All I want for Christmas is … a pimple

Giardia, chicken pox, cholera, salmonella, chlamydia … not the first things that spring to mind when you hear the words “soft toy”. While visiting a science toy shop on the weekend we discovered a whole pile of cuddly toys in the shape of viruses and other icky stuff. They’re called Giant Microbes (there’s even a heart-shaped box filled with sexually transmitted diseases, I bet they go gangbusters on Valentine’s Day). Sprog 1 was transfixed. She was desperate for the Acne one, she wanted to call it Pimply. She was begging: Please, please, please can I have a pimple for Christmas? Christmas morning for Sprog 1 is going to be quite something: a toy pimple, a black T-shirt with a skull on it, a sea monster Barbie doll, Just Macbeth (book), a guide to weird scientific stuff, some Mushi Monsters, a stuffed owl made from chook feathers and a bug catcher. Can’t wait to see my mother try to ooh and ahhh over that lot. Aside from some last-minute odds and ends, my Christmas shopping is done. The mania has passed and I struggle to summon the energy to even enter a shopping centre. I’m expecting a resurgence of retail enthusiasm in the new year, when I’ll treat my sleek new physique – a middle-aged woman’s gotta dream – to something in the sales. But my eye is more firmly fixed on the real prize – shopping in Waikiki in April. I stashed some cash in my US bank account many moons ago and it’s burning a hole in my electronic pocket. There’s something so gaily abandoned about shopping on holidays. It feels natural, right. Shopping during non-holiday periods feels extravagant, wrong. I reckon it will feel even better when I’m five kilos lighter. Since the dieting and jogging don’t seem to be doing the job, I may have to start on the sit-ups as well (or get a tapeworm). Getting thin is such a drag. Being thin? Well … I know I’m not supposed to say this … I’m sending completely the wrong message … feels awesome. Forgive me, but it does. I’m not talking skeletal, size 10 will do me just fine. So, as my brother-in-law would say, I’m going to “suck it up, princess”.    

DIET TRANSGRESSIONS: Two tablespoons of rice at lunch.

TONIGHT’S MENU: I’m out, again! And leaving sausages for Husband and the Sprogs.