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WTF?

You manufacture shiny plastic headphones for a market of consumers whose preferred mode of communication is grunting but that’s no excuse for ignoring me. I get enough of that from the grunters who sprouted from my own ovaries thank you very much.

Just this last Christmas I caved into stereo emo offspring demanding glamour over substance and bought them each a pair of Skullcandy Low Riders.

#santawin

First my son’s snapped in two in the middle, closely followed by my daughter’s in exactly the same spot. Neither headphones saw the end of January intact.

#skullcandyfail

I certainly learned my lesson – your headphones are flimsy crap.

Unfortunately the teenagers are less pragmatic.

Typical.

I also gifted my darling progeny tickets to see Biffy Clyro. My doofus son decided he would SELL his Biffy Clyro ticket and challenge MY better judgement by squandering his newfound riches on… yeah you guessed it… another pair of Skullcandy headphones.

This time HESH.

These things are not fucking cheap you know!

And you’d think being twice the price of the low riders they’d last twice as long?

At least 2 months?

HA!

TEN DAYS.

Flimsy crap doesn’t even cover it.

So Skullcandy I emailed your customer services department bemoaning the quality of goods I have received in return for my many pounds sterling and like the truculent teenagers you sell to you have ignored me.

Unfortunately I can’t ground you, make you tidy something you didn’t make a mess of or play with your little brother for an afternoon so instead I am giving you a free review here on my blog.

Do not buy Skullcandy headphones of any description people – they take your money, give you crap in return and then ignore you. Yes they are just like your hormonal teenagers, but unlike the creatures I incubated I’m under no obligation to love them.

So screw them.

Ten days alone in a bedrooom with a 13 year old boy might conceivably be grounds for suicide but come one – they fell apart on his head!

I’m not entirely sure what I look like. I either take the photos or refuse to be in them. Oh I know what my face looks like, just not how the rest of me fits together. There’s not a single full length mirror in my home. The closest I get to my reflection is stolen from shop windows that I pray are distorted, warped… wrong. My bathroom mirror goes down to the sink and it’s from IKEA. Really, IKEA ought to be ashamed of themselves, that mirror takes at least 20lb off me. So wrong in a different way.

For as long as we have been making images of ourselves, in paint, celluloid and now pixels, there has been a normative definition of beauty. Historically and culturally specific portrayals of the ideal body, face, stature, strength, colour… have been used to categorise those who embody the ideal norm and more importantly those who don’t. I find it difficult to confine the struggle to define beauty to a feminist issue, it’s way more than that and at the root of it is nothing more complicated than power. Be it one marketing campaign over another, one gender over another, one race over another, the definition of physical perfection has been used time and again to control, subjugate and wield power.

Heavy stuff for a Friday morning and where’s this all going anyway?

Via Kristin at Wanderlust I discovered that today is Bloggers Without Make-Up Day, the brainchild of Jodie at Mummy Mayhem.

Now I don’t wear a lot of make-up very often, but I will slap it on for the camera. So I did not like this idea. Then I popped over to Mummy Mayhem and started reading all the wonderful posts from women I’ve never read before and sort of got a bit hooked on the idea. I’ve not read nearly enough and it’s offline Friday (swimming lessons, wine, y’know), but will pop back over the weekend and catch up with as many as I can. In the meantime I scraped the hair back and took a photo of my nekkid face. Admittedly it’s in an IKEA (bad IKEA!) mirror in a room with no natural light, but I have resisted the urge to Photoshop myself a more natural colour. You’ll have to take the oddly yellow me under the environmentally brutal 60w bulb I’m afraid!

At least I didn’t scare you with the full size version!

This week at iHeartFaces we’re photo documenting dessert recipes – and rarely do I manage this without some mishap.

Last year when I was looking for something a bit different for a dinner party I found this recipe for Rum and Coke Trifle in the Daily Bigot’s Mail’s magazine. Desperately ignoring the fact that simply clicking on their website probably set lights flashing at Tory Central… I printed it off so I’d never ever ever have to click there again. I washed my eyes after. Yeugh! I’m not providing Linky Love to the Daily Racist Mail – go look for it yourself!

So here we go, the Premenstrual Cook does pudding.

Gather together from the four corners of Tesco….

• 5 Gelatine Sheets
• 50g Caster Sugar
• A lime
• A jar of Lemon & Lime Marmalade, available here in the USA or if you are particularly clever you could always make your own
• 3 medium organic eggs
• Trifle sponges (not sure if you get these over the pond but the Sara Lee cake I spotted in My Four Boys recipe would do nicely I think)
• Your rum of choice – I’m rather partial to Mountgay or Appletons which is why those bottles are empty so Captain Morgan’s Spiced it is
• 2 cans of Coke or Pepsi or whatever – just not diet, there’s nothing diet about this!
• 400g Mascarpone (just under 1lb isn’t it? 1lb = 454g lord this is fattening!)
• Green and yellow boiled sweets or jellies to decorate – or not – if you can be faffed

The night before, make the jelly.

Cut the 5 sheets of gelatine (or enough to set 600ml, 1 imperial pint, 1.2 US pints, 2.5 US cups or just over 1 sextariumm phew!) into strips (dragging in a painted child to help tut-tut) and cover with cold water. Leave to soak for 5 minutes after which time it will be all gooey but still hold its shape.

Whilst the gelatine is soaking tip 600ml of coke (1 imperial pint, 1.2 US pints … yadda yadda!) into a pan and bring to the boil. Drain the gelatine then pour a ladle full of the hot coke over it and stir until it dissolves. Stir in the rest of the coke, cover, cool and refridgerate overnight.

Next day… get those sponges tipsy. Break them up and either base line a high sided dish with them or use 4 /5/6 individual glasses. I’m using my whisky tumblers. The recipe calls for 3tbsp of rum – I say bollocks to that, drown that sponge with at least 6 or 7 and if it’s still a tad dry (and depending on your sponge absorbency) water it down with… em… water? Or more rum. Whilst the rum is soaking in spoon 150g (about 1/3rd of the jar) of marmalade into a pot, add the juice of 1 lime and heat until it’s liquid. Push the marmalade/lime juice through a seive then divide it between the trifles…

Take thy wobbly coke jelly and break it up with a fork til it’s all crumbly then divide that between the trifles too…

Looking a bit trifly now yes?

Now for the million calorie topping.

Separate the eggs. I always used to juggle the yolk between the two halves of broken shell til it wobbled free of the yolk then I saw Ainsley just whap it into his hand and let it dribble through his fingers…. you have to suspend imagination for that sentence. You just do.

In a large bowl whisk together the egg yolks and caster sugar until light and fluffy and the sugar is dissolved.

Then whisk in the mascarpone. At the very least stand up and try to work off a few calories before you prepare to lick the bowl.

Wash that whisk then in a separate bowl whisk the egg whites until stiff.

Take a couple of tablespoons of the egg white and fold it into the yolk/sugar/mascarpone mix to loosen it. When it’s all nicely loosened fold in the rest and stop licking the spoon!

Spoon the topping over the trifles and voila! NOW you can lick the bowl.

For a final touch I stuck the boiled sweets in a ziploc bag and bashed the bejebus out of them, sprinkling the resulting emerald dust all over the topping for pretty sparkly trifles.

Cover and stick in the fridge for a couple of hour before devouring – though they will keep for a couple of days chilled – if you can wait that long.

The first time I made these I counted the calories up but the result must have been too shocking for my mind to cope with as it instantly purged the memory and if I even think a wee bit about counting them again I twitch.

Seriously.

Twitchety twitch.

Go check out the rest of the recipes at iHeartfaces – go on – you muuuuust!

Now I have to go say something to get that sweary rant off the top. <Sigh>

It appears I’ve made the Tots 100 Index of British Parent Bloggers, which came as a bit of a shock since I didn’t submit myself for the index.  As far as I know you have to post a comment with all your details over at Who’s The Mummy to get yourself measured, graded and ranked. I think I would remember having done that and it’s something I really didn’t want to happen to my ranty little corner of the blogosphere.

I don’t really consider myself a parent blogger. Certainly no more than I consider myself a female blogger, a hobby photographer blogger, a student blogger, an overweight blogger, a left-wing Scottish Nationalist blogger, a wifey of a teacher blogger… you get my drift? I chose not to pigeon-hole myself because I couldn’t really find my tribe.

If I was going to submit myself to be indexed and assigned points I probably would have done it during a month I posted some stuff. January has seen me down with, as Marilyn so eloquently calls it, a dose of the “Can’t be bothereds”.  Meh.

I’ve decided to call it a day with the Open University at least until Paul starts school. Despite the load I feel has been lifted it still pisses me off. I was supposed to be finished this year. But I’ve been putting off doing absolutely everything since I got so far behind with my studies. I couldn’t iron, cook, get my camera out, cook, play with Paul, knit, did I mention cook? Or blog. I couldn’t be bothered . As soon as I started anything I felt guilty for not spending the time studying. I’m not  prepared to cram a Level 3 course into the 90 minutes a day I get to myself… there’s no way I could do it justice in that time. So all I’ve been doing is a big fat nothing. Not the month to have my blog judged huh?

But… whilst I’m a bit pee’d off at being included without asking, I’m not going to deny that I’m a bit chuffed to make the top 100. I’m just not sure if I want to continue being graded… I can’t make myself UNknow now. So I’m confoozled. I’ll sleep on it.

Until then me and the boy are skiving school and going to see Astro Boy.

Since he can barely spend 5  minutes out of my company without freaking out (except at school, for some reason he goes to school without me fine, just can’t go to bed, or the loo, or the kitchen on my own – meh)… I thought I’d interview Paul on his favourite subject. Me.

Yes me.

No not Star Wars.

Me.

I borrowed the questions off an old Facebook meme courtesy of Hey, Ho, KellyGO

1. What’s something I  always say? No
2. What makes me happy? Hugs
3. What makes me sad? Punching you makes you sad (yeah usually)
4. What do I do that makes you laugh? Tickle me
5. What was I like when I was little? I can’t remember!
6. How old am I? I don’t know
7. Guess? No (clever boy)
8. How tall am I? Twenty ten (inches evidently given the way he divided me up and counted the bits)
9. What’s my favourite thing to do? Play games (yeah you wish boy)
10. What do I do when you’re not here? Go on your computer (no son, I wash alone and drink Bacardi)
11. If I was famous what would I be famous as? A drawer (I hope that means what I think it does)
12. What am I good at? Working (ah.. not drawing then, so I must be a wooden box shaped thing you shove your socks in – a skill I could be famous for)
13. What am I not good at? You’re not really good at Rock Band (HAH! better than you matey)
14. If I was a cartoon what cartoon would I be? Chowder
15. What’s my favourite food? Pasta (so not)
16. What’s the same about us? Hair and eyes (yes…. I suppose… we both have those)
17. What’s different about us? We have different tops on
18. What’s my favourite place? The living-room (actually it’s the bath, but I think that answer’s indicative of our social class in some way yes? It’s not a lounge, or a sitting-room, it’s a living-room)
19. How do you know that I love you? Cos I’m cute (quite so)

I wonder if the other two know me any better? I’d like to think so.

This post has been brought to you courtesy of Josie’s Writing Workshop over at Sleep if for the Weak

Paul: We had haggis for tea at school

Me: Did you eat it?

Paul: No!

Me: Why did you have haggis?

Paul: Cos of Rabbie Burns

Me: Who’s he then?

Paul: He was a farmer but he wasn’t very good so he stopped being a farmer. He’s good with words.

He’s indeed “good with words”.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!

Robert Burns, To A Louse

Me: “There’s snow sliding down the roof into the gutters, one’s hanging off”

MrW: “I’ll get it with this bit wood”

Me: “Use a ladder”

MrW: “I’ll be fine”

At  least this one had the sense to take cover.