Coming round

Its eight thirty in the evening and what will you find me doing? Catching up on my emails and updating my Blog perhaps? Clearing away the evening meal and tidying the kitchen? Marching round the block on a nice energetic walk with the dog? Nope, I am falling asleep on the couch, while the dinner things fester on the table, the computer hums away to itself in the corner, nothing more than a very expensive clock and the dog sits hopefully by the back door with her lead in her mouth. Yes, having laughed like a drain at my Mum and Dad for taking a little kip once dinner is over, now it’s me settling down to unwind in front of Mastermind and slowly slipping into a coma. I’ll just rest my eyes for 2 minutes, thinks I; the next thing I know I’m jerking awake with a string of drool down my chin just in time to see the winner being announced. What’s that all about? Is old age creeping up on me? Surely not. It’s my brother who is about the hit 40 after all (tee hee!).

But, hey, I wouldn’t mind being my parents at the moment, seeing as how they have just been on a 2 week cruise to the Caribbean – rafting down the river in Jamaica, shopping in Cuba, rounding off in Barbados - nice. And yet here I am instead, trying to find a way to get Pickle to stop jumping on the sofa and teasing the dog, desperately searching for something else that Poppet will eat besides chicken nuggets, and trying to train the dog to stop gnawing the table legs and running around the house when she’s just been rolling in puddles in the forest.

Meanwhile the conspiracy theorist in me is convinced that I have become part of a clandestine scientific experiment to see how many virtual balls the average housewife can keep juggling in the air, including a girl with a broken leg and a boy with asthma, while other objects are thrown in from all angles. Let’s see how she copes with a broken down car in the middle open farmland, with a user manual in French and no clue what the error message on the dashboard means. Or how about we turn that traffic light orange as she goes past it and have the police pull her over for a ticking off? OK, now here’s an oven that fuses the whole house halfway through cooking a Sunday roast and remains out of action for the next 3 weeks. And show that dog where the food scraps are on the compost heap so she can vomit teabags all over the carpet.

The men in white coats have been having a field day with me. Will she drop the lot and reach for the bottle? Or perhaps go for a relaxing diversion that the whole family can share? Ah, yes, she’s going for a trip to the cinema, looking up the nearest one with a family film in English and driving for 40 minutes to get there. Buying the popcorn, settling down, preparing to forget all about the list of tasks back at the house. The film is starting… and it’s in French. Bugger. Those beastly scientists doctored the web site and sneaked in another curveball - that particular cinema never shows films in English! Arrgh.

Hand me the bottle someone. No, tell you what, just re-open that school, pronto. Who cares that the school runs are murder; the half term holiday is way too long.

But before I become a total moaning Minnie, Poppet has turned everything around today and wiped out all the stress with one simple act - she walked without her crutches! She limped into her classroom with them under her arm instead, much to the delight of her teacher, and her Mum. I am not sure what gave her the proverbial kick up the bum she so desperately needed. Maybe it was the threat of going back to the hospital if she didn’t get walking, or maybe it was the promise of a trip to Disney if she did. Either way, I am overjoyed to see such progress and I am bursting with pride.
They can chuck what they like at me now; I have my little girl back.