THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING DRESSES . . .

Now it's no secret that my clothes conspire against me. Remember how my tights like to try to escape on a regular basis? Wardrobe malfunctions such as this occur to me on a regular basis.

But becoming more and more of a regular occurrence is me losing the bottom half of my dress when I get to work.

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, although I could be wrong. At the time it was a one -off, but now it's happening more regularly . . . AND WITH DIFFERENT DRESSES.

What happens is that somehow, on my walk to work, my dress manages to work its merry way up my body and settle somewhere around my waist. And, if I don't happen to have popped to the bathroom on my way into the office, I get a bit of a shock when I unbutton my mac to discover I can see the crotch of my tights.

(By some stroke of luck, disappearing dress days do not seem to coincide with escaping tight days.)

This has happened to me now three or four times, and it has just been sheer fluke that I have either noticed just when I'm opening my coat, or no one has been around to witness it.

One day I'm convinced I'm going to be running late, rush into work and distractedly fling off my coat only to find I am missing the bottom of my dress once again, AND EVERYONE IS LOOKING AT ME!!!

Don't worry though. If it DOES happen . . . I'll be sure to tell you all about it???

Any recent wardrobe malfunction stories to share???

TV HELP REQUIRED . . .

Okay, so I'm a bit clueless about TV. In terms of normal telly, all I have is freeview. I watch Hollyoaks fairly frequently and otherwise I just watch re-runs of Friends. I therefore love watching tv online, but I'm not sure what to watch next! Can you help me???

I also like shows like:

How I Met Your Mother (which I'm fully caught up on as it stands - who IS the mother, eh???)
Peep Show
90210 (yep, I'm shallow. I can't help it. And everyone is sooo purty.)
Being Erica
Samantha Who?
Flight of the Concords
The Inbetweeners
Arrested Development
Plus stuff that has a supernatural twist but is shallow enough to still keep me interested. In other words, things like Dead Like Me, Tru Calling, Buffy or Pushing Daisies.



I'm looking for some recommendations. What is must-see tv for you? What would you recommend for me, based on what I currently watch?

As long as I can find it online, I'll give it a go. So hit me with your best shot . . .

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER RANT . . .

Today, let's talk about self service checkouts in supermarkets.

Yes, I know people may think they're quicker and more efficient and all that shit. But here's my two cents.

I HATE THEM.

Anytime I've queued for them, I've had to wait for AGES. Something always goes wrong with the person in front of you.

In addition, what is with this whole "UNFAMILIAR ITEM IN BAGGING AREA" crap. It's my SHOPPING, goddammit!!! That's why I'm here!

And half the time it rejects your cash.

Is it any wonder I nearly always opt for the human person serving you queue???

So imagine my absolute FURY tonight when the only human being actually SERVING had the cheek to ask me to go to the self service checkout??? It wasn't even cos I was a little bit tipsy, because I don't like self service at the best of times. First of all the machine didn't recognise my item - a bottle of alcohol. Then it didn't recognise my second item because it had to get a human to ID me. THEN it didn't accept the fact that I wanted to buy cream cakes too. I don't think it wanted my cash so I ended up using my card (I may just have been paranoid by then.) THEN it finally decided I hadn't bagged stuff properly - yes, I hadn't, All along. Because the machine was stressing me out way too much for me to actually be able to open a bag for me to put my items in.

The whole time this other member of staff was looking over, talking to another member of staff and pointing. I actually wanted to just leave the stuff and go. YES. Leave my WINE. THAT was how bad I felt....

By the end of it, I wanted to go and punch the apparent member of staff who couldn't actually help me in the first place and just put my items through the regular till, while one poor lovely member of staff had to serve the numerous desperate stressed out souls she was too lazy to serve herself.

By the time I left the store, I was stressed out and ready to cry. I made a point of thanking the woman who HAD helped us for her time. After all, she seemed like the only person who was actually WORKING In the shop.

Self service checkouts??? Load of shit, as far as I can see . . .

Opinions???

DON'T CALL ME A WINO (ONLY *I'M* ALLOWED TO CALL ME THAT . . .)

So I ordered three books I HAD TO HAVE IMMEDIATELY off amazon yesterday and paid extra to get them delivered today. I had them less than 24 hours later.

That's not really related. I noticed just now that a £40 wine voucher from Virgin Wines had fluttered unseen from the package at the time I eagerly ripped it open, and was lying on my bed.

Ooooh, thought I. Wow, I also thought. I glanced at it, and discovered what it was in fact offering me was £40 off a 12 case bottle of wine of my choice (worth 89.99 or more.) So I thought about this and tried to do some mental arithmetic in my head. I am not very good at mental arithmetic, so I eventually divided 90 pounds by ten, worked out ten bottles would be about 9 pounds each, so it was a little less than that.

Which seemed a bit rubbish considering I can get three bottles of wine for 12 quid in my local Iceland. (The shop. I don't have my own mini country in the west end of Glasgow or anything. That would just be weird.)

Then I remembered that it would actually only be 49.99 so only five quid per bottle if it was ten bottles, and therefore a bit less than five quid for 12.

Which is actually really good.

Plus it would save me having to go to my local shop for alcohol for a wee while and therefore they might start to think I wasn't an alcoholic. Occasionally I try to fool them by staying away for a bit, but they always reel me back in eventually. The bastards. (Yesterday I even tried to trick them that someone else was going to be joining me, by buying a bottle of my usual rose AND a bottle of white. Both for me, obviously. But since they probably know my drinking habits, I thought I might have fooled them. In retrospect, buying RED wine would probably have been more of a cunning plot. But I HATE that.)

Then I realised that probably those 12 bottles of wine wouldn't last me all that long.

I find it fairly impossible to keep wine in the flat without drinking it. The only time I managed it was when I was sick at the end of last year, and a few bottles of wine I'd bought from Asda online remained undrunk for approximately . . . um, two days. So 12 bottles just lying around BEGGING me to open them? Um - not a good idea.

That being said . . . I'm still considering it.

Yep. I'm that kinda girl, I'm afraid.

SHOP 'TIL I DROP . . .

I find, when I'm feeling a bit shitty, retail therapy is definitely something that can work for me.

Don't get me wrong, the people in my way annoy me. The prices annoy me. The having to try stuff on REALLY annoys me (sometimes I wish I could just go shopping in my underwear. It would save me having to take everything off in every shop I see something I like in. On the other hand, it would probably get me arrested. Or cause a lot of jeering. Either/or.)

But the having bought STUFF at the end of it? Whether I need it or not? Is TOTALLY the best part...

So what DID I buy??? Yes, I hear you ask it. Here's what . . .

Pretty pink cardigan, courtesy of Warehouse. I haven't bought any knitwear in a while, and this just was so pretty, I couldn't resist. What can I say, I'm a sucker for pink . . .

I love accessories which feature buttons but so far have only managed to acquire button-related hair accessories. When I saw this necklace in Dorothy Perkins, I HAD to have it. It is Awesome. Yes, WITH a capital A. And the Dotty P purchases didn't stop there . . ..

I saw this tunic and had to have that too. OWNED!!!

And as for this dress???? I am in LOVE!!!!

I am pretty sure Dorothy Perkins has become my new favourite shop for dresses, and I know I'll get a lot of wear out of those purchases.

It didn't stop there though. I also went a bit mad in Boots. I am mildly obsessed with Soap & Glory products. Not only do they do awesome things to you like make your lips big and tingly, or your skin smooth and soft and smelling delicious, they also are experts in punninlingus when it comes to product naming. Wowsers. Sooo, the upshot of this is that pretty much every time I see a product I haven't saw before, I have to try it. So step forward THESE two products . . .

Hocus Focus and Bright Here, Bright Now

I haven't quite worked out what either of them DO, but I couldn't NOT buy them (I'll let you know if they're any good, promise!). Then it turned out it was 3 for 2 on all Soap & Glory products in Boots so I bought a massive tub of the Righteous Butter too (although I'm appalled at the current spelling of "addictive" on that particular page). That was on top of the Feria hair dye, highlighting kit AND a new tube of my favourite lipstick also in my basket.

What can I say? My name is Paula and I'm a shopaholic.

And I really don't care. Cos I feel happy now. :p

What do you think of my purchases??? Have you been on any spending sprees recently? Please share. :)

THE MYSTERY OF THE MISSING CHOCOLATE BAR . . .

When I get into work in the morning, the first thing I nearly always do is head to the kitchen to get a 500 ml bottle of Diet Irn Bru from the vending machine. (The caffeine and E-numbers are completely necessary, trust me.) Recently, I've taken to selecting myself a chocolate bar from the machine too. To give myself something to look forward to later that day.

And today was no exception. I got my bottle of juice as usual, placed it on the worktop so I could select my chocolate bar, picked up my juice and headed upstairs to my desk. And looked forward all morning to lunchtime when I could eat my chocolate.

But when I dug into my bag to retrieve said chocolate bar . . . it wasn't there. "What have you lost?" one of my colleagues asked me finally as I probably looked more and more panic-stricken. "My chocolate!" I wailed. My distress evident, a few of my co-workers even helped me check my desk for the mislaid chocolate. But it was nowhere to be seen.

Where did it go??? I guess I will never know for definite. Could someone have stolen it? Not really. My bag was next to me, and someone rifling through it . . . I'm fairly sure I would have noticed that. And they would have came across my purse first, and let's face it . . . if you had the choice of a 65p chocolate bar or a purse with fifteen pounds in it, what would you choose?

So I have to assume that what has happened is that I have once again embraced the "blonde stereotype" and . . . forgotten to actually remove my chocolate bar from the machine after I paid for it and selected it!!!

Yeah. This ranks up there with The Tragedy of the Soup.


Done anything silly recently?

THE LAND OF NOD . . . OR NOT!

I am not a good sleeper.

I would go as far as to say I'm maybe a little bit insomniac - if there is such a thing. Don't get me wrong, in general once I'm actually ASLEEP I'm fine and could cheerfully sleep for several weeks without too much of a fuss. It's generally the actual GETTING TO SLEEP part that is my stumbling block.

My mind starts to work overtime, I start panicking about what the world is all about, about how I'm not immortal, and about every little niggly thing I've forgotten to do during the day which suddenly seems as important, if not MORE important, than the "why are we all here?" deep burning question. It is extremely rare that I'm ever asleep before midnight - even if I've been exhausted all day, once I get to sometime around six pm, my second wind kicks in and suddenly I could give the Duracell bunny a run for its money.

But last night I experienced one of the worst sleeps of my life.

First of all, I was wide awake before I even tried to go to sleep. But it was after midnight and I was up early so it seemed like a plan to go to sleep. Huh - great plan that was. First of all, I was doing that random jerking where your entire body jolts like you are falling. Someone once told me that when this happens, your heart has stopped for a moment. Whether that is true or not, I then became convinced I was going to die.

Then I was getting fidgety and tossing and turning and couldn't find a comfortable position. I was too hot, then too cold. Then a mixture of the both. I had no idea whether I was conscious or unconscious - I know I was sliding in and out of some weird dreams, but couldn't tell where reality ended and dreamworld began. Of course, I didn't feel remotely tired until ten minutes before my alarm startled me out of my waking nightmare. Then I could have slept for 12 hours solid without the slightest bit of effort on my part.

The worst part of it though was that I wasn't alone. Not only did I sleep badly, but I caused someone else to sleep badly too, with all my moving about, and apparently I was doing a lot of "prodding" - which I can only assume happened in one of those rare moments where I was asleep as I certainly don't remember doing that.

Man, sleeping is SUCH a pain sometimes . . .

Any surefire insomnia cures? Or even half-assed, "might-work-but-I'm-not-that-sure" ones? Please feel free to share. I really don't want this to happen to me again anytime soon...

CHEER-ME-UP-TUESDAY

Aaaannnndddd... Cheer-Me-Up Tuesday is back in service.

To be honest, today wasn't generally a bad day. Not in the way most Tuesdays are. It was actually okay. It's just since I got home to discover kitchen sharing flatmate STILL hadn't washed her dishes, hadn't taken out the bin AGAIN (once again, I was left to do it) and on top of that was hogging the part of the kitchen table NOT already full of her dirty dishes with a massive box of organic fruit (which I'm sure she will at some point dismantle and probably stuff the box in the bin - for me to have to take out. Grrr.) that I've ended up in a bit of a mood. :(

So I thought I'd share some things from some of my favourite websites. Here goes . . .

If I need an instant pick-me-up, my first stop is almost always Damn You Auto Correct. I've made so many of text related blunders thanks to my phone that I can totally identify with it.

One thing I CAN'T do, however, is go on the site at work. Not because it's blocked or anything. But because I cannot start laughing, and it's embarrassing . . .

Monday Through Friday

And from yet another favourite site of mine, Not Always Right, we have this lovely story. I giggled...

Please, Take A Crap

Restaurant | West Midlands, UK

Me: “Hello, what can I get for you?”

Customer: “I’d like a crap, please.”

Me: “I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

Customer: “I’d like a crap with sugar and lemon, please.”

Me: “Oh, I see! A crepe with sugar and lemon.”

Customer: “Yes, that’s what I said. A crap with sugar and lemon!”

Mmmmm, yum. Suddenly I really want a crap too. I'd rather have golden syrup on mine though. . .

And if you STILL need cheering up after all that, why not pop by The Oatmeal, another of my favouritest of all sites. This is my current favourite comic of his. Even if it DOES really make me want to eat koala meat and bison balls . . .

Cheered up yet?? I kinda am. :) Anyhoo, if you have any nice jokes, or website links to share with me that you think will make me lol a lot, please feel free to share. And enjoy the rest of your Tuesdays! (Unless it's already Wednesday where you are, obvs, in which case "Yay! You survived Tuesday!!! Congrats!")

Over and out.