Welcome Back to My Life

Which is as normal as ever.  (Laughs bitterly but wouldn't have it any other way. Probably).

Sorry I've been gone so long - I'm fine, I've just had loads and loads on, been very exhausted, had to have the MMR vaccine which, joy of joys, made my arm swell up like I'd been bitten by a venomous snake and made me feel awful.  The kind of awful where you have to sleep on the sofa because if you roll over in bed and the duvet touches your arm, you cry..... Needless to say I wasn't allowed the next instalment, with medical opinion being it would probably result in my arm dropping off (maybe), so that particular whole exercise of pain was somewhat pointless. And... well and I've just felt quite odd.  I don't mean like depressed or anything - far from it (I say as someone with an all too up close and personal relationship with depression) but just kind of 'weird'.  Like even more in a parallel universe that normal.  Like my life was/is so kind of surreal I couldn't find the energy to talk about it.  As someone who normally loves to share it this was quite odd and not very welcome.

But last night, again, my kids had me roaring with laughter and shaking my head at the same time and I thought 'get back in the ring girl, you gotta share this insanity!'.

So here is the last 17 or so hours in my life for your digestion:

So yesterday I broke up for Christmas (well I didn't really but today I've made the 'informed decision' not to attend what I'm supposed to attend today).  I'd been struggling with a migraine all day and was kindly dealt some prescription strength codeine by a fellow sufferer.

If I felt other worldly and somewhat messed up before I took the codeine....Well afterwards I was flying.  My eyes were kind of half shut and I kept forgetting what I saying half way through words.

And it was in this state I rocked up to collect my little darlings.

As we emerged from the school gates, me clutching a Darth Vader lunch box and screeching 'carry your own coat if you're not gonna wear it' I noticed that, bad timing or what, a funeral was taking place in the church right next door.   They were in fact, right at that moment, unloading the coffin.

Right on cue, eldest child (the train nut Aspergers one) stops and announces...


'Oh wow LOOK - one of those extraordinary vehicles they use to carry those special wardrobes they put dead people in'.

GROUND. SWALLOW ME NOW (and what's with the wardrobe analogy son??).

'It's called a hearse, a hearse, now COME ON' (dragging his curious brain away from scene of mourning).

Youngest child (lunatic, doesn't have Aspergers, does have obsession with dead things/death etc etc) pipes up...

 'WHAT!?  WHAT!? There is a REAL LIFE DEAD PERSON in there!? For like actual real life!? DEAD!!?'.

Me:  MOVE, NOW (drag children down street in an un-gentle manner).

Get home.  Answer a lot of questions about death and wardrobes.  Go to my friend's house for 'Sausage Wednesday' (this is what happens when it's Wednesday and we all have sausages).  Eat enough almond thins to kill a man.  She burns chips and desiccates sausages.  We laugh. Children describe food as gross (well my eldest describes it as 'somewhat over-done') and sate their nutritional needs with icecream and Haribo (well it's nearly Christmas - apparently).

Get home from friend's house.  On journey purchase a scratch card (I don't know why - blame the codeine giving me a feeling of being intensely blessed)  and win £5. Spend £4 of this on a 4 pack of Stella.

Truly believe I AM intensely blessed.

Get home and decide  that as it's the end of term (for me) and I've feeling jolly to crack open the Stella.

Find out that if codeine messes you up, codeine and Stella is a whole new planetary plane.

Have row with eldest about TV viewing.  I do not want to spend my evening watching 'The Great Trains of Europe' or indeed a documentary about the history of lawnmower development.

Youngest child announces I have to take chocolate cakes to school tomorrow for their party day, as my name is on a list somewhere, but whatever I do I mustn't put nuts in them or 'somebody will die' (this is ever since my kids joined the school after everyone else and the school forgot to inform me they have a serious nut allergy problem.....  I sent the younger one in with peanut butter sandwiches causing a mass panic and exclusion zone situation.  What can I say - you live and learn).

I get kids to bed (somehow) and end up making (non-nutty) Rocky Road whilst dancing round the kitchen to old-skool Prodigy wearing fluffy boots and flying on a codeine-Stella Christmas trip.

The cakes turn out surprisingly well.

Decide to take today off to recover from migraine (and, erm, Stella) as it will do me the power of good....

Wake up to find....

1. 5 year old asleep next to me having somehow entered my domain and stolen an entire King-size duvet

2. A 3 foot stuffed Iggle Piggle staring into my eyes.  If you've never experienced this - it will shit you right up.

3. A cat ON MY ARSE kneading it as if it's its furry cat mother's milky bosom (this says rather too much about the pillow like qualities of my arse, although I can assure you it is NOT furry).

4. A naked 8 year old, sat cross legged next to the bed, holding my charging i-phone and muttering sweet nothings to You Tube videos of freight trains leaving Crewe.

5. The crumbs of some Rocky Road all over the pillow.

Immediately regret deciding to take day off.

Somehow get everyone downstairs and whilst making lunch boxes, cutting up cake, putting on make up la la la etc etc etc, eldest child decides to build a frickin German Autobahn the ENTIRE WAY through the ground floor of my house.

This will be the house I need to drag a Christmas tree through as some point and, err, live in.

He solemnly declares that the road system absolutely 100% MUST still be there on Christmas Eve for Father Christmas to see.

I can assure 100% that is won't be but, for today, it lives.

You think I exaggerate?

Here it is sweeping across the lounge floor (see that bay window - that's where the sodding tree needs to be erected)....

And into the dining room (excuse the woodworm)......

And into the kitchen......

It then enters the bathroom but I don't think you need to see any more (or my dirty smalls all over the floor) to know what it looks like.  

These three pictures do quite a good job of summarising the dichotomy of my life.  The kind of chaos that comes from obsessive order.  Sigh.  

I then have to get the buggers out the house, during which youngest child drags his goddam coat, THROUGH the autobahn.    The obsessively ordered autobahn.

ARGGGGHHHH.

Eldest child can not physically leave house until it's all put back exactly as it was.

Youngest child can not physically leave house because he's been slam dunked into the shoe cupboard with a roar of primal 'you've just fucked up my motorway' rage.

I'm just standing outside trying not to beat my head off the wheelie bin by this point, shouting 'MOVE, JUST MOVE OUT OF THE FRONT DOOR, NOW, OR I WILL RUN AWAY AND LEAVE YOU ALL' (well not the last bit - don't want the neighbours to get false hope....).

Get to school wild eyed and wishing I was sat in rush hour traffic somewhere near Bristol.

Eldest child remembers it's Talent Show Day (I'm informed that in honour of Jesus's birth a number of children will be performing 'Gangman Style').

The one thing he hates more than choirs and church is talent shows.  Even though he will not even be watching the darn thing (he will be sat reading a book about trains I imagine) it sends him into a frenzied fit of anxiety.  I think the very thought of organised 'fun' is enough to finish him off.

I walk back from the school making a promise to buy all those who work with my children a bottle of wine for Christmas and to get back to blogging......

AND BREATHE ;-)

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