Today I will be mostly…

…mopping brows, cleaning up sick and supplying the ill population of my household with Calpol, Nurofen, hot/cold drinks and toast as required.

I am off work, feeling fine myself, caring for James and the blonde kid, The lurgy has hit!!

For the last few days James has been feeling under the weather, shivery and cold and then shivery but hot but all manageable with ibuprofen and plenty of loving! Last night at exactly 22:37 it struck Jordan. He appeared back downstairs after having been in bed for a couple of hours smack bang in the middle if House on channel 5.

“Mom,” *sniff* “I’ve been sick”

AND OH MY GOD HADN’T HE JUST.

It was everywhere! On his bed, under his bed, on the floor, all over his wellies, over his sheet and for the extra yucky factor on a teddy he doesn’t know about yet and I hope to get clean before he does and freaks out about it!

I am lucky and I know I am, I don’t have a child who becomes a screaming banshee at the first sight of vomit neither does he collapse in floods of tears because he thinks his world is about to end because if he continues heaving this way he will turn himself inside out! No he just tells it like it is…”I’ve been sick” and then lies wallowing in self pity, looking at you with puppy dog eyes willing you to give him all the love and attention a sick child deserves.

Unfortunately it is hard to sit cuddling him while I know that the contents of his stomach is sitting all over his bedroom, soaking into the carpet screaming to be cleaned up. BUT it is even harder talking myself into going to clean up the mess when I know the sight of it is likely to induce me to add my own touch of colour to the puce pile already all over the floor.

Once I’d prepared myself for the worse and tucked lil’ J up with the already sick big J in the living room I armed myself with rubber gloves, a bowl of warm water and a few plastic bags (see keeping all those old carriers comes in useful) I went to the task in hand. Mentally chanting “it’s only food, it’s only food” over and over in my head!

I am a terrible mother, I simply can’t clean my child’s sick without heaving my own soul up in the process!!

I was only sick once and only a very little bit and in the end. It only took me 20 minutes to clean the floor, strip the bed and such like and was back downstairs cuddling my poor little thing in no time, although I’m not sure who was comforting who as all he kept saying was “sorry”.

He was fine, I cooled him down when he got too hot and warmed him back up when he got too cold and made him sip water to rehydrate himself. Finally got him back upstairs an hour or so later where I’d made him a camp in my bedroom so he didn’t have to sleep in the vomit scented room of his own when…STRIKE 2

All over the bathroom floor…you can see where this story is going!!

I spent some more time cleaning carpets, bathroom mats and praying he’d already been as sick as he was going to be! Finally got him settled and everyone in bed some time after midnight and *touch wood* as to yet he hasn’t been sick again since!

At the moment both the invalids are both still in bed and have yet to venture further the bathroom, I on the other have been running up and down the stairs with drinks and foods. Backwards and forwards to the shop fetching medicines and juices of many varieties and looking around me with despair as how can one night of illness create this much washing!!???

But instead of worrying about I’ve taken this break in my nursing duties to spend 5 minutes with a cup of tea and to share my ordeal with you for the last 15 minutes all has been quite on the front lime with James eating toast and Jordan watch Harry Potter with no coughing shivering complaining of being too hot/cold,uncomfortable no request for well anything…

I’m hoping this lull in activities up stairs is a sign of improvement, a sign of recovery and NOT the calm before the storm!!

Sometimes I feel like a whingy whiney bitch, Complaining about my job, complaining about my bills and often (being a female) complaining just for the sake of it, but this weekend I discovered a whole new level of misery!

I spent the last three days up in Manchester in one or two bars, the cinema and sporadically in the group of neurotic, high earning, over ambitious, singletons. Now THEY can complain!!

They complain about being single but then claim they couldn’t possibly go out with someone who earns less than themselves. They complain about stress at work and then proceed to tell you about the nth holiday they have booked for this year for the “Costa Del Wherever”. They complain about their jobs and then tell you how it is company policy to travel first class whenever they need to travel.

It started to grate pretty quickly.

After listening for a good few hours to them complaining about how good they had I started to feel like shit! No I don’t have a 6 figure salary and I don’t have any aspirations of work myself into an early grave to get one either. Hell when you look at my basic earnings I don’t even have a 5 figure salary yet and by god I wished all I had to worry about was where to book my next holiday or how much is it really necessary to pay to get your hair cut! I don’t jet around the world on my holidays with friends every couple of months and I am exactly the under-achiever that they describe as not being a suitable person for them to hook up with!

I started to feel really REALLY bad about myself, about who I am. I started to look back at what I always considered to be achievements and putting them into their perspective and then they look like not achievements at all, just me being under ambitious! I started to really analyze myself and I came up seriously lacking, but then in turn I started analyzing those around me and I came to the conclusion that for all the money and talk I really am better off already!

I don’t have the worlds greatest income, and I don’t thing it will be making any drastic improvements any time soon , But then again I don’t have the 10 hour working days and nothing but the bottom of an empty bottle to keep me company at the end of it. I don’t live out of a suitcase, I have a stable loving family and environment to go home to with realistic dreams about what I want not idealistic unobtainable fantasies.

So I left Manchester and the high flying socialites to their drinks holidays and microwave meals for one content that I was going back to a daily grind of minimum wage slavery. Knowing that although I don’t earn as much as I’d like or anywhere near as much as they think I should I already have a life so much more fulfilling than theirs, because for everything that they have and can have that I cant afford I have the one thing you simply cant buy….

…happiness!

I was going to update today and write all about me, Me at the moblog meet up mentioned in my last post, Me and my NEW CAMERA, Me at Ragley hall (where the blonde one exhausted himself on the adventure playground, the 3D mazes and I trialled my NEW CAMERA), Me and my work review, or in bullshit speak my “P.P.D.R”, Me and my extremely bad hair day, strike that bad hair week and just a bit more about me, Oh and my NEW CAMERA…sorry had I already mentioned that??

Instead I am going to tell you about why the title of this post sums up my child so perfectly, Jordan is ADORABLE, yes, I know, I’m bias but he is, really he is (when not pulling April Fools tricks on me, or hiding my dressing gown under his bed), He’s special, not in a sit in the corner rocking kinda way but in a “I’m a 7 and I see the world in a really innocent way” He still has so much to learn about life and things in is head are so simple. It’s one way or another and all the grey areas we have to learn to navigate as we grow older he has yet to realize they exist.

He is still a child yes I know I’m stating the obvious as he is still only 7, but with him it’s easy to forget how young he really is when he behaves so well, acts so grown up most of the time and much to my detriment understands sarcasm far too well, But also SO easy to remember when I get home from work and have a conversation that goes something like this…

Hey hun, had a good day?
We played piñata at school today.

Really? Who bought that in?
No one

You DO know what a piñata is don’t you??
(with a very indignant look) Err Yeah!

So how did you play piñata then??
Well I was the piñata and *insert random name here* and the others hit me with sticks.

YOU WENT TO SCHOOL AND LET PEOPLE HIT YOU WITH STICKS???
yes.

ROFL!!!

I should have been more diplomatic and NOT laughed in the kids face, I could have shouted, demanded to know what the hell the teachers were doing while my poor baby was being beaten with the branches from the nearest available tree by a group of prepubescent girls, I could have stormed the school gates and set up camp in the reception refusing to move until i had the heads of all the girls involved on a plate in front of me, But he was so matter of fact about it and so indignant with me as I picked myself up off the floor to his protests of “it was only a game” and “I enjoyed the girls playing with me“, I just couldn’t help myself but laugh.

All I could picture was my little boy, who’s greatest hero in the world is a cartoon character called Ben10 (until later this week when Spiderman 3 comes out and I’m sure he’ll switch allegiance again), Striking his best Karate kid Kid pose in the middle of a group of baying females and screaming “AYYYEEEE-YAAA, COME ON GIVE IT ALL YOU’VE GOT!!” and fending them off with a series of his ninja moves which (he believes) rivals anything the turtles have to offer because believe me knowing my son so well this is exactly what he would have been doing!

So thats my boy, he goes to school and plays with girls, and lets them beat him with sticks, more worryingly he seems to have quite enjoyed it!!

I love him so much he’s fantastic but as this shows he’s also very very weird but in a really special, priceless, adorable 7 year old kinda way!

Not surprising really considering he’s my son!

…But I still don’t know their names!

This Saturday is the Midland Moblog Meet. Mobloggers from all over the UK are traveling to Birmingham to meet up have a few drinks tell a few stories and obviously take a few photos.

BUT here’s the thing, on moblog with names like Sir Findo Gask, Filbert Fox, Baggie Boy, SWMBO…how the hell am I supposed to know what to call everyone??

…Or “How I just realized I’m a grown up”

On Monday I had the day off so in an unusual fit of productiveness instead of spending the day sat right where I am now in front of the computer I actually did some housework, I tidied the blonde kids bedroom or using its correct name the “dump”.

Now that in its self did nothing in the way of convincing me that I’d grown up, my mom had been making me tidy up after myself since I was the blonde kids age, No, all that did was reinforce my own belief that when my son grows up and marries his wife will be as long suffering as my mother was with me because he’s a messy little shit too!!

What made me feel OLD was what came afterwards. In the process of sorting out the abundance of k’nex and marbles and matchbox cars and books and comics and dirty socks and I don’t want to even hazard a guess at what the pink thing was from under his bed, I came across a copy of Roald Dahl’s “George’s Marvellous Medicine”. I’d bought it ages ago with the intention of reading it to him chapter by chapter as a bedtime story…thats was until he decided he was “too old” for stories at bedtime and passed up on “Curling up with Mommy-Time” for “DVD-Time” or “Can I stay up later if I promise to go straight to sleep later-time!” and forgotten all about it.

So I decided to get my monies worth (all £2.99 of it, it was the paperback edition). I decided that I should spend some quality time with my son that doesn’t involve shouting, running around, jumping on beds, digging up the garden, painting him blue (don’t ask I only did it once and lost the photos and now he wont let me do it again!) or winding up James and resurrect the whole bed time routine now he’s old enough to appreciate the book, not just the cuddles, and started to read it to him.

I am distressed to report that it is this storybook that has made me feel OLD and all grown up!!

Tonight was the second installment, we’ve been going great guns and have already got to the part where Grandma grows so tall she breaks through into the attic of the house. BUT while the blonde one sat there staring at me wide eyed with wonder at all the whooshing and fizzing of the medicine being prepared (apparently I do good sound effects), and commenting with admiration at the courage of the 8 year old George for standing up the the mean nasty bitter grandmother, and looking at it the way a 7 year old who has never had to stand up for himself his entire life would, George must look pretty brave, all I can think is “Naughty little bastard”.

And that is why I feel old….instead of the wonder and excitement of the story I remember from the first time I read the book myself all I’m worried about is I hope Jordan doesn’t get any ideas!

I hope I don’t get up in the morning to find my bath full of lotions and perfumes and shampoos and food stuff and paint and not that I keep horse tablets in the house but I’m sure he’d find something as an alternative in a reenactment of the story!!

Not that I seriously think he would, but we are talking about a kid who keeps a log called “Loggy” as a pet in the playhouse at the bottom of the garden so it wouldn’t be a great leap for his imagination to be stretched that little bit further and for him to try!

So now I feel old and like a proper “parent”. Worrying not about what has happened but about what possibly could happen IF my son loses all sense of himself early one morning and lets his imagination run away with him!! Tisk!!

I was going to read him “James and the Giant Peach” next but then started worrying that maybe “Loggy” would metamorphise into a human sized caterpillar and he’d run away with it and not love me anymore!! So maybe I’ll forgo it for something less paranoia inducing like “Topsy and Tim”

I thought cats were supposed to have a superb sense of balance and always land on there feet. Well not this STUPID SOD!!

Judywudyawah has recently taken to sleeping on the back of an arm chair, which I wouldn’t mind if she didn’t insist on dribbling and molting EVERYWHERE she sleeps. And I’d mind even less if she didn’t look at me with total contempt every time she falls off as if it were MY fault. Yes I have the only cat that for the life of her CAN NOT stay balanced once sleeping. She’s even fallen off the window sill which is quite a bit wider and sturdier than the back of the chair! AND even better she STAYS asleep until she hits the floor awakening only on impact!

I was once told she has a “fucking stupid name” well I’ve just come to realize she’s a “stupid fucking cat”. But I love her!

[edit]

I had to come back and share, Literally not a minute after I’d first published this post there was this almighty CRASH behind me and I turned to find the dumb animal had done it again…but this time into a box of “STUFF” James had bought over from his parents. She was just peering over the edge looking at me as if to say “WTF just happened!!”.

You’d think by now the amount of times she’s fallen off there she’d find somewhere else to sleep!!

Sometimes when things get too bad I have 2 options that I use to cheer myself up. Eat cake or get a hair cut.

Friday I didn’t have any cake!!

I’m told the “elfin” look is in. Which is quite lucky really because with my new shorter style (but not as shorty as last summers “lesbian” crop) I’m hoping that my sticky out ears will just give me that cutting edge pixie look that is all the rage, as opposed to looking like the F.A. Cup!