Stay at home, Mum

Since my last post, I have to say that my life did a little shimmy to the left with a kick in the crotch followed by Ta-Dah with jazz hands. In other words, while it hasn’t been all fun and games, sometimes it takes a jolt to reconfigure priorities and to get some perspective.

I left my job of 4 years, to be a full time mother for a while. I did try the part time thing for a bit after maternity but for one reason or another it didn’t work out. I have to say its weird, but it’s nice. I’m still getting used to it.

Of course focusing on the kids is a pleasure. It’s nice to feel like I’m actually doing something good. For years I’ve been dumping my son one place or another while I jump into the rat race for the day and then pick him up for scraps of time each evening. It was necessary at the time but life changes and I’ve changed. I don’t think I could have been happy then without work in my life, and now working was interrupting my life.

So what’s next? I can’t say that I will never work full time again, but if I do it will be on my terms for my families benefit, not on some bosses terms for their families benefit.

Car trouble

Unless you can make a car soft and cuddly and wrap it in a ton of fluff, it will continue to feel foreign to me. I recently had to take the car in because it was squeaking like a constipated mouse.

“Hello there, what seems to be the problem?” says friendly mechanic man.
“Ah, well I have a squeak, well more of a screech coming from my car…”
Pause.
“Is it when you break?”
“It sounds like it should be when I brake, I mean it has that break kind of sound to it but actually it mainly happens when I’m NOT breaking… oh and my break light just came on, but that is, like, totally unrelated to the screech..”

I stopped suddenly feeling ever so slightly out of my depth.

Mechanic dude looks at me expressionless, “Ah…”

So I booked it in for a service and they said that it would flag up any problems. Of course they would also pay special attention to the ‘squeak’. In my mind I put on my demur little bonnet, tilted my head slightly and while doing an appropriate flutter of the eyelashes said “Why thank ye kindly sir. I’ll just take my ignorant little lady butt on home then while you fleece my bank account”

Later on they gave me a call and by this stage I was determined to show a little control, take charge of the situation and gosh darn it just get this sucker fixed already.

“Hello Mrs O, well in a nutshell your whatsit and dinglebong are fused together and you need to replace this flibberwocky and whatnot…”
He carried on and on while I was keeping the tone even and saying what I thought would be appropriate things like “yes” and “of course” and “uh huh, I thought as much”. I ended the call by telling him I was just going to go over what he had mentioned, check a few things and would let him know what to proceed with.

I sat for a couple of minutes processing everything, then picked up the phone and dialled..

“Babe, you’re going to have to call the mechanic – he spoke words to me but I don’t know what on earth he was saying…no, I can’t really tell you what he said – it was, um tyres and um, something was fused and the breaks I think… “

Well at least it’s fixed. It cost one million and eighty pounds and thirty two pence but in fairness it drives so nicely now…

The next morning I lost the car key. Doh!

The early bird catches the worm

“I am sorry to have to tell you that your son has done something awful again today. He put a worm on a girl’s hair. He also then sucked a worm….”

Oh man this just cracked me up!

After reading a tense email telling me in no uncertain terms to talk to my son about his disgusting behaviour, I promptly burst out laughing at the tone my son’s headmistress used in her email to me.

It was so comical! Petty, but comical!

Because as we all know, 10 year old boys are sweet, quiet, clean little darlings who should shudder at the mere thought of picking up a worm and certainly not chase girls around the playground.

Whatever next? Tree climbing? Mud pies? Simply shocking I tell you!

However I decided to at least reprimand him for the worm-in-mouth thing. That was a bit gross…
Although as my Mum pointed out, what do you expect when kids see shows like Survivor and ‘I’m a celebrity, get me out of here!’

It’s was a valid point. Still I wanted to at least be consistant and firmly mention that perhaps worm foolery on school grounds is not the best idea.

And then hubby came home and said
‘What’s this I hear about worms?’ in a big booming voice before they both collapsed in fits of laughter.

I gave up at this point and made supper.