Cocktails at Naptime

The Perils of Petting

2012-01-26T09:48:00.000-08:00

Choosing a pet is not just an opportunity to have your house stink of pee or algae. It can also be an opportunity to teach your children some lively life lessons. Our first pets were goldfish bought from an eccentric lady who had a glowing neon fishtank filled with fish out on her yard for sale dirt cheap. The goldfish lived fairly peaceful lives with us until the purchase of some african cichlids by a certain husband who did not read the notice in the pet shop that they should not be mixed with slow witted goldfish or anarchy would occur. The result of his purchase, suffice to say, ended in the GOLDFISH MASSACRE OF 2009 in which certain goggle eyed goldfish, let us say, never regained the power of sight.

This led to outrage from the kids who loved the goldfish dearly, about how the cichlids were 'bad boys' and should be put in a 'time out', that they should receive severe corporal punishment with small sticks (don't worry this didn't happen) and in order to stay in the tank should be equipped with small muzzles (!) After I explained that it was not practical to make muzzles for fish and both dead goldfish and live cichlids were flushed (well what would you have done with them?) the life lesson learnt basicially amounted to 'always read labels in pet shops before purchasing new pets.'

Marshmallow, it's for you!

Essentially, we learnt that birds of a feather stick together, or in our case, guinea pigs. An easier time of it has been had after the recent purchase of two female guinea pigs called Peanut and Marshmallow. Marshmallow is now twice the size of Peanut and we have had discussions with the nippers about whether Marshmallow is pregnant. We have decided no she is not, partly because both are females and partly because it is obvious from observing her that she eats three quarters of the food and thus simply looks pregnant.

We have also had discussions about whether it is suitable to have Peanut live in a dolls house.

The answer being no unless we can equip it with a flushing guinea pig toilet (patent pending).

Further investigation on the internet for critter fashions has indicated that there are certain guinea pig fashion designers who take things a tad too far. It has been explained to the girls that guinea pigs should not be fashion plates, partly because I do not wish to shell out for such outfits (all fashions posed by models):

One unfortunate side effect is that I have become obsessed with Peanut and Marshmallow and am very concerned with their welfare. Their nails have become too long now and I must either cut them myself or take them to the vet and I am worried they will get hurt - you know, how you are worried about your child hurting from having a shot at the paediatrician. I will only get more and more attached to the animals I call my 'grandpigs' and as they live about eight years I fear I will only get more obsessed with them.

So, do tell, is it normal to think of your pets as children and what has your pet taught you?

Cocktails at Naptime - A Woefully Inadequate Guide to Early Motherhood is available for download at the ibookstore here or in paperback here.

10 Weird Kids' Toys: All I want for Christmas is a Yodeling Lederhosen!

2011-12-13T10:28:00.000-08:00

Today I'm dealing with strange products marketed at children that make you scratch your head and think, hmm, who thought that up?

1. Posh Potty

Psst, Posh Spice, here's the latest word in stylish pottys. Harper's probably getting to the stage soon when she'll be wanting to do number ones and twos in a fashion forward setting.

So if you want something sparkly for Harper then grab this exclusive potty that's studded with Swarovski crystals. And if you dear reader are sobbing that you simply haven't got that kind of cash to spend on a potty to bribe your daughter, then all I can say is, there are plenty of cheaper bribes out there that can work equally well. Believe me, we've all been there - potty training bribes are what it's all about. From chocolate buttons to letting kids play mind numbing games like Angry Birds every time they poop in the correct hole, when the shit hits the fan you do what you can.

2. Facts of Life on a Pillow

This pillow is marketed to kids. I'm all for letting them know about the facts of life but isn't this going a bit forking far?

3. Pee and Poo Plush Toys

Which product designer thought to themselves, “You know what the world needs? Stuffed animals in the image of bodily excrement." You know who you are.

4. Pissed Book Designer let's it all hang out

Beer, bear… what’s the difference, really?

5. She-male dolls

These dolls from Russia quite clearly have both male genitalia and the long flowing hair typically associated with females. I'm a tad confused here. Are they doll versions of David Lee Roth or what?

6. Lost in Translation

Is it fair of LEGO to upset kids at such a young age? Do youngsters really need to know of a possibly sexually frustrating future via the Cock Bloc Super. I think not.

7. Remote Control Lederhosen

For the kid who has everything - a pair of fat dancing ghost pants controlled by a knockwurst. This was either invented by a Nazi war criminal or Walt Disney. Guaranteed to give any kid nightmares.

8. Toy Designer with Mental Problems

I couldn't believe this was real but there's actually a video about it here. Just a very odd idea indeed. Maybe the doll's designer spends too much time alone with his workbench and powertools?

9. Growing Up Skipper

Skipper was meant to be Barbie's little sister, but in 1975, Mattel decided it was time for Skipper to become an adolescent. After countless minutes of research, Mattel settled on trying to 'keep it real.' That, of course, meant that when you rotated Skipper's left arm, she'd grow an inch taller and pop out some tits. Just like a real girl! It goes without saying that there were a few complaints and the doll - which was, alas, pulled from the market.

10. The Kaba Kick

Kaba Kick is Russian Roulette for kids, well in this case a Japanese Roulette. The player points the gun at his or her own head and pulls the trigger. Instead of bullets, a pair of feet kick out from the barrel (which is shaped like a pink hippo). If the gun doesn't fire, the player earns points. What a lovely and constructive game!

All right, so I guess most of you will be sitting there with your jaws open, having had your fill of these oddball toys for now. But I hope I've given you food for thought. Would your kids like any of them in their stockings to you think? And also, do let me know if you'd consider spending seven hundred quid on a sparkly potty?

And if you have a little less in your budget this Christmas, remember that our book Cocktails at Naptime - A Woefully Inadequate Guide to Early Motherhood is now available for download at the ibookstore here or available in paperback here. So if you know a new mum who is on the edge of sanity - get her a copy today!

Larding It Up

2011-10-03T08:31:00.000-07:00

News reaches my ears that Denmark has just launched a "fat tax" on lardy products. Apparently Danes are big fans of butter and bacon and will now have to fork out an extra 25p on a pack of butter and 8p on a packet of crisps, as the new tax on foods which contain more than 2.3% saturated fat comes into effect. Everything from milk to oils, meats and pre-cooked foods such as pizzas will be targeted. The additional revenue raised will fund obesity-fighting measures.

Elsewhere in Europe Hungary slapped a tax on all foods with unhealthy levels of sugar, salt and carbohydrates, as well as goods with high levels of caffeine. Denmark, Switzerland and Austria have already banned trans fats, while Finland and Romania are considering fat taxes. Britain has the biggest obesity problem in Europe, and campaigners have urged the government to follow Denmark's lead.

But hold on to your spare tires - enough of this madness!!

This is all well and good and I applaud the effort to attempt to make people - myself including - eat less fat. But am I the only one who thinks this tax won't have any effect on how much fat is quaffed? In fact, to be honest, I can't help feeling that once fat is more more expensive it will be more not less in demand.

Is this the end to free access to sausages?

In fact, how soon will it be before a black market in fat explodes across Europe where bacon butties are sold tax-free under the table at local pubs and dealers stand on street corners opening coats that are strung with fatty sausages, sausage rolls and slabs of lard?

Will putting higher taxes on unhealthy food really make people buy less of it or will it simply make people feel like naughty boys and girls if they purchase mega-priced lard burgers while giving a two fingered salute to the governments attempt at nannying their exploding girth?

What do you say? Would you pay extra for lardy food or would you turn the other cheek and start quaffing low fat food stuffs?

Or do you see this as the start of the thin edge of the cheese-wedge, when ultimately fatty foods will be banned and a black market in fatty salami splatters across the market place, with people illegally staging fat food parties and stashing cheese in their luggage when having to travel to particularly 'low-fat' countries?

Mop Till You Drop

2011-06-02T09:48:00.000-07:00

The last time I wrote to an agony aunt was when I was fifteen. I wrote to a magazine called Just Seventeen: "I have just started dating a lovely 30 year old fella and so far we have just gone to second base. We are very much in love and recently he told me that he used to be a woman and is a post op transsexual. Now we want to go all the way and I would love to know what to expect in the genital region when we eventually do it. I am a bit freaked out to be honest so please be as graphic as possible so as I know what to expect."

Now I wasn't going out with a post op transsexual I just wrote in for a laugh. But I never got a reply. I mean shame on you Just Seventeen for not grabbing this thorny topic by the (artificial) balls.

Since then I have been tempted to pen letters to agony aunts or especially to the nauseating agony uncle Dr Phil over the years. To be honest with you I am getting a bit worried about my kids. They have both become cleaning fanatics and I don't know what to do about it. So I put pen to paper and wrote to him.

Dear Dr Phil

I have often seen you patronizing people on TV and thought that the time had at last come for me to sit on a tall stool in your studio, listen to your home grown nuggets of wisdom and 'own' my guilt regarding my parenting decisions until snot runs out of my nose and mascara dribbles down my cheeks.

My problem may seem insignificant but the issue is that my seven year old a.k.a Sausage and ten year old Scarlett make me feel massively inadequate in the cleaning department.

I have always been somewhat lackadaisical in my attitude to cleaning. Sort of why fold laundry in the basket if you're just going to wear it again soon, why clean a floor unless it's sticky and why clean a fridge unless there's mold growing in there.

My bedroom is a tad chaotic with clothes jumbled in the drawers and my 300 pairs of shoes all over the shop. So imagine my surprise when Scarlett recently organized my closet (see above) so that the shoes were in pairs. I cried a bit as I saw she had also made my bed for the first time in weeks.

Sausage is even more hardcore. She frequently begs to wash the dishes by hand even though we have a dish washer. She is always mopping the floor. She loves ironing and in fact was late for school yesterday because she was ironing a top (I was supervising).

I only have to leave the Hoover unsupervised before Sausage has plugged it in and is making short work of the carpets. And Scarlett has been known to mow the lawn 'for fun' and without monetary compensation.

The long and short of it is they are already at this young age better at me at all housework. I still do the cooking but it seems like it is only a matter of time before I will be usurped from this too.

I feel deeply inadequate and my self esteem is on the floor. What would you do Dr Phil if no sooner had the dryer beeped when your kids would have 'made a game' out of putting all the freshly dried socks into pairs?

I'm begging you Dr Phil. Tell me what I can do to make myself feel less intimidated by my cleanaholic kids?

Yours

Slobby Housewife

While I am waiting for Dr Phil to pull his finger out please send me your advice. I mean is this normal. Do your kids like doing housework or is it strictly for money?

Knee Deep In Horse Manure?

2011-04-11T07:56:00.000-07:00

For those of you who are not familiar with the 1975 British TV series The Good Life, it was basically about a couple, Tom Good (who gives up his job working at a company that makes plastic toys for breakfast cereal packets) and his wife Barbara, who decide to get back to nature and start living a self-sufficient lifestyle while staying put in their home in the London suburbs. They grow fruits and vegetables in their garden as well as keeping chickens, pigs (Pinky and Perky), a goat (Geraldine) and a cockerel (Lenin). They also make their own electricity, using methane from animal waste, and attempt to make their own clothes with disastrous attempts. They sell or barter surplus crops for essentials they cannot make themselves.

The comedy revolves firstly around the fact they are knee deep in horse manure in the middle of the city and how horrified their very conventional neighbours, Margo and Jerry Leadbetter are at their antics. The main thrust of the show is that Tom and Barbara are nuttier than squirrel shit to be attempting this when they can easily get their chops from the local butcher. Still, it was a great show, and it was fun to watch the two couples regularly getting bladdered on the Goods' homemade wine, flirtations accruing and mercifully stopping one hair short of them becoming suburban swingers.

What's so funny is that these days you couldn't actually do a piss take out of someone trying to 'go natural' in the city - as there are countless serious programs about trying the sustainable lifestyle as if it is somehow fun. Well my inlaws who live in Ireland and do live in the countryside basically were hard up for money in the current economy and started to keep chickens and now all the neighbours barter vegetables for eggs and bread etc. - it is quite sweet to someone observing it all, but basically it came about because of economic hardship not via some idea of trying a new sustainable lifestyle. And while I adore their hens let me just say that chickens really stink, even when well cared for, so anyone who says they want to have two pigs in their garden, well, they're just telling porkers!

And what about you? Do you do anything sustainable? I can understand it if you're living in the countryside but what if you are in the city? I'm not even sure you're allowed to keep livestock in a city garden these days.

As for me I do love those mini pigs and horses you see at the County Fair but I wouldn't want to trip over one on my way to the car, you know?

And if you did watch this show as a child did you want to be Margo or Barbara? Tom or Jerry?

I know Barbara is cute as a button but I always always wanted to be Margo, immaculately decked out in designer outfits, lying on a sofa and quaffing Pimms. Luckily my dream has now become reality!

This blog is part of the AMB May Carnival. Check out the rest of the posts here:

Warning: This book may incite one to laugh out loud in public!

2011-03-14T08:02:00.000-07:00

For those who are not yet addicted to the stylish yet impossibly funny Romina who blogs over at Martyr-hood, do dash over and have a gander of her wonderful review and giveaway of Cocktails at Naptime. Don't be intimidated by the fact that she is impossibly gorgeous even when pregnant! She's just like us under the Angelina Jolie style cheekbones!

The lovely Romina says:

"Cocktails at Naptime" covers all my checklist points of interest.

Talk of saggy breasts - check!

Explicit vagina talk - check!

Sexual innuendo and more - check!

Talk of the penis - check!

Hormonal episodes - check!

Every other experience that I as a mother have been confronted with, but no-one bothered to enlighten me with before birth - check!

Profanity - check!

Laughter - check!

Sense of self worth - check!

These ladies cleverly use the art of humour to embark upon the voyage of early motherhood in a way that is relatable and fun to read.

"If you have just had a baby and are surrounded by a pile of earnest baby books that don't seem to have any relevance to your life, please don't despair. Sometimes you don't need advice, sometimes you just need a cocktail at naptime."

Here here sisters!!

I feel honoured to review this book for you all and strongly suggest that if you are a parent, do yourself a favour and have a read of this epic guide.

You will come to the conclusion that the glass of parenthood is half full...not empty!!

One lucky reader now has the chance to win themselves a copy of "Cocktails at Naptime"!!

All you have to do is either "Follow" me on Google Friend Connect on the top right hand side of my page, or "Networked Blogs", or "like" my Facebook page - and simply leave a comment below of your favourite cocktail and how it became to be your favourite.

Competition closes on Wednesday 16th March 2011.

Good luck - and happy drinking to those who aren't encumbered by the growth of a sobering fetus!!

Bitches.

So what are you waiting for? Hurry on over and check out her blog!!

Romancing the Crone

2011-03-02T06:59:00.000-08:00

If any of you out there are newly solo and rushing to join a dating website, let me offer you a word of caution before you dive in. There is a new breed of man out there looking to hook forty plus women. He will whisper words of utter delight in your ear, he will look like a God and will immediately be smitten by 'your beautiful smile.' The downside is he's a Romeo Scammer, and, as a mature friend of mine told me, they are wriggling all over the dating website scene, like woodworms in wood!

Yes, in tough economic times people are no longer responding to spam emails promising to grow your penis three extra inches or from melodramatic Nigerian government officials asking to lend them money which you will get back soon with 400% interest. These days you need to have the time, and a certain amount of talent to lure gullible people into parting with their cash.

For the woman of a certain age it all starts when a sexy young under thirty guy connects with you on a dating website and sends you a hunky photo of himself. You might initially think what the heck, even if this guy is a tad too young for me he is smokin' hot, you go girl! If you live in America this guy will claim to be American but alas, he will always live at least a hundred miles away. He'll tease and torment you with his emails at first which are grammatically unsound but you think, well, he does say he's a contractor working in Nebraska, so what if he spells like someone who has just learnt English. When the heart finds that perfect soul mate who cares if he can't spell for shit?

The scam goes on in that the guy never gives you his phone number or asks for yours, starts IMing like a love sick schoolboy and sooner or later arranges to fly over to meet you until a glitch occurs, he claims finances are tight, could you please wire over the money for the flight my dearest darling girl, so we can be together? My friend is au fait with the procedure as she sometimes likes to toy with these Romeo Scammers for kicks. And when she checks their IP addresses they are always (quel surprise!) located in Africa.

If there are any documentary makers out there I'd love them to find out if there are call center type places called Romeo Towers or Passionate Plaza in Africa where these Romeo Scammers ply their trades. Just imagine the conversations when a new guy comes on shift:

Romeo 1 "Where are you up to with that lady in Baltimore?"

Romeo 2 going off shift: "Well, I having warm her up nice hot and you can go in for killing. I have told her I am ready to be flying out to Baltimore from Nebraska seeing to her give one. I telling her in last email: Waiting you the playing sweet music love the making me. Cannot wet to your stroke soft skin and shower the perls over you."

Priceless!

All I'm saying is don't be caught out by the new Romeo Scammers out there. If a young toy boy with abs of steel is immediately smitten by you be assured he may want to plunge, not into your hot body but deep into the crevices of your wallet.

From Nutella to the Nut House

2011-02-08T10:13:00.000-08:00

I was a little shocked if not surprised to hear that a tome called Mom Blogging for Dummies will be published in July. Firstly, I must admit I shed a few tears for all the trees that had to be felled to produce such a pointless book. And secondly, any info anyone needs about becoming a mommy blogger is freely available on the internet so what's the point of the book? My blogging pal Very Bored In Catalunya did a brilliant send up of what kinds of stuff you are likely to find within its pages such as: How to crawl up the arse of bigger named bloggers, How to over-decorate your blog with sparkly bling and How to win that all important Nutella gig.

Like Very Bored I have no intention of looking inside the pages of a book that will ~~make some obvious points about mommy blogging~~ lead you gently by the apron strings into the mommy blogging lifestyle, so I decided instead to give any of you out there who aspire to be mommy bloggers the lowdown of what the lifestyle really involves. Believe me it's not all free Nutella and free tickets to Disney World. And while many mommy bloggers cheerfully write reviews about the latest biodegradable baby wipes and get a bit of money from the manufacturers in the process this book should really come with a warning about how addictive it can all be. Many are chosen, and some go off the rails.

The problem is that some mommy bloggers get addicted to the attention their mommy blog brings.

For a select few vulnerable souls, a life of PR-pimpage means becoming obsessed with the hits on your blog, and in some cases making up dramas to get more traffic to your blog. Some of the mommy bloggers who went attention whore mad include the one who (allegedly):

faked a pregnancy

outed her pre-school son as gay

acted like a pat down at an airport was an assault

traded a puff piece for thousands in dental work

Indeed, one of the main qualification for being a mega famous mommy blogger may just be to be able to start a good row on the internet. So just be aware: there is a dark side to mommy blogging. And really, shouldn't there should be a warning on this book: All in the garden of free Nutella is not rosy!

We Still Would

2011-01-25T08:03:00.000-08:00

You got an older brother? Or a dad, maybe Jake?

We’ve all heard of the phrase MILF. Indeed some of us have been horrified (but let’s face it secretly delighted) to be called one. For those who still don’t know, a MILF is a Mummy I’d Like to Fuck. Yes, boys think up that kind of thing, that's how their brains work.

A conversation I had recently on the phenomenon with a chum of a similar age got slightly out of hand. We both work with students, so we’ve both been on the receiving end of the odd MILF comment. Which is nice, if slightly icky when you break it down. I suppose we'll be upset about it when it stops, so at least we've got that going for us for now.

It’s wonderful that all of a sudden older women are attracting the interest of young men, but I am sad to report that we don’t feel the same. With the odd exception in the shape of a perhaps a brief brush with a Gyllenhaal, women don’t really like boys. Boys are daft, to be honest. The truth is, we like an older man, perhaps a GILF. But since the full name of the acronym GILF is, let’s face it, quite horrific, (work it out the G stands for Grandad-see I told you- icky) we decided on a new one that more likely sums up what we’re talking about. These guys are called the WSWs. WSW standing for We Still Would.

So why does the older man appeal? Well, for one, you’d still be young compared to him. I think this is important. I actually feel slightly sorry for those women with substantially younger partners. Whilst they are gadding about looking buff and fantastic straight out of bed in the morning, you are busy getting up an hour before they do to apply fillers and serums to the worst bits and smearing on a careful layer of make up to the whole ensemble lest they turn round to find the face of Zelda from the Terrahawks on the pillow next to them and run to the nearest twenty-one year old.

Zelda from Terrahawks

(or you if you wake up next to a 20 year old)

Still not convinced? Think I've lost it? Well, let's have a look at these reasons why a WSW would be a good bet:

A WSW wouldn’t look at your stretchmarks or episiotomy scars and shriek “What the fuck is that? Dear God, were you in a plane crash or something?!”

A WSW has some good pillow-talk. Old guys-they’ve got good stories. He’ll also speak that talk directly to you instead of messaging you later in a text message full of acronyms you don’t understand. Or use street talk.

He won't ever say anything like "Nice dress, my mum's got the same one."

A WSW wouldn’t need to borrow cash from you cos let’s face it, you’re not going to go for a poverty stricken WSW are you? You've got to have some standards.

A WSW has a personality- he’s had time to develop it. A nineteen year old does not. He’s still quoting from films instead of making up his own jokes. I mean, he just called you a MILF- that’s straight from “American Pie” for goodness sakes. Case in point.

Rise of the WSWs (Possibly with the help of Viagra- but we don’t mind)

So without further ado, here is my WSW list. Feel free to add your own in the comments box.

Harrison Ford: Ruined it a little when he got that terrible earring. We don't like our WSWs trying cheap tricks to look younger. But c’mon, he’s still Han Solo, get ‘em off H!

Terence Stamp: Your gaze is not going to move from his incredible eyes so it doesn’t matter that the rest of him might look like a roll of crushed velvet. You couldn’t have shagged Terence Stamp when he was in his twenties because he was too good looking and you would have looked like a hag next to him no matter how young you were. Now he’s an old guy, you’re on a level pegging. And he would talk to you in his Terence Stamp voice. Good grief! (*faints*)

Jeff Bridges: A person favourite of mine- possibly number one my WSW list. More of a IAWAIAW (I Always Would And I Always Will) than a WSW, actually. A beautiful beautiful man does not wither with age. And Jeff would always have dope with him. You know he would.

Tim Robbins: Formerly married to Queen of the MILFs Susan Sarandon, Robbins gets better with age himself. I think my husband looks like him so yes, THAT's weird. But let's face it, this whole post is weird so we'll go with it.

Michael Palin: Sexiest of the Pythons by a long way. And I still would. I’m prepared to defend this choice to the hilt. Palin does it for me- so shoot me. I bet he’d also bring you tea and toast in bed without you asking. Also good for helping you plan a holiday.

Jeremy Irons: People who don’t understand this choice haven’t seen the film "Damage". Go and watch it and report back to register your confirmation that YSW (You Still Would). He could also read the phone book out as foreplay.

Viggo Mortensen: Bring the Lord of the Rings outfit Viggo. That’s all we ask.

In Service

2011-01-20T11:24:00.000-08:00

One of the rites of passage as a human being is having that first part time job as a waitress, or bartending as a student. Some of the best laughs of your life are to be had working with fellow disgruntled students serving up a burger and salad with a pubic hair carefully placed betwixt patty and bun to the slug/guy hybrid creature who talked solely to your breasts whilst you took his order. Some of the best parties I've ever been to involved the liberation of leftover stock from hotel weddings to whom I served the bride and groom with my fellow soup-monkeys. Some of the wildest nights out I ever had were with folk I used to work with at the cocktail face after we'd chucked the last punter out of the club. But a life in the service industry? An actual career serving people? Not for me.

As soon as I left Uni it was my goal to never serve again. OK it didn't work immediately like that- I had to make ends meet and all that with crummy jobs in theatre box offices, petrol stations and one particularly horrible stint as a receptionist in a hotel that seemed to be solely for oil-rig bound gorillas who were fogged in onshore and permanently drunk and/or angry. But, you get my point- as soon as it was feasibly possible I got out of the exhausting arena of the service industry tout suite. Never to return.

Or so I thought.

Twelve years ago I joined the ranks of those in service once again. The conditions I find are still much the same as they were:

Demanding and often unreasonable customers
Abuse
Poor personal hygiene standards
Ordering off menu
Lack of manners
Occasional acts of violence
Complaints about the service
Complaints about the food
Repeated demands for service even though the kitchen closed an hour ago
And don't even get me started on the mess they leave behind
Lack of remuneration

When you have kids-that's it. You are back in service for good. And you can't spit in their soup in the kitchen before you bring it out to them if they are rude to you.

Apparently, if you do, they get their own back when you go and live with them as an old lady.

Soup anyone?

I'm Too Sexy For My Harem Pants

2011-01-12T09:20:00.000-08:00

The legendary Emma K and a young fan

Today I am honoured to be writing a post about my own personal style. I was tagged by the divine Rich Asshole who has awarded the Cocktails at Naptime Blog a Stylish Blogger Award.

It may well have been the sight of our wonderful book inside the covers of style bible Cosmopolitan Pregnancy (Summer issue out now in Australia) that prompted her to bestow us with the award. But whatever prompted her to tag us I am more than welcome to air my dirty laundry and then carry out her instructions which are:

1) Thanks and linkage back to my pal. No problem. 2) Share 7 things about myself. 3) Award 15 recently discovered bloggers the Stylish Bloggers Award and 4) contact them and tell them that they, too, are Stylish.

Now Gillian may want to write her own fashion post and this post in no way reflects on her fashion choices but I have always had a bit of a checkered relationship with fashion. I have done a stint at the fashion police here in Baltimore but generally speaking I am a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde where fashion is concerned. I do scrub up fairly well but I mostly don't bother and go out without a scrap of makeup wearing sweatpants. My personal style is a mix of Bett Lynch and Catherine Deneuve. Classic tailoring with a shot of loudmouthed barmaid if you will.

Deneuve + Lynch = Emma K

How fashion forward am I you may well ask? Well if a truly fashion person like Anna Wintour is a Ferrari, I am more like a clumsy clown riding one of those miniature tricycles at the circus. What I mean is, I don't follow fashion. I don't understand 'current trends' or why you should wear harem pants or bunny ears to name but two daft trends.

But for now, pay close attention to the following 7 Fancy Facts:

Until I was nine we lived in a flat with no indoor toilet or bathroom (there was a toilet in the outside hall but no bathroom anywhere). Let's just say I used to bathe at friends' places an awful lot.
Our TV broke for about four years and mum didn't get a new one. It was quite nice in a way because I read about a million books but the downside was this was in the midst of Dallas fever and I felt a bit left out when I had no idea what they were on about when everyone at school kept talking about "Who Shot JR?"
When I was a kid my mum used to give German lessons at our home but she could never get rid of the pupils at the end of the hour so I used to have to dress up as a grownup, go outside and ring the bell and pretend to be the next pupil.
I have an addiction to Branston Pickle.
I had a phase when I fancied Simon Cowell and I still can't fully explain why.
I would not enjoy a meal of "liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti" - I am the antithesis of a picky eater and will eat anything, with the exception of innards i.e. lungs, kidneys, liver, heart etc.
I am a hamster killer - One winter when I was about ten, I noticed that my Syrian hamster had turned stiff and cold in his cage. Figuring, he was dead I threw him in the trash. A friend later told me that he was probably hibernating as the Syrians often do that. Yeah, I know I will burn in hell for that.

Oh crap. Reading that you can see I'm not all that Fancy or Stylish. Still I'm sure it's given you an insight into me if nothing else. So now I'd like to give the Stylish Blogger Award to:

Good Golly Miss Holly

Ramblings From Toushka

Mum Husband Two Girls Dog

Lori and Family

2011-01-07T00:47:00.000-08:00

We had some terrible news yesterday. Lori of Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mum, a friend of us here has seen her husband Tony be taken into intensive care. We don't know the details of why but we do know that this has been a tremendous and tragic shock to everyone, and that Tony is fighting for his life. Lori needs all the support she can get.

Lori posted this message on her blog yesterday to briefly explain the situation as it stands.

Emma and Gillian would like to send our love to Lori and her family. We hope and pray that Tony is recovering and will be back with his family soon.

There is nothing we can do practically, but we'd like to send this message to say that we are thinking of you and we hope that in a small way it helps to know you have our good wishes behind you.

Much love,

Gillian and Emma

xxxxxx

Gifts for New Mums are Full of Folly

2010-12-15T08:53:00.000-08:00

Gifts for new mums are full of folly,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Tis the season to grin stiffly while presented with crap,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Don we now our baby high heels,
Fa la la, la la la, la la la.
It's never too early be a Lady Gaga,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

See the baby poop scooper bags before us,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
For the baby who won't wear nappies.
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Follow me in merry measure,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
While I receive the gift of Baby Tee-Pee,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Germophobics love the Potty Mitts,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
But I don't think the Baby Toupee is a suitable gift,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

If you really want to make a new mum's Christmas,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
Stuff a copy of Cocktails at Naptime in her stocking!,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.

Merry Christmas to you all and have a fabulous New Year! Now we're off to sample some liqueur chocolates and maybe a Cocktail or two.

Hugs

Emma and Gillian

xxxx

Sex After Baby: Doing the Dirty

2010-11-29T09:46:00.000-08:00

Sex after baby will not be one of your top priorities

Once you have given birth you will start suffering from amnesia. If your husband asks you about having sex it will be like you have no idea what he is talking about. "Sex, what's that again?" you will murmur as he tries to manhandle your breast. Truth be told some of you may be having sex a few days after birth but we're assuming you have either round the clock nanny care and/or are a figment of men's imaginations. For the rest of us sex will be off the agenda for the foreseeable future due to feeling tired, feeling like a milk cow and generally not feeling like it. The downside is your husband will want to resume sexual relations as soon as possible and you'll start coming up with all sorts of crazy excuses to avoid sex such as these:

Excuse 1: "My Scar’s Still Too Sore"

Answer: If you had a Caesarean, chances are it might still be bothering you a bit, but is that any excuse not to give sex a whirl? All you have to do is try a position that doesn’t rub against your scar. Don’t be too ambitious though or you might do yourself an injury. For example, ‘the Wheelbarrow’ position is murder on your arms, or so we’ve heard. Also ‘the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ position can end up giving you or your husband pretty bad carpet burn, depending on who’s being the tiger and who’s being the dragon of course.

Excuse 2: "Won’t I Take His Eye Out?"

Answer: Chances are, if you are nursing you might very well squirt your husband during sex. If you really are too self-conscious about this then by all means don a bra. But we’re pretty sure hubby won’t mind that your breasts have turned into a couple of water pistols (or should that be milk pistols?). In fact, since most men love cowboy films and breasts, this may turn out to be his ultimate fantasy, a buxom cowgirl letting it rip with both barrels, so to speak.

Excuse 3: "The Clock’s Against Us!"

Answer: If your husband’s been doing the ultimate foreplay - which as you'll find out in Cocktails at Naptime is housework with plenty of elbow grease – and you’re looking anxiously at the clock and wondering if he really does have time to take off his rubber gloves and give you a good going over before Junior wants another feed, then fret no more. Vibrators, God bless them, are the sexual equivalent to microwaves, and will help you be done in a jiffy. Incorporating them into your lovemaking will help to speedily conclude the act so that you are one happily satisfied woman before once again taking up the reins again as Feeder of the Babe Who is Insatiable.

But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself here. Maybe you're a new mum who hasn't yet gotten back into the saddle so to speak. Let's call a spade a spade here, at some point you will have to hold up the white flag and yell "Surrender!" so make it now, make it tonight. Maybe you're simply scared about what sex after baby will be like. Well fear not, this is how it's going to be.

The Caveman Cometh or What Will It Really Be Like?

The first time you attempt to have sex post-birth will most likely remind you of a cave trip you took at school where you invariably got lost. Except that this time of course, you're the cave and the explorer is your hapless husband's penis, a caveman lost in the limitless caverns of your vaginal walls (skip this bit if you've been frantically Kegelling as soon as Junior was born, we were too tired to get dressed or even to mop baby vomit off the sofa to Kegel).

As your husband prepares to fire his arrow into your cave, there will invariable be something a little nerve wracking about the act, your husband tentatively exploring your post-partum vagina as if he were scared it were going to do something unexpected - like letting off an air bag. The act itself probably won't be great or even good and you may wonder if you're feeling any sexual sensations at all or whether you just have an urgent need to pee. But whatever happens, watch his face carefully for signs of progress. And whatever you do, don't say those immortal words "Is it in yet?" He'll be shrivelled down to the size of a worm before you can say, "Can we just hurry it up a bit love, Junior's wailing for his next feed."

But on the upside you'll have got it over with.

So, what was first time sex after giving birth for you or should I really not ask?

Connect 2 Mums

2010-11-22T01:00:00.000-08:00

The top mums' networking site Connect 2 Mums has reviewed "Cocktails at Naptime" and has two copies of the book to giveaway in a competition.

The review is by Jen Muir who is a mum, pregnant lady, blogger and design consultant.

Read her review here

You may have to join Connect 2 Mums to get into the site but it's free and it's well worth joining.

Here's an extract:

“I was recently asked by c2m if I would like to read and review “Cocktails at Naptime” by Gillian Martin and
Emma Kaufmann, I was more than happy to. What a great excuse to laze around and read for a few hours! Well, while my two year old daughter was asleep, and I was temporarily not overcome with first trimester “morning” sickness anyway.

“Cocktails at Naptime” is described by the authors themselves as “a woefully inadequate guide to early
motherhood”, on the front cover no less (my husband commented on what an odd form of advertisement he thought that was – typical male).

The book takes a lighthearted approach to warning all who are game about the things a woman may go through physically and emotionally once that little bundle of joy arrives and the effect it may have on her relationships with others (as you can imagine, there are some hilarious in-law references).

While the book is written in a very humorous style (I often found myself laughing out loud while reading
alone on the couch) and is very entertaining, I still found it to be very informative and, well, re-assuring I guess. I think partly the fact that the authors can make such fun of what can in other contexts be very raw subjects,
reminds me that I am not alone, that many mothers have gone before me, made the same mistakes and had the same doubts as I do. Also, between all the jokes there is some very real advice and I think sometimes it is easier to see the bigger picture when you take a step back and view something in a different light as “Cocktails at Naptime” forces you to.

Interestingly the authors have never met in person. Emma is a British ex-pat living in America, while Gillian is in Scotland, both apparently quiet well known blog writers. To put a further twist to the story “Cocktails at Naptime” has been published by Australian publishers Finch. While this is a wonderful example of the whole “global village” it leaves the book with a slightly odd feeling, I was never quite sure if I was reading an English, American or Australian book, as there seem to be references to all three throughout, however I don’t suppose it affects the flow too much.

I also found “Cocktails at Naptime” to be an appropriate book for all mothers, whether expecting, nursing,
tackling the toddler years and beyond or thinking about doing it all again. I know while reading I was both reminiscing about my daughter’s birth and what followed, as well as reminding myself what I have to look forward to with number 2. I think it changed my perspective on a few things too.

I would definitely recommend “Cocktails at Naptime” to any mother, first time expecting, or with three under
five!

Read the full article here. http://connect2mums.com.au/profiles/blogs/cocktails-at-naptime-book

Book Tour Redux

2010-11-20T16:10:00.000-08:00

You know those episodes of Friends or The Simpsons where you think you are getting a brand new episode but then you find out it's a flipping clip show of all the best bits of Ross and Rachel's relationship or all the Simpsons' musical numbers like "Who Needs the Kwiki-Mart" (by Apu)? You know them? You know at first you go, "Oh bloody hell, a flippin' clip show!" but before you know it, you're sat down on the sofa and are really quite enjoying seeing all the best bits again? Well, we're going to do that. Hell, we might even throw in some new material which is more than you would get from Matt Groening and chums.

In October Emma and Gillian traveled Australia and New Zealand and appeared in some shape or form on some of the best blogs of those fair countries on our book tour. There were reviews, guest posts, original posts and all sorts of fun. It ended on November 1st, and then Emma and Gill were booked into the Betty Ford Clinic for a few weeks to recover. But just like a lot of the inmates of Betty Ford, we want another fix, so we're back touring. We're going to post all the best bits of the tour, link to our blog tour hosts blogs about the book (which were ace- must better than that "We were on a break! schtick of Ross Geller's) and let our new followers see what all the fuss was about.

In addition we'd like to invite new readers and friends to write reviews of their own. Hell, we'll even do some more interviews if anyone wants to feature us on their blog. So if you've read Cocktails at Naptime or if indeed you won a copy of the book on the blog tour- get in touch. Just email Gillian and let her know at:

gillianamartin(at)hotmail(dot)com

Or just give us a shout in the comments box below.

We'll link to your review and make sure we send readers over your way.

We're going to start our redux next week so look out for some great stuff you may have missed and some new stuff too.

If you want your very own copy of the book they are all talking about then go HERE

Dear Santa...

2010-11-17T07:29:00.000-08:00

A photo shoot- what a great gift for the pregnant lady! (Not)
http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/

When you get pregnant there are lots of things that happen to you that never even occurred to you. There’s the swelling of body parts other than your belly (fingers and toes, anyone?), the fact you can’t go a hour without eating a substantial meal, and the dreadful digestive problems you previously thought only elderly dogs suffered from.

However there’s something a lot of first time mums are going to find out about being pregnant (or indeed nursing) at Christmas time and that’s this: you will get crap Christmas presents this year.

Nobody knows what to buy a pregnant lady. You can’t buy them clothes because they are monster sized, sorry- what I mean is they are blooming and burgeoning and nothing will fit them-yes sometimes even shoes. You can’t even buy them maternity clothes as they will hurl them back at you with some added abuse. Booze is out for obvious reasons and anything fragranced is bound to make the super sensitive mum-to-be puke as soon as they catch a whiff of whatever soapy, moisturisey type cosmetic you’ve bought them.

So what’s left? Items for baby? Absolutely not. A great deal of parents are very superstitious about having baby items in their home until baby himself is actually here in the flesh. Furthermore, isn’t the gift supposed to be for the lady in question, not the unborn progeny inside her? His or her time will come...oh yes it will.

Now, obviously this is a slightly churlish post to come from two writers who have written a book that is possibly the BEST EVER Christmas gift you could give a new mum or a pregnant lady (Click here to make sure Santa Claus gets his order in good time), but all the same the question has to be asked. What the blazes do you buy a woman who can’t do any of the following things this Christmas:

Move
Drink alcohol
Eat cheese/shellfish/raw eggs/pate
Wear nice clothes
Smell anything more pungent than fabric softener
Stay awake for longer than a couple of hours at a time

Six years ago my sister and I were pregnant at the same time. She was three months ahead of me in gestation. We knew we would be a problem to buy for so we armed ourselves with a list of suggestions for those who were struggling. Some ignored the list. Yes, you know who you are. Some decided a good idea would be to buy us both a bottle of red wine. Presumably cos it’s healthy, init? What would have been less appropriate, I ask you? A soft cheeseboard? A voucher for a bungee jump? A boob tube? Roller skates? A unicycle?

I expect a full list of other terrible pregnant lady Christmas gifts to appear shortly in the comments box. C'mon ladies- name and shame! Who bought you Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin" or a DVD of Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby"?

Let’s do the relatives and friends of those pregnant or nursing ladies a favour and make a special Christmas list. Then we can send it on to those that we may think could go down the bottle of red wine route...or worse the cosy bedjacket/wooly socks route. What’s the ideal present for those with one in the oven?

Other than a copy of Cocktails at Naptime, that is. *Cough*

Some poses are cheekier than others

2010-11-16T07:50:00.000-08:00

This just in from Sarah from Brunei who SWEARS she saw this in a Fremantle bookstore whilst on holiday and DIDN'T move it there herself!

Add your pic of the book to our growing gallery by clicking here. You could win books from Finch Publishing back catalogue.

Glamour Magazine

2010-11-12T10:30:00.000-08:00

The UK's top selling woman's magazine Glamour features a little article by Gillian this week. It's called "Five things to Know Before Pregnancy" and you can read it here.

Make sure you comment and/or rate it, if you like it!

Now You're Pregnant The Race Is On!

2010-11-01T09:11:00.000-07:00

If you are newly pregnant you are at grave risk – unless you are careful – of finding your next nine months locked in bump to bump combat, part of a Gladiator-style race against other pregnant mums. Few of us can escape the pressure to have a competitive pregnancy so I say you might as well throw in the towel and just go for it. Basically you need to decide whether you are going to be a Stickthin or a Supersizer.

Stickthins and Supersizers

Stickthins like Victoria Beckham carry their bump with flair, as if it were a Prada purse and not twenty pounds of lumbering flesh and embryonic fluid. The ultimate prestige in this category is when a stranger assumes you are much further along than you actually are. If you are the kind of pregnant woman who can start stick thin and stay stick thin throughout her pregnancy (but with a small bump), you have a good chance of competing with the Stickthins. But let’s face facts here most of us would have an easier job competing with the Supersizers. I did, twice.

Now, both these groups are in a race against each other. While Stickthins vie to put on the least amount of weight over the nine months (often demonstrated by showing off that they have such incredible will power that they can follow a healthy eating plan such as the one in What to Expect When You’re Expecting), Supersizers will grab the chance to eat for two and will tell anyone who is listening what a huge amount of weight they are carrying.

Supersizers will compete with other Supersizers to see who can put on the most weight during pregnancy, while at the same time pretending that they are eating healthily, and I say, hey, ‘healthy’ is open to interpretation. Under the crazed influence of pregnancy hormones, many Supersizers (including myself) have been known to interpret two Big Macs eaten before bed as healthy, provided there is a lettuce leaf in between the patties.

It goes without saying that Stickthins will be at the gym every day throughout, treadmilling or Stairmastering up until the day their waters break, determined to put on as little weight as possible.

And when that particular contest is over, it’s time to get down to the next one, that of giving birth. There are two categories in the birthing category: I Had More Complications That You Did with extra brownie points for those who had several false labours which turned out to be undigested tacos and I Had A Natural Birth It Was Ever So Painful But It Was Worth It with extra points awarded to those who did not use expletives or bite their partners during the excruciating pain of undrugged labour.

So, have fun competing! Then take a breather and pat yourself on the back before getting stuck into the next challenge – that of being a competitive parent!

Book tour finale: Happy Child

2010-10-31T15:33:00.000-07:00

If you're an Australian mum you're bound to know about Happy Child, a parenting website run by Yvette Vignando. Yvette's e-zine and site isn't just about the baby stuff, it's there for you rifght throughout the nursery years, the school years, and well into the uber challenging teenage years. If you haven't subscribed- you should. It's free and Happy Child is packed with great parenting articles.

To round off the Cocktails at Naptime book tour, Gillian has pitched up at Happy Child to write a guest article. As with everything Gillian writes, don't expect it to be too serious. Head on over to Happy Child to read the full post and win a copy of the book.

In Cocktails at Naptime, a book I wrote with Emma Kaufmann we said:

“Yes we’ve all been to another mother’s house that has looked like she’s spent the morning actually licking it clean with her own tongue as if a lifestyle magazine photo shoot were happening that very afternoon instead of your visit for tea, biscuits and gossip. That woman will soon be having a breakdown in the middle of a supermarket aisle: you do not want to be her.”

My own mother was and is that woman. She's a fantastic mum but she's an absolute neatness and clean freak. Her house is immaculate. The other week she got excited when she found a secret compartment in her tumble dryer that would need regular cleaning. One that she didn’t know existed before. She reacted to finding this fluff-filled compartment in the way normal people react when they find a $50 note they’d forgotten about in the pocket of last season’s jacket.

When she was recovering from an operation in her late forties she had to get a cleaner. She would clean before the cleaner arrived. And after she left.

I am like my own mother in many ways, I look like her, I hear myself talking like her but in terms of house pride we are polar opposites. She despairs of me and if it weren't for the physical resemblance she might think I'm some kind of changeling. Sometimes I feel a little guilty about it, especially when my mum comes round to visit unexpectedly, but on the whole I'm happy that I don’t feel the need to spend six hours a day making sure my house is immaculate. The thing is, I'm a mother of the 21st Century; so much is expected of me. In addition to being a mother and a wife, it's expected that I earn a living too. When my parents married in the sixties, the first thing my mother did was quit her job and set out her stall as a housewife. My parents had no money and it would be eighteen months before she even had a baby (me), but no-one batted an eyelid at her non-working status. Her mother had done the same, as had all her friends when they got a ring on their finger. Can you imagine that flying with your husband these days?

If I was to achieve the standards of neatness and housewifely perfection that my own mother and other women of her generation maintain, I would spend every hour of my non-working time with my hands full of Hoover and my head down sinks and toilets instead of paying any attention to my kids. There has to be a balance. Nothing makes me happier than visiting friends whose houses are an absolute disgrace. A scene of domestic devastation fills me with joy. My own house teeters on the edge of messiness most of the time, but somehow we manage to avoid it collapsing into a perma-hovel completely. I like to feel slightly smug when I witness others whose houses have got completely out of control. It makes me feel like a success! I’m not as slovenly or inadequate as them. Woohoo!

I'm lucky enough to live across from a friend who is a lone parent and has four teenagers, a foster child and a full time teaching job. Whenever I feel domestically inadequate I pay her a visit. I pick my way through the mound of laundry to her messy kitchen for a mug of tea with some dog hair in it and I stay there for an hour basking in the chaos. Then I go home and miraculously my house feels like something out of a homes and gardens magazine, without so much as me lifting a finger. I’d recommend finding a friend like this is you don’t have one already.

As I type this in my dining room I'm surrounded by my daughter and her friends making Halloween decorations. Upstairs my son has three friends in and they are making a racket with guitars and a drum machine. There are sequins all over my floor, I've just heard a massive crash upstairs, papier mache balls drying all over my kitchen counter and someone has just got a glob of glue in their hair that I had to break off from this article to scrape out before it set and an emergency hairdresser's appointment had to be made.

I admit it, my living room is in a bit of a state and I have no idea what we’ll be having for tea. But do you think my kids and their friends will remember any of my housekeeping shortcomings in years to come? Do you think I'll look back on my life and sigh and say “I wish I'd done more housework.”?

Of course I won’t. As for the kids, I hope they’ll remember how their friends used to like to hang out at their house and how there was always something cool going on. And how no-one ever asked them to lift their feet to let a vacuum cleaner go past. That’s the house I like to run, a busy one with lots going on and one where a spillage on a cream carpet doesn’t reduce a woman to tears.

Who knows maybe when they leave home I’ll even manage to squeeze about ten years of housepride in…before my grandchildren arrive to wreck the joint.

Visit Happy Child by clicking here.

Book Tour: Day 21: Catching the Magic

2010-10-31T09:41:00.000-07:00

The Cocktails at Naptime Book tour is in its final days and here's our last visit to New Zealand. We're at Sarah Lee's Catching the Magic, in Wellington.

"When I had my first baby, seven years ago, I had a sea of books on either side of my breastfeeding chair. Let’s just say I had the yin and the yang of parenting books. It took me six months to listen to my instincts, ditch the books and go with what felt right. I’d been told before motherhood that babies don’t come with manuals. It took me a while to realise how true that was. The only way forward was to piece together a mix of advice to come up with the best fit for baby and I.

If only Cocktails at Naptime had been around back then I might have managed to get through the first year of parenthood without requiring prozac. "

Read the full post here.

Book Tour: Day 20: Sunny Side Up

2010-10-28T16:14:00.000-07:00

Kirrily over at Sunny Side Up is next up for a Cocktails at Naptime review.

Extract:

"And this is where the book - Cocktails At Naptime - comes in. If you've been under a rock in the mummy blogosphere, not only will you not have heard of its existence (and shame on you), but you also won't know that Gillian Martin and Emma Kaufmann co-authored the book and have never actually met. It's now the stuff of folk legend, I'm sure, for it remains a mystery to me how anything so well crafted has been put together by more than one person who don't even live in the same country. As a wannabe published author myself, I find that a remarkable feat on its own.

But as it stands, I've devoured Cocktails At Naptime cover to cover and I have to say, this book is such a delightfully refreshing, funny - frankly - pisstake on the entire debacle oh sorry, miracle that is bringing home a new baby. You can't help but laught out loud, even if you're the hardest nut to crack. "

Click here to read the full review (and to enter the Sunny Side Up competition)

Book tour, Day 19: WoogsWorld

2010-10-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

"Suck on this!" Gina Ford, says Mrs Woog of Woogs World. Yeah, Gina. Gillian and Emma are interviewed by Mrs Woog.

"Look at this. "
"Can you please explain why I find it so offensive? "

Read the full interview here.

Book Tour Day 18: Life in a Pink Fibro

2010-10-24T04:36:00.000-07:00

Alison from Life in a Pink Fibro is a writer. More-over, like Gillian and Emma, she is writing a book with a writing partner who lives hundreds of miles away. She's interviewed Gillian and Emma about their writing experience of Cocktails at Naptime.

Extract:

"When Gillian Martin got in touch to ask if I'd be part of the blog tour for the cute, funny book - Cocktails at Naptime (Finch) - that she'd co-authored with Emma Kaufmann, I thought they'd knocked on the wrong door. After all, it's been nearly four years since there was a newborn in this house and that's unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Okay, ever.

But then I investigated a bit more (as I do) and discovered that there was more to the story than met the eye. Specifically, that Gillan and Emma had written the book together, despite the fact that they were based on different continents. Moreover, they had never met.

Confession time: I have co-written a (not yet accepted for publication) romance novel with a friend. She lives in another state."

Read the full interview here.

Book Tour Day 17; Bobby Robin

2010-10-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

And we're still in New Zealand with the lovely Bobby Robin:

Extract:

"I was sent the new book Cocktails at Naptime to review and although I certainly don't have time to read these days - I made time for this one! It had me in stitches from the get-go. I've always thought that if a book can make you laugh out loud or cry uncontrollably then it's pretty good - well, this book - did both (but the tears came with laughter not sorrow!)."

Read the full review here!

Book Tour Day 16: Moments of Whimsy

2010-10-23T05:21:00.000-07:00

This was a real test. Would a mother of teenagers relate to the book. After all it's all about the first year of motherhood. But Cate at Moments of Whimsy found Cocktails at Naptime had more than a few uses...

"I was somewhat perplexed though. At this stage of my life, I should be sitting down with my own overseas blogging buddy (Vix?) and penning my own woefully inadequate guide for surviving the teenage years, taking the lead from the clever girls who wrote this tome from different continents after connecting via the blogging world. (You can read their personal blogs here and here). Could I still relate to a book about that first year of child rearing when I was so many years down the track? Would I recall those various scenarios referred to in the book such as sleep deprivation (mine), sex deprivation (his) and a flabby tummy (mine again)? "

Read the full review here. (and don't forget to check out the new fans of the book at the bottom of the post!)

Book Tour Day 15: Diary of a Mad Cow

2010-10-22T05:27:00.000-07:00

Today we're over at fellow author, Mad Cow's cowshed.

Extract:

"Ahhh just the book I’ve been looking for.

Or was looking for, before my self-imposed ban on reading any sort of parenting book, ever again (at least, until I have to read over my own) lest I resort, yet again, to hurling books across bedrooms, whilst feeding a newborn and screaming about sanctimonious know it alls who are not in my bedroom as my right nipple is being removed by the gums of a 6 week old and the thought of wine makes me want to vomit

Um .. where was I? Oh, yes. Then this book, Cocktails at Naptime arrived in my post office box. Sadly, a little late, as my “baby” is now two, and we all know you are no longer a mother once your child hits the golden age of two years old. Just check out all the “parenting” websites. And the “we interviewed some mothers about who they want as our next prime minister” in the paper, and had a lovely large group photo of them; all with babies, save for the one kid who was “two years old”.

I was most excited about the title, thinking I was going to be treated to a selection of cocktail recipes you can whip up with a bub hanging off your boob, or perhaps tips on how to mix a margarita and a bottle of formula without confusing the two. Sadly, this was not to be.

Also, this “naptime” business … what is this?"

Read the full review here

Book Tour Day 14: Candy's Family

2010-10-21T11:18:00.000-07:00

Our most prolific blog host, not in terms of blogging but in terms of popping kids out (she has 7 kids! look- the whole of Candy's lovely Family are at the head of this post) Candy, is hosting us today.

Extract:

"This book is a lot of fun to read. Thanks to Finch Publishing for sending me a review copy. While reading it I lost count of how many times I found my self thinking: Yes, that is so true! I’ve done that. I’ve been through that. This stuff happened to me too! It is full of all the rather important little bits of information you mum neglected to tell you, my theory is that grandma values having grandchildren much more than your sanity.

Just today I was standing at the checkout alone (yes I know, alone!) and ahead of me was a woman with a toddler babbling away at me, feeling fairly amiable – as one does when they are free of their own minions for a brief moment – I returned said toddlers attention and said Hello there (small snot encrusted one). His mother turns to me and says “If you value your sleep you’ll never have kids”. Aside from that being a completely unexpected and unnecessary response I realised that here is a mum who is finding out the hard way that parenting is the most tiring, brain draining, physically depleting, libido stealing, repetitive undertaking a person can ever do. I know, yet I’ve had seven babies. What the hell is wrong with me? See, babies do things to your mind..."

Read the full review here.

Book Tour: Day 13: Good Golly, Miss Holly!

2010-10-19T14:55:00.000-07:00

Miss Holly was unable to host the book tour so her daughter, Bug, took over.

Extract:

"Hurro everyone, it's the Bug here!

My Mama's still on her blog holiday and while she's doing all the fun Mama stuff like sorting out the linen cupboard and scrubbing the turrlet, I'm sneaking online ... How badass am I?

I tell you, I feel alot like Special Agent Oso!

So anyway, I overheard my Mama on the phone the other day saying that she'd been given a copy of this awesome book written by these two funny mamas, Gillian Martin and Emma Kaufmann. I even heard her say that she wishes it had been around when I was born. Something about lack of sleep and leaking boobs. Whatever that means."

Read Bug's full review over here.

Also... how cute is Bug???

Book Tour: Day 12: the Not Drowning Mother

2010-10-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

Week 3 of the Cocktails at Naptime Book Tour kicks off with our first original post inspired by the themes in the book. The excellent Not Drowning Mother (Best Australian Blogger winner at the Bloggies, dontchaknow!) has been thinking about appreciating the fleeting baby years.

Extract:

'Imagine being one of the Chilean miners still waiting to be rescued from the mine and getting a message from one of the guys who’d been already rescued saying “Enjoy yourself down there while you can! Above ground is sooooo overrated and there’s nothing on TV tonight, anyway.” Well, that’s how a little how it felt when I was wrangling a wailing newborn and a shouty toddler at the supermarket and some random stranger would pat me on the arm and say “Enjoy the baby years, love. They go past in a flash!” It should be noted that generally, the kind of people who offered such advice, would have just spent their life savings on a Winnebago so they could enjoy their grandchildren at a healthy 400km+ distance. Whatevs. Still, here I am, actually standing on the other side of that long dark tunnel called “The Baby Years”. '

Read the full post here.

Thanks NDM for making us sob on a Monday morning...sniff!

STOP PRESS: Congratulations to The NDM. Her Cocktails book tour post has made it to Freshly Pressed, the showcase of Wordpress blogs. Comments on the post are (currently) nearing 150. Quite an achievement. See here: http://wordpress.com/

Book Tour Day 11 : London City Mum

2010-10-17T03:03:00.000-07:00

We've hopped back from Australia and New Zealand for the weekend to London for a mini-break. Insead of going to see the Houses of Parliament or Buckingham Palace we're over at London City Mum's place where she's got an interview with Gillian and Emma.

Extract:

Here's a thought.

Suppose you really liked one of the virtual bloggers who regularly leaves comments on your posts, sends you funny emails, eventually picks up the phone and calls, or - even better - Skypes you so you can see them in person. You feel like you truly know this individual and it is as if you had been friends forever. You share a sense of humour, a talent for writing, and a perception of reality that is laden with comedy.

Now, if this were me, I would have been running around shouting "Stalker!" soon after the Skype call.

Not so these two ladies. Despite living some distance apart (one in the US, one in Scotland), they have pulled off that amazing feat of actually writing a book together. And getting it published. In Australia, of all places. Without ever meeting in person. How mad is that?

And the end result is a highly entertaining, extremely tongue-in-cheek, look at early motherhood. A book that says exactly what you need to know in order to retain some sense of normality - I use the term loosely - after the term 'a good night's sleep' recedes forever from your memory.

Being an extremely serious blogger, I thought it only appropriate to ask some meaningful questions of the duo, ie ones that did not involve training, races or triathlons of any shape or size, in the hope that some of their fame might rub off on me.

Read the full interview here.

Book tour extra: Sticks and Stones

2010-10-14T06:42:00.000-07:00

The Trunchbull from Matilda

(Roald Dahl knew how to send up teachers)

Kids can be evil beasts. Especially schoolkids.

Quite soon after the launch of Friends Reunited in the united Kingdom, some forums were the subject of a legal investigation, after subscribers defamed and slandered teachers they had once had in an effort to rekindle and relive the old days. The same kind of stuff is probably going on in the land of Facebook right now.

Kids seem to be able to find a person's weak point and home in on it, making it the be-all and end-all of a teacher’s reputation. Kids can be vicious little feral monsters. William Golding knew this; he wrote a book about conches and flies and pigs heads and stuff that kids are now forced to read in the very schools they mockingly run amok in.

Given that a teacher will, in the course of their career, teach generations of kids, it still surprised me to find out that down the years, and even across different schools, different kids have had the SAME nicknames for certain teachers that I once had.

A couple of times since my husband Meeester M started teaching we have come across teachers that he has been in contact with or even colleagues with, that I had at school. In some cases, those teachers had (usually offensive) nicknames. Turns out that two generations later these teachers have THE SAME nicknames they had when I was a schoolkid.

A biology teacher who had a perennial, vile blob of spittle in the corners of his mouth was simply called “Foamy”. Often in Bunsen burner type experiments where liquid was to heated up, we would exclaim excitedly on boiling point, “Sir it’s foaming, it’s foaming!” to much sniggering. Surely, the man knew that we were mocking him, yet he would calmly respond, "Well, yes, it will do that..."

Another teacher who would get quite exuberant and energetic about his subject, but who decided never to wear any deodorant, was given a can of SURE for Men on his desk every Christmas, as all his students could concentrate on were dark patches of sweat under the arms as he waved them about. We never paid much attention to the actual content of his sweat inducing rants.

Given that a teacher can have a career of forty years, and that every class would do this to him every year, we’re probably talking over 1200 cans. He could have set up shop.

Then there was Funky Fred, the most inept and least funky of all teachers, nay people, I have ever come across. I don’t even know if his real name was Fred. It just fitted with “Funky”. “Funky Brendan” or “Funky Arthur” wouldn’t have had the same pzazz.

Wearing dirty, coke-bottle-lensed square glasses, he certainly could never have been empirically defined as “funky”, yet generations of kids knew him thus. He may be dead now; I'd like to think his obituary in the local paper mentioned his workplace moniker. It's what he would have wanted.

One teacher whose name was Bashford, was simply called Mr Bastard. Simple, yet effective. I quite liked old Mr Bastard, he seemed OK. Yet you don't get away with a name that can be easily turned into a sweary in a secondary school. Mr Bastard he stayed. Nice guy, or no. All over this country, there are teachers called Mr Buck and Mrs Hunt having a really shitty time of it.

However, it doesn’t stop at school. Later on in life we get bosses, managers and supervisors. In an effort to bond with our peers, give a little light relief and generally kick against the pricks, we give our boss a nickname. It helps to pass the day/week/career.

Nicknames of bosses I have had include :

"The Bald Eagle" (he was bald; gosh we were inventive)

"Barry Gibb" (he had thick mulleted hair and a beard- of course he’s Barry Gibb)

"The Prince of Darkness" (second only to “Hitler”, officially the most common nickname for a male boss. Source: me . It makes me wonder, did Adolf Hitler's underlings have a nickname for him. Where did they go for inspiration given that Hitler was his actual name?)

“The Human Hormone” was a female boss, whose mood would swing like a bored Seventies suburban married couple with a special bowl for car-keys , and whose crimes against her staff we passed off (by her) as being the result of erratic menstruation patterns. Way to go sista! Thanks for setting women’s rights back a few hundred years. Someone actually got her a badge that said “Watch out; I’m premenstrual”. From where, I don’t know. Maybe she sat up all night making it. Certainly, I know for sure, it would not have been presented to her in the week before ovulation. Talk about having a death wish...

This makes me think, do we do this our whole lives? Right now, in Old Folks' homes are certain carers, matrons or whatever, in charge of making our final years as comfortable as possible, providing sniggers, as one of the elderly residents comes up with a suitable yet vicious nickname? A nickname that makes all their elderly resident mates guffaw everytime it is mentioned or exclaimed under the guise of a cough or whisper as they go past with the meds trolley.

You know something, I kind of hope so.

Book Tour: Day 10: Mrs Winterpepper of Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mum

2010-10-13T15:25:00.000-07:00

Today, Emma and Gillian THOUGHT they were going to be hosted by Lori of Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mum but her blog seems to have been hi-jacked by a lady who, let's face it, is not our target readership. Mrs Winterpepper gives her opinion on Cocktails at Naptime- she might even be protesting outside Australian bookstores as we speak.

Extract:

"Well. Goodness me. In fact, just lately she tells me she's been sent a copy of the book "Cocktails at Naptime". Quite frankly, I was disgusted. Cocktails? At naptime? Really. *Sniff*. I confiscated the book. In order to do a thorough inspection of this... this.. concept.

"I was, quite frankly, beyond being disgusted. I was horrified.

The advice contained within!! The debauchery. Never in all my days have I seen the word- well, you know the word, I'm sure, if you're reading this blog with it's foul words. That word. The f-word. Used in this context. In relation to motherhood. Mothers of small children should not be having s-e-x, ladies. It's improper. As this book points out, you'll be far too tired and leaky for that anyway, but that is hardly the point.

This novel contains information on how to be something called a "yummy mummy". It contains a ridiculously unabashed chapter on the myths surrounding post-natal issues such as sex, sleep and *sniff* chocolate. It also goes into graphic detail on the after-math of childbirth, and the routine hospital humiliation that goes hand in hand.It discusses such ridiculous things as 'body image' and the concept of actually going back to work after you have children. Imagine."

Read Mrs Winterpepper's full review here

Book Tour: Day 9: Vegemite Vix

2010-10-13T10:58:00.000-07:00

It's Day 9 of the Cocktails at Naptime Book tour and it's Vegemite Vix's turn to host. As well as giving the book a rave review she also mentions that it has the perfect plot for a Hollywood movie. What a fabulous idea Vix! You readers out there, please humour us with this little fantasy. At the moment I fancy Tamsin Greig to play me and Sue Gomez as Gillian (both from the crazy UK TV show Green Wing) but we are open to suggestions ...

Extract:

There are lots of things about Cocktails at Naptime that make it funny. The back story for one. You see Emma and Gillian have actually never met. Oh sure they’re met virtually through their very witty blogs — MisssyM Missives and Mommy Has a Headache.

They’ve ‘met’ via emails despite one author living in Scotland and the other in the US, but neither of them have actually met their publisher, who hails from Down Under.

If that isn’t the plot for a brilliant movie, I wonder what is! Two authors meet virtually from different sides of the Atlantic and together publish a book with a publishing house based in Australia.… you can see the potential for great mirth can’t you!

Yet it seems as if they’ve pulled it off, and how! Not only is the back story amusing but the stories are funny in that they are true to life and there is nothing that is funnier than stories that are real, keenly observed, and faithfully retold with tongue planted firmly in cheek!

Read the full post here.

Book Tour: Day 8: Melbourne Mumma

2010-10-11T13:15:00.000-07:00

Melbourne Mumma

It's Day 8 of the Cocktails at Naptime Book tour and it's Melbourne Mumma's turn to host the girls. She's reviewing the book, interviewing Gillian and Emma AND giving away a book or tow in her competition. Go Mumma!

Extract:

"I was stopped in my tracks. Cocktails, at naptime?

At naptime??

Genius.

Why the hell hadn’t I thought of that before?

Based on the title alone, my instincts told me that Emma and Gillian – the two clever Mums who wrote the book - just may know a thing or two that perhaps I didn’t. So I volunteered to read Cocktails and Naptime – for myself, and for the benefit of several new Mums and mums-to-be I know. Heck, for all Mums in the world at large…

And it turned out to be an eye-opening, absolutely hilarious read from start to finish! Emma and Gillian leave no stone unturned. All the important topics new Mums need to know about are covered: the extraction process birth, breastfeeding (behold the Alpha Boob!), midwifes (and yes, I encountered several that should definitely have been prison officers), your emotions, post-birth sex, getting back into shape, yummy mummies, life as a ‘Mum’, returning to work."

Read the full post here.

Book Tour: Day 7: Potty Mouth Mama

2010-10-11T01:37:00.000-07:00

We're into Week 2 of the Cocktails at Naptime book tour. Yes, for the past week Emma and Gillian have been flitting all over Australia via the blogs of the country's best bloggers. it's been an absolute blast so far and looks set to continue in a suitably excellent fashion.

If you've missed any of the posts there's a handy link list at the bottom of this post. But before that, hop on over to Potty Mouth Mama's blog for today's review.

Extract:

"But what happened when Cocktails at Naptime sat on the kitchen table unattended? Matt picked it up, looked at the chapters listed, immediately turned to Chapter 3 and commenced reading.

Chapter 3? - I hear you ask.

Chapter 3 = Sex and the stretchy girl. Chapter 3 is all about sex after childbirth. Clearly Matt cuts straight to the chase, there's no small talk for him. Chapter 3 and BOOM! He's into it."

Read the full review here.

Missed the other tour dates?

Don't worry, they are all here:

What Kate Did Next

Mummy Diaries

Organic Motherhood with Cool Whip

Ramblings from Toushka

Moore for Mums

Maxabella Loves

Sleepless Nights

Book Tour: Day 7: Someday We'll Sleep

2010-10-09T15:18:00.000-07:00

‎"It’s brilliant. The best parenting book I’ve ever read." Veronica Foale

Veronica Foale is a great blogger and writer. So it was lovely to see she's enjoyed Cocktails at Naptime so much. Read her full review here on Some day We'll Sleep.

And don't forget to comment on her post to be entered into her competition to give away a copy of the book.

if you've missed any of the book tour dates click here to read the reviews, guest posts and interviews to date.

Book Tour: Day 6: Maxabella Loves

2010-10-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

Today Gillian is guest posting over at the beautiful blog of Maxabella Loves. "Gillian,"she asked, "What can children teach us?"

"Children can teach us swear words Maxabella, that's what" I said in reply.

Here's a brief extract:

"And then there's Miss Misssy's chum, Ellie. I asked my daughter’s friend Ellie why they didn’t have their Jack Russell anymore. “Because he’s a complete pain in the arse,” she said very matter or factly, like she was discussing a canine medical condition."

Read the full post here.

Maxabella is giving away two copies of 'Cocktails at Naptime: A Woefully Inept Guide to Early Motherhood', and all you have to do is comment on her post to enter the competition. So make sure you do. Good luck.

Pregnancy Stories: The Princess, Indy and Me

2010-10-07T01:27:00.000-07:00

31st August 1997, 1am (Paris time): A Mercedes-Benz drives at speed through Pont de l'Alma tunnel. The inhabitants of the car are contract driver, Henri Paul; Emad El-Din Mohamed Abdel Moneim Fayed,also known as Dodi; Trevor Rees Jones, a body guard and Diana Princess of Wales, an icon.

In Aberdeen, Scotland a 28 year old woman lies awake next to her sleeping husband, Meeester.

The Mercedes crashes.

Misssy M is preoccupied.

1.30am: Ambulances arrive. The driver is dead. Dodi Fayed shows no sign of life but a resuscitation attempt is made. Trevor Rees Jones and Diana Princes of Wales are alive. Rees has facial injuries and is rushed to Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. Diana is crouched on the rear passenger floor with her back to the road. Ambulance crews cannot remove her.

Misssy thinks she might be pregnant.

1.45am: News breaks of a serious accident involving royalty. Journalists everywhere are called into work.

2am: Diana is freed from the wreckage and is rushed to Pitié-Salpêtrière. She is alive.

Misssy wonders if she is ready. What time can she get a test? Do all night garages sell pregnancy tests?

2.15am: Surgeons discover that Diana’s heart has been displaced to the right side of her chest. Her pulmonary vein and the pericardium are torn. They operate immediately.

3.30am: Meeester gets up for his early morning shift.

Surgeons struggle to repair the damage in Diana’s chest cavity.

Meeester goes out the front door being careful not to waken his wife.

4am: Doctors pronounce Diana dead.

Meeester arrives at work at the same time as James Naughtie of the Radio 4 Today Programme arrives at his. The Radio 4 schedule is abandoned. Naughtie delivers news of a terrible accident.

4.30: Jean-Pierre Chevènement France's Interior Minister and Sir Michael Jay, British Ambassador meet with police to discuss the press release.

5am: Meeester phones Misssy.

“Put the telly on. Something has happened. I’m sorry. Happy Paper Anniversary by the way.”

Peter Sissons is on the BBC. Sissons on a Sunday? Diana has been injured. Dark footage at a tunnel shows chaos. It is light outside in Aberdeen. What is going on? What time is it?

Calls are placed to next of kin by police and diplomats.

5.10am: Misssy thinks about chemist opening hours, but sits glued to the television. Journalists interview other journalists. Misssy clicks on Radio 4. Naughtie? On a Sunday? She puts the kettle on, then switches it off again. It’s too early for tea.

Sissons is interviewing Jennie Bond, the BBC’s Royal Correspondent. She knows nothing and is talking about Diana and Dodi’s recent holiday in the South of France.

5.20am: Misssy turns the TV up as she puts the kettle on again.

5.30am: Diana’s death is announced to the world’s press. The BBC are still saying Diana is seriously injured.

6am: Misssy gets dressed in front of the television. Diana’s death is announced. Half dressed, Misssy sits down.

More journalists interview other journalists. Paparazzi apparently ran the car off the road. Stock footage of Diana is shown being hounded by press when she was nineteen, holidaying with her children and getting married to Prince Charles. Sissons is looking tired and upset.

9.30am: Misssy leaves the house. The streets are empty.

Prime Minister Tony Blair is interviewed outside his local church.

9.40am: Safeway is open. There are six cars in the car park. Misssy feels weird. Oh my god, her kids. She is not a royalist, but she might be a mum. She starts to cry in the car.

Finding out about new life doesn’t seem right today.

10.15am: Misssy returns home and turns on the television once again. She reads the instructions on her pregnancy test and pees on a stick.

10.25am: Newscaster Peter Sissons is speculating about the Royal Household. The Queen is believed to be in Balmoral. She has said nothing.

Thirty miles from Balmoral, Misssy looks at two little purple lines side by side. On the television people talk of nothing ever being the same again.

Misssy starts to cry with happiness.

It’s a strange day.

My son Indy

******

What was finding out you were pregnant for the first time like?

(This post was inspired by Lori)

Book Tour: Day 5: Moore for Mums

2010-10-06T00:29:00.000-07:00

Here's Moore for Mums review on the book:

"Cocktails at Naptime is, in my view, right on the money in terms of its philosophy: we’re all so serious about motherhood. This book takes a different tack, revealing what’s in store for mums-to-be in those early days of motherhood while at the same time drawing a comedic bow across the topic."

Read more here.

Missed any of the book tour so far? Catch up with the excellent posts from previous tour dates by clicking on these links:

What Kate Did Next
Mummy Diaries
Organic Motherhood with Cool Whip
Ramblings from Toushka

Book Tour: Day 4: Ramblings From Toushka

2010-10-05T12:11:00.000-07:00

The Wiggle that is Anthony Field.

Emma K confesses all in Toushka's interview

Toushka has to get the prize for the funniest first line of all the tour hosts so far:

"This is the book that Tena has been waiting for. A laugh-a-minute book that is aimed at women whose pelvic floor muscles are already vulnerable.

I have been warned not to judge a book by it's cover but I always do, and as soon as I saw the title I knew this was going to be the funniest book I was to read this year. My instincts were correct."

Toushka reviews the book, interviews the girls AND gives two-yes, you heard right-TWO copies of the book away in her competition.

READ THE FULL FEATURE HERE!

Missed any of the book tour so far? Catch up with the excellent posts from previous tour dates by clicking on these links:

What Kate Did Next
Mummy Diaries
Organic Motherhood with Cool Whip

Book Tour Day3: Organic Motherhood with Coolwhip

2010-10-03T03:24:00.000-07:00

Naomi at Organic Motherhood with Coolwhip is hosting Gillian today who gives an interview on how the girls came to get Cocktails at Naptime published. It's a must read for anyone trying to get their own book published.

Oh, and there's also a cheeky little exclusive extract from the book.

"5 ways to spot your husband desperately needs sex

He casually brushes himself “accidentally” against most household surfaces. In short repeated strokes.
He wolf whistles at you on seeing you taking off your rubber gloves and apron.
Every time you bend over to pick something up, he miraculously appears behind you in a nanosecond. Even if he was previously at work.
He keeps on mentioning that he's finished wallpapering Junior's room and indicating it's time Junior maybe experienced it for himself. Even just for one hour.
You wake up each morning with him on top of you."

Read more here

Missed any of the book tour so far? Catch up with the excellent posts from previous tour dates by clicking on these links:

What Kate Did Next
Mummy Diaries

Mummy Diaries

2010-10-02T00:25:00.000-07:00

Kathrine at Mummy Diaries

It's Day two of the big ole Cocktails at Naptime Book Tour and Emma is over at Mummy Diaries. If Mummy Diaries' intro is anything to go by, it's hilarious (but then yummy mummy Kathrine always is).

Extract:

"From the moment you shoot your precious kid out of your now-oversized pachanga every Tom, Dick, Harry and Aunt Petunia will be giving you all sorts of unsolicited advice and disapproving looks on everything from:

- breast vs bottle feeding (holy moley is that a minefield),

- discipline (“thank you Aunt Petunia I shall keep it in mind to belt the crap out of the little shit with a wooden spoon..yes, yes I know your parents did it and you turned out just fine”)

- and jumping back into the sack with your man love. For what it’s worth I had absolutely no interest in fondling my man-love’s sack for quite some time. And I don’t feel bad about it either.

You take it all in – or let it all slip out the other ear, despite the fact that you are wishing your eyes could turn into lasers and burn holes in their know-it-all big bums.

Everyone though, needs a little helping hand sometimes and the first year of motherhood is a particularly hard one, what with your new vagina, breasts and husband salivating and lying in wait to jump your bones at the all important 6 week mark, not to mention that whole newborn baby business.

With that in mind, bloggers Emma Kaufmann – Mommy has a headache and Gillian Martin The Missy M Missives decided to collaborate to write a REAL, practical and fucking funny guide to the first year of motherhood, choc full of useful and refreshingly honest revelations about what to expect when you become mommy and aptly titled Cocktails at Naptime. And just like it’s authors sneaky convict ancestors, Cocktails at Naptime has managed to weasel it’s way onto Aussie shores! Yaye for us!"

Read the full interview here

Book Tour Latest

2010-10-01T01:45:00.000-07:00

The Cocktails at Naptime Book Tour starts today! Emma and Gillian are over at What Kate Did Next being interviewed about writing the book by Kate Lord Brown:

Kate writes:

Today is a bit of a red letter day. I finally have a liquor licence, which means for the first time in six months I can buy wine without my husband's permission. The pilot still gets a text every time I use our card, and an account of exactly what I've bought, (which he naturally finds highly amusing), but frankly I'm thankful for small mercies. It struck me the other night that expats seem to go one of two ways - gin or gym. We should all aim for a balance of both, but 'sundowners' are a welcome diversion out here and 0f course the quinine in the tonic is so good for you in this heat ... Yes, perhaps most of us can identify with today's guest bloggers Gillian Martin and Emma Kauffman who are launching their hilarious guide for 'woefully inept' parents today. The sun's over the yard arm, so let's settle back with 'Cocktails at Naptime'

Read the full interview here.

Here is the book tour list in full. be sure to hop around all those great blogs throughout October and join in the fun.

1st October: What Kate Did Next

2nd October: Mummy Diaries

3rd October: Organic Motherhood with Coolwhip

6th October:Ramblings from Toushka

7th October: Moore for Mums

8th October: Maxabella Loves
9th October: Vegemite Vix
10th October : Someday We’ll Sleep
11th October: Potty Mouth Mama
12th October Melbourne Mumma
15th October Random Ramblings of a Stay at Home Mum
16th October: London City Mum
18th October Not Drowning Mother
2oth October: Good Golly Miss Holly
21st October: Candy’s Family
22nd October Diary of a Mad Cow
24th October: Moments of Whimsy
25th October: Life in a Pink Fibro
27th October: Woogsworld
28th October: Kiwi Mummy Blogs
29th October Sunny Side Up
30th October Chez Lee
31st October : Mummy to JJ
1 November : Happy Child

And if you've got a copy of Cocktails at Naptime already then don't forget to enter our photo competition. You can find details of that here.

And if you don't have a copy of the book but would like one you can buy it direct from Finch Publishing here. Or at a range of online stores (just Google Cocktails at Naptime and they'll all come up). Or go old-school and simply find it in your local bookstore in Australia and New Zealand.

See you on tour!

Special Kids

2010-09-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

For Real: Sign outside Pepe Rosso restaurant in New York

I met my friend Polly at the pool here in Baltimore back in August. Polly is a teacher at one of the more pretentious preschools here, and she’s getting pretty exhausted by the parents.

“I have to make believe like every child is special to their parents,” she said. “It’s a gigantic pain in the arse, since most of them aren’t. If there’s nothing off-the-charts special about the kid’s academic achievement, the parents will try and make out that he’s special in some other way. Like, one mother has already been in touch with me, even though school doesn’t start for another three weeks, to talk about her son. She told me, ‘I just thought I should tell you that Brendan’s mother and I are in a same-sex relationship and his uncle was the sperm donor. And I am just hoping that the unique circumstances of his conception will not alienate him from the rest of the class.’”

Polly continued: “I just said, ‘Oh, I’m sure Brendan’s situation isn’t that unusual and he will fit in just fine.’”

“I bet she didn’t like that,” I said.

“No, of course she didn’t. She didn’t even seem to want Brendan to fit in. She wanted him to be special.”

So, there we were, laughing our heads off about this, when Polly said, “Uh-oh, here comes someone whose kid is going to be in my class in the fall.”

“You mean Nicola? Oh, poor you, she’s cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs.”

Nicola came up to us. She’s got this weird manner about her, in that she always stares over your shoulder while she’s talking to you. She’s one of those people who has simply never gotten the message that I think she’s a tedious nutcase.

Nicola said, “Where’s Scarlett? I just see Sausage in the pool.”

“Oh, Scarlett’s been staying in Ireland with her grandma for the past few weeks.”

“Really?” Nicola replied, aghast, as if I’d told her Scarlett was working sixteen-hour days at a sweat shop.

“Yes, quite a relief, just having to look after the one, you know! I bet you couldn’t spend even one night away from your daughter, Anna, could you?”

“Probably not, but not because I couldn’t bear to be parted from her,” replied Nicola. “It’s just that I’m still nursing.”

Right. Bear in mind that Anna is four and a half years old. Nicola went on, “And I would hate to artificially break up that nursing relationship before she was ready to give it up.”

“I must say, I simply don’t get this stuff about nursing a four-year-old,” I said. “I mean, you advocates of extended breast feeding always point to third-world countries, where women nurse for much longer than we do in the West, making out that’s the ‘natural’ way. But they only do that because there is often no other adequate nutrition for the child other than breast milk. And since there are many other sources of nutrition here, why nurse for more than one or two years?”

“Oh, none of this was planned,” replied Nicola. “I thought I would give up after about a year.”

“Believe me, you would have if you’d had biters like I did. They practically chewed my nipples off, so I weaned them both at one.”

Nicola ignored me and continued to ramble. “But since Anna did not choose to wean at one year, I decided to keep going. And here we are, still nursing!”

More like, you didn’t want to give it up, is what I didn’t say. This mother is at the upper echelons of overprotective. You know the type—they have to stand by the slide while their kid is using it, in case, oh, I don’t know, the child falls off the slide and kills itself, an all too common occurrence in playgrounds today.

Well, after Nicola had chewed Polly’s ear off about what an advanced reader Anna was and could Polly possibly let her start on War and Peace (okay, maybe I am exaggerating a tad here), because Anna’s already reading at a first grade level, she eventually sodded off. I rolled my eyes at Polly.

“You do know that you’ll have to tell Nicola that because her child is so special and has such a special nursing relationship with her mum, that Nicola is welcome to come to the classroom and breastfeed her daughter any time. Tell her that the school wants to nurture their special relationship.”

Polly looked a bit scared. I was joking, but I think Polly was wondering whether it was not so far-fetched that Nicola might turn up in the classroom one day and lift up her shirt, ready to breast-feed her special child.

Here you go: an irrelevant but super-cute image!

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Kids in Cars

2010-09-23T03:13:00.000-07:00

Last week I left my twelve year old and seven year old in the car whilst I went to the supermarket.

"Don't touch anything!" were my final words.

Needless to say when I came back I practically had to rebuild my car and the two of them had taken photos of themselves on my camera to further piss on my authority. Regardez:

No that is not a Golden retriever, that is my son, Indy.

Evo minutes before she decided to nick

the wheels and leave my car up on bricks

Still, I have a cheek for even mentioning my kids' own bad in-car entertainment. If me and my brother, now known as Uncle Ginge, formerly known as Red Belly Button Boy, were ever left alone havoc would ensue. This is one of my favourite stories from my childhood about how we invaded France in a T-Reg Audi......

The story breaks down into four notable points of interest, which I'll summarise for you now:

We packed seven people into an Audi 80 and whinged them across the UK, France and the Pyrenees.
Excuse me, has Mum only put one cassette tape in the car for this two day journey?
We all nearly die through misadventure.
We all nearly die again. But my mum predicts it, so we're OK.

Cast and location

So the story concerns our first family holiday abroad. My mum and dad had rented a villa in St Jean de Luz, the first town in France after crossing the Spanish border. Or if you are a Basque separatist, one of the towns in the Basque Country.

We were to go by ferry and car as planes weren't invented yet. The von Schneider Family as we were known, were five individuals: Mama von Schneider, Papa von Schneider, RedBellyButtonBoy, Misssy M and CheekyMonkey.

How to pack seven people into an Audi 80 and whing them across the Pyrenees.

We had a green Audi 80, as befitting our Germanic heritage and were destined for France, also befitting our Germanic heritage.

Oh, and did I mention Aunt R and Uncle T were being shoehorned in too? So, imagining a Sesame Street counting animation, let's count! 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 people in a family saloon.

This all took place in the days before people-carriers, but funnily enough not in the days before 7 people legally should have been split between two cars.

So now let’s look at what was involved in this journey with two adults in the front, two in the back and three children sat wherever they could get purchase.

Aberdeen to Plymouth: 14 hours
Overnight stay in car waiting for ferry to leave: 6 hours (yes, we all slept in the car!!! I know!!!)

Ferry crossing to Santander (thankfully outwith the confines of the car): 12 hours
Santander to St Jean de Luz (over the Pyrenees): 5 hours*

Total time in car: 25 hours

Should I call Guinness?

A quick footnote on the Santander-St Jean de Luz stretch. You know that bit at the end of the Italian Job with the truck hanging over the side of mountain…that’s the kind of thing that is par for the course on that stretch of road.

O.M.G has Mum only put one cassette tape in the car
for this 2 day journey and two week holiday?

So we’ve got everything stuffed in the Audi. Miraculously we’ve managed to fit enough luggage to serve four adults and three kids for two weeks into the car. There was probably a roof rack, there might have even been one us kids strapped to it at one point. So have we got everything, then?

No. It’s not long before we realise that we’ve only one cassette tape in the car. It is a homemade tape. Worse; it’s one of Mum’s.

Side One: The Long Run by the Eagles
Side Two (and this is going to hurt): Rock and Roll Juvenile by Cliff Richard

To this day, each of us three kids would be able to sing along perfectly to either of those albums without one single lyrical mistake. We're not proud of this.

The tape just got played and played and played. If I go to hell, that same tape will be playing in the purgatorial waiting room. And the Devil will look like Cliff Richard circa 1979.

Nobody EVER buy me this.

We all nearly die

Well two of us do. I’m jumping past the whole holiday and back to the return ferry journey.

My parents, Aunt R. and Uncle T. take my five year old sister, CheekyMonkey, to arrange our ferry tickets, leaving me and my brother Red BellyButtonBoy in the car alone (alone except for Glenn Frey, Don Henley and Cliff). Their biggest mistake here, is thinking that CheekyMonkey is the root of all trouble. This is just a smoke-screeen RedBellyButtonBoy and I have carefully constructed over the years.

As soon as they are out of sight, we jump into the front seat and start messing about with the car controls, and generally arsing about.

It's important for you to know at this point, that the car is parked facing the water at the quayside of St. Malo harbour. There is a chain across the quayside but this is merely for decoration, as it is not high enough to stop anyone falling in. It merely signifies the end of the quay and makes the place look finished.

Whose idea was it to start the car up whilst it was in gear? Accounts vary. But let’s just say, for argument’s sake that it was RedBellyButtonBoy in case my parents are reading. This close to going in the Channel, we were. THIS close.

My parents only remark on the terrible smell inside the car on their return.

No, we really could have nearly died

The reason we're in St Malo is that the original return ferry was cancelled in Santander due to mechanical failure. The ferry company offered us an alternative route.

They would fly mothers and children home, leaving Dads to drive their car back across the Pyrenees and across the whole of France to Northern port, St Malo. My dad, Aunt and Uncle looked forward to the Cliff and Eagle-filled two day trip with no kids on knees. But one thing stood in their way. My Mum.

My Mum didn’t want to fly on her own with us kids. Maybe it’s not surprising given that we were the kind of kids that would drive a car over a quayside like in this road-sign which was designed after us.

I really don’t know why she didn’t want to go on that flight, but something made her nervous. That "something" is now confirmation of my mother's soothsayer status. Six hundred years ago in France she'd have been thrown on a bonfire alongside Joan D'Arc for that kind of stuff.

That plane had to crashland in Kent. Actual fact. The plane WE would have been on had my mother not refused the offer of a flight home instead of a two day car journey.

Mechanical failure, apparently. Some engines stopped working or something. No one was hurt. But my God, can you imagine? You'd never board a plane again.

FIN

Buy Cocktails at Naptime here.
http://www.finch.com.au/books/cocktails-naptime

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Strike a Pose!

2010-09-19T07:35:00.000-07:00

Well this week sees that book we're always banging on about "Cocktails at Naptime: A Woefully Inept Guide to Early Motherhood" appearing in bookshops over Australia and New Zealand. By our reckoning it'll start appearing on shelves on the 22nd of September, although it is officially launched on 1st October.

So it's time for the launch of our competition (one of a few we'll be running over the next few months, we reckon).

We want those of you who buy the book to send us a photograph in which the book must appear somewhere in the frame. It should be inspired by something you've read in the book. The best, most inventive and funniest ones will appear on our blog here and our gallery on our website here. And there are prizes for the ten best ones.

"So, Misssy M and Emma K what do I win?" I hear you say.

Well, our fantastico publishers Finch Publishing are offering ten prizes. Our top ten posers will get to choose their prize from a huge selection of Finch's back catalogue. There are loads of amazing titles on there and really something to suit everyone. Go and have a browse if you don't believe us. Click here to go to Finch's website.

So what are the competition rules:

1. Take a photo with the Cocktails at Naptime book somewhere in the shot.

2. Make it as cool and funny as possible.

3. Email a decent sized jpeg of it to mail@cocktailsatnaptime.com

4. Await the fame and fortune (!?) that comes with it

5. Tell your mates

6. Enter as many photos as you like

To start the ball rolling Emma and I have posed with our copies of the book.

Here's Emma roiling around with hers like Demi Moore in Indecent Proposal ...

And here's Gillian fitting a bit of reading into her busy schedule...

We are also asking all our followers and readers a massive favour...spread the word of the competition. Let your friends know, your blog readers know, your twitter buddies know, hell, let your granny know...Cut and paste this URL http://cocktailsatnaptime.blogspot.com/2010/09/strike-pose.html , spread the word and let's get those wacky photos rolling in.

You'll be able to buy the book:

Here

Here

Here

Here

Here

and anywhere in Australia and New Zealand where good books are sold.

Strike a pose!

Buy Cocktails at Naptime here.
http://www.finch.com.au/books/cocktails-naptime

(International shipping available)

Playgroups 101 - From Bad Boys to Metrosexual Dads

2010-09-17T06:40:00.000-07:00

Ah the smell of it ....the waft of freshly brewed coffee mixed with freshly pooped on nappies. Sometimes when I smell it all the memories come flooding back. Of the days I'd crouch like a Hobbit in a dark church basement singing 'The Wheels On The Bus' with my two tots. Today I am talking about playgroups. Ah yes, playgroups, finger painting, damp rusks in hair and all saved my sanity during those first fraught years. I actually miss them a bit now the kids are at school. But for any newbies out there who want the lowdown on playgroups this guide is for you.

Once you have a baby you will find people asking you if you are part of a playgroup. Your initial reaction will be “Why would a four month old need a playgroup?” Well the answer is that the playgroup is not for your baby, it’s for you, to prevent you going gaga. Sometimes playgroups take place at people’s houses but this is, frankly, to be avoided as it basically means having a bunch of toddlers and overwrought parents in your house and the situation is totally unrelaxing and will leave your house looking like a tip. Also people will expect you to provide soy milk and non allergenic biscuits at the drop of a hat while constantly making sure their baby does not plug himself into a light socket. Frankly you’ll need a lie down after hosting such an event not to mention a stiff drink so avoid avoid avoid.

The best place to join a playgroup is a church hall because there you will usually meet a colourful cross section of people and can just let your baby run wild amongst the throw pillows and play mats while you chill out. The first thing to do when you join a playgroup is to make sure they have an industrial strength coffee machine on the go. There will be some who’ll poo poo the idea because they feel that the combination of boiling water and rampant toddlers is a bad combination but where there’s a will there’s a way and if necessary special ladders can be constructed to reach the industrial strength coffee machine because let me just say right now you will not get through a two hour playgroup without coffee.

It can be downright weird joining a playgroup because it will give you a strange sense of déjà vu and you will be transported straight back to an under thirteen’s disco at secondary school. All the parents will skulk round the edges of the group at first eyeing everyone else up suspiciously. But after a few weeks contact will be made and the same different gangs that existed at school will emerge here too – the popular crowd and the misfits, the nerds and the jocks will quickly form into cliques. But the most significant delineation will be the male female divide. The men will stay with the men even if the only thing they have in common with the other man is that they both have X and Y chromosomes. In a playgroup situation this is a natural defence. The stay at home dad is massively outnumbered by the stay at home mum and must therefore skulk in packs for his safety and sanity.

In a group of stay at home dads the guys will mostly be average joes who take being a dad in their stride while talking football scores. But on the cusp of this there will be two fringe demographics: Bad Boys and Metrosexual Dads or MADS. MADS will stand around going into way too much detail about nap schedules and do you have a good recipe for baby food, not to mention hour by hour detailed descriptions of their babies’ bowl movements. MADS have made being a dad to an art form and will often carry around baby related flow charts and venn diagrams for every aspect of their child’s daily routine as if they were running a mini corporation.

Bad Boys on the other hand tend to be stay at home dads because they are unemployable. They skulk around the outskirts of the playgroup reeking of cigarettes and wearing shades or trenchcoats while eyeing up the hotter mums. They will often say they have a part time job but when pressed for details you will find the job will be something like ‘playing on line poker.’ Beware of being too friendly - give these Bad Boys an inch and they’ll take a mile. After a few weeks of pretending to be good, Bad Boys will start bunking off school. After giving you a charming grin they’ll say ‘Look after Timmy will you while I go for a smoke? I’ll be back in a minute.’ You’ll agree to do so - then won’t see hide nor hair of Bad Boy for two hours.

While the stay at home dads are clustered in a corner the mums will form their own giggly clusters. Chat up lines between playgroup participants are silly and obvious not to mention shockingly banal, similar to the chat up lines at the under thirteens’ disco which were: ‘Wanna dance?” “Wanna snog?” “I like you,” or “Nice hair.” Remember how you wouldn’t get a slow dance at the disco if you gave a smart alec answer, well the same is the case here. Avoid answering in a cynical fashion or risk alienating yourself and finding yourself in Playgroup Purgatory. There is no room for a smartarse in the playgroup environment and if you want to be clever clever you will soon find yourself sucking the fuzzy end of the lollipop aka don’t be surprised if, come circle sing a long time, the only cushion left is the smelly one with the puke stain. You have been forewarned.

So when a cheerful Mummy or MAD asks brightly:

“Wow, he’s so cute, how old is he?”

Don’t say: “Sixteen, but I could never be bothered to potty train him, that’s why he’s still in nappies.”

“Wow, she has so many teeth for her age!”

Don’t say: “Oh they’re false ones. She ate so much candy I had to get her a set of dentures at six months.”

“My what pretty girls. Are they twins?”

Don’t say: “No, they’re actually clones, I got them mail order from a secret laboratory in Korea.”

In summary, you will rarely find any stimulating adult conversations at a playgroup because everyone will be talking about their kids. But you will hopefully find industrial strength coffee, the weird sense of nostalgia that you are reliving an under thirteens’ disco and hopefully the opportunity to have a small nap while hiding behind a large teddy bear.

Buy Cocktails at Naptime here.
http://www.finch.com.au/books/cocktails-naptime

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Pilot Light

2010-09-13T11:40:00.000-07:00

Amongst all the bizarre things that happens to a woman when she has kids, there are some that you are just not prepared for. You expect the tiredness, the boob saggage, the tendency to wear cardigans but some cumulative effects sneak up you with such stealth that when you experience them it takes you a while to even connect their causal root to your being a parent. You just think you’ve gone mental. But I didn’t see this one coming and I know it’s because I am what a policeman friend calls a “pilot light”. I am a “pilot light” because I never go out.

One night out in town and two things happen; I get way too excited and end up doing handstands in a bar, but far worse than that (because doing handstands in a bar is actually quite good fun-try it!) I am easily startled by the goings on outside in the streets and behave like a frightened pensioner making her way to bingo through a troubled sink estate with a rolled up wad of pension cash in her handbag.

It’s starting to get dark at nights up here in Northern Scotland and I know I’m a couple of weeks from an evening walk home freakout. Last year as I went back to my car at 5pm when it was dark with my Christmas shopping I nearly did a reverse ninja kick to a girl behind me who I was convinced was going to knife me in the head, steal my kids’ Christmas presents and carve her initials in my face for good measure. On reflection, the potential assailant was nothing more than a teenage girl wearing one of those fur trimmed hooded armless anoraky things, maybe walking just a little too close behind me, but nevertheless, minding her own (stupid teenagey “what-evaah!” type) business.

A night out with workmates sees boys running past me in the street calling each other the c**t word. This equals me involuntarily shrieking in bloodcurdling terror. And then when I’ve calmed down I’ll bend my friends’ ears for a good hour about how people just think they can use the C word as a term of endearment these days. “When did we get so hard to shock?” I say, downing a medicinally calming flaming Sambuca. Of course, I’m saying this to cover up the fact that I was indeed so shocked that I did a bit of wee in my pants back there. hey, I thought someone was coming at me yelling the word, it used to be a threatening word, not a jolly little nickname!

Then later that night someone with a gelled to Hell and back shark fin haircut will look at me a full nanosecond too long in the taxi rank (probably because I’m looking at them like one of those cowering dogs in animal cruelty infomercials). This sustained look equals me dialling 999 and having my trembling thumb poised on the send button on my mobile phone lodged in my pocket. I’ve read Stuart McBride’s novels on crime in Aberdeen, I've seen CSI. I KNOW there are psychos out there. I don’t want my torso to be found in pieces in a black bag on the beach and my head on a countryside golf course. I'm too young to die!

Another occasion will have me having to (I’m starting to get palpitations just thinking about this) take out money from a cash machine the twilight hours WITH SOMEONE BEHIND ME in too close a proximity in the queue . Someone who clearly is going to draw a blade across my throat and steal my money on the first bleep of the dispenser alarm. This equals me getting into such a state that I forget my PIN number and get my card swallowed up OR I end up shakily withdrawing my card and going to the next ATM with no-one about and my car keys splayed through the fingers of my free hand like the blades of Edward Scissorhands or Freddy Kruger.

Has society got worse since I popped some kids out, or am I just a lightweight unused to social activity in a public place... where there might be guns, knives, scary dwarves and vampires at large??

When did I become such a scardey cat? Albeit one that can do a headstand on a barstool.

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The Oxford English Dictionary of Man-Speak

2010-09-09T12:34:00.000-07:00

A Martian yesterday

Men aren't from Mars, no more than women are from Venus. We're all conversant with the operating instructions on the whole but sometimes you just need a little help with the understanding of your man on a day to day level. Obviously I've got my hands full with the Cocktails at Naptime book launch (1st of October, fact fans!) but I'm already working on my next tome- I'm going to pitch it to the Oxford Dictionary people. It's called The Dictionary of Man to Woman. Here's my proposal and sample extract:

Ladies, learn to understand your man! By learning the hidden meanings behind these few simple phrases you can unlock the mysterious vault of your man's psyche. (Please feel free to add your own in the comments box. Together we can crack this thing...)

1. Uh-Huh: "Uh-huh" is the man-sound equivalent of the snooze button on an alarm clock. In response to piercing annoyances along the lines of “Will you take the dog out?” or “Can you take the kids out of the bath?” the sound "Uh-Huh" will buy men another five minutes until the noise starts again.

Note to men: The Uh-huh snooze button can only be pressed once. Pressed a second time it will only cause the piecing annoying request to be repeated more loudly with possible expletives and a frying pan thrown in .

2. Very reasonable, actually: The phrase “Very reasonable, actually” is one of a collection of phrases belonging to the monetary group. It is used to fob a partner off after a large amount of money has been spent on an expensive yet frivolous gadget or item. Other examples of this include the phrases: “Quite cheap”, “less than you would expect”, “A giveaway” and “an opportunity of a Lifetime”.

Items that are "very reasonable actually" can usually be bought on Ebay, late at night after 4 glasses of wine.

3. Five minutes: "Five minutes" is the time it takes for anything to happen that won’t be soon. "Five minutes" can be anything from 1 hour to never. Often used in the phrase, “I’ll be home in five minutes” or “I’ll tidy up in five minutes” or "It'll be done in five minutes".

4. “Where’s my...(+ noun)?”: The phrase “where’s my...(+ noun)?” is a lifelong man phrase that has been oft recorded as a male infant's first sentence. In the first 16 years of life it is directed at a man’s mother, but then converts into being directed at a man’s wife or partner. It is used in lieu of ever actually looking for anything one’s self and can be an important time saver. Variations include the more pointed “Where did you put my...(+ noun)?” and the more casual"Have you seen my...(+noun)?".

Note: the phrase “Where’s my.. ...(+ noun)?” is often bellowed from an adjacent room to the recipient.

The +noun element of the phrase rarely involves anything that the woman herself will use.

5. “Hardly”: A staple of the man vocabulary, “hardly” is key component of any good male sentence. Its main use is to mask copiousness. Examples include, “I hardly drank anything”, “I hardly touched it” and “I hardly noticed/know her”.

Note also the phrase “hardly anything” which can be used in place of any of the phrases in Phrase 2.

6. “Sorry”: The word every female dreads hearing. In the male vocabulary “sorry” is rarely used as an apology. Sorry is a portent of doom which can involve indiscretions with money, women, employment and gloss paint which there can be no hiding from.

Note: The word "sorry" used on its own and shouted can also mean the opposite of its dictionary meaning.

7. “OK” the word “OK” in short means one thing: “I’m not going there” or “I’m not touching THAT one”. It is often used when a man doesn’t want to commit to any one polemic view for fear of his life. Here are some uses.

Woman: “What do you think of Dave’s new girlfriend?

Man: “She’s OK”

Woman: "How did you and my dad get on, then?"

Man: "OK"

Woman: “What do you think of me in this bikini? Do you think I can still get away with it?”

Man: “It’s OK”

****

So people, what would you add?

Much Ado About Parsnips

2010-09-05T09:06:00.000-07:00

This molded vegetable salad from 1974 was an early attempt to dupe kids into eating lima

beans

Now, I’m the first to admit that I have trouble getting my daughters (seven and nine) to eat their vegetables.

As far as I am aware, the only ways to get reluctant kids to eat them is through one of two methods:

1. Being mean

“Eat that bit of cauliflower or you won’t get dessert.”

or

2. Being really mean

Leaving your daughter to stare at a mound of cold Brussels sprouts indefinitely while admonishing her with “This is all there is so suck it up,” until she falls asleep face down in the veggie mush.

But neither of these is that great. In fact I recently found out that a pretty foolproof way to get kids to scarf down vegetables is to brainwash them into thinking that being served a steaming platter of freshly boiled beets is not only normal but desirable. And that the only way to do this is to start young and deaden their taste buds from an early age. Alas it is too late for my kids to go this route but I take my hat off to some friends of mine who are both vegetarians and the most godawful cooks on the planet. If they’re not boiling the life out of vegetables they’re doing insane things like making sushi out of cucumber and cream cheese that has the consistency of wallpaper paste and the gastronomic appeal of licking a snail. Now I’m not saying vegetarian food can’t be delicious – it certainly can – but in the case of The Thompsons their food is definitely an acquired taste. Their daughter, Tina, her palate deadened from birth hoovers up any variety of mush that’s proferred and shrieks with delight when presented with a platter of limp, over boiled broccoli. I have one of the strongest stomachs known to man but I cannot touch their tofu fried with onions (that’s it – no spices, no sauce, nothing) or eat their pseudo meat nuggest that remind me of Styrofoam peanuts. They lucked out that Tina is so pathologically unpicky that she accepts it all from boiled squash to squished marrow.

But all alas was not rosy in the garden of the vegetable eaters. The Thompsons' son, Jake, once a passive bovine member of the family who troughed at the communal dull tasting fare one day went to a friend’s house, ate a real chicken nugget and never looked back. Suffering from an overload of E additives and synthetic flavours he turned his back on nut cutlets and kept his mouth pressed firmly shut. At first his parents liked to joke about how Jake was ‘a vegetarian that wouldn’t eat vegetables’ until they finally cracked and offered him hot dogs while trying not to think about all the pigs that died for the cause. Jake’s case proved that even if you try to keep the diet of kids limited while at home at some point they may smell a forbidden chicken nugget and be lost to the cult of fast food forever.

Some parents – against all odds try and take the bull by the horns and exert control over their children’s diets. Known as Health Food Nazis – and we all know one – they are people who have to have their kids eat every type of vitamin, mineral, protein and carb every day or they self destruct. So their daughter might have to say, eat one lettuce leaf, three prawns, two carrots, an apple, a slice of cheese and a tofu burger before she can have a ‘treat’ of soy yogurt that looks like hair wax. The amounts of vitamins etc the child has imbibed are entered onto a spreadsheet at the end of each day and mum or dad has to take a Valium if their girl forgot to eat a complex carbohydrate. This kind of ‘extreme parenting’ is all well and good but I think it can backfire. Mark my words, as soon as such a child is old enough to walk to the shops on her own I’m pretty sure she’ll be truffling through a mega tub of Kentucky Fried Chicken or be found half drowned, flailing about in one of those supersized Big Gulp cups of Coke.

Cucumber and beet ice cream anyone? Emma in ecstasy as she discovers you can have your cake and eat it

But actually there is another – relatively sane – way to get your kids to eat veggies. I recently discovered veggie ice cream in a variety of flavours from butternut squash to corn on the cob. And yes, the kids love it. So it’s got a ton of sugar and fat in it but what the heck – they’re still eating red cabbage! No need to thank me for the tip. You’re welcome!

But I'm certainly still open to ideas. How do you get your sprouts to eat their Brussels sprouts? I do draw the line at making penguins out of aubergines though - life's too short!

Angel of Death

2010-09-02T07:07:00.000-07:00

I have two friends with small babies in my village. Me? I’m closed for business on the baby front. Sometimes I feel a teeny bit sad that I don’t have a little baby to cuddle and look after but on the whole I’m completely fine with it. Two's enough for me and frankly I don't think my pelvic floor would hold another one in.

One of the more positive knock-on effects of our decision to stop the baby making is that we will no longer have to endure visits from our Child Health Visitor, known to us as, The Angel of Death. One of those two aforementioned friends has completely lucked out and I spotted The Angel coasting up her front steps this morning. I ran hastily inside lest she spot me.

The Angel of Death has no kids herself, but knows everything about bringing up a kid since she learned it at college. Apparently. She manages to do her job despite the fact that all children and their parents are visibly terrified of her.

She is broad country farming stock and looks like a big knitted bag that is filled with runny porridge. She has unrestrained, unsupported, massive, pendulous breasts that end somewhere around her waist. The upper front part of her body is not so much a décolletage as flesh-mountain landslide. It’s truly remarkable and may be visible on Google Earth.

Whatever the weather, she always wears jumpers, with a pattern that looks like the vomit you see on a Sunday morning beside a lamp-post outside the pub. She must knit them herself as I have never seen the like on sale in a shop anywhere.

Moving past the jumper area and up to her head, she has a haircut like a bloke, a bit like fifties crooner Perry Como or bewigged late stages Frank Sinatra. She wears those horrible Reactolite tinted specs. You know the sort; they instantly make someone look sinister. The more light there is the darker they go. They lack the coolness factor of sunglasses and retain all the geekiness ofprescription wire-rimmed specs with an ever changing gradient of brown insipid tint. My gran also has a pair and they make her look like Dr Strangelove.

There’s a whole catalogue of incidents with the Angel of Death, but I think our first meeting gives the most succinct impression of her. It's the occasion of my son Indy's 2nd birthday and hence his 2 year developmental assessment. We've just moved into the area and have not met the Angel of Death in the flesh yet. Of course, being as it is the day after Indy's birthday, I have forgotten that she is scheduled to come round.

At that point, I was the only one of my friends to have a kid, so Indy’s birthday party had consisted of our friends coming round for a barbecue, getting pissed and watching the wee fella do cute things for our entertainment. So at 10am Indy and I are sitting in the debris of all yesterday's parties eating leftover birthday cake for breakfast in our jammies watching Clifford the Big Red Dog on telly, with me nursing a slight headache and all the barbecue dishes still in evidence.

I spot the not inconsiderable frame of the Angel of Death lurching past my living room window. It's too late to do anything about the situation. Hiding is futile as she has already glanced through the window giving me quite a start. And as it's particularly sunny, being May, the Reactolites are in sociopathic full tilt tint. I have to let her in. Stopping her from entering would look even worse.

Once in, she starts to "assess" my boy, whilst no doubt making a mental note to contact social services as soon as she leaves.Her assessment is frankly odd. For one she does not speak directly to me when Indy is in the room, she talks through Indy like he's some kind of parent medium. She also shouts at Indy the way that ignorant people shout at deaf people or foreigners.

"SO HAS MUM STARTED TOILET TRAINING YET?"

"SO IS MUM THINKING ABOUT ENROLLING YOU IN PLAYGROUP?

I have done none of these things. A cross is indelibly marked somewhere on an official sheet as my failings as a parent are recorded forever.

The most hilarious thing about her is her accent; it’s not just broad Aberdeenshire, which is impenetrable enough. No, the Angel of Death appears to have her own language.

"Aye jist wait, we'll hae Thunner and Lichhtnin'" she says by way of small talk about the weather as she arrives.

Lichhtnin'? How does one get from light to liccchhht via making the sound of a cat bringing up a hairball? This is taking Scottishness too far. Even I can see that.

I fixate on this speech affectation..I go into a dream...I wonder if she wears tichhts on her legs.

If she goes on holiday, does she go to the Isle of Wicchhht?
Does she wear the Reactolites to compensate for her failing sichht?
Is her favourite Elton John number, Saiturday Niccht’s alricchhht for Ficcchttin’?

To this day, if we hear the faintest rumble of thunder we say,

"Aye jist wait, we'll hae Thunner and Lichhtnin'"

The Angel of Death goes on to test Indy’s development on ridiculous things that can’t be part of any recognised programme. She gets some little Thomas the Tank Engines out of her big black bag. She then asks Indy to point out which one is "James" and which one is "Henry" .

Now, we don't like Thomas the Tank Engine in our house, so Indy knows none of these characters and is no more able to pick out Thomas than he would be to pick out the Prime Minister put in a line up of insurance salesmen. Oops, this is not good, the boy can’t even pick a well known character out of a host of other well known characters. I demand a recount. But given that I'm in mismatched jammies, reeking of Chardonnay, un-showered, hurriedly shuffling around trying to collect what seems like hundreds of wine glasses with chocolate fudge on my face, I haven't a leg to stand on.

“We don’t really know the Thomas the Tank Engine characters,” I say, “I couldn’t even tell you the answer to that one!” I squeak.

She looks at me blankly and puts another mark down on another official form that probably says something like,

“Does the child have any skills- Yes/No”

As the years went on I had another child to offer up to her. She would give me advice on breastfeeding, despite her ample bosoms never having seen a hungry baby, only terrified ones trying to get away from her grasp and back to their mothers. She would talk me through childbirth, despite never having possibly even seen a grown man naked, never mind getting pregnant. I am unsure if there is a Mister Angel of Death; I suspect not.

So goodbye Angel of Death, we won’t miss you. But as I sit here, I’d like to think of her on her way right now, to terrorise a family with a new baby, trundling along a street in her Vauxhall Vectra and looking out her windscreen at the skies and weighing up the possibility of “thunner and licchtnin”.

Babes on a Plane

2010-08-30T07:23:00.001-07:00

Before ash clouds and cabin crew staff strikes and recession I read that a couple of airlines were thinking of introducing child free flights. It seems that they thought that childless, lone adults or child loathing passengers would pay an extra few quid to not have to be near horrible sticky whinging children on a long haul flight. Fair enough, if there's a market- but why not go the whole hog- why not have child only flights? I bet the air staff will be queuing up to get on that rota. You think I’m joking? No sir, I am not. Think about it. Which one would you rather work in? Intolerant Adult Airways (the child-free option) or Lord of the Fliers (the child-only option).

For me, there's no contest. The other week the world heard about US air steward Steven Slater who did what so many of us have dreamed of and quit his job with a flourish and jumped out the plane door. Don’t panic- the plane was on the ground at the time. This happened after he had just one too many spats with an awkward passenger who refused to sit down when all passengers were told to remain in their seats whilst the plane taxied. Instead of sitting on his arse, the man proceeded to get his heavy bag out of the over head locker. When he was approached by the Steven the man ignored his pleas for good behaviour he pulled his bag down and hit the steward squarely on the head. This was after repeated polite requests to sit down from both passengers and staff. The steward lost it and exited the plane via the emergency shute, scuttled off the runway and got in his car and drove home, just in time to meet the police cars that were there to greet him for his safety and security breach.

Poor guy. What else must he have had to put up with over the years to get to this state? And here’s my question- how much worse would passengers be on a child free plane? In my opinion people who don’t like kids fall into the same category of people who don’t like cats and dogs. It’s like there is something wrong with them. Crying babies might be slightly annoying when you are trying to get to sleep, not least to their parents, but would you really want to share a cabin with 200 folk who don’t like kids or who lose it at the sound of a whimpering child? These must be the most horrible people on the planet. Why would you want to sit next to them? You’d probably have a better time at the a sleepover hosted by Fred and Rose West.

What’s more, adult passengers behave like morons on a plane (coming to a cinema near you, Samuel L. Jackson in”Morons on a Plane”). They sexually harass stewards and stewardesses, they get hammered on the free booze, they go off with strangers to have a sneaky shag in the toilets, they hog your arm rest, they recline their chair when you are trying to eat your meal on the traytable behind them and they piss all over the bathroom and leave it for someone else to clean up. In fact, I was listening to an air stewardess on the radio who said she once caught a drunken male passenger pissing all over the stewardesses seats in the galley area. And then complained when he was told to sit down!

Adult plane travellers can be the most territorial, mindless and selfish people on the planet. They don’t do what they are told, they ignore the safety briefing (except my friend Jane- who is always tempted to ask them to play it a second time in case she’s missed a bit) and they complain about mundane stuff that it wouldn’t occur to a kid to be bothered about. I have sat next to some of the most demanding and horrible people on flights and have seethed with hatred- any I didn’t even have to serve them! I have never found myself getting annoyed at a crying child.

So here it is, my business plan for Lord of the Fliers, the kids only airline . An airline where the passengers:

Do as they are told, as they are trained to
Are happy as long as there are cartoons on
Think getting a free playpack with some colouring books and pens is the best thing they've ever got
Are toilet trained (or have nappies to catch the wee in)
Will not bore fellow passengers with details of their divorce
Are placated by the offer of a visit to the cockpit
Once conked out will stay in the foetal position on the floor until their destination
Can be controlled by the promise of sweeties
Are never really in a hurry, so only get impatient for things that can be controlled, like “I want more sweets/cartoons” rather than having a strop because the passport control queue is too long.
Have no loud boorish opinions on homeland security
Drink nothing stronger than milk
Don't smell of BO, just Johnson's shampoo
Love going through turbulence cos it's like Space Mountain at Disneyland
Aren’t going to be carrying Semtex or other explosive devices so security is a breeze.
Are responsive to Medised (other sleep inducing concoctions masquerading as cold medicine may be available)
Can be placated with a hug

Ok Ok, you might have to deal with them pressing the call button repeatedly, shoving their unwanted dinner down the gaps inbetween the seats and the occasional vomit/jobbie accident but I reckon many stewardesses would gladly choose that over getting their left tit grabbed as they lean over to put someone's tray table up.

How do you deal with exasperated and impatient passengers when your kid is having a strop on an airplane?

In Utero

2010-08-23T07:34:00.000-07:00

The thing is with our book is that it has no actual advice in it. In fact, it has anti-advice. It also doesn't talk about the birth itself, just the couple of years of aftermath. So I feel I should tackle the whole birth thing straight on.

In fact, I feel obliged to write a quick ready reckoner for all Mums to be to make up for the lack of advice in our book. Frankly, I don’t think any of those pregnancy books are telling it like it is. But don’t fear; we will.

Don't worry, friends, there are no photos of either of us crowning.

The following is to be viewed by those that are ready for the truth about childbirth or know first hand what it's like. If, like Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, "you can’t handle the truth!!”, look away now and come back in a few days time. Or go and have a look at some fluffy hippy sites and read about how magical and spiritual it all is.

Midwives

People who work in maternity units do not spend all day waltzing about with bluebirds on their shoulders and going on about how amazing the miracle of childbirth is. This is their job and they sometimes get sick of finding bits of afterbirth in their hair after a shift. As you would.

Like any workplace there are good guys and there are wanks. There are people who love their job and there are people who hate their jobs. The good guys will help you through this rather challenging time in your life and make sure you are well cared for. Given a few choice narcotics, you may even tell some of them that you love them.

The wanks will ram a loaded meds tray through your ward door without opening it first and switch the strip lights on a mere five minutes after you have dropped off to sleep after fourteen hours of labour and a sleepless night with your new baby. If that doesn’t wake you then another wank will come round and inspect your torn perineum with cold hands. Bracing!

But on the whole midwives are nice ladies and their primary job is to stop doctors coming in and making you nervous.

Doctors

If a doctor comes in the room when you are labour it will be for one of three reasons:

1. You are in big trouble. Be worried.

2. They are students who will want to do unnecessary procedures on you and your unborn for “the practice”. Remember, the chances are these people are only four or five hours clear from mainlining tequila at a drinks promotion at the University Union.

Tell them to “Fuck off”. No really; use that phrase. You’re in labour, so people expect that kind of language to be coming from your mouth. Take advantage. These students are trained to handle it. And if they are not- be part of that training yourself! That’ll be the only “practice” they get from you.

3. They are lost.

Nastiness

Your undercarriage will be rent asunder like something out of a Quentin Tarantino film. I’m not going to lie to you. You may also poo and not notice. There you go, I bet Miriam Stoppard or Dr Spock don’t tell you that! Ahh... the beautiful miracle of the human body....Birth can be summarised as peeing, pooing, bleeding, swearing and crying in a room full of strangers. It differs from a bar-room brawl in only one respect- and that is, that a kid is present...eventually.

Your relationship

Your husband may find it difficult to look at you for a few days after the event. Mainly due to item the stuff I mentioned in Nastiness, but also because in the last 24 hours you’ve called him “The biggest, most useless twat that ever lived” just because he offered you a ice-cube. You’ve forgotten about it, but it might take him a wee bit longer; he didn’t get any pethadine, after all. Even though he asked for it repeatedly.

But there are some points when to be honest you really do hate him. No it's not because he got you into this mess, it's because you can smell the cheeky chicken pie on his breath that he had whilst nipping out of the labour room pretending to make a phone-call to your parents to "let them know how it's all going". You've not been allowed to eat for hours. How could he DO this to you?

The sweep

If you aren’t going into full blown mega labour quickly enough they will suggest a membrane sweep.

This may sound like they run a little implement like a metal detector over you, or gently stroke your belly.

But no, it’s nothing like that. A nurse is going to stick her whole hand and fingers in your lady-bits and rummage around in there like she’s looking for a lost kirby grip in a massive handbag. Effectively, she is going to claw at your cervix roughly until your baby shouts, “Okay enough already! FFS, I’m coming!”

The sweep also never works. All it does is make you feel sick, sore and violated. I swear, the membrane sweep is worse than labour itself. Pregnant ladies, if offered a membrane sweep say, "No, I read this blog once that said it was tortuous unnecessary barbaric bollocks. So, I'll just politely decline, if it's all the same to you."

If I met the woman who swept my membrane tomorrow in the street, I’d instinctively cower away from her like I was a dog whom she had once mistreated. Or punch her square in the chops.

Getting your own way

You can say “no” to people in white coats. This is a well kept secret. In fact, they pretty much have to do anything you ask. No-one tells you this. This is because it will open a whole Pandora’s box of patients asserting themselves and the health service would fall to pieces. Old ladies know this, this is why no health professionals want to work in geriatric care.

However, in the heat of battle, you may forget what it is that you want. And you may also find that only swearing will fall out of your mouth whenever you do try to communicate.

This is why I advise all pregnant friends to get t-shirts printed with the following on them:

“Bring me the finest painkillers known to humanity.”

Then everyone is clear.

So that's it- pretty much the only advice you'll get from us!

The Cocktails at Naptime Story

2010-08-12T13:58:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time...two mums who really should have been doing housework wrote a book together....they called it "Cocktails at Naptime" and some nice Australian publishers called Finch Publishing laughed out loud when they read it on the train home and thought their readers would laugh out loud too on their trains home, possibly startling some fellow passengers along the way.

Here's their story:

Emma says:

Gillian was like Nanook from the frozen North (Aberdeen) while I was a sunburnt British ex-pat living in East Coast America. How, you may well wonder, did this unlikely duo meet on the blogosphere and decide to write a book together? Well, truth be told, it was not an instantaneous attraction but our eyes at some point met across the crowded blogosphere . I am ashamed to say my chat up was that corny old line, “I really like your blog.” Luckily she was polite enough to reply.

At first I was suspicious. What was the matter with Gillian I wondered? She was not loud and shouty like so many people on the blogosphere. She never posted pictures of her cats or mumsy articles about how to create rainy day activities out of a thousand saved yoghurt pots. She was immature in a certain way like me, a Eurovision Contest fanatic who liked to dress in cheap spandex for non sexual purposes, yet unlike me seemed to run her family like a well organized military machine whereas I was domestically challenged, leaving the dirty washing to overflow the baskets like Mount Vesuvius and sometimes (okay a lot) getting my two daughter’s names mixed up.

So in some ways we were chalk and cheese and yet before we even disclosed we were both Capricorns (born a mere two years and ten days apart) there was a certain indefinable chemistry between us. Well I’m not sure how it happened but we realized that we were having the sort of synchronized and brilliant ideas could no longer be hidden under a bushel and before long we were telling each other we had to write a book together.

Now why that worked out is a bit of a mystery. Why we understood each other so well despite the fact we’ve never met in person may be partly astrological but it is also deeply geographical. For while I was born in the South and Gillian in the North we both shared the same soggy, damp landmass for many a moon. Essentially our shared heritage involves such cultural reference points as finding the royal family ludicrous, a genetic disposition to enjoy things like fried sausages and eggs without worrying about its cholesterol content, a seventies childhood involving numerous electricity strikes where we sat in the dark listening to ABBA on a portable radio and an adolescence spent dating weedy pasty men with crooked teeth (tans only briefly becoming a fashion statement in the UK in the 80’s when orangey fake tan made a debut which looked like crap unless you were a member of Wham!).

Even though we were psychic twins in many ways including a love of cheesy pop music and the fact that we both speak German it still didn’t take a genius to figure out that writing a book together in cyberspace was going to be about as easy as asking Lindsay Lohan to lay off the sauce. And yet, because we are both goats we dug our hooves in and got on with it, with bits of text flying back and forth until we had amassed something that looked distinctly like a book. And now that this book is done and dusted and filled with marvelous illustrations we’re hoping there are other mums out there – not necessarily Capricorns – who will enjoy our peculiarly skewed but perceptive views on what really happens after your midwife screams, “Mrs Mum! Take a deep breath and push. You’re crowning!”

Gillian says:

It was October 2008 and I was hatching plans for that year’s over the top Halloween costume (Marie Antoinette as I remember complete with a papier mache dead Louis XVI’s severed head in a basket) when an email popped into my inbox from someone I only knew as Emma K in the strange world of blogging.

“Hi Gillian

I always enjoy your blog and believe you are on the ball, so

I just wanted to pick your brains. So, I was wondering......”

And that was how Cocktails at Naptime started. We added the Woefully Inept bit later as we realised there was a slight theme emerging when none of us put forward any recipes for anything anyone could feasibly feed our kids or any top household tips on how to get any baby puke cleaned off of anything that would normally require dry cleaning. So, effectively what I’m saying is that email there is the evidence I need when my own mother reads this book for the first time and gasps at all the bits about vaginas and boobs and sex so that I can point squarely in Emma’s direction and shout “She started it!”

What strikes me now, over two years on, is that what is even more bizarre than starting this tri-continental book in the first place is that we actually finished it. You see Emma and I have never met in person. Not even as I write this little epilogue as the book’s about to go into print. Yet, I feel I know Emma pretty damn well as for the past two years we have been writing and sending little funny stories and daft lists about "Ten Ways to Hide Birthweight with Nothing More than Electrical Tape" to one another, and fretting over what’s funny and what’s not, and what’s too rude and what’s not rude enough and somehow getting a book written between us. Along the way we’ve talked about what’s going on in our lives, made each other laugh frequently and possibly cry with frustration on the odd occasion.

We’ve even had the odd off-peak long distance phone-call where we nervously tried to suss out if one another was one of those unhinged crazies you meet on the internet, who given half an inch, will turn up at your bedroom window one evening wielding an axe or start sending you carefully constructed and physically uncanny representations of yourself as a voodoo doll through the post. Turns out we were only as unhinged as each other and that’s why we got on so well. If Emma ever sent me a voodoo doll I’m sure it would have been well meant. I’m certainly currently working on a simply darling one for her.

One thing’s for sure it’s not been the easiest way to write a book I’m guessing, but it certainly has been an incredibly interesting one. At first I was convinced that at one point Emma and I would have to at least meet geographically half way and actually clap eyes on one another get this book finished. Maybe we could rent a cheap garret in the Faroe Islands half way across the Atlantic and stay there for a week one of us sat at a laptop typing furiously with fingerless gloves on as the other paced the creaky floor brandishing a half empty wine bottle, dressed in a parka ranting about nipple shields, support pants, colic and the humour therein. After all, isn’t that the kind of thing writers do? It never happened. We each just sat in our respective kitchens thousands of miles from one another and wrote and edited and emailed, and then rewrote and edited and emailed some more without requiring any Faroese hospitality, garrets or otherwise. I still wore fingerless gloves though for that feeling of writerly authenticity...I can’t speak for Emma although I’m guessing, like me, she was in spandex a lot of the time. We both also confess to occasionally brandishing half empty wine bottles.

After all the blood, sweat and emails there came a lovely time when a good while after we had dispatched Cocktails out into the world of publishing and sat expectantly by our letterboxes, we indulged in quite a lot of virtual jumping about hugging one another in cyberspace when we were asked by some nice Australians if they could publish our book. This was indeed an unexpected twist to the already insane geography of this whole project. Let’s get this straight: I live in Aberdeen, Scotland- Emma is English but lives in Baltimore in the United States- and a publisher in Sydney, Australia wants to publish our book? And none of us have ever even been in the same continent as one another at the same time, never mind the same room? Somehow even in the era of an international web community and the whole “global village” thing that still seems completely and utterly mental.

The big question for me is; will Emma and I ever meet one day? I really don’t know. But I know I feel like we already have. In fact, I feel like we’ve been sharing a flat for nearly three years. And yeah, that horrendous mess in the living room, yeah that wasn’t me, that was Emma...

Buy Cocktails at Naptime here.
http://www.finch.com.au/books/cocktails-naptime

(International shipping available)