

Psychotic Parent number 1 seems to have calmed down and is actually speaking to me again this week. But how quickly the psychotic can change. I ain't holding my breath, put it that way.

And on a random note, I think there should be speed nappy changing competitions between nurseries. It would be really funny! NO? Just me that finds that amusing. I'd be awesome at that. Ten nappies in 25 minutes, including one poo (though sometimes they can all be poos which would of course add to the time a bit) is not bad.

An over share???

He he. Anyway, I hope the last part was ranty enough for you. I think I'm gonna have to put my slippers on. My feet are freezing!

Looking forward to a nice night on the couch with A. It's been a long time.

Have a good rest of week where possible. Until the next blog........