No pictures :-(

Hmmm, I use an iPad for all my Internet browsing these days, this is since my darling little girl knocked my lap top off the arm off the sofa and smashed the screen. I've had the iPad since last June and found a few little annoyances, such as no flash player! But the latest seems to be that I can upload images to my blog! Grrrrrr. I've just opted for the new "blogger interface" I wonder if this will let me post a picture that is stored on my iPad..... Nope! Maybe if I post them to an image hosting site like flickr or picasa I'll be able to use the URL option, but it seems I can't just post an image that is stored on. My iPad - drat!

Why I love my job

I'm a government statistician, I work for the NHS as an information analyst - a senior information analyst actually, but that makes me sound old. So my job sounds pretty dull, but I love it. I didn't imagine it would be what I was doing when I was 16 choosing physics, chemistry and maths A-levels. Or when I was 18, embarking on a five year degree in chemical engineering. Or when I was 23 with my 1st class with honours Masters of Engineering degree under my belt and about to start my PhD in bioinformatics. Or when I had finished that 5 years later and could make people call me doctor. The thing is, I don't think I ever really knew what I wanted to do, except that I wanted to a) enjoy going to work and b) feel I was making a valued contribution to society in some way. And so here I am collecting and writing statistics about health and social care.

I started at the NHS Information Centre in 2007 and worked in a team called Lifestyles, we produced statistical reports on drinking, smoking, misuse of drugs, obesity, child height and weight and contraception. The reports I worked on we're always in the news, I'd hear "according to an NHS report published today ....." on the morning news and sit up in bed saying "ooh I wrote that". Just after returning to work after my second child I moved, on promotion to a team called Social Care Development. Not so much in the news, the number of people receiving social care services and how much that costs isn't as news worthy as the number of binge drinkers, the number of 11 year olds who know what heroine is or the number of 6 year olds who are obese. However it has been and still is quite stressful. Promotion came with extra responsibilities and line management - though I have to say managing the staff I do is not in itself stressful. The team has been through quite a few changes, structurally, and staff wise and now we are under resourced and have more to do. That is stressful.

So what keeps me going to work everyday? It's the people I work with. We have such a great team and some real characters. There's the usual office politics, but most of the people I work with have a great sense of humour, the jokes and the laughs keep coming everyday and that's what I love about work.

My boss is the best for making us all laugh though. While he's the same age as me and most of the guys we work with, he has quite a young outlook on life. He lives for the moment, enjoys having a laugh. He can be quite hyper and giddy and we spend so much time laughing at him. I'd never seen anything quite like it when a colleague gave him a super strong coffee. We watched it's effects unfold, as he darted about the office.

Just before Christmas he returned from a meeting in our kitchen area, beside himself. He eventually managed to tell me, between the giggles, that he'd managed to get three of his fingers on one hand stuck fast in the three little holes in the back of the chair next to him. One of our colleagues, fortunate enough to be in the same meeting was hot on his heels to recount the tale.

Boss was playing with the chair at the side of him, nodding and "yes"ing in the right places, then suddenly was distracted by something beside him, pulling his arm back a few times, he jumped up shouting "my fingers are stuck! My fingers are stuck!" feeling to need to lift the chair up with said fingers to demonstrate. There were a few moments of flapping, jumping around and yanking the stuck hand, while a more sensible colleague suggested there was washing up liquid at the sink, or might even be margarine or butter in the fridge. Eventually he yanked his fingers out, by which time were red and slightly swollen and once the fit of laughter from our other colleague had subsided, meeting resumed.

I honestly dind't think it could get better than that.

Until Boss, Boss's Boss and I had a meeting in the same kitchen last week. I sat down, Boss squeezed between two chairs, having to walk on tip toes to get passed, presumably to get his groin and bottom areas over the top of the chairs so he could pass them without having to move one. Suddenly the chair in front was moving with him, he took a small step back and chair jerked towards him, another shuffle away, and chair continued to follow. It became apparent that somehow his groin area was attached to the chair, a few expletives were uttered as he grabbed hold of the chair and gyrated his hips to try and free himself. It's a good job I was sat down as by this point I was in a fit of hysterics in a heap on the table. Boss's Boss was bit behind us, and had just joined us at the table at this point, she seemed to want to help and moved towards Boss, but then realised how he was stuck, she said a big Ooooh, and inched back, with her eyes wide and started saying errrm errrm errrm, trying to work out how she could help him, even more giggles from me, I was completely helpless. A few tugs and funky hip movements later and he was suddenly free, it appeared to have been a bit of stray cotton off the fly off his jeans (it was a Friday - the unofficial dress down day) which had got stuck between the metal bit and the wooden bit of the chair.

So I eventually controlled my laughter and the meeting commenced, but he kept looking down to his fly, I guess to check it wasn't unfastened or had been ripped or anything, all the way through the meeting, which kept setting me off again.

When I left the meeting, I bumped into someone from our team on the corridor and was doubled up with laughter trying to tell her. I'll never forget the sight of my Boss getting jiggy with a chair!

I wonder what he'll do next.

I won't be fooled by your tricks

Supermarkets are such tricksters. I've known this for a while and try not to fall for the 3 for 2 offers unless it's on something that I wouldn't use any quicker like shampoo or cleaning spray. I took Archie to Tescos with me on Saturday, and I find it's always easier to get sucked in with a toddler in tow because half your brain is concentrating on them and what they are doing.

So on Saturday we had a list, we were sticking to a budget. We usually have the luxury of a very loose budget and spend about £100 - £150 at the supermarket. But this shop was just to tide us over until payday in two weeks and so it was just 'essentials'.

Well the first trick I nearly fell for was grapes. Grapes are expensive and the kids love them. They could happily eat a whole punnet in one go and so we have to ration them, giving them each a little tub with a counted out number of grapes in. This means that grapes are classed as a treat in our house, which can't be bad. I also love the fact that tescos do punnets of half red grapes and half green grapes, because Emily prefers the red ones and Archie prefers the green ones. So, on Saturday, grapes were £2.45 per punnet or 'any 2 for £4' so I immediately started looking for what else was on the same offer to get the £4 deal and seeing as grapes were the only fruit on my list (we still had some apples and bananas left over from the previous shop) this would have been something extra. I almost went for blueberries because Emily loves them, but Archie won't touch them and they were £2 a punnet and so I would've saved 45p. Instead I just decided to get more grapes and save 90p and as I reached out for them a little voice inside my head suddenly screamed "budget! What do you think your doing? If you just buy the one punnet of grapes at £2.45, you're saving yourself £1.55 by not being sucked in" (ok so I don't really hear voices in my head, but that was just my thought processes).

The next trick the supermarket had in store was to put some of the things I wanted on the end of an aisle with a big sign telling me they were all 'only £1'. Belter - carrots £1, on the list, parsnips £1, on this list, cherry tomatoes £1, not on the list but we do use them and I wanted to take salads things to work for lunch. So, chuffed with myself for getting 3 different things for only £3. And now here's where Archie saved me this time, he ran off down the aisle that sold carrots and parsnips and picked up a great big bag of carrots - "what about these mummy?". Having already got carrots I wouldn't have normally looked at anymore, but as I put this huge, three-times-bigger-than-the-one-I-had bag of market value carrots back, I noticed they were only 69p. The carrots looked fine, they were all clean, granted some were broken, some were funny shapes, some were fat, some were skinny, but they all looked perfectly edible. And then I noticed the parsnips nestled next to the carrots, again there was some martlet value ones, there were slightly more parsnips in the bags and they were nice and fat, whereas the £1 bag I'd picked up were all really skinny and uniform, as we love to roast them, the fatter the better. And guess what? The market value ones were only 69p too. Feeling slightly annoyed at myself for almost being conned I went to check the cherry tomatoes and actually they were a good deal, the ones for £1 were nice a red and looked better quality than their other value offerings.

Spurred on not to be beaten by anymore tricks we moved on. We got to toilet rolls. Now Archie and I were getting the bus home, so not only did we have to careful with cost, we also had to watch weight and volume, so I couldn't get the usual 12 pack rolls. Cuchelles 9 packs were displayed on end of the aisle at half price - £3.50, this seemed like a good offer but I was determined not to be fooled again. We walked down the aisle and I spotted the tescos own and the tescos value packs. Having resorted to tescos value in the past I knew these are horrible so I looked at the tescos own, they were something like £1.89 for 6 rolls and I was tempted but when I squeezed the packet, I noticed the roll was easily squashed down to half its thickness, whereas the cushelles hardly squashed at all. So this is a quality trick. The cheaper toilets rolls look like good value for money, but you actually get less on a roll because they must wind the tissue on less tight so they look the same size as more expensive ones, but actually half of it is just air. Seeing as my kids go through toilet rolls like there's no tomorrow, I went with the cushelles.

I probably got conned by loads of other things, we got 4 muller rices for £2, and I know morrisons are doing them at 10 for £2, but we can't trek all the way to morrisons for the sake of yogurts and while I think the choice is often better in morrisons, I've found it expensive recently. I also went for 4 for £12 on meat and fish, getting a large packet of mince which will do two meals, some casserole steaks, some pork loin steaks and some salmon steaks. I'm not sure if that was good value but we needed meat and Archie was getting bored by this point and touching everything so I didn't have time to work it out.

We often do our shopping with tescos online - I dread the think what kind of tricks they employ to make you spend more that way.

First day back to the grind stone

Well, first day back at work after over 2 weeks off. It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but didn't get everything I wanted to do done. I was very good and took a packed lunch of a third of a ciabatta, smoked cheese (thinly sliced) tomato and cucumber and so had a lovely sandwich, ok probably not the healthiest with the cheese and ciabatta but at least I held off the mayo!

For tea it's salad, with prawn and avocado (I know that's not the healthiest either but it needs using up and the alternative for tea was something with sausages in!)

Well,ok, I might have one of the sausages, there are six and I can't expect my partner to eat them all, I've baked them rather than frying and they smell gorgeous. Really fancy a poached egg too, but I think I can beat the hankering.

Still haven't taken the Christmas tree down yet, would've made sense to do this before returning to work. I'm not sure how the kids will take it, Emily is currently in bed singing we wish you a merry crispmas.

First of the healthy meals

Well for tea tonight I thought I had better start as I mean to go on. In the fridge there was choice of minced beef, sausages or pork chops, loads of bits of different cheeses, salad leaves, asparagus, courgettes, peppers....

So I settled on a pork chop with the bone cut out and the fat cut off. Then I put it between two pieces of cling film and hammered it with the end of a rolling pin until it was about as thick as a pound coin. Seasoned it with a steenbergs barbecue seasoning mix. Made some breadcrumbs out of a left over ciabatta, seasoned these with dried oregano, garlic salt, black pepper and then added some steenbergs thai green curry seasoning for good measure (and because I love the smell of this particular spice mix). I put some asparagus on to steam, rubbed some flour onto my seasoned flattened chop and dipped it into a beaten egg and then the breadcrumbs and pan fried it in a tiny amount of sunflower oil. I put some crispy green salad leaves onto my plate and dressed with just a sprinkling of balsamic vinegar. When the chop was golden on both sides and cooked through I put it on the plate and decided to add the rest of the crumbs that hadn't stuck (a good handful) to the pan and toast them, and tossed them over the salad leaves and voila. It was very tasty if just a slightly bit dry. It would've have been amazing with olive oil on the salad, shavings of Parmesan on the asparagus and a dollop of garlic mayo, but that wouldn't have been very healthy, so 'pretty good' will do if it helps me lose weight.

I need to educate myself into thinking that healthy doesn't have to be boring and bland.

The first and most difficult of posts

I've been meaning to write a blog for a while now as I love writing but rarely find the time to do any these days. The two things that have been stopping me are what to call it and what to write in the first post. Having recently been inspired by two Facebook friends who both had babies in July 2009 like I did, I decided to take the plunge.

So why "And the little one said..." well, I was thinking about my family and how we are 4, and was thinking along the lines of four in a bed, seeing as when Archie and Emily wake up the first thing they do is come and get into our bed. However that would leave my stepson Jacob out, as really we are 4 and a half, but he's too old now to come and get in our bed on a morning and four and a half in a bed wasn't really working for me. But that put the song in my head, we often sing it when the kids get in with us and Emily is the little one. So "and the little one said..." seemed quite fitting as Emily has recently started talking loads, in fact now she can talk in sentences she never shuts up! But also, I am little, at only 5ft and this is my blog, so this will be what I've said. The idea grew on me and so here we are. Oh and that's my first post sorted too. I don't know why I put it off for so long!

I look forward to writing many more posts, about me, my thoughts, feelings, fears, my family and their antics and well, just stuff in general. Oh and I'm tempted to use the blog to try and motivate me to lose a bit of weight, by keeping a food diary and posting about my trials and tribulations. Hope you enjoy reading it as much as I am sure I will enjoy writing it.