What am I like??!!

Someone asked me that very question a couple of days ago when I had sent her another invitation to join me as a friend on Facebook. She’s been my Facebook friend for months already.

So what am I like? I’ll tell you. I’m like a dog who’s been chasing its tail so long it’s in danger of disappearing up its own backside. No, I mean arse of course, dammit, the kids aren’t reading this, not that they haven’t heard the word before, ahem. I’ve been so stressed out and cross that I have let slip quite a few naughty words lately and I just hope they haven’t remembered too many of them. Sadly I happen to know that children learn by virtual osmosis and you only need to whisper a rude word in their general vicinity for them to store it away in their repertoire to be pulled out again sometime soon, usually in front of guests. Although I don’t recall ever saying the phrase in front of her, Poppet came out with something I swear rhymed with ‘clucking bell’ the other day when she was struggling to put some trousers on a Barbie.

Bugger. I am a baaaaad mummy.

It’s true. And I have recent proof. I let rip at another Mummy this morning, in front of both our children, when she politely asked me to move my enormous pushchair off the road so she could park closer to me and allow more room for cars behind her. She was only being nice. But my two were already thumping each other, I had books, crutches and bags galore to cart to school and it was raining as well so the poor woman got both barrels. I was spitting feathers (and expletives) all the way to the classroom, as we walked past all the other cars whose owners hadn’t given a toss and parked several yards behind the one in front. It’s just my luck to get the do-gooder up my bum first thing in the morning.

However, before you decide I am a total monster and switch off my Blog forever, I have to say that by the time I had delivered my payload and chatted with a dozen cute little 6 year olds, who love my strange accent, I had totally calmed down and felt awful about it. So I waited by her car to apologise, and watched her flinch as I approached her; I didn’t realise I was that frightening, I was welling up by the time I got my French in order to say I was sorry. Anyway, she was very nice about and we’re all friends again. After all, there’s a still a week to go with the big buggy and I have to live here a few more months after that so I don’t really need a reputation as a ball-basher at the moment.

Anyway, I am going to spend my first kid-free morning of the week (I kept Pickle off the first few days to let the cough subside, needless to say I needed a crowbar to get him out the door this morning…) calmly dreaming up some gentler alternatives to my favourite swear-words. I like ‘clucking bell’ and Rose has found ‘molluscs’ a handy substitute for one of the ‘b’ words when you drop something on your toe. I just need something starting with ‘sh’ and several others beginning with ‘b’, although I fear it may already be too late where one of them is concerned. Poppet read me a lovely story about Goldilocks once and as she got to the part where they decided the porridge was too hot to eat straight away she said, ‘The three bears decided to go for a walk while the porridge cooled down, so they buggered off into the forest.’ !!!!!

Oh dear. I have corrupted them. What am I like?