Bored

I'm bored.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not bored of social networking, I'm not bored of coffee with mates, hell I'm not even bored of gin. I'm bored of fricking Motherhood. It's tiring, it's constant and it's dull. The kids are arguing so much at the moment that I'm not even bothered about who did what and who looked at whom. It's not justice I'm interested in - it's peace and quiet. So I've been thinking about getting a job so I can have a little break. But it's not that easy.

The thing is, when you've not got family nearby, childcare don't come for free. And I'd need to earn a decent amount to pay for childcare. Which would probably cost me three times the amount that the provider normally charges because, I'm not even kidding, my kids are crazy bad ass.

My day reeks of groundhog: get woken early, fight them to get ready for school, drive around like a manic, read The Hungry Frigging Caterpillar, attempt to sort out their arguments, bribe the kids to sleep.

Now I've seen in magazines that some mums work, have successful careers, a great family life and are in total control. They look amazing, balance everything perfectly and still feel like going out and doing special love. Well I'll let you into a secret - THEY HAVE A NANNY. And I would kill for a nanny - even if she chain smoked, wore my clothes, stole loo roll and ran up a long distance phone bill.

My husband, bless him, has suggested that I get a night job stacking shelves at Aldi or Poundland. He didn't even mention John Lewis. But a night job would mean that the groundhog day as described would remain exactly the same except the part where I sleep would be replaced with me going out to work. (Note: I know a couple of fabulous mums who do this and are truely wonderful, far better creatures than I ever hope to be and are clearly far less selfish). So I always come up with reasons like who sorts the kids and what if they're ill, which my husband says are excuses but funny how the answer to these kind of questions is always ME.

However, as you might have guessed, my husband's not tolerating me at the moment. He has introduced something far more scarier than the special love. It is worthy of a Stephen King title so I shall call it The Talk.

The Talk is when he catches me unawares and starts quizzing me about what I'm doing in life, why I'm always moaning, when am I going to sort myself out and what the hell am I spending his money on. My husband is not interested in my crappy answers. He does not see that it is hard enough just being me. He cares not for my Twitter account or my blog.

The Talk comes when I least expect it. Like when I am sat drinking a coffee or watching Made In Chelsea and most of all when I'm sending a text. The Talk always starts the same way. His tone is softly softly as he says "So, have you been thinking about what you're doing?" At which point I feel a cold shiver down my back and realise there is no way to escape and believe me, I have tried but not even the special love can stop The Talk.

Oh my husband is good. He is very good. He can find faults and loopholes in everything I say. So much so that even the kids are thinking I should go back to work. And damn that survey that said children are not effected by a mother who works.

The Talk almost always ends in tears. I have been cross examined and objected to within an inch of my life. My tears are tears of gratitude that it is over. I am a victim of The Talk Syndrome which resembles Stockholm Syndrome in that I am in love with my captor and express positive feelings towards him that are so crazy in light of the trauma he has put me through. When he is not giving me The Talk, I mistake his other words as an act of kindness.

So here it is. This is what I'm looking for:
A part time job please. Three days a week that fits around school holidays and hours. That provides a nanny (free). Salary of £50k. Work uniform of Gucci provided. Occasional travel to the Bahamas and lunches at The Ivy with never ending supply of Grazia Magazine. Skills required: Twitter, sleep, coffee and watching reality shows.

I'm sure the offers will come flying in. But in the meantime, anyone know of a support group for victims of The Talk?



This blog is a mish mash of two old posts that were only read by three people, one of which was my mum.

Birthday Cake For Breakfast (The time I spent obeying my 3 year old's every word)

When I was little, I was a crazy kid. I always wanted to do bad ass stuff like climb on the roof to fly down like a chicken, empty all the liquids in the house into one jug for an 'experiment' and run around with the paddling pool in November. Top of my list was to eat a whole packet of Jaffa Cakes, naked. These days, I'm a boring fecker. I sit here sorting out paperwork, doing packed lunches, emptying the dryer, doing the washing up and hoping that one day I'll get to the bottom of the ironing pile.

So the other day I had the 'great' idea to spend some time doing whatever my 3 year old son wanted to do. Yep - those that know me will probably say that he does whatever he likes anyway, but this time I was gonna obey his every word. We would have a whole six hours doing whatever he chose to do. I was secretly hoping we'd sit naked watching crap telly but this is what happened:

"Party bag please." he said. "Let's eat it on top of the car." This was breakfast. Oh HELLO Malcolm from next door. Yes, we're sat on the car roof eating birthday cake in our pyjamas. "Let's do digging in the garden." So off we went, churning up mud and probably dog poo in the pouring rain.

We then walked the dog. We do this quite a lot, but not like this one. I have never played hide and seek with a sheep before. Nor have I taken off my shoes and rolled down a hill. We hopped, we skipped and I even attempted to run.

We got home. "I know, Mummy, let's make Christmas." Fortunately we've got a really rubbish collection of Christmas decorations - 5 bits of tinsel, 9 baubles and a crappy candle. Once they were out and placed & rearranged for half an hour, he discovered the bubble wrap in the cupboard under the stairs. You know, that junk cupboard with tins of foreign coins, keys that don't fit anywhere and dead batteries. "Let's squash the bubbles with our bumbums".

"Can we go on a bus to the park?" The park is two minutes from our house so we pretended to be on a bus. With me as the driver, looking like a tosser.

It was almost time to pick up the kids from school. Toddler was tired. "You choose now, Mum". But what should I choose? There were toxic lunch boxes to sort, a never ending pile of ironing and countless loads of washing up to be done.

Yet I had a better thought. I ate a whole packet of Jaffa Cakes. And I ate them naked.

Mothers I'd Like to Punch (MILPs)

Oh celebrity mums. How they like to shove their teeny tiny baby bumps in our faces. How they love to show off the post baby body twenty seconds after giving birth. How they adore writing their parenting manuals, designing the babywear collections and declaring they do it all with no help whatsobloodyever.
It would be so refreshing to see a celeb saying it AS IT REALLY IS. Who admits to relying on a nanny, who struggles with losing the extra weight, who just looks fecking KNACKERED.
The lovely @midwifetomum and I have put together the following list of MILPs:

KATONA
VAN OUTEN
KLASS
THORNTON
BECKHAM
PALTROW
PRICE
HOLDEN
WILLOUGHBY
LLOYD
GIGGS
CAREY
SPEARS

And to make love, not war - here are some MILFs:
STEFANI
RINGWALD
SYKES
CRUZ
AGUILERA

Please feel free to comment and add to the list.