Tough day at the office

Tough week actually, of a tough month. Ok I don’t like to moan, but have you ever tried to keep your house magazine perfect while wrangling a toddler and a dog? (that actually equates to two toddlers if you hadn’t already realised)Oh and the open inspections are NOT on crèche days.

Whoever it was who listed ‘selling house and moving’ as one of the most stressful things to put on a marriage; I wonder were they talking about having to do that with ankle-biters?

Ok Buddy doesn’t bite, but he trips-up exceptionally well when you’re rushing. Nevertheless, just when I thought I was getting a grip on it all, I had cause to remember just how much fun Gastroenteritis isn’t.

We are moving in exactly ten days, and I’m not clearing out closets nor am I organising a much needed garage sale. Instead, I find myself swabbing the decks, ferrying toxic waste directly to the outside bins and washing my hands every five minutes (the skin is actually washing off my palms). All the while listening to my daughter’s farts sound more and more like an old pull-chain-cistern flushing. SWOOSH  “thar she blows...”

I thought almost three years on, I was over the clothing changes (tops and bottoms) and stripped beds, hitting double digits, but apparently I was wrong. And it’s gone on for four days, until finally her little peach of a bottom seems to have finally said ‘enough’.

But the episode has taken its toll not only on mummy’s sanity but her efficiency. 
As I was about to pour soy milk over my Vodka tonight, I reflected on the tough day I’d had at the office.

I spent my morning trying to stuff more banana’s into the small person’s mouth along with extra doses of bowel-support acidophilus. This job was punctuated with massive clean-ups as it exploded out the other-end. At one point as my sanity started to slip and I considered cutting out the middle man and just spooning her food directly into the toilet bowl.

So, having been grounded since Thursday with a sick child, I look in the fridge after pouring the last of the milk on my coffee, and realise we have no food, not even dog food, along with the no milk situation. I already have an alarmingly low supply of nappies, thanks to the 2-nappy-changes-per-hour over the past several days and my husband has no business shirts.

With just 30 minutes to hit the supermarket, the butcher and the dry cleaner and Lucie a bit perkier, I load her up in the car chanting to her, “We can do this..”

I whipped through the shopping like greased lightening, with a growing sense of self congratulatory smugness. Unfortunately, immediately as that feeling took hold, the wheels came off… The outer casing on my car key disintegrated in my hand and on queue, Lucie started throwing a fit. “Waaaaaaaaaaaahhh” “Biiiickeeeeeeeeeeeeee” “milkeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”

So as smugness evaporated into damage control, I found myself madly fumbling in my bottomless pit of a bag for milk, crackers and my reading glasses so I could try and jam the headless metal bit back into the plastic clicker bit to get the car started.

A car behind me, waiting for my park, tooted and I flipped 'em the finger without missing a beat. Strange that no matter what is taxing my dexterity at the time I can always manage a rude gesture when needed.

At the dry cleaners I decided against removing the mangled key from the ignition while I paid for the shirts so I left the car running with its nose almost jutting into the dry-cleaners door, filling the lane full of shoppers with exhaust fumes.

Then with the phone under one ear, desperately calling Toyota spare parts division for a solution, I tried to wrestle the dry cleaning & shopping into the car simultaneously. 

But while I struggled with the blasted shirts that got hooked on the dirty wheel of our mountain buggy (still left jammed in the passenger seat after our last open inspection), I put my wallet ...on the roof so I could use both hands....

Yeah, you got it.

A note of thanks to a Saint of a woman called Barbara, who caught my purse on the bounce as it sailed off the roof of my car who would have had it back to me within the hour.. if I hadn't been still driving around and around the block looking for the bloody thing.

If there was a mummy equivalent of MR Bean it would be me.


Photo courtesy of http://jezebel.com/5560376/lady-gaga-throws-fit-flips-the-bird-at-mets-game