Nesting, wedding and a splash of realism

Do not sit still for long. You could be in danger of being thrown away by me. Yes, as the title suggests I am in the midst of an intense nesting phase and as such I am going full steam ahead with stripping back our belongings from 'over full' to merely 'plentiful'. I spent two days throwing out and sorting out toys from the playroom and managed to fill the back of my people carrier car with items for the school fair this weekend. The only trouble with that is I am now worried about how to keep ted from demanding to buy back all the toys I donated, however the now very useable playroom is worth all the screaming and tantruming he may attempt. The makeover I achieved was nothing short of a miracle. Although my mother did walk in and exclaim 'and this is AFTER the big clear out??'. It is water off a duck's back to me - the 'new look' play room has given me hours of pleasure since its reinvention and I am feeling very proud of myself. But my nesting did not end there - I have hoovered lampshades, ceilings, skirting boards, books and shelves. I have emptied all my 'thin' (I use the term loosely as a sister pointed out that a size 12-14 is not 'thin' but it is all relative and to me that is skinny) clothes out of the wardrobe and vacuum packed them away under the bed so that my wardrobe is now very useable and only holds fat, very stretchy or maternity clothes. This has also bought me much joy, as now every day is a dressing dream and not the usual daily drama of me throwing around piles of clothes asking thin air where a particular top/dress/leggings/jeans are. It has also made way for the crib in my very small bedroom so I can now stare longingly at it waiting for it to have an occupant and fold baby clothes and put them inside - in effect I am playing dollies - which is my favourite part. All the preparation of tiny clothes and nappies and imagining the being that will soon arrive. (Before the screaming horror who sucks me sore actually arrives.) My nesting did not even stop at posession organisation. I have also been manically organising the children's birthday parties - the first is on the 1st of September and the last on the 3rd November but they are now all fully booked and organised. I would already like to send out invites for the November party but I appreciate not everyone is in my intense state of madness and organisation so I have restrained myself so far.

Part of the mad cleaning was not only nesting but the knowledge that my mother was poppinq in for her once-every-two-years flying visit. K and I are very keen to keep her visits to a minimum as we quite like the chance to 'hide' up here in London. We are generally regarded as the poor relation when it comes to the sisters and mum has frequently said 'I don't now how you live like that' in regards to the state of the house, size of the house and number of children and toys we fit in to it so naturally, we are keen to keep ourselves to ourselves. In fact all of my family insist on keeping their shoes on when they visit despite my natural hatred for wearing 'outdoor' shoes 'indoors'(it is my dog poo obsession combined with the trails of piss on the pavement as well as all the spit - I can't help but think of it being transferred to my carpet and no amount of hoovering will take that away) which I am sure is their way of inferring that they believe the bottom of their shoes to be cleaner than my carpet/floors. Anyway, I digress. Mother visited. She came on Saturday morning so that I could whisk her away to the country for the weekend. At approximately 9.50am she arrived and at approximately 10.05 we departed so it really was a flying visit. She didn't even have time to go upstairs and notice my cobweb free landing ceiling but it still brings me comfort every time i glance upwards as i gasp for air at the top of the stair, so my time and effort has not gone entirely to waste.

So on to the wedding. I always get slightly stressy about leaving the children. Not because I am obsessed with them or heavily in to attachment parenting or anything it is just that i have become deeply institutionalised and it is extremely out of the ordinary and therefore gives me the heeby jeebies when it does happen. Plus an overnight desertion is exceedingly rare and due to my institutionalisation I feel intense guilt and assume I will be killed in a car crash just to teach me a lesson. I went anyway. I was exceptionally tired and reasoned that I might not die in the car crash, just be wounded enough to have a nice rest in hospital, and mum was going to fill up my tank with diesel so I did it for the free food, diesel and a potential rest. And obviously to witness the newly married sister's best friend say 'I do'. The venue was near Bath which meant a rather long car journey with mother - especially as we had to drive past the turning for Ascot and it turns out there were an awful lot of people who wanted to enjoy the racing so I was very desperate to get out of the car, go for a wee and talk to other people by the time we arrived at the venue 3 hours after we left home. After we had checked in and got to our room there was only twenty minutes to get ready, devour a ham sandwich from room service and head out to the open air ceremony - I would normally require an awful lot longer to make me look sufficiently presentable but I was more worried about eating all of the sandwich and accompanying crisps than I was in perfecting my hair and make up.

When booking a wedding a year in advance it is impossible to know that the summer would fail to appear. In fact I have renamed this new season we are currently enjoying - I refer to it as Sprautumn. It is like the brunch of the seasons and it takes the pressure off in terms of expectation. Not referring to it as summer any longer means that any sun whatsoever is a bonus and wind, rain and cloud are now 'the norm'. Anyway, this wedding was based outside and unfortunately Sprautumn was on typical form and the clouds were cirling rather menacingly overhead. Luckily the rain stayed away for the actual ceremony and as one would expect of a big fancy wedding, the bride looked fabulous and fancy, the bridesmaids looked gorgeous (especially my annoyingly attractive newly married sister who needs to get fat, old and ugly soon or I shall have to start helping her on her way with Machiavellian deviousness) and everything was beautiful as well as beautifully organised. Unfortunately, I looked like a Weeble. Miserably I had put all my thoughts and efforts in to making sure we got there, the children were ok, the house looked ok, K was ok and i had eaten etc etc I had devoted almost no time to my appearance. I had briefly tried on a large red spotty non-maternity dress the night before to see if it fitted (it was embarrassingly too big even 8 months pregnant which makes me wonder exactly how big I was pre-weight watchers and in the midst of my reverse body dysmorphia affliction) and although Ted gasped, said 'wow' and asked if I was a Princess, I couldn't help but feel I looked like Mrs Blobby, complete with safety pins pulling it in at the sides, so I opted instead for a Topshop maternity dress I couldn't be arsed to try on in advance. It turns out that when the bump grows and the fat increases the dress length shortens. I wish I had known this before we got all the way to Bath. At this stage I am all bump, boobs and fat and it would have been a lot more flattering if I had worn a full length dress to try and counteract the Weeble effect. Standing next to the ridiculously tiny, primped and preened newly married sister in a flowing and elegant bridesmaid dress I looked two foot tall and five feet wide. It is a lesson learnt. If I am ever heavily pregnant and at a wedding in the future I shall remember to go floor length to at least give me some height.

Anyway, my weeble appearance aside, the ceremony was lovely, the champagne was flowing, and the venue was stunning - I was even mentioned in one of the speeches - that is the third wedding in a row now, although technically I was doing the speech last time so that is cheating. The food was delicious and very welcome as mother had inhaled far too much champagne and not enough food (so far that day she had consumed a few bananas). Miserably there wasn't enough to sober her up completely which meant that she was far too vocal during the speeches (to me, not heckling the speakers obviously) and at one point it got so annoying I did threaten to punch her in the face if she didn't shut the fuck up (I think I may have shocked the Woman to her left but it really had got to an exceedingly annoying level). True to form, by the time it had got to the dancing section of the day mum and I were flagging and although the band were fantastically good the heavens had been emptying themselves of all the water in the world for quite a while and we no longer had the energy to even smile at the merry revellers so we retired to our room and left the cool kids to it. I was muchos excitedos about getting back to the room because it had the most exciting bathroom ever - it was huge, there were two baths side by side and (drum roll) a tv to watch whilst in one of the two baths. I know!! Since the children I have lived a remarkably sheltered and un-luxurious lifestyle and this was my first tv-in-the-bathroom experience. Very annoyingly, as I got in to the bath all television programmes ended and I was reduced to flicking through the channels watching adverts for ages until Love Actually started and i got to watch a miserably small amount before i had to get out due to boredom and wrinkly skin. Still, it is something to tick off the bucket list. By the time I emerged mum had fallen asleep and my clever phone had finally found some signal and I was able to text K and check on the children and email pics to my Kent Sister who was eagerly awaiting news (she has recently set up an events organising company so there was a professional as well as personal interest). The very best part of staying overnight at a posh hotel is the nice sheets, freebies and breakfast. I knew the breakfast would be good and I was keen to clean up on the buffet (i managed toast, two pastries, full english, two glasses of freshly squeezed orange juice and three cups of tea - I feel I did myself proud). I was so full I didn't get hungry again until about 4pm. The great freebies also provided me with gifts for all the family upon my return. G was particularly keen on his hot chocolate sachet although I have to say I felt K was a tad underwhelmed with his cafetiere coffee sachets. There is simply no pleasing some people.

The more weddings I attend the more I think it really is time for an update of the wedding vows. I love the way we attend each and every wedding acting as if we all truly believe that marriage is for life. I don't want to upset anyone but, people get divorced. Why don't we stop acting as if this unpleasant part of life doesn't exist and give the wedding vows a radical overhaul. I for one would have been very happy to sign up for something that was more along the lines of, 'I fully intend to give this marriage my absolutely best shot and not give up as soon as it gets tricky; I will love him as much as i can for as long as I can but realise that love is not enough to weather every storm; at the moment I can't imagine my life without him and hope we get to grow old together, but if not I reserve the right to leave the marriage and try to split our assets fairly.' Now, isn't this a far more sensible way to start a life together? Also we can do away with the whole 'is there anyone here present who objects' bla bla bla - nothing exciting ever comes of this. I am quite convinced it was created by writers of plays, soaps and films to add drama to weddings but it serves no relevance to 'real' weddings. It hasn't stopped all sham weddings and bigamists from 'getting away with it' and as defences go it is pretty lame. I must assure you that it was not this particular wedding I attended that made me think about all of this - my overhaul plan has been brewing for a while. K and I have been to many weddings since ours over nine years ago and obviously we assume that every one is going to last, however already two have not and statistically there are more divorces to come so I just hate pretending that every single bride and groom really do end up growing old together. I was only 24 when I got married. At no point did I think that I would end up 60 years later staring at K over my cornflakes. It is too much to think about. I definitely did think that I would rather live with him than without and that he was the person I wanted to spend my foreseeable future with, but forever at 24 is a ridiculous concept - I would have been the perfect candidate for the 'best shot' vows. I admit it might ruin some of the romance of a wedding but pretty flowers and dresses will still be in abundance to make the whole experience feel ethereal. If I get married again I will write my own vows and hopefully start a new trend of realism.

So, other than the nesting, wedding and marriage overhaul excitement I have little else to report. It has taken me nearly a week to get you this far. I am so fed up of being exhausted it is boring. Other than bursts of energy for my nesting madness I am doing exceptionally little and tend to be in bed by 7.30 most nights. I even bought grated cheese in a bag rather than waste my time and energy grating. And today I missed sports day. I sent K in my place naturally, but it did feel wrong to miss both of them running, jumping, pulling, catching and throwing. Unfortunately the unseasonal Sprautumn heat did not help either of them to enjoy the experience and as g's was in the afternoon he was too tired and hot before he even began expending energy which meant that he basically managed to do the tug of war before bowing out somewhat ungracefully. Bea had the good fortune to have her event in the morning but was still very unimpressed when K mistook a drinks and biscuit break for the end and waved her goodbye, only for Bea to carry on her sports day without a spectator - mercifully there were some kind mothers on hand to comfort her. All in all it couldn't have been more different to last year's incredibly enjoyable and medal achieving day of glory. I asked G what it was in particular that he didn't like about this Sports day and he said 'the sports bit'. He has been looking forward to sports day since he started in Reception in September so I was a little shocked. Weather has a lot to answer for. Bloody Sprautumn.

Ooh look at that it is gone 8pm already. I must get to bed. This isn't particularly well written anyway but I don't have the energy to make it better. You will have to just make do until such time as my energy returns. I wouldn't hold your breath though. Good night Xxxx