So the bro headed off to sunnier pastures new yesterday when he moved to Dubai. Right up until the last few minutes before he said goodbye to us, I thought it was all one big joke. He popped upstairs to take one last look at Miss Thang the bambino and when he returned we hugged and I started blubbing. I can’t believe he’s gone! I know I’ll see him every month or so but I feel bereft at losing my bro. We’ve rarely been very far apart in our entire lives and now he feels like he’s a million miles away. Anyway…

It’s been a pretty hectic week as usual. The boyf was 35 on Monday and we celebrated by having a mini surprise dinner. He thought we were just going for the bro’s leaving do (it must have been his tenth one…) so when we walked in and he saw one of our friends at the bar, he was really confused. As people came over and said happy birthday he turned to me and said “Why is everybody saying happy birthday to me?” Honestly! Sometimes you can’t surprise people! It was only when another friend turned up that he finally twigged that I’d surprised him. Last year I got the waiters at another restaurant to surprise him with a cake and they scared the crap out of him by blasting Stevie Wonder’s ‘Happy Birthday’ through the restaurant. This year, I managed to get him again - the whole restaurant sang ‘Happy Birthday’ and the waiters dropped and clashed all of their trays repeatedly. Hilarious!

As usual life is trying to pull my pants down as I juggle freelancing with the bambino who seems to be a whirlwind of destruction! There I am trying to do some work and she’s somehow managed to get find her way to the cupboard under the stairs where she’s trying to get out the vacuum cleaner and her car seat… But she goes to the childminder twice a week now so I get some ‘me time’. I’ve been a bit more organised this week which means I managed to get a lot of work done, sold more ebooks (yay), did my column in Dollymix, took some stuff off the ever growing to-do list, and I even managed to squeeze in a shag…. Joke! No, not really!

One of the things I’m hugely entertained by is when exes get in touch with you on Facebook. I love how they contrive a reason to get in touch with a long winded explanation to justify the contact. Then you add them as a friend and they find out that you’re ’settled down’ with a baby. Hehe… I’m not hugely into Facebook but it does give you the opportunity to peek into people’s lives like you never could before. Another upside of Facebook is that you can finally cut off those guys that think that they may be able to dip in and out of your life like they did before. It’s funny how once you add them as a friend that they suddenly have nothing left to say once they’ve checked out your profile…Thank God for technology! It does the whole “So long sucker! I’ve moved on” without you having to do a damn thing!

Speaking of technology, I was explaining online dating to my ma earlier and told her that it’s full of liars and people pretending to be something that they’re not. “So I should be honest then?” she asked. “Yes ma!” (Earlier she’d suggested saying she was 35….I’m 30….) “OK…I’ll say I’m 45 then…” she said hurriedly as she got into the car. “Ma, you’re 50!” I yelled. Parents these days….