Smokey the Magnificent

1. I am frequently amazed by the kind of men who manage to get wives.
2. Yesterday I finally bit the bullet and attempted to cure myself of fatigue, anaemia and the moops by consuming raw, frozen liver cut into little pills and swished down with water. It was horrid, but considerably less horrid than downing liver in its customary cooked, chewable form. I only managed to ingest about a teaspoon’s worth, and it had no appreciable effect on my desire to train for a half-marathon, but they say it’s cumulative. I will Let You Know.
3. I found out at the supermarket today that the salmon I have been smugly purchasing to ward off the brainworms is farmed, not wild. There’s always something, innit. Farmed salmon is evil; they keep them in cramped conditions and feed them soy and grains and things, which mucks up their omega 3-omega 6 ratio and no doubt makes them discontented in their squish. And then they have to feed them dye to get their flesh the correct pink. I got cod instead, which is cheaper and hopefully less evil, but not very appetising.
4. Did you know more women have blonde or red hair than men? Wikipedia said so. I wonder if it’s due to the Barbie/Ken beauty model.
5. Speaking of Barbie and Ken, Toy Story 3 is excellent.
6. I need a way to make a lot of money fairly fast. Nobody’s going to lose an eye or anything if I don’t, but it would be handy. Ideas?
7. I made white chocolate ice cream with homemade ginger cookies crumbled through, and it is mighty tasty, but Helpdesk Man does not like it. I am torn between wounded scorn at his dismissal of any ice cream that is not double chocolate, and smug because it means more ice cream for me.
8. The snortlepig is probably going to grow up to be a taxidermist or a serial killer. She has a penchant for Death. The highlight of supermarket trips is visiting the “dead fishies”, to the point where she refers to grocery shopping as “seeing dead fishies!”; and today when we went to the butcher and they had large portions of cow hanging up out the back, visible through a window no doubt designed to prove that everything is sanitary and pukkah, the pig was delighted and insisted I lift her up so she could beam at them for five minutes while a butcher whacked off bits with an evil-looking knife and gave us uncomfortable glances. Also, though? According to the sign, the Maori word for beef is “kau”. This gives me more happiness than words can convey.
9. Would you rather lose all your worldly possessions in a fire, or be stranded for a month on a desert island after your plane crashed into the briny?
10. I have megalophobia.

Today I was seized with a wild, creative urge occasioned by being behind on the laundry. I made the snortlepig some trousies.

They have side seam pockets, the insertion of which taxed my tiny brain to the uttermost.

Also big knee-pockets, into which I am thinking of putting small pillows to cushion the knees of the snortlepig when she falls on them during walks. I’m not sure, though. It seems anti- the survival of the fittest. One would not wish to do the species a disservice by artificially advantaging a snortlepig who cannot retain control of her own two feet.

Just for larks, I also topstitched some pretend pockets on her rump. It’s doing little things like this that keep me topside of the Seine.

And because I am Thrifty and Virtuous, I made the legs very long and fully lined so they can be turned up and the pig can wear them till she’s, like, thirty. And don’t think she won’t.

The pig was also struck with the creative yen today. Know what gets ballpoint pen off an LCD monitor? Handsoap, hairspray and/or rubbing alcohol. Thank you, Google.

I had an interesting experience in town today. I was heading at a rate of knots for the bus stop, pushing the snortlepig in a pram, when I came to a crossing and saw a teenageish-looking girl. I gave her my customary tight-lipped, terrified smile which is meant to indicate aimiability and usually looks like I’m about to shiv the recipient. To my surprise, she gave a slight smile back. The little man turned green. We began to cross the road, when she said to me “What do you think, is it worth it if a guy mumble mumble cheats on his girlfriend and then leaves her for another chick, is it worth it?”

I considered this briefly. “Hang on”, I said, “the guy cheated on his girlfriend and then found another girl?” “Yeah”, she said. I was tempted to ask whether this made two girls or three, which of the girls this particular girl was, what I’d missed in the mumbles and why she was asking, but we were running out of road. So with the fate of precious individuals in my hands I took a stab in the dark and said “He sounds like a bit of a scumbag, to be honest”.

“Yeah”, said the girl vaguely and drifted away. I hope it helped.

Would you rather be totally bald or have hair that looked like Snape’s?

ETA: No? Really? OK, I have another one. If you had to suffer from one of these conditions for the rest of your tiny life, which would you pick?

1. Every time you put on a pair of shoes (including flippers, sandals, slippers and similarly quirky footwear) you had an hour of moderate, unrelievable nausea

or

2. Every time you looked in the mirror you would experience a jolt of fear.

Go.

10:32 - Under-layer of fondant successfully applied to all three cakes. Helpdesk Man, who was also stricken with the deathpox, is lying in bed next to a bucket. The snortlepig thought it would be amusing to watch as I dusted the table with icing sugar, and then plant her foot in the middle of it. Oddly enough I still like her; it must be the fever. Am keeping body and soul on nodding terms with scraps of cake and fondant.

11:39 - Realised any skill I once possessed at making icing roses has disappeared, either due to the passage of years or rapidly-progressing nerve damage. Am Googling “how to make icing roses”.

12:02 - In a martyr-like display of maternal solicitude, made bacon and eggs for me and the snortlepig. Snortlepig choked on a piece of bacon rind. Proudly: “I throw up!” Peering, delighted: “I throw up BACON!”

1:36 - Seven roses of somewhat dubious botanical verisimilitude completed. The pig keeps eating the flower paste. Helpdesk Man has staggered out of bed and had a bowl of ice cream, despite my warnings that Dairy is Mucous-Forming.

2:56 - Have piped a large number of royal icing butterflies on greaseproof paper. It calmed me temporarily into a trance-like state, until I sneezed three times and my amygdala got lodged in my sinuses.

6:13 - All cakes fully masked. Had a break for a while giving the pig the milks and watching a bit of Volver, which Helpdesk Man and I started watching last night upon discovering it in several Top Feelgood Movies of All Time lists. Last night the main character’s no-good husband tried to rape her teenage daughter, who killed him with a knife. About the time she started dragging the body to a nearby chest freezer we decided we didn’t Feelgood, and went to bed. Today, while the snortlepig slept and had the milks, the main character engaged a local prostitute to help her dump the body. I also learned the main character’s father had had an affair with another woman, who may or may not have burned him and his wife to death before leaving town, and whose daughter is now dying of cancer. It’s a gay romp, I tell you. It’s also subtitled, so after half an hour of this my eyes started to frizzle and I decided icing the wedding cake would be more Feelgood. Incidentally: never trust things you read on the internet.

8:11 - You know what I’d do if I ever wanted to torture someone real bad? I’d find one of those tiny freezer compartments you get in fridges, all iced up thick around the edges. And I’d hold his hand in it for five minutes until it was good and chilly. And then I’d bang it back and forth, not particularly hard, against the sides. And then I’d do it again. It would be extremely unpleasant. I’ve affixed the roses to the top tier and placed a few butterflies on wires amongst them, but they had a high mortality rate when I peeled them off the waxed paper so I’m making another batch. I asked Helpdesk Man and Flatmate Man to saw my dowelling, but Flatmate Man is as drunk as a large, smallish fish and Helpdesk Man has oosed off to get some Burger Fuel for dinner, me being both too busy and too infested to make the boeuf bourguignon for dinner, which yes, actually was on the meal plan, although admittedly not spelled quite that well.

10:39 - Yay! Apart from putting in the ribbon, the cake is DONE. Including some spare butterflies to give the transport girl in case anything shatters in the car, which is sadly likely - those butterflies are ridiculously fragile. As are the real ones, though - realism, innit. Anyway. I am going to bed.

I write you all from a haze of cheem. A few weeks ago I rashly agreed to make a last-minute wedding cake for my sister’s friend, and what do I do but contract septicaebola three days before the big event. The batch of cake batter I mixed up this morning contains 1 kg butter, 6 cups of caster sugar, four blocks of chocolate and not less than four parts per million of my own personal pus, mucus and other bodily fluids. Something old, something new, something fetid, a bit of goo, as the old saying goes. I’m supposed to be making icing roses right now, but whenever I try to alight from the couch I see this

and my brain goes

and I have to pass out for a bit.

Today I told the snortlepig she could not lick the beaters yet, because I still had to beat in the vanilla essence. She called me a pesky wench. (A “peshky wench”, technically.) At times like these, I begin to doubt my parenting. Discuss.