Well, hello! Here I am, at 38 and a good half, face dropping and furring around the edges, able to walk into a room and have not one straight man notice me, even the lonely-looking ones, and it is all a bit joy-depleting. SIGH. So today, I went to Westfield with Mark and Otis in order to

a) get coffee from the NZ-ish kiosk Sacred, where I accidentally ordered the lolly cake and ate all of it at 10am, and

b) to do something boring with a flicky iphone screen at the Apple store, and

c) to fix a watch face which had been severely wrecked by the intersection of a boy and his bike and the pavement.

But then, in pursuit of buying more drawing paper for Noah (more on that later), I was drawn into Claire’s Accessories ostensibly to buy plastic rings and bracelets for Otis so he would leave my plastic bracelets and rings alone, and then

I DECIDED TO GET MY EAR CARTILAGE PIERCED LIKE BEYONCE.

So I did, and I came back to the Apple store where Mark was doing something that looked suspiciously like buying a new massive iPad, and I was all nonchalant and cool-like on the surface, but inside, it was all CHAOS! Excellent, feeling alive, adrenaline CHAOS! All fired up and pulse-racing because I felt like I did something very transgressive, and bad, and secret and rebellious, although, of course, no one yet has noticed. And it hurts a bit and I am not sure what to do with the long earring stem tonight when I try to lie down and it will sit awkwardly and perhaps cause me some serious pillow recalibration. But oh the joy of doing something a bit off! I’m like a new lady, still with the coarse greying hair at the temples and some sort of burgeoning eye infection, hitching up the too-tight jeans to cover the mum pouch which creeps out over the waistband regardless of how hard I shove it back in – but inside, with my shiny new golden ball stuck halfway up into my ear, I’m about 14 and full of the sass. My inner dialogue is full of self-aggrandising nonsense and maybe a little bit of Beyonce-talk. I totally recommend it – it is much less work than an affair and once my psoriasis calms down, I’m going look HALF my age, I reckon.

On drawing paper tales, my darling Noah drew these two nights ago:

Ok, so on one hand, this is clearly an open-mouthed toothy python who is rearing up and wants to kill you, and the other is very obviously an eyeball with tentacles and hands made of forks. But on the other, this is a clear case of vagina dentata, which, as urbandictionary.com says, is the Freudian concept that all men are subconsciously afraid that their wives want to cut off their genitals. You decide. It does make me wonder what those boys and their father all talk about when I am at Waitrose buying stuff for dinner.

Latest Instagram Photos To Remind Me What We Have Been Doing:

Cliveden National Trust. A popular little Sunday excursion:

Handsome dog, bit fat:

A birthday again. This is not my cake – Mark was very kind and asked for a Patisserie Valerie monstrosity and you can see how BEYOND HAPPY everyone is about it:

A dramatic expression of Otis’s internal struggles with accepting that he was given a takeaway babyccino, not a sitting-in version:

How we get home these days now that Otis refuses the buggy – very slowly, and often in the wrong direction. These stairs lead us back to school where we had just dropped off four children. There was no reasoning to be had – I just waited patiently for his return and played on my phone, hoping he wouldn’t fall into any puddles of sick or wee:

The only other thing to report is that I am trying to sell some stuff on eBay, which is what I do when the unworn sample sale things start angling out of the wardrobe, shaming me for my inability to Just Say No Because It Doesn’t Fit Or Frankly It Is Ugly, and so I raided the wardrobe and spent an afternoon photographing and listing things and selling some off. But on Monday I got a terse, crabby message from the new owner of a nearly new Mulberry blouse who wanted an immediate return because it was dirty. DIRTY! And so I replied, why, yes, ok, though I don’t know what you mean because it was hardly worn and then she sent some photos and it did look a bit grubby and then I was reminded about how I am a bit slovenly and bad at being clean and particular, which I think is part of my charm, but she was OUTRAGED and once I accepted the return, she gave me negative feedback! My first. And so I spent about 24 hours in a state of total shame and rage and depression over it and the lady, and then I thought I need to learn to be tougher.

And now I have multiple piercings (well, three) and I think that that is probably a very good start.

BRING IT ON, FUSSY EBAYERS AND THE LIKE! I’M QUITE LIKE BEYONCE NOW.