While I’d love to buy a drink for each and every single of the one hundred bloggers heading to the Zoo this Sunday, I don’t think it’s fair on those of you that can’t make it.

How about I make you all some cake? Yes, that photo is me in the kitchen, rustling up something tasty, wonderful and celebratory – but oh, what rotten luck, with our low-tech social networking, you can’t even taste it!

Well fear not, I’ve managed to magic up with a bit of blagging and barefaced cheek blogging goodness some cracking goodies for everyone to have a shot at bagging.

And here they are and they could be yours, just drop me a comment on this post, or a tweet @nixdminx and I’ll pick the winners of these darling goodies by December 10. I’ll be adding a few more over the coming week too, so keep your eyes peeled lovelies x

Karaoke Golden Ticket

I’ve got a Lucky Voice Golden Ticket on offer. That means two hours free singing in this most glamorous of establishments with cocktails and microphones galore!  It’s so much fun, you’ll want to say longer…I ended up staying an extra three hours on my Birthday last year.

If you can work out what this song is below, will you let me know…the lyrics aren’t recognisable but I think we sang it more than once!

Super Lush Sweet and Dreamy Box

This gorgeous Sweet and Dreamy Lush briar box of rosy dreams and sugar candy baths (quite tempted to keep it actually) could be winging it’s way to you ahead of the Christmas Party Season and could help you get over all those dreadful hangovers feel fresh as a winter daisy.

Festive Fun: Peter Pan tickets

This is one hot show this Christmas – I have two tickets to see the Peter Pan show at the 02 from lastminute.com*.  It’s also a little known fact that my birthday falls on the same day that the original book was published (Peter Pan by J M Barrie)

Kitchen Goodies from Simple Human

Thanks to Simple Human for the Sinky Caddy & Drainer – I would hate for you all to be scrubbing pots and pan without some kind of stylish kit…

Tickets to SeaLife

Here’s one to fill the days after Christmas when you simply have to get out of the house, two tickets to Sea Life – take your pick which one you want to go to

Transformers DVDs

Blockbuster movies are always great for rainy days and I know this one is a goodie. I have four, yes four!, DVDs of Transformers 2 Revenge of The Fallen

I really enjoyed the first film, so please let me know what you think of it – but remember it has a 12 rating.

Thanks to Lush, lastminute.com, Simple Human, Lucky Voice and Paramount DVD for their generous offer of prizes – it always helps to keep the readers happy! x

*valid for performances Monday to Thursday before December 17 2009

Incredibly, this story I am writing is post number 149 which means over the last year I’ve probably written around 75,000 words here. That combined with the other writing on sites and blogs I do probably amounts to around 120,00 words – no mean feat when you look at it. But it’s my no means been a difficult challenge, it’s been a total blast and has helped me get to grips with more than just how to click ‘publish’.

So back to where it all began. Facing a particularly difficult situation; no job come January, a Christmas without my daughter and and the end of my work contract wind down, the months appeared before me like an abyss. It was hard not to feel alienated and a social outcast. Even if I wasn’t one, I felt it. It was no suprise I succumbed to an awful attack of the flu. That Friday, the fever was so bad that I was unable to leave the house for three days, and fortunately Miniminx was away for the weekend.

With no choice but to live online while snivelling and bedridden, I just about managed to survive on what was in the house, ordered some online supplies and kept writing. Just a blog post each day, but it was something.

At the end of day three with the tissue box empty and the lemsip packets crumpled, there was a knock on the door and a groaning ghostlike-heap greeted the delivery man. Yes, it was me, and it was at that point I had a revelation.

Nothing was going to be the same again – I’d found a new tool for survival and wasn’t going to give it up.

Blogging might be easy, but getting started is the hardest part. I determined to say anonymous. And by blog name summed up the sense of futility at that time. My high hopes had been nixed and my minxy life crushed. Clown that I am, I set about writing with humour not despair, it took me a while to get it right and it certainly lifted the dark clouds and put the light back behind my eyes.

There is something really unnerving about putting a story out there in this new cyber world they call ‘the cloud’. I imagined my blog posts would be like raindrops falling from this cloud and evaporate before even hitting the ground and, in reality, no one would ever read it.

But they did and hey ho, I got a visitor or two, and thought

‘Oh my god, I wrote a blog post and someone bloody ready it – shit!’

….and then I got a comment, and thought

‘Um, so what happens next? This is quite scary. Who are these people, they have funny bloggy names.’

I had a look around and found other bloggers. Mummies. With beautiful blogs, stickered with awards. I had discovered the Mumosphere, or rather, it has discovered me.

‘Ahem.’ I thought. ‘Well goodness me. I see I’m not alone here.’

I replied to comments, it was like making invisible friends with lovely people. It was a miracle. I was no longer alone at my laptop.

‘Wow. Wahaaay.’

I had a new job.

I had become the accidental Mummy blogger.

Simply put, it’s been an incredulous and fabulous year.

November 29 2008 was the day I clicked ‘publish’ on my first wordpress post. I was amazed I’d even managed to work out how to set up a blog, but compared to what was going on in the world, it was really easy.

I knew from the start of the credit crunch I was heading for a sh*tstorm – working as a contractor for one of the biggest companies in the world, and with a job offer on the table, nothing was set in stone and I became more nervous day by day as the stock markets crashed…an invisible fall out dust was settling across desks, it was suffocating, it was paralysing people, it was as if we were under attack. People mouthed frantically to each other behind the glassed vacuums of ‘private’ offices in a vastly open plan glass space. I took cab rides through the City and the cabbies drove at the suits as if they wanted to mow them down.

This was really shit.

I knew I should look elsewhere and so did everyone else but to no avail. Jobs I went for evaporated, people I knew were sacked by email or text.

I had a ‘war effort’ breakfast with a colleague and by the time we had eaten our scrambled eggs and half drunk our fancy coffee – 40 people were out the door leaving laptops, mobiles, blackberries and thwarted ambition behind.

My Christmas present for 2008 was my P45.

So what?

It’s the frailty of corporate life that makes you question your personal values – who am I without this junk, without this stuff? Who am I without a job, a career, a profession, a hope? Ego no longer plays a part, it’s a great lesson.

So this…

Against all odds, and the backdrop of possibly the worst financial meltdown I’ve seen in my lifetime, I’ve been lucky enough to find a new and exciting way of life that’s helped me to overcome what was initially a hugely daunting prospect.

More to follow…

I’m quite jumpy so everyone in this neighbourhood is used to my occasional squawks but this was a corker.

I saw a spider.
I screamed.
Then I screamed again.
And then I screamed really loudly. And then some more.

This was no ordinary arachnid. Huge, leggy and fast. I had spotted it on the stairs before and sneakily left it for the cleaner to hoover up. I thought it was languishing in the Dyson but the bloody thing has, or rather had, reappeared.

Let me rewind to the early evening that was going alright and then started to go a little bit more than wrong. After finishing work, cooking Miniminx her dinner, clearing up, sticking some more stuff in the oven (still got NTA) and then getting Miniminx to practise her guitar, I decided to get the bath on and bring the chaos of the day to a close. But it was only the beginning.

We went upstairs to gather bathrobes and towels and I noticed by my foot a massive spider. For the first time in years, I had a phobic reaction and leapt in the air screaming. And like Mother, like daughter, so did Miniminx.

‘Spidaarghhh.’ I wailed, I was reduced to minimalistic sentences.
‘Aaaarghhh’
‘AAAAAAAAAAAArgggh’ I replied and in a state of heightened anxiety.
‘Where is it?’
‘Go to your room and I’ll….’ I looked around frantically. It had gone.
But where? It was in my bedroom, with me!
‘AAAAAARGHHH – it’s chasing me in my room’
Miniminx was in fits of laughter at this point. I tried to let on I was just hamming it up but I was really petrified.

I looked again, and yet again, it had gone. And then I saw the long legged horror sneak under the stand alone towel rail in the hall.

‘We have to call someone – the bath is going to run over and I’m not going to go in there while this thing is on the loose’
‘I’ll get the phone’
Realising how ridiculous I sounded, and also that I’d never live it down if someone had to sort this out, I momentarily came to my senses.

‘No, no, we can’t do that. I’ll sort this out’ I said trying to be/sound grown up, after behaving like a teenage moron…’Just get in the bathroom’ I said calmly.
She did. I stayed put and reached out to move the towel rail. I slid it around, gingerly, on the axis of one leg. As it gracefully arced in what should have been a revealing pirouette, there was nothing on the carpet. Nothing, nothing, nothing. Nothing!!?? I peeked over the stair rail and looked down at the stairs. There it was. It had jumped down. Great a bloody massive base jumping spider in my house!

‘Oh my god’
‘What?’
‘It’s so big, it’s walking up the bloody stairs.’

I’ve never seen anything like it. Like a horror movie. It was coming for me like the Alien after Sigourney Weaver.

I ran in my bedroom to find a large book – I was going to flatten that thing. Vogue? Too good. Heat? Too trashy. I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence? Big enough? Yes, yes, yes and yes. Ironic enough? Oh bloody hell, Yes.

With a giggling child on the verge of becoming quite scared I had to rein it in. Channelling De Niro in Taxi Driver, I turned the tables on that eight legged piece of nothing. I was going to get it before it got me.

‘Oh come on then! You want some?!’ I shouted at it mockingly as it plodded up the stairs one by one. I turned to see the bemused look on my child’s face, there’s really no turning back once you’ve got this far, I had to follow through to the bitter end instead of giving in to hysteria again.

My heart was pounding. I tried to lighten the moment.
‘We can do this darling! We’re a team!’ I grimaced. ‘We don’t need to be scared.’

Three steps away from the landing, the stairs turn, I could see it, it was on it’s way up and heading to meet me.

‘Where is it?’

Silence.

‘Come on…let me at you….!’

It arrived. I lunged, I slam dunked. I stamped on the book.

We cheered.
We waited to see if the book moved.

I waited ten minutes before picking up the book.
Victory was mine, it was flushed.

And oh hell, the oven was still on….
‘Oh my god, the food’s going to burn…’
More laughter from the bathroom as I ran downstairs like a maniac.

Midweek madness, there’s nothing quite like it.

Oh, and on a good day, I can be quite like Surprised woman….and by the way, sorry Amy, we still love you and your book.

So when the lovely Tara asked me for a photo for her profile on me, I thought, hang on a minute, I’m really happy to talk about my blog and parenting, so I sent her my mugshot.

And she has run a lovely article this month on mychild.co.uk.

Here it is and here I am too…

Thanks to mychild.co.uk for being such a great web site too, we need more of these please.

I’m am so chuffed – in fact gobsmacked to be a new entry in the Top of the Pops (well Moms and Pops) – it’s brought back memories of me and my brothers and sisters (six of us, a veritable bratpack) dragging out the dressing up box on a Sunday night, sticking polystyrene cups wrapped in foil on the end of bamboo sticks and glamming up to sing the Top 40 to an audience of two screeching, coughing, choking and (looking back, I hope) laughing parents.

This is obviously a sign of my age – whatever happened to Top of the Pops, 45s (flexi-discs????), chart show run downs and seeing my brother (then 11) drag up in a shiny gold and orange number over his Leeds footie kit? Who knows.

I digress darlings, caught up in the flow of nostalgia, I’m neglecting to mention what has brought this all on. It’s the Tots 100.…

Thank you lovely ladies for this lovely present! I was advised to post this gift in the sidebar, but I don’t know what one is, well I do really, but you lucky buggers bloggers on typepad can do this I can’t on WordPress right now…and I’m a little bit confused too, because looking at the code I can’t enlarge it (if you saw my last post you know I’m not one to undersize my images).

So that’s a drat and double drat from me but I don’t care! I’m gobsmacked-blown-away-cheshire-cat-like-and-have-a-warm-fuzzy-feeling-all-over. And it’s made me think a bit more about my months of blogging.

So what’s the big deal? It’s a huge deal because blogging has become a true essential in my life, it’s an extra pair of hands in parenting.

I began at the very tail end of last year because I’d hit a big wall and been quite seriously credit crunched – a new job had sadly evaporated almost as the world economy crashed and burned and I was left facing January 2009 with apparently no hope. So there I was wondering where to go, what to do and how to keep busy and out of trouble.

Hmmm, oh well, I thought. Perhaps a blog would help keep me sane. So I started to write, a bit gingerly at first, a real scaredy cat, but then I got hooked. I had no expectations, I didn’t think anyone would even read it.

But guess what – it has kept me out of trouble, sane at times and even better, some lovely people have even taken the time to read it and speak to me. Wow!

I kid you not, if I was a psychologist, I would recommend it as therapy.

Blogging has been really given the thumbs down by a lot of people ‘in the know’ in the media, such as Janet Street Porter here slagging off all us child-laden saddoes who have a reason to live,  but they don’t understand the real reasons why people blog. It’s rather like the time when paste up designers refused to learn DTP. Failure to embrace the future means it will reject you. I’ve always loved Janet Street Porter’s work but I think this time she is wrong. I can’t wait for Janet Street Porter to start twittering and feel the noise – come on rise to the challenge!

Anway, back to those of us back at the ranch who put the kids off to bed and sound off in the 2.0-scope. Why oh why do we venture into this new and unknown territory? Perhaps it’s very much like parenting and we are all curious and want to hear about other people’s experiences. Well if you don’t, I certainly do, and I hear these reasons from blogging parentsall the time about why they do ;

1. Catharsis
What a great place to indulge that need to let out niggles, worries, wants, whatever it is in our lives, it’s better out than in!

2. A diary
I believe bloggers are journal writers. The most beautiful thing I ever read on a blog was that these blogs are ‘love letters to our children’ – so whoever wrote that, I’m sorry I can’t remember where I read it, but it is the most poignant and touching belief and a beautiful thing to define, so thank you…

3. A discipline
Blogging is a way of keeping addled minds on the straight and narrow – be it sleepless nights, unemployment, separation, forthcoming nuptials, long haul flights, ex-pat living, we all need to verbalise it, albeit online. Apparently, poetry helps to fend off depression, I truly believe that blogging has the same effect.

4. Connecting
I never in my wildest dreams ever thought that blogging would enrich my life the way it has. I’ve met interesting people, read great stories, had amazing conversations and feel that the other bloggers I connect with are interested people with a common goal – it’s not about business or self aggrandisement, we’re raising the next generation and all of us in very different circumstances but it’s a great new playing field we’re on and so much fun to boot. But that aside, it’s affirmed my Motherhood, flippant as I may be, being a single parent is no easy road but through blogging it seems easier.

So, while I’m still agog, and possibly sounding a little twee, I have to raise a toast (be it sliced brown Hovis or champagne) to all those others who have created this extraordinary new cultural phenomen. Here’s my shout out here (or rather post-bedtime whisper) and a big thank you to all of you who in the first instance reached out to me and gave me that little nudge, that kind comment and more than occasionally a huge laugh and also left me reaching for the tissues to either stem the eye watering laughter or the honesty of a bad experience that made me cry. I may not know you all so well but I just want to thank you for being there, that’s all

Violetposy
A Modern Mother
Rosie Scribble
Potty Diaries
Jo Beaufoix
Dulwich Divorcee
MTFF
Alpha Mummy
I promise That I will Do My Best
Single Parent Dad

PS: I don’t take saccharine. I’m giving you all a cup of builders’ tea with two heaped spoons of Tate & Lyle, enjoy! Btw, tagging maybe a bit scraggy, sorry all x

The ‘news’ being the result of my interview. Waiting is just the worst thing and especially when your future is a stake, it becomes the kind of wait that makes you clean your house inside out, iron and fold things, generally do anything to distract yourself and keep busy and of course, gaffer tape your mobile to your leg so you don’t miss the ‘call’.

So I heard, and first it was luke warm news but with an exciting twist. Perhaps there was another newly created role which would work for me – would I be interested? I bought into this 100% as it was a far more exciting proposition and I was up on the moon for a while.

As calls came and went, this turned into a red hot fireball which then unexpectedly blew up in my face. So now the cold tap is attached to the garden hose and drenching me so to speak. What a day, and it’s not even 6pm. I’m just plain old keeling over.

Not sure where to turn now. It seems I’m more likely to win the lottery than get a job. I’m going to really, really panic for now and take stock when I’ve calmed down a bit – so probably by tomorrow I’ll be back at it. I had my hopes up and now they’re dashed again.

What’s a girl to do?

Well, I shall be drinking red wine tonight (if the head cold allows) and mouthing along to my karaoke (can’t upset the neighbours can I?).

And tomorrow, as Scarlett says, is another day…and how lucky I went down the garden centre to buy some seeds for a vegetable patch, perhaps they’ll keep us fed over the coming Summer months….

After a hour or so of feeling like I was about to pop, I woke up again thinking it was 8.54 and was just about to panic when I checked again and it was 6.54. Phew!

I got a good morning kiss, a cuddle and a cup of tea in bed. Then I was babbled at for 90 minutes. Oh yes, Miniminx was up and about and working on her new, new signature. It’s morphing over the pages of her Hannah Montana notebook, so now it’s a fish motif (she’s Pisces) with her first name in the body shape and her surname initials in the tail. Wow, amazing and thoughtful and invidual – what a cutie. She’s learning how to express herself and creating a sense of identity. She proudly showed me page after page of permutations and I have to say I’m massively impressed, in fact it’s quite a developmental milestone.

We’ve had a Wicked weekend in more ways than one. First we went to see the Wicked the Musical on Saturday and second, after a long and Rosé fuelled Sunday lunch by the river in the fabulour sunshine we were Wicked and Musical.

Miniminx’s Luckyvoice Partybox is a hit in our house, but not it seems next door. So much so in fact, that my neighbour felt it necessary to holler at me about above through the din. It was 7pm, not 2am. Yes, how very unseemly of her, she obviously didn’t enjoy our renditions of the Smiths and Pulp or our duets – we hadn’t even got to Dolly Parton on the playlist. Thank heavens I took off my Amy Winehouse wig before I answered the door…actually, hang on a minute, maybe I should have just kept it on and screamed ‘Blaaaaaaaaaaaake Incaaaaaa-arse-errated’ …that would have stopped her in her tracks.

Ooh she’s a wet blanket isn’t she? Three hugely happy grown ups were placed on the proverbial naughty step and the impromptu party died a death. While I’m tempted to hang my smalls out to dry on our shared trellis just to wind her up a bit, I won’t, because I’m nice and she’s a meanie. I’ve never complained about her REALLY ANNOYING chair-scraping-across-wooden-floor habit, or the way she lets her burglar alarm ring loudly as she goes in and out of the house, or her car alarm going off at 6.45am.

Maybe I should drop anonymous notes through her door saying ‘Lay off that wind breaking will ya?’ or ‘Don’t mean to alarm you but your cleaner is having sex parties while you’re at work – signed a kind, concerned neighbour’.

We’ll just stick to show tunes for now though…I think she might get the point non?

There’s more to life than Aldi and Lidl, which is why I am hosting the best and most luscious budget blogs here soon…so please join me and make it happen!

Email nixdminx@live.co.uk with Credit Crunchista Carnivale in the title and include the post you’d like to enter, with a link and a brief synopsis of you and your blog.

The deadline is March 16 2009, and I’ll send you more details to post and publicise on your own blogs. C’est tres simple!

TTFN – I’m off to the gym now for a workout and a pamper, with a bag of fabulous freebies….

Being out of work is any oxymoron – I’m am actually working very hard to get a job even though the KPIs below amount to failure. Maybe I should just do nothing…and wait

A year ago this would have been an adventure and I would have had  five or so face to face interviews by now and maybe two serious offers on the table but it’s no longer a job seekers’ market.

My efforts are not to be sniffed at, I haven’t succumbed to daytime TV and microwave lunches just quite yet but hey ho, it goes like this;

Hours spent trawling the web for jobs = 280

Registrations on job sites = 6

Paid subscriptions to job sites = 1

Recruiter meetings = 5

CV submissions = 15

CV re-edits = 6

CV rejections = 2

Non acknowledgment of CV submissions = 4

Jobs that have evaporated due to the credit crunch before I even put a foot through the door = 2

Job interviews = 0

Interviews that are still in the pipeline = 2

Oh, I know it looks really bad on paper. But it only takes one job to come up trumps doesn’t it?

There’s a massive flipside to unemployment (apart from lie ins, daytime drinking, no commutes etc.)  It is not have to spend time with people you just wouldn’t hang out with under any other circumstances.  Workmates are just heinous at times – all that gnashing of teeth, loose eyes in head and frothing of the mouth, and that’s just me.

I know they don’t mean it but there’s loads of plain old crap that you suffer daily in the corporate office environment that you just wouldn’t bloody tolerate don’t get at home (unless you’re in Downing Street or the Whitehouse)…and there’s a lot to be said for swapping the at-work-alpha for the out-of-work-omega status.

Zero is the new hero for me as I realise that my work angst is nil.

Here goes, all those jaw clenching petty things that I no longer have to put up with;

1. The silent farters – you know who you are! – 0
2. ‘Does my life amount to this moments’ = 0
3. ‘URGENT’ work calls during home/sick/holiday/weekend-time = 0
4. ‘Are you REALLY sick?’ phone calls from unconcerned revenue/deadline driven colleagues = 0
5. Snide, snitchy, backbiting comments from septic single work ‘mates’ = 0
6. The ‘I found your idea and made it mine so I get a promotion and you don’t’ = 0
7. Unwelcome advances from drunken executives at work functions = 0
8. The ‘Sorry mate but I dumped you in it on a Friday night at 5pm – I’m off for a stag weekend’ = 0
9. Infuriating, desk sharing nose-picking, nail-biting toetappers = 0
10. Smokers who come back to their desks humming with the smell of fags/frantic Nicorette guzzling
    addicts = 0
11. ‘Oops I just shared that drunken photo of you to 2,000 people’, can I recall the email? = 0
12. The ‘I’m going to make you look SOOOO bad’ triple cc emails chasing you for a deadline you ‘supposedly’ missed but the cow colleague has just not read your email from three days ago
13. Snickering gimps on instant message who NEVER turn off the high pitched alert
14. Four word emails on crackberrys
15. The ‘I know you’re on holiday but if you’re reading emails, can you just ….’

But the thing is, these are the things things that make the world go round in working life, so now I’ve had a break, let me at ‘em!