Archive for the ‘girl talk thursday’ Category

Remember a few months back when GTT had us admitting to our list of five?  Well Diane’s now admitted that she left a few actors off of her list because she only found them attractive because of the character they played.  Well that’s not entirely a problem for some of us seeing as 80% of our list were published on paper before they made it through to TV. 

But still, opening up that list to fictional characters does make it a whole new ball game. 

5. Kisten.  He loves his woman so much he dies for her.  Twice.  Come on, tell me that ain’t hot.  He also wears tight leather, rides a bike and kicks bad guy ass. 

4. Lucan.  He’s muscular, toned and tattooed.  Any further description should be saved for the book, because trust me, if you like your fictional characters hot, this one is not to be missed.

3. Smoky.  He’s a dragon.  Yeah, I know, how can a dragon be hot.  But he shifts into totally hot human form.  He’s superior, arrogant and most definitely the sexiest dragon alive. 

2. Edward Cullen. Edward is just enough to make you swoon.  We’ll ignore the fact that he’s only 17.  He’s been 17 for a very long time.  Time matters.  Sure, book Edward doesn’t exactly ooze sex, but he’s still a dream come true.  The love he feels towards Bella is the sort of thing every woman dreams of.  But he should know, I would have been the better choice. 

1. Eric Northman.  You have to admit that Alexander Skårsgard is totally but book Eric is hotter still.  He’s that little bit more bad, and definitely way sexier.  Seing as the series has only gone through two books, I won’t spoil it for you but damn he has some sexy moments. Go read Dead to the World.

Roommates. I’ve been lucky, the closest I’ve ever had to a roommate was the sister.  Yeah, that was bad enough.  To say me and the sister don’t do well together in confined spaces would be a slight understatement.  Good job we got our own rooms after a few years. 

You see, I never went to boarding school (but that life in the novels always appealed to my younger self) or university so I never had the chance of sharing a room with a random stranger.  That said, university may not have helped on that one; I can’t remember the last person here who had to share a room at uni. 

So, I have no nightmare stories to tell, no hilarity or moments of connection.

Now, you could say, my roommate is the husband.  I love him, but he’s messy, and snores (louder than a rocket launching) and hogs my side of the bed as well as his own.  At least I can say he’s cuddly in the middle of the night.

There’s some scents that stick in your mind, not necessarily perfumes, but simple scents.   Bread baking reminds me of childhood afternoons spent at Nan’s, the salt air by the sea brings back summers spent at Cardoness.  The musty scent of deep underground tube lines is comforting; you never smell that on the shallow lines.

Then there are other scents that you’d rather not remember: like the scent of the hospital ward I stared upon, a cloying scent that stuck to the back of your throat, quite unlike any hospital I’ve visited since. 

There are scents I’ll never forget, scents I crave to smell again.  The wet, orange dust of Brasilia, London rain just before it starts to fall, the pine of a South West Scottish forest.  I could bottle them up and wear them like perfume. 

Unfortunately I’m not so lucky.  We get bad smells in our house.  I live with two boys, soon to be three.  Good smells only come when I release my perfume bottles.  Bad smells get covered with things like deodorant, but it never really covers eau de fart that well.

I love perfume, but I’m particular.  Diesel’s Fuel for Life and Paco Rabanne’s Black XS are my regular choices.  I love Lacoste’s fragrances, especially Touch of Pink, but I don’t love the rash they bring out on my skin. 

Of course now I’m pregnant, I can smell better than a dog.  A number of our neighbours smoke, and I can tell every time they light up.  It doesn’t matter whether they’re out front or back, I can smell it through the letterbox or through the tiny bathroom window that’s open upstairs.  The husband thinks it’s funny that I notice.  He’s not the one it makes heave.  The scent of butter melting on toast turns my stomach, just as scrambled egg does now.   I always thought it would be pretty cool to have a wolf’s ability to sniff out scents (yeah, i read too much urban fantasy, I know) but now I have to wonder.

*Cos you know at some point my undies are gonna make it out of the laundry basket.

I remember when I was a little girl I had pants with the days of the week written on them.  Now I’m much much older, I reckon it’d be cool to have pants like that again.  Only I’m not my mother; there’s no way I’d have the right pants washed and ready for the right days.

And that would be my underwear dilemma.  Never the right item for the right time.

When I was a mere 11 years old, my friends marvelled at the fact that I’d already reached an A cup when they were still in their training bras.  Then I felt special.  I didn’t realise that it was the start of my body trying to give me a rack to compare with Lolo Ferrari.  By the time I was 15 I was a blossoming 34C.  Sure, I wasn’t thin with it, but damn, I had assets.  Just as shame there were no guys worth flaunting them around.

By 18 and a little extra weight I’d hit a 38DD, big enough that shirts wouldn’t fit around my bust and my stomach at the same time, and big enough that half the shops  didn’t go up to my size.  I dreamt that one day I would be small enough to be able to buy a wonderbra.  Still, there were a couple of places I could go to buy undies, and buy undies I did.  Shape and colour didn’t matter, if I could spend my money on new undies I would.

And then I got pregnant.  And bigger.  And all those beautiful, multicoloured undies didn’t fit any more.  But I kept them, just in case.  I could look at my collection and dream whilst standing in my plain black and white boring undies.  Because you couldn’t buy anything that wasn’t a boring black or white, and certainly nothing strapless or crossover, in a 38GG.

And then I heard of a wonderful placethat did grundies in all imaginable colours for those of us who may have been slightly overblessed.  So I shunned M&S’ notoriously awful bra fitting service (I worked there in the past, and the amount of untrained teens they let loose with a tape measure is enough to make you steer clear) and headed over there.  And holy crap you cannot seriously think that I’m a 34HH.  But it was true.  I even went across to Debenhams to get a second opinion.  But hey, at least I knew I could re-start my colourful collection.  Until I saw the price tags on these babies.  Knowing I was desperately trying to loose weight, I invested in some plain and boring bras and just kept going back as my back dropped down to a 32 and my cup to a H.  Not far to go and the cheap bras I’d once known were in sight.  You could even get a G in strapless and backless and crossover now.

And I fell off the dieting wagon.  Yeah, both my undies collection and I agreed that it was not my smartest. move.  Especially when I eventually remeasured as a 32JJ.  Holy crap, one or two more cup sizes and I wouldn’t even be able to buy a bra that fitted.

So instead of worrying about it, I got pregnant again.  And increased my back size to a 36.  But at least that meant I could knock off one of those Js. 

This time around, my undies are old and battered and come in a collection of black and white.  If I’m really feeling adventurous in a day, I may even thrown on a grey or nude.  But, rest assured, once this kid’s popped I’ll be demanding my boob job from anyone who will cough up the money, and as a tiny boobed (and hopefully flat stomached from the tummy tuck) woman, I’ll be back to my collection and sexy as hell!

Well, a girl can dream, can’t she.

Yeah yeah, it’s over a month away, but I guess all the shops are getting their stuff in, and just like Christmas, it’s apparently never to early to think about these things. 

Except in our household.

Growing up, Halloween was always a bit of a wash-out.  We might get lucky and get a party through Brownies, or maybe a friend would have one, but my parents never made a big deal of the day. 

Every year, without fail, my sister and I (and later my brother) would be to be allowed trick or treating.  All our friends, were going, we’d be the only ones not.  Without fail they would deny us our night.  It was the sort of thing ruffians and the nasty kids did, it wasn’t safe, it was unfair on the neighbours.  Every excuse possible was trotted out whilst they maintained their nos.  We might have a friend over to play Halloween games, inevitably J and her younger sister G, but there were rarely costumes and it was never really the Halloween we’d been hoping for.  We had visions of American Halloweens showed to us in movies and on TV.  Nothing we did could ever really compare.  I suppose it didn’t matter too much – even if our parents had gone all out in pursuit of the holiday, nothing would have reached those dizzying heights of the movies.  The UK just isn’t geared that way.

There was one year, a party at Brownies. J and I dressed up as punks. Denim and tiny tops that were the domain of the dressing up box appeared outside the house for once. The mother did our hair; elaborate styles formed of plaits and pipe cleaners . We piled on the make up and ripped holes in our tights. The sister ended up as a tiger in the remnants of a dance costume I once used to portray a humbug that by now had a length of plaited wool attached to resemble a tail. At least by then I could no longer fit in to that costume.

Trust me on this one: this is probably the first and last time you’ll see a pic of me under the age of 9 on this blog.  In case you’re having trouble working it out, I’m the miserable looking shit on the left.   

In later years Halloween wasn’t something we paid much attention to.  We stayed in the house, leaving the front light off if at all possible.  Better that the kids don’t realise you’re in than you give away your precious sweets or find a sticky mix of egg and flour plastering your door.  The next door neighbour was bound to show his face at some point.  One year we threaded the hose through from the back garden and had it ready and waiting.  The parents didn’t approve, but we liked the idea that we could blast the little bugger if he got too close.  Unfortunately, we never got the chance. 

I did make it to one party, only months before we left for Brasil.  L’s birthday is the day before Halloween, but she’d never really mixed the two.  That year it was to be the first big party in her new house and her birthday celebrations at the same time.  Why not expect your guests to turn up in costume.  Of course getting a costume at that time of year, on an extreme budget and at very short notice wasn’t the easiest of things, especially when even then I wasn’t exactly small, and had a bit of a bump appearing.  I ended up as a medieval princess, the husband as a magician.  The costumes weren’t great (but I wasn’t exactly in the shape to turn up as a playboy bunny!) but they did the job.  Everyone was more interested in my growing bump anyway. 

Part of me now wishes that Halloween here was a much bigger event, something to get excited about.  The other part of me is just happy to sit in with good food and a horror movie.  Yeah go on, tell me I’m getting old.