There Ain't No Cure for the Summertime Pinks.......

Ol' Red Eyes is back. Back on the screen. Now able once again to spend hours with her cyber life without having to fling up her arms and scream like Bela Lugosi. Yes, the rabid conjunctivitus is finally ebbing away. Just slightly pale pink albino bunny eyes now. The occasional dab of a hankie. Old prescription sun-glasses that slide off the face put away again until the next foolish notion. Or the next re-infection. Yes she's back. And this time, she's mascara-free. If the red swollen pus-dripping blistering blood-eyed gorgon didn't scare you, Madame SG without her lady-disguise will send you howling for mercy. Look away. Look away now or so help me you'll freeze-crack in sheer terror.

Really, the last non-family member to see me without my face is still being fed with a spoon. That was New Year's Day um..... 199something. Poor boy.

And then, we were setting off for a friend's last BBQ on English soil. This is my husband's most glamourous and gorgeous sexy female friend. I have a massive spot on the right of my nose and the left eye of Satan's grandmother. 'Oh don't worry what you look like. It's not a competition honey' he says. The stupidity of the male can still silence me. But not for very long. Just long enough for him to duck.

It wouldn't have been nearly so bad if on the way the pharmacist hadn't winced in disgust and slapped that antibiotic ointment in my leperous hand. She sneered at my self-healing efforts of salt water and honey and yoghurt and tea bags. OK the teabags weren't chamomile. Nettle and spearmint aren't as soothing as they could be but the wayward eyeball cream was ferocious. I felt the left hand side of my face swell like a beachball and started sobbing along to the ABBA CD in the car. It was supposed to be feel-good sing-a-long to get us in the mood for cheery black sausages under grey skies. But knowing me knowing you darling can't you hear me the winner takes it all ain't it sad.... It's all too true, too true and I can't keep it in! I make everyone wait when we arrive while I patch up the streaks in my face powder and balance the sun-glasses back on my snotty nose. I emerge from the back of the car like a star. Feel like a twat.

By the way it wasn't my car. That's been sheltering in the bosom of the garage for some time now. Pleading to the mechanics 'Don't send me back there! They're maniacs!' But we shall be reunited soon I hope. And I will promise to not wreck another gear box and clutch this year. I'm not sure how many more light-hearted yet begging phone calls to my mum I am allowed in this lifetime. Still we got a ride in Mr GPants' 'nice' car. Only grown-up rubbish in it. A rare treat. Then we can send the traumatised little courtesy Punto back to its family. Due to the skanky eyes it's had more rest than expected, albeit shivering in the rain under flaps of bubble wrap held on with bricks and a watering can. It's lack of action in effect set it up as a sitting duck. One shattered back windshield later...... That Thuglet has one hell of a golf swing, just needs to work on his aim.

On the subject of golf balls ..... Being drawn into this house of all things creepy, crawly and growly and clawy, I was glued to a programme last night about crocodilians. (Get me.) And they demonstrated their speed of attack through the water using a golf ball as the illustration. It's all in the rough skin. And the related dimples on a golf ball reduce the drag by a half in comparison to an equal sized smooth ball. My mind starts ticking..... Still haven't rigged up our stream-lining experiments. Must buy smooth balls for Thuglet Woods. Wonder how fast my arse could fly?

Anyway, for all my previous whingeing about having a proper 'summer holidays', I then found myself in quarantine after all, blindly unable to enjoy it. The agony and the ecstasy indeed. Driven into the ground. Me and the car. All that tidying effort and now look. Filth returns to taunt me. Still, found a few weeping moments to work on my little pap mach tree. If I can't bear the real outside sunlight (what little there was), and only peek through dirty windows at my flittle butterflies, I can shrink my mind to gazing at a 2' tree instead. And shrink. And think. Tree. Branch. Twig. Blip!

A couple of days later I find myself bullied into the Summer Slam - a 'fun' free family fling in the middle of a park I normally get to sit still in. I'm not really ready to be out. I seem to be barking rather that speaking. I don't understand why people have to have 'fun'. Or why we have to queue to have it. And be surrounded by other people's children having it. I want to go back to my self-controlled shrunken mind-womb. But on picking up my missing football star from his chum's that afternoon I am bolted into an air-punching back-flip. There I sit with a nice cup of tea amid rows of neatly stacked ironed and labelled school shirts. Ha haaah.... I think I can just pick up the scent of my missing mojo again. Alarm clocks, bus stops, lunch-boxes, PE kits...... All can float past us social pop-outs. Not for us non-tow-the-liners! Yes, I can definitely smell it. The warm familiar hum of smugness. It may not be a pleasant odour to anyone else, a bit like a boy and his own farts, but it's so very comforting to me. (Actually it may be related to not bundling the kids into the bath every Sunday night. Perhaps I'd better hose them down soon though. If only for the sake of the courtesy car.)

But it's not like they're avoiding water altogether. Gorilla boy has been checking his little tank of £12.99 birthday money Triops every 10 minutes since he set it up. Been well over a week now and naafink. However, outside in the abandoned blackened slime-store previously known as our paddling pool it is teeming with life. The mini biologists have been busy. I no longer have a single mixing bowl or measuring jug left in the kitchen but they have incubators and observation podules all set up. One even made it onto the kitchen counter when the Chief Supervising Ecologist was worried the torrential rain would overflow their outdoor laboratory. No nice short-lifed educational little pre-packed shrimp things then. Houseful of mosquito larvae instead. Thank you boys.

Despite my reservations I did have to scrawl a name into a couple of footbally things this week and was worried enough about Little Rock Godling being abandoned for 5 hours among actual humans. He'd wanted to join in with a special Goalkeeping Day where big bruv was already signed up for the usual Skills Course. Now I regularly deposit Gorilla Boy on muddy pitches all over the land with no real concern but his younger skinnier surreal scarecrow sib? What would nice people make of him? Daddy flung them both out of the car and skidded off as fast as he could before anyone could catch his eye. He came back early however to check out the experiment and discovered that all the kids on the goalkeeping gig were as bonkers and cloth-eared as our own dear little muppet. He said it was as if they had gathered together all the little retard boys that the other players had told to 'just go in goal'. So Little RG perfectly at home, bless him. No offense to goalkeepers. Or to retards. Or even to LRG. Obviously huge offense to everyone else but hey......

And while I was indisposed Mr GPants had to do the ice rink run too and here's more bad news: Minx says he's more embarrassing than me. How can this be? I practice and practice til I'm fit to drop - he just turns up once in a blue and it comes naturally. I dropped to my knees and asked her 'HOW? HOW????' 'Mum, he calls out "Jazz hands! Jazz hands darling!"' God, he's good.

So now I am back in the 'outside world'. Even done a supermarket cruise. With 3 sugar-magnet boys. Trial by packaging. It's funny what attracts children really. I don't usually even blink before refusing most aloft prize hopes. 'Do you want this Mummy?' from the smallest in a sweet tone made me look. Tena Lady Pants. Pants! I didn't even know they did pants. Well I never! I'm looking too long and thinking too much. Snap out of it! 'Oh.... no thank you darling. Not yet.' .....Wow, they do pants......

And next week the world and its offspring crank into uniformed drill once more. I'll be back in the fray myself - albeit more like paintball than actual war. Way more fun but still exhausting. And The X Factor is back on Saturday nights for the next 6 months. Here come the winds of change. Blow the whistle - over the top lads, over the top.

Summer! What happened? Where did it go? They've all gone up a shoe size and down a haircut size. And I don't seem to have anything to do with it. The sun comes up, the sun goes down. And they all get a bit more mouthy. And a bit less blond(e).


So, adding another layer, what have I learned this Summer Holiday?

Well..... Be careful what you wish for (again), pharmacists are the devil's agents, ABBA are all too deep, I am a crap driver, golf balls can be interesting, no school is well cool, goalkeepers are nature's outsiders, butterflies are life's breath, the house will very quickly return to its natural wild state and perhaps even eat me, ignoring the garden is ecologically rewarding, they do Tena Lady pants now, childhood really is as fleeting as all those nice older ladies in shops say, less really is more and my sunglasses still don't fit. Oh - and the pride in my one talent, being the Most Embarrassing Parent, has been squashed.

To sum up the way Life just keeps on balancing things out, I shall leave you with a profound discourse from 2 enlightened Wise Women (ie Me and Minx):

M I don't like feet.
MSG They are quite handy.
M But hands are not very feety.


And the leaves start to fall.......

I must get a life

I must not only get a life but keep me trap shut. This week's clutch control foot's day off is or was tomorrow - but of course when asked 'are you free tomorrow afternoon?' I say '..er...yes.' Now I've fluffed up all my feathers and am slumped like a fat vulture. All thundercloudy-faced. And only myself to blame - even more lemon-sucky.

I could have had a life tomorrow. That's a mind-fuck sentence for you. Mind-fuck lemon-suck.

But there was today afternoon. So I decided to mend things. And failed. Precious things. Easily broken pottery things I had made when I had a life! And now my last failure, which is kind of an outsider-possible-success (it really isn't but I just wanted to type in the word 'success' to see what it looked like ....looks like 'suck-cess' in my head) is now resting/balancing/drying/setting (whatever) in the spot where I want to continue to make my little pap mach tree - the thing that actually does make me happy (see - there is something). So, here I am on Mr G I-Work-From-Home-Now Pants' upstairs computer which is really clonky and irritating instead of doing the thing that makes me happy cos I've got to wait for something which didn't to be so past help I chuck it out. Well, by chuck it out I mean leave in a shoebox somewhere for 6 years. And I wonder why I have made such a mess of my life. Cloudy thinking. Thundercloudy clonky thinking. OK - thinking's the wrong word. Black thundercloudy clonky bloody anticlockwise antisocial lemon sucking then. In fact it's the lemon that's got tears in its eyes. THAT's how sour I am.

But there's always tomorrow morning. Maybe tomorrow morning I won't have a face like a smacked arse. I might not be waving a clenched fist at the world because it failed to invite me to it's party. And of course I may have even thought up that perfect idea for instant money-making - the one where I do fuck all with fuck all talent in fuck all time and earn fuckloads. It could just happen. Tomorrow.

Meanwhile I shall scour the sweetie tin for the last Quality Street (or Squalourty Sweet) even if it is the strawberry one, and count my blessings.


* * * * * * * * *


OK done that. Now have a strawberry-flavoured goop sucky face.


I know what I need. If you were to look at http://www.xtremefalconry.co.uk (dammit I'd hoped that would pop up as a different colour and be all accessible .....sigh...) you could peek at some pictures of most talontastic birds of prey. In particular you could feast your minces on a Bateleur Eagle called Talisman. She came to say hello to our gang in our 'new' hall yesterday - with some of her hard-ass chums. Now she's a feisty ol' gal who'd apparently been passed from pillar to post due to thundercloudy unsociable behaviour (that's my girl!) until the Xtremefalconry chaps got a hold of her. Bein' a venomous snake-eatin' predator an' all she is kinda supposed to be a tad aggresive like. But the chap yesterday explained how this type of boid sleeps nestled up against their mate (q unusual in bird of prey world) and how the male would start the day with a good 20 mins of so of grooming his woman - particularly round the back of her neck. Now this sends this puffed up scary bitch into a totally ecstatic trance. All her spikey-up feathers sleek down and she is immediately entranced. The chap showed us. There were about 20 women in that sports hall who all cooed and sighed at the same time.... 'I w a n t t h a t ......'

THAT's what this fearful red-eyed clown-haired old trout needs. Some sort of stupor-inducing tickling trick. Do me the world of good that would. Anyone know a good Bateleur Casanova?

We saw a fair few impressive feathers yesterday. A Peregrine Falcon, a Harris Hawk, a Kestrel, and 3 different owls. I LOVE owls. A 'baby' Asian something Owl, a Barn Owl (who clipped the top of me head as she swooped across the hall), and the most breathtaking European Eagle Owl. Just like in the Gruffalo. Little Rock Godling and I were totally enraptured. (Thuglet was.... well he's 4, Minx ducked out after the Barn Owl - not enough eye-liner or over-the-boot tights to hold her interest and Jack Russell Boy was too engrossed in being allowed into hallowed circle of bigger cousin and his Playstation at Nanny and Grandad's for an extra day to come - shame really as he would have been in creature-mad boy heaven...but he was in big cousin and small dog boy heaven instead.) And did you know that mouse wee glows in UV light? That's how clever little Kestrels spot'em. They have UV peepers and when the constant trickle of electic blue wee starts to puddle, they swoop on the halted dirty little suckers. Ha!

And every night the boy's 'stories' are library books about deep sea life, or reptiles or bug-eating plants (as well as blinkin' dinosaurs). And they want to KNOW all this detail stuff - how big, how old, what they eat, where, how..... and teeth in giant squid tentacles' suckers? Oh my boggling convulsions! Well, I'm learning loads. They're happy. And I've managed to hurl The Jolly Bloody Postman in the charity bag. God I hate that book. That alone makes me feel a bit slinkier-feathered. And to top ALL this - Minx has started to read A book! A real book. A novel. Yeeflippinhaw!!!

There now. All sleek and shiny again. Despite my fingers smelling of 3-day-old curry (another fabulous nay facksome leftovers dinner bonanza - ricotta and spinach pasta things left over from lunch with the least unappetizing bits of the above-mentioned curry). And you may have thought I didn't have a life! (What gave you that idea?) You've not lived unless you've had one of my dinners. Obviously you may not live if you do. But I can take it - constitution of a slut. I'm snake-snappin' screecher who just needs a little good lovin' now and then. The occasional goopy chocolate. And an upstairs computer where I can hide for almost 10 mins before small boys can find me.

Blessings indeed.


OK I still need to learn to button it when I'm asked if I'm doing anything tomorrow but I feel better already. What's another day out of my amazing life gonna cost? (Two pap mach branches and Nov 08 to Jan 09 scrapbook catch-up probably.)

Oh damnedy doo doos - I could've done that instead of sittin' here playin' tippety-tappety on the mind-suckin' 'puter.... Doh!

As some Scouse strummer once said - 'Life is what happens to you when you're busy sucking a lemon'. Or something like that.


Oh go ask a giant squid.

Social Psychologies Study Paper Grade 3: Insights into the Domestic Mind Case History No. 447 Middle-aged drudge, parent of four, delusions of humanity: Unedited scrawl in response to simple bloody question at end of Form WTF101b

Swings and roundabouts.    These are the images of taking life as it comes.    Thoughts of sunny skies and happy childish squeals cutting the breeze.    And a cracked jaw as the swing hits you in the fizz and the roundabout drags you around the concrete by your Bay City Rollers scarf.

There is something wrong with me.    I know.    I've read all those books.    'Hey you!  Turn that frown upside down!'    I know all that.    I do.    I know everything actually.    Ask Mr GPants and he'll tell you I respond to everything he says with  'I know.'    It doesn't mean a damn thing knowing stuff.    I know biscuits aren't an appropriate start to the day.    I know going to bed like a normal person is good for you.    I know the bin needs emptying.    I know noone's reading this crap.    You see  -  it doesn't make a peck of difference.    I will still persist in being a fuckwit because I always have and I simply always will.    And so is everybody else.    Oh yes you all are.    In our own little ways we are all agonizingly stupid.

We should just go with the flow.    I don't  'get'  why clever is good.    Stupid is comforting.    And repeating your mistakes  -  how fantastic.    We should celebrate this.    If I'm good at something then I want to do it again.    And I'm really good at fucking things up.    So I do it over and over,  and now I'm brilliant at it.    Just ask my family about dinner.    Or lunch.    Or anything that makes it onto a dirty plate in this house.    Always crap.    But there I am again a couple of hours later.    Incinerating something or dropping it down the sink and scraping it up again.......    You see  -  positive thoughts.    I'm not crap at cooking  -  I'm fabulous at being crap.

And,  my badness me,  I am really crap at keeping a clean house.    And I'm a really really crap parent.    AND I'm off the scale crap at wifey stuff.    And I take full pride in all this.    I know one shouldn't boast but .... I just can't help myself.    I am just THE crappest in the whole world and I just have to shout it from the highest hills.    I am the Doris Day of Crap.  

But lately,   I've let myself go.    Avert your eyes you sensitive types.    (Actually,  any sensitive types can simply fuck off  -  I hate sensitive types.)    I PROMISE this is the last time I mention clearing things out or hoovering ever again but I cleared out and hoovered and dettolled and Febreezed the ....CUPBOARD UNDER THE STAIRS.    Now THAT,  in my temporary madness,  I thought is  dedication to duty.    That,  I smiled,  is laying the ghost of being a bad housekeeper to rest.    THAT earns me enough Brownie points in Self-Worth Land to sashay into the sweetie tin with big-time pink tenty abandonment,   I declared.    THAT now means I can do MAH THANG!!!!  

I truly believed!

And then............ splinky plinky pellets of reality pierce my skull ........  do I have to keep this shit up forever?

Oh  -  I made the mistake of opening my eyes again after half a dozen thank-you-Nanny Quality Street hits.    The sugar held me aloft for only 4 minutes.    The scales fell from my spiralling eyes.    Behold  -  The Living Room.

The Living Room.    It's had small things in it.    While I was scooping out mouse weed-on rusted implements from the C-u-t-Stairs,   THEY were doing diabolical things in my had-already-been-attacked-with-squirty-and sucky-things lovely Living Room.    And now standing there with tears simmering,   I could hear them doing diabolical things upstairs in their bedroom.    Playing with their damned toys I bet!    I must stop this immediately!    I must DO something!    I run to the toilet to sit down.    The only seat I ever take during daylight hours.    I need to think.    THINK woman THINK!

E-bay?    Nah  -  noone would be that stupid to bid for them.      Limb removal?    Just make more mess.      Shouting and swearing?    Too........ everyday.      Run away?    Ohh  -   run away!    Nah  -  I'd have to de-lollipop the car seats anyway.      Lunch?    Yeah.........


There's always tomorrow  -  by that I mean in about 20 years time.

There's comfort in that wispy thought.    It crops up at odd little moments everyday.    In 20 years time I can have a nice house.    In 20 years time I can have a bath.     I could dare to ignore the washing machine for a whole day.    I might own a chip-free tea cup.    I might drink a hot cup of something.    I could go into ladies' shops.    I may remove the nail varnish on those last 2 toes.    I could listen to the whole of  Jethro Tull's Thick As A Brick  -  just 'cos I could!    I might watch the last couple of episodes of Ashes to Ashes.    I could sit on a real chair before 10.30 at night.    I may mend ......  things.    I might finish something I've.....


AAaaaarrrgghhh!    You started it!    No YOU did!    You fucker!    No YOU fucker!    It's MY dart!   I found it!    No I did!    You fucker twat!    No YOU fucker twat!........



Ahhhh the warm arms of ignoring the shit around me embrace me once more.    I don't know what came over me.    The very idea of trying to control my life,   my surroundings,   my thoughts!    I don't even know how these things got in.    I have no business having thoughts.    Thoughts are dangerous.    They lead to ideas and ideas are very bad indeed.    They make you do things.    Doing things is insanity.


Swings and roundabouts.


Just one thing  -  I never really did have a Bay City Rollers scarf  -  I'm not THAT fucking stupid.

      

I need to do this....

I need to write a new post......  for some unexplainable reason  -  I just do .......

......and I don't want it to be about birthdays or tidying the house  but......

                              oh god my life is so   DULL   DULL   DULL  !!!!!!!!


I have one more room and the cupboard under the stairs to attack and what I started last December  (was it?  -  all that bedroom rearranging seems so -  last December)  will be COMPLETE!!!!!

But guess what...    I have today to do this.    And ........   Thuglet is ill.

But not ill enough to sit nicely with delightful Swallows and Amazons on constant loop.

No no no.

Just ill enough to only beat 99% of the crap out of Rock Godling and leave my eardrums bleeding.

RG's now stomped off to the bedroom.    That's my last room to do!!!

G-E-E-E-ET   O-O-U-U-T!!!!!!!!


I want to achieve!!!!!


I can still hear little sobs.  

The big ones are mine.

Not sure if my sobbing is because I can't get to do this fabled  'getting the house straight'  thing  (actually I started this particular kick 3 years ago).

Or is it because this is what I've become.    An obsessive House Tidy-er.

But I'm SO CLOSE to having gone through every room and got rid of things and put other things away and HOOOOOOVERED.  

And  THEN  I can  'do something I want to do'  -  yes  -  ME!!!    I can update my scrapbooks  (this doesn't sound exciting I know but believe me  -  this is top notch entertainment in my brain),   or I could finish my decaying papier mache tree  -   ohgodohgodohgod just imagine!    Close to orgasm.    Or I could get my kids' books back up to scratch -  the ones where I write all the lovely funny things they've done and said.    Yes those.    I think Thuglet was born last time I opened them.    Yes I'm sure there are 4 books.    Or I could finish my Tutenkhamen cushion cover.    Or my Earth Goddess.    Or my quilt.    Or I could  ....   I could  .......  I could   WRITE MY BOOK  - the one I started about 8 or 9 years ago and got all excited about again 2 years ago  -  and again on my Bacton Gas Terminals holiday  -  OHHHH I COULD DO ALL THAT!!!!!!


I just need one more obstacle to put in the way of this longed-for achievement.    Postpone my fulfillment just a tidge.    Hold the happiness...




I need to write a new post ....... for some unexplicable reason........

  



 

Happy Birthday to you and you and you and you and you.........

Ssshhhhh............ There's more.    But we have ticked the boxes marked Birthdays in THIS house.    And sailed through another today via the phone.    There are still 4 more family ones and several others in August still to be 'done',   but our bins are through with envelopes,   sellotape and wiry twisty things for another year.    Well,   until the C word that is.    Ssshhhhhh  -  don't mention the C word!!!!!!

After the weekend I think I might even lower my eyebrows back to the factory settings.    Reposition shoulders half a dozen notches down.    And breathe out.

And obviously live off porridge for the next 6 weeks.    Although September is filling up.    It all starts again doesn't it?    The things that kind of stopped.    Start again.    Wrapped around the things that haven't stopped.    And then there's the things that just seem to burst into my life in September.    Things  -  dates on the calendar.    Written in June they seem so innocent.    Halfway through August they look menacing.  

And the things we restart....    Need confirming.    Some need more forms.    All need paying.    Need attention.  

NOT INTERESTED  -  until we are actually there.    But people who do,  need to know who,  and how many,  and when,  and they want to know NOW.    Bloody people.    I can't get my head round all this organising stuff.   It's August.    It's the Smokingun Birthday Season.    I'm not available.

And then I go and organise something too.    Sort of by accident.    Got asked to.    Said yes.    Stupid.

I now have a list of 169 people who want to come to something I'M  'organising'.    And another 8 asked today.    Me?    It's torture.    I have to make phone calls.    I don't like making phone calls.    I don't like all this 'Hello' stuff.  

      *  *  Don't you know where Hell is...

               Hell is in 'Hello'....  *   *    


Something like that.    I always loved that song.    Not sure I really was Born Under a Wandering Star.    Probably more like Under a Duvet Cover but it doesn't scan so well.

But anyway  -  next week.    Porridge and the Duvet.    Possibly a good title for my autobiography  (like THAT's going to be a finger-sizzler!)    Looking forward to not looking forward.    Dreaming of daydreaming.    Navel contemplation.    (Eugh.   Not mine.    Not after 4 kids.    Maybe one of theirs....    Maybe I'll contemplate something else.    Something without bits in...)

And eat cake.    We have lots of cake.    All chocolate.    Everyone has to have their own Birthday Cake don't they?    (Don't they?)    In the shape of a hamster  ('It looks like a mouse.'    'Is that a hedgehog?'    'What's with the giant rat?'    'It's a bloody Zhu-Zhu Pet hamster!    It's a hamster alright?'    'Why have you made a rodent cake?  In THIS house for gods' sake!'    'It's a cute Zhu-Zhu thing!  Like his thing!  And it's cute and have you got any matches?'    'No.'    'Shit.')

Or perhaps the next day,  in the shape of his name?    ('What's that black stuff you're scraping off the chisel?'   'Shut up and get the hammer I need to put the candles on.    Did you buy any matches?'   'No.'    'Shit.')

Yes we have lots of cake.

I have Cake and the Duvet.    A far better suggestion.    A perfect pairing.

That's what I should have organised.    Not a Home Ed rampage on a pleasant rural annual event.    I should have posted up for volunteers for a Cake-In.    A 24/7 crumb fest.   In your navel.    Summer holidays have finally begun!    Not Monday tho'.    Busy then.    And Tuesday.    Oh can't do Wednesday and have just agreed to do something else on Thursday..........  

Well.....  for a couple of hours next Friday anyway.    Come to my Summer Holiday Cake-In!    Join me Under the Duvet.    Be there or be sort of rodent-shaped.


Oh and can you bring some matches?