No, I wasn't kidnapped!!!

Although if I was, I would hope it would be by someone who would hide me away on a luxury yacht and force me to eat caviar and smoked salmon all day long! So if anyone would like to do this, feel free to steal me away anytime!

Well, it's been a ridiculously, stupidly hectic couple of weeks and I think it's only JUST starting to wind down now! We have had overseas guests visiting, and our son's 18 birthday, so there were times over the past few weeks where I have been holding court to about 14 people a night, between our friends, our guests and our son's friends.

We had a huge party for his birthday, where my gorgeous husband and his friend, who was visiting from South Africa, put on a fantastic rock gig at our house, with our son playing the drums. Well, they were ALL fantastic, and I was sooo proud of my boys! Everyone had a super time and I think it was about 4am before I finally laid my weary head down on a pillow. But hey, my baby is 18!! Wow!

But with all the entertaining and hosting and cooking and taxi-driving, I have been kept away from my computer for so long that when I sat down tonight to finally start catching up on everything, I took one look at my lovely Mac and just wanted to kiss it! My poor book, How to Survive ... the Stepkids from Hell, was finished but not yet polished, when our surprise guest arrived from England, followed by the arrival of every teenager in the country to celebrate the boy's birthday ALL WEEK LONG and I could hear this sad little book calling to me every day and night, like a neglected child, and I felt sooo bad!

But now everything seems to have calmed down to a mild panic, and I can finally sit down and focus on my work! Which is what I love to do!

Oh, and my kitty girl had her kittens - three gorgeous, beautiful fluffy little angels - ON MY BED AT 2AM!!! She panicked every time Stud or I even moved a muscle - we couldn't even go to the toilet!!! - as she wanted us with her during the whole process. I even took a picture of my non-pet-loving husband stroking her while she was in labour! Well, he couldn't exactly do anything else - when he stood up to leave the room she started howling and trying to follow him, with a baby halfway out of her! Poor thing ... she thinks we're her parents, I think, or that she's a real human child. But I love her to bits, even if she kept me up most of the night last night trying to move her babies around and finding the 'right spot' for her.

But anyway, back to work! I have an unpolished book to finish off, a fantastic newsletter to end off and send out, and an outline for the next 3 books that I'm already so excited about!!!

For now, I wanted to share something I recently learned, and it was quite a shocker too. My husband's ex wife, who we refer to not-so-lovingly as Blossom, went through a period some time ago when she became quite impossible to deal with. Not that she was ever NOT impossible, but this was a strange time for all of us. She had pretended to befriend me (and I say pretended because it soon became clear that she had no intention of being a 'friend' at all) and my husband had felt quite relieved that all her 'drama' seemed to be over and that she was finally putting everything behind her and making an effort with us both. So, very mistakenly it turned out, he started to let down his guard a little.

Now, we all know that women's intuition is a VERY powerful thing, and that most of the time a man will not actually see a woman's manipulation for what it is. Men are just not equipped to sense the undertones or read between the lines. They are literal creatures, and therefore take what someone says at face value. But not us ladies. We KNOW when we know that something's afoot. So when she started getting 'friendly' and calling him for 'chats' and texting and acting in a way that made me very suspicious, I aired my feelings to my husband.

Only, she had anticipated this already. He, not wanting to rock the boat, would answer the phone when she rang, even if it was 20 times a day, 'just for a chat'. And she would KNOW that sooner or later I would put my foot down over that, and she manipulated him so brilliantly by saying to him, "You know, it's just so silly that your wife has a problem with us being friends. After all, we have children together, and we knew each other long before you met, so of course we're going to stay friends. I mean, it's just so silly that she would have a problem with us talking. What is she so insecure about?"

What she was doing was behaving in a way that she knew would annoy ANY woman, and then manipulating my husband into believing I was being unreasonable, jealous and irrational. And, him being a man, just didn't see it. Boy, we really had to struggle through that period!

Another thing she would do would be to set me up as the 'bad guy'. She would tell him, for example, that she wished that they could spend more time together and just 'hang out' but because I was just so jealous and 'insane', it just wouldn't be possible, and it really made her so sad. And she did it in a way that made her look like she was just trying to be the nice guy and I was the ol' meanie who was stopping them from being friends!

And I could see what she was doing, and I did all the wrong things - fought, cried, pouted, screamed, wept, raged ... but nothing changed. It just reinforced what she was telling him about how 'crazy' I was, except he didn't know that she had known EXACTLY how I would react to certain situations, because it was how ANY woman would have reacted, even her!

Thinking back, the stuff that went on over those 7 or 8 months was just scary. Our marriage reached breaking point and we were both so angry with each other, and so ready to call it quits, that just the thought of being away from each other seemed like absolute bliss! But we made it through, and how we did that is for another day, because that's a long story. A GOOD one, a valuable lesson and a tale of great inspiration, but not for today.

However, what I recently discovered, is that it was at the beginning of this exact period of turmoil that his ex wife had decided she wanted him back. Apparently, and I have heard this from a very valuable and reliable person who is no longer in her life, she was envious that I was having the life with him that she 'deserved'. I had the house on the beach, her kids adored me, my husband was becoming successful and well known, we had a great lifestyle, we were happy, everything was good in our lives. And she hated that!

And so that exact period, those 7 or 8 months, was the time that she was determined to win him back and get rid of me. In fact, she went so far as to say that she wanted to drive me so insane that I would be locked up in a mental hospital and she could move in and take over my life. Wow! She had spent all of that time trying to break up my marriage, the only family that her children had ever really known as they had broken up when the children were still very young. She was prepared to put her children through that! To separate them from the step-siblings they loved, and their baby sister, their home, their pets, their whole life! Just to get rid of me!

I have to say, when I heard this, I felt so ill. That she could do that to her children just sickened me!

Thankfully, there came a period when my husband started to realise just what he was going to lose in me, and he started to see a little inkling of what she was trying to do to us. So he called her, in front of me, and told her that he loved me very much and that our marriage came first, and she needed to understand and respect that.

Within a week, she had made contact with an old boyfriend (only to be told by his wife, over the phone, to get lost!), and then found another old boyfriend, who she immediately started a relationship with over the internet. She couldn't wait to tell my husband that she was 'in love' and was very disappointed by his lack of reaction!

I am so thankful that I didn't know all of this at the time, because of course there was a time when I was poorly equipped to deal with her drama and manipulations, and I would have reacted so very differently then than I can do now. Even though I was shocked to hear all of this, it still gave me and also my husband the affirmation that my woman's intuition was right on the mark, and even though he couldn't see it, the fact that I TOLD him repeatedly that this was happening has come back to him now. If he hadn't learned to trust that sixth sense of mine by now, then he certainly would have trusted it after hearing this news!

It just goes to show ... every time the ex wife starts a drama, creates a problem or behaves out of character, a woman will always sense it LONG before a man ever does. Men don't need to rely on this gift - that's why we have it!

So that's just a lesson to show that by the time a woman has suspicions - that little feeling in her tummy, that little whisper in her ear, that unanswered question ... there's already something going on that a man hasn't yet seen. And all we need to do is tell our lovely men that we, as women, have a wonderful gift that has been biologically built into us since the beginning of time - when we had to use these senses to perceive the hidden vibrations and meanings while the men were doing the whole hunting and protecting thing - and that gift needs to be acknowledged and respected.

And that means that if we can sense that another woman is 'up to something', then that needs to be taken seriously! We're not being jealous or paranoid or irrational! I have a wonderful friend who is gorgeous, fun, kind and clever. She and my husband get along really well and there is a genuine fondness between them, but I know that they are only friends. I don't perceive any threat in her whatsoever. Yet, I have met women who have been less attractive, less compelling, and my nose twitches! Women can tell who the threat is and who isn't, and it has nothing to do with how attractive or wealthy or entertaining that threat is. We KNOW!

And my intuition tells me right now that someone needs to make me a cup of tea, lol! There's my lesson for the week. Tomorrow I'm back at work and I am going to be very diligent about clearing up all the backlog that the last crazy weeks have got me into.

Thanks for the 'where are you??" messages from you all, by the way. I'm still here! Just waiting for that champagne-caviar-kidnapper to whisk me away ... whenever you're ready ;)

Adi x

How to Take Care of your Precious Pets

"Princess, why is your hamster sitting on the stairs licking its balls?"

{shrugs} "Dunno"

"Do you want it to die?"

a rather long and suspense-filled pause

"Well?"

"Um, I think so. Shall I go get the hammer?"

Oh.My.God.

And in a later, very secret conversation with the other girl-child:

"Mom, d'you know what?"

"Mmm?"

"I hid the hammer under my bed"

I need a drink ...

What happened???

Tiger is 18 today.

And I'm thinking ... how can it possibly have been so long ago that I held this beautiful baby and fell in love with him on the spot? How can it have been SO long ago that he came into my life and my heart melted, and for the first time in my life, I started to live for someone else?

And now he is learning to drive, and has a girlfriend, and friends with motorbikes and little straggly moustaches and ... what happened? One minute he was just my little boy and the next ... he was getting ready to leave the nest.

Happy Birthday, Tiger. We love you so much and are so proud of you. I really like the man you are becoming. And it's a privilege to not only love your child, but to like them as well, and I really, really like you.
xx

Who knew???

I really have to wonder sometimes if some women just don't realise what they are getting themselves into when they commit to a man with children!

I belong to a few stepfamily forums - some I actively post at, some I just read every now and again - but it never fails to surprise me when I see a woman pouring out her heart and saying "This wasn't what I signed up for!!!!"

Gee, ya think?

I really believe that when we're in love, we just feel so invincible and so happy, that we just don't realise that LOVE ISN'T ALWAYS ENOUGH! Going into a stepfamily with an ex-wife in the picture and children that your honey shares with this woman ... damn, it's tough!

And that's not to say that it isn't WORTH it, because most of the time, it IS worth it! In fact, sometimes you will look back and say, even through the low times, the valleys and the heartache, that yeah, you'd do it all over again. But walking into a stepfamily situation is not an easy ride, and so many unexpected twists and turns crop up to take you off your happy path that your relationship may end up being one of those that fall by the wayside. And who wants that?

The key is KNOWLEDGE. Forearmed is forewarned, and all that. And because I've been thinking about this a lot lately - helped by a strange new surge in women posting on the 'net saying, 'Oh god, help! I didn't know it was going to be like THIS!", I've been working on a couple of new ideas to help women (and men!) prepare themselves properly for the rollercoaster ride of being in a stepfamily. Because sometimes you just really need to know what's ahead of you so you can be prepared!!

Soooo ... after our next book (out next week) "How to Survive ... the Stepkids from Hell!" (--> shameless plug, lol!), my husband and I will be releasing a series of ebooks that will help guide you safely through the storms that inevitably crop up in a stepfamily.

And we know what we're talking about! We're a stepfamily of SIX kids, ranging from 3 years old to 18 years old. I have been a part-time stepmother, a full-time stepmother, a mother and a wife and an ex-wife! My husband has been a part-time stepfather, a full-time stepfather, a divorced single dad, a husband and the owner of one of the world's finest ex-wives. (Did you pick up the sarcasm there? Hmmm ... lol!)

Every mistake that can be made ... we've made it! And we've even made mistakes that haven't been invented yet! We've toughed it out through the hard times when all we wanted to do was walk away and climb down a bottle of Jack Daniels! We've had the highs, the lows, the in-betweens and everything else you can think of - and we're still here!!

We've been dragged through hell, through court (same thing, I think!) and through all the letters of the alphabet that we step-parents know so well - PAS, MMS, HAPS and even ABC and XYZ. We've done it all! I have to be honest with you - there were times when we just weren't sure if we were going to make it at all! But we did. We survived, and we learned so much along the way.

And now we want to share that with you! So please stick around and sign up to our FREE weekly newsletter, starting next week. We'll be featuring the Stepfamily of the Week, and JD (Mr Adriana!) will be doing a weekly "Man-to-Man" interview to get the 'guy's' perspective on this crazy stepfamily world of ours. You don't want to miss this!

Also, don't miss out on getting your blog or website added to our list of Blog of the Week and Website of the Week!

We hope to bring together this fantastic global family of Fairy Stepmonsters (Oh, thank you Disney!), and we would love for you to join us on this journey so that we can all learn from each other and grow together.

All you have to do is pop over to our website here and add your email address to our mailing list, and voila! You'll be receiving our newsletter every week with the latest and greatest in stepfamily news!

And if you'd like to be included in our newsletter, either by being interviewed or adding your blog or website to our list, just give us a shout!

And that's enough for today. Whew! I think I probably got a little carried away here! But I'm just so excited about everything that's happening with the Fairy Stepmonster and I want to share it with the world!! LOL!

See you soon xx

The Girlies in the Basement

Why is it that some children know exactly when you have finally had 'enough' so they can turn on the charm ...

Little Monkey has been pushing my buttons for a couple of days now, but suddenly, just today, he has turned into the funniest, wittiest little thing, and has had me in stitches with his little comedy act. I think I might love him again today :)

And Stud has decided that this book-writing thing looks like fun, so he's going to have a go at it. And in just a few hours he has churned out over 30 pages of funny, heartwrenching, fabulous stuff, that it makes me want to weep - both with envy and because the story is just so damn good.

Dammit! He beats me at Monopoly, I've banned him from the Scrabble set, and now this? He had just better not start getting good at Sudoku - that's all I can say! There has to be something, even one small little pitiful thing, that I'm better at than he is.

Curse the man! He is even a better cook than I am. Life's not FAIR, I tell you!

And my little pregnant princess, CoCo, the cat who is rather obsessively in love with me, is getting bigger and fatter every day, and soon she will pop out some gorgeous little babies and I will be SO proud of her. And I hope this will be the closest I will get to being a grandmother for a LOOOONG time. Kids, are you listening?

Stud has this crazy idea that when the girls hit puberty, they are all going to be locked in the basement and taken care of by lesbian robots. I tell him that I will be the one sneaking in the boyfriends through the side window. He says he won't stand for this kind of insubordination, and if I like, I can go down there with them. Ooh, huff and puff, huh?

Aah, he knows that day is coming ... but he just wants to put it off for as long as he can. Poor thing. He won't know what's hit him when these girls hit their teens.

Poor, poor man :)

Flying Creatures

A little flying creature flew into my left eye today. Not, like, a bat or an eagle or anything! Just a tiny little flying bug thing. And it was SORE!!!

I couldn't tell anyone though. It would have grossed out Stud, and the boys would all have been wanting to dig my eyeball out with a spoon and find the blood and gore covered beast. And then kill it.

Boys. Why are they so gross???

So Who's Who in the Zoo?

I have to get the whole 'who we are' thing out of the way now, before I go any further, because quite frankly, I live in a zoo.

It's not just the random animals I keep finding on the side of the road (do you think someone plants them there for me? I may be getting a bit of a reputation as an 'animal rescuer'), which now consist of 6 cats and 2 dogs - okay, last week there were 7 cats, but we offloaded one of the rescue beasts onto a friend, and one of the dogs decided to go for a midnight swim and forgot to lift her head up to, you know, breathe, so we were minus one dog after the weekend as well.

Although, having said that, the other little dog beast is something I rescued outside a supermarket a couple of weeks ago and it doesn't seem to want to leave. I want it to, though. Oh, so bad.

Okay, so now we're down to 6 cats and 2 dogs. Oh, and a terrapin that hardly ever gets fed, and two hamsters (because one of them was found lying on its back in the office the other night, faaaaar away from it's cage - haha, it was lying in a kind of Bardot-ish pose, as if it were gazing backwards at a sexy hamster checking it out. Oh, that was funny). Stud wants a monkey.

Okaaaay ...

But APART from all the 'regular' animals, there are the six other little beasts prowling our little castle that we like to call 'home'.

Starting, at the very top of course, with the eldest boy person (mine) who will be 18 this month - Tiger is a lovely thing, but feeling very forlorn and sorry for himself after being grounded until his 18th birthday. Something to do with motorbikes, and cans of beer, and a trip to the emergency clinic last night for some foot-wrapping fun. Bandages, not presents. He's a phenomenal drummer but is rather less keen on school than I would like.

Next is the other boy, Einstein, (also mine) who will be 12 next month. He's a brilliantly clever young boy, and seems to have just recently discovered that girls are, in fact, rather a lot nicer than he used to think. Sometimes we call him Suicide Bob, due to his morose appearance, only it's probably just his 'deep thinking' that makes him look like he's about to jump off the nearest cliff. If we had any, that is. Living on an island ... well, let's say that cliffs are a bit of a rarity around here. Still ... he's got a wicked sense of humour and doesn't like wearing glasses.

Moving on, there is the Monkey, (his) who has only just turned 11 and wishes he was already 18 so he could drink beer and hang out with other teenagers. He loathes school and really, really doesn't like reading, but he's a whizz in the pool and the biggest daredevil in the family. Being blighted with a spot of ADD from his dad, Stud, words often get jumbled up inside his head and he chooses to rather express himself with the poking of large sticks onto people's bottoms.

Having dispatched of the boys, then we have the first of the girl people in the family, who is Kitten (mine). She will be 10 next month, and she has a ginormous heart. Kitten is a little shy, but adores fashion and wishes, oh with ALL her heart, that she could be best friends with Hannah Montana, because she just KNOWS they'll get along great!

The next little girl is Princess, (his) who has only just turned 9. She is, by her own admission, a ditz - blonde on the inside, brunette on the outside - but she makes up for it by being a happy, cheerful little soul who giggles a lot and is very eager to please. She loves her daddy and loves being cuddled and tickled.

Our last little munchkin is Moo (ours). Moo is 3, but seems to be a lot older most of the time. Tonight she has started speaking in a strong American accent, and saying things like 'Oh my gawd!' and 'whaddya know'. She's headstrong, beautiful, delightful and scarily and freakily clever. We like her a lot.

To round it off, there is my lovely man, Stud - the one responsible for both the laughter lines around my eyes, and the grey hairs on my head. He is 34 and is both a musician & producer (which he loves) and a computer geek (which he doesn't). We've been together for 5 years, married for nearly 3, and we still love each other stupidly much. Every now and then, we both wonder what the hell we are doing with each other because it just doesn't WORK! And then suddenly, as if by magic, something clicks and we look at each other and go, "Aaah, you're just so beautiful, aren't you". And then we love each other again and go lock ourselves in the bedroom while all the kids look at each other and go, 'Right, what's the loudest DVD we can watch?'

So that's us. Oh, and me ... yeah, least important ho hum (Note: this is called passive-aggressive something or the other) I'm a very old nearly-37, and wish I could wake up one morning with perfectly perky tits again, but alas, unless there is a plastic surgery fairy godmother out there, I don't see it happening any time soon. I love my life, and my wonderful family, and I have a secret fondness (okay not so secret any more now!) for chocolate peanuts - although I suck off the chocolate and throw away the peanuts, but then almost always feel really shit about it afterwards because I think of all the little Oompa Loompa's who have picked all the peanuts, and the people who washed them and put the chocolate on, and maybe they had to separate families of peanuts and the moms and dads all thought they were sending off their peanut younglings to a noble cause, only to get discarded once the chocolate was sucked off.

And really, I wonder sometimes if these denuded peanuts lie at the bottom of the bin and feel rejected and wonder, maybe even out loud, what was so wrong with them that they were discarded without a seconds thought. And I kinda feel sorry for them, you know?

Just not sorry enough to eat them. C'est la vie!