We made it to the end of term! I know I disappeared for a minute there this week but I was trying to stay sane whilst keeping everything I needed to remember in my head at the same time – no room for superfluous thoughts or word usage.

As we crawled closer and closer to 3.20 this afternoon I could feel myself slowly giving up on all fronts. Gut-healing restrictions all GONE, will to get out of bed in the morning for boot camp GONE and capacity for original thought GONE. Long blacks with cold milk – takeaway – have become my best friend. Whittakers chocolate my secret lover. Boot camp my arch nemesis. The fitbit has been an experiment in sadism. And yet I have been a chipper, chatty poppet.

My poor office mate has had to put up with me babbling away like a beauty pageant contestant in her ear all week – all sunshine no substance. That’ll be all the sugar I reckon! I also have a big, round, sugar belly.

And I have been thinking about wine. The photo at the top gave you pause eh? Especially if you’ve spoken to me recently and heard me babbling about how the only things I have managed to stay off were gluten and alcohol (that’s my stubborn streak). And the photo is of the mantelpiece in the music lounge yes.

I have been thinking about wine this week. Red wine. The wonderful kick in the back of the throat that a good(?) red wine gives when it hits it for the first time. The satisfaction of cracking the seal on the twist top (ahh so classy). The ‘legs’ on the side of the glass when you swirl it. Fuck me this mamabear loves wine. And it’s my birthday next week – surely I’ve been saying to myself, surely I could have a glass for my birthday? after all I won’t be (insert number dangerously close to 40 here) ever again! So the seed has been planted. But I’m a stubborn fucking biatch. Look again;

That’s right ‘alcohol fucking removed’. Whaaaaaaaaa?

I was driving home after ringing a million homes to find out why half of my cohort was not at school. I have been hearing variations on ‘Oh I’m sorry Ms Dean but my daughter is on holiday already in samoa/america/hamiltron and will not be returning until next term now’ all week now (apparently the school term means nothing and the credits she might have gotten today in the Maths assessment can go to hell because cheap fares and a teenager free house is more important THAN YOUR CHILDS EDUCATION thank you very much).

I digress. Where was I? I was driving home and I needed/wanted/craved/could think of nothing but Wine. And then suddenly Eureka! They are always trying to con pregnant women in to ‘alcohol free wine’. They wouldn’t make pregnant women drink stuff that tastes NOT like wine and call it wine would they?

I stopped at Glengarry’s and went and asked the friendly wine lady if they had a decent non-alcoholic wine that actually tasted like wine. And then without even thinking I LIED and said it was for my pregnant friend coming round for dinner. What the fuck?! Why did I lie? Obviously I am ashamed of my teetotaler status. And I want the strangers in the wine shop to like me? Because I care so much. Because…..    I think that’s a whole other blog post. Jebus.

What was the ‘wine’ like you ask? Hmmm. I can’t say it didn’t taste like wine. But it did taste distinctly like sour juice. Which I guess is what wine is – except the good stuff has the alcohol and it makes your teeth tingle so good.

I have had one glass and it wasn’t awful. I will probs not buy it again deliberately but it’s like the whole gf thing – you have to forget what ‘real’ pasta tastes like before you have gf ‘pasta’ or it will be bloody terrible. I haven’t forgotten yet what real wine tastes like. I will just have to find another way to scratch the super-tired-at-the-end-of-term-mama-needs-a-treat itch.

Tomorrow I sleep in – School Holidays woo-fucking-hoo!!