Month: January 2016

Teeth are falling out of mouths in our house at a rate of one a day: daughters 3 and 4 both lost a tooth this week, as did dog 2 who is teething. Step son has been told he may have to lose a few and seemed genuinely surprised when the dentist told him the reason for this was sugar. Mine are all still in tact at time of writing this, but there is definitely something in the air. 

A year ago the tooth fairy stopped needing the teeth in our house for her fairy dust and now the loss of a tooth is just met with: ‘give us a pound please, mum’ and ‘shall I put it in the bin.’

Partner and I were truly shocking tooth fairies. Our record for leaving a tooth under a pillow was four nights – the tooth fairy was very busy that week too. 

Tooth fairy scenarios became very elaborate with daughter 4 and that piled on the pressure. Letters were written, requiring replies and once a walnut shell bath was left out, with water and a piece of cloth as a towel. 

I tried to stop being Father Christmas last year too. I thought I’d kill off two logistical birds with one stone. However, this was met with cries of mutiny, resulting in partner and I still creeping around the landing at 1 in the morning, eating mince pies, feeding the dogs carrots and drinking whisky. At least now though, we get proper thanks for our efforts – it used to kill me watching them open presents I’d sweated over choosing and buying and some bloke who doesn’t exist getting all the credit. 

I jump, confidently onto the scales for my final January weigh in. I’ve put on 2 kilos, I wail to partner, so loudly that the kids all come running in. Partner is laughing. I’m outraged – how can he be laughing. The scales have just torn my world apart. I’ve been denying myself bread and potatoes for four weeks. It must be the granola, I scream accusingly at daughter 1, who is lined up with her sisters at my bedroom door, eyeballing my naked misery. Or it could be the fact that dog 1’s paw was on the scales, partner is exploding with mirth.
‘Watch out boy she’ll chew you up’ the kids all chorus and then scarper.

I don’t know why you’re worried anyway, partner says, as only a man would, apparently big bums are still in for this year. Dog 1 is cocking his head to one side and has his worried face on. Be afraid, I thought to myself, be very afraid.

 

We are finally getting rid of January. It’s so drawn out with its 31 days, that it eeks out every last bit of spirit that’s in you. Perhaps soon we can at last move on from meals adorned with quinoa and daughter 1’s obsessive exercise regime, which has involved ever increasing amounts of burpees being performed loudly, late into the night.  ‘You’re gonna reach greatness!’ Mr Motivator has been telling her all month, ‘you are sweating beads of greatness!’

It occurs to me that in January’s dying hours, I should try out some of this language in my Taekwon-do classes, although I don’t think I could pull them off in quite the same way as he can. I can’t think of many people who can sidle up to a lady at the back of a class and get away with singing, ‘you’re a man eater,’ as she performs her jumping lunges, but somehow he does. 

Looking for inspiration to get me through the first half of February to Valentine’s Day, where there’s finally an excuse for champagne, I look up the rest of the lyrics: 

The woman is wild

A she-cat tamed

By the purr of a Jaguar

Now you’re talking, I think. Let’s go make February rock! 

Daughter 3 is hoping, in the future, to pursue her dream of going to an American university on a football scholarship. But you don’t like flying, I say to her. Have you thought about that? 

Partner and I are talking about it. I hope that it’s not my fault that she doesn’t like flying, I tell him. (Because I am of the opinion that every plane I go on is going to fall out of the sky). I have been really careful to hide my fear from her, I continue. She says she doesn’t like the confined space. Partner looks at me. You don’t think that’s got something to do with that time you left her locked in the car went inside, cooked the dinner and only when you were serving it up did you notice she wasn’t there, he questions. Or that other time when you left her in the car and only realised she hadn’t come in when she poked her head through the cat flap. Or it could be that time…ok, ok, I say crossly. Isn’t it just the parents’ role to feel constantly guilty for psychologically scarring their kids for life, I say, in an attempt to vindicate myself, but they then have to find their own path through? Yes, he replies, but isn’t it also the parents’ job to help them through the obstacles and not to put them there in the first place. 

I had a bad feeling about this morning, when daughter 4 took off her shoes for the orthopedic consultant, only to reveal, in addition to an extra bone and dreadful pronation, two large holes in her tights, with her pink socks bursting through.

From this point it was difficult to concentrate on anything he was saying, but the upshot seemed to be further insoles, built up shoes and if all else fails, plaster.

We were ushered to the splint room, where I administered more apologies for holed tights. We need her shoes, the orthotics lady told us, you can drop them in later if you like. No, I thought, I don’t like. This is my fourth visit to the hospital in as many weeks and we don’t live next door. We’ll manage, I said stoically, throwing daughter 4 a ‘don’t argue’ look. In fact, her look was more one of surprise. How? Orthotics lady and daughter 4 chorused. We’ll sort it, I said, as I bundled a bewildered daughter 4, shoeless, out of the room.

Outside the hospital the remains of the American storm Snowzilla was raging. Why can’t our storms have cool names like that and not Frank and Gertrude. I googled it once and discovered that the name for H is my ex’s name. I read the description of criteria for naming a storm: To be given a name, a storm must ….have the potential to cause either medium or high impact. Yes, I thought to myself.

Back to the slight logistical problem of driving rain, high winds, no shoes and a walk to the car. Wait here, I tell daughter 4, I’ll bring the car to you. Except in my haste to battle Snowzilla, I forget to pay for the ticket. I get to the barrier, cars backing up behind me. It tells me my free time has expired. I need to pay at a machine. I get out the car to explain to the four cars behind. They back up for me. I am faced with a dilemma, I can’t leave the car park, but there are no free spaces to park and the ticket machine is outside of the car park. I spot a disabled space and grab it. The lady in the space next door gives me a look. I run past shouting through the howling wind: I’m having a bad day, as she pulls her disabled child out of the back seat – I feel bad.

I pay for my ticket, screech out of the disabled bay and the car park to rescue daughter 4. It is lucky she is not yet a teenager – standing in a packed hospital entrance lobby for ten minutes with holed tights and pink socks would have killed her. I block the ambulance entrance to piggyback her to the car.

On the way to school she is trying to work out the least embarrassing way to reach her trainers. They are on the second floor, she moans, and I will have to walk into a classroom full of people in my tights. Holed tights, I correct her, just to remind her that this morning isn’t going well because of her tights.

With daughter 4 safely piggybacked into school, I am able to reflect on the morning. It is only now that it dawns on me that I am back at the hospital on Friday to see that charming consultant about my shoulders and I could have safely delivered the shoes. I think I am just hard wired for a challenge.

Daughter 1 has stepped her healthy delights up a gear. She has found a recipe for granola bars on You Tube and led me to believe that they are healthy. She brought partner and I some of the mixture to try, as we sat and watched tv last night. It was delicious. Are you sure that’s healthy, I asked, rather surprised that it tasted so good. In my experience, anything that is really healthy tastes pretty awful, once you step back and see it for what it really is and not with rose tinted diet glasses on. I quite happily ate quinoa for weeks before our summer holiday last year, telling myself and everyone else how good it tasted. But once we hit Spain, I was eating double the amount of chorizo to make up for the assault of blandness my taste buds had endured.

They are healthy, daughter 1 replied assuredly, they’ve got almonds in. I asked for some more mixture. Partner wanted more too – it just tasted so good. I’d better make a second batch, she said, as she watched the gooey substance disappear into us at a rate of knots.

Daughter 1 went to bed. Don’t eat any granola bars mum, she said, as she disappeared upstairs, I’ve counted them, I know what you’re like. Partner went to bed. I was left alone downstairs. I found myself looking for the granola bars. She had hidden them in Tupperware, but I spotted them and they were now cut into neat little bars. There was one irregular shaped one, it was mine!

Daughter 1 comes down for breakfast. You know those granola bars mum…I was thinking about it and they aren’t really healthy at all, because of the honey and the brown sugar, the desiccated coconut and the golden syrup that’s in them.

I sigh. Back to the quinoa and rose tinted glasses.

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

……………………………………………………………….

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.