Butterflies in my tummy

Hmm.  It appears while I have been on indefinite hiatus blogger has changed its format.  Now I'm going to have to re-learn how to operate the blasted thing.  Ugh.

Right, so, the main reason I haven't climbed back in the saddle as regularly as hoped is that the OCD part of me hates to leave gaps in a narrative, and there's far too much missing to catch you up on everything, ergo I've fallen too far behind to start up again.  The mountain is insurmountable, or something.

So I've just had the artistic, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants, leaves-tea-cups-everywhere side of my brain beat the OCD side into temporary submission and put up a post. It would be nice to have some comments from the old gang, if any of you are still out there.

I'm not even going to try to give you a summary of the past two years, I'm just going to start as though I'd never stopped, and maybe now and again fill in a bit of back story maybe.

Yesterday Small Pirate, aka Pirette, did the most extraordinary thing.  She was watching telly and playing with her magnadoodle (which hadly leaves her side).  The man on TV was talking about butterflies.  She scribbled on her magnadoodle for a moment, then waved wildly to get my attention from the kitchen.  I turned around and she made the sign for butterfly (we do a lot of signing around here), then pointed at her magnadoodle. This is what I saw:

And she's not even 2 yet!  My baby's a GYNIUS!

Introducing...

Oona Mary Elizabeth Pirate!

Born on the day I saw the very first daffodils of spring (while walking to McDonald's for lunch while I was in labor!), and Pirate saw the first cherry blossoms (while walking home from work to take me to the birthing center).

And yes, that is a Star Wars T-shirt I'm wearing. I used the Force. It helped.


She weighed 8 lbs, 7.5 oz. Don't ask me how long she was, they don't do that measurement here so I have no idea.

We didn't go to a hospital, we we went to a midwife-led birthing centre. It was marvelous and peaceful. I was the only mother there, and I was waited on hand and foot by two fantastic midwives who had been working as a team for 30 years, knew each other inside and out, and had great humor and bantor, and by a materinity assistant, who did all the non-medical stuff like make me tea and draw me a bath after. I couldn't have received better care if I'd been the queen.

I stayed overnight with Oona in bed with me. They offered to let Pirate stay as well, since he was falling asleep on the tile floor of the delivery room. Poor wee Pirate; he was all pooped out after 11 hours of labor! *snort*

I'll post the whole story with the gorey details later, if any of you maternal vultures are interested. Right now I have to put the bed together for my maternal pirate-in-law, who is coming to stay for a few days to lend a hand so Pirate can go back to swashbuckling.

Watch this space...

I'm back.

But that's not the big news. THIS is the big news:


And this photo is a couple months old already. I'm T minus 2 weeks, and boy am I ready to pop. My mom and doc don't think I'll make it to 40 weeks, which is good, because I'm SO FREAKIN' SICK OF BEING PREGNANT!!!! (I know I know, after I wanted to be pregnant soooooo badly. So I'm a hypocrite. Shoot me.)

In other developments, Pirate and I no longer reside in sunny Cornwall. Now we're living in bloody Swindon. Thank fuck it's only temporary. We'll be out of here in July.

So why the sudden return to blogging? You can thank First Nations for that. I saw that she was back on line again and it inspired me. That, and Pirate has been bugging me to get back in the blogging saddle for a while. He's scared I'll get hit with post-partum depression (a legit fear, with my family history and my own history of depression) and knows how supportive all my imaginary friends have been in the past, and figures one more safety net can't be a bad thing. Plus all kinds of zany crap keeps happening to us, and he's constantly saying shit like "this would make an awesome blog post." And he's right.

So watch this space...

Announcing Yakee Cakes!

I finally did it! I have a business! A real one, with a website and everything. Check it out:

www.yankeecakes.co.uk

Now, my technical advisor (Pirate) informs me that for my website to be known to search engines there have to be lots of links to it on other websites. I've created a couple business listings in places like yell.com, but it would really help if each of you would just whack a link to my business in your blog. It doesn't matter what continent you're on, there just need to be a ton of links out there in the ether.

Pirate explained a new website is like a walled garden, and every link you create is gate in the wall. Make enough gates, and eventually Google will notice you exist.

(For the techies who are now rolling their eyes, we've already done the meta data and keywords in the html code.)

Now get linking and send me some business!

(and if you know of any one in the soutwest who's getting married, point them my way.)

Yay! Also, Oops.

I've done it; I've started Kingfisher Cakes. The website will be online shortly. (I hope.)

I'm extremely excited about this. I began this with the view that it would just be a little cottage industry, something to help me earn a little pin money. But looking at the way the website is shaping up (I'm making it in MS Publisher), it looks ruddy professional. Now I'm thinking, the sky's the limit. Who knows how far this could go? How far do I want to take it? I don't even know, but I'm open to much bigger possibilities that I was a few months ago.

I've also just realized that in telling y'all the name of the business you'll be able to go to my website and find the real me. Now all you cyber-crazies can find me in meat-space. Oops. Oh well. I'll have to take my chances. It never occured to me when I began discussing this with you that I was crossing over my real and virtual personalities. Now you know. Too late.

And for your edification and delight, here are some photos of cakes I have made recently:

First up is a double-chocolate, 10-inch square layer cake with chocolate buttercream frosting, decorated in a solar-system theme with hand-piped buttercream.

Next is this awesome R2-D2 cake. Fully 18" across, the sponge is chocolate, covered with white buttercram frosting and decorated with hand-piped buttercream and silver sugar balls (which you can't really see in the photo but looked great in person).

Lastly is my own wedding cake. Two tiers of lemon drizzle layer cake, 2 tiers of carrot layer cake, all covered with cream cheese frosting and decorated with real pansies and rose petals which had been crystallized by hand by yours truly, and all of which were completely edible.

So whadda ya think? Would you pay money for one of my cakes? (Oh, and I have learned how to do marzipan and sugarpaste, so if that's the look you're going for, I can does that, too.)

Wee Mighty Predator

The small predator had a big day yesterday. In the eyes of the neighborhood moggies, he is now A Man.

He caught his first mouse.


Before yesterday I wasn't sure if he was a hunter or not. After seeing his behavoir, I'm convinced that if he'd had a kill before now we'd have known all about it.

I came home from the supermarket and found a dead mouse right in the middle of the front hall carpet, with Pai walking around it in circles around it, chest all puffed out, tail up, and saying to me "Look at me! Look what I did!*" He was so chuffed with himself I gave him a pat on the head to acknowledge his achievment, and then he did something I did not expect.

Despite the mouse being well and truly dead (I checked), he clearly wasn't done with it. He put it someplace where I coudln't miss seeing it, but once I had seen it Pai wanted to continue playing with it. He picket it up in his mouth, threw it across the hall, and pounced on it. This he repeated several times until by accident he threw it in with the cardboard recycling. He tried to climb in after it, but the density of empty cereal boxes made this impossible.

Not wanting it to rot and stink in there, I dug it out and carried it outside on the front porch, where I told Pai that he could keep it, but it was strictly an outdoor toy. He listened, bless him. He carried on playing with the mouse outside, but didn't bring it in the house again after that. Such a good kitty! I did get a huge kick out of watching him throw it straight up in the air and then bat it between his paws as it came back down, the fucked-up feline.



*He was speaking Cat, naturally, but some things are so obvious they need no translation.