Friday night ramblings 1: The fridge

We need a new fridge... I took this for my Face-book wall, with the caption "And this is supposed to go where?".  Sadly I took it in November last year, and the problem hasn't improved.  I have been whinging about this for nearly a year and its no longer a joke. We really really really need a new fridge, ours is just too small for a family of 5.  But here's the thing (there is always a thing) - I'm sure we didn't need these huge *ssed fringes when I was a child, even though families were as big, if not bigger. Why is this? Are we eating more? Well probably. Are we buying more and throwing half of it away? Also possibly. But I've hatched on another answer:

This is my families milk selection. I have skimmed milk, E has soya milk (lactose-intolerant), G has lactose-free milk (lactose and soya-intolerant) and to honest there should be full cream for K as well but it's finished and I'm a rubbish mum and didn't pick any up today. Fortunately my husband doesn't drink milk at all, because if he did he'd probably want a different variety just to be difficult. And all 4 types of milk need to be stored in the door. This means there is no room for anything else. Then there is the yoghurt, and again this is fat free, full cream, soya and lactose-free. Do you have any idea how much space this takes up? At least a full whole shelf. I only have 3! When I was a child the milk was the milk. 1 bottle, in the door. Done. I'm also fairly sure when there was only one tub of yoghurt in the fridge, which seemed to last for days, and definitely didn't get a shelf to itself. Was no one lactose-intolerant then? Where parents just less inclined to indulge their kids and themselves (the milk we have is the milk we have)? More importantly, how can I be anally retentive about the positioning of things in an over-packed fridge. Hell, I'm lucky if I can get the door shut, let alone put things in neat little piles. And don't even think of trying to fit left overs in there. Eat it dammit, there's no room. (This is also a good excuse for finished any open bottles of wine).

Anyway - thank you for reading, what is essentially a very public dig at my spouse that I want a nice double door fridge, and thank you for coming back.  My blog hit 4000 tonight. I've very excited. So excited in fact I think I'll go and attempt to repack the veggie draw. Living the high-life on a Friday night...

Intellectual bad*sses (less-wordy Wednesday)

In my last teaching post I was a 6th form tutor. My form was all the kids doing 2 or more sciences for their AS levels, and was therefore made up of all the highest achievers in GCSEs the previous years.  On about the 3rd day of school one of the less achieving boys noticed this, and said "What's going on here - I'm in the nerd form".  To which another boy, who achieved 15 A*s in his GCSEs, yet was sitting there in his DMs and leather jacket, turned around and said "We are not nerds - we are intellectual bad*sses!".

I loved this expression and adopted it at once, not only for my form, but form myself.  It is a perfect description of me, or at least how I want to be perceived. I'm not a nerd per say, but I certainly have nerd tendencies. Neither am I a true intellectual, or indeed a true bad*ss. But I do have aspirations to be both (as well as a proper lentil weaver, but we will save that for another post).  I have always considered it a compliment to call someone a nerd, as it was what I wished I could be - clever AND achieving. But the nerds I aspire to be still have a level of cool - like Morrissey, Michael Stipe and Stephen Fry. Unfortunately, for most people, the term obviously brings with it images of national health specs and pocket protectors, so I was very pleased to get a better description.

My children are definitely intellectual badd*sses in training. They rock out to alternative music and wear more black than the average child, but they also love learning. They are very curious about the world and want to learn and understand everything. They devour non-fiction books and suitable sites on the internet. Miss K is particularly studious about her school work and always wants to be in the top group for everything. She was recently motified to discovered she is only in the second group for spelling and has spent the entire week working on it.  Middle E is just straight competitive, and has to be the BEST (I see a fair amount of disappointment on the horizon here).  Here they are this morning - even Miss G is attempting to do her reading (with her feet mind).

5 skills you need to be a parent.

Short but sweet today - I'm a wee bit tired. But here are 5 skills I think you must have in order to be a good modern parent...

1. The ability to appear to be listening, intently, to an immensely elaborate story about every single detail of your child's day at school. Never let on that you are actually day dreaming about David Tennant or mentally writing this evening's blog.

2. The ability to select an outfit, put it on, do your hair, put your make up on and grab your hand bag in 7 minutes flat because if you don't you will be late for the school run...
3. De-sensitisation to mucus on your left shoulder - its always there. Accept it, move on.
4. The ability to sit gracefully through dance recitals choreographed by your children, puppet shows written by your children and songs composed by your children - don't forget to applaud rapturously when it finally finishes.
5. The skill of being able to identify your children's clothing from a hundred paces. And don't get smug and tell me you've labelled it. Firstly you never manage to label it all, you always miss something, and secondly they only lose not labelled items...

Ominous silence (conveniently on Silent Sunday)

You know that feeling - you are enjoying a quiet moment. Perhaps you are having a cup of coffee and a cheeky piece of cake. Perhaps you are really getting stuck into the ironing (not likely in my case, but hey - some of you are good mothers). Perhaps you are checking your face book for the 20th time that morning just in case they decided to revert to the old news feed format... But anyway, you are busy and occupied and getting on with something you needed to get on with, when you suddenly think - where are the children and why are they so quiet? And then you get scared...

You know they are safe because you wouldn't have let them wander off anywhere untoward or do anything dangerous - that's not why you are scared. No, you are unnerved because you know they are occupied, and as a rule things that occupy them in such a manner are not the expensive wooden toys you bought them or the high brow books you are hoping they might read. No - they are investigating their world in some manner, probably one unsactioned by you.  What they are up depends on their age. In older children this may mean they are trying on your expensive clothes and jewelry, digging in your underwear draw on a search for Christmas presents or, in the case of boys, or more adventurous girls, about to parachute down the stairs only using your knickers to break their fall, But for smaller children what they are up to is slightly less scary, but rather more messy. Like unpacking the compost bin or involuntarily defrosting the freezer while they scatter frozen peas around the kitchen. Here is Little Miss G last night...

You'll never **** alone...

There are plenty of things I could complain that no-one warns you about having children. Piles - no-one warns you about the piles. The lack of sleep for THE REST OF YOUR LIFE is not made clear either.The trauma of cutting your tiny weeny babies nails - no-one told me about this either (but I'm going to cut her finger tips off!). But these issues do get discussed afterwards, in hushed circles, by those in the know. Its like a secret club that you can only be in if you have had a child - "yes I got piles too. jolly good fun that was, did you try an enema of coffee? No not necessarily helpful, but it takes your mind off it darling".  But there is one issue that doesn't even get discuss in these circles - the fact that you'll never have a bowel movement undisturbed again, ever.

As a species, we, as humans, at some point made a strange evolutionary sideways shift to being beings that are embarrassed about our bodily functions. Other animals just go - you never see a cow hiding behind a bush for an adventure wee or a lion seeking away from the pride to make a number two. But we as humans, for some reason or other, have decreed that these bodily functions are foul and embarrassing.  We have built little private rooms to disappear into to relieve ourselves where no-one else is around. And we only elude to their use as well - I'm going to the little girls room to powder my nose; I'm going to tinkle etc.  The whole thing is more than a little hush hush. Therefore - pre-children - you are used to this time being sacred and private. You probably mention it only to your partner, but even then, it is one of the few times you are alone, really alone. Private.

But not after you have had kids. Then you are never alone. My children burst in on me when I'm in the loo (see what I did there, typing in the loo is somehow less embarrassing than typing ON the loo) at least once a day. We do have more than one bathroom, so there is no excuse.  Yet for some reason that is the perfect time to need to wash their face, brush their teeth, or far too often, just tell me something.  It started before K could even move. Being a first child, if she was awake, she clearly could not be left alone, so I'd bring her into the bog with me in her piccolo chair. These days I have a box of toys in their for G as she will howl if I dare leave her on the wrong side of a shut door. Being able to open the toilet door is another of the modern milestones of child development. Your privacy is no loner sacred. My girls just don't get it - they will just walk in and keep talking to me.  And yes, I could lock them out - but what if it was important?

This post was inspired today by K - she came into the bathroom to tell me that G had stacked her cups. "Okay, thank you for that bulletin, keep me abreast of any further developments and don't let the door hit your a**e on the way out" I say. "Huh?" she says. "Off you go" I say "and shut the door". "What shut it?" She says; "Like properly shut it? Closed and everything? Shut-shut?" Says it all doesn't it.

5 great mysteries of my life...

1. Why am I always so far behind with putting the washing away?  I wash it, dry it and fold it no problem, but that last step seems to be impossible for me. So much so that in this case I had to fold it all again as it had been over stacked, and spontaneously unfolded itself. I am such a domestic failure. This would probably still be waiting to be put away if it wasn't on my desk...

2. Why am I ALWAYS late on the school run? There must be a hole in the space-time continuum between my front door and my car.  I swear no matter what time I leave the house, when I get in the car it is 8.48, which means we are not going to arrive gracefully at school.  The sight of me storming across the playground  like a heifer on heat in the vicinity of a prize winning bull is quite common to those living in our village, dragging three harassed late children behind me.  Well, more than quite common actually.

3. Why does my children's hair not stay in a hair band or hair clip? Other people's children remain immaculately turned out all day, looking like its just be cut and styled by a professional, whereas mine tend to look like scarecrows who last had their hair brushed last week and that I went around pulling bits of the pony tail out immediately after having tied it.


4. Why can I not longer park a car? In particular parallel park? I used to be able to do it, I must have been, I passed my driver's licence (on the first try no less). But I cannot do it anymore.  I look like Austin Power's doing a three point turn - forwards, backwards, forwards backwards inching closer to the curb. The children have even said things to me like "just go round the corner Mum, there's always lots of space there" and "Daddy is good at driving, especially parking, you are good at... making cakes".

5. How is it people get their child, at the age of 4, to write Christmas cards and Thank You cards? Proper Thank you cards that say "Dear Anna - thank you so much  for coming to my party and for the lovely gift of a set of Dora the Explorer felt tips. I shall treasure them for life. All my love, Marybell".  It took every ounce of strength I had to get E to write her NAME in her cards last Christmas, while K wrote plenty in the first cards, less in the second and by the 10th card it was down to "Merry Christmas, love K". I suppose I should be pleased its wasn't X-mas.  I stand there like a slave driver whinging and whining for them to get it done. They cry, I shout and not much gratitude winds up getting to the recipient, even less Christmas cheer is spread...

Return of the maroon goon (Semi-wordless Wednesday)

He's been gone from my life for nearly 3 years but yesterday it happened - THAT purple dinosaur and his annoying children friends re-entered my life.  I am not a SAHM, I am a WFHM, and keeping G busy is sometimes challenging.  I popped the maroon goon on yesterday on the off chance I might get some work done, and hey presto - Silence...

Better the devil you know I guess, and  boy do I know Barney. In fact it turns out that not only do I know Barney, I still know all the words to "colours make me happy, every where I go..." and "squishy-squishy squashy, give those hands a washy", the names of the pretentious kids (I've always had a love/hate relationship with Hannah, who is presumably now a 25 year old woman) and the actions to both the clapping song and the Baby bop hop. Still, a whole generation of North American and South African kids (and countless other countries I'm sure) have been introduced to socials norms through a stern deliverance of "Barney say's Caring is Sharing" by their mother; and you can never actually go wrong with the Clean Up Song. Well, that's what I'm telling myself anyway, seeing as he's back for another year or two, best I believe he has some redeeming qualities, and I don't mean BJ and Baby bop

And, erm, no that is not face book on my lap top. Its work, really.