Is there a doctor in the house?

Today I woke up feeling unwell, it was a strange kind of exhaustion with a pounding headache and mild nausea. I struggled through the morning becoming increasingly concerned over the way I was feeling. A couple of times I felt a bit light-headed and started to think I should call the doctor for an appointment. All sorts of things were running through my mind, what could be wrong? Flu? Gastro? Something more serious? Brain tumour? Bubonic plague?

Then it hit me. The gin and tonics. I had two of them last night and what I was now experiencing was a hangover. Good grief how can two gin and tonics give me a hangover? Admittedly Tom pours a mean (and very large) gin and tonic. But still, it used to take gallons of alcoholic beverages to generate one of this magnitude...now it takes two gin and tonics. Pathetic.

So I had a very un-vegan greasy lunch and was right as rain after that.

And by the way, this is my 50th post to this blog. My golden anniversary of posting. I'd have a drink to celebrate but I might end up needing my stomach pumped.

Like I said. Pathetic. Pffft

Life's a zoo

Ok, it's official. School holidays drive me insane.

I love my children, I really do, but honestly whoever decided that kids need holidays from school clearly had a nanny or owned a clown or some other form of child entertainment. Oh no, hang on, I get it, it was a MAN wasn't it?! A man who obviously never had to be the one staying home looking after them during the never-ending, crazy-making, please-somebody-kill me school holidays.

Today has, so far, been about 38 and a half hours long. Whenever I desperately look at the clock it's only 5 minutes later than it was last time. Why? Oh why? I just want to feed them dinner, get them bathed, read a couple of stories and get them the hell to bed and pour myself a LARGE gin & tonic. But no, today has been an endless, non-alcoholic stream of 'Groundhog Hours'. I've never been so desperate for a drink and tea just isn't cutting for me today.

I can hear all my Northern Hemisphere friends sympathising, 'yes' they say 'summer holidays are certainly a challenge'. Well, here's the thing folks, it's not summer here. I'm talking about the two week mid-term winter break. Two weeks! And I'm going mental! You see it's raining. We can't go out because of it. It's so dark and dismal and wet that I can't even see if the sun is over the yard arm so that I can have a drink. So we're holed up here drawing, making stuff, watching movies and trying not kill each other.

Fortunately this is the second week so if I can just get myself through the next 3 days we'll be home free. Now, where's the Margarita Mix.......

Life as we know it

My peace has been shattered. The children have returned from a few days at Granny & Papa's farm. I don't know about them but I had a lovely break.

I have no idea how long it's been since I was able to lie in the bath at 5pm. Or work at the computer uninterrupted for longer than 5 minutes. Or eat dinner with my husband and have conversations that didn't involve synchronising our diaries for Fairy Ballet, Parent/Teacher interviews or school concerts. I even managed to go the supermarket and buy groceries that didn't have Shrek on the packaging. Tom and I did some shopping together late on Sunday evening (two important points there - 'together' and 'late'). As we stood at the checkout admiring our purchases - cheese, olives, good coffee - Tom sighed happily and said 'grown up shopping'.

And now they're back. My peaceful, tidy house has gone. There are rice bubbles on the floor, hot chocolate on the sofa and Dorothy the Dinosaur is wearing one of my bras. The air rings loudly with the theme from Play School and someone has drawn on the TV screen.

And I couldn't be happier.

Mummy said a bad word....

I heard the above comment several times on Saturday morning as I put the finishing touches to the frog costume and attempted to apply face paint to a four year old. I've decided that if I ever have to paint her face again it will only be done under a general anaesthetic (for her, not me although perhaps....). Anyway, in the car on the way there she picked half the face paint off so that in the end she resembled a leprous black and white minstrel....only green.

The concert went well and the costume held up and Aislin seems relatively unscathed emotionally. She forgot all her cues (they all did) and spent most of her time on stage waving at us, but she had fun and so did we.

Unfortunately the photos didn't work out, the light was bad and the camera is still playing up (I will buy a new one soon) but if I can photoshop it I might get it to the stage it can be exhibited.

15 minutes of fame

You'd think, wouldn't you, that my newfound freedom would result in endless blogging about my new life and how exciting it is. Well, it is pretty exciting from an 'I DON"T HAVE TO GO TO WORK ANYMORE!!' perspective, and it is nice to be home and baking bread every day again and getting up an hour and a half later than I previously had to on work days (yes, you did read that correctly, an hour and half, it's worth it for that alone). And I am enjoying the generally more relaxed feeling that we all have now. But isn't it funny how one kind of busy-ness can so quickly be replaced by another kind of busy-ness? First of all there's the business - working on the website - no, don't ask, I'd have to make you bleed. Then there's the general family stuff. Like making a frog costume. Oh yeah, a FROG costume.

Aislin goes to Fairy Ballet and very cute it is too. Except for the 'concert' at the end of every term. Well, that's cute as well but it requires a costume, and this term hers is a frog. The concert is really just a short demonstration of what they've learned during the term, 15 minutes to be exact (come on..they're four years old - their attention span doesn't allow for longer than that). But it means that a costume must be made for a 15 minute demo - which is tomorrow. I am oh-so-happy about that as you can probably imagine.

When they send the notice home, telling us what part our amazingly talented children will be playing, they also take the opportunity to advertise their costume maker who will run us up a fabulous ensemble for our offspring at the special members only price of $50. Now we've already established in previous posts that I can be pretty average in the parenting department so I am sorry, I am not paying $50 for a 15 minute frog costume. So I decided to turn down their generous offer and make it myself. I realise the resulting abomination costume may cause Aislin to be scarred for life and in therapy for years but shit happens.

So today (and I also like to leave everything to the last minute) I will be donning my creative hat and making a kind of vaguely froggy outfit.

I'll post a photo.