Is anyone else’s head f**king turned? I mean, where the BLEEP are the holidays? Why is Easter so FECKING late and why does no one just reschedule the holidays and let us all have a break because I’m not coping; the kids aren’t coping, and poor auld LSB’s just had the head chewed off him for looking at his phone when I was trying to talk to him.
I’m fed up people; WELL fed up. I feel like I live under a tyranny of relentless washing, ironing, cooking, and the bane of my F**KING life; getting children and all their paraphen-f**king-alia ready for school.
‘Where are my shoes?,’ (always the shoes.)
‘Why have I no clean vests?’
‘Because all your bastard bears are wearing them, THAT’S WHY.’
‘My show and tell is tomorrow!’ Of course it is. I’ve had the sheet for weeks but only now, at 5-45 the night before have I found it within myself to address the issue. 6- 30 and a yawning child is trying to pen: ‘I’m a Diplocous, my long tail keeps me stable!’ It still looks shite. The printer has spat out a stegosaurus with half a head. We set the bar too high with the previous Show and Tell and have thus created an unrealistic standard to try and maintain. I put the child and her annoying sister to bed at half seven.
‘It will wait til the morning,’ I tell them through gritted teeth. I’m lying of course- it will never wait til the morning. A sodden LSB arrives in from training, drenched and pitiful. Happily, he stopped at The Vineyard. Just as well. I open a Malbec and he starts googling dinosaurs.
‘What would the Small Child be if she were a dinosaur,’ he opines.
‘Which one was the biggest melter?’ I retort, savouring the first mouthful.
‘Here’s one looks like Jacob Rees Mogg,’ he says, and he’s right; it’s wearing a Top Hat and glasses, like some sort of anti-EU arch villain from the Cretaceous Period. If only an asteroid with drone like precision could take him and all those other twats at the ERG out and we’d all, (well all 56% of us who voted remain in NI) be happy.
Anyway. We do some snipping and attaching pictures of dinosaurs to a pin board.
‘I’m a Tyranosaurus Rex! My closest relation on Earth today is a chicken!’
‘Hello! I’m a stegosaurus! My brain’s the size of a walnut, but even I voted to remain!’
I slug more wine. There is still a meal to cook and lunchboxes to wash. I fecking hate lunches. The Older Child will, at least take a cheese sandwich, but ONLY on white bread, preferably from M&S. ‘I NEVER want to eat Kingsmill 50/50 again,’ she declared on Wednesday. The Small Child eats ‘butteries.’ These are two circles of bread, perfectly formed as I take a cookie cutter to a slice of pan loaf and make nice shapes so she doesn’t succumb to starvation. She won’t countenance any class of a filling, so butter it is.
‘You know how we have a donkey cutter?’ she asked on Monday. (We do, I bought it at the Donkey Sanctuary.)
‘Can you make my butteries in a Tyranosaurus Rex shape today?’
‘No I flipping can’t,’ I snarled.
This week, for their ‘healthy snack’ they had ‘vine fruits, two ways,’ otherwise known as a tub of grapes and a smaller one of raisins.
I can’t make the lunches the night before because even though the containers claim to be 100% BPA-free I don’t trust that they are, and so leave this task of slicing and buttering and cutting grapes in half lest a child choke until the morning. See? I can be quite a diligent mummy.
It’s just hard, keeping on top of it all. The air has been a striking, vibrant shade of blue. At pick-up a while ago a mum remarked that her daughter had been told off for swearing. ‘She certainly didn’t hear it at home,’ said the perplexed Mum.
‘Mine TOTALLY hear it at home,’ I said, not to make her feel better, just because it’s the truth. They hear it all, my children, and I hope to God they have the wit just to accept it when I tell them that mummy is just stressed to f**k and they’re not to go repeating it.
If the Mothership reads this I’m so dead. I give it an hour, and the phone will ring, and they’ll be an aggrieved pensioner on the phone.
I’m off- there’s a few facts about a Triceratops I still have to look up.
