Its Not Easy Being Green...

So.... " Wicked! " was, well, wicked. It was great. Amazing. Thrillifying, as the would say in Ozzian. And my mother enjoyed it too, which was a relief because i wasnt sure it would be her exact cup of tea. And i think my bubba enjoyed it because the entire way through the second half i was being kicked. Actually, i'd heard of a study that babies in the womb, when played music, will react most ot classical, so i suppose a musical like " Wicked! " almost falls into that category.

I wont give away details for those who havent seen it but suffice to say i totally recommend you get yourself some tickets when you can. I can also say that you will probably spend a good proportion of the first half disliking one of the main characters ( although i wont say who ). Oh - and " Defying Gravity " will absolutely blow your socks off. Which is a good thing.

What else did we get up to on our little roadtrip ? Baby furniture shopping - and it wasnt successful at all. Now i'm not going to be one these fussy mums who only wants brand name, expensive furniture or baby clothes or whatever, but the one thing i have my mind set on is getting a nice, quality, baby change table. You can get the standard baby change table, which is a plastic three tier trolley - kind of like a food service trolley, only plastic-er - but i'd like to get a change table that acts as a peice of furniture. Wooden, white , with three or four drawers, so thatw hen your finished using the top as a change area, the whole thing just becomes a chest of drawers for the little one's room. And do you think i could find one in my price change ? Uh.... nuh. The least expensive one i could find was still priced oat over $500 and i just cant afford to be spending that on ONE thing.

Let see: we've already bought a pram, but we still have: change table, cot and car seat to go, not too mention all the little stuff. So $500 on one item is a bit much when Mr Gil and i are trying to stick to a budget. Good news we may have found an alternative to the baby change table - a regular chest of drawers that i can put a change mat on top of - so that may be another item to be ticked off the list.....

I'm Off To The Land Of Oz

Yes, the moment is finally here - i am finally getting to see " Wicked! " tonight. To those of you who are not into musicals that probably doesnt mean much, but if you take into account that i tried to get tickets almost 5 yrs ago when i was in NYC and am only now just succeeding in that aim well...... thats a long wait. 5 years is a long wait for anything really. But the wait is over - my mother and i are roadtripping 6 hours ( probably longer when you add in all the toilet breaks my pregnant bladder will need.... ) down to Sydney to see the show tonight, and will be roadtripping it right back tomorrow.

6 hours you say ? WTF ? Here in Australia ( or at least where i come from ) a 6 hr roadtrip for an overnight event isnt really all that long - we do it all the time - and even if it were, i'm thinking this roadtrip will be well worth it. I have heard such great things about " Wicked! " the musical, and i read the original " Wicked! " novel by Gregory Macguire about 7 years ago, so i'm pretty confident i'm going to love it. So much so that i will probably buy the soundtrack.

Which means i can swap all the songs from " Rent " that have been floating around in my head the past two weeks for soaring ballads about witches and wizards and being green....

Its Real - and Its Hilariously Scary....

I dont mean to alarm you but.... i'm getting dumber by the minute. Its ok, i have an excuse, but its the excuse itself thats the scary part. All the females reading this may want to sit down for this part but..... baby brain is REAL.

Yes, sadly, i have discovered that old chesnut - that a baby eats your brains cells, effectively making pregnant women stupider - is true. Ok, technically they dont eat your brain cells, but studies have concluded that a womens brain does shrink whilst she is pregnant, a phenomenon commonly known as " baby brain ". Baby brain causes the lucky lady to forget basic things, get all clumsy, and basically make silly, simple little mistakes, the likes of which may cause her embarrasment but will give her family, friends and colleagues hours of laughter.

Case in point: me. Yesterday i had a run of little things, today one big oopsie. See:

* Went to work 20 minutes early so that i could write a letter to a charity. I got out all my details, put them on the coffee table next to my bag... and promptly left them there. So i got to work 20 minutes early for nothing.
* I noticed a discrepancy on my banking reconcilation for the day before. Seeing a payment had been missed i went back in and put the payment on.... but i put it on as the wrong payment type ( cash instead of credit ) so i still ended up with a discrepancy.
* Wrote up said banking and trotted myself off to the bank... where, once the bank teller opened up the bank book i realised i had only written up the cash, not the cheques, nor the deposit total, and i hadnt signed the deposit slip.
* I told Mr Gil i would stop and pick him up an application form for some casual work.... and drove straight home from work without picking up a damn thing.
And the big one....
* This morning i got prepared myself a mid morning snack to take to work, put the rest of the snack ingredients back in the fridge.... and then left for work with the fridge door wide open. Yes, i almost spoiled a whole fridges worth of food. Luckily it is only 4 hours between when i start and when i come home for lunch, so i was able to save everything before it went off. All except MR Gils deli meat for his sandwiches... looks like peanut butter for him tomorrow.

And so - if the quality of the writing on this blog should slip, should i leave a comment on your blog that makes no sense at all, or i generally disappear from the blog world ( because i have forgotten about blogging )..... please forgive me. I suffer from baby brain.

Is It Just Me .....

.... or is Kanye West a total douche bag ? Hell, is Kanye West one of the biggest douche bags of all time? Its not enough that the man wears shutter shades* or that he throws tantrums when he himself misses out on an award, but now he goes and makes a ruckus when someone else loses out. Which is fine - as long as you dont do it onstage after hijacking the microphone, denying the actual winner her moment. Blog about, have a whinge on Twitter - but for God's sake, dont steal the limelight from a mild mannered teenage girl.

I am, of course referring to the ugly incident with the aforementioned Kanye and poor little Taylor Swift.

The douche in action.

Now, i know some of you arent that enamoured with Taylor Swift ( i, however, am a fan ) but even if you arent all that in love with her music, you have to pay her dues. She worked hard, she filmed a video clip, and she was deemed to have won. Taylor should be allowed to have her moment. Like she said, it was her first Moonman - that should be a special moment in any young singer-songwriters life. ( NOTE: I am yet to win a Moonman. DOUBLE NOTE: I am also not a singer-songwriter ). So i can understand how she ( supposedly ) went backstage and cried her poor little eyes out. Some dickhead rushed the stage, stole her microphone, and stole her moment. Biatch!

Thank God Beyonce has some class - despite what her video clip attire would suggest - and gave Taylor some time to shine.

The only question i am now left to ponder - who's the bigger idiot ? Kanye West or Lady Gaga ?

That Cannot Even Make Sense....

What doesnt make sense ? This:

Just in the last week or so i have started to feel much heavier and quite ungainly at times - you know, like every other pregnant woman on the planet. However, i'm kind of worried that my bump is on the smallish side. As in, too small for my stage of pregnancy. Which is 22 weeks ( 23 on Monday ).

So how can it make sense that i feel heavier and awkward and ungainly - but i also feel too small ?

Good question, yea ? Answers anybody ? No, okay, maybe i'll just ask my obstetrician on Tuesday......

Another Weekend By The Numbers

3 - number of kicks felt during a storm on Friday. This is significant because these were the first baby kicks i've been able to feel on the outside of my belly. I've been able to feel little butterfly-ery movements inside for a few weeks now, but the first belly kick i can feel from the outside ? Very special.

1 - christening attended. For my neice, B. She was too cute in her little christening dress with her fluffy hair.

5 - number of hours spent sitting in the sun after the christening. I'd say sitting in the sun drinking, but i wasnt. Everyone else was though - its so weird being the only sober person at a bbq or party.

100 - number of dollars spent on groceries for the week. Mr Gil decided to experiment: we went to a local green grocery for our fruit, the local bulk meat centre for our meat and bought the " rest " at the supermarket, to see if all that running around was less expensive than buying all the groceries in one place ( ah, that being the supermarket ). And it was! Around $30 cheaper in fact.

1500 - number of dollars we could potentially save for the year if we do our groceries the grocer/butcher/supermarket way. Thats the cost of a holiday right there!

6 - pieces of French toast i ate for Fathers Day lunch. I made them, so i figure i deserved an extra piece or two. I had originally planed French toast for breakfast, but Mr Gil was one of those people who spent 5 hrs drinking - so McDonalds egg and bacon McMuffins were on the menu instead.

60 - pages left until i finish the book i've been reading. And by " been reading " i mean i read the first 2 chapters about 3 weeks ago and read three quarters of the rest of it yesterday. In case your wondering which book it is: " A Harp in the South " by Ruth Park. Its an Australian classic that i'm pretty sure i read for school once, but its turning out to be much better than i remember it.

Feature Friday: Insomniatic Musings Child of the Month

Name: Olive Hoover

Age : 7 years old

Hometown: Alberqueque, New Mexico

You Know Her From Where ?: The film " Little Miss Sunshine ".

Reason for featuring: Because she is one of my favourite child film characters of the last few years. For starters - look how cute she is with her little teeth, and her chubby cheeks and her huge glasses. Seriously, those glasses could rival the specs i wore as a child, so anyone who can wear those and look so gosh darn cute is a-ok with me. But what i really love about her is her self confidence. If you havent seen " Little Miss Sunshine " ( why not ? Go rent it now! ) little Olive wants to win a beauty pageant, and her whole dysfunctional family take a road trip in effort to help her achieve that dream. Her father is a motivational speaker who cant sell a damn thing; her brother has taken a vow of silence; her grandfather is hilariously funny, but addicted to drugs; her uncle is a suicidal gay scholar; and her mum is trying to hold everyone together. And Olive ? She's just this little kid that likes to dance and 80's throwback sweats.

What i love is that Olive has no real idea that her family is so dysfunctional, and neither does she think of herself as awkward ( even though the massive glasses would, stereotypically, suggest " nerd " ). Nope, Olive is just a sweet, chubby, little girl with a dream - and a an awesome pageant coach/ junkie Grandpa who encourages it. The whole final dance scene at the pageant, and Olives attitude in the face of pageant judgery ( is that a word? it is now... ) just melts my heart.

So here's to Olive Hoover - to her big glasses, her old school sweatbands, her awesome choice of music, and her dysnfunctional family. A worthy recipient of Insomniatic Musings Child of the Month.

What Am I - A Ham Sandwich ?!?

Seriously - i'm about sick of my state manager, The Bell, pretending that i'm not here. That i dont exist. She must think that the more she ignores me, the sooner i'll go away.

And i will. On maternity leave. I just wont come back.

I know i'm raving a bit here, its just starting to become greatly annoying. I've never really liked The Bell anyway but the last few months of being given the cold shoulder is almost enough. Being that she's the state manager i had to inform her of my pregnancy and intention to take maternity leave. I did so when i was 10 weeks and she told me she would toss up a few ideas in regards to replacement staff and call me about the next week. That was 11 weeks ago and i havent heard dot from her since - unless of course i get in touch with her. She hasnt called me of her own volition at all. Consequently myself, J and the rest of our office colleagues are still in the dark about what will happen on my temporary leave.

I called The Bell again this past Friday, for probably the fourth time since our initial discussion, only to be told " Its arranged ". Literally - thats all she said. " Its arranged " and then she just kept on talking. She didnt elaborate on who was arranged, or what was arranged, or when it was arranged. Just arranged - and then she preceded to tell me i dont really need much time off before the baby arrives because all i do is sit down all day and besides she worked up until the Thursday and had her baby on the Friday. Good for you lady - seriously. It must make for a nice little story to tell about how brave you were and how hard you worked ( choke! ). I, on the other hand, would like a few weeks or a month to rest up, make it to all my doctors appointments without having to rush back to work, and to make all the last minute preparations for my little munchkin.

So - thats it. The Bell insists on telling me nothing but " its arranged ". Funnily enough our national sales manager ( remember, The Bell is only state manager ) has told J and myself that they will definately have someone or something in place and she will let us know when they've put it in place.

Which would suggest that The Bell is not only trying to ignore, but is also a liar aswell.