A week of nothing and everything

This blog is rapidly becoming a graveyard for my stream of consciousness ramblings, so I hope you're ready for another one. This week has been quite trying on many different levels and ended up with us losing a very close family friend. RIP flat-screen tv. But good news - our insurance cover does stretch to completely unforeseen incidents like an almost 7 year old twirling around in the lounge sending her hairbrush microphone flying out of her hand and into the tv screen. I bet we won the prize for most random insurance claim this week.

In other parenting news, my children had a half-day at school this week so I let them wander around the streets like little unwanted urchins until I finished work and could claim them. By the time I arrived at our meeting point, they had picked up another stray who I dutifully delivered home but not before being asked if this child could come and spend the afternoon at our house. You know that moment. The one where you're given a split second to agree or come up with a really good excuse. Being quite tired and ill-equipped to deal with another person in the house even though this child is completely likeable and toilet-trained, I just couldn't muster up any enthusiasm. All I really wanted to do was have some time to myself at home in a sunny spot somewhere. I could have been a normal parent and just said "No, I want to be a cat" but I like to let people down gently so instead I trotted out the very useful and suitably vague line that I had made other plans which only disappointed 25% of the children and 100% of the parents in the car. Don't hate me girls when you read this a few years from now. Mum was just tired. Somehow, I needed to turn my fake excuse into a real plan. This is why we ended up at a mall far, far away from our house on the pretext of buying some birthday gifts and ultimately into a 2-dollar shop with rubber balls that look like breasts which my children disturbingly delighted in squeezing and bouncing on the floor. We didn't buy those. Who buys those??!

And in ever-so typical fashion, I had a complete reversal of mean-spiritedness and offered to have three little friends over after school on possibly the coldest and wettest day of the year so far just for the pleasure of sitting in peak hour traffic with them to deliver them to their Brownies outing. Turns out I might have given them a bit more than afternoon tea as I now have a violently unreliable stomach and I think all their mothers will be quietly seething about that. Sorry.

This is all very bad timing as my baby turns seven today. She has lost her only decent winter jacket and of course we've had a polar blast of epic levels blanket the country for the past two days. In my weakened state this morning I couldn't even be bothered arguing with her to put on her sister's spare one. It is three sizes too big for her and she'd rather die of some cold-related illness than wear a jacket with the sleeves rolled up so she went dancing off into the sleet with her thin cotton hoodie and threadbare 3/4 leggings with a gaping hole in the knee and it will all save me from gift-buying because she'll probably get pneumonia for her birthday. And a possible stomach bug.

Happy birthday.