flossing the cat

I still haven't set up the voice mail system on my new smartphone. This troubles my husband, who fears I could Miss Out. "Somebody could be trying to get in touch with you", he says. "It could be important". The truth is that I hate anything to do with phones and/or leaving messages, but checking voice mail is the absolute pits. Checking voice mail is like opening up Pandora's Box, except that instead of sickness, death, turmoil, strife, jealousy, hatred, and famine, you just get guilt, guilt, and then, oh hello again, guilt. The voice mail on the landline is bad enough.  All week, the message icon has been flashing at me like The Eye of Sauron. "What have I done now? What? WHAT???" I scream. "WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME!" Actually I don't scream, I just talk. To scream at the answering machine would be deranged. Meanwhile, my mind runs through messages it might be harbouring. For example: Is my mother worried sick a...

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...