Pregnancy or too much cake?

I seem to be at the point in life when everyone I know is either pregnant or planning to be pregnant. I appreciate that this is supposed to be a joyous time, when happiness bounces off the walls like an out of hand squash game, but to me it's a social minefield.

What do you do when someone waddles up to you with a slightly pronounced belly?  Do you say something like "When are you due?" and receive an evil, cold stare and realise you have just called them fat? Or do you say nothing (usually after several interactions like the one just described) and disappoint the proud pregnantee who has been trying to push out their modest bump to entice someone into a conversation about morning sickness, heartburn and swollen ankles brought on by their little parasites?

If only someone had produced a guide to the differences between pregnancy and too much cake...

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Drug Mule

Respect your cephalopods

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A lesson in trigonometry

After a year of living in our current house, Husband and I decided to swap a couple of the rooms around. We had all our gym and exercise equipment in the upstairs spare room, and the office with the desktop in what was probably intended to be used as a dining room (we've never had a dining room that we've actually used for dining. Probably because we've never owned a dining table or chairs. We've spent almost ten years eating meals off our laps like perpetual students. Or squatters).

Last weekend was designated our 'do nothing' weekend (i.e. we just potter about, do hobbies and ignore the bacteria-ridden dishes teetering dangerously on the kitchen side), so, logically, I decided to start switching the rooms about. The first thing Husband knew about this, the computer had been disconnected and my beloved computer desk had been dismantled ready to shift upstairs. Moving the computer and it's desk upstairs was the easy part.

In the gym room, we have a 30kg workout station that was constructed in the room it presently occupied. I looked at the handlebars, then the width of the door and suggested we dismantle the top half. By this point, Husband had dragged it toward the door saying that we could manoeuvre it out. I looked at the handlebars, then the door again. I repeated that maybe we should dismantle it. Husband was now tilting the station and trying to drag it diagonally through the door. Foreseeing that we would reach a point where we would have to dismantle it anyway, I sighed and took the other end of the station to help Husband take a few more chunks out of the walls.

We spent the next fifteen minutes rocking the station in a hopeless attempt to convince it to bend around the door frame. Husband was giving directions to help co-ordinate our efforts. This would probably have expedited things beautifully if he had given the directions and then waited for me to move, rather than move the station whilst giving directions. After having my toes crushed, ribs bruised and fingers jammed in the door, we somehow managed to get it out of the room and into the hallway. Looking at the handlebars and our spiralling stairs, I once again suggested we dismantle it. Husband was resolved that it was unnecessary.

 We tried a variety of approaches in getting it down the stairs, and after a while of us supporting the station's weight in between decisions, I was beginning to vote that we just throw it over the banister and go from there. We compromised and let it slide down the first flight of stairs like a pair of deformed, demented skis.

Luckily, we live in a bit of an odd house with the bathroom situated in between flights of stairs, so I managed to pull the station part-way in the bathroom so Husband could slide through and attempt to negotiate it down the last set of stairs. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the station to go down the stairs as the top set of steps was blocking the handle bars. At this point, Husband was supporting the vast majority of the station's weight. I waited. Husband then suggested we remove the handle bars.

Returning with tools, and leaving Husband to hold the entire station as it overhung the steps, I set to the task of unscrewing the handlebars. This was proving difficult as somehow during the move the station had ended up upside down. I slowly fiddled about trying to secure one end of the first screw with a monkey wrench, whilst turning the screw thread-by-thread with a screwdriver. Being the meticulous person I am, I continued with my sedate approach DIY on the second screw, despite Husband starting to flag a little under the weight of the station. Eventually, with an exasperated (and slightly pained) vociferation of "You don't need to unscrew every bloody thread!" Husband brought his foot up and booted the handlebar to knock out the loose screws.
 
Now that the handlebars were no longer a limiting factor, the rest of the move went very smoothly with minimal wall damage. The workout station now sits quite happily in the downstairs room. I think moving it was probably the most intense work out either of us have had from it. At present, the handlebars remain separated from the station just in case it needs to be moved again.

Modern applications of martial arts

I hear the term 'modern applications of martial arts' quite frequently (being married to a Ninja that's not really unexpected), but never really understood the term until recently. I had visions of metro-sensei types tweeting instructions on how to poke nerve points via Facebook; I was quite disappointed to discover this wasn't the case. My understanding now is that it basically means you can beat some-one up in a nightclub as well as the more traditional zen garden setting.

When I studied Kung Fu for a couple of years, I discovered the most practical modern application of martial arts was to beat up on a vending machine when it didn't hold up its end of the deal. A fortuitous discovery indeed!

The cartoon below took a lot of redrawing and colouring, and I still don't think it looks right. The original sketch had so much more character, but it seems to have got lost in translation. Among the other issues, I think the arms are wrong; they are basically just a padded stick figure's arm! Guess I need to keep studying anatomy. Oh well. I may go back to it someday and re-work it, but I suspect I'm probably too lazy to ever get around to it.

Behold the dead, emotionless face of today's martial artist...

...versus the colourless yet more expressive prototype.

Taste in men

I'm sure the 'ole 'too many cooks...' sketches have been done to death, reincarnated and killed again. Even so, here's my version:

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Criticism

I do not handle criticism well. I'm the kind of person who after being gently told that perhaps yellow is not my colour, will dramatically don a black bag for the rest of the week yelling "fine, I shall just forgo clothes completely then" and rustle off in a mood.

This attitude was not very helpful when I was at art college. I tended toward (and still do) a rather low self-esteem, so it was nothing to do with thinking my work was perfect - criticism, regardless of how constructive, confirmed in my mind that I was indeed quite crap.

At art college, I was perfectly happy to be left alone to sit in a corner and draw cartoons. Unfortunately, no formal educational institution I ever attended were great advocates of cartoons being actual art, and I was not left alone to draw cartoons.
I remember it once being suggested that I try adding more colour to my work, and perhaps make my work a little larger at the same time. My response to this perfectly reasonable suggestion was to produce this travesty:

This has to be the ugliest thing I have ever produced (and I've eaten some pretty rotten curries). This monstrosity is 2ft high, painted on an uneven bit of plywood and flaunted a deliberate misuse of colour. My intention was to dispel my tutor's belief that colour is beautiful by making something so damn hideous it would make you break into a cold sweat as you fought against the need flee. And I drew it BIG. I guess the figure frantically shaking their head represented my reluctance to move away from my drab, tiny drawings.

I probably thought I was being really clever. Turns out I was a bit of a tit as a teenager. Still, my tutor never asked me to be more colourful or large and I was finally left alone to draw cartoons.

Note I am a little disturbed that I've given the impression that I all can draw is cartoons. Or worse, that the above drawing represented that I spent my time at art college pissing off tutors. To prove otherwise, I've added a couple of drawings I did at the roughly the same time as the poop one above. This might be taken as me being a bit showy or needy. I never said I wasn't still a tit.