Crabs who live in glass shells shouldn’t throw stones. Awesome educational tool, but not so much a look for the discriminating crab who doesn’t want to get pecked apart by seagulls. “Dude,” this crab seems to be saying, “everyone can see my cephalothorax!”

I spent rather a lot of time around Hermit crabs in my youth. I’m not sure if it was just my school system, but when I was about 9, my science class did an entire unit on these pesky little buggers. Like most children, I think I was both fascinated and a little bit horrified by the hermits, who, for the record, aren’t particularly closely related to true crabs. They had eyes on stalks and one enormous claw to catch the unwary finger who moved too close. They were probably a little hostile due to the fact that we conducted what must have been annoying, no-brainer experiments on them like, “Which side of the terrarium will the crabs prefer- the side with the heat lamp or the side with the ice cubes?” The crabs would make a little crustacean pyramid under the sunlamps, as if to say, “No shit, Sherlock.” “What do hermit crabs like to eat- apples or doritos?” was another engaging scientific conundrum that we were tasked to investigate. I believe that “apples” were the answer that Mrs. Abbot, my science teacher was looking for, but the truth is, hermit crabs will eat ANYTHING, up to and including Hostess Snack Cakes. (The subject of fat and cholesterol in hermit crabs was NOT in the curriculum, however.)

When the unit was finished, I found that I had become more than a little attached to my be-clawed friends and begged my mother for one to keep as a pet. At the time, our menagerie included two cats, a dog and an elderly rabbit, but I guess she figured that a crab wasn’t really going to tip the animal balance in our house into unmanagability, so we traipsed off to the pet store and brought home Leonardo Di Pinchy. (My father, being trained in the Dad Art of the Pun, bestowed this moniker on him and it pretty much stuck. We just called him Leo.) He was joined soon after by Clawopatra. (Cleo, for short.)

The two crabs lived happily in a little wooden cage that my father made for them, munching happily on Cherrios, apples and leftovers and scooting around in their water dish. One would think that crabs would not be the terribly adventurous sort, but Leo and Cleo had quite extraordinary lives.

Leo was flung across the room once when he latched on to my babysitter’s fingernail. There was rather a lot of screaming , “GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!” before he obviously had enough, let go and ended up in a large flowerpot.

Both of them were seasoned escape artists who soon learned that the lid of their cage wasn’t very hard to open. Who knew crabs were good at climbing? Upon gaining their freedom, they were immediately at the mercy of the cats, who found them endlessly facinating. The felines couldn’t do the crabs any real harm, but they were batted around mercilessly. Cleo was once found climbing up the screen door. Leo disappeared for 3 months. We expected to find a shriveled crab corpse somewhere, but my mother found him in the basement, (where he must have been transported by one of the cats) lapping up water from the de-humidifier. There was rejoicing all around and admiration for the ordeal he must have endured. (What was he eating all that time? As far as I’m aware, there were no Ho-Hos in the basement.)

Leo and Cleo tenaciously survived for quite some time. However, even after they were gone, my mother, who was also a teacher, would bring home 20 to 30 of the little guys, who were being used in the same no-brainer experiments. It was lovely to hear the scritch-scratch of little claws again. At least until the cats decided that a box of 30 moving balls was MUCH more fun than 2 and knocked the whole shebang on the floor, necessitating a crab round up of epic proportions.

I hope that perhaps someday the Prawn will not be too much of a girlie girl to open her heart to a small thing with buggy eyes, antennae and fingernail pinching apparatus.

Perhaps called Clawed Rains.

Possibly Shell Silverstein.

Or maybe even Richard Hurton.

I’ve been kind of tired for the last week or so. It’s my own fault, really. I should start going to bed on time rather than watching stupid crime shows on telly. It’s just, when you have a kid and they finally go to bed, it’s like getting a small taste of freedom in your day. Like a little bit of freedom pudding at the end of a long meal of responsibility.

At any rate, there’s been a lot of talk about US interrogation methods in the news recently.

And I tend to type any old crap into Messenger before thinking about it when talking to the Rock Star.

Me: heh.

The Rock Star: What?

Me: I keep seeing all of these stories about “waterboarding” and I’m all, “that sounds like fun!” and then I remember that it’s a torture method.

The Rock Star: LOL.

The Rock Star and I got to eat out last week. Twice. Which for us was rather brave, considering that one member of our party often leaves enough food on the floor to make up a whole other disgusting and fluff covered entrée.

We realize that we’ve really been fairly lucky in the whole genetic lottery as far as the Prawn is concerned. She’s a laid back little soul most of the time, and since the beginning, so long as we avoided dining during teething or a major growth spurt, she’s been quite well behaved in public dining establishments. It is only now that she wants to eat what WE’RE eating that it’s become slightly more complicated.

On Thursday evening, we had a belated Christmas dinner with The Idiot and the Barmaid at the local Pizza Express during which the Prawn managed to dump 3/4ths of a plate of pasta on the floor. The Idiot and the Barmaid are parents to our nearly 2 year old goddaughter and are therefore members of the “Picking semi-digested rusk out of the carpet” club. On Saturday, we went out for a very tasty meal at an American style steakhouse with the lovely Jonathan and the lovely Wendy on Saturday to celebrate their last hurrah as couple-sans-children-hood before meeting their adoptive children this week for the first time. The Prawn did her best to be as cute as possible, perhaps to lull them into a false sense of security, but did manage to create culinary carnage all around her. We managed to have a very nice meal nonetheless and only had to share a few unsalted fries, a jacket potato, some mahi-mahi and a little bit of ice cream with her to keep her (mostly) quiet. (Am I a really terrible parent if I say that I was wondering what would happen if I’d let her bite into a jalapeño pepper from atop the starter we ordered that I can only refer to as Mt. Nacho?) I hope the tip we left was large enough for whoever had to clean the carpet.

I generally cook for the Prawn. It might be some latent guilt about our utter breastfeeding disaster, but strangely enough, I’ve come to enjoy it. I was told in no uncertain terms by the usually useless health visitors that attend the weekly clinic at the surgery down the road that as soon as she turned 6 months, I should be feeding her directly from my plate- no pureeing, no liquefying, only light mashing. (My first question was, “What if I want a Vindaloo or something?” She didn’t really have an answer for that.) “Don’t pay any attention to Anabel Karmel and her like. Babies can eat whatever you can provided it doesn’t have too much salt,” she said. So, sceptically, I went home and gave my child lightly mashed spaghetti bolognaise.

After cleaning up copious amounts of vomit, I went out to buy Anabel Karmel’s cookbook for babies and toddlers and I can tell you, she’s been a hell of a lot more help than the health visitor. The Rock Star and I don’t eat too badly, but it’s been 10 times easier to have a load of Prawn friendly food frozen in small cubes in the freezer than it would be for me to make 3 portions of whatever we’re having. I’ve found some fantastic recipes along the way that I’ve been able to modify into actual human food by the addition of salt so that the Rock Star and I can truly say that the Prawn is eating the same thing we are.

So the Prawn can now sit in her high chair in a restaurant like a small human being. Yes, thanks, she WILL have a menu. As long as there is a cloth to wipe it off with afterwards.

In an age when even small businesses are spending obscene amounts of money to carefully craft a corporate image, it’s unusual to run across things that make you go hmmm.

My job often requires me to coordinate the shipping of goods, thus, it is needful that I deal with couriers. After getting fiscally shafted by several logistics companies, we finally found a small, friendly one who does exactly what we need them to do. Their name, however, has been a source of some concern. They call themselves . Yeah. Really.

When even a Google search asks potential customers, “Did you mean Incontinent Couriers?” you know that something has gone dreadfully wrong with your branding*.

*I came across another company the other day who works mainly in the Global Positioning System field with the slogan, “Find yourself anywhere.” Anyone who frequents the painfully hilarious Bash.org site might recognize the need for appropriate commas. (“They’re really important. Commas make all the difference in the world between, I helped my uncle, Jack, off a horse and I helped my uncle jack off a horse.”) In the same vein, a company pushing satellite navigation might want to consider a comma in order to keep their slogan from meaning, “Use our stuff and who knows WHERE the hell you’ll turn up.”

The Prawn has been listening to music pretty much constantly since she grew ears at about 18 weeks gestation. In fact, at around that time, she attended her first concert at which she was privileged to listen to the blues stylings of the one and only Mr. Joe Bonamassa.

The Rock Star often puts on concert videos in the morning for background noise while he works. (Or, attempts to work with someone in the room who would also very much like to be using his laptop, but for vastly different purposes.) Yesterday, while he was watching Eric Claptons 2007 Crossroads Festival video, the Prawn awoke from her nap.

As he usually does, The Rock Star went to fetch her and jigged her around the living room in time to the music, which at the moment, was being provided by BB King, most likely making up silly lyrics.

“Who’s your daddy?” The Rock Star asked, rhetorically.

The Prawn, without hesitation, pointed straight at BB King and went, “DADA!”

Great. Now we have to explain the difference between “YOUR Daddy” and “THE Daddy.”

Right. We are back to Potamus “Classic” after discovering that viewing the site in Internet Explorer was like looking at the aftermath of a car crash. The Rock Star is using this as an example of why he hates his job sometimes. Hopefully, new and improved Blogapotamus shall return shortly.

Please disregard the rubble. And any residual orangeness you may encounter.

You see, sometimes, a blog makes itself a very ugly cocoon and after a time, emerges as a beautiful, more simplified and less cluttered butterfly.

Supposedly, today is meant to be the gloomiest day of the year; diabolical weather, New Year’s resolution’s fading like so many bad hangovers.

I have to admit to feeling a bit under the weather when I left the house this morning. I’m fairly prone to Seasonal Affective Disorder, so long, grey English winters are often my undoing. I don’t really start feeling like a human being again until sometime mid May.

Since I had to take 2 computers into work today, (I’m still in the process of getting all of my email off of my Vaio onto my Macbook) I drove rather than walking the half mile.

When I pulled into the driveway, headlights on, the beams focused directly on the cat, who was taking a crap in a bush. Her face was all, “WTF, MEATBAG?? I CAN HAZ PRIVACY?”

It’s been keeping me going all day.

I have a playlist on my trusty iPod entitled “Pissed Off”. However, after today, I may re-title it “Music to Get Utterly Shafted by the Goventment To”. The Rock Star and I have received a 5 grand tax bill that we had absolutely NO idea was coming, despite the fact that we have accountants.

I am lost for words at the moment and I have no idea what the hell we’re going to do.

But I know that Metallica takes the edge off.

Before you even ask, NO, I am not knocked up again. But is it me, or is everyone else?

I’m not sure if this is just because I’ve recently developed a large tumour in my brain that compels me to seek out gossip (because, obviously, there’s no other rational explanation for my shameful secret) or if it’s because the press has developed an irrational fixation on pregnant celebrities, but it seems that at any one time, there seems to be some frantic celebrity baby watch going on that will continue at fever pitch until some nosy bastard snaps the first photo of the little blob in public, at which point everyone loses interest.

It seems strange to me that women in the public eye who get pregnant are the source of such endless fascination as (I’ve been told) it’s actually pretty common among members of the female species. I suppose the state of pregnancy is always slightly unusual to the casual observer due to the really quite alarming physical characteristics of the condition, namely, the enormous, animated belly poking out in front. Although other conditions, including gross obesity, also have this characteristic, pregnancy is different. It’s a condition that’s treated reverently and with a certain degree of respect. Therefore, when an A-lister gets into a family way, it is though the light of heaven shines straight out of her ladyplace.

The recent must-have item in Hollywood seems to be an unplanned pregnancy with a boyfriend who spends most of his time running a nightclub paid for with your money and playing Xbox. Obviously chic. Condoms? SO yesterday. And One can’t possibly be expected to remember to take EVERY SINGLE LITTLE PILL in that wheel thingy when you have 15 trips to Starbucks to make in one day.

Press releases from publicists could almost be fill-in-the-blank: “ _________is expecting her first child with boyfriend, Cheaty McWorthless. The couple are thrilled and delighted”. Of course, from just about any photo you care to dredge up, it’s patently obvious that __________ is anything BUT thrilled and delighted, because in fact, __________ was a day away from canning Cheaty McWorthless’s ass when the dreaded plus sign appeared in the little window of the pee-pee stick. Solo pregnancy in show business guarantees headlines in the Enquirer. But pregnancy with a seemingly doting partner gets you People, US, Glamour, Vanity Fair, and a shitload of free baby swag from every trendy specialist boutique. So obviously, Cheaty gets to stay on, being a loathsome sponge until the baby shows up, at which point she is free to sell the story; “I Left Him for the Sake of My Baby” garnering massive public support and securing a guest spot on Oprah.

Then of course, there is the all important matter of a cool name, because god forbid you do something so prosaic as name the child after your grandmother who loved you dearly and baked you things, although you can be forgiven if your grandmother was called Edna or Fanny. (IF YOU HAVE A GRANDMOTHER CALLED EDNA OR FANNY, THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT BY THE WAY. I HAD A GREAT AUNT EDNA WHO WAS A LOVELY, LOVELY WOMAN.) I have to admit to falling victim to the peculiar name bug when looking for names for The Prawn. I don’t mind telling you that some of the casualties of the girl’s name list were Kestrel, Lirael and Lyra. (for you literary buffs) But naming an A-list baby seems to be a task that causes famous parents to take leave of their senses and bestow their offspring with monikers that will no doubt make up an entire chapter entitled “How My Parents Fucked Me Up” in their future autobiographies. While Apple is a lovely name for a fruit, a computer and a small, photogenic girl, it is not necessarily a name that will ever look right on a credit card or eventual social security check. Indiana is a fabulous name for a state or an archaeologist, but unless he’s willing to wield a bullwhip in the school yard, no so much for a little boy. (Although I have a sneaking suspicion that in a state of hormone induced madness, it might have been one of the names that I suggested to the Rock Star if the Prawn had been born in possession of a winkle.)

The part of pregnancy that the public rarely ever sees is the downside, which involves miscarriage or infertility. Pregnancy announcements are made and then there is a deafening silence if something should happen to go wrong. In addition to the insanity that surround celebrity pregnancies, it would be comforting once in a while if someone who regularly found their face on the cover of magazines might come out and say, “yeah, that happened to me too” rather than slinking away to hide (although this is probably a more natural reaction) so that other women struggling with the same problems could feel slightly more normal and know that not all pregnancies lead to a) endless lunches at the Ivy or b) an actual honest to god baby.

So we have yet another 6 or 7 months or so before the latest round of unwed celebrity mothers are fit to pop. Let’s hope they’ll use the time wisely. And get rid of Cheaty’s X-box.