Friday 13 February 2009

Running on empty

The following is not a rant. It should be interpreted as a rather long sigh, like you would hear from a very slowly deflating balloon.

Daisy stood in the hall and let out a deep sigh “Can’t we decorate before the Swiss student arrives?” Which really sums up the state of the house and of course seen through the eyes of someone who has just returned from a designer house nestling in the side of a mountain, I think it is safe to say our house is looking pretty shabby.
I of course would like to think of it as shabby chic, but we all know that is just a euphemism for complete and utter chaos in desperate need of a lick of paint and a good scrub.
On top of this came the ultimate barbed insult “The Swiss Family's mother doesn't even have a microwave” which of course disparages my ability to feed the girls nourishing home cooked food. Which ironically I try to do, but as we rarely sit and eat at the same time most of what I cook has to be reheated to suit times of hunger and home time.. At no time do we sit together as a family which of course the The Swiss Bloody Family Robinson did…They also had a ‘wonderful power shower’ rather than the hot spit we have. I have long since given up the pretence of living a 'lifestyle' I find just existing* hard work, but I do feel Daisy’s pain.
Of course most families work together as a team, ours is made up of warring factions, neither of which are prepared to give ground to the other. He who must be obeyed does nothing and so I am left to patch the house together as best I can.

* Cooking, (quite often 3 separate meals) cleaning, going to work, pairing socks, folding and putting away 25 pairs of skinny jeans, making beds, cleaning not one but two bathrooms, picking up dirty tissues, clearing the dinning room table and wiping it, apologising daily to the Au-pair about the shocking behaviour of my youngest, running a taxi cab firm, helping out with homework, making sure that no one child is given more affection than the other....

It is now half term, my treat tonight is to go and see Every Good Boy Deserves A Favour which is on at the Olivier Theatre
I will then spend some time in Oxford so I will be off line for a week, hopefully taking some photographs if my cunning plan* come to fruition

* I am going with Leyla on her own. Daisy is taking Kitty on Wednesday, which means we are all together for lunch on Wednesday only...result, oops did I say that out loud?

3 comments:

auntiegwen said...

I feel your pain, my house is falling apart, my kids seem to think their dad is a fab cook and I would be too if I only had to do it on saturday teatime and had all day to prepare it.

I am bored to feckin death of my life and I am so restless I am verging on reckless.

But as you say, half term now x

materfamilias said...

Ah! I know that sigh, altho' I've never described it so well. Sometimes Pater will ask me what's going on, why the deep sighing, and it will be the first realization I have that I'm even doing it!
You do get through these years, and your young women will, I'm sure, come to admire in retrospect all you were able to do while being a good mother. I love that you can feel Daisy's pain even as the accusations are aimed in your direction. You're obviously wise enough to know that they're only aimed that way 'cause she's trying to find a focus/target for her newly-developing awareness of a bigger world, of other people living in different homes in different countries with different priorities and different lifestyles. I remember that wonder, the excitement and frustration and anxiety it provoked, possibilities mixed with an impossibly small ability to control my own living conditions. Oh, so long ago . . .

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