Edinburgh and Stuff

Almost 2 weeks ago we went to the Edinburgh festival to hang out with with our super fun comedian friends who are staying there all month. It was really our last chance to live the student life style for a few days before becoming the kind of people who carry wet wipes with them at all times, and invest money in invisible things like life insurance and pensions. Thinking about it though, maybe students and parents have more in common than you think, they both survive on too little sleep and they both turn a blind eye to crisps on the floor.

Edinburgh festival is really fun there are 1000s of shows and lots of them are free, (we went to 10 shows in two days and they were all free.) We saw a lot of our friends shows, and we really do have some super talented and funny friends. We saw some other shows too. We came back singing the songs from Kris Foster's album, he's a Lancashire comedian who wears a leopard suit for no reason and writes songs about Vimto, and taxidermy, and that situation that you sometimes find yourself in.... when you need to make two brews and you only have one tea bag. I respect people who write songs about things people don't normally write about. There are way to many songs about love, and I don't think I'm the only one who has run out of tea bags more times than I have been in love.

Since coming back I have been making the baby's room, so far I have painted the floor and one wall and been to ikea but not actually made the ikea stuff up yet. Here I am testing a few colours in my pyjamas. With hindsight the second coat was not really the time to start testing out different shades but I have an unconventional approach to decorating. When it's all finished I'll put up some photos.

Happy 57th Birthday to my Dad. We went to surprise him for the day while he was on holiday in the Yorkshire dales. The great thing about being 28 and having parents in their 50s is that we're at that nice point in life where neither of us are burdening each other, financially or emotionally. I've managed to get over all my teenage issues before they have started having old people problems, I hope to have at least another decade of that.

And last but not least...exciting news!! We have a nephew called Reuben born yesterday! Massive congrats to Dan's sister Bethany and husband Nick. Hopefully we'll get to visit soon and then I can dedicate a whole blog post to him.

The Adventures of Bumpy

Bumpy (the name we have temporarily given to our unborn child) has been on a few adventures recently. I guess because I've been on a few adventures and it's inside me. Yes I'm like a russian doll, but a bit of a crap one because there isn't a baby inside my baby. Although if my baby is a girl then the eggs that will hopefully be half of our future grandchildren are already inside our baby's ovaries.  So that's pretty cool.

This year we decided on a very opposite holiday to last year's cycle to Kuwait. We decided to do something relaxing and to stay in England in case we needed the NHS.  So we booked 6 nights in a B&B farmhouse with a swimming pool in Cornwall. We then kept adding extra days to complicate things, so we ended up going to Cornwall via my parents in Coventry, friends in Wiltshire and a campsite in Devon.

So here are some things bumpy has been getting up to:

Going on a rope swing.

Sleeping in a horse box, that my friend Josh is making into his house.

Being licked by a horse on a day trip to Lundy Island off the coast of Devon.

Swimming in a rock pool.

Breaking the law.

 We have this really cool book called 'wild swimming' that has lots of suggestions of nice places to swim (that's how we knew about the cool rock pool place.) So on our way back from holiday we looked in the book for places near the M5 that we could stop off at and we found this lovely quarry. Unfortunately since the book was written there must have been an accident here and the police have decided to put an end to everyone's fun by putting up boring signs. They could have just put up a sign saying 'be a bit careful' or 'don't jump in if you're drunk or can't swim' but that's not really their style.

I didn't want to let a sign get in the way of fun, so I weighed up the risk of danger... (I can swim, there was no current and Dan is a qualified life guard so low risk) and the risk of getting caught...this concerned me a bit more but it would only be a fine, they're hardly going to imprison me. My motto for life is "better sorry than safe" so I decided it was worth it. There was no one around when I got in, but then some walkers appeared making comments like "it says no swimming" and more offensively "that's how natural selection works".... "well ha ha to you because I'm already pregnant" is what I didn't say in reply.

I will leave you with some bump art. I wonder which face Bumpy will end up looking most like.

The Peak of Pregnancy

It's so nearly the summer holidays! yey! sorry to all those people that means nothing to. If it makes you feel any better I could refer to it as unpaid leave. I've had a lot of work this term so I'm looking forward to a nice rest. Here are some things I have helped children make this term:

This is a mural of children from different eras  (designed by the children painted by me)

This toucan


















This gluey slippy horrible mess.

I've also of course been continuing with making baby Jones. (To see my pregnancy comedy click here )

I think I've reached the peak of pregnancy ie I'm obviously pregnant rather than fat, I'm not sick and I'm not a whale. It's now big enough to kick me (but in a lovely way.) I had a freaky dream about it last night... I dreamt my belly button was actually a hole to my womb and baby Jones (who was a boy in this dream) got both his feet stuck in the hole so I could see his feet. That's the second dream I've had where it was a boy and Dan has also had a dream it's a boy.

My bump has been meeting the bump that will be his or her cousin:

(That's a duckling who also wants to be part of the family by the way.)

And also the bump that may one day become his or her spouse if me and Bex get our way:

We have a bit of house news... we're not buying the shop which I blogged about a while back. Sorry, it would have been cool but for a similar price we're (hopefully) buying a real house with things like heating and a garden and a place to park. I know it's so conventional. It's a new build in Toxtheth near our friends Steph and Nic they are hoping to move in in December and we are hoping to move in about June. We could have been next door neighbours but we selfishly picked a plot with a bigger garden instead, sorry guys. 

The final thing I would like to share, is that this week Dan offered to make me a pasta carbonara meal and was so tired that he managed to serve up just the sauce. It wasn't until it was on the table and I said "where's the pasta?" that he realised he was missing a vital ingredient. Aww bless him he had cycled 86 miles that day (for fun) what kind of nutter does that?! Don't worry though Dan you're not as crazy as the person who asked to use our microwave because their tumble dryer wasn't doing a good job of defrosting a packet of frozen mince.

My Bump

As the title suggests this blog is mainly about 'my bump, my bump my lovely baby bump' I hope you sang that bit to the tune of the black eyed peas 'my hump'

Yesterday I was 20 weeks (well the baby is I'm now approximately 1468 weeks from conception)  I went for my 20 week scan, we could have found out if it's a boy or a girl today but we've decided to have a surprise. Although as I once pointed out in my comedy everyone has a surprise they just choose when to have that surprise. We could drag it out even longer by doing blindfolded nappy changes, but I think the gift of sight would probably help in a nappy changing situation.

I've got through the horrible sickness phase now and I also had this very extreme hunger that would randomly happen. I described this once by saying "I was normal and then I suddenly became ravashing" (I meant ravenous)

So here's the bump at 14 weeks which was a really awkward stage where I felt really self-consious and fat because I didn't look properly pregnant.

And here it is at 18 weeks when I got some maternity clothes and started enjoying having a bump a bit more.

and here is the bump today with clothes on.

We have started calling it "bumpy" we were calling it after what it was the same size as e.g apple pip, pea, bean, raspberry ect but we gave up on that after it got to the size of a peach. I've got very used to bumpy now it might be weird to give it a real name. Bumpy Jones has a nice ring to it.

There is a strange list of things you can't do when you're pregnant obviously drink alcohol is one of them but you also can't eat anything unpasteurised like soft cheese or homemade mayonnaise. You can't have mr wippy ice cream or mcflurrys or sword fish and you can't touch soil or cat litter. I quite recently went to a cheese and wine party which along with sword fish-gardening parties are the worst kind of parties you can go to as a pregnant person. However I heard that you can eat soft cheese such as camembert if it is grilled so because everyone felt sorry for me 3 tubs of camembert ended up being grilled and I ended up overdosing on cheese. I really do love cheese a lot! I hope it is true that you can eat it grilled or I may have damaged our unborn child. Although I'm not too worried because I've never met anyone with some kind of medical problem that's said "oh yeah it's because my mum ate 3 tubs of camembert while I was in the womb"

Here's our little one at 20 weeks, it's not as clear as the 12 week scan but everything is fine.

After the scan we went and bought the first thing we've ever bought our baby, pretty much the only nice unisex thing we could find:

Can't wait for the christmas jumper season to start!

Should We Buy a Shop?

We're looking for a new house with a bit more room for our us, baby Jones, Lola the rabbit and ideally a lodger or two. Yesterday Dan and I and our friend Joe were chatting about where we might live next and we started talking about living in a shop. Not just a shop, a house that includes a shop, because really who doesn't want to have a big extra room that you could do crazy things with?!

Here is a link to the shop on rightmove

Ok it's decorated like a old people's home, and you can't park outside, and it doesn't have a garden but forget all that and think about all the cool things you could do with the shop! Forget commercial things for the moment as I bet that involves filling in some kind of form. Here is the list of things that we came up with in order of most sensible/ realistic/ boring to craziest.

1) Mini home gym

2) Art/music studio.

3) Home cinema with a ball pool instead of seats.

4) Climbing wall leading around the room to indoor tree house.

5) Indoor camping area with a turfed floor a, campfire a, gypsy caravan and a tepee.

We're going for a viewing on friday, don't get too excited though because we do have to sell our own house first....also Dan might need a bit more persuading. Feel free to help out with that.

Baby Jones :)

So near the end of my last blog I said "that's all our news" That was a lie sorry. We have a super exciting wonderful piece of news that I am so glad I can finally share!

And just in case you're wondering... no it doesn't have a wicked witch's nose and a little Jewish hat, those random bits are apparently 'artefacts' I'm not really sure what that means but they're not real things they're like refections or something.

Baby Jones is due on 4th November. It's currently the size of a large plum and right now doesn't have fingerprints but it will by next week -how crazy is that?! We're looking forward to being a family of 4 (including Lola the rabbit) although she wasn't that chuffed when we showed her the scan, she just sniffed it and hopped off. I think she was a little disappointed it wasn't a carrot.

P.s If you want to hear my new stand up material about pregnancy (and other subjects) come to the Pilgrim for the final of 'Liverpool comedian of the year' this Thursday 1st May 7:30, £3.

Houses, pets and crazy dances

Hello, sorry for not blogging for a very long time, to be honest I'm not sure how long this blog will continue. This used to be my outlet for things I thought were amusing in life, but now I save up those things for my stand up. I don't want to give up just yet though, partly because I'm worried that I can't do anything for more than 5 years. (As I child I did gymnastics between the ages of 5 and 10 then I did drama classes between the ages of 10 and 15 and then I had a boyfriend between the ages of 16 and 21) I've been doing this blog for 5 years and 4 months.

Recently I've been taking photos, making people do silly dances, traumatising rabbits and trying to sell our house. Here's some more details:

I sold my wedding dress and bought a camera, here are some photos I took when visiting my littlest sister in the Isle of man.

So far in my learning about photography, I've mainly learnt 'everyone loves a bit of blurriness somewhere in a photo.' For more top tips for the amateur photographer check out other bits of the internet.

 Also I've been making more people dance the YMCA in arabic.

Because pretty much everyone in the world who goes to a comedy gig and thinks "I wish I got to do a dance on stage today and I wish it was just a touch harder than the YMCA with the english letter shapes that's a little bit too easy"

I also got into the final of 'Liverpool comedian of the year' which is on 1st May this is my performance in heat 2 of the competition, there's not a lot of new material in it but there's a bit: click on this to see it.

 Which reminds me..... HAPPY NEW TAX YEAR EVERYONE! 2013/14 has been my most successful tax year ever! I may even have to start paying tax! I'm exaggerating a bit I do normally pay a bit of tax, but I might actually have to start paying a tiny bit of student loan off, if they can work out who I am....they don't know my married name and they only have my parents address, which is a house that is soon to be knocked down so good luck finding me. My mum says I should phone them and tell them. Mums hey... that's a crazy idea.

So yes that other thing, you know our adorable bunny Lola?

Yes her,

I though "what could a bunny possibly love more than a little trip on a lead to Sefton park?" turns out a lot of things. Like the safety of her own hutch. There are sometimes when I wonder whether Lola likes something, but when a rabbit plays dead for a while before going absolutely crazy and running very fast in circles (because thankfully she couldn't escape) you kind of get the hint she is not loving the park trip. Sorry Lola I promise not to take you again.

We've also put our house up for sale check it out: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-43689877.html

Everyone keeps asking us where are you moving to? but we don't really mind not moving much at all we just want a bit more space, ideally enough for a lodger and children. I'd quite like to move to what I've named 'posh L15' (we currently live in scally L15.)

So that's all our news, (oh yeah and my other sister got engaged- congrats guys!)  one last thing before you depart from my blog. How would you feel about starting a new version of 'lol' for older people? I know I'm only in my 20s but I just can't get on board with 'lol' here are two alternatives. Feel free to use them!

IJAC - I just audibly chuckled
IOLIMHBIWVF - I only laughed in my head but it was very funny