Category: Stuff that just happens

“Have you heard about the dyslexic blogging group? They can only get a following by having sex in a car park”

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Partner is going deaf. I basically want my Facebook page to be a blogging site, I’m telling him. Silence. I look up from the computer. Partner has turned the grey of our whites’ wash. A dogging site? He thinks he is repeating, with the voice of someone who thought they knew you, but is now having doubts.

I consult daughter 2 about Facebook etiquette and rules. Do I ask face time friend to become MY friend, I enquire. Sure, why not, daughter 2 replies, nonchalantly. Well, I go on, I don’t want her thinking it’s weird, or worse still seeing me as someone to share her problems with. Daughter 2 looks at me in complete disbelief, its not like that mum, she sighs.

I know they aren’t real friends, but a friend request still makes me feel happy. I’m beginning to wonder if I’m easily pleased. Back in November I saw a specialist about shoulder problems. I have had the problems a year and a half and am getting to the end of my tether. In the first week of January, when I was feeling particularly fat and frumpy, I finally received a copy of the specialist’s report to my GP. It read, ‘your patient, presenting as a slender and muscular 45 year old’… ‘Slender’ and ‘muscular’…words I can only dream about being called at my age. I was in a dreamlike state, I was on cloud nine, I was in heaven. What did the report say about your shoulders? Partner interrupted my moment of ecstasy. Oh, I have absolutely no idea, I replied.

Yes, too easily pleased.

Every Friday morning, partner personal trains myself and client: lady of the house, in her garage. Most garages are so full of lawnmowers, bike helmets, scooters and pogo sticks that training would be impossible. However, this is an almost empty double garage and doubles up perfectly well as a studio.

This morning we arrive to find builders have moved in to our training space. Don’t worry, lady of the house says, we can use the sitting room. Partner is wondering how this is going to pan out. The sitting room is straight from Homes and Gardens. It is modern, pristine and beautiful and not at all like the garage. We take off our shoes. I am glad I have worn my pink t shirt – I match the cushions beautifully, which is important in this sitting room, as everything matches everything else beautifully.

Partner adapts effortlessly to the new space: asking me to run down the length of the sitting room and perform two punches on the pad at the end. The floor is under heated, highly polished oak. I slide into the pad, narrowly missing the wine fridge. Partner is looking worried.

The workout continues and I’m starting to sweat. I don’t want to drip on the oak. I move to the cooler, more easily washable marble kitchen floor to perform my burpees.

I admire lady of the house’s lights, to distract from my sweat. They create a pretty, holographic glow. We could be in a nightclub, I quip. Lady of the house gives me a disapproving look. A posh nightclub, I try recover the situation, like Stringfellows.

Partner senses that it’s time for a change of mood and a new exercise. He pulls out two dining room chairs. But I’m on a roll. I straddle one of them Madonna ‘Like a Virgin’ style – but I’m clearly not. I start singing. Partner is now starting to sweat. Ok, let’s do the plank, he says in a last ditch attempt at salvaging a rapidly deteriorating situation. And now onto your backs for reverse bridge – his finale. ‘Touched for the very first time’ – I start humming. I can’t help myself, as I thrust my hips towards the beautiful vaulted ceiling.

Lady of the house looks at partner and I wearily, and as she pushes the dining room chairs safely back under the table she sighs, I’ll never feel quite the same about my sitting room ever again…

Number 1 friend and I are discussing her son 1 and my daughter 3″s parents’ evenings, that both took place last night. He’s actually doing really well, she said with complete amazement. Apparently he’s really bright, works hard and is a pleasure to teach. I can’t understand it, she said, shaking her head in disbelief.

Daughter 2 asked daughter 3 how parents’ evening had gone – brilliantly, she said, without a hint of irony. I butted in, erm what about the bit about you being constantly distracted, talking too much and that you could push yourself more, I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

Daughter 2 is incredulous that daughter 3 is allowed to drop all languages at GCSE, whilst her school won’t allow it. I’m even more dyslexic in French, she moans.

She asks me to read the blog to her. No, I say, you read it to me, it’s good for you. She reads a couple of sentences and that is enough. My artistic integrity is compromised, subtleties are lost, words are left out. I can’t bear it any longer. Pass it over here, I say.

I recount the incident, guiltily, to number 1 friend, who was in complete sympathy. I do the same, she said, it just becomes unbearable listening to them. We look at each other and laugh. All things considered, I think our kids are doing pretty well.

Yesterday, I went for lunch at big sister’s house. Our house is screaming for mercy under the sheer weight and amount of bodies we are squeezing into it at any one time (it’s lucky face time friends don’t take up any space, real friends are a logistical nightmare: can I have a real friend to sleepover please Mum. Yes dear, of course, if they don’t mind sleeping on your sister’s head). Conversely, big sister lives in a big house, situated on a gated road. I arrived at the gate in my old and very tired Previa, which is also screaming for mercy – cracked windscreen, only one of the sliding doors in operation (we carry a large screwdriver for situations when friends don’t know and we forget to tell them about the door), air con broken and oh the mess, so I don’t really blame the gate for not wanting to let me in. It’s on a slope. I put the handbrake on. The car slides back. Add it to the list! I have a problem – I need to get out of the car to access the intercom so that big sister can let me in. I sit and contemplate how refugees must feel at border crossings.

I ring big sister on my shiny new phone – the one thing that feels dependable right now. Big sister comes flying out of her driveway, brandishing the buzzer, looking rather harassed and wearing, what seemed to be strange attire for lunch. She apologises for her appearance: Pilates, maintenance man, shower, undressed, she gabbles. I wondered whether she is having an affair with the maintenance man.

I notice a large juicer on the granite top, filled with something green. Kale, she tells me proudly and lettuce, sweetened with lemon juice. But lemon juice isn’t sweet, I point out. Defensively, she whips out her January edition of Good Housekeeping, and apple, she points at the recipe victoriously. Oh god, is that massacred kermit frog concoction in that blender my lunch, I ask. No, she said, I had an accident – my glass broke, but I drank it anyway. She showed me the glass with a hole in the side. A Dartington crystal glass, she said incredulously. But, she continued, I knew that you or maintenance man would find me if I swallowed a piece. Maintenance man, I correct her, because I would have been stuck on the other side of the gate – the side that doesn’t drink smoothies from crystal glasses.

Have you ever looked at your loo brush and thought, omg, what does that loo brush say about my life?

Ditto the car. Pre-kids, I travelled in a friends’ car who had a toddler. I was horrified – how could she let things get like this? Perhaps she’s still got post-natal depression? Should I say something about just how bad it looks from my perspective?

Luckily I chose to keep schtum, because now I am so embarrassed about the interior of our car that I even apologise to daughters’ friends, who ordinarily wouldn’t be looking beyond the next selfie opportunity.

When we’re mid-school term and hardly have time to piss, I don’t seem to notice things such as dirty toilet brush holders. Similarly cobwebs and stained carpets are off my radar, because they just seem too huge to deal with. Surface cleaning only until the holidays.

However, the holidays come and I find the job of living in a house in the holidays with everyone else at home, a full time job. So… when do people clear cobwebs and buy new loo brushes? I have decided that the next house I go to I will examine the above, if only to reassure myself that everyone else is slowly sinking with me.

On those rare occasions that I have a millisecond to dream, usually in the toilet, I find myself sometimes wondering whether there will ever be a day in my life when I have got everything done. Not just the thing at the top of the list, but I mean everything. Then I wonder how empty it must feel to have done everything, as I reach for the loo roll and see that, yet again, no one has bothered to change it, despite notices above every loo roll holder in the house: Changing the toilet roll will not cause brain damage. Back to reality – there is always something, a million things, to do.

Every now and again, ever so occasionally, a smug feeling will come across me in a wave – a feeling that I have accomplished just enough that day so far to warrant feeling a teeny bit smug and then, wham! One damn buzz in my pocket and my feeling of smugness is crushed, as the never ending stream of school e mails continues on a pace.

Just like every other parent, by the time the kids have left for school, I’m frazzled and quite often wound up like an elastic band on a merry go round – ready to unravel and ping in a random direction at high speed, but with certainty. By the time I’ve done the dog walk I feel like I’ve been going for hours and by the time I flop down outside Waitrose with my free coffee (sorry Tunbridge Wells), I am gasping for that hit. So it was with much amusement that I listened to Psychologist friend in exactly the same state as myself, when she rocked up at Waitrose cafe yesterday, launching into a tirade about her number 3 son’s complete lack of co-operation and total melt down that morning. And the worst thing about it, she said, revving up for the finale, is that I bet his teacher is thinking: we’ll never ask her to come in and talk to the children about her job. If she can’t manage him, what hope is there for the rest of us mere amateurs.

I have decided that the fate of the whole day can be dictated by how my hair goes up in the morning. This morning it went badly: pony tail secured, lump of hair on top, undo, redo, pony tail too low, undo, redo. Time is running out, daughters need lunches and a tight war is erupting in the background. Re do, make do – something I’m always telling daughters not to do: don’t make do, aim high. I hit my elbow on the banister on my way downstairs and my tea slops onto the carpet. I growl. Tight war stops for a moment, as participants are momentarily distracted by mum’s bad hair day.

In the office, partner shows number 1 friend the blogo (blog logo) he has designed for me. But she looks too frazzled, she told him. She just doesn’t look like that. Partner remained silent, while I beamed. Partner and I get in the van to go and teach a taekwon-do class. His bum had hardly hit the seat when he said: she just doesn’t see you frazzled.

At the ladies taekwon-do class, post-class conversation inevitably turns to kids and specifically kids afternoon napping: those who do, those who don’t any more and the bitter ladies whose kids never did. Even on a 12 hour journey to France my two didn’t sleep, hassled mum says. Crikey, I think, I’ve taken my babies on laps of the Tescos car park at midnight in days gone by, but France seems a little extreme…

Dog 2 has eaten daughter 2’s £50 Clarks school shoes. She had only worn them for a term. The dogs had been quiet. Daughter 2 came in to partner and I, brandishing a photo on her phone: look at the dogs, don’t they look cute. I glanced at the photo, then back to the tv after a quick acknowledgement of their cuteness.

Once we discovered the chewed shoe, I ask to see the photo once again. I zoom in. Dog 2 clearly has the tassel of chewed shoe in his mouth. Cute my arse.

I try to convince her that the shoes are still wearable, as one shoe is entirely untouched. She’s having none of it. She face times her friend for support and she too is having none of it. I don’t stand a chance. You’ll have to go to Tescos mum, for some cheap shoes. With so many children with feet, Tescos was the only place I used to go, until daughter 4 developed a foot problem that the doctor said required a ‘proper shoe’. Since then, all the girls want ‘proper shoes’ .

Determined, I search the charity shops for a replacement that isn’t Tescos and success! A brand new pair of brogues from Jones in Oxfam and at £15 they are more expensive than Tescos. They are almost her size – bingo!

A week on I have spent a further £7.50 on special blister plasters, £5 on insoles and £6 on new tights. I am still falling into the trap of false economy.

Daughter 1 is on a health drive. Not borne out of any particular desire to have a New Years resolution, but merely based on the fact that she ate too many weetabix minis. She is trawling the Internet to find workouts and healthy recipes.

She is excited about a workout she has found and wants me to do it with her. The trainer is American and half naked, but we’re peering at her I phone and so all gratification is lost. He is unusually casual in his approach and misses out an exercise in round two, but it doesn’t seem to matter to him at all, he just carries on with his crazy assault of motivational crap. Keira, who is positioned behind him, is supposedly representing those who cannot quite cut it at the front with their t shirts off. Keira has stopped! He shouts, don’t worry if you have to stop! Then later on he exclaims: oh my god, even Keira is doing the full press ups now! Poor Keira, daughter 1 says and we spend the rest of the workout feeling sorry for Keira. By the end of the workout the trainer cannot control his excitement: you’ve completed the workout of professional athletes, he booms through the tiny speaker. Except for Keira, daughter one says, as she looks at me, sadly.

Daughter 2 isn’t impressed with daughter 1’s new exercise regime. You’re going to make yourself anorexic, she told her. Apparently, according to daughter 1, just bananas and oats mashed together and flattened into small pancakes on a piece of grease proof paper and cooked in the oven for ten minutes, are healthy. She has so far subjected us to two batches. Can’t you leave out the banana, daughter 4 asks her. I hate bananas. That would leave just oats, daughter 1 exclaims indignantly and they wouldn’t taste right! Daughter 2 is shaking her head, worried that we are all going to fade away.

I’ve booked a break for the Easter weekend. A tent?! Daughter 2 exclaimed, both to me and her FaceTime friend. I’m going to be in a tent while you’re in Spain. A tent?!, her friend repeated back, somewhat incredulously. Yes, I said, a little irritated by this double assault on my choice of holiday, it’s called glamping and we can take the dogs – as if either of these two pieces of information were going to reduce her and FaceTime friends horror.

Will there be wifi, asked daughter 1. No, it’s about relaxing and switching off, I tried to explain, beginning to wonder whether this was the best choice for a break with 4 tweenage and teenage girls, two dogs and partner.

We got to the book now part of the form. £595 for a tent! Partner exclaimed. We’ve got a tent in the shed! I sighed, but the trip advisor reviews say that the duvets are more comfortable than a five star hotel and there’s a proper toilet and lanterns, I reply somewhat weakly and they’ll let us take the dogs. He nodded and reluctantly clicked; priorities have changed.