UFO: Unidentified Fetid Object

As we drag our weary arses towards the end of another term...

How was it that at the beginning of this term Pinkster and I were walking to school every day and we were not just on time, but early most days?

And now we're just making it before the bell, and sometimes not and that's with me driving the whole 980 meters?

Why are we so disorganized with homework all of a sudden? why do I have to lever her fingers off the iPad with growing frequency?

Why is it I cannot leave my child watching Horrible Histories so I can get some work done in my office, without coming down to the living room 30 minutes later to find it's been hit by a craft tornado?
Scissors, paper, string and googly eyes are sticky taped to everything. The living room rug has become a storage facility.

WHAT'S GOING ON?

Phyllis Diller once said: "cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing"

Truer words were never spoken.
In my usual post-child's-bedtime-clear-up,  that would be the one completed around two hours after the craft tsunami clear-up, I was digging the remote control and some playing cards out from where they had been sat-squashed behind the sofa cushions.

I not only found my long missing nail clippers, the ones that actually cut, rather than chew off fingernails, and I found this UFO (Unidentified Fetid Object) pictured above (and in part below).

I couldn't tell what is was, without my reading glasses and I couldn't identify it by touch. It was just a mass of black stringy crispiness.

See if you can guess from this next picture:

Unidentified Fetid Object

I always thought I was quite a good housekeeper.
I'm fairly fussy; or so I thought.
And I swear I only had all the seat cushions off the sofa to wash their covers a couple of weeks ago.

Still there it was, with a number of other delights, most of them teeny tiny toys - the sort that get Hoovered up when someone smaller than myself mistakes the living room rug for a storage receptacle.

I'm now blaming everything on End of School Term:

The melt-downs  (her's and mine),
the tardiness,  (lets not name and shame on this one)
the inability to get out of bed  (I only wish it were her's),
the growing addiction to mind-numbing distractions  (her's with that bloody iPad)
the increasing desire for alcohol   (definitely mine - she's going heavier on the milk though)
the nagging (me mostly, but she'll put in a good effort the minute I answer the phone)
the short fuses unleashed upon the pets  (her's more than mine - except when I'm trying to work and the cat insists on taking a stroll across my keyboard- why cant she just curl up on the printer?)

So a week off end of term I feel as always like the wheels are coming loose on our family cart.
However, considering we drive past so many parents walking their children, and only halfway up the hill, to school on those very late morning's - I know its not just me pushing the pain barrier.

How is end of term working out for you?  
Leave me some comments to let me know I'm not the only one going mad - please?

leaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllisdil400596.html

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. Phyllis Diller
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllisdil400596.html

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. Phyllis Diller
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllisdil400596.html

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. Phyllis Diller
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllisdil400596.html

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. Phyllis Diller
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllisdil400596.html

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. Phyllis Diller
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllisdil400596.html

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. Phyllis Diller
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllisdil400596.html

Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing. Phyllis Diller
Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/phyllisdil400596.html

Heimlich Anyone?

Two weeks back I almost died.

First let me pre-empt this sorry tale with a run down on my preoccupation with health & longevity.

For years I've read all I can about health. I'm a big fan of healthy diets, which don't include KFC or Mackers, but somehow I manage to make excuses. 

I'm heavily into Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), and I have the impossible offspring to prove its efficiency. I take lots of Chinese herbs and other supplements.

I see a Doctor who specializes in Integrated Medicine: which means he sends out for blood tests every six months and prescribes supplements and tailor made pills from a compounding pharmacy.

The result is that I stay young(ish), slim and healthy despite my love of a glass or two of wine and the, probably too frequent, indulgences from Colonel Sander's kitchen and the Golden Arches.

TCM takes care of my liver, digestive and immune systems and Dr Integrated gives me sips from the fountain of youth.

That I should collapse to the floor gasping for breath with a multi vitamin pill lodged firmly over my windpipe; well surely that defines the term Irony.  You might look Irony up in the dictionary and find a picture of me on all fours in my dining room hands at my throat turning blue. Child at the table playing with an iPad..

OK maybe not.

But they were the longest 60 seconds of my life, there on the floor literally gasping to draw breath.



I was making some really odd noises too trying to suck air past the obstruction. That continual squeaking, sound you can make with an inflated balloon when you pinch the open end between your fingers to let the air out slowly? Yeah like that.

She-who-worships-pink, didn't look up from her iPad until The Orange Dog leaped to his feet whining in a panic and began dancing around me wall eyed with his tail planted between his butt cheeks.  "the food pourer is dying!! the food pourer is dying!!"

The second irony of this story is that Pinkster and I make jokes about the Heimlich maneuver all the time. We are forever pretending to perform it on inanimate objects, on each other, sometimes the pets too.  It's one of our  weird private joke things, like when we put our faces together so close that we can only see a single eye on each others face and we shout in unison: 'Mike Wazowski!'

But in reality, we don't really have a clue when it comes to performing an effective Heimlich Maneuver and I don't think for one minute that, a smallish eight year old would have the strength or stature to make that work even with a full grasp of the proper technique.  

These were some of my panicked thoughts during that long sixty seconds.

With the Orange Dog having a conniption, Pinkster finally reacted: she rushed about the room with her arms waving and yelling "Get the puffer! Get the puffer!" to no one in particular. 

Not asthma honey, mummy's choking on a vitamin pill.

I can laugh about it now, because I'm alive (obviously) to tell the tale.  I managed to drag just a little air past the obstruction, enough to cough and dislodge the pill  which was roughly the size of suppository.

Bravely I took some water and swallowed it again, down the right pipe. 
Hey, waste not want not: after all vitamins are good for you!