Wow!  A real blog.  I used to have a blog on my website, but it was a cheaty type blog which my good friend Tom made me, and not a real bloggety blog like this one.  I chose this one because one of my other good friends, Vijay told me about it.  If this turns out to be a terrible idea I will still feel o.k. because it will all be Vijay’s fault.

Apparently I can add lots of tags and categories to my blog entries so that people can search for them and be amazed by the fact that I have talked about chocolate eclairs or ear muffs.  My blog entries tend to be so random this could take hours and still be puzzling and ultimately futile, so for today I think I’ll just stick to a regular blog entry where I just bimble about talking rubbish about life in general.

I’m getting very technological this week.  Having been forced into getting a facebook account by some friends who insisted that I was their friend and I must come and play, I have been mucking about with it quite a lot.  As my sister in law, Lisa tells me (she races imaginary wildlife), it could become quite a time waster.  I think I am safe as I have three children, a hungry husband and a large house to care for and I waste plenty of time already on them.  I have however, started my new Open University course this week (Y160 – Introducing the Arts, for those in the know – Andrea) and I can see that I might well be tempted to go and turn myself into a vampire on facebook instead of getting down to some serious study, so Lisa’s prediction may well come true.  Still, it’s slightly more productive than creating an elaborate exam timetable, which is what I used to do when I wanted to waste valuable study time.  I don’t have to sit any exams, and I need all the friends I can get now that I only mingle with the parents of small children.  Fair exchange is no robbery, as they say.

So, now I have a facebook thingy and a blog thingy, and for a thirty five year old woman who remembers fondly the days of dial telephones and pencil and paper I feel this is a big thing.  I’m only making an effort for the kids really!  I don’t want them to end up thinking that their mother is too technologically retarded, and I could see they were losing all respect for me when they worked out how to use Sky+ before I did.  I had to do something to claw back my ever dwindling ‘cred’.

Today was quite stressful.  I had an eye test this morning so that I could get a new pair of glasses.  As I have been sharing with anyone who will listen to me, my glasses imploded last week and I have been left bereft.  It’s not quite as traumatic as it sounds, as I wear contact lenses during the day, but when I go to bed, or when I have a lot of studying to do, I like to slip into something more comfortable i.e. a tracksuit and a nice warm pair of glasses (so much for the days of drinking champagne from Manolo Blahniks!)  Sadly I have been unable to do this until today.  I couldn’t face the thought of taking the children to the opticians with me.  Oscar will try to destroy all the machinery and Tallulah and Matilda will make friends with everyone in the shop, try on every pair of glasses and then spend five hours trying to persuade me to have lurid pink specs with diamante on them which make me look like a cross between Dame Edna Everage and Olive from On the Buses.  The stress would kill me, so I have been doggedly coping without my specs until they were back at school and Oscar was in nursery.

Unfortunately, I had to leave my contact lenses out for twenty four hours so that they could test my eyes properly.  This was a little bit of a problem due to the exploded nature of the specs (see above), and the fact that I couldn’t see through them properly anyway for the past six months, as they’re four and a half years old and covered in scratches.  Without them I cannot see at all however, and so for the sake of my continuing existence on the planet and to ensure that I didn’t have to bumble my way through life avoiding oncoming hedges and flirting with danger from all corners it had to be a home DIY repair job.  Jason (my loving husband) set to work on Wednesday night with a large roll of sellotape and much swearing and I believe the word is, ‘mackled’ my glasses for me.  All credit to him, they maintained structural integrity, but it wasn’t easy.  Yesterday I spent the whole day staggering around like a drunken Mr. Magoo with my glasses stuck to my hair and veering off to the left of my nose somewhere.  I felt very vulnerable and slightly sick.  Oscar also spent the whole day trying to rip them from my face and eat them, which didn’t help their fragile sensibilities or mine for that matter.  Oscar is one, so he’s allowed to do these things.  I won’t be quite so forgiving if he’s still manifesting the same obsessive fondness for eyewear when he’s twenty, so I’m hoping it wears off soon.

Things weren’t helped this morning by the fact that after I’d got the girls off to school and Oscar in nursery I had to tackle public transport to get to the opticians.  It was rather like being at Alton Towers but without the screaming.  Mind you, the ticket was a lot cheaper – £1.50 for all the fun of the fair.  Everyone avoided me like the plague even though it was rush hour, and I got a whole double seat to myself.  A tip worth remembering for those who really don’t like sharing, or having someone else’s puffa jacket rammed into their ear.

Anyway, I made it to the opticians in one piece and only slightly dishevelled, although my hair decided to help me by taking on the texture and appearance of an afghan hound this morning, so I made a very fetching figure when I finally arrived at the portals of Vision Express.  Luckily they are trained to deal with all kinds of optically challenged fools and took me heartily into their bosom and shut me in a darkened room with a jolly woman who made me tell her which circles were the darker, ‘red or green, green or red’ for the next twenty minutes.  I had forgotten how much I hate eye tests.  My best friend Rachel, loathes hairdressers in much the same way, and can be reduced to tears in minutes by the mere mention of Charles Worthington (understandable really).  God, it was depressing.  I hate that ‘red or green’ thing.  I always feel like they know the answer and they’re trying to trick me, and then I go into prisoner interrogation mode, feel hugely unworthy, shrug a lot in a Kevinish kind of way and mumble: “I dunno, they both look about the same, innit?” thinks: “You’ll never take me alive copper!”

 Apparently, my eyes haven’t changed too much in four and a half years, but I don’t know how much of this is down to the refusal to confess to the ‘red, green’ dilemma, and how much of it is real scientific proof of my blindness.  It’s worrying, and I’m always convinced they will find me out and make me go and work in the lens grinding mines of Vision Express, which are probably somewhere outside of Slough.  This trauma then paled into insignificance when I had to actually find a pair of frames I liked.  The main problem being that I couldn’t bloody see any of the frames properly because I am completely blind without my glasses.  A very nice lady who worked there (or did she? I don’t really know because I couldn’t see her properly.  Alright so she had a badge, but she could have been coming off shift from Tesco and just popped in to have a laugh and mess with people’s minds) helped me, and I had to rely solely on her judgement as to what suited me best, which is how I ended up with a pair of Dior frames with glittery, bling style ‘d’s’ on the arms, and a case like something Kate Moss would carry her pet slug in, if she had one.  £345 later, and a further hour of stumbling around a shopping centre peering hopelessly at stuff and I emerged with a pair of working glasses.  I hope to God that Jason likes them, as he’s footing the bill.  He hated the last pair I had and sang a hymn of joy when they broke.  I really don’t know what he will think of these.  Still the kids will like them, which is not saying much.  They’d like rat pooh if it had sparkles on it.

After that I had a stiff cup of coffee and a bun to cheer myself up and proceeded home in a taxi so that I could lie gibbering gently on the living room rug for an hour before picking the kids up from school.  Two minutes after coming through the door came the sickening realisation that I had left my mobile phone on the back seat of the taxi.  Thankfully it is my Dad’s old taxi firm (he’s retired so that he can fixate on carnival glass and deal in antiques) and they know me well, so when I rang to confess my foolishness they were round within ten minutes to deliver my phone to me.  It’s a bit like having a lot of disapproving uncles at times, but it can be very helpful in a crisis, and I have quite a lot of crises.  I couldn’t even blame the phone incident on the fact that I couldn’t see because I’d snuck off after I’d got my new glasses and put my contact lenses back in in Debenhams toilets.  Some woman gave me an evil look while I was doing it.  Probably thinking – “Crazy fool, jabbing herself in the eye repeatedly like that.”  But I just didn’t care.  It’s so brilliant to be able to see properly again, and at least contact lenses don’t slip off your nose or steam up when you get excited (usually about buns).

Right. First blog entry done and dusted.  Off to my mother’s fireworks party tonight, so no doubt there will be much to report later.