And significantly more cheerful. Like this --> :o) Did you see that? I smiled. SMILED.

The improvement in mood could be down to any number of factors.
1. I had lots of lovely notes yesterday and felt much less guilty about having had a moan. Thank you so much, everyone that left a note. I hug you all of muchness.
2. I confessed to Alex last night that I was actually feeling really down, that I didn't want to moan properly because it made me feel guilty but that I was FED UP OF HAVING A CRY AND THEN LAUGHING AT MYSELF in order to salvage the situation when all I really wanted to do was have a proper cry, a cuddle and some junk food. Followed by as much crap tv as necessary to demonstrate how much worse my life could be; I could be an actor in one of the crap tv shows. Or worse...a CONTESTANT on a crap tv show. Oh the horror.
3. I have one assignment in now and the pressure has been relieved a little bit. The other assignment is evil, but do-able. And if I fail, I fail; I can resubmit and it's not the end of the world. Nobody will judge me; I usually do really well but I'm in a weird weird situation here. So I'm just panicking over nothing. I think I put myself under more pressure because, irritatingly, people at uni seem to have got the idea that I'm intelligent from somewhere. When I say "I'm really nervous about getting those results back, I don't know how I'll have done" I get told to "shut up" because I'm "really brainy and I know I'll have done better than everyone else". Where have people got this idea from?? Where??? Digressing again...
4. I had good news at the midwife yesterday which has cheered me up. I'll explain this in a moment
5. Carrott made me laugh for a full half an hour last night. A cat has never made me laugh so much. I will explain this shortly, too.

GOOD NEWS

My midwifes appointment yesterday was lovely. My usual midwife, Fiona, is on holiday so I had to see somebody new...who turned out to be absolutely fantastic and brilliant. She was Scottish and FUCKING MENTAL - I know that the mentalness of medical professionals is usually directly linked to how frightened you are of being in their care, but this woman was great. She started doing all the normal majiggery that they do, then all of a sudden stopped, sat back in her chair and told myself and the assistant about a dream she'd had the night before in which she was a cleaner who had demanded �18 an hour. She then laughed manically, shook her head...and carried on with the sensible midwifery stuff.

But that's not the good news. No! Of course that's not the good news!

Heather is now 2/5 engaged! I checked what this meant, as I know all midwives measure this differently, and as far as my midwife is concered it means that there's 3/5 of the baby's head descended into my pelvis already. This is very good news; we just need her to drop the final 2/5 and then we're ready to go!

For an added bonus, she was in the perfect position to be born; all down the left hand side of my belly. Unfortunately she decided to be bloody minded last night and has wriggled back over to the right...we need her to move back! Send me baby-movement vibes!

CAT COMEDY

Carrott is broken, in his head. He has a thing about hairbands. Just plain, covered elastic hairbands; Carrott loves them. The first thing he does when he comes into our bedroom in the morning is to jump up onto the bedside table in search of hairbands and, if he finds one, to grab it, run away and play with it in secret until he thinks I'll have forgotten. If I'm doing my hair and I rest a hairband on my knees for a second, Carrott steals it before I know what's happened.

He put on a little show for me while I was in the bath last night. He'd got a whole hairband routine worked out.

STEP ONE: Pick up band in teeth.
STEP TWO: Put claws of one front paw through hairband and stretch band to breaking point
STEP THREE: Holding paw still, weave head from side to side as far as it can go a few times
STEP FOUR: Open mouth. Ping hairband across room.
STEP FIVE: Pounce on hairband and repeat.

I don't think I can actually communicate how funny it looks...but the cat truly is mental. Every now and again his paw slips and the band pings him in the face...does he care? Does he heck as like. The game is clearly too fun for a little bit of pain and potential blindness to put him off.

BIG BRAIN GAME DEMONSTRATES SMALL BRAIN

Carol Vorderman's Big Brain Game. Firstly, CAROL VORDERMAN: GET OVER YOURSELF. She's annoying in her smugness over her own mighty brain. I would like to discover that Carol Vorderman has actually been cheating for all this time. That would make my day.

But yes! I hate the big brain game, but I also love it. It makes me feel a bit stupid, but for some reason I enjoy watching it and feeling my own, average sized brain slowly melting with the effort of trying to answer the questions.

I managed to answer two questions correctly last night. It would have been three, but I refused to answer one out loud as I wasn't sure and Alex says that, as he's not psychic, that answer doesn't count.

After the programme had finished Alex asked an unrelated question: "You know what you've been saying Heather is?"

Apparently I looked at him blankly for a few seconds before answering in a monotone with "...Baby..." Upon seeing his incredulous expression I tried again "...Very strong...?" Alex pissed himself laughing for bloody forever and said that I'd turned myself into a vegetable by trying to answer questions on the brain game. The answer he'd been looking for had been "engaged", not "baby".

He'd already pissed himself laughing at me earlier when he went into the kitchen to make a coffee, leaving me alone with the programme. All he heard from the front room was a silence, followed by an anguished, muffled* wail of "BUT WHY?????" Well, sometimes I don't see why the answers work. Why would it be �2.75 instead of �5.50? Why? Why is the answer 'C'? WHY???

Bloody Hell. Carol Vorderman I am not.

*If I'm really frustrated I put my face in the cushions. It means I can wail more effectively without upsetting the neighbours.

Right, I am orft. I have an assignment to do and Alex has used kiddie motivational techniques on me; if I've done at least 500 original words on it by the time he gets home, he's going to rent a DVD and buy me a pizza from Dominoes. If I haven't done the work, no DVD, no Dominoes, NO CHICKEN STRIPPERS**, no relief from cravings. I think I want to be doing this assignment now.

** Anyone else hear "Chicken Strippers" and think "Sexy chicken", imagining poultry peeling off stockings and pole dancing and wotnot? Or is this just me?

Anyway. T'ra for now.

37 WEEKS - OFFICIALLY FULL TERM. WE CAN HAVE HER NOW. SOMEBODY PLEASE INFORM HER OF THIS.

LET'S GET IT ON...


give Kate-Lee more *HUGS*Get hugs of your own