Ever thought just how alike your Toddler and Husband are?

1. If you disagree with them, they both restate their point louder and louder until you do agree.

2. They both snore, hog the duvet and drool on your pillow

3. They both need to shit when you are in the bath.

4. They both throw tantrums when something doesn't go their way.

5.  They're both hideously possessive over the TV remote

6. And grossly territorial over the sofa

7.  Neither will listen to a single word you say.

8. Both will turn their nose up at your cooking

9. Both will tantrum if you don't offer to help them.

10. Both will tantrum if you do offer to help them.

11. If you do help, I can guarantee both will tell you you're doing it all wrong.  Then tantrum.

12. Both will throw things across the room if they can't make/fix it.

13. Both whinge when they're taken shopping.

14. Neither can be relied upon to co-ordinate an outfit.

15. They both sulk, tremendously, if you dare point out they're wrong.

That's life.

Just some observations on life so far.....

* No matter what you order, whatever the person you're with orders will always look and smell nicer.

* Unless you order the same, then it will be disappointing and you'll wonder why you didn't order something else.

* Bacon butties are infinitely nicer when someone else makes it for you.

* If a door is push, you'll try and pull it.  If it's pull you'll try and push it.

* If there's a cubicle with no bogroll, that is the one you go in.  You won't realise until your knickers are round your ankles and your arse is on the seat.

*  You'll take a pregnancy test willing it to be negative.  When it's negative, you realise how much you wish it had been positive.

* Them shoes that are just a tiny bit too tight and pinch your toes, the ones you're sure will stretch given time.  They won't.  They'll hurt you.  Forever.

* Continually pressing snooze on your alarm clock won't get you any extra sleep, you'll just get pissed off.

* Don't bother running for the bus, you'll still miss it only you'll also look like a right pillock too.

* If you try and use up the shrapnel in your bag to save breaking into a note, don't bother.  It will take forever, everyone else in the queue will be thinking of increasingly creative ways to kill you and you'll be two pence short anyway.

* Fancy baking something?  There will be one ingredient you need yet don't have.

* Whichever queue you choose in the supermarket, no matter how short in comparison to others, will inevitably take the longest.

* When waiting for a bus, you'll see at least two on the other side go past before yours arrives.

* If you're early or on time for your doctors appointment, you'll end up waiting an hour.  If you're a minute late, you'll have missed your appointment.

* Have somewhere important to be?  You'll wake up with a zit.  A giant one.  We're talking volcanic.

* Wearing glasses in the rain renders you temporarily blind.

* Ditto when you open a hot oven wearing them.

* If you wear mascara and open a hot fan oven, it turns to glue and you spend a minute in blind panic wailing 'I can't open my eyes!'

* If you fart thinking it will be a silent one, it won't be.  It will be the loudest stinkiest fart known to the human race.  If you attempt to contain it to avoid the fart from hell....when you finally release it, it will be silent but deadly.  The SBD.

* If you really fancy cereal, The Spawn will have used up all the milk.

* Spreadable butter will never ever spread straight out of the fridge.

* Getting a daytime bath?  The postman will knock, with a parcel.

* Trying to get baby down for a nap?  Every neighbor will suddenly embark on DIY and the council will finally decide to mow every bit of land nearby.

* Having a shower?  Another member of the household will use the taps downstairs and you will lose all hot water in the shower.  Bastards.

*

Atchoo.

Today is one of those days, yes you know the ones, when your internal narrator randomly snaps ‘Fuck Off’ at everything and everyone. Constantly.

It’s an ‘I don’t have enough middle fingers kind of day’

The Toddler decided to wake me every two hours last night and then deigned 6am the start of the day complete with three tantrums and one epic prolonged screaming session. Git. He’d better be learning quantum physics or something equally impressive to warrant this abhorrant decline in sleep, even by his usual standards of lets face it, crappy sleep habits. The past week has seen me starring in my own personal film ‘sleepless in Lancashire’ Only problem is the film doesn’t appear to have an ending, mayhaps it should be called groundhog day instead.

Thing One’s ankle appears to be on the mend going by his incessant and prolific exertion he haplessly puts upon it. Thing Two who is now six, yes six! (don’t worry, needless to say I’ll dedicate an entry to her shortly to bore your pants off) and has her first wobbly tooth. I despise wobbly teeth. Just the thought of them makes me shudder with sheer repulsion a bit like public swimming pools and mouthfuls of verucas. When I was a child, the instant my tooth wobbled I attacked it with my nails, severing through the root and yanking the bloody thing out. We’re still hoping that the front tooth that fell out in it’s entirety when she was a toddler will grow back someday. She also appears to be coming down with a cold of some sorts with a horrific cough so I’m on tenterhooks with The Toddler as whenever he catches a cold we inevitably end up at the hospital for oxygen / nebuliser / steroids.

Oh and it’s raining. As in it won’t stop raining. The sky is a thick sludgy mass of grey that makes you want to drag your finger through it if only to write ‘cheer up’ upon it. Apparently it missed the memo that it’s still summer. Just.

At this rate we’ll never get that bastard trampoline up. Can you trampoline in the snow? We like snow.

There is naught so irritating as hearing The Husband snore whilst I’m awake. It’s odd how hearing the children snore makes my lips twitch upwards and my heart go squish yet the sound of The Husband snoring makes me want to make his heart go squish, with a mallet. I do love him, kind of, in a way.

I was tremendously brave at the weekend. Those who know me are aware of my crippling social anxiety, Despite being a net junkie for 17 years, being an active member of and indeed running many many groups getting to know a substantial amount of amazing people (and unfortunately many not so amazing, who are polluting the gene pool) I have only met, in person, until this weekend seven of them and I may or may not have perhaps been romantically involved with three of them (at different times, I’m not a total harlot, honest) People scare me. People I actually like, respect and value, down right bloody terrify me at least in part by my own personal banality and lack lustre in all aspects. However, this weekend I met the amazing Mrs Pickles & co. She assured me she wasn’t actually all that fabulous. She totally and irrevocably lied. Big time. She is simply enchanting and Master Pickles is so adorable he’s verging on being edible. Not that I’d ever eat a child. Well not raw anyway.

However, the morning wasn’t without it’s typical drama mainly consisting of a very naughty Dyson that played dead and an ancient decrepit hand held hoover that may have exploded copious amounts of crud all over the carpet mere minutes before our guests were due when The Husband helpfully opened it so I could empty it.Arse. Did The Husband help? Did he fuck. He instead decided to follow me around filming my cleavage and derriere whilst I tried to hoover a hall and a sitting room with a hand held (wannabe dust buster) cleaner.perve. This was following an hour of him being in a terribly vile mood full of tantrums, you know the kind, the ones that only grown men and children can throw.

And now, to ice the cake of sleep deprivation I appear to have caught Thing Two’s cold, only worse. Super. Spiffing. I know I taught her to share but this really does take the proverbial. Of course this is in conjunction with teetering on the edge of another M.E trough, staring down into the very mouth of it, and what a grim mouth it is.

There is a smithering of good news however and that is in the form of a laptop! Hoorah, yes I am back online. The very lovely Mr Pickles sold me his old laptop.

Thing One is having his special day with The Mothership who is back from Spain and The Toddler appears to be brutally assaulting Thing Two by the sounds of it. I say by the sounds of it because I’m hiding in the kitchen cooking tea leaving The Husband in charge of the cretins. Still it may or may not be an improvement on the thermonuclear farts The Toddler had been letting off in her face earlier, under a blanket. He gets his charm skills from his Father.Obviously. Still, makes a change from Thing One and Thing Two arguing over Videos (yes videos, we’re dreadfully old school), air and the colour of an orange.

Talking of farts, oh sorry ‘pumps!’ Whilst trying to settle Thing Two the other night I let one off (yes, us females do. Just because not all females admit it doesn’t mean we can’t fart with the best of them.) I gasped in faux astonishment and declared to my newly six year old 'one of your dollies just pumped!’ Thing Two has no flies on her as she stared at me in a state of utter derision and informed me slowly and carefully as one does when talking to someone of immense stupidity ‘Dolls are fake. They can’t fart. They can’t do anything. Because they’re fake.’ Oh dear, that’s me told then. Should have blamed the cat.

Is it bedtime yet? The Toddler is refusing his tea, or should I say refusal is in part for he is actually quite adamant that he would rather like his chocolate mousse, NOW. The Dog is doing the Dharmer on the living room floor and I’m doing a rather remarkable impression of Rudolph what with my sore red nose, the same nose that has been in danger of being punched all week due to allergy related runniness and my itchy throat that is making the thought of a serrated bread knife rather tempting, not to slit my throat (sorry to disappoint) but to scratch the buggering thing.

The Husband very kindly ‘let’ me have a bath this morning to unwind (obviously collecting brownie points for a blowie) yet the hot tap kept running cold and there was an incessant shrill alarm going off, constantly. The entire time. Oh fabulous.

And to top it all off, the crux of existential problems, I now have to dye my hair a ‘normal’ colour. Why? Because it would appear that every troll-munter and her mates in the school playground in all their chavvy pj clad glory have suddenly developed a penchant for purple/pink/blue hair etc. How very ruddy inconsiderate of them. Whatever next? Stripy thigh highs and bother boots?

So alas feeding time at the zoo and thus my respite computer time is over as I contemplate another sleepless night and if I could get away with vodka on my ricicles in morning, purely medicinal of course.

I shall leave you with the conundrum that has been plaguing my wilting mind of late when listening to the arguments between The Husband and The Spawn; how come The Husband is so impressively good at acting like a child yet absolutely incapable of attempting to understand how a child thinks?

Treading water

Sometimes I can't decide if I'm waving or drowning.

It's like a drowning.

Sometimes it's the slow motion muffled drowning where you're under water and have no hope of surfacing yet you still fight it, you still struggle and everything is blurred and dissolving before your eyes.  A mesmorising distortion. You hold your breath and wait to sink, eyes wide shut.  It looks almost pretty yet essentially hopeless. A morbid fluid dance that ends only in darkness.  Thoughts strangle and twine around you, memories swell then fracture and you're locked in silence. A deadly serenity.  Then you just stop fighting it and you let it take you.  Seconds feel like years and there is a beauty in giving up.  It's no longer defeat it's a dark, isolated tranquillity. It doesn't hurt down here. You can't see me.

The strange days have come and you're gone

Other times it takes you unaware, like the sudden grabbing motion of a hand locking around your ankle, dragging you violently and quickly underneath the water without warning.  There's no dance, no drawn out descent it's a rapid inarticulate spiralling as vehement as it is vicious. The clarity is brutal and alarming, jagged sharp details. You're not ready.  You don't want this. You can't stop this. You're drowning and thrashing yet people smile and wave back.  I'm not waving.  I'm drowning.


Either way, you can't control this.


She's lost control again.