How to undermine the Queen
Here’s a really oddball present for someone, should you be stuck with a credit card but no car.
Did you know that you could become:
Lord/Lady, Baron/Baroness, Duke/Duchess, Count/Countess, Viscount/Viscountess, Marquis/Marchioness, Earl/Countess, Sir/Dame -insert your own moniker here-, for the low, low price of $294????
“Imagine… A Life Of Priviledge
-Credit cards emblazoned with “Lord (or Lady) Smith”
-All identification confirming the new royal title.
-Doors opening professionally and socially.
-is no faster way to climb the social ladder.
-A unique and thoughtful gift which can pay for itself.
-A fantastic icebreaker which gains instant respect and credibility
-Unlocking doors which were previously unknown
-A completely risk-free gift”
Risk-free?!?!? If you say so!! The ebony certificate jacket would be worth that alone!
Kisskiss sweetie-dahling
xx
Countess K8 the Gr8
East meets Breast – Boobquake Day
I can understand how women baring too much skin could cause earthquakes, after all, if we can cause cow’s milk to sour and a pestilence on the spuds, it naturally stands to reason. That’s why I wasn’t surprised at all when I read the following quote;
“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes …” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi, senior Iranian cleric
I am therefore outraged that Blag Hag, an irresponsible and reckless blogger in Indiana has decided to put millions of people’s lives at risk by staging a national ‘low-cut top’ day on Monday 26th April that she calls ‘Boobquake Day’.
“On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that’s your preferred form of immodesty. With the power of our scandalous bodies combined, we should surely produce an earthquake. If not, I’m sure Sedighi can come up with a rational explanation for why the ground didn’t rumble. And if we really get through to him, maybe it’ll be one involving plate tectonics.”
Disgraceful, endangering people like that.
She’s on the facebook and the twitter, and is brazenly flaunting her boobs in everyone’s face which is all well and good when you’re all sprightly and perky, but what if you look like this lady:
I am afraid. Allāh will not like it. Not even one little bit.
Ten things they don’t warn you about before you get pregnant… #6
The one thing that’s very obvious about pregnancy is the gruesome. Films focus on the gunge and the pain, TV documentaries love to stress how horribly things can go wrong… they show husbands fainting, vomit inducing stretchmarking, hormonal shriekage way beyond banshee capability. Gore sells. Even friends and well-wishers love to tell horror stories about labour and pregnancy without much consideration for the woman they’re talking to, the person who is by now a mass of nerves for no reason at all. It’s very hard to take all of this with a pinch of salt.
This is a post about some of the good things, the great things, the things you crave for again once baby’s been born and epidurals are but a fading memory.
1: The Dentist. There is no better excuse not to go. Amalgam fillings aren’t generally a good idea during pregnancy unless there is dire need for them, so it’s best to wait until you’ve got your body back before visiting the surgery. So, the guilt at not making that horrible appointment is completely and beautifully absent for a whole nine months. The fact that the baby is in the meantime robbing all of your calcium stores should probably not be dwelled upon. Losing teeth isn’t so bad, one less to clean, eh?
2: Weight Gain. Eating for two. While health experts say that this theory isn’t necessarily true, it’s lovely to be able to eat six Weetabix followed by two apples, then two super-noodle sandwiches smothered in chocolate sauce, all washed down with three cartons of orange juice and NOT feel disturbed and gluttinous afterwards. A little voice obviously told you to do it, and I don’t mean the one your psychiatrist’s concerned about. Getting fat is fun, don’t try and tell me otherwise.
3: Hair. I’ve lost count of how many people have commented that my hair’s gotten all bright and shiny. It’s lovely. The reason is purely because pregnant women stop moulting so their hair becomes thicker, and the glands are slightly oiler than usual. It does what it’s told… its fringe stays on its best behaviour… bad hair days become a rarity. Of course it’ll start falling out in clumps once the baby’s born, but let’s cross that bridge when we get to it.
4: Hiccups. There is no bad mood, no amount of spilled milk, no gaping mire of disapointment that can’t be lightened instantly by a dose of foetal hiccups. The kicking is of course a thing of beauty, a welcome sign of life, but hiccups are something else entirely. After a bit of research I found that they’re not caused by a deficiency or abundance of anything in the mother’s diet, they’re just caused by a tiny diaphragm practicing wee breathing excercises, it’s owner probably wondering what the hell is going on. Think of the cuteness of puppy hiccups, but muffled deep down inside your body. Absolutely bloody amazing.
5: Drive. Thank God for gay men, I say. If it weren’t for gay men, there’d be no porn for women at all. No, we don’t want to see scantily clad men holding a mop or an iron suggestively, we want to see men perform gravity defying acts with their bits, thanks very much. Happily there are open minded blogs out there who have provided many hours of entertainment for hormone-laden horny pregnant women (think Phoebe and her Evander Holyfield phase) like myself… some links of fascination might be – Sex Is Not the Enemy, Youporn (obviously), Altporn.net, Boob.ie (Yay for those wimmin who embrace their inner lesbian!) and CarnalNation, for when you just need good old fashioned educating. Yes, I will indeed miss this part of pregnancy.
6: Lazy. Yeah, I’m lazy. Now I have an excuse. Get over it and make me some tea.
Did I leave anything out? I’m absolutely positively sure I did… another thing about pregnancy is that melted brain. It’s lovely having a temporarily shrunken mind, blokes have it so handy (;-p). Help a girl out will you and remind me?
I put a spell on you…
One of the biggest things I missed about my next door neighbour when she moved away were the snippets of eyebrow-raising advice she used to dole out. Given that witches never really speak about being witches, especially to relative strangers, I felt honoured that she’d envelop me into her circle of trust and tell me of her voodoo shenanigans. After all, there’s a fine line between an open-minded person and someone who’s all too willing to go behind your back and bitch about what a weirdo you are, especially in Ireland.
She loaned me books about rituals. She taught me how to make altars so that I’d have my own personal space to meditate in, a space that meant something only to me. I learned amazing things.
How to get rid of an unwanted live-in houseguest:
Place a witch’s broomstick in the hallway beside the door, and stick a fork into the bristles. Within two weeks, the unwanted guest should be a thing of the past. I may be rough on specifics… maybe the fork needs to be made of a certain type of metal, maybe the broom should be upside-down – it’s not really something I’d try, but her story amused me. A friend of hers did this trick, and within two weeks was separated from her husband. Turns out that she herself was the disruptive influence in the house and her leaving was the best thing that happened for everyone involved. Eerie.
How to nab the house of your dreams:
Whether you’re bidding for a house, or hoping to inherit and battling with siblings, or maybe you just fancy the look of someone else’s gaff (I keep thinking of The War of the Roses for some reason), apparently there’s a fail-safe trick you can do to assure that pile of bricks will someday be yours.
Once a month, given obviously that you’re a female, you need to sneak onto the property, squat, and leak a few droplets of your own menstrual blood onto the soil surrounding the house. I’m not sure what your alternatives are if you’re post menopausal, perhaps crones in covens stockpile menstrual blood in their freezers? It’s an awfully personal question to ask.
I would seriously love to know if this actually works. There’s a beautiful house nearby, a stone-walled three-storey haven surrounded by mysterious woody hinterland with an elaborate tree house just about visible to plebs like me who gaze wistfully from behind a steeringwheel as I pass by every day. If I was caught mid-squat, I’d be scarleh, it’s not like I could pretend I had dropped a contact lens or something. If anything I’d be looking at a two-to-five stretch inside.
It would be kind of worth it if not for scientific experimentation though. Any takers?
Ten things they don’t warn you about before you get pregnant… #5
The Nesting Instinct
You may or may not have heard references to this phenomenon before. It’s described as an instinct that kicks in at some point during pregnancy, most commonly when birth is imminent.
There are whimsical references to it in books and in films, down the pub and during Ann Summers parties… this urge to clean obscure and bizarre places. But! It should never be underestimated. It is a very serious thing indeed.
I’m not talking about getting on your hands and knees to scrub yellowed pee and crusty puke from the dark corners of the no-man’s land behind the toilet, I’m not talking about risking life and limb to reach the waterproof covering on the bulb in the porch to extract the countless dead bodies of flies that have accumulated over the years (how the hell did they get in there in the first place?!?)
I’m talking about demon possession here.
One morning, you might wake up and decide that every floor surface in the entire house must be bleached to within an inch of its varnished life. Superhuman strength makes you lift the couch and drag heavy oak tables outside, even though you’re tired and hungry, you will not rest until it’s done. You’ll happily risk your life, your back, and your growing belly for the cause. It’s a very strange thing.
Today it happened to me, but I’m nowhere near my due date. At least I hope I’m not.
This is what it looked like at 9am this morning:
Twelve hours later, it looks like this:
I’m not sure how it happened, nor where all the junk went to – I blacked out for a while and may have eaten it all. All I know is that if somebody called to the door with a de-fibrillator right now, I’d happily have a go of it. Even blinking hurts.
So, if you have a room that needs de-cluttering, forget Kim and Aggie, all you have to do is get yourself up the duff. Most of the time, it works every time.
El Duderino
The naming of the foetus is an epic task, especially when you haven’t met it yet. Of course there’s always the option of naming it after its zone of conception, but who wants to live their life with ‘Ballybunion’ for a moniker?
Baby name books are pointless, especially Irish baby name books. From Morrigan to Aoife to Siobhán, everyone has something mean to say about a name, (Siobhán your knickers, yer da’s on his way…) or somebody already knows a person by that name and doesn’t like them, or it rhymes with something rude… or maybe it’s just plain naff. Nah, if you ask me, the only way to choose a name is to scan the credits at the end of a film – this method always spews forth interesting possibilities.
Take my friend for instance… she’s due her babby in three weeks time, and she loves the name Charlie. She cannot name her kid Charlie, however, because her surname is Brown. Hell, Snoopy hasn’t been aired for years, if you ask me she’s on to a winner, but her family won’t let up nagging her into changing her mind.
Then there’s my other friend, who gave birth last month and named her baby girl ‘Kitty’. It’s not short for anything, Kitty is her name and Kitty is what she shall be called. I love it, but it’s undoubtedly quite an eccentric name, which beautifully mirrors a very eccentric family. My family is not eccentric, at least TAT’s side isn’t… I can imagine the multitudes of rolled eyeballs, the quick snide remarks directed towards the stoner family at the Christmas table. It’s just not worth it.
No, The Accidental Terrorist and I came up with an idea long ago, we had a flippant moment during a private viewing of The Big Lebowski:
Dude.
Why can’t I call my child Dude? “The Dude. His Dudeness… Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing” to quote The Dude himself.
Yeah, yeah, I know why I can’t call the child ‘Dude’, because someday he’ll grow up and will most likely want a job that doesn’t involve canvas or scripts, or burger flipping. Such is life. Or is it?!?! Such is the beauty of the Irish language perhaps… like the phrase ‘Mahogany Gaspipes’, the word ‘Dude’ could be Irish – all you have to do is add a fada and an ‘i’ somewhere, and the problem is solved, as follows:
-Duaid; short for Duaided, means ‘Evil Death’… who picks on a kid named Evil Death?!?
-Dúid; short for Dúidín, meaning ‘Pipe’. Grandad would be so proud.
-Dóid; meaning ‘Fist’… again, schoolyard politics are in favour of this one.
-Díud; short for Díthugad, meaning ‘Extermination’… a future in pest control perhaps?
-Diúd; short for Diúdán, meaning ‘Giddiness’, which is fitting.
-Duíd; a version of ‘David’, which my mother called me during the first three weeks of my confusing life.
But maybe the most fitting yet:
-Dúd… meaning ‘Mouth‘, because his would be one more to feed.
I do so hope it’s a boy!
Ten things they don’t warn you about before you get pregnant… #4
PAIN
It’s the one question that everyone asks; when the subject of babies crops up, the look of fear on their faces is unmistakable. They wonder why I’d willingly offer up my body to excruciating hell like that, and tell me they’d go the ‘too posh to push’ way if it came down to them. I can see why they’d say that, but I can also see how vastly misled they are. It’s the film industry… they love the gushing bloodiness, the portrayal of the sweaty monster screaming and cursing at its husband… they make the whole ordeal seem so vulgar and hellish, it’s no wonder so many women opt for the cesarean section.
THE MYTH
In truth, childbirth is not the most painful thing that can happen to a body. Childbirth is about endurance, not about pain. Pain is what happens when you break your leg, or suffer from an abscess. It’s something that involves destruction or infection, something that happens to let your brain know that there’s something wrong. Childbirth is entirely different, so it’s really not fair to taint it with the same brush.
Childbirth is all about creation, and as such it feels different. Yes, the pressure hurts a lot, but it comes and goes, that’s the beauty of it. You get a two-minute rest in between contractions, even in the thick of it, and these two minutes are pure bliss because the void is so beautifully apparent. And, what’s even more amazing, is that once the whole ordeal is over, the pain is over, completely forgotten in the blink of an eye. There are no splints, no metal plates to be inserted, no antibiotics (unless there are complications of course), the pain just… goes away.
One woman I spoke to even told me that she had a pretty amazing orgasm while giving birth once. She has four children with another on the way, and there’s not a chance you’d entice her into a cesarean section if she had a choice. Nor is she particularly masochistic I might add, as I noticed once when she caught her finger in the car door. A bigger whiner you wouldn’t find – yet the concept of labour excites her no end! Go figure.
Of course, there’s the part where one is required to squeeze something the size of a large bag of spuds out of an opening the size of a postage-stamp… surely that’s got to hurt just a tad? It does, no kidding, but here’s where Mother Nature shows her infinite kindness. When… um… things are stretched beyond a certain point, the nerve endings in the area shut down so that in reality, you only have about ten seconds worth of screaming agony. Okay, so it’s a pretty long ten seconds, but it’s not the five hours they portray on television, not by a long shot.
Me? I’ve never had an orgasm while giving birth, I chose the way of the epidural, the drug that is so amazing, you really don’t care that it takes a syringe the size of the Empire State Building to administer it. I would have happily stabbed my spinal cord repetitively with the syringe myself, if there hadn’t been an anaesthesiologist around to do it for me. It makes you want to vomit, it makes your thighs itch uncontrollably, but it gives you a clear enough brain to enjoy the experience. I too was a woman who swore she’d be able to give birth without pain relief, but as a midwife once asked me in the throes of things; “Do you think you’re getting a feckin’ medal for this or something?” She was right. There are no medals for martyrs, that’s the whole point.
THE TRUTH
Pethidine is the Devil’s drug. It hurts. It doesn’t stop labour from hurting. It leaves a numb-spot on your ass for months afterwards and leaves your baby more stoned than Woody Harrelson. Don’t be fooled.
Nitrous Oxide is great craic, especially when the midwife leaves the room and your birth partner gets to have a go and the midwife returns to find everyone gasping in hysterics because there’s a crack in one of the ceiling tiles. It’s that much fun, it should be illegal. Its only downfall is that after a while it feels like you’re swimming in mercury and you end up in the horrors, so less is most definitely more, but very very very funny with it.
Tens machines are only good for the people who get to watch you jump every ten seconds from the electric jolt. They find it hilarious, but you won’t. Yes, it distracts you from the pain a little bit, but frankly what is far more entertaining, is placing one charge on each one of the testicles of your loved one, and then zapping him while he sleeps. Laughter is an excellent pain reliever, especially the evil type.
Last but not least; Yes, you will most likely crap yourself while in labour. As foul as that sounds, it’s the last thing that’ll be on your mind at the time, so why give a shit*?
Bizarro jewellery… you know you want it.
*Did you come all the way down here to see if that was an intended pun? Don’t you know me by now!?!?
Ten things they don’t warn you about before you get pregnant… #2
The ‘outie’ phenomenon.
Apologies to all Omphalophobics out there… you may want to look away.
It comes as a terrible shock to one day look down at your navel to find that it has turned itself inside-out. It’s an even greater shock to stick your pinkie finger in there to find there’s a hole that leads to somewhere possibly very intriguing. Offering to have other people stick their fingers in there is not a good idea… the resulting scream of “EW!!” tends to make the foetus jump, which is a high price to pay for personal sadism.
It makes one realise that there are certain things one shouldn’t do if they ever intend to be pregnant;
- Navel Piercing: I had my belly button pierced during a rosemantic getaway with my fella once… I did it to soften the pain of his tongue piercing. I never really wore jewellery in there, it kept getting hooked onto my belt buckle which is not to be sneezed at. I let the hole close, which never really happens with a belly-button piercing, especially if you get yourself in trouble. I remember being in labour with my first child, and sharing a room with a young male midwife who almost passed out when he spotted the gaping maw of my self mutilation. When he asked “WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!?!”, I replied via ventriloquism using the piercing wound. He was not amused…. not even when I sang ‘Blue Moon’ with it. Nitrous Oxide is wonderful stuff.
- Tattoos of dolphins ‘jumping over’ your navel: That is, unless you also like Humpback whales. Humpback whales who have been through intense orthopaedic surgery, for that matter. It’s not pretty. Any sort of tattoo is a bad idea in the belly department for that reason, for while everything else might shrink back to normality, tattoos don’t. They disobey logic in all its forms… maybe this is where Picasso got his inspiration?
Ten things they don’t warn you about before you get pregnant… #1
Thrupenny bits
Yes, I mean those two girly lumps stuck to the front of you that you’ve grown to know and love… from the early weeks of duff’ness, they develop their own personality altogether. Welcome to the anomaly that is alien pregnancy boobs.
You may notice at first that the straps of your favourite dark and lacy number suddenly dig into your shoulders and leave deep tracks where there never were before. Then the rest of the bra suddenly begins to tear under the strain of growth… they threaten to spill their contents on every bend-over… they create a weird muffin-effect that makes your chest look like it’s perpetually frowning. Time to go shopping. Not only for a new cup size, but a bigger (horror!) chest size too – we need to make room for all that rib-growth and baby weight, don’t we?! Katie Price, eat your heart out.
(Scroll to the end of the post to see an amazing pair of tits*)
High beams
Don’t even start me on the raspberry ripples… you could pad that bra with re-inforced titanium and those things will still find a way to poke through and stare at passers-by. Full beams, baby… get used to woolly sweaters. If the darkening of their colour doesn’t alarm you, their sudden sensitivity will… it’s like somebody came along one day and re-wired them completely. If you have fillings in your teeth, and have ever accidentally experienced the sudden shock voltage of chewing tin-foil accidentally, you’ll have an idea of what an brief brush with those nipps feels like. Electric shocks, when you least expect it… takes a lot of getting used to. This does of course also have its advantages, but that’s for a whole other post.
There are ways to ease the boob situation of course, that you don’t always find in books. If you don’t want to roll over and trap a nipple under your elbow while you sleep; thus making you hit notes that Kiri Te Kanawa herself would be jealous of, wear a bra to bed. This over-the-shoulder-alien-boulder-holder also helps to stop the formation of shuddersome stretch marks that never go away, and gives you something to put cabbage leaves into when things get overly hot and stuffy in there. Yep, a good bra is your best friend, and so is that lovely lady in the lingerie shop that will fit you out properly… when your thrupenny bits are in order, that’s a quarter of the battle of pregnancy sorted, right there. Oh – and stay away from tight white tee-shirts… because you just never know what might leak, or from where. That panic you feel when you realise that things have gotten so bad even your boobs need nappies – that’s normal. It’s not pretty, but somebody’s got to do it I guess.
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*…there’s nothing quite like the sight of nuts nestled between lovely tits.
God be with the days before Christianity
I’m reading ‘The Mists of Avalon’ right now, a book about Arthurian legend from his mother and his sister’s point of view. In them days, it was all about appeasing the Goddess and natural ritual and Bardic poetry and such other lovely stuff, as Christianity and convents slowly crept into their consciousness.
I can’t help but be slightly jealous at the constant mention of the Bealtaine fires. May first every year, everyone in the community douses the home-fires, then celebrates life and re-birth during a giant hooley by a huge fire. As part of the ritual, it’s required by the Goddess that random people should couple up… so named the unity of the Great Mother and her young horned God. Not an orgy, no no, just appreciation for the exuberant healing powers of spring. It’s not just at Bealtaine either… they get to do this every quarter of the year to celebrate the ever-changing stages of life and death. This is most likely the origins of bonfires at Hallowe’en, then? Can you imagine loads of skobies all dressed up as Gardaí and Zombies all shaggin’ away after their sugar rush because the Goddess wants them to?
Pity they didn’t have Youtube back then!
