Emotionally delicate pharmacists and minty freshness with ol' Asbestos Mouth

Excuse me if this post's a little bit disjointed and rambling (and maybe even a little bit sleazy), but today mama went and got herself some glorious German salami (the food kind, kids. Not the 'other' kind) and is now distracted by those speckly pink slices of greasy sex (I really don't help myself, do I). I have to stop every couple of minutes to stuff another piece in my mouth (it just gets worse, doesn't it), so bear with me. Parental Advisory spiel (and parentheses abuse) over.


If The Monk was awake right now, no doubt he'd be trying to wrench the Glorious Salami out of my hands. He'll eat anything he's not meant to eat, up to and including leftover chicken vindaloo from the local Indian takeaway. The other day, he was doing an archaeological excavation under the sofa cushions (don't judge, at least it's vaguely educational if I bury things like newspaper scraps down there) and unearthed a tube of Extra-Strong Mints - y'know, the ones that make most normal adults fan their mouths and wince a little? He ate the fucking lot. I was blissfully unaware of this until I went to scoop my dribblier-than-usual spawn off the sofa, and found he was glued to it. I eventually separated baby ass from sofa leather with a sound like flypapers being torn apart, and promptly plopped my minty-fresh son and his flame-retardant mouth in the bath, to the soundtrack of "WHY do you keep doing this to me, you're NOT a nice baby and mama's putting you in the BIN next time bla bla bla (Why Must I Keep Repeating Myself remix)" *deep breath*.

Gabriel seems to live down the doctors' surgery at the moment. I toted him down there yet again a couple of days ago, after his eyes became so bloodshot it looked like he'd been smokin' some sweet, sweet herb. After being diagnosed with hayfever and doing the rounds of the whole waiting room - waving, clapping, shaking hands, signing autographs - we went to collect his prescription.

Our pharmacist is a very nice Italian man, and he's tickled pink by The Monk: "Such a happy baby! He smiles all the time, I love him!" (try experiencing the 'happy baby' for 24 hours, Mr. Pharmacy Man). Because said pharmacist is male, Gabriel couldn't give less of a shit if he loves him or not, so as soon as his feet hit the floor he toddled out of the room. Mr. Pharmacy Man was sad. He tried to summon my wayward boy with clicky noises and plaintive cries.

Effing heartbreaker

"Mister Gabriel! Mister Gabriel! You want your medicine? It will make you better, little friend!"
The Monk wobbles briefly into view, waves his arms and shouts "NO."
Mr. Pharmacy Man's face crumples a little, and mama does the whole "Excuse my kid he can be a dick sometimes" thing as she grabs the meds and the child and runs away. I can't handle hurt feelings, especially when my spawn is the source of it. Poor Mr. Pharmacy Man. I should take some biscuits in for him to cheer him up.


I'll be blogging much earlier next week, because I know you're all straining at the bit to read my thoughts on the sacred institution that is the Eurovision Song Contest. I'll be camped out in front of the TV from start to blood-soaked finish (am I getting confused with 'Battle Royale' now?), notebook in hand - so I don't miss out on any precious nuggets of Euro-tat for you, my beloved pair of readers - and a synapse-disconnecting amount of wine at my side. I might even get me some more salami.

Try not to upset your pharmacists, kids. You might need them after my next post.

Scrapyard gourmet

Gabriel's got a new game he likes to play with us now, unofficially known as 'Hey Parents, Guess What I've Got In My Mouth (Before I Run Away)'. It does pretty much what it says on the tin. The kid is fast turning into a small human dustbin; so far this week, I've recovered a chunk of plaster he picked out of the wall, an ancient toast crust, a bottle top, some business cards, and some assorted woodlice. Very rarely, though, will you find fresh food that tastes pleasant in his mouth - shit like that simply isn't up to The Monk's discerning gourmet standards. It's like a scrapyard in there. Constantly keeping one eye on his grabby little hands and his Aladdin's Cave of a mouth and the other on the PC is giving me a migraine. I'm starting to look like Marty Feldman.

"Got my eye on you, kiddo."

Shit's getting tough, now that Monk's walking. The TV stand is a source of endless fascination for him, especially the Sky box. He manages to record programmes (usually some mildly distressing crap involving televangelists, the freak) completely by accident, and then play them back over and over and OVER again, and d'you think mama's got that shizz figured out yet? Does she buggery. I can barely change the channel successfully without throwing a tanty. He stands there, merrily pressing all the buttons he can get his sticky little fingers on, so we've pretty much given up trying to watch anything on TV now. We only get 'Eastenders' punctuated by overexcited pastors who WANT-AH your MONEY-AH PRAISE THA LAWD!!!!

The boy's also mastered the Advanced Sofa Climb, as we discovered one day when we found him perched on the sofa by the living room window, shouting at passing pedestrians and attempting to rip his nappy off, Hulk-style. I wish I could've got a picture, but sadly mama was all "Oh my fucking CHRIST Gabriel get DOWN and stop SHOUTING" and slightly more concerned with preventing the bloody kid from launching himself out the window. Sorry peeps.

It's a pity that he hasn't quite got to grips with the whole sofa dismounting thing though. As soon as he got bored with licking the window and smooshing his open mouth onto it like some kind of simpleton goldfish, he started looking for a way down. The concentration on his face was something to behold as he stared at the seat, then at the floor, and back again. He formulated a cunning plan, and I grabbed the popcorn. This gon' be GOOD.

So off he goes. I watch in paralysed fascination as he inches forward on his bum, peeps over the edge... and fucking bellyflops to the floor. He sounds like a boulder being dropped from a first-floor window. I finally manage to make my legs work and run to scoop him up, just as the window-rattling howl of injustice escapes from his gummy little mouth. Gabriel often forgets to breathe when he's in full wailing mode, which I like to call "The Carla Bruni Effect". His entire body goes bright pink and rigid, his mouth gapes open cartoon-fashion, the tears start brimming in his eyes, his little fists shake and he stays like that for a good 10-20 seconds before he unleashes the crying beast (along with a stream of babble that might be swearing, I can't tell). Thank THA LAWD!!!! he can't talk yet. I get the feeling he's going to be bloody verbal when he's pissed off.

His first word, I'm almost certain, will be "MINE." I can see it in his eyes. Carpet cleaner? Mine. Contents of mama's bag? Once emptied onto the carpet and given the taste test (including receipts and keys), mine. Empty yogurt pot? Got my name on it, lady. The game ejected out of the Wii while Daddy wasn't looking? I OWN that shit, at least until I snap it in half, in which case it's Mama's and I had nothing to do with it. You get the picture.

Wow, I can really go on - I've just read this back to myself and all I can see is a pixellated ream of shit. Probably where The Monk gets it from. Later, kids - I'm off to fling myself off the sofa and send all my money to some religious nutjobs. You've been a great crowd, I'm here all week. Don't rush to applaud or anything, okay?

Carla Bruni made my kid cry

The Monk just alternated indignant screaming with biting off chunks of pink wafer, then continuing to scream as he chewed. I'm assuming he was pissed off at something, as he went on for quite a while (nothing unusual there), but you've gotta admire the boy's multi-tasking efforts. If ever I try to eat and rage at the same time, people start expressing concern for my mental wellbeing and shielding their faces from flying food detritus, because when I fury-munch, I AM SEXY.

FUCK YOU PINK WAFER.

Sunday night was a horrible mess of sleeplessness. Gabriel was cutting a molar tooth and had been a pain in the ass all day (in all fairness to him, it did look bloody sore, like a hot cross bun-shaped torture device), so 2:30 in the morning saw us wide awake and cuddled up in mama's bed watching the coverage from the French presidential elections, because dammit we know how to party in this house.


I must be one of the only people in Europe who's sorry to see Sarkozy go, but my reasons are hardly political. I've always been rather fond of the slimy little fucker, in the way that I'm fond of hamsters and all other furry or preposterous characters (Prince Philip and Silvio 'Bunga bunga' Berlusconi make up my unholy trinity of favourites here). I love his Cuban heels, his extravagant fibs (taking down the Berlin Wall, anyone?), his total lack of people skills, and his propensity to steal shiny pens. I just want to pinch his wrinkly little cheeks and pop him in my pocket. And as for Carla Bruni, well - she's the Facebook friend we all have that really needs deleting, but you just keep her for the lulz. Plus I have a morbid fascination with her ever-mutating face. It's like the Bride of Wildenstein before it all went totally fucking tits up.

Sarko and Silvio, just being themselves. Bless.

Although by rights, I should've found no joy in this whatsoever, I discovered today that Mrs B.-S. (LOVE that) is 'threatening' to relaunch her solo music 'career'. I was THRILLED. I haven't laughed so hard in forever... okay, maybe that's a lie; I laughed quite hard when a plastic ball from Gabriel's ball-spouting toy elephant thing bonked him square on the head, but that's neither here nor there. And I know it's a Daily Mail article, for which I apologise, but the wording of the title had me guffawing into my tea. And I love the picture of Sarko with the big stick. He looks like he's threatening to insert it into a rather baffled-looking Francois Hollande. I wouldn't be surprised if he did actually penetrate him with that big stick; in fact, I imagine the majority of Sarko's life has been dedicated to inserting things into other people. He WAS the President of France, after all.

In the name of scientific research (and for my own sadistic amusement), I decided to get on YouTube and test The Monk's reaction to the dulcet tones of Madame Carla. Seeing as this is the boy who headbangs to Edith Piaf, I reckoned this would be an interesting exercise. I wanted to see if he got the joke.

He didn't.

Carla Bruni made my son cry, and he didn't even have to look at her face. If she learned to eat wafers and have a snotty sobby tantrum at the same time, she'd be fucking unstoppable.

*shudder*

 Put the guitar down, Carla, and stick to scaring children. You're amazing at it.

Big Dick Rasputin and the 7th level of musical Hell

You know you wake up some mornings, and you just know the rest of the day's going to be an absolute bitch? Yup, my psychic powers were a-tingling with that information when I was rudely awoken a little over 2 hours before it stopped being bloody dark. Even binmen and bush-dwelling perverts aren't up at that hour, so I see no need for this still-poorly mama to drag herself out of bed.

Thanks to catching my cold, The Monk passed out at 5:30 last night, which is the kind of awesome behaviour I can really get behind. There was a small voice in the back of my head, warning me that the boy would most likely wake up at stupid o'clock, dehydrated and starving and determined to make up for all the noise we were spared by his early crashing, but the correct medication (percentage-based beverages) silences noises like that quickly and effectively. So mama and daddy went to bed, watched "Benidorm" (never before have shitty all-inclusive resort holidays looked like so much fun), and rediscovered that elusive little minx known as Sleep. She's beautiful, in case you didn't already know.

Mama wants her some o' THIS.

Sleep decided to go back to her husband at around 4:35 this morning, citing irreconcilable differences and the fact that "it's not you, I'm just not ready to have kids yet." This is probably something to do with Gabriel getting up especially early so he could set about composing today's V-Tech Symphony Of Nightmares, featuring instruments of torture such as the Musical Helicopter, the Overly-Cheerful Kitchen and the Keyboard-Phone of Hades. He's always ridiculously pleased with his opuses, sitting and waving his arms amongst the unholy din whilst he yells at me to get out of bed and listen to his hard work.

The lesser-spotted Sleeping Orchestrator of Misery.

"Give mama 5 more minutes, puppy."
"No! You will listen to my music! You will listen to it NOW!"

It doesn't help when you need to be out of the house by 8:15 for an appointment with the doctor. The Monk's temperature was up, and every cough that came out of him sent him into fits of tearful hysterics not unlike the ones I go through every morning, when I wake up and see that fucking Teleshopping is blaring away on the TV. I hate Teleshopping, it makes me want to buy stupid things like steam mops that break, and unusual-looking exercise contraptions that are eventually sent to pasture as clothes horses.

Speaking of horses, a friend of mine gave life to one of my dearest wishes today. Growing up, I was an enormous fan of Spike Milligan (I still am); I spent one Christmas in stitches over his version of "Black Beauty". I desperately wanted a horse of my own at that point, and wanted to name him after Black Beauty's father, Big Dick Rasputin -- idyllic childhood reminiscence-style music squeals to a halt -- and you can all discuss my cheerful choice of moniker amongst yourselves. I was never to own that horse, BUT I did get to know the Awesome Ben, and today he promised (after some squabbling and Facebook status pollution) he'd bestow the wonderfully evocative title of Big Dick Rasputin upon the first person who unwittingly posted something on his Facebook timeline. I am now responsible for someone walking around and bearing the best name on Earth.

The Monk can keep his dumbass musical compositions. He'll never rule as hard as mama does.