Hestia is Elizabeth Taylor: The final day

Well, look at that - it's ME!

You know what they say 'the best laid plans of mice and men...' and all that.  When WAS the last time you saw a mouse with a plan?

Anyway, my plan to blog every day for a week whilst undergoing the Elizabeth Taylor metamorphosis has hit a bump in the road - Tartarus was due home from sea yesterday and the house looked like it had been bombed.

So I gussied myself up as ET and cleaned the carpets, changed beds, washed, ironed, hoovered, binned (fruit, of course - another mouse plan that went 'agley' as we say up here).

It did mean, however, that when Tartarus rocked up at 5.30pm I myself was quite tidy with all the makeup on.  And he barely said a word - other than I was a bit late picking him up.  For that, blame Nero who decided that after avoiding the rain all day, it was time to go out for the most epic of pisses just as I was trying to get into the car.  That dog was BURSTING.

Anyway, he came home and the dog and the child both went bananas with excitement.

We ordered Chinese.  We fed Nero a couple of prawn crackers....oh reader, THAT was a mistake.

I was woken in the night by the sound of what can only be described as wet laundry in a washing machine going round and round and round and round.  I put the light on at around 4am because I was sure that if Nero suddenly needed to poop, he would barely make it to the hall, never mind the lengthy sprint to the back door.

He started to whine and I let him out.  Half an hour he was out there in the darkness as I stood by the back door, hair like a brillo pad, the remnants of mascara giving me panda eyes (why IS it impossible to get all your mascara off at night?!).  I caught sight of my reflection in the window and thought 'well, hello Martha from Who's afraid of Virginia Wolf?' "  All I needed was a glass of whisky and a cigarette and Richard Burton and I had the look PERFECT.

Nero and I retired to bed.

And got up again at 7am for the same performance.  This time I could see that he was eating grass while he was out, so I sorted myself a coffee and practised my Italian (duolingo - free app for the ipad - absolutely brilliant, get it).

There was no point in returning to bed, so I just got on with the day.

I am terribly disappointed that my Elizabeth Taylor DVD collection still hasn't arrived and neither has the biography, so I feel that the week has been incomplete!