04 Oct 2011
by Tamsinin Bedraggled Mum Tags: Anniversary, Child, Husband, Mommy, School, School Run, Squidge
I have come to the conclusion that the School Run is not suited to a wedding anniversary. This is why…
7am: BLEEP BLEEP BLEEEP. The Husband’s built-in iPhone alarm wakes me up from a deep snore sleep. I realise I am still sick. I go back to sleep.
7:30am: Meep Meep Meep, WOOF. Meep Meep Meep WOOF. Squidge’s Animagic puppies (she got these for her birthday) are eeping at each other while she manages her doggy zoo on her bed. I place pillow over head. At this point the fact that it is a) our anniversary and b) my morning shift has not been remembered.
7:45am: “Mooooooommmeeeeee” The adorable voice howls, I mean, calls at me from the bottom of the stairs. I smell coffee. I rise, like a zombie (seriously, if you saw The Hair you would totally think I had been dragged out of a grave backwards) and head for the smell.
7:47 am: “Happy Anniversary darling,” says The Husband, looking annoyingly perky and talking to me before I have caffeine. I can get off on a technicality for that. He hands me a lovely card with blood on it, “Look,” he says, “I bled for you.” Suddenly a lightbulb goes off in my head. OH. My. Holy. Knickers. I have his card, but I haven’t written in it. I have his present, but it hasn’t arrived yet. I have his gift voucher, but I didn’t print it.
8am: I have shut the lounge door and am frantically writing in The Husband’s card. I pause for a moment to praise myself for its amusing joke involving the Kama Sutra. All the cards I buy him are rude. It’s important. I am also juggling a child who is not interested in remaining in the same room. She is like a cat. If the door is shut she has to go through it. I am trying to print Amazon voucher at the same time but screen faces kitchen and the door has glass panels so is blindingly obvious I have not prepared his present. The Husband is being rather sweet about pretending not to notice his Crap Wife.
8:01am: Fastest card writing and printing in the West. Duly handed over and I’m making French Toast for breakfast. We got some Manuka honey yesterday and, along with the Olbas oil tissues, the cough mixture, the Beechams, the honey and lemon tea, the rooibos tea and the echinacea it has been added to my “eff off you effing cold” armoury.
8:05am: Am frantically juggling hot spitty pan, temper is frazzling as coffee machine on a go slow and STILL no caffeine, and child has come into kitchen for the fourth time to argue about getting ready for school. “Mom, how am I supposed to get ready if I don’t have any school clothes to wear?” she asks. I snap. I pick her up and carry her into her room, dump her on floor, yank shirt, knickers, socks, and pinafore out of cupboard (all of which are in plain sight) while yelling (not REALLY yelling), “It is all here so stop coming up with excuses. WHY we have to go through this EVERY morning when *blah blah blah*”
8:15am: Sulky child sitting at table with French Toast. Husband glaring at Sulky Wife who knows she should not have gotten cross but is refusing to back down in spite of having now had some coffee. The Husband is also grumpy about being undermined by aforementioned wife when he weighed into Getting Dressed Argument. The Husband is tad sulky too. I attempt to lighten mood by going, “Ooooh, look, Manuka Honey!” The Husband responds with, “Bet it is just a marketing scam.” Child responds with, “It tastes funny! I don’t want it! Ack! Ack! It makes my throat burn.” I try to drown self in coffee mug.
8:25am: Child sits like angel while I brush her hair. She is, stubbornly, refusing to offer hugs and to make friends. She is a master manipulator and knows how to push her mother’s buttons. I am so pathetic.
8:30am: The Husband hurtles downstairs screaming, “TIME TO GO!!! We are late!!!” He insists Squidge goes as she is, sock-free, as she was told ages ago to get ready. He relents as he walks out the door, half carrying her and half putting her socks on. Silence reigns over the house.
8:55am: Email: Dear Husband, thank you for my lovely anniversary present. I love you. Not sure we should have our anniversary on a weekday anymore.
Reply: Well, quite.
16 Sep 2011
by Tamsinin Bedraggled Mum
Ever seen Medium? If you like sci-fi/urban fantasy stuff watch it. If you don’t, don’t.
For those of you who have no clue what Medium is, or who Alison DuBois may be, allow me to explain. She is a (wait for it) medium (no, kidding!) who wakes up pretty much every night, screaming. Her poor husband is usually jolted awake by her panting, heaving, sweating, shouting and (as mentioned before) screaming. None of this has anything to do with sex. It’s her vivid dreams of the dead.
oh, wait, it may have something to do with sex after childbirth after all…
ANYWAY so last night I pulled an Alison on The Husband. There he was, happily snuggled beneath (most) of the duvet, snuffling contentedly when I woke him up by grabbing his chest violently.
In my defence I was half asleep.
I had this dream, you see, where I was at a lunch with a bunch of friends from South Africa. A very, very vivid dream where I found myself telling TeePot (she knows who she is) that The Husband had left me for a Karen Gillen look-alike. I was rather upset in the dream. It was so real that I sat up in horror and, well, grabbed my husband and ordered him to, “never leave me you asshat“.
Not exactly the way most men like to be woken up but The Husband appeared to take quite well….
15 Sep 2011
by Tamsinin Bedraggled Mum, Fascinating Things Tags: Exercise, Fat, Husband, Saffa, Turning 40
You ever have a fat day? The day where you turn and accidentally catch sight of your ass in the mirror and a part of you starts screaming like Munch and doesn’t shut up for at least 24 hours?
yeah…
I get them. Funny how I get them more now that I actually am fat. I look back at skinny me and mentally slap her for stupidity. If I still had that old figure I’d be sitting here naked and wearing nothing but knickers on the school run. If I did that today, there would be heart attacks, medical emergencies and a restraining order. And that’s just from my husband…
I read, recently, that as you get older and into your 40s a woman’s body deposits fat on the arms and thighs as a part of some or other ageing process (translation: god has a sick sense of humour) but I had no idea this happened OVERNIGHT. Yes. If you are not 40 yet, please be warned that you will go to bed 39, looking ok, but wake up 40 with your upper arms and ass dragging on the floor behind you. Allow me to give you the name of a good surgeon…
Anyway, this morning, as I was wrestling my arms into some sleeves (kidding) I got an email from a dear, dear Saffa I love. This email has officially made me laugh so hard that I may need back surgery. Here it is, enjoy…
30 Aug 2011
by Tamsinin Bedraggled Mum Tags: Exercise, Fascinating, Fat
…do I really LOOK like a drug addicted maniac?
Let’s start at the beginning. Last week The Husband and I set out on our planned Home Renovation campaign that involved a lot of painting, sanding, cleaning, washing and (occasionally) yelling at each other. On our very first day I went down the stairs, slipped on a hidden puddle of paint, and fell down.
I only fell maybe three steps. Not far AT all, especially seeing as they are carpeted and I am well padded. Unfortunately the one step hit my left shoulder at exactly the wrong angle and knocked it out. The “()£*)(“*()*£” thing.
The pain is, I have to tell you, extraordinary. I screamed. No, wait. I fucking screamed. I didn’t bear down with stoic composure. I didn’t gracefully bite my lip and whisper to my husband for help. No, what I did was this…
As I hit the second step and felt the bugger pop out I screamed (and this was punctuated by the bonk thunk of my ass hitting subsequent steps) “AAAAMBUUUULAAAANCE!!!!”
The Husband went, “Oh no, not again“
It wasn’t a heartless remark, it was one filled with utter fear for me, knowing how agonising it can be. Off he ran to get the phone. I sat at the bottom of the stairs, holding onto my left arm as tightly as I could while sweat POURED off my face. When the nice paramedic arrived I stuck my arm at him and gasped, “Morphine!”
Ok, OK, I know this doesn’t look good. I do. But if you have ever dislocated anything you will know how completely painful it is. Apparently (I have no way of confirming this short of empirical testing, which I don’t plan to do any time soon) it is more painful than a break. I also have zero pain threshold and cannot cope with pain.
So morphine and entonox were, literally, my only lifeline. Last time my shoulder stayed out for around 6.5 hours as the A&E was busy. A real bugger when you realise that it takes about 10 mins to put me under and whack it back in.
Luckily for me, the arm swacked back in as I stood up to get in the ambulance. We didn’t know at the time, it took a VERY confused X-Ray technician for us to realise that the agonising pop that happened when I stood up was actually my arm returning to sender.
However, while I was there (and I must point out that my hair is still growing out of the short haircut and looks AWFUL and I have put on a ton of weight and I was wearing clothes covered in paint) a nice doctor sort of rushed me through the system so I wouldn’t have to wait six hours again.
I was beyond grateful until I suddenly realised, two days later, that maybe he wanted the scary bag lady out of there as I was scaring the elderly? Or I was his charity case for the day.
This was reinforced today when I went to the hospital for my check-up and, after vaguely poking at me and making me lift my arm, the guy goes, “It is very badly bruised and torn, don’t do anything for another 2-3 weeks.”
Fine. Frustrating, but I can live with that. However, when I asked him for pain relief he said, “No more for you, take paracetamol” like I was some kind of drug addicted freak.
To be fair, he didn’t know I spend all day in front of my desk typing as I work from home and have no choice BUT to work. STILL! Do I LOOK like a bloody codeine addict?
I think, perhaps, I need to get this mad mop of hair and this diet sorted out before someone hands me a trolley and 6 cats and tells me to get on with the mad cackling…
22 Aug 2011
by Tamsinin Bedraggled Mum, Parenthood Tags: Child, Fascinating, Husband, Mommy, Poo, Squidge
The Husband and I, since July 2006, have been haunted by the Inconvenient Poo.
It all started when Squidge was a baby. As we sat down to dinner, looking down at the adorable little baby in her playpen/cot/pram/baby holding device with fond eyes and happy smiles, she would get that focused expression that can only mean one thing. An enormous poo.
At first we didn’t notice but after a few weeks we realised that, no matter how we shifted the timing, Squidge would have a poo as we sat down to eat our dinner. I am surprised that I wasn’t really thin back then. It is hard to return to cold food after having wrestled, for ten minutes, with a crap that has possible sentience.
We even named her poos after Scottish distilleries when Squidge had the most powerful and utterly terrifying poo ever at the Glenmorangie distillery. I was off on the tour, sipping whiskey and licking whisky caskets (no, not really) while The Husband had to race into the nearest loo and literally CUT her clothes off her and throw them in the bin. There was, apparently, poo up to her neck.
So, those violent and messy poos are Glenmorangies, the ones that are accompanied by lots of noise and dramatic crashing noises but somehow yield no real results are called Dalwhinnies, and the Glenfiddich is the more casual and yet alarmingly whiffy poo.
To this day Squidge will declare, usually in a loud voice and usually at a restaurant (with non-child carrying friends trying not to look horrified), that she requires a poo JUST as the food lands on the table.
However, the Inconvenient Poo does not just strike when food is nearby. It has a plan. It wants me to have a nervous breakdown and cause my last nerve endings to collapse in anguish. For the Inconvenient Poo will almost always arrive WHEN WE HAVE JUST LEFT THE LAST TOILET BEHIND.
And when I say last toilet I mean – it is late and we are in town and all the shops are closed and there are no nearby pubs or restaurants, we have just hiked to the beach where there are NO public toilets in reach and an accident WILL occur by the time we hike to the ones we can find, on a bus, on a train when I am carrying 16 bags and then have to wrestle them, her and ME into the tiny toilet, on a train where all the toilets are out of order and there are still 1.5 hours to go (this HAS happened), and when all the toilets in the surrounding area are out of order…
We have also had the, “Oh I didn’t realise I had a poo” while standing in it on the floor of a restaurant. The “Oh god what the hell do I do with this” poo that appeared while walking through a nearby farm and resulted in my burying it. I still feel faintly worried about that farmer hunting me down somehow. And the “I appear to have had an accident mum” when in the car on the M25 where (apparently) nobody is allowed to wee because there are NO TOILETS.
Actually, am considering a side business of opening up some rent-a-toilets on the M25 for people like me who drank an entire large skinny latte before hitting the M25 and then realising, in a massive traffic jam, that Houston had a Problem.
To this day we are haunted by the Inconvenient Poo, an all powerful being that remains utterly in control. The only weapons we have are wipes and spare knickers. Stay on your guard parents, next time it could be you…
15 Aug 2011
by Tamsinin Bedraggled Mum Tags: Husband, Mommy, School, Squidge
On Friday morning I was running around the house like a blue-arsed fly, trying to get all my ducks in a row before I went to meet up with other mums in the park. This whole “juggle a full time workload with a school holiday” thing is rather tough. I am so tired I may need a holiday off on my own when Squidge goes back to school. Am SUCH a lightweight…
ANYWAY
I am pootling this way and beetling that when I suddenly realise that I’ve failed to call my poor father in two weeks. “Shit,” I say, believing it to be a barely heard mutter. I should know by now that I am incapable of anything quiet. I was born without volume control…
Squidge looks up at me in horror.
“Mummy!” she says, “Did you just say ‘shit‘?”
I look at her guiltily.
She shakes her head and says, “Daddy is supposed to say that, not you.”
I am NOT kidding…
I laughed so hard I sneezed.
05 Aug 2011
by Tamsinin Bedraggled Mum, Fascinating Things Tags: Mommy, School, Squidge, The Naked Dream
Picture of hot naked men. There isn't a valid reason for including this.
I have spent my entire life listening to people talk about that dream. You know, the one where you are walking into work/school/family get together and suddenly realise that you are completely naked. You are horrified. You suddenly panic about your wibbly bits.
I have listened with rapt attention, riveted by the idea, wondering when I will get my turn.
Finally I have.
Although I wasn’t naked.
Instead my dream had me rushing Squidge and her best friend, G, to school. It was definitely a panic morning with mad dashes to get the lunchboxes packed, hair brushed, sun lotion on, clothes in decent array. We are running to school, late as late can be, and barrel into the playground where everyone gathers before the bell rings.
I am panting (both with relief and total unfitness), the kids are laughing and running behind me. We did it. We arrived on time. Suddenly I realise that all the other parents are staring at me. Some in wide-eyed horror, some with their hands over their mouths as they try not to laugh, others look away and cover their children’s eyes.
Why?
Because I have rocked up at school in my ancient tatty pyjamas that have holes in bad places and show off bits they definitely should not. My hair is in disarray (well, more so than usual) and I have slippers on my feet. I am completely and utterly mortified.
I woke up sweating. I was panting. I was DELIGHTED!
At last I have had the dream! YES!
P.S. Those PJs are no longer in use. They have become scruffy cloths and floor cleaners. Just so you know…
P.P.S Did you know that people do naked yoga? NAKED YOGA? I found this out while trying to find a funny pic to go with this post. NAKED YOGA?? Wtf
21 Jun 2011
by Tamsinin Bedraggled Mum
The carnival has not been forgotten. As I was about to start pulling the posts together my entire block had a power outage. So, since 4pm today I have had no power and no interwebz. I just managed to sort my dongle to post this message. Hopefully the carnival will go up tonight, if no power, then it will be up tomorrow morning. I am so sorry!
20 Jun 2011
by Tamsinin Bedraggled Mum, Slightly Insane Tags: Blog, Child, Husband, Squidge
I feel sorry for my husband. I really, really do. I mean, let’s face it, he is married to someone who would (in the old days) have been labelled as mentally unstable and put into a huggy jacket for all eternity. Nowadays I am merely considered “quirky” and he is forced to endure great pain. Like when I nearly killed him on Father’s Day…
Let’s start at the beginning of this truly insane weekend.
On Saturday, after a lovely morning of pootling through Brighton and purchasing all manner of delightful objects for Father’s Day, Squidge and I returned home to fetch The Husband. Then the four of us trundled off to her school to view their Art Day which was, essentially, the kids’ artwork in frames on boards.
We loved her pic. The Husband grinched about the fact that we have to pay £6.50 for a framed pic in yet another fund raising activity and muttering about writing a blank cheque and being a bank. I was all misty-eyed about the awesomeness of a painting done by my little genius, all framed and ready to go.
Then on the way home, on a narrow sidewalk, a woman hit my child with her mobility scooter. There was this sickening “crunch” and then that cry that no mother EVER wants to hear.
I felt her hand ripped from mine and everything seemed to go in slow motion.
It was like I was turning in syrup. My child lay on the pavement, arm outstretched, face almost under the wheel of the scooter. I screamed, “Oh my god!” The world ground to a horrible halt.
I cannot tell you how hideous that moment was. I ran to her, checked her out. Made her move arms and legs. And down the side of her beautiful face was a raw scrape where the wheels had ripped her skin off. Other than that my lovely brave child was alright.
The Husband and I were NOT.
I was so shaken I kept walking with Squidge, I wanted to get to a wider part of the pavement so I could put her down and look at her more closely without being bumped into by people. The Husband was torn between me and the woman. We both knew we couldn’t say anything more than the horror on our faces. She kept saying sorry.
I knew I couldn’t beat up a woman in a mobility scooter. But BOY was I angry. I had already been irked by her aggressive driving, practically forcing me to jump out her way. Now I was fuming. But I kept walking. I didn’t want to upset The Husband and Squidge any more than they already were.
We went to a local coffee shop as Squidge said she wanted a hot chocolate and we were both happy to oblige. Then we talked about what had happened and The Husband shared his bombshell.
He said that those machines are really heavy and that if it had been an inch to the left it could have crushed her skull. It sounds dramatic but he is not prone to fits of fancy. He was right.
The strength left my legs. Really. When that realisation kicked in I could barely breathe.
Two days later and we are both still very disturbed by it all. Something so simple could have been a tragedy.
Should mobility scooters be allowed on the pavements? I am inclined to say no, now.
In spite of our drama we forged ahead for a fabulous Father’s Day. He got breakfast in bed, lots of pressies. We went to the fair and did some random wandering around and looking at vintage cars and laughing at donkeys in the Donkey Derby and nibbling on fudge.
We also saw this at one of the stands.
No, I don’t get it either. A prize to the human who can connect the naked man in a thong with his legs chopped off to a Lion’s fundraising day and stuffed toy animals.
It was an ace day until, after eating the dinner I got for him, he fell over ill and has not been able to move much since. Awesome. I poisoned The Husband on Father’s Day.
What kind of a woman am I????
20 Jun 2011
by Tamsinin Bedraggled Mum Tags: British Mummy Bloggers, Carnival, Turning 40
Ok guys. It’s like this. I have a carnival tomorrow and only a few applicants. I am alone. I am afraid. I am staring at lack of popularity with growing horror and thinking, “Shit, I am nearly 40 and NOBODY LOVES ME!”
You wouldn’t want to upset an elderly person like this, would you? You don’t want to see me staring forlornly at my false teeth floating in some water, sobbing real tears of pain? DO YOU? No.
Enter my carnival. The theme is grumpy or funny or both.
Email me on tamsinator[@]gmail[.]com
Please
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