flossing the cat

My partner excels at romantic gestures. This year he bought me a book, wrapped in the prettiest red paper, with the magical word ‘Love’ in the title.  I know what you’re thinking. Is it ‘Love in the Time of Cholera’ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez? Is it ‘Love’ by Toni Morrison? Well no, it isn’t either of these. Great works of literary fiction only claim to change your life; my partner has bigger ambitions. His gift was a self-help book that will change my life for real. A book called ‘How to Get A Job You’ll Love’.  Thanks, baby.  You see, for a long time now, I’ve been worrying that all this pissing about raising my kids is below me. I’ve longed for a book that will help me get off my fat, lazy, stay-at-home-mummy ass (covered as it is in oozing bedsores from sitting down reading stories to my kids) into the world of REAL work.       Even as I write, there are tears of gratitude welling up in my eyes. So moved am I by his gesture that I feel compe...

Normally I’m a fun-loving kind of gal. I like playing mummies and daddies. I like doing the matrimonial polka. I like taking a turn on the hobbyhorse.  I say normally, because there are three exceptions to this rule. These are a) during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy; b) during any episode of d&v but especially when it's that motherfucker Norovirus; c) when it’s cold. There is NO WAY I’m lifting up my petticoats and/or traditional cotton winceyette full-length long-sleeved nightdress* in this weather.   I like my body the way it is, thanks very much, not all blue and puffy and lifeless. As it happens, I think my partner feels the same way. Yesterday he bought a Dreamland luxury super-king-size heated mattress cover, which has five settings, including a super-fast pre-heat option, a dual control unit that allows each side of the bed to be set at different temperatures, an all-night timer, an elasticated skirt, and an extra foot warmth section. Which says it...

Today I have a dead ass. A bum so numb I might as well have a) scooped out a load of silicon gel from one of my baby daughter’s sodden nappies, blended it up with porridge, and PVA glue, and hairy chunks of Lego from under the sofa, and injected the whole bloody lot of it straight into my ass cleft, or b) tattoo’d a detailed Technicolor picture of a Stage 4 Bedsore on each of my ass cheeks with a spectacularly dirty needle and then waited for Life to mimic Art. That’s how fucked-up my bottom is. It’s all the fault of the school Christmas concert. Of course. I should have known something was up as soon as I saw one of the other mummies carrying a pair of PINK MATCHING CUSHIONS into the school hall a whole half an hour before the concert goddammit. But I was already misty-eyed at the thought of my little ones, singing their hearts out, solemnly saying their one line, looking for their mummy and their daddy in the audience, and I didn’t register. In fact, I didn’t really register unti...

Operator: Hello, emergency services operator. Which service do you require? Caller: Something’s happened. I just got home. You’ve got to send someone. You need to send someone quick as you bloody can. Please. For fucksakes ... please... Operator: Please calm down sir. What service do you require? What is the nature of your emergency? Caller: I got home. Something’s happened. I think… maybe … there’s a body in the house. Maybe an animal ... I can’t walk in the house I’m telling you …dunno wot the fuck it is. I’m on the phone in the hallway and I can’t walk in the house … it’s too much …there’s this stench from hell … it’s on my clothes on my skin in my mouth in my fuckin throat I can’t breathe … it’s coming at me like this wall of pure shit you’ve got to believe me … you can almost see it… Operator: You need to calm down sir. Caller: Its like being tied to a fucking corpse I’m telling you … I feel like I’m gonna black out … you've got to send someone, got to send someone. Oh, no, h...

Gosh darn it and bugger, dear readers! It seems I have quite forgotten to MAKE the children an Advent Calendar!!! In spite of weeks of trying to get myself into the Christmas spirit, including excessive and uncontrollable drooling over vintage baubles, clandestine hoarding of festive issues of 'Ideal Home' and 'Country Living' magazine, and to top it all, seeing troubling visions of Nigella just before I fall asleep every night (her face and head, but with the body of an Outdoor-Reared Organic Goose), I have once again failed to live up to expectations. Yes, FAILED. It was meant to be the perfect way to start the perfect Christmas. A homemade ‘eco’ advent calendar fashioned from recycled tin cans, decorated by the children as a wintry after-school activity, with naif squiggly dates crayoned on recycled cardboard discs. Just divine!!!! I imagined it sitting there - on the kitchen mantelpiece above the range - amidst sprigs of artfully arranged greenery (from Sunday af...

There seems to have been a terrible mistake. Someone has nominated me for The Versatile Blogger Award. (Older Mum) Versatile is not a word I associate with myself. Versatile is a word I associate with someone who is able to write a novel, become the youngest-ever managing director of a UK plc, sack a shed-load of people, and pleasure her husband AT THE SAME TIME AS giving birth. Another way of describing this kind of person might be Karren Brady*. Or smug c**t. By contrast, there are only two things I do really well. They are:   Swearing Making beans on toast However, as I am spectacularly needy and crave instant gratification, there is no way I’m turning this award down, so I must now follow the Versatile Blogger Award rules of acceptance. In other words, I must tell you seven things about myself.       (Here it is. A Design Classic, I think you’ll agree.) 1. I once challenged Dani Behr to a popularity contest. This humiliating episode happened at the ...

This week, I’ve been mostly thinking about F. R David, best known for the 1981 song 'Words'. This is not because I've developed a sexual interest in bouffant hairstyles or people who wear sunglasses indoors, but because the opening line of 'Words' - "Words don’t come easy to me" - whilst it doesn't rival the expressions of alienation found in, say, Kerouac - does describe the kind of week I've had.  Simply put, every day this week has brought with it a phrase or word that I have literally NEVER EVER heard before. In fact, there have been occasions when I’ve thought: I’ve probably just had a stroke and lost the capacity to understand language. Last Saturday, for instance, we took the kids to McDonalds.  (Before you keel over with horror, this is NOT my normal routine. Normally, I would, ahem, plate up a lovingly prepared lunch of artisan-baked breads and antipasti, obviously . ) But on  Saturday, we were busy, and I thought, heck, what’s wr...

Today, I danced in the kitchen in my pyjamas like the alcoholic housewife that I probably am.  At my feet lay a trodden banana; on the kitchen worktop, an obese fly barfing on a piece of toast; at my side, an overflowing bin smelling of, erm, what’s it called again, that most evocative of smells, oh yes, SHIT. But did I care? No I didn’t. I just danced and I danced and I fantasised. About crazy lovely stuff. And why was I dancing? Well, because I was listening to some tunes for a ‘Music Therapy’ blog I’ve been tagged to write by the awesomely prolific Motherventing and Older Single Mum . (Now, before I start, I want to point out that when I say ‘therapy’ I don’t mean “real” therapy, oh no, no, NO, I don’t need “real” therapy, not at all, I’m just tired, real tired, that’s all. Hey, just because I might have stopped dancing at one point, and started weeping for no apparent reason, and then, having caught sight of myself in the mirror, started punching myself in the thigh and screa...

I always wanted a cool nickname. As cool as The Fonz or Mr. October, or cute and sexy like, you know, Pussy Galore.   Well today the dream died. It happened whilst I was dropping the kids off at school. I was late as usual, and all psyched up to negotiate the school’s door security (double doors, outer lobby, entry buzzer concealed behind massive papier-mache dinosaur, more double doors, another lobby, you get the picture), when a woman I know suddenly said, “Look at you, Mrs Plod-Along. I love your style.” Mrs Plod-Along?  MRS.PLOD.ALONG? Deep breath. Chill out. I know that what she really meant was “I love your devil-may-care attitude towards lateness.” (How could she know that beneath my carefree exterior lies pain, paranoia, exhaustion and self-loathing?) But still! Mrs Plod-Along!  Are you sure? Don’t you mean Pussy Galore? Didn’t you see the way I emerged Bond-Girl-like from those puddles at the other end of the yard? For fucksakes. And so it is that ‘Mrs ...

I live within walking distance of my children’s school, a beautiful seven-minute stroll through a forest of ivy-clad oak trees, ferns, ladybirds, and a stream. But before you stab me in the face with your car keys, let me tell you what it’s really like. First, there’s the seven-minute thing. 'Seven minutes' invites complacency. If you’re told that a journey will take you seven minutes, you think, “Oh, I’ll be there in no time .” So you fuck about. Seven minutes is not like an hour, which you take seriously, which you allow time for. If you live within a seven-minute-walk of your children’s school, you either need to be a) Allyson Lewis, whose bestseller ‘The Seven Minute Difference’ shows you how to break your actions into seven-minute micro-actions (but who, sadly, looks like a reptile) or you need b) an Atomic Clock that loses less than one second every BILLION years and also shouts at you. Now I don’t have an Atomic Clock. I have a collection of time-keeping devices that a...

Today is the day before Bin Day. And although it’s only ten o clock in the morning, I am already in the grip of pre-Bin Day nerves. For those of you blessed with a normal psychological profile, pre-bin day nerves is a nasty condition characterised by irrational anxieties about bins - and particularly bin collection. Imagine you’re in the middle of some humdrum housewifely activity, like watching your tears dissolve in the washing-up suds, when a question pops into your head. The first question might be mischievous, even playful, like “What happens if I forget to take out the bins?” or “What happens if I take out the wrong bins?” But then it all gets a little crazy, as in, “If I can’t entirely close the lid of the black wheelie bin (and the bin therefore represents a dire infringement of council health and safety guidelines), what is the maximum gap permissible between the lid of the bin and the body of the bin before the bin-men refuse to take the bin?” And “Will I get an orange c...

I’m not accustomed to awards. In my experience, awards were what you got if, instead of lying on your bed fantasising about Simon Le Bon and/or dreaming up spectacular ways of killing yourself to punish your parents, you practised your viola for five hours every night. But now it seems I’ve won the Liebster Blog Award, courtesy of award-winning mummy blogger Older Mum , and the rules say I have to blog about it! I don’t know what the fuck a Leibster Blog Award is, but who cares! I’ve not been this happy since my mother reassured me that although she didn’t like me, she still loved me. Gee mom, thanks. That means a lot.  I do realise, of course, that awards are just a shallow motivational device to get people hooked on Capitalism (cue deafening applause from parents who send their kids to Steiner schools), because if they weren’t, my extraordinary record of underachievement, dysfunction and just plain making a hash of things, would have been recognised earlier.  After all, I...

I thought I was a good person. I buy The Big Issue. I have never amputated a daddy long legs. I don’t covet my neighbour’s husband (even when he is chopping logs and the sweat is pouring down his back … ahem…cough... ). So imagine my shock when Tracey McMillan’s Huffington Post column, “Why You’re Not Married’, informs me that the reason I’m still unmarried is because I am either a bitch, a slut, a liar, shallow, selfish, or not good enough! (Well Tracey, for your information, I’m definitely not shallow.) Of course, this isn’t the first time my domestic situation has been the focus of moral panic. In the early days, my poor long-suffering mother was so "sickened to the core" by my sordid shacking-up experiment that she refused to enter our house. Instead she would stay in the car outside (whilst my father came in to see us), weeping with a gusto not seen since the days of the prophet Jeremiah.  At some point, my father would take her a flask of coffee, and from our vantage ...

If there’s one thing at which I excel, it’s under-achievement. I can imagine few more humiliating things in life than a girls night out/pub quiz in the company of Karren Brady, Nicola Horlicks, or Christine f**king Lagarde.   Over-achievers suck. I mean, what’s so wrong with doing well at school, going to university, doing a post-graduate degree, getting a really exciting job that’s full of prospects, and then, you know, doing nothing for six years!   (And when I say nothing, I mean raising three kids, but not having a CAREER or ‘IT ALL’…) So anyway, I thought I’d create an alternative list of skills I don’t have, especially for my partner – who today told me I trade on my insecurities. And since feeling inadequate is obviously the cornerstone of my identity, my main social currency, I should probably rehearse this list aloud every morning, preferably in the mirror, just before the school run.     This would be put me in the correct frame of mind for tak...

This morning I took my daughter to a swimming lesson at the local leisure centre. As usual, my best friend H and I went to the spectator area to see our beautiful little six-year-old selkie-girls performing mushroom floats, swimming on their backs, and venturing into the Deep End for the first time. As usual, the vending machine with the “Out of Order” notice was working perfectly, and as usual, the other vending machine - the one without an “Out of Order” notice - was out of order. All was well with the world, until we saw him. Now I’m not saying that every lifeguard should look like an extra from Baywatch. In fact, there are very few ideas more revolting in life than the idea of getting one of The Hoff’s curly chest hairs stuck to your soft palate during a rescue. At the same time – and at the risk of sounding politically incorrect - I don’t expect a lifeguard to be both obese AND asleep. So, naturally, I was concerned. Any mother would be, and especially one with a diagnosed ...

Yesterday I had a crazy idea. The idea was quite simply this: to apply actual make-up before embarking on the school run. Unfortunately, the idea struck me at around 3.15pm, which is only five minutes before I need to leave the house. “You okay?” said my neighbour, at the school gates. “Bloody knackered,” I said, which is my stock answer to any question. My neighbour is extremely polite, because it was only later, whilst looking in the rear-view mirror, I realised that I looked like The Demented Wife of Pierrot The Clown. The day got worse on the journey to GroTesquo. I got honked on the A road by a suit in a Merc who was riding my ass even though I was driving at the 40mph speed limit. I gave him The Death Stare in the mirror, which didn’t work, in spite of the shocking state of my face. I think I will get a US-style sticker that says, “ I brake SUDDENLY for tailgaters.” Of course, it’s not only businessmen tw*ts that think it’s ok to break the law. I was having a glass of wine with...

There are few things I hate more in life than the school run. 1. The mindless tit-fest that is The Sun ‘newspaper.’ 2. People who don’t pick up their dog crap 3. Going to the dentist (don’t mind needles and pain - just don’t like being told how to brush my teeth, ‘in a circular motion’, when I’m 42) 4. The Royal Family. Don't get me started. The reason I hate the school run is because I AM LATE for every pick up, for every drop-off, for every appointment. I say this to other mothers and in a well-meaning gesture of sisterly solidarity they usually say something like, “So am I. It’s a nightmare!”  To which I should say: NO. YOU. ARE. NOT. Just to clarify. I am not lazy. I don’t oversleep. I don’t go to Tesco Express in my pyjamas. I have even been known to be up and dressed before 7am, even in November. In fact, the daily psychic meltdown doesn’t really begin until around 8.30am, when the only remaining tasks are a) find a bobble for the bale of sticky ha...