**Apologies, the site ate the last copy…this is a repost. if you read it before, its just as bad as before but doesn’t have this paragraph in it. My bad. Sorry.**

It’s nearly the end of the year.  As is customary on many a TV station, radio station, news website and indeed personal blog, people look back on the events of the year.  Recollect on the funny.  The sad.  The interesting. Relive those moments that made you laugh.  Cry.  Shout out “GOOD GOD..THIS IS CRAP!”.  A way of filling the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of interesting reading.  Yeah I know, I kinda stole and hacked that last line from a popular Kipling poem.  So, looking back.  To take you through the things I achieved this year between posts.

Yeah I am not gonna do that.  Or maybe I will.  Here:  ”I did stuff”.  There.  Satisfied?  Good.

Instead, I would like to talk about something original.  Not cheat by going “Oh look…a post full of repeats.  Clever.  Look what I did there…I wasted your time with stuff you already read!”.  Don’t get excited though, this is me we are talking about here.  If I was on a boat all you would hear is “pointless ramblings ahoy!” by a man with one eye, 3 legs and a parrot called Gifford on his shoulder.

Anyway…190 words in to this post, I guess I should get on with it.

As I spend more and more time with my oldest daughter, I cant help but wonder how at 3 years old she has already managed to be smarter than me.  Yeah, every parent has that “MY CHILD IS A GENIUS!” thing going on.  The over zealous “She walked while she was still in the womb!” or the “He recited Mozart in his sleep at 3 months” types.  I even heard a woman who looked like tying her shoelaces would be mentally challenging say “The Dr said my daughter is very advanced”.  Pretty sure what he actually said was “How this kid even remembers to breath having a mother like you is beyond me”.  

So when I say that my oldest daughter is bordering on genius, you could easily think “Yup.  Whatever numbnuts”.  But really, she does things that just…a 3 year old shouldn’t.  She already worked out the father Christmas lie…which is a shame and I hope she forgets.  She seems just to do things that other younger kids don’t.  So when my second daughter was born, I had high hopes.  Shawnee, the eldest.  A very pretty young thing.  Hair that adults are jealous of.  A great magnetic personality. Makes even those “I will NEVER have kids…I hate them” go “She is soooo cute!”.  So when daughter 2 was born, normal service was expected to continue. she would also be this magical child.

Braelyn, my youngest….looks exactly like me.  And eats mud.  Literally.  She eats mud.  Dirt.  Shoes.  Hair.  Cat food.  Actually, most nights I try to feed her and she wont eat…and it took me ages to work out how she is managing to grow when she doesn’t actually eat a thing.  And then I noticed that the cats are all losing weight.  She seems to have started a protection racket on their food.  I walked in to the kitchen a few days ago and the cats were cowering in the corner.  Scared to go near their bowls.  Braelyn on the other hand….cheeks like a gerbil.  As soon as she saw me she started crawling away as fast as she could.  The odd crumb of dry cat food falling out of her mouth and hitting the floor as she crawled faster and got more out of breath.  

She also inherited the weirdest curliest hair in the world.  It is about as unmanageable as me trying to give up alcohol.  It’s not right.  I think it is a generational kickback or something.  Maybe to prehistoric days.

She also has quite an evil streak.  She will crawl over to Shawnee, push her over…and then speed crawl away.  Leaving Shawnee alone.  On the floor.  Crying because she was pushed over.  Meanwhile Braelyn is long gone sitting innocently in the corner.  Eating cat food. An innocent look of “What?  I was here chowing down.  She fell and is trying to set me up” on her face.

With Shawnee as a baby I could sit back and just watch her.  With Braelyn I find it is a game of cat and mouse.  She is a 27 hour a day child. Eating anything and everything.  Leaves, mud, cat food, toys, furniture, steering wheels, the cats….anything she can get near.

It is Christmas.  She is now crapping tinsel.  The Christmas tree we have has fake (coz the real stuff I guess would melt) snow on it.  That’s a whole new tasty snack.  She has taken to taking the decorations off of the tree….and eating them.  Problem is, some are polystyrene with nice paper wrapped around them.  She eats both parts.

What worries me more is that she is way more like me than Shawnee.  Looks like me.  Isn’t maybe as intelligent as you would want….like me.  If I didn’t shave my head, I would have unmanageable hair.  

Every night after bathing both daughters, I carry Shawnee to her room, we read The Gruffalo, she climbs in to bed, I tell her I love her, she tells me back and I walk out of the room thinking “I need to get a paternity test done on that one”. Shortly afterwards I put Braelyn in her cot, gently kiss her on the cheek and say “I’m sorry”.  

Well, that is the year for me done.  So.  Merry Christmas.  Happy holidays.  Whatever you do or don’t believe in, enjoy the period. I’ll try to come back in 2012…if Braelyn hasn’t eaten me.

Yes yes.  I know.  Yet again it is months between posts.  But I will be honest…I have been busy.  Not just busy, but VERY busy.  I would list all the things I have been doing, but it would take me so long to make stuff up to make me look sexy that it is just not worth it.  So I will just sum up the past couple of months in this one photo:

There.  I think you understand now.  I’ve been VERY busy.  I am glad you understand…I think it was getting awkward there for a minute. 

But as I sit here, my black shirt covered in lumps of green tree poo and an aroma eminating from me which can only be likened to a homeless person taking a bath in a silage container, I cant help but think “Where the hell did this year go?  And I wonder if anyone around me can smell this.  Actually…where is everyone?  Why isn’t anyone around me?  What is wrong with me?  Do I smell or som……..oh……ok, I get it”.  I mean, I like solitude as much as the next person….but I was planning on saving that for about 10 years time.  In 10 years time, both my daughters will be fighting over the bathroom.   My wife will be saying words like “You spend all effing day in that shed…why don’t you come in and be a father” and I will be saying “That’s it…I am going to my shed.  Dont bug me woman.  I need my space”.  Sadly, I think my storm off routine will look more like it came from a Monty Python sketch as I have a case of shin splints at the moment and if they don’t go before 10 years time, I can’t see my walk being more than a 46 year old man (Note to self…holy shit dude…in 10 years you’ll be 46?) hobbling out of the door like a wounded elf.

I guess I should tell you why my clothes are purest green and I smell like Swamp Thing.

Here in the south east of England we are kinda crap.  Scotland gets snow.  Thousands of houses lose power.  Roads are closed.  100mph gusts of wind.  Does that stop them going to the pub?  hell no.  But here in the south east, a mere few hundred miles away…it’s all different.  Trains stop working at the first sign of a cloud.  People moan incessantly and things are hard work.  The trees in the south east seem to have no stamina.  If they were an adult movie industry star, they would be known as “Quick Larry”.  One gust and they take a lay down.  So in the early hours this morning while you were all snuggled up in bed dreaming of me, I was the hero. On the roads.  Making your drive to work safer. 

Sure, I am not a road clearer.  Nor a manual labour guy.  I work in an office.  Doing critical communication stuff.  Thats all you need to know…this post will bore you enough as it is.

But dressed in office trousers and shirt, I found myself standing in front of my car looking at a stuffing big tree taking a lay down across the entire width of the road.  Too much for one man….but a second car appeared and another man got out.  There we were.  Two strangers.  Standing together in the rain facing adversity.  We wouldn’t be beaten.  It was miles to go around it.  We stood.  We looked.  We started pushing that tree.  It took proper HEEEEEAVE! type of pushing.  It started moving.  Gradually.  Slowly.  Then…totally unexpected….he pushed harder….and let out an enormous fart.  Lovely.  Thanks man.  That’s….what did you eat?  It smelt like he had just let a decaying rat out of his behind.  I started to giggle…and really wanted to gag.  But it seemed to work…the tree moved and I am fairly sure that guy got to wherever he was going with a turtle poking its head out followed by a swift change of underwear.  I on the other hand have that green gunge that you get on trees all over my clothes.  I am sat at my desk with a sleeve that looks like someone with a nose so snotty that they could bottle it and sell it as the perfume of some “celebrity” (coz lets be honest…”Snot Bucket – A perfume by David Beckham” or something isnt really a seller) and I am constantly wiping said nose on my sleeve. 

But we made that tree move.  I got back in my car. Drove a few miles.  Met another tree.  But that one I did alone because I am amazing.  And there is nothing to say about it.

So.  I may well do another post before the end of the year.  Yeah…really.  I know.  I don’t know what has got in to me.  I do know what hasn’t got enough in me….alcohol.  So…being Christmas, if you want to send me money via paypal to buy myself a beer or post stuff to me…don’t be shy.  I’ll even tell my friends in social gatherings about how awesome you are.  I should note that I only see about 11 other people…and 5 are kids.  But I’ll tell them anyway.  You aren’t going to are you?  I think you saying that just killed a kitten.  Let me check.  Yup…dead.  I’ll probably get it stuffed and scare small children with it.