Gwyneth, a frog and a moral in the tale.

So I wanted to tell y'all a story about a little frog and his big adventure and how I ended up in his big adventure - and trust me it is a cute story. But I'll get to it in a moment. My head is all a-blaze with other stuff first.

You see today I took Sproglet with me to meet my old work buddies to snatch a quick coffee in their lunch hour. It felt a bit surreal to have Sproglet trying to avoid eating his cheese sarnies whilst coveting a huge chocolate muffin in the same place I used to trundle to for my daily caffeine fix. It was so great to see these guys, my buddies, the folk who have been my day in day out tribe for so long. But no matter what, something invisible has shifted and it's not the same. I still feel the same way about them and they still look exactly the same - but our mutual frames of reference are all out of kilter because they are still involved in world that I'm not. They are invested in something that I no longer am, they still have to work together, they're still a team. It wasn't anything they said, or anything any one of them did, it was just there, wafting between the toasted paninis and frozen coffees.

Then I took Sproglet for a haircut - and he continued along his theme of being the cutest, best behaved boy I know. As a pink/red haired lady snipped away and he made faces at himself in the mirror I grabbed a VOGUE magazine to flick through. Somehow I landed on Gwyneth Paltrow's interview. It was all black and white pics of her perfect abs and talk of her perfect ass, and perfect kids, and life and marriage and business and body (did I already mention that? sorry, it is just this article did - once or twice) and to top it off it there was her friend being quoted as saying 'Gwyneth's relationship with her Husband is 90% physical.' Good to know that Gwynnies great butt is probably a result of her swinging from the chandeliers with her veggie rock star husband. She's bringing out a cook book and has a blog that tells you the best places to eat (if you are a millionaire) and how to cleanse your bowel and film tips from folk you might of heard of like er... Spielberg and music tips from a Ronson. Now I've got nothing against this woman and her sculpted body and all her great culinary tips - but oh my god, could I have felt more inadequate as I raised my 10 pounds-over-my-ideal-weight-lard-ass off the sticky seats to pay for Sproglet's chop?? That's a no. Tonight I got an email from the local education board telling me that I'll find out if Sproglet gets a place at the school that I want him to go to (and he wants to go to) on Thursday and I caught myself thinking 'I bet Gwynnie doesn't have to worry about crap like this. Like proper, keep me awake at night worry...'

So to the frog. While my good friend Hannah and her family were here, my boy and her boys decided to play ball in our small but cute garden. The ball inevitably wound up falling down the grate outside our basement window - so Hannah's husband had to go downstairs, take off the blind, open the double window and hoke out the ball. He called up to us and announced that way down there, outside the dark window was also - a frog. Quite a big frog. And beside the frog was the lid to our re-cycling box that we have long neglected to retrieve. Inside the lid was rainwater filled with bubbles of frog spawn. Steve reached the lid up to us and we all poured over the life budding outside our dingy basement window. Then the frog managed to escape from Hannah's son's hands and leapt to safety behind our large cabinet in the kitchen - which holds every glass we own. We subsequently had to empty said cabinet of every damn glass and somehow manage to lift it and poke out the froggie so he could spring off to a life in greener pastures. This took a mere.... hour or so! Anyway, froggie hopped off and we have been left with all her little babies, waiting to hatch from their jellyish cocoons. There is something so wonderful about the fact we live nowhere near a pond or a stream and yet somehow this little frog, who fell into a dark window ledge and couldn't get out, still managed to birth her babies in water - she still found a way.

Life always finds a way. There is always a way through everything. So I guess when I'm having my 'not feeling a great as Gwyneth' moments I should think about the little olive green slimy frog. And how she survived, against all the odds.