Yesterday was a most remarkable day.

Ergo I am remarking upon it.

I got dressed up for the first time in two months. I did my hair. I put on makeup. I wore a strapless little number and a heel (the other foot encased in my Big Damn Boot still). I went to London in the freezing cold evening and met 7 of my team from a project we did earlier this year, one which has bonded all of us like veterans of the worst type of Eastern European conflict. It was a really nice time – a restaurant in the hallowed hall of Covent Garden, far too much wine, lots of chat.

Since I am parading around in a leg cast and an arm cast, I get a lot of looks. Lots. People are very helpful and kind, with that mild pitying look in their eyes. I see them look at me and turn to whomever they are with and mutter something. I can hear it in my head.

“Look at that. What do you think happened to her?”

“Probably a car accident. Or perhaps Dudley-Do-Right didn’t get there in time to untie her.”

“Yeah, I’m going with car accident too.”

What they say to me is the same, however, almost without fail: “You look like you’ve been in the wars!”

This must be a very English thing. Which war do they mean? The Boer Wars, do I have a bit of sun on my neck? A pen stripe up my back leg while I await the next Blitzkrieg? I have lost count of how many times I have heard this expression now. What I want to say in return varies:

“Yes. Yes I have been. This cocktail dress is camouflage. Urban warfare is the new black.”

Or: “Yes I have been. The cast is nothing, I have third degree burns over 90% of my body.”

Maybe: “Nope, just common garden variety leprosy.”

Instead if they give me a status quo comment, I give them one: “Yeah, but you should see how the other guys looks.”

Last night on the train back from London, bolstered by our old friend liquid courage, a guy said to me: You look like you’ve been in the wars.

Me: You should see what the other guy looks like.

Him: That sounds like a standard response.

Me: That sounded like a standard question. Or were we meant to be bonding here?

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The twins’ Nativity Play was yesterday, too. It was fabulous. I cried. Mostly, I loved it. We had Mary and Joseph, about a billion angels, five shepherds including Nick and Nora, two Shaun the Sheep, and two Wise Men (one of them fell off a swing earlier in the day). The children did the play on the drama stage of a nearby secondary school. They enacted the play, Mary whipping the baby Jesus out from under her giant robes and whacking him into the manger, and all the kids burst into song. It was like Glee, only with under 5′s who can’t dance or carry a tune and half of whom were paralyzed and unable to sing (including our little songbird Nick). Another stage fright victim was one of the two Wise Men, who just stood there staring at the lights. This prompted Nora to periodically whack him with her foam shepherd’s crook. Adults couldn’t resist the temptation to abuse a giant foam hook, how the makers of the shepherd’s costume thought children could staggers the mind.

The singing ended with “And today is Christmas!”

Which immediately prompted a four year old in the back of the chorus to shout: “No it’s not! Christmas is next week!”

Children are so breathtakingly honest sometimes.

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We have been hit hard by a mass infestation of moles. Mac had been doing his part in keeping the population in check, and with his absence comes a serious problem. New mole mounds are appearing daily. I was able to do some research a few nights ago and found a few sites that suggested pushing chocolate laxatives deep into the mole holes (necessary so dogs can’t get to the chocolate). The moles eat the chocolate, get dehydrated, and die. Seeing as locally there are no humane mole removal methods (and my anger at the little bastards creeps higher daily) we are trying that out.

Yesterday morning I was on a conference call that I could be on mute for much of, until they came to my portion. As I have been working from home since the first surgery, each day is spent getting out of bed and getting into my pajamas then, once the children are whisked off to nursery, I log on to work. So there I was, in giant ankle cast, wrist cast, and my fluffy fleece pajamas with enormous Tweety Birds on them. My Blackberry was tucked in my pocket, the headphones in my ears to let me do my call. And there I was, a giant Supersized box of chocolate laxatives that I was breaking into bricks and burying deep into the mole holes. My portion of the call came up, so I took myself off mute and proceeded to do my call.

“I need engineers to the following sites – ” I said, then one of the headphones came out of my ears. I reached for it, but realized my hands were covered with both mud and moderately melted laxatives, so I continued my call. While leaning down and screwing more laxative into a deep hole, the other headphone came out. This made the whole cord fall to the ground, but my piece was nearly done so I stayed bent over, shouting into the barely visible black wires that now lay on top of a mole hill.

“I need three engineers to B site and A site by Tuesday!” I shouted, since the speaker was further away from my mouth. “If I can’t get any engineers then I will have to escalate!”

Just then a DHL delivery truck turned up with a package for me. He pulled his van alongside our fence, got out, and saw me.

I clocked him and waved with my good hand which was still holding a giant box of laxatives. “And if I have to escalate to get engineers then I will throw everything at this!” I shouted at the mic on the molehill. “So please get someone scheduled and turn up to site or else Father Christmas will not be visiting your house this year!”

The DHL guy looked scared. I realized at that moment that I was standing there in my giant bird pajamas, two casts, box of laxatives, apparently shouting into a molehill about the appearance of Santa Claus.

“I can come back later, if you want?” he asked hesitantly.

I realized at that moment not even a joke about roughage could help me out.

-S.

PS- British Mummy Bloggers – that forum of all that is holy – has nominated me for Most Inspiring Blogger of 2010, defined as: “Bloggers can inspire us in many ways: with descriptions of their struggles and the solutions they find, with encouraging words for others, with tips for coping and with their humanity. These bloggers inspire their readers in a variety of ways but all of them leave us with a sense of being uplifted.” You can vote for me on the link found here, if you do in fact find me an inspiration (of either hope or that which must be avoided, the choice of course is yours.)