I often get the giggles in the early hours .
This morning , with my fist crammed in my mouth as D stirred somewhat impatiently as I hooted and tittered to myself I tried to work out what this is all about and more importantly , did I used to do this when I lived alone ? I cant remember , is the simple answer , and as the answer to almost everything these days , is enough to set me off afresh . The thing which sparked me off today was initially seeing Kitty out of the corner of my eye as she nosed her way into the bedroom at four fifty three am and spotted me already reading . ( " Welcome to the World Baby Girl " by Fannie Flagg , and the name itself was enough to set me off on another tangent a few moments later but that's another story . Remind me , if you can bear it . ) Kitty has all the grace of a warthog , and she pushes into the room , stumbles over fallen debris and lands with a thud on top of D . She has no sense of the need to walk round the guy in the passenger seat to get to the driver . Her beady eye is fixed on me , and I try to remain steadfast , holding my book firmly in two hands and reading on , Neighbour Dorothy holding me in thrall . As she bakes cakes and broadcasts from her back yard without missing a beat in the fifties , I read , oblivious to the fact that a hefty tortoiseshell she-cat is craving my attention and is hell bent on pushing her way between me and my reading matter . Whack ! The book goes flying . I sigh , do the Planned Ignoring that my sister taught me many years ago when she had toddlers , and pick up the book . Soon Kitty is where she needs to be , nose to nose , chest to chest , weighing a ton as ever , and my book is held at arms length and the world is at peace .
Fiftteen minutes of fifties Missouri ( was it ? I forget ? ) is enough to set me back on the road to sleep , my body is relaxed , kitty is purring for England and the book is discarded .
This is when the tittering turns to snorting and choking .... as I do my customary , I can see three things which are ...... I can hear three things , my mind wanders off to my blog and a post I read yesterday from Wide Lawns and Narrow Minds about Gillian Mckeith ( unfortunate popular health guru freak(?) who advocates quinoa and butternut squash and rootles about through peoples' fresh poop , all whilst dressed herself in a smart neutral suit . Looking at poo while dressed in beige ? no thanks , I'd be in navy or brown ..... ) . Anyway the thing which got me going at six ten was the word "legumes ". Wide Lawns ( I wonder what her real name is ? She can't really be called Wide Lawns ) said , having watched Ms Mckeith that she loved the way we Brits call things different things , ie she had never heard of "Pulses " and she supposed pulses must be the things she calls " legumes " ..... I got to thinking I couldn't recall what a pulse was though obviously being a Brit I often cook with them and had a picture in my head of a bowl of them ..... it took me several minutes to come up with the name .....( some giggling here as I wondered if this was the pre-pre- perimenopause , my topamax , my age generally , or the time of day ..... ) and then Hey Presto Lentils ..... I had the name ... lentils !
That's of course when it really got silly . Lentils and the like just cannot be called legumes . Surely a legume is a big yellow thing like an aubergine ? A legume has to , just has to look something like a leg . It just cant look like a lentil !
My shaking finally dislodged a very disgusted Kitty , who cannot abide movement when she is happily settled . Laughing and sneezing are verboten . D was not best pleased either , but being asleep was unable to express it except by disgruntled turnings and then some snoring activity of his own .

And as for Fannie Flagg ? A colleague of mine was appalled some years ago when she went to Disneyworld Florida ( That can't be right , but you know what I mean ) wearing what we call a BumBag and a woman approached her and asked where she got her FannyPack . Despite my appalling short tem memory I still recall the look on my daughter's face ( the sheer delight at hearing such a rude word, fanny of course here a crude word for the female external genitalia ). And bum would not be a word recognised in the States , in fact here butt too is taking over . As I pondered in the early hours , would leave us with buttbag and for some reason this left me with an image of two elderly sheep ( Clifford the Sheep anyone ? the childrens' book with sheep dressed in wolves clothing riding around in a sports car ? Ok I'm making it up ... ) rummaging around their underparts inspecting their scrotums for ticks .
Oh dear . We've come full cycle here . Its got to be the Topamax .
Enjoy the weekend ....