My life in numbers

Lately I can't help but feel that my life is like a series of GCSE Maths problems.

Consider this a test paper:

Q1. Rebecca has 26 weight-watchers points at the start of the day.

For breakfast she eats cereal with semi skimmed milk (6 points), for a mid morning snack she eats a banana (o points) for lunch she eats 2 slices of pizza (8 bastard points! Can you believe it?!) then, because 2 slices of pizza does not a lunch make, she gets hungry and in the afternoon she has a packet of snack-a-jacks (2 points) and, AND a chocolate digestive biscuit (2 points). For dinner she makes delicious chicken fajitas for her family and thinks "I'll be fucked if I'm putting in all this effort and not eating some myself" so she has three (16 points) washed down by a nice cold beer (oh my god, 5 points right there). Later, she's pretty stuffed but there's always room for gin, and so whilst watching an incredibly emotional episode of Angel she has one single glass with tonic and lime (2 points because SLIMLINE TONIC- genius!)

How many points does Rebecca have left at the end of her day?

TIP: The answer will be a minus number!

Please show your working, and for extra marks, explain HOW THE FUCK SOMEONE CAN LIVE OFF 26 POINTS?!




Q2. Toby is taller than Rudy but not as tall as Mummy who is about four inches shorter than Daddy. Rudy is smaller than Toby but louder than EVERYBODY. Who makes the most noise in this family?

TIP: The loudest person is usually the one who wakes up first

Please show your working, and for extra marks, explain WHAT IS WITH ALL THE SHRIEKING? AND WHO TAUGHT THIS CHILD TO SAY "NO"?!




Q3. If a 3 year and 7 month old and a 20 month old are left alone in a room together, how long does it take before there is screaming?

Please choose from the following options:

a. Long enough for the responsible adult to take a pee and return to the room
b. 0.07 seconds
c.Just long enough for the responsible adult to get her pants down and sit on the toilet

TIP: This answer may vary day-to-day!




Q4. There are 7 days in one week. Chris works 3 days and has to attend university on one day. Rebecca works 2 nights but cannot work any nights when Chris is working during the day because no one has yet invented TELEPORTING so he will not be back in time for her to leave. In addition to this, Chris works 2 part time jobs, averaging an additional 16 hours per week and is revising for an exam. How often will Chris and Rebecca see each other in an average week?

TIP: The answer is likely to be in minutes rather than hours or days.

Please show your working and EXPLAIN TO ME AGAIN WHY SHIFT WORK IS GOOD?!




Q5. There are 12 months in a year and an average of 700,000 babies born in the UK per year. Showing your working, please explain why ALL THE BIRTHDAYS are in July? Making reference to what exactly is so dull about October?

For extra marks make suggestions on how to finances all the presents and fit in all the celebrations.


Q6. If a toddler usually naps for between one and three hours each afternoon, how long will s/he sleep for if his/her Mum sits down to write a blog post?

Please choose from the following options:

a. Between one and three hours
b.Three and a half hours without stirring once
c. Half an hour so she has to write the remainder of it with him on her knee bashing the keyboard with his big brother's old battered safari car

For extra marks, can you tell me WHY?!

THIS CONCLUDES THE GCSE MATHS PAPER THAT IS REBECCA'S LIFE

YOU MAY NOT LEAVE THE EXAMINATION ROOM WHILST THE TEST IS IN PROGRESS.

OR, IN FACT EVER.

Weight Loss and Lightbulbs

I'll keep this brief because I can't think of anything more tedious than hearing about someone else's attempts at a diet.  Unless we're counting hearing about other people's plans to remodel their kitchen or bathroom, which are also mind-numbingly tedious and have me silently pleading "unless you're planning to let me cook all my meals or take all my showers in it please STFU!"

As you may know from my earlier rant, I am currently attempting Weight Watchers as a way to lose some extra weight that I appear to have accumulated somewhere between going back to work last year having a mirena coil fitted, celebrating christmas and stopping breastfeeding.

The first week did not go well (as you may have gathered from aforementioned rant).  I was 12 points over by the end of the week, constantly ravenous and didn't lose so much as 1lb (somewhat predictably).  The second week I didn't track what I ate because we were away at a wedding and I was having far too much fun to care.  I weighed myself anyway out of curiosity and was pleasantly surprised to discover that although my weight was static, at least I hadn't gained any.  I am now at the end of my third week, in which I have tracked every single thing that I have eaten and have managed, somehow to keep it within the points allocated to me (only just, but nonetheless) and I have lost...drum roll please...3lbs!

I have been complaining almost non-stop about having to account for what I eat and feeling that it will never work, so the loss, all be it a small one, is a happy surprise and gives me hope that all this studying of packaging and calculating points will not be in vain.

In other news I haven't been blogging much because I have had what you might consider a LIGHTBULB moment (I so can't write that without thinking of Despicable Me, oh how I love that movie!)

See it turns out, there is only a finite amount of time.  Within my day that is. 24 hours to be exact.  And each one of those I spend writing blog posts is one hour I am not spending writing the book that I started and promised myself I would finish.  And so, although blogging is more appealing, because it's about a million times easier and I do (very occasionally) get feedback, I am having to be strict with myself, in much the same way as with my nutritional intake, and limit the amount of time spent indulgently waffling into cyberspace in order to Write (note capitalisation there).

So if you're one of my ten readers who noticed I've been a bit quiet, now you know why.  You can fully expect my usual blathering quota to be fulfilled just as soon as I hit a wall with the book ;)

A picture (or 5) speaks a thousand words

I am deliberately not going to blog all about last week's events.

Which means I won't be telling you all about the wedding of two of my most favourite people, and how fantastic it was and how beautiful my best friend looked, how I cried actual real tears when she walked up the aisle and would have probably sobbed my way through the entire ceremony had I not had 2 little monkeys children to keep quiet and relatively still.  There seems little point either, in going into how gorgeous the location was, how well behaved our boys were and what a great time we had.

Nor will I be telling you about the hilarity and gin-soaked awesomeness that was the Poirot-inspired Murder Mystery Evening, how I laughed more than I have in a really long time and how my alter ego has secret homicidal tendencies ;)

I won't be telling you about our 3 day stay at Roaches Hall, including random detour to a farm which damn-near scraped the bottom off my car and may in fact have knocked a few things loose underneath. I shan't even begin to tell you how much fun the boys had at "The Big House" as Toby renamed it, how they loved being around so many people 24/7, how they always had someone to play with and were in their element spending most of their time outdoors.

I won't bore you telling you how deflated and strangely detached we all felt getting straight back to normality on Sunday or how mundane this week has been in comparison.

I'm not even going to share with you a selection of my most favourite photos from the whole experience...oh no wait...actually I am...Just a sneak peek ;)