I am a terrible mother. My own mother was her own brand of Hitler so perhaps it passes down the lines. Whatever!
The little madam started playschool last week. A phasing-in process has begun and since then I've been nothing short of frantic. Heaven knows if I thought I had no time to myself before then this has got to be a new type of mental.
I now have a new-found respect for school-moms. How do they do it? Running up to school. Drop off. Back home. Patter around - me doing some housework, the privileged masses probably doing coffees at the local barrissta. Fetch from school. Do lunch. Nap time for midgets more housework for mama's then its supper, walkies for everyone and bed. No time for a manicure, not even a nanosecond for the now well-coveted solitary wee!
I go on like a looney and I've got only got a "wee-me" in playschool. Prep, Primary and High School still loom. Oh, God give me the energy. I have no books to cover.No uniforms to procure in multiples. No sports meetings to suffer under intense heat and the smell of cream sodas and sweat. I have no recitals to endure by pain of auditory failure. None of the above. And I'm already flagging. It's only week 2 for heaven's sake.
To all the mama's past, present and future - I salute thee. Kids, I am beginning to notice, are hard work the older they get. But yet you just slot in and get it done.
I am nurturing what is promising to be the mother of all colds. In summer no less! Not only am I drained most days but this bug seems to have sucked the few kilojoules I have left right out from under my left bum cheek. Let's hope it comes back for the other butt cheek before the end of the week. I have a pool party to attend and don't want to be left with a limp.
Til the morrow......
Toodles
PS. I would like to state for the record that I love my mother very, very, very, very much! She was strict, hard and brutal. She smacked my bum. She made me eat my peas (argh!). But she also wiped my tears, coddled me when I was ill and taught me the value of hard work and sunlight soap.
PPS. Was that kiss-arse enough for you, Mummy???
Today I have lost what feels like the thousandth dummy (pacifier) and thrown my millionth internal fanny-wobble.
How many times have I misplaced this rubberised item of sedation. A big crime in her majesty's eyes and punishable by torture in the King's - no chocolate for a month I hear him saying. Luckily there was an old, decaying, fuzz-covered specimen hiding away in amongst her socks.
I somedays just feel like a cosmic juggler. It's like I have these million chores on my mental chart and I go about daily saying tick tick tick to myself.
How on God's green earth am I meant to keep track of it all. Today went something like this
Get up
have a wee
get madam dressed for school
check school bag and pack school bag
get myself shampooed and clothed
slap on some war paint
make up bed
strip midgets bed
throw load of laundry in to wash
go to school
spend 2 hours there
go home
hang out laundry
fetch family
go to library
go to play place - the King wanted to try the coffee (!)
go home
bring in laundry
put madam down for a nap
remove refrigerated supper from fridge to have for supper
check mails
keep dogs quiet
think about tomorrows supper
madam awake
grab stuff to go swimming at friends
go to friends and have swim, chat, Cooley's, nice nice nice
go home
start supper
feed dogs
entertain madam
cook remainder of supper
serve supper
eat supper
clean up after supper
do dishes
entertain madam
bath madam
read to madam
make sure madam asleep, soundly enough to have an audible conversation
have a cuppa
catch some news, maybe a little telly
chat to the King
flop into inadvertent coma
And woe betide whomever asks me what I've been doing all day. Then I begin to imagine four-letter words that start with F.
Food, frog, fuzz, figs, the list goes on. Dirty minds!!!!!! Naughty, naughty, naughty!
Toodles
So holiday season seems to be over. The last of the schools are opening their doors this week and slogging starts in earnest. But all this got me thinking of our family holidays past. You know, when most hotels didn't come with a TV. Where the pool was communal and all the entertainment was free and non-motorised.
My maternal grandparents retired in the late eighties from the Iscor clogged skies of the Vaal Tiangle to a quaint caravan park on the Natal North Coast. They lived in a mobile home called a Plett - a big caravan with a permanent patio attached. This became MECCA to us grandchildren, cousin Jess aka Gecko, my sister and I in particular. Not only did we love this granny and grandpa more than Oros (the drink du jour of the tartrazine age) but Mtunzini ticked all the right boxes for us. Permanent summer. Swimming 10mths of the year. Only 10 rainy days every 12mths.
The sun rises at 4am in the summer. And we kids usually slept on the convertible sofas in the lounge. Old people are early risers and a vivid memory was my granny making us tea every morning, with 3 sugars nogal. We were only allowed 1 normally so already granny was a rebel and rule-breaker. "Don't tell your da, right!" in her cockney, Pomeranian accent with a wink and click of her false-teeth. God rest her soul.
We spent the entire summer in the pool. I remember my grandpa telling us off for being in the pool so much he said we were going to go mouldy. I remember all us girl grandchildren learnt to swim in the pool of that caravan park, each earning a big, shiny old R1 coin for our efforts and achievements. One Christmas we all got goggles as presents. We spent so much time under water that my grandpa called us La Loutre, or French for otters! By the end of the 4 week holiday our porcelain complexion resembled that of Bulgarian Gypsies complete with cozzie lines and freckled noses.
We only used to head back home at feeding time it seemed. I remember being eternally hungry. Of a persistent rumble in my tummy. Thinking back I can only surmise it was all the fresh air and exercise. My grandparents being WW2 escapees were never going to be up for any culinary awards but the spartan meals they did put out appealed to every fibre of the child in us. Bully beef sandwiches. Canned ham, home-made potato chips fried in a pot on the gas bottle out on the patio with minty peas.There was only Weetabix for breakfast. Which we ate with full-cream milk (my parents were of the powdered generation). Gallons of lemonade which my grandpa bought in the old glass 1lt Sparletta bottle and stored in a crate in the garage. Braai's. Always chicken. Even now that smell takes me back to 1990! And my granny's pineapple fluff pudding made with a tin of evaporated milk beaten by hand, a packet of jelly and a tin of crushed pineapple and lined with Marie biscuits!
We were old enough to look after ourselves, entertain ourselves. Living for the nights when they would burn the sugar cane and all the cane rats would come running through the caravan park with all the local ethnics running after them Good eating they reckoned and kids being kids we were always so puzzled why they were eating cane rate and we weren't!?!
Or daring each other to run up and touch the trunk of the avocado tree where the big python lived. Spending hours on the trampoline after lunch - 'cos we weren't allowed to swim but bouncing was healthier, erm? Playing pertanque with the park directors' kids when they were home from boarding school.
On rainy days we would play Bidgie. Gin rummy to mere commoners. We would play with my gran for real money and for real points. She was a wicked and ruthless teacher. There was no Mr-Nice-Guy with her. You learnt very quickly how much a ace was worth and not to hold onto your cards. You learnt to keep a straight face no matter how good a hand you had. And you learnt to "read" people. At the end of the game, after we had played from Ace though to King, granny would tally up the points, do a little doodle in her book and announce who owed what. We would all sit there with our velcro wallets and hand over our 5c or whatever silly figure it was. To this day we all reckon we actually owed her a hang of a lot more money but she going easy on us.
These holidays punctuated our year. We spent so much time at the coast we began to refer to ourselves as locals. We knew more about the ecology of Natal than of our native Free State. We cried on the "leaving days" and the first thing we did when we got home was count how many days til our next visit.
Those days are over. Granny and grandpa are long gone and the cousins have moved onto the cooler climes of Canada. We are older with children of our own and working on making our memories. I sometimes forget those times but just once in a while a smell or sound instantly transports me back to a moment from the past.
As the digital age encroaches I am planning a resistance. I think I may be alone in this. Her majesty will be dragged outside while there is still nature to enjoy. I will demand that her cousins come on join her so they can make the memories I have. I will seek out places without DSTV. Where fun is DIY
For now it's her majesty waking the birds and me whose less-inclined to remove myself from the linen but I am planning a whole lotta fun for the years to come. I hope you Will join me in this movement.
Til then....
Toodles
So 2011 is over and all and sundry are tooting to 2012. And with that everyone is contemplating and considering the prospects. As per normal you've got the usual suspects asking the introspective "what are your plans for 2012"?.
My answer : Survive it. Plain simple and completely honest.
Every New Years eve his majesty and I have our NYE boudoir conference (this is where all our good chats happen) and reflect on the last 365 days and how we fared.
Must say 2011 was a doozy. Again. Nothing gets easier it seems.
But it beats the year of THE NEW JOB (mine)
The year of HIS MAJESTY's KIDNEYS BEING BROKEN (shocker being 22 and thinking I was going to lose my husband)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of FINDING OUT WE COULDN'T HAVE KIDS (and finding out I wasn't the broken one)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year BENTLEY DIED ( I loved that silly dog more than chocolate!)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of NEARLY LOSING HIS MAJESTY (watching my soulmate lose 20kgs in a month and being at deaths' door for the better part of twelve months)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of THE MISCARRIAGE (awful - saving this for another chat when I have more energy to use the tissues)
The year of HYPERTENSION (mine)
The year of DUMB THINGS JUST HAPPENING ONE AFTER ANOTHER (oh wait, that's every year if your name is Tiffany!)
The year of THE MOVE
But although terrible, heinous and all round kak to deal with there has also been :-
The year WE SAID I DO (I look back at the pictures and we seem so young!)
The year WE BOUGHT OUR FIRST HOUSE ( we had sex in every room just for good measure)
The year of BENTLEY (our pseudo-baby furry person wannabe)
The year of BUYING A BRAND NEW CAR OUTTA THE BOX (which I pranged the same day in our own yard! I just want to hide under a stone every time I think about it!)
and my personal favourite the year IMOGEN ARRIVED! (no topping this one!)
I have learnt that life seems to dish us equal parts of bad and beautiful. I surmise it's just our ability to meditate on either side of the scales that makes a year either good or bad. Our reactions to the ebb and flow of circumstance.
So my resolution would have to be optimism. But always with a good measure of realism and sarcastic spunk to keep his majesty laughing. As long as one of us is happy then it's all good right!
To you and yours I say just get on with it and live it without the endless pondering and planning, heck, it's over too soon. Smile more, eat less and live better.
Much love
Toodles
