Hello blog,

how are you?

Today is Monday. Tell me why I don’t like Mondays? Ok, I will:

1. The Face’s alarm didn’t go off (even though someone NAGGED him about making sure his itouch was charged and not on 18th December 2027 at 17.45 as its date and time).  So…..my alarm went off (as I’m boring and make sure these things work……mainly) and I have to say, I did enjoy shouting ‘The FACE! Quick! It’s 7 a.m.  You’ve got 10 minutes (to save the world, Flash?) to get ready before the bus LEAVES!!!!!’ – I almost felt sorry for him……

2. I had a French lesson booked for 9 a.m.  Reason enough to hate Mondays, I know. Normally, so that I can move all the SHITE the family leaves everywhere each and every friggin’ morning, BEFORE my french teacher arrives, the Husband takes the kids to school…………i said NOR-mally, as in, today, at 8.30 a.m., when I wasn’t dressed, was trying to find invitation templates for the party that The Lips-I-definitely-don’t-want-a-birthday-party-this-saturday….oh-hang-on, I-now-think-I-will-have-one, needed to take to school in 10 minutes……anyway, the husband announced that he needed to go right then and there to get cash to pay someone  he wasn’t seeing for three hours. Of course he did……and what he didn’t need was to buy more nicorette gum….no, of course not.

So

2. continued

I take the kids to school and pass my French teacher (who happens to be a school mum and extremely well organised), shove the kids through the school gate (I think they fell but I couldn’t hear their cries once I’d turned the corner), run back past my French teacher (who arrives in under 2 mins) back to the house, kick some shite under furniture, go into the back kitchen where I am shocked to find my washing machine, hanging off the 2 foot ledge/plinth (argue amongst yourselves) by one corner, whilst the water and evacuation pipes are so taut as to be near to snapping free, with a floor as slippery as ice (softener – the blame lies with you) and the cycle still going.  

Do you know how heavy a (n overloaded……..GUILTY) washing machine is? especially when you have no grip on the floor. It is however funny how I found some super human strength to push the thing back into it’s jail cell ….I mean, plinth/step just as the door was knocked…..

My french lesson was a success as usual. REally, I don’t know why I continue when I’m so fluent……

3. Mondays follow the weekend. The weekend involves more bodies in and out of the house than in the week. More bodies (other than mine) means more mess and more pee pee near or thereabouts the direction of the toilet but never into it..etc. 

4. Today I thought I would make jam.

For the first time.

For those of you who know me, this was and will be, certain to FAIL (I don’t do this every Monday and actually has nothing to do with Mondays but I think I can hear the laughter of the Bogster (friend) and the Jusmaster (another friend) from here).

5. Drinking wine at 5 p.m.

well, following on from an email exchange with the F’Aussie (an Aussie who lives in France and therefore not to be confused with Aussies who quite rightly, live in Australia), today, and Mondays in particular, at WINE TIME, I cannot drink wine.

This is a self imposed ban.

Normally I do not exert such control and those last seconds ticking away before 5.00 p.m. feel that bit longer than say……..the last few seconds before your French teacher arrives to CHAOS…..anyway, to get back on track –

this evening, I have a French child in the house. 

I had two french children in the house but one has gone to do a sporting activity with the Lips and the husband (and bless my soul, FAtty too).

To be found, by French parents, drinking wine, on my own at 5 p.m.?  Mon DIEU!!!!!!!!!

So, I found a mug and poured the wine into that and no one will be any the wiser (bottoms up, F’aussie).

 

Ok – now to go back to blog 3 and the flatulent guest:

The gas this guest emits could be used in a chemical warfare situation.

It clears rooms.

It lingers and comes back and hits you in waves and waves and waves.

It smells like freshly laid dog poo………. and here is the clue 

The guest is a labrador. Old as the hills (mind you, I think I actually have more grey hair than her…..and thinking about it, maybe my gas isn’t as fragrant as I’d like to think but I HOPE that is where the similarities stop?).

Time to put down my pen and pap…..keyboard and burn some things for dinner.

A bientot

Tomorrow we shall discuss if ‘mum, is bloody hell a swear word?’ and other such dilemmas.

 

 

 

Dear blog,

I’ve missed you. It has been three days since my last confession…….

The (last part of the) week that was:

The husband returns with a bottle of champagne, roses, a mini boom box, a smile on his face, a twinkle in his eye and a gift from THAT shop in Paris.  We open a bottle each and have a civilised catch up.

Camera 1 – same scene, five hours on – this shot would capture dancing in the kitchen, an ultra eye twinkle and a few more empty bottles

Camera 2 – bedroom scene – two hours on – this shot would capture……………wouldn’t you like to know?! Actually, in reality, this shot would capture the beginning of the drunken misunderstanding. The beginning of much to-ing and fro-ing from the bedroom ‘and another thing (or sching in this case)’ . I was two bottles behind him and was now very tired and VERY sober. I stayed in bed. He stomped around the house in protest of? I have no idea. I think he didn’t either. But he felt very strongly about ‘it’ all the same.

7.00 a.m. ALARM. WAKEY WAKEY. Except that I am already awake as I didn’t go to sleep.

and so the day begins

but wait,

it’s my turn for the toddler group. SHIT! I have visions of peepee/ca-ca toilets that need to be cleaned and the remains or rather damning evidence of our Party of Two.

And once I get that sorted out, the toddler group stand me up!!!!!!!!   Entre nous, I’m relieved. The still drunk husband is snoring on the sofa…..

I continue to chase my tail for a while and don’t get very far with the house and jobs. In the meantime, the Prodigal needs to get ready for his first day of Coiffure School in a big(ish) town, 30/40 mins drive from here. I nag, he ignores me and 5 mins before we leave, he still isn’t ready.

The Drunk one is starting to sober up.

The Fatty is grumpy and now I realise I will have to kill three hours with him in a soft play cafe whilst we wait for the Prodigal to finish as it’s not worth my while (and petrol) getting home and going back.

SOFT PLAY – there aren’t many words put together, that make my heart and spirit sink as much as those two.  Good job I’m not tired or hungover…..

Back home (via the supermarket – AGAIN – another bad queue, I lose my credit card, the queue does a collective sigh, the cashier begins to dismantle the check out till to look for it, the Prodigal looks like he wants to curl up and die when I say loudly ‘i HAVE to find that card and no, Prodigal, I am not just going to leave and cancel it once I’m home, thanks for the (shite) advice.’) the house is chaotic as I left the Husband and four unsupervised kids, make that the unsupervised Husband and four kids and a dog to leave things where they fall.

WE HAVE TO INTERRUPT THIS SERVICE DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES (the kids and husband are back).

and I didn’t even get onto the flatulent guest.

Until next time.

As I burn the dinner:

Child number 3 (the Professor) is skateboarding.

The Face (child number 2) is supervising and tutoring the Professor.

Fatty (child number 5) is the audience in it’s entirety. So that I can type this piece, I am allowing him free access to some dried apricots. What a nappy filled day I’m going to enjoy tomorrow.

Meanwhile, our very jolly and very reasonable neighbour, has the volume set to MAX for the French news.  She enjoys the boys skateboarding so much that perhaps she wants them to enjoy listening to the radio at the same time?

The Prodigal, who has calmed down since this afternoon’s mania, is upstairs doing? I just don’t want to know. The Lips (child number 4) ISN’T winding up anyone so I’ll find him once the smoke alarm goes off which will mean dinner is ready.

The Husband remains in Paris. I can’t blame him. I’d remain in Paris if I could…. (he says a new sex shop has opened in the street his flat is in. I’m wondering why he felt the need to tell me this. He then told me he had bought me a present. Are these two statements related?).

(I can hear the neighbour’s French news even over P.M., radio 4, played through speakers in the kitchen. She REALLLY enjoys skateboarding. In fact, and as another aside, the Prodigal revealed that Hers were the first, real live breasts he ever saw. He also revealed to having seen his girlfriend’s mother naked…….and one of my friends)

The dinner now having been eaten (a lasagne so wobbly that perhaps, in my knackered and worn down state, I had confused lasagne sheets with gelatine?), it is time to sum up the day’s events:

– dream that husband dies which gives me that SUDDEN WAKEY WAKEY horror  just before the bell tolled 6 a.m. (yes, in our village, the bell tolls on the hour…..and if not on the hour, then sometime around the hour that was…..half an hour since or will be – it is on a need to know basis, clearly).

-perhaps, as I awoke, I screamed as the Prof and the Lips are soon in my bed and fighting over who is next to mummy.

-The Face gets up at 6.30 for school.

-The Prof, in doing some mighty calculation in his head, wriggles and I kick him out of the bed

-I doze off and have a continuation of the husband dying dream

– MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! gently whispers Fatty.

The day begins.

It is a Wednesday which means no school for the Prof and the Face. And, as usual, Mother Hubbard’s cupboards are bare. Off to the supermarche we go.  Need I say anymore on that? You all know the scene – untethered goats is the best description I ever read describing taking children (not French children….they behave) around a supermarket.

I pick the Rubbish Queue. I have a talent for this. I wait…..we wait, rather. I shout. They misbehave. It feels like a lifetime has past (mine), I see but pretend not to see the woman behind me who only has two items to my piles of toilet paper, dog food and doughnuts, watermelon…… I can feel her eyes boring into my head ‘see me. see me and let me go in front’ – I look away….. treat others as you want to be treated yourself? Not today, my friend.

Load the car. Wonder at the shoppers who, rather than walk an extra what? few metres to the opposite trolley park,  have added trolleys to the long, long lines (x 3) of parked trolleys which just about allow one car to pass by.

Next errand: Tennis inscription, as they say here. Booking the kids in for some tennis lessons.

FAIL (the tennis club has a very full internet site. So full that they couldn’t squeeze in the opening times)

Next errand: unloading the car by juggling the multi coke pack, baguette, a cantaloupe and large dog food bag

FAIL (who would have thought that the cantaloupe would make so much mess as it slipped onto the tarmac?)

The Prodigal does me a good turn. He follows Fatty around whilst I do some vacuuming upstairs.

Meanwhile, the FAce returns from school beaming with delight as he got 3/3 for maths…………..

The Prodigal, later, does me a bad turn when I agree to allow him out to meet his friends in the forest (no, not a name of a bar…..an actual forest) on the condition that he doesn’t drink. He seems to feel that the condition is unfair. We exchange some not very nice words. I go looking for my keys to lock the exits………AGAIN.

Good things today:

my dream didn’t come true.

I managed 10 mins on the rowing machine without ONE child standing so close next to me that I knock them over with my stride (or whatever you call a pull of the rower).

I took the five kids and the dog to my friend’s house and let them run around wildly.

I have one follower of my blog!!!!! Pride – self pride but still…..

And now:

Off to sanitise the Prof, the Lips and Fatty. Clean up after dinner. Do the washing. Clear up the MESS until it all starts over again tomorrow.

Bonne soirée

 

 

–

 

Dear diary?

Dear reader?

God?

Dear me?

I’ll stick with that.

The night unravelled around 10.20 p.m.  The Prodigal (recently returned after a years absence from the family home due to unpopular behavior) had been doing more than sniffing the wine cork………AGAIN.

-‘Why are you accusing me of being drunk? I can walk straight, can’t I? ‘  (ok, so that question just answered itself)

-‘Have you been drinking? yes or no?’

His eyes shift back towards the front door – ‘can I reach it, open it and get out before she catches me? I stand a good chance as she is half way down the stairs…hmm, she does have her trainers on….’

So after insisting that he hadn’t drunk anything, and much verbal haggling, we then progressed onto the ‘I had one or two’ which in my experience means the one or two after the shitload that broke the drunk camels back.  And this one or two (litres?) seemed to make him if not, falling over drunk, then not very pleasant slightly aggressive drunk.

‘Get into your room, get into bed and DO NOT LEAVE.’

It is hard to shift a 6 foot, drunk AND righteous, 18 year old.

He was well aware of this.

He was also well aware of the fact that his step father (oh yes, there are levels of history and happenings and rewritten memories in this story) was in Paris.

I got him into the room. In there with him was his 13 yr old brother (the Face) who for once, had the good sense to pretend to be asleep.

The drunk monologue began. If it lacked anything, it certainly wasn’t volume. Then the self righteous pacing began……he must have had some tap shoes that I didn’t know about.

time check – 11.30 p.m.  Mirror check – aged and ageing.

‘what did I do to deser……’  I stopped myself as I knew the answer.

Around 11.45, I called the Face to come out for his own protection (he didn’t seem to be given the right responses to the Drunken Despot), told the now sobbing number 1 to bloodywellgrowupasyouarelikea6foottwoyearoldandbloodywellgetintobedandIdontwanttoseeyouagain(ever?)untilthemorning

and

‘if you really insist that you aren’t drunk then we have a bigger problem to hand.’

The Face has to come in with me. Odd. It has been about 7 years since we were both in the same bed.

I go down and lock all of the exits and hide the keys (extreme measures but the Prodigal has form for nighttime escape). I then hide the vodka (it must have evaporated of it’s own accord as the Prodigal didn’t take it…….I swear, mum..) and the whiskey and the rum and the armagnac etc into the Aga (please let me remember that it is in there before we switch that heat monster back on in November).

time check: midnight  mirror check: it cracked

The tap shoes gave up the pacing around 12.30 a.m; the Face fidgets……and rocks; the Dog begins her nightly toilette with a thump, thump, thump of some part of her body onto the wood floor and loud, slurps as she licks…….only she knows where; number 5 moans and bumps around his cot,

I lie awake

A light wakes me at 4.00 a.m.

The Face forgets to switch off his alarm which sounds at 6.30 a.m.

He moves too quickly and knocks over a cup of water. The cup is smashed. The cup was bought for me by a friend years ago and had enjoyed a longevity which no other cup ever had.

I give up my right to sleep and leave the bed at 7.00 a.m.

And so the day starts.