Tuesday 29 March 2011

Football and death.

I am not in a good mood. Firstly the football is on and it is showing on my television in my living room where I am currently residing on my sofa and two, I have staffing issues.

The manny was 'sick' yesterday. I have had to use inverted commas because he actually had a cold and took to his bed to recover. It wasn't exactly pneumonia (I only have serious illnesses as I take our one-up-manship competition on illness very seriously) with which he let me look after the children for two and a half days before stepping in to help. Anyway, it turns out the children are actually hard work and I found yesterday exhausting. Mercifully I had to leave early to help weigh people in at a wibblies meeting. I put Ted to bed at 6.30 just to get rid of him and get out of the sodding house. The manny had magically recovered upon my return which I could NEVER have predicted and today he shows no signs of illness whatsoever. He also appears to have partly gone on strike which is irksome in the extreme. I can't help liken it to the same feeling you get when you first have a cleaner - in the beginning you are so grateful that there is someone helping you out with the housework and making the house clean and tidy without you having to do it that you don't really care how they're going about it and are delighted to hand over the cash, but after a few weeks and then months you become ridiculously picky about what they have and haven't managed to do in the allotted (and crucially paid for) time and start muttering about what you could be spending the dosh on - the same is true for the K being a manny. He seems to pick and choose the housework he is prepared to do and then ignores the rest as if it isn't part of his job description. I think very soon I will sadly have to let him go. It's not just his lack of professionalism on the job, it is the financial implications too.

Still, there has been much 'blog' excitement today. (I still don't like the word which is why I have separated it from the rest of the sentence, not because I intend to invest the word with any irony.) I am on two websites! Thrillingos (eng: thrilling). I'm not sure it has done anything exciting in the real world but psychologically it feels like a move forward and crucially makes me feel less like I'm just writing to myself in the living room in front of the football. It was also interesting to read posts from other 'bloggers' (same rules). I am totally and utterly fascinated by who the hell is reading all these blogs. There are thousands of them. Clearly I understand why you are reading this - as my sister kindly pointed out there are only a few of you and 99% of that number are friends and family - but who, who, who, jolly well who, has time to read about how a stranger cleaned the loo that day and even worse and more unthinkable than that, how they played with their child?? YE GODS. The law of Jinx will now curse me obviously but it really is a mystery. The loo cleaner spent quite a few paragraphs explaining how good she was at her previous high-flying career. Surely the need to validate herself as a bona fide person in the 'real world' was negated by her top tips for loo cleaning in the here and now? I must stop before jinx catches up but I could go on and on and on. (Don't get me started on the woman, the playmobil and her daughter).

My news is that Ted has now developed a worrying addiction to Medised. This morning he grappled me for the bottle and then he started tapping it with the dispensing spoon repeatedly before becoming more insistent and fighting with the childproof cap. The screams when I took it off him and hid it will stay with me forever. He is also trying to get more and more spoonfuls before bed. At some point I will have to start a ten step programme, but only after his sleeping is greatly improved. However I have shown some parenting prowess today but finally taking him for his third set of jabs. I believe I am only a year behind on them and when he gets his 12 month jabs in four weeks I shall be a mere 6 months behind the official 'programme' of jabbing. I feel brownie points are owed. Ted was actually far braver than I had imagined, I tend to put off taking them for their jabs because I hate them rather than fear for their pain.  But it does feel somewhat barbaric holding them down so a stranger can pierce them with a needle three times and it makes me feel sick so I tend to find any excuse not to go. I did it with George too. That nurse was horrid and shouted at me. It's not like I don't feel bad, when George kept getting hideous coughs as a baby I was convinced my procrastination on injecting him had helped bring back whooping cough and George was going to be the first child to die from it in 50 years.

Although my obsession with illnesses is not limited to un-injected infants, I am usually convinced my entire family is heading for imminent demise. I think the usual parental concern has been exacerbated by my father's sudden death when I was 9 months pregnant with Bea. Ever since then I have assumed that death is just around the corner. It isn't helped by my love of American hospital drama - House and Grey's Anatomy have helped to convince me that I have skin cancer, alzheimers, breast cancer and MS (that's just the ones I'm telling you about, I'm also quite sure I have very complicated heart issues and the start of alopecia totalis which I keep to myself). K is going to have a heart attack if lung and throat cancer don't catch up with him first and if the children stay asleep too long then it's SIDS and/or Medised overdose where I imagine the court case and my subsequent imprisonment, breaking up of family etc etc. I do have more rational days though, where I worry less and realise we are far more likely to go in a house fire before the illnesses can finish us off. The other day I discovered that my hair straighteners had been on all night, every night, sandwiched between papers and magazines in the basket next to my bed, for weeks and potentially months. I was too frightened by my discovery to allow my brain to think back to when I last used them. Also the Alzheimers doesn't really allow it.

The football is still on. Regardless of the alternative entertainment I shall have to stop lest I become tempted to give you my top tips on using the Toilet Duck.

They think it's all over - it is now.
x

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