The best laid plans of mice and mums

This year, as well as having Harper and getting him to through his first year without major mishap, I have a couple of plans. (Insert Mr Burns-style evil hand gesture here)


These plans are:


1. Learn to play the bass with the intention of playing on an actual stage with an actual band, and write a small book of essays about why chicks who play bass totally rule. In order to do this, I will actually have to pick up my guitar, dust it off, tune it, and learn to play it. I have a set of DVDs that I bought when I first got the guitar nearly two years ago that I have watched maybe once. This goal will also require me to cut my nails. I bit my nails like a cannibal until 2004. Till now I have kept them pretty short and functional but thanks to the beauty of nature, being pregnant made them steely strong and fast-growing, so I let them get a bit longer and prettier. They are exactly how I always wanted them to be, but to really conquer the frets, the nails must go.

A gratiuitous shot of my pretty nails, so you can all see the sacrifice I am making for art.

2. Learn to sew in order to clothe my new body shape, which despite me 'shedding my baby weight' as women's magazines like to say, is rather a bit larger than it was before. My hips in particular, which rattled like a cage when I was pregnant, now say 'no' to that old pair of jeans, they say 'get out of here' to shorts that used to hang off me, they say 'who are you kidding, girlfriend?' to that once-too big skirt.

Now that I have got through the first messy weeks of motherhood and feel a lot more on top of things, I feel like I can get on with introducing these two plans into my life. How long they last, however is another thing...