It occurs to me that it has been far too long since the last Prawn Cuteness fix, so, for your viewing enjoyment, here she is.

This is a relatively new trick; the headstand.

The tiny trampoline was a birthday gift and a great toy success.

A moment from The Prawn’s visit to the farm; getting to hang with the calves.

Just woken up on the right side of the bed.

Prawn and mummy.

Things have been a little manic in Potamusville of late. What with the Prawn now being a fairly sentient human being who demands books (not that I’m complaining; it’s awesome. She could want to watch Lazy Town all morning, which would obviously kill me) be read to her RIGHT NOW on pain of “Peepo Baby” flung with amazing viciousness at your crotch and almighty tantrum, it’s a little harder to get a chance to sit down with a cup of tea and a natter with the beloved internets.

The other activity taking up much of my time has been a renewed and fervent interest in my hobby, which is jewelry making.

I wish I could tell a story about how metal working always called to me or how exerting my will over base metals makes me feel like I’m in touch with the beating heart of the planet. But both of those things would be total horseshit, because the reason I ACTUALLY got into it was because I wanted to spend a spring college semester screwing around and jewelry making sounded like a fun and relatively easy elective. It actually turned out to be terribly addictive and all the screwing around got put on hold while I JUST SOLDER THIS ONE LAST JUMP RING TOGETHER. During that semester, I made a couple of lovely pendants, a nickel ring and a “locket” for my friend Rosco that was heavy enough to be used for basic self-defence.

I didn’t pick up a jeweler’s torch again until a year or so after I moved to the UK when I discovered a nearby adult education course in jewelry making and thought it might be nice to reacquaint myself with the basics. Again, I managed to get totally sucked in and was soon busy crafting items to be sold by my saintly mother to her friends and colleagues under the heading of “My Aphrodite Jewelry”.

My mother has been my greatest saleswoman and cheerleader. So much so that early on, she let everyone at her church know that her daughter was selling jewelry on the internet at www.myaphrodite.com. While this was partially true, my website address is actually www.myaphroditejewelry.com, so we had a quick gander at the former site only to find that it was, in fact, a purveyor of sex toys. This early mishap spurred a frantic flurry of phone calls to ladies whom she’d alerted to the 20% off sale on “butt plugs and other anal stimulation devices”. (It is now some sort of erotic search engine.)

My work over the years has become more precise and professional in appearance. I get far fewer burns, rarely melt anything, get negligible fire scale and do a lot less swearing, however, I still do occasionally cut the top of my finger almost clean off with a jeweler’s saw on a semi-regular basis and spend a lot of time on the floor looking for beads or clasps that I’ve dropped before the Prawn can eat them. Although my mother still has a few “Stones and Scones” parties in the works, I’m trying to move the majority of my business onto Etsy, which has been a glorious find for me and hundreds of thousands of other small artisans. I’d encourage anyone to take the handmade pledge for a year and buy all of your gifts from the site. If you want felt mice dressed as pirates, you’re in luck. If you want a plush uterus, you’re sure to find one. If you’d like a wallet made of duct tape (WAY cooler than it sounds) with a photo of Bettie Page on the front, go for it. From the ridiculous to the sublime, everything that you could ever want under one roof, you WILL find it on Etsy.

Of course, I’m there too.

Our friend Mr. Steve told us the other day that when all else has failed in the pursuit of entertaining Coneass the Barbarian, he often turns to YouTube for endless videos of trucks and diggers. This fascinates Coneass to no end. So, yesterday, in an attempt to make her jaw go slack enough to shovel some food in her mouth, we perused the endless source of entertainment that is YouTube for Prawn friendly material.

These are some of the examples that we found that made the Prawn spit out her dinner. NSFW, although not in the traditional looking-at-titties-at-your-desk kind of way, more in a god-that’s-loud-what-the-hell-are-you-watching? kind of way.

It’s been a bit quiet here at Prawn Central recently. Since starting on my meds, I’ve been trying to keep my head down, take deep breaths and get on with things.

The Prawn has developed into quite a little conversationalist recently. It’s been convenient for those moments when I need to get something accomplished in the kitchen and am always able to pinpoint her location in the flat from the endless stream of chatter that issues forth. There are a few words that are clearer than others. Her first word, guitar, is a clear favorite, said at varying levels of inflection depending on the mood of the speaker. “geeTA,” for instance, can conceivably mean, “Look, mother, there appears to be a guitar hanging on the wall.” “GEEta,” is more like, “Father, you appear to be playing a guitar. Allow me to assist you by stealing your pick and attempting to ingest it.” Whereas “GEETAAAAA!” generally means, “Attention parental units: you decision to remove the guitar from my sticky-fingered grasp is one that you are likely to regret imminently.”

We’ve also made our first linguistic forays into the world of barnyard animals. Her favorite playthings, ever since the age of 6 months or so, has been a set of DK picture cards, which feature many toddler favorites such as “cat”, “dog”, “sheep” and “sweater”. (For some reason, “sweater” keeps turning up in the animal box, leading us to make up fantastic stories about vast herds of winter clothing that live on the prairie.) It occurred to me that this admission might lead people to believe that we are “those” parents who consistently shove flashcards underneath their progeny’s nose, determinedly willing them on to academic excellence despite the fact that they’re still predisposed to eating week old Cheerios from under the sofa. I swear to god that we’re not. Our holiday companions Mr. Steve and the Danish Muffin brought some along for their 2 year old and the Prawn seemed fascinated, so we picked up a pack for ourselves. DK is marvellous when it comes to children’s stuff; the bright pictures and textures are baby gold. The only ill conceived card in the packs as far as I’m concerned is “jelly” which featured (notice I use the past tense) a sticky blotch in the middle of a photo of a piece of toast. Of course, the sticky blotch remained sticky for all of 15 minutes and was quickly un-stickified by hair, carpet fluff and spit.

The Prawn seems to dig on animals. At the moment, she seems to have a “cow” thing going on, so we were thrilled to have a chance to take her to a dairy farm last weekend that a friend of ours works on to show her the real thing. Our friend, The Colombian, is possibly the most laid back person we have ever personally met in real life, and seems to very much enjoy his job, despite the fact that it drags him out of bed at 4am every morning. He refers to his cows as his “ladies”.

As soon as we hauled the Prawn from her car seat, she pointed at the nearest cow and shouted, “MOOOOOOOO!”

We were lucky enough to be there at a moment when one of the heifers was about to calve, so the Colombian invited us into the stall to watch the blessed event. I was vaguely hesitant as the stall also contained about 16 other cows and a 1.2 ton bull. “Oh him?” the Colombian said, when I asked him if he was sure all would be well, “Tommy’s okay.” This is not entirely fitting with my experience of bulls, nor of the Colombian’s (he was once attacked by another bull on the farm twice in about 15 minutes. “It was like being hit by a car and then having the driver realize he didn’t hit you hard enough the first time and then coming back to run you over again.”) so I was still a little wary taking the Prawn into the bovine domain, despite Tommy’s glowing character reference. However, Tommy seemed to take much less interest in the proceedings than the rest of the herd, quietly retiring to a corner to possibly contemplate his absolutely enormous testicles.

For The Colombian, birthing calves is like doing paperwork, so he chatted to us merrily while elbow deep up the backside of a clearly uncomfortable cow. (One wonders what it must feel like to try to give birth to something with 4 legs.) “Hello, mate!” he exclaimed, as the calf’s head became visible, “Welcome to being a cow!” The Prawn, at this point, was unimpressed and desperately squirming in The Rock Star’s grasp in order to be allowed to roam freely among the beasts and among their many leavings. “Dude, this is the miracle of life happening right here,” we kept trying to tell her. “Dude,” she seemed to say in return, “I see some cow shit that I would desperately like on the knees of my jeans, so hands off!”

The calf, a little bull, was finally delivered. “You want me to take your picture with him?” asked the Colombian, reaching for the camera I was holding. (which happened to belong to future sister-in-law, Trumpet) “Erm…” I said, shrinking back, “maybe you should wash your hands first.” He looked down at his hands, covered in every conceivable cow fluid imaginable, in surprise. “Oh, yeah!” he laughed, going to dunk them in a not much cleaner water trough.

I could just imagine Trumpet’s reaction.

“Um, why is there after-birth on my camera?”

April is an inauspicious month in which to have a birthday in the UK. As we learned last week, one can never count on the weather to do anything other than whatever it pleases. One moment there may be brilliant sunshine and the next, you might have snow dumped all over your unsuspecting ass. The last few days, we seem to have had a recurring hail motif. LOVING IT.

Also inauspicious was the first email I received on the first morning of my 33rd year, firing me from my position with AQA, a text based answer service that provided drunk morons with information. I would be more upset about it, but quite frankly, I’d let my account slip into inactivity due to the fact that I was getting a little tired of answering questions like, “If u r so smart, what’s my name?” (To which I dearly would have liked to reply, “U jst paid a £ 4 this question. WHO’S THE DUMBASS NOW?”

33 was not an auspicious year for either Alexander the Great or Jesus Christ. As my friend Pablo pointed out, 33 is a numerical palindrome. It is also the International Country Code for France. There are 33 vertebrae in the human spine when counting the individual bones of the coccyx. It is the atomic number of arsenic. It’s binary equivalent is 100001. And the number 33 is printed on every bottle of Rolling Rock. Of all of the meaning that I’ve been trying to derive from the number, the later is by far the most significant. Maybe it’s just because I could really use a beer.

Lucky for me the Rock Star is taking me to dinner. While the dining establishment in question is unlikely to sell beer as utterly terrible as Rolling Rock (don’t get me wrong, I’d still drink it.) I’m sure I’ll be able to find an appropriate substitute.

The Rock Star and I often become engrossed in bad television. The things that get recorded on our Skybox are truly embarrassing. I hate to even admit that several years ago, we became completely addicted to a “reality” program that was about as real as “The Hills” called “Paradise Island” where a bunch of impossibly beautiful people (and one painfully unattractive, but wormy guy) were shoved together in an impossibly beautiful and luxurious villa overlooking the sea and, in time honoured format, were voted each other out one by one. Such was it’s stagedness, the “spontaneous” camerawork looked as if it were being shot by Martin Scorsese. It was a detestable piece of televisual shite, but because we are morons, we couldn’t get enough.

Lately, my thing has been a deep and abiding love for “Miami Ink” chronicling the life and times of the occupants of “Love Hate Tattoos” in South Beach. Such is the stunning realism of this particular show that every customer enters the shop OBVIOUSLY WEARING A RADIO MIKE and, if they are female, WEARING A BIKINI. I’ve actually been to Miami, and surprising as it may be, I didn’t see many half naked women downtown. Also, there seems to remarkably little blood involved in the tattoo process, and for anyone who’s ever been inked, you’ll know that getting a tattoo involves a fair amount of leakage on the tattooee’s part. Furthermore, when a customer examines their new piece of body art at the end of the process, there is a complete absence of redness or swelling of any kind. Again, a fresh tattoo has the same effect on the skin as having a drunken nightclub patron doodle on your flesh with a lit cigarette.

But pshaw to these little details. They do not hamper my enjoyment. And most dangerously of all, they make me want very much to go get another piece of ink.

Sad as it is to say, the world looks very differently upon tattooing in men and women. A bloke with tattoos peaking out above his shirt collar or out from under a short-sleeved t-shirt hardly receives a second glance or a moral judgment from passers by or employers. However, a woman with the same pieces of body art is likely to be looked upon as, at best rough and at worst, low or unintelligent. Were I a man, I’m pretty sure I would be bold with ink; a neck and back piece, maybe a sleeve with bright colors. However, being female, I feel obligated to keep my dalliances into the world of inkery in spots that generally do not see the light of day. The subversive part of me is keen for everyone in the PTA to know damn well who the Prawn’s mother is. “She’s the one with all the tattoos,” they’ll whisper. “YEAH?,” I’ll shout from the other end of the gym, “AND I CAN STILL KICK YOUR ASS AT MAKING RICE KRISPY SQUARES, BITCHES!” But that little annoying practical voice that I have to kick in the face every so often with a Doc Marten to silence still gets through saying, “Are you sure you can look at that for the rest of your life? Cause it’s NOT COMING OFF. Plus, would it kill you to stop picking at your toenails?”

At the moment, it is easy enough to ignore my ink as it’s almost all on my back. The two pieces on either of my feet are small and unobtrusive and generally only visible in the summertime when even broken glass on the pavement cannot compel me to wear shoes. Perhaps the level of subversion present in my soul is not at quite the level I would like it to be.

Meanwhile, I will dream dreams of descending swallows, blood red hearts and colourful, intertwining flower vines.

My lovely internet readership, I cannot thank you enough for all of your kind words. Fear not. The Potamus shall Rise Again.

And now, back to the tomfoolery.

Being laid out with an atrocious head cold, I spent some time this morning once I got to work reading the paper while through my mucus-filled brain fug while standing next to a steaming kettle. Despite the haze one headline leaped out at me.

“Straw threatened to “hit Balls” in Cabinet bust-up”

A headline that cannot help but provoke a juvenile chuckle from anyone unless they are dead or perhaps a member of the Cabinet. In the first seconds after reading, my question immediately was, “Whose balls? The cabinet as a whole? His own? WHAT AN ODD THING TO DO.” For this very reason, you can be sure that there have been editorial meetings at every major newspaper in Britain since Ed Balls became a minister to make sure that headlines having to do with him are constructed VERY CAREFULLY. Not carefully enough, as it seems.

While obviously, nothing as trite as a name should hold you back from a chosen profession, one wonders if politics was the best arena for a man by the name of Ed Balls to enter.* No one would dare mess with the lorry driver Ed Balls. Or the bouncer Ed Balls. Ed Balls the porn star would be par for the course.

But Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families? It’s all just a bit unfortunate.

*And lest we forget the former Transport Secretary under Tony Blair, Mr. Stephen “9 Penalty Points” Ladyman, who’s moniker must have been a complete joy to him at the Birkenhead Institute Boys Grammar School. His name was more likely to invoke images of a dirty weekend in Thailand than of maintaining highway infrastructure.

I hate to admit it, but I’ve always been the teensiest bit reluctant to talk about very personal stuff on this blog. It’s easy to forget that your little home on the internet is not a safe place with locked doors, but rather is more like that house down the street where there are always six drunk college freshman on the porch and the cops keep showing up. As some of the more squeamish will note, I’ve got no qualms about talking about some things up to and including the very personal private personal functions of my very own personal private ladyplace. It’s a little harder, however, to go into the realm of feelings without sounding like a complete tool. Other people are quite adept at talking about feelings, but given the choice, I’d probably far rather make jokes about my period or something.

At any rate, my feelings have been bothering me in an itchy rash kind of a way lately. I guess it’s no secret that depression is pretty common among women my age and I’ve kind of struggled with bouts of it on and off since late high school. (Although back then, it was probably just more about the fact that this girl I was friends with totally wasn’t talking to me and my boyfriend was sneaking around behind my back and OMG, I TOTALLY CAN’T GET MY HAIR TO DO WHAT I WANT IT TO.)

I had the obligatory health visitor questionnaire 10 weeks after the Prawn was born. Was I a) happy all the time, b) happy most of the time, c) sad most of the time, d) sad all of the time or e) so sad I’m thinking about hurting myself or my baby. The lady who administered this rather drippy test smiled apologetically at me as she asked me to answer. “I think as long as it’s not e, you’re pretty much par for the course at this point,” she admitted. Strangely enough, when the Prawn was smaller and more stressful in terms of care, I felt just fine. Apart from the first 5 weeks when I was convinced that my life was over and could go from 0 to crazy in 0.2 seconds flat, and alarmingly, that’s how I’m starting to feel all over again.

My main symptom is the low level feeling in my gut that I’ve just been given terrible news. I’m pretty sure just about everyone knows this feeling, although I imagine that it’s different for everyone- The kind of sad that just kind of seeps into everything you do, if it allows you to do anything at all. I will cry at the drop of a hat. This is especially embarrassing at the gym while on the treadmill and an NSPCC ad (for those of you in the States, a large child abuse prevention charity) will run on MTV or something and I have to yank my headphones out and look away. (By the way, what do you reckon they do to the children in those commercials to make them look as if someone has just brutally murdered a puppy in front of them?) Absolutely anything having to do with children suffering at all makes me totally nuts. That photo a couple of months back of the baby being tossed from the apartment building in Germany? I was a gibbering wreck in front of the television. Oxfam ad? NO THANK YOU. Seeing any more pictures of crying, malnourished babies will keep me under the bed for a week. I cried the other day while reading the Prawn a book. About a snail and a whale. Why? BECAUSE WHALES ARE ENDANGERED. The Prawn was all, “Pull yourself together, woman!” (Oh, and thanks awfully much to Sky News for the spectacular footage last week of baby seals being brutally clubbed to death. That was awesome.)

The worst part about it is trying to be “on” for her when all I want to do is curl up in a ball on the floor. Of course, this compounds the existing depression with the feeling that I’m being a terrible mother, which is just the cherry on top of the whole shit sundae. I suppose I can thank my lucky stars that I have never considered hurting her or myself due to whatever chemical fuckwittery is occurring in my head. I just feel bad. All the time. Pure and simple. As stressful as life with the Prawn is sometimes, she’s not the source of my problems. If anything, she’s become more of a joy to parent as she’s begun to be a sentient human being who knows where her nose is, how to say “va va voom!” and enjoys stealing things from other children. She’s hilarious.

So, a few months after the media triumphantly declared that anti-depressants were a big damp squib, I popped my first dose of Citalopram, which is a member of the SSRI family. My GP, who I really like when I actually manage to get an appointment with him, didn’t put much stock in the study that everyone was wetting their collective knickers over. “I’ve seen these drugs make a difference in too many people’s lives, far beyond what could be expected with a placebo effect,” he told me, “One study is not going to change my mind on that.”

Obviously, since I just started taking the stuff last week, there is very little to report. Anti-depressants take a good long while to build up in your system, so I imagine that it’ll be at least another 3 weeks until I can expect to notice any sort of difference. I suppose my main fear is that there’ll BE no difference.

It’s hard to write about depression intelligently when it’s already been done by so many other much more talented and, quite frankly, much more depressed people. Suffice to say that it both sucks and blows, entirely confounding the laws of physics and it’s my adamant hope that these brain-altering drugs banish it from whence it came.

While fishing in the river of filth that pours into my comment filter every morning, I came across this:

“Gay Bears: Hardcore”

That is all.