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  • A Few Scoobyisms

    Him: (while playing MySims) Mummy, what are Sims?

    Me: Well, it means 'simulations', which are, er, like, um, pretend things that you can play with as if they are real life.

    Him: So, at church, why do we sing 'Oh, happy day, happy day, when you washed MySims away?'

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Him: Mummy, why is the food that comes with prawn crackers called chinese food?

    Me: Because it comes from China.

    Him: Oh. Is that why it takes so long to come to our door?

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Him: I love you Mummy.

    Me: Oh thankyou darling, that's lovely.

    Him: Just a little bit though. I love Daddy more.

    Me: Oh. Why?

    Him: Because you're only a bit funny. Daddy is really reeeally funny!

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

    Daddy: I love all my boys sooooo much. I especially love.....all of you!

    Him: (laughs in a knowing way) But I think really that you love me the best.

    Daddy: Why is that?

    Him: Because I'm hilaaaaawious!

  • Bargain Basement

    As our family gets bigger, and our energy supplier has decided that ours has been the elected household to supplement the world wide rising gas prices, I’m looking for ways to make money go further. So I have begun trying more of the basic-type ranges from the supermarket. Sometimes these are successful, and some are not. Sliced and grated cheese, garlic bread and big bags of unlabeled apples seem to work fine. My particular favourite is frozen peas. While we do eat a wide range of vegetables, I absolutely love the fact that there isn’t a meal is existence that can’t be bulked up in the green veg department by frozen peas. Spag Bol, a roast dinner, stir fries – you name it, you can add peas to it.

    There have been a few disappointments too – the enigmatic bag of ‘citrus fruits’ can sometimes yield many wonderful seasonal varieties of small tangerines that are perfect for lunch boxes, or four large oranges that have to be cut with knives and are therefore not. I do wonder as well if the vague title means that one day we will find ourselves with a mixture of lemons and limes that we have no use for. The ‘frozen chicken pieces’ was another one. I presumed that some of it would be on the bone for variety, but no, all of it was on the bone – and more often than not, bone made up the majority of each piece. By the time I had cooked it to defrost and soften it, pulled all the meaty bits off (there’s a reason people generally don’t buy chicken wings unless they are coated with something that disguises the gristle) and recooked them into whatever meal we were having, I decided that it was benefitting us neither in time nor money, as there was less meat than buying fillets in the first place. So we’re going back to being wasteful 21st century town dwellers in that department and sticking to only buying the boneless white meat bit of the chicken(sorry farmers).

    It has led me to being more creative in other departments too. The week before the school term started found me sewing up holes in the boys school jumpers where they had been chewed or – well, whatever else it is that small boys do that produces small holes in the middle of a jumper’s chest. And the trousers that I bought online for Turtle turned out to be massively long but rather than buy more, I have tightened the elasticated waist as snug as they will go, and hemmed the bottoms up, adding the words ‘You’ll grow into them boy.’ I am a dying breed, surely?

    One idea that I’m sure will be brilliant, if it ever works out, is getting my hair cut for free. I haven’t had my hair cut for a whole year now, which is definitely a record even for me, so I hit upon the idea of asking the salon I normally go to if they need victims people for their trainees to practice on, and they said yes. Models (I think ‘guinea pigs’ is probably a more apt title) are needed on Wednesday nights for teaching purposes, so I figured it would solve both my hair-cutting issues at once; I don’t have to pay money for it, and they will choose how I have it cut so I don’t have to make a decision on what I want. Perfect. The only trouble is that the appointment has been moved twice now as staff go on holiday or have guest speakers in for training purposes, so I’m not sure if I’ll still be waiting this time next year with twice as many split ends for an available slot to finally come up.

    Finally, my piece de resistance, today in the post, I received three brand new pairs of trainers, one each for the older boys, for free. That’s right, for free! One of my online mum friends told me about this website that had a few factory seconds that they were giving away for just the price of the postage. I dubiously looked at it, and was surprised that not only did I actually really like the designs, but their limited stock covered the exact sizes we needed - and they normally sell for over £30 a pair! When they arrived we were even more impressed that they are called ‘Inchworms’ and – get this – they can grow to a whole size bigger! That’s right, should the shoe last through a whole season of small boy abuse, they can be adjusted so they last the next season too! Can you tell I’m excited?!?

    You’ll be pleased to know that we won’t always have to live frugally though. In recent discussions with the boys we’ve asked them what sort of job they’d like to be aiming for in the future. After much thought, Turtle has opted for a museum night guard, because ‘It’s really easy to do’, Scooby wants to work at McDonalds (what better way to make someone’s day than serving them food?), and Crash has his sights set on farming, which in this country is a really good stable industry with a promising.....wait. No......

  • Home Help

    We're sat at the table eating our tea when Crash's finely tuned bladder goes into action and needs emptying there and then. It would be easier if this happened every evening five minutes sooner so he went before he sat down, but nothing will tear him away from his book/toys/program a minute before he has to, so he generally waits until we've wrestled him to the table and said grace before he realises he needs to go to the bathroom. It does, however, help that it adds more minutes to his eating time as he eats at the speed of a two-day starved savage beast and then bounces on and off his chair until the others have finished and are ready for pudding, so we let the toilet trips go unchallenged.

    However, on this occasion, we have nearly all finished before he reappears and he has to be called down the stairs. When he does come back, he's wearing different trousers.

    'Crash, why did you change your clothes?' I ask, as he begins to wolf down his pasta.

    'I did sit on the toilet but I missed a bit and it went on my trousers,' he tells me. 'But don't worry Mummy,' he continues in soothing tones, 'I put it in the washinsmurshuphl.'

    (The last bit was absorbed in pasta sauce.)

    'You put them in the wash basket?' I say, to clarify.

    'No, in the washing fan.'

    'What's the washing fan?' I ask, looking worredly at Richard.

    'The spinner,' Crash says, indicating with his hands. 'To spin it round and round.'

    'You mean the washing machine??'

    'Yes, the washinsmurshuphl.'

    I go up with a heavy heart - I know that a load has just finished in there and now it will have had weed-on trousers out on top of it all. Shall I just rinse it or put the whole thing through the wash again?

    Then I see that I do not need to make the decision as Crash has taken the initiative to turn the machine on himself, and the clothes are spinning round in the mysterious 30 degree sports cycle, which I have never found a use for (I tend to stay away from anything with the word 'sports' in the description).

    As I turn away, I realise that the cap is off the new bottle of non-bio liquid. The new mega-super-family-bumper-sized concentrated non-bio liquid. And the bottle is now half empty (yes, I know I could see it as half full, but in this instance, it's half empty, alright?).

    'Craaaash!' I call, and he runs up the stairs, having finished his combat with the pasta.

    'Yes?'

    'Where's the wash liquid from in this bottle?'

    We both know what the answer is, but I have to hear it on the slim chance that some of it may be redeemable.

    'In dere,' he says, pointing, of course, to the soap drawer at the top of the machine.

    'Noooooo,' I say.

    I open it and the only dribble left is in the conditioner part of the drawer. The rest is empty, having drained into the machine. As I watch, I can see the suds building inside the drum.

    I patiently explain to Crash that while I value him trying to help with my household burdens, it would be much better if just stuck to the jobs we had already assigned to him and leave anything that involves machines, fluid and no parental supervision alone. I empty the meagre contents of the conditioner drawer back into the bottle and mourn the loss of about 24 washes' worth of liquid all in one go. I change the cycle on the machine to the longest one I can find, then I sincerely pray to God that my machine will not explode nor overflow and cause any soapy water damage to the rest of the house.

    Then I come down and ask Crash to clear the dinner table, which, after his demanding day of performing household chores, is clearly too much to ask, and results in an epic battle which involves the threat of stickers lost and much huffing and puffing on his behalf.

    You will be pleased to know that 7kg washing machines can, remarkably, take in 24 times the required amount of liquid soap at once without blowing up or spewing their contents everywhere, but it does take at least four full-length cycles before clothes are in a wearable state and no longer covered in a soapy film which renders them impossible to dry or wear without discomfort.

    This tip, along with other useful tidbits of information that I'm bound to discover in the next few months and years will surely have to be published one day into a volume entitled 'Pushing It To The Limits: Things You Never Knew You Or Your Household Appliances Were Capable Of.'

  • Breaking News

    Things that I learnt on Wednesday 6th May 2009 (and the days following)

    1. A nineteen month old child tumbling from a dining room chair onto a wooden floor can cause very serious injury to himself.

    2. When a child has been crying for longer than ten minutes, it is time for a closer inspection of his injuries.

    3. When a child’s arm looks like it has two elbows, that is not a good thing.

    4. Good friends, when called upon in a dire emergency, will come round extremely fast.

    5. It is not hard to find a paramedic in the West End of Morecambe at any given time, nor in fact, to find two or three paramedic crews just waiting around at the end of a job ready for the next local emergency.

    6. Having a broken child gets you a free ride through Morecambe and Lancaster in an ambulance, with flashing lights and a siren and everything.

    7. Having a broken child gives you priority through all the other casualties and straight into x-ray.

    8. Just falling from a height of one and a half feet can snap a forearm bone in half so that the ends overlap each other at strange angles, and will usually need surgery with pins in order to correct it.

    9. Morphine does not have a dulling effect on toddlers – in fact, quite the opposite.

    10. When a child can no longer feel pain, he forgets about broken bones and wants to adventure up and down hospital corridors.

    11. Old men on stretchers do not like the noises produced by a baby bashing a plastic toy with a rattle over and over again.

    12. Having a hyperactive and noisy child means you will be swiftly removed from the queuing corridor and into the treatment room.

    13. Having plaster from the shoulder all the way down to the fingers is not a hindrance to the mobility of a determined enough child; in fact it can act as extra weaponry to wield away interfering parents.

    14. Having a broken arm x-rayed and plastered are not pleasant experiences but are in no way as traumatic as having a name tag attached to a healthy arm, which can cause the patient to fly into such a rage that he will actually try and chew it off his own limb.

    15. Children’s hospital wards have wonderful cots which can be used as pens safe havens against for poorly toddlers.

    16. Spending the night in a hospital, then having nothing to eat or drink for two hours the next morning in sympathy for your pre-op child, along with the trepidation of walking him down to the unfamiliar bowels of the hospital theatre, even for a minor operation, can leave you shaking like a leaf.

    17. Watching your child be anaesthetised in your arms is not the same as watching him fall asleep peacefully because his facial muscles collapse, making his eyes roll back in his head and his tongue loll out of the side of his mouth, which is a very nerve racking and unpleasant event.

    18. Sometimes doctors can pleasantly surprise you by not doing surgery at all but discovering they can manipulate bones back together manually which means that a two hour ordeal only takes forty-five minutes.

    19. Just because a child has had anaesthetic that morning, it does not necessarily mean that he will be drowsy or sleepy at all for the rest of the day.

    20. A full length arm pot, a sling and the recent memory of a traumatic fall is not enough to stop a toddler racing up and down the stairs, wrestling with his brothers and climbing onto the table as soon as he gets home from the hospital.

    21. Even if you ring up and beg, the orthopaedic department of a hospital will refuse to put other unbroken parts of a child’s body into a cast, even if you think their mobility should be reduced for their own safety.

  • How to Waste the Time of a Security Guard, Two Police Officers, Several Teachers and an Agricultural Engineer

    Tuesday 28th April

    Yes, I know I am a long way behind but April was a busy month. And May. And June so far as well. Anyway, some things are worth waiting for, especially if it’s a laugh at my expense.

    This day was turning out to be a great day. I had got lots of jobs done and was, which is a rare event, looking as if I was going to get all my to-do jobs done for that day. Before I did the school pick up, I had one more job to do and that was the quick shop. I do a big shop over the internet about twice a month but often nip out to an economy supermarket inbetween to top up on fruit and other bits we needed. Small shops I can handle because there is usually only one make of each food item and therefore dispenses with the need of chosing one brand over another, an activity which always causes me to fluster and go into a mild panic.

    I arrived at Aldi at 2:30, which gave me a good 45 minutes to get what I needed and get to school which was only a couple of minutes away. I parked up, got the trolley, wedged Baby in and began the trolley dash. Even when I have plenty of time, I can’t do it leisurely because Aldi shopping trolleys don’t have baby harnesses in them and Baby usually remembers that after about twenty minutes, which means I then have to revert to one-handed shopping while using the other hand to pin him down so he doesn’t heave himself headfirst onto the laminate floor. He doesn’t understand why I haven’t at least let him try this once just to see what will happen, and so he makes a lot of noise which makes people turn round and stare at me as I hold a pack of ham in one hand and a child’s ankle in the other.

    On this particular day, I succeeded in making it all the way around the store and to the till before he tried it, and then I gave him the job of throwing the less breakable items
    onto the belt, which distracted him for a bit longer.

    As I left the shop it was beginning to rain so I ran to the car and put Baby in first so he could stay dry while I put the food into bags and into the car. Then I did what I normally do when I have to return the trolley – I locked the car from the inside so that I could do it without activating the alarm and scaring Baby half to death when he moves. I ran the trolley back, got my pound and was walking back towards the car when I began to get my keys out of my pocket. Except they weren’t there.

    Confused, I tried more pockets, finding them all empty. Then my heart began to beat faster as I realised that the only place they could be was in the car itself. I ran back to the car and peered in through the tinted windows and yes, there they were on the floor at Baby’s feet. I must have put them down while I strapped him in instead of putting them back in my pocket.

    I began a conversation which went something like this, ‘No, no, no, no, no, nooo, no, no, nooo, no, no, no, NO, no, no, nooo, no, no, no, NO NO NO NO!’ and carried on for a bit longer.

    I looked round every inch of the car but there was nothing, no handle, no chink of window, no boot lock, that would grant me the slightest hint of an entrance. Of course, that’s what we pay good money for in our cars – decent security systems – but at that moment I would have given anything to have had my car be a crappy little Escort that could be jimmied open with a coat hanger.

    I kept peering through to Baby who was looking at me a bit suspiciously but fairly calmly, obviously clueless as to what I was about to put him through. Feeling the panic rising in me, and realising that my phone was trapped inside with my keys, I had to think of something fast.

    I bolted back into the shop to look for a phone and / or someone who would look official and help me know what to do. My eyes were beginning to blur and I didn’t know if I was about to burst into tears, but then I saw a man in a uniform and I ran over to him and told him that I had just locked my keys, phone and eighteen month old in the car. He looked a bit shocked himself and was about to guide me to the shop phone when he said ‘Actually, you know what,’ and gave me his own mobile from his pocket. ‘Come on,’ he said, ‘you can use this outside.’

    We ran back out and I peered back in at Baby, who started laughing as if we were in the middle of a prolonged game of peek-a-boo. At least he was having fun as I began thinking about who I could ring. I tried Richard’s mobile but there was no reply. My friend Catie had a spare house key, and so might be able to find the spare car keys at home for me, but I only knew her home number off by heart, and not her mobile, and evidently she wasn’t in that day. I then realised I needed to let school know what was happening, so I had to ring directory enquiries to get their number (and made a mental note that I must learn that too for future emergencies) and then ring them and explained in a quivering voice about the mess I had just got us all into. The secretary was very nice and told me not to worry, just to keep them up to date with what was going on. I was relieved to have that over with, but then we still weren’t any further to solving the current predicament. (Notice that with that ‘we’ I have now roped in and included the security guard into my misdemeanour and given him equal responsibility to fix it.)

    The only other route to go down was the most official one, but we were left with little options so he used his radio and called in the police. There was a team in the area, they said, and could be with us in ten minutes. I started to feel more nervous as I wondered what they would actually do when they got here, and what Richard would say about whatever means they would have to take to get in.

    Then suddenly, the guard’s phone rang and it was Richard! I answered it and began blubbing as I told him what I had done and where I was. He had just finished a job in Kendal, which meant he was an hour away, but was ready to set off straight away, and he had the spare car key with him.

    The police arrived ten minutes later, looked around the car and confirmed what I was thinking – that there was no way in without causing damage, and it would be risky with a baby in the car as glass might fly towards him. When they heard my husband was on his way they said the best thing to do was wait for him and then the lovely police lady began jumping around the car with me in the rain, peeking into the windows and pulling faces to make Baby laugh.

    There’s nothing like an emergency to bring you closer to people. I learnt the family situations of the security guard and the police man, and the name of the police lady's cat. She said that Baby was so cute that she was feeling broody and she might have to blame me if she cancelled her plans to stay child-free for the next three years. The security guard fetched me an umbrella, offered me a brew and kept the store manager updated with my situation. I learnt the different call outs the police had had that day and what a typical week in the life of an Aldi security guard is like (it explained why he was so chirpy – a break from the monotony and fifteen extra cigarette breaks rolled into one was his idea of heaven).

    They left when they heard that Richard had come off the motorway and was only ten minutes away (although the lady said it was a good job they were going so she didn’t have to do him for speeding) and I was just getting into a great conversation with the guard about religion when Richard swung up like a knight in shining silver van and bleeped the car open for me.

    I could have kissed him with relief but of course I didn’t, because when you’re married to a man who spends his job around the back end of cows all day, you learn some self-control until there has been some sort of showering involved. I opened the door and gave Baby a kiss, thanked the security guard who was finishing his last smoke, and high-tailed the car round to school to get the other abandoned children. And that was the first time in the whole hour-and-twenty-minutes ordeal that Baby began to cry, because he had seen his daddy and was then whisked away again.

    When I got to school the boys had had a great time joining in with Year 6 football and Year 3 singing practice and weren’t bothered in the slightest. I got home to find Richard settled in front of the TV because my emergency callout had meant that he had finished his working day early, and Baby was very happy to play with him after a relaxing afternoon in the car giggling at crazy women putting on a entertaining show for him. So the only one traumatised by the whole ordeal was me, as I discovered when I changed into some dry clothes and realised my hands were still shaking.

    I also discovered that some kind of miracle had occurred in the middle of it all, unbeknownst to me. When I had originally rung Richard, the reason I hadn’t got through was that he was in a mobile black spot. That particular farm in Kendal had never had mobile signal and so my three or four calls would normally have been pretty futile. However, as he was finishing the main part of that job, his phone beeped to say he had received a message and he was able to pick up my blubbery SOS clearly. Then, still to his bewilderment, he was able to ring me back and have a clear conversation with me, which made him cut the job short and get to me sooner. He even tried to ring me back straight after our conversation to say something else and got the usual blank tone to say there was no signal.

    How amazing is that?

  • A Typical Day

    (sheepish look) You'll have to forgive my absense. The irritating thing is, the more material I have to write about my life, the less time I have to actually blog about it, so I have a bit of a backlog of unfinished ones to bring. Here's the first, more to follow when I can find the time...

    Monday 6th April

    This morning I was awoken at 7.15 by a small boy peering into my face and asking if I could put the Mr Men show on for him. I growled something and rolled off the bed and into my dressing gown. I went downstairs and picked out the program from the TV menu with blurry eyes, and then another child very unwittingly howled at me, ‘I want my milk NOWW!’

    As we have covered before, I am not a morning person. Neither is the child in question. He knew exactly what he would get from a request like that, but his internal wisdom had not yet woken up, and neither had my patience. I decided to avoid conflict, and I blanked him. He didn’t take the hint and it took a lot of screaming and a long stint on the naughty step before he would calm down and make a polite request, in which time I had had my cup of tea, the others had all drunk their milk and we had all had breakfast.

    On with the school preparations. I had warned them all not to mess around at all because Daddy is away with work and so I am flying solo. I counted them into their clothes and made them all line up ten minutes early with their shoes and bags on and ready. We were about to head out of the door when Crash suddenly wailed something intelligible. I turned round to look, and there was blood dripping off his nose. He had chosen that moment (bored, stood waiting at the door with nothing to do with his hands) to rip a small scab off the front of his nose. From the noise, I made out, ‘I meed a plaster!!’ I ran back to kitchen and got tissue, Savlon and a box of plasters and administered the first aid to him on the street. The tears and the bleeding seemed to stop quite quickly but now I had a son who looked like he had been in a boxing match on the first day back to school. The unruly look was exasperated, I realised as I was seeing them off across the schoolyard, by Turtle wearing his shoes on the wrong feet, and Scooby’s jumper being on back to front. I think I need to add to my checklist in the morning, ‘Item 257: Really, actually, properly LOOK at the children before they leave the house.’ At the moment I tend to be happy with a head and lunchbox count on the way out of the door.

    Me and Baby came back to survey the desecration that had occurred in the house during the Easter holidays and work out where to begin. Baby thought that pulling all the shoes out of the cupboard was a good start; my preference was a cup of tea and an itemised list.

    I spend all six hours of school time cleaning, reorganising things and recycling carefully preserving all the artwork they had created and dumped in the dining room. Three o’clock came round too fast, so I left what I was doing, picked up Baby and got ready to head out of the door, and then realised that my keys were not where I thought they were. I usually leave them on the sideboard in the dining room, but I had emptied all the contents of the sideboard onto the table while I dusted and reorganised it. The table was now covered with contents I had found scattered around the ground floor while cleaning, and were waiting to be sorted and put away. My heart sank. I put down Baby and very carefully began moving things around the table, trying not to mix up the different piles as I looked underneath them all. Baby helped by trying to dispose of the dusty-cereal-hoops-and-toast-crusts pile. I looked through every item, but no keys. I went back to the sideboard and moved everything on there, but no keys. I tried the floor, down the back of the sideboard, even in the shoes that were under the sideboard, but no keys. It was 3.10, school finished at 3.15 and it took six minutes to get in the car and drive across town, without finding a parking space at the other end. Panic panic panic. I began going up and down the house, into every room I had been in that day, which was all of them, and making bargains with God for what I would do for those keys. I looked to see if Richard had left his spare car keys. No, they must be with him in Ireland too. Darn it, darn it, darn it. Eventually, at twenty-five past three, I looked on the dining room floor, and there they were. On the floor. The floor that I had looked at about seven times, simply behind the table, between a table leg and a chair leg. That’s where they had been the whole time. I was hoping for a really dramatic story to tell at school when I got there late, like ‘Baby stole my keys and threw them in the toilet’, or ‘Baby tried to feed the keys into the video player’, but no, for once he had kept his meddling fingers to himself, and I was just stupid.

    On the plus side, there were plenty of parking spaces by the time I got to school.

    Next on the agenda was a trip to the supermarket. Don’t look at me like that, I never usually take all the children shopping with me at all, but I had been on a tidying roll at home and didn’t want to disturb it, and it’s probably good for the children’s life education experiences if they get to visit the supermarket once or twice before their thirteenth birthdays. I was prepared and had a list for Turtle to read to the others so they would all have things to focus their avid attentions on instead of creating havoc. We chanted the rules on the way in: ‘Stay next to Mummy; don’t touch anything; repeat’, and skipped straight past the DVDs, computer games and toys and straight to the vegetable aisle. And they were very good! They took it in turns to put the things I gave them into the trolley, they stayed where I could see them, they only asked for thirty or forty things they couldn’t have, and they didn’t smash the trolley into a single other shopper’s ankles. In fact, the only rule breaker was me, who after successfully whizzing them from the canned goods to the cereal without letting them see the crisps, chocolate or biscuit aisles, realised that Baby was no longer holding the shopping list. I do realise that giving the eighteen month old that kind of responsibility was not the best thing to have done, and also that at the end of the shopping trip, most people with a half a brain would manage to remember the two items that were left to get, but I don’t have half a brain left. I have donated large chunks of it to each child, and I am not sure how much of it I have left. Nor am I sure when they are going to start using their designated chunks.

    So, because I didn’t want to have to make another trip for a vital item I’d forgotten, and I didn’t want to run past the sweetie aisles again, I said to them, ‘Boys, I need to go back, but I want you to stay. Everybody put their hand on the trolley. Hands on the trolley and don’t let go. Keep your hand on the trolley and stay next to the trolley and don’t move away from the trolley.’ I had run out of different ways to say it, so I said ‘Do you understand?’ and they nodded very solemnly at me.

    I left them and sprinted back the route we had come, back to the last point I knew I had seen Baby holding the list (that place where my reason had failed to kick in and say ‘Hey! Baby holding list = not a good idea!’) but there was no sign of it. Darn it. I turned and ran back to the cereal aisle.

    Here’s the good bit. The children had, very true to my instructions, not released their hands from trolley, nor had they moved away from the trolley, and were, in fact, still next to the trolley. The only trouble was, that the trolley was no longer in the cereal aisle.

    Thankfully, they hadn’t got far, only as far as the bakery section (and nearly in the bakery itself but I got to them in time), which reminded me of the next item, which was bread. A bag of frozen sausages later, and we were at the till. My little helpers unpacked the contents of the trolley for me and found the list, which, again, rather undramatically, was in the most obvious place I should have looked, which was just the trolley itself. I held Baby’s fingers away from the packets of chewing gum and the credit card machine while Crash told everyone else in the queue, very loudly and proudly, ‘That’s ours!’ and held up every item between our ‘Next Customer Please’ signs to show to the other shoppers.

    Out of the supermarket, we got home safely and they all helped me to put the food away in the kitchen. I was a bit stumped at the absence of some items, but it all made sense when I searched the bin and found that Baby had helped by lobbing them in there.

    At some point, Crash did something. I can’t remember what, but it was worthy of sending him to his room, so up he went. I followed him up and then went into the bathroom, at which point the secret invisible sensor that I cannot find or switch off was alerted – the one that triggers the bladder of every other person in the house. Scooby hurtled himself into the room yelling ‘I meed a wee!’ so I graciously stepped aside and gave him priority, and went into the laundry room to put on a fresh load in there. Nearly hopping myself, I went back once Scooby had finished, only to find that he had decorated the toilet seat and the surrounding area with a generous sprinkling of his fluids. I curse the school for having urinals and teaching them the trick I kept from them for so long – that little boys can pee standing up. I crossed my legs and used a handful of disinfectant wipes to purge the area, and finally it was my turn. But I had forgotten to shut the bathroom door. Three seconds later, Baby walked in, grinned at me, and lobbed the Sky remote control into the bath. As I strained to check that the tub was completely dry, he decided to play a game of open-the-door-shut-the-door-open-the-door-shut-the-door as forcefully as he could, then, sensing my helplessness, toddled into the laundry room next door, which I had also forgotten to shut the door on. As I scrambled to finish my business and get to him, I could hear all number of buttons and dials on the machine being operated as it spun round in mid-cycle.

    Finally I wrestled him away, took him back downstairs and began to make tea, counting down the minutes till bedtime. Forty-five minutes later, it was on the table and with the others sat down, I began to search the house for Crash, wondering why on earth I hadn’t heard anything from him for over an hour. I found him in his room, quietly reading books and began praising him for his good behaviour when I suddenly realised that the reason he was here in the first place was because I had put him in here for some misdemeanour and then abandoned him. I couldn’t even remind him why I’d put him there because I couldn’t remember either, so I told him firmly that his five minutes were up and brought him back downstairs.

    We ate, we bathed, we brushed teeth, and then encountered a minor hiccup when I went to get pyjamas out of the dresser to discover that there were no handles on the drawers. Obviously, this was my punishment for forgetting about him for so long – Crash had decided to get creative. I quizzed him for a while before he admitted that they were all stuffed in the cavity between the bedroom floor and the bathroom ceiling (which we really need to hole up at some point) and they were returned to their original positions so the children could finish getting ready for bed.

    Frazzled and tired, I churned out the shortest story I could find, tucked them all up and was thinking about my precious me-time downstairs with a cup of tea and a chick flick, when Turtle cuddled me round the neck from his bed and said ‘Mummy, I love you. You’re so beautiful.’ My heart melted as I kissed him goodnight and said ‘Ahh, that’s lovely darling, thankyou so much. I love you too and if you dare come down those stairs tonight, there’ll be no TV for the rest of the week. Goodnight sweatheart.’

  • Random Fact About Me Number Five

    Sunday 19th April

    5) My goal is to GET ORGANISED. It's been my goal since I was fourteen.

    Home organisation is to me what dieting is to fat people. It has taken over my life and become my goal, every new house, every new year, and usually every new week. I constantly create the equivalent of diet plans – which rooms I will do on each different day of the week; or a tick-list of weekly jobs to get done, in order of priority; or a monthly cycled rota so I purge each room once a month; or taking a timer into a room and seeing how much I can get done in twenty minutes. If there’s a method of tidying and cleaning that you can try, I have most probably failed at it.

    If I believed in karma (which I don’t) I would say it’s my parents revenge from when I was young and constantly lived in a messy bedroom. Nothing they could say or do would make me tidy it, until it all got on top of me and I would charge at it full pelt for forty eight hours, get it nearly done, run out of energy and time to sort the last few remaining piles, and then gradually they would spread back into the room, seeping into every corner until suddenly one day the carpet had disappeared again.

    Now I live in a messy house, with a messy husband and four incredibly messy children. I spend all day every day cleaning and tidying (or planning new ways to clean and tidy) and never have a tidy house.

    It’s like running on a treadmill while eating cream cakes.

    I love organisation. I crave it. If I can find little pockets of my life when order reigns, I want to stay in them forever. It was why I loved MySims so much. It was neat and orderly and everything stayed where I left it. It’s why I love ironing. That’s right – I LOVE IRONING! You lay the piece of laundry on the board, you smooth over it, you fold it up and voila – a beautiful piece of symmetry where once there was a crumpled mess. The fact that it’s the only household chore you can do while sitting on your backside and watching TV is immaterial.

    But I hate doing what needs to be done to get to that place of order. I’ll work really hard on one small corner, and if I don’t get interrupted, leave the room feeling satisfied with myself, only to walk out and drown under the chaos of the other eleven rooms in the house. It’s soul destroying.

    I can stand over the boys and help and support them to tidy their bedrooms or the playroom, but by the end of the week, it’s as bad as it was when we started. I can scrub the kitchen and take all day to make it gleam, but after a couple of meals and any DIY job of Richard’s, it’s full of grime and tools and dirty dishes again. It makes me want to cry.

    So I binge and I purge. I set myself unattainable goals, I fail to reach them, and then I give up for days on end. I trail the internet looking for systems and ideas and hope that the promise of each new one will fulfill, but I never keep up with the plan. Because it’s been a long day and if I stop to clear the side now, I’ll never get my paperwork done tonight. Because I woke up too late and didn’t have time to empty the dishwasher, so I’ll have to do it later. Because I can’t be bothered to have the Battle of the Playroom tonight, I’ll get them to do it tomorrow. Because I’ll just have a cup of tea and go on Facebook for ten minutes before I get started.

    Like waiting until you’re a size ten to organise that class reunion, my dreams are all based in ‘one day’. One day, when I am on top of everything, I will start writing my book. One day, when I am organised, I will do my third year theology correspondence course. One day, when my house is tidy in every nook and cranny, I will invite my grandma round.

    Will it ever happen? I really don’t know.

  • More Teatime Conversations for the Insane

    Tuesday 7th April

    Turtle: For my first wish, I wish for a house made of sausages!
    For my second wish, I wish for a barn full of pork!
    For my third wish, I wish for a car made out of bacon!

    Scooby: For my first wish, I want a bike made out of bread!
    For my second wish, I want a door made out of soup!
    For my third wish, I want a chair made out of marshmallows!

    Crash: Pour my first wish, I want a gingerbread man house!
    Pour my second wish, I want a teddy bear sugar!
    Pour my third wish, I want a genie!

    His english may be worse, but his strategic planning makes up for it.

  • Random Fact About Me Number Four

    Saturday 4th April

    4) I bought MySims for Joel for Christmas and then got slightly addicted to it.

    'Tis true and I hang my head in shame. I'm over it now but for a while I was playing it compulsively every lunchtime and just thinking 'One more house, then I'll stop. Oh no, he hasn't got a bed, must build him a bed. Oh, he wants some apple essences to go on the bed, need to go and find a tree, then I'll stop.' Like a crazed person.

    This is why I have never in my life tried smoking, drugs or getting drunk. I have such rubbish self-control when it comes to not over-indulging in stuff, that I refuse to start because I know I won't stop. For that reason I've never watched an episode of Lost or 24 either :D I can't start a really good book unless I know I'm properly ill and will actually be in bed for two days straight.

    I did actually let Crash play with MySims too. He had to have his own town though - he wasn't going to interfere with my precious handiwork. I was very glad of that too when one day they were playing on it unsupervised and Scooby came and told me 'Crash moved Violet out of her house and there are no trees.' I came down and did a virtual tour of Crashtown, and indeed, every townperson had been kicked out, every tree had been uprooted and the town hall had been remodelled to resemble something like an art deco garden shed.

    I deleted his profile, gave him a new one (with trees and a respectably sized town hall) and then moved him away from the Wii, hid the game from him and made a mental note never to allow him to become Prime Minister.

  • Advice on Dechunking Your Laundry

    Friday 27th March

    Occasionally one will find oneself with a child who develops a temporary food intolerance, particularly to dairy products.

    By this I mean you feed them and they return it to you threefold.

    If you have a child with a longstanding habit of doing this, you are actually in a better equipped position because you never let them drink their milk without standing guard, holding a catching vessel, ready for the first heave of fluid. One can become quite adept at catching a moving flow. We know because we had one of these such children.

    However, if you have grown unused to such habits because the necessity has long since passed, but you are of the ilk that continues to produce more children, you may find that nature lands you with a tricky one. One that usually holds their dairy but occasionally decides to have a stomach bug, or an excess of phlegm, or just a mischevious twinkle in his eye. This type of child will wait till long after their drink or meal, until they seem to be out of the danger zone and are wandering or resting unsupervised, and then choose to upheave their stomach contents.

    Having such a child presently and having been caught off-guard three times in the last 48 hours (that doesn't include the one that I did manage to catch), I thought I would share my words of wisdom on how to clean up after the event.

    Firstly, it is useful to have a husband or other trained animal professional present who will take the sticky wriggly, now excuberant and uncooperative child to a seperate place to be washed. If this is not possible, try to cordon off the affected area while you clean the child yourself, and come back later.

    Note: repeatedly shrieking and pointing to the disaster zone and giving warning of its existence is an ineffective method of cordoning, and will most likely draw more children towards it rather than driving them away.

    Secondly, baby wipes are your friends. After using kitchen roll to remove larger clumps (and this is where mucus does come in handy, because it does stick them all together) from floors, mattresses or furniture, baby wipes clean pretty much everything. I mean obviously disinfectants, fabric sprays and carpet shampoos are all useful and necessary for deep cleaning, and for getting rid of the germs and the smell, but when it comes to getting it off here and now, when you are supposed to pick the other children up at 3.15 and it is now 3 o'clock, and you just need to get the stuff off everything before people come home and walk through it or sit on it, nothing else beats those baby wipes. Yes, that was me on Thursday.

    Thirdly, do not put any affected fabrics straight into the wash. Most mothers discover early on that using a washing machine is not guaranteed to remove chunks and will either leave them intact or, more likely, spread them into smaller particles that smear and stick to the fabric, never to be freed again. In fact, someone near and dear to my heart once found an entire poo in her drum after emptying it of laundry, and had no idea how it got there. Amateur.

    Instead, use the following tactics:

    A ) Showering the item(s) - good for getting the chunks straight off and into the drain, ready for the machine. However, this is not good for duvets or any other large items, as the target matter just seems to spray off one area and straight onto another, causing you to lift the item higher and higher until eventually you find yourself entwined with it and face to face with the only spot you managed to miss. Even after you think you've got it all down the drain, you will - I repeat - you will inevitably walk downstairs and realise you've managed to get some on your slippers.

    B ) Using the ever faithful baby wipes and picking up the chunks clump by clump and putting them straight in the bin. Suitable for larger laundry items, but not for those who are weak stomached or those who like to keep their dignity. Having lost mine a long time ago, my only issue with this one is that it takes a long time.

    C ) Flushing the item. That right folks, your trusty lav can be multi-functional. That flow is great for pulling those chunks straight down and away from your eyesight - after all, that's what it is designed for. Extreme caution is to be used when using this method however. Flushing an item too large may clog your system and bring the water (and the matter you were trying to dispose of) back up towards you. A tight grip is to be maintained on smaller items at all times, otherwise you may as well have saved the water and just used the bin. And finally, always, always make sure that you have removed the child before flushing any items of their clothing.

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