Christmas present buying for boys

If you need a proper "auntiegwens guide to" I can write one but if you are a boy with a short attention span this idea would do.

Buy a beautiful handbag for your beloved.
Inside the beautiful handbag, place a surprise present.
For maximum effect it should look like this

This type of behaviour makes women (well, women in the auntiegwen household) very, very enamoured of the man who bought the present.

Tech feckin ology part eleventy squillion

I have fecked my new laptop. It has died.

I am writing this on a borrowed laptop, in someone elses kitchen, in Kirby Muxloe (that is a real place)

I should be at home, doing mummy type Christmas prep. I am not. I am 2 glasses of the red down with no tea.

I wish you all a very merry Christmas. I will leave you with a picture of my very tasteful Christmas cake, Nigella is shitting herself!!!

Things I have to do before Christmas

Yes I know I'm a last minute Lil, don't give out to me, I am middle aged, tired and in need of a wife. In no particular order I have to

Find a new hiding place for the Christmas beer, it has been found and decimated by the 2 older teenagers and the Hot Boy who live here. I wish to save the remaining few tins for beer drinking visitors.

Go to the supermarket again, Glory be to God, I'm never out of supermarkets, I go in spend £100 a time on tins of Quality Street, DVDs, batteries and wine. Have I anything for tea? that'll be a no.

Wrap presents.

Oh wait up, I still need to buy presents.

Not get cross with The Beautiful Parents when they continue to uhm and ahr about whether or not they'll be joining me for Christmas, I fully appreciate that they are scared they'll get stranded on the M6 but I kinda need to know one way or the other. It's not beyond them to tell me they won't be coming and then show up as a nice wee surprise for me. I'm not sure my last remaining nerve would cope with that level of surprise or the second guessing of the possible surprise. My parents being here affects when the children see their dad, what I will be doing on Christmas Eve, Christmas night and Boxing day. It also affects how much more food I need to buy, what presents I can buy my nieces (as my parents can take home with them and I don't need to post them) and how tidy my house needs to be. I have no wife and no cleaner, there is just me. Even just typing this has made me tired. And grumpy.

Ice my Christmas cake, my beautiful home made, filled with brandy and good stuff Christmas cake. Not baked by me so it should be safe to eat, I get to decorate it though. I am currently uhm ing and ahr ing about tasteful decor or Christmas on crack, place your bets.

Turn my office back into a dining room if my parents come for Christmas - I know I've done the parents bit but I remembered too late. If they don't come I will just shut the door and we'll eat in the kitchen.

Replace light bulbs in my office/dining room. It is very dark after 3 in there.I did buy light bulbs on one of my many Quality Street buying trips. I just need to buy the right sort of light bulbs next time.

Post Christmas cards, after I've written them obviously.

Remove bag of ice from front doorstep, it was left over from the very upmarket drinks soiree on Saturday night. Nothing beats a bunch of schoolfriends getting together 1st night back from their repsective uni's is there?

Lose 2 stone so I can put it back on by New Years eve, I have a ferocious amount of Quality Street here tormenting me.

Find a takeaway that is open on Christmas day, no one wants to eat a traditional Christmas dinner, the only meat eaters don't like turkey and well okay then, no one wants to eat a dinner cooked from scratch by me.

Get the dishwasher fixed, it only works if you hold the button in, I'm not sure jamming it in with a cocktail stick is a long term (IE over the Christmas holidays) solution.

Fix the arial problem. Apparently we have no TV, I didn't notice, when you switch it on it reads no signal. I am extremely tempted just to leave it, I doubt there would be anything I'd miss.

This is in addition to the normal working, driving offspring places, heating up, laundry (of which there is a fierce amount due to Eldest Beautiful Daughter bringing all her washing and a fair amount of fellow students washing home with her), cleaning and other stuff I do every other week of the year.

Then on Christmas Eve I will go to church and get down on my knees and give heartfelt thanks for my life, because I am blessed, my life is wonderful. I know I moan here week in and week out about my life but genuinely deep down I know how incredibly fortunate I am. Deo Gratias.

I wouldn't trade places with anyone.

Things that make your auntie cheerful

Yes, I know I'm old enough to know better but it just makes me laugh.

Things I don't understand part eleventy squillion

In the Cath Kidston shop in Bicester today there were 2 security guards at the door. How nasty were they expecting middle aged woman deprived of retro floral household porn to get?

Feck, even last Tuesday this place only had 1 security guard.

TMI

You know it's time to de friend your son on facebook when you read

Formspring

"You ever kissed a boy?"

Answer

"yeah"

So, you have to ask, don't you?

"Did you really kiss a boy?"

"Yeah, it was a dare, I was drunk"

I'm going back to Mummy denial land, this time I'm keeping the duvet pulled over my head.

The Big Chill

I feel the cold, my default temperature setting is "a bit chilly", I blame it on being born in the summer. I like it hot. No sniggering at the back please. I can sunbathe in 45 degree heat, you will never hear me say I'm too warm. Never. It's a shame I live in a cold place, I am more suited to somewhere like Hades, climatically speaking.

Readers, my central heating has broken down. I have no heat and no hot water. I have no fires or other means of heating my house. There is a teeny tiny electric wall heater in my winter fridge, you may call it a conservatory? This means if I had a barometer it would read "Fecking Freezing"

This is my own personal doom. I am not good in the cold. Not good at all. I am tetchy, significantly more tetchy than normal. I am writing this in bed, attired in jammies, tracky bottoms, a rugby thermal top, a fleece, thermal socks and a cardigan awaiting someone who I will love for evermore coming to fix it. I am practising being a poor pensioner, I feel I've nailed it.

Please feel free to drop by and hug me to warm me up. Or to point and laugh at my attire, your choice.

Update 3pm

My boiler was indeed repaired and it stayed on for an hour, it's gone off again now. I will get another engineer after 6pm tomorrow to try and refix it. I am a very chilly auntie again.

Update 6pm

The company I pay stupid amounts of money to every month to fix these problems have called to reschedule the engineer due to sheer volume of central heating breakdowns. The first available slot is next Wednesday. They did apologize profusely and tell me I could buy electric heaters up to a limit of £50 and they would refund the money. They also offered to reimburse me if I found someone else to fix my boiler whilst at the same time telling me that they have taken on every local engineer they could find. As a last resort they have said I can check into a local hotel.

Not a very happy auntie this night.

Oh Christmas Tree

I must warn you, if you are of a Bah Humbug disposition you may wish to avoid visiting for the next few weeks as there may be a whiff of the seasons around the posts. I am very keen on Christmas.

I'm not overly keen on the preparation though, due to my can't be arsed gene. I love all the decor, the food, the presents etc and I would love them even more if I didn't have to facilitate it. The Beautiful Children probably are because they don't. The exception to this is my Christmas tree, I love doing my tree.

On Sunday I have to put up the tree, The Beautiful Son has to get the tree down from the attic because I have watched Michael McIntyre and know that as a woman I'm not allowed in the loft.

The Beautiful Son and Beautiful Baby Daughter decide they want to help me. Now you think I'd be glad but I'm not. I am a bit possessive of my tree and yes I do know I keep saying my tree. It is mine, fully mine, I only let the others look at it because I'm kind.

I like my tree to look nice, this is why I don't want help. I have been decorating my own Christmas tree since I was 22 and that is a very long time ago, I put on Christmas music, light my Crabtree and Evelyn Noel candle and have a tasteful one colour theme tree. I do a good tree. The children have their own tree, it looks like Christmas on crack, it has every colour ever known and is done up like the tinkers dog. They can't be arsed with 2 trees this year, they just want the one, my one.

I relent, they can help, he is 15, she is 14, they're not little anymore, in fact he can now reach the top of the tree and save me standing on a chair. We have the lovely Christmas smelling candle, we have the lovely Christmas music. At the end we have a not quite as lovely as if I'd done it myself Christmas tree.

I was slightly hurt when he compared me to Stalin and she compared me to Monica from Friends.

Still, David looks cheerful in his Santa hat, doesn't he?

Nature v Nurture

The Beautiful Son and his first girlfriend have split up. Eldest Beautiful Daughter read it on the book of face and told me. I told Beautiful Baby Daughter and explained that although he annoys the crap out of her, she was to make allowances and under no circumstances give him a hard time.

I asked him how he was and he actually said "These things happen, it just wasn't working" I was a nice kind Mummy and didn't laugh, it was a 6 month thing, that's fairly heavy duty at his age.

Readers, we were worn out being nice to him, I was fetching cups of coffee in bed for him, watching what he wanted on TV, ordering pizza in, trying really, really hard to wrap him up in a big blanket of love.

I shouldn't have bothered.

Eldest Beautiful Daughter read his Formspring (for the middle aged non facebookers amongst you it is a thing where you can ask him anything and you can remain anonymous)

On this Formspring there were several enquiries asking why he'd dumped her, heavy duty guilt about how miserable she is, lots of comments on the new leggy blonde thing who has been worshipping at the altar of Jack for several months and a few enquiries about his parentage. I can assure you I was married to his dad, I have the lawyers bill to prove it.

I was not happy.

Neither were his sisters.

So, this bold boy of mine, who had been brought up to respect, no, actually revere women has dumped a lovely wee girl, has had a replacement lined up, had us, the women in his life in flitters looking after him because we think he's been dumped and not cracked a light?

As his big sister says "We fail, he's turned into a bloke"