... was the phrase I most overused this week.
It was week where my head almost exploded. I simply do not have the mental capacity, nor time in my day to do everything I need/want to do. Just getting everyone dressed and fed and clothes and washed is enough frankly, to fill a day - but add into that school homeworks (a 3 minute presentation that Sproglet has to do - NO THAT I FREAKIN HAVE TO DO YOU NIGHTMARE TEACHER) more laundry than the back room in Oxfam, and oh yes, a full time job on a punishingly relentless tv show and you have a woman on the edge.
Take this morning, for example - Husband and I are trying to do a food shopping list (not for us the moseying along some achingly fashionable London foodies market - *remembers fondly* - trying bits of aged cheese here and home made dips there) when Sproglet comes in wearing his clothes - back to front and inside out. So as we help him change, Sproglette is bleating on about me eating some invisible concoction she has created from her wildly complicated plastic kitchen cooker/dishwasher/fridge ensemble and it is carnage. Beads she bought (beads - I mean, who lets a 2 year old buy beads, oh yes - Husband does) are scattered across the floor - miniature jagged little pills that will cause untold pain when stepped upon (as they are daily). Then, as Husband and I fight over cheaper meals and how I MUST HAVE GIN at all costs - even if I do not eat all week - Sproglet insists I practise face painting on his arm.
Rather than go to a fun leaving event of an actress on our show - I was with 5 lovely women, drawing snakes and flowers on each others' arms. The snakes do look like giant slightly skewed penises crawling along our arms - and the roses are faintly vaginal, but who cares, we are trying goddammit! What for you ask? Son's school fete next week, where I no longer am needed to paint my unique form of transsexual unicorns, instead the aforementioned snakes, roses, dolphins and an angry bird. Funny, because it will turn me into an angry bird for sure... There is a reason skilled folk face paint - because they have talent! They flick a wrist and viola! A dolphin leaps from an elbow. But with me, it is like some squished jellyfish has landed and will never raise a tentacle again...
So in between face painting, and Sproglet having a football team presentation, and needing tennis kits and Sproglette being demanding, and homework and spelling tests and work piling up, and promises made to friends to read scripts, and to other friends to write up ideas for shows, and cooking the odd meal and thinking 'I must diet! I have a skinny skinny dress to get into at a wedding in 4 weeks (and then eating an oreo because this thought upset me so much) and not having time to exercise at all - and wishing for more sleep and time to break open my Game of Thrones box set (gawd bless you Cushman for that gift) as too many work scripts needed reading... I kind of flipped out. I stood teary eyed in my kitchen on the phone to a friends' voicemail babbling on so long that the tape ran out - shouting 'I AM BUT ONE WOMAN, I CANNOT DO IT ALL!!!!!'
Then I called Husband and told him I was divorcing him and that I could not do it all. Enough. He took it quite well as we divided our properties and fought over the car. I made a plan to run away to Ireland with the kids - it was all sorted in my head. Then he came home with a bottle of Hendricks gin, a sorted babysitter and told me we were going for dinner. I decided not to divorce him and go fro dinner instead.
In a restaurant with a fake olive tree, and fake bricks, and fake tasting scallops, we chatted through our very real lives. I told him my mantra and he is going to help more. As I type, he has taken the Diva shopping and I have ten whole minutes to write this blog before I begin the laundry nightmare...
That's all it took really - a bowl of lemon risotto and some fine red wine - and I was happy as a clam. Because if you don't have time to stop - down tools, and take in the view - you never get time to appreciate the nice bits, in between the face painting and the bum wiping. The bits that remind you why you liked each other in the first place and why you are still on this journey together - battling children, money, weather and jobs and trying to remember who you are in the process. Right, now I'd better get back to all of the above...
It was week where my head almost exploded. I simply do not have the mental capacity, nor time in my day to do everything I need/want to do. Just getting everyone dressed and fed and clothes and washed is enough frankly, to fill a day - but add into that school homeworks (a 3 minute presentation that Sproglet has to do - NO THAT I FREAKIN HAVE TO DO YOU NIGHTMARE TEACHER) more laundry than the back room in Oxfam, and oh yes, a full time job on a punishingly relentless tv show and you have a woman on the edge.
Take this morning, for example - Husband and I are trying to do a food shopping list (not for us the moseying along some achingly fashionable London foodies market - *remembers fondly* - trying bits of aged cheese here and home made dips there) when Sproglet comes in wearing his clothes - back to front and inside out. So as we help him change, Sproglette is bleating on about me eating some invisible concoction she has created from her wildly complicated plastic kitchen cooker/dishwasher/fridge ensemble and it is carnage. Beads she bought (beads - I mean, who lets a 2 year old buy beads, oh yes - Husband does) are scattered across the floor - miniature jagged little pills that will cause untold pain when stepped upon (as they are daily). Then, as Husband and I fight over cheaper meals and how I MUST HAVE GIN at all costs - even if I do not eat all week - Sproglet insists I practise face painting on his arm.
Rather than go to a fun leaving event of an actress on our show - I was with 5 lovely women, drawing snakes and flowers on each others' arms. The snakes do look like giant slightly skewed penises crawling along our arms - and the roses are faintly vaginal, but who cares, we are trying goddammit! What for you ask? Son's school fete next week, where I no longer am needed to paint my unique form of transsexual unicorns, instead the aforementioned snakes, roses, dolphins and an angry bird. Funny, because it will turn me into an angry bird for sure... There is a reason skilled folk face paint - because they have talent! They flick a wrist and viola! A dolphin leaps from an elbow. But with me, it is like some squished jellyfish has landed and will never raise a tentacle again...
So in between face painting, and Sproglet having a football team presentation, and needing tennis kits and Sproglette being demanding, and homework and spelling tests and work piling up, and promises made to friends to read scripts, and to other friends to write up ideas for shows, and cooking the odd meal and thinking 'I must diet! I have a skinny skinny dress to get into at a wedding in 4 weeks (and then eating an oreo because this thought upset me so much) and not having time to exercise at all - and wishing for more sleep and time to break open my Game of Thrones box set (gawd bless you Cushman for that gift) as too many work scripts needed reading... I kind of flipped out. I stood teary eyed in my kitchen on the phone to a friends' voicemail babbling on so long that the tape ran out - shouting 'I AM BUT ONE WOMAN, I CANNOT DO IT ALL!!!!!'
Then I called Husband and told him I was divorcing him and that I could not do it all. Enough. He took it quite well as we divided our properties and fought over the car. I made a plan to run away to Ireland with the kids - it was all sorted in my head. Then he came home with a bottle of Hendricks gin, a sorted babysitter and told me we were going for dinner. I decided not to divorce him and go fro dinner instead.
In a restaurant with a fake olive tree, and fake bricks, and fake tasting scallops, we chatted through our very real lives. I told him my mantra and he is going to help more. As I type, he has taken the Diva shopping and I have ten whole minutes to write this blog before I begin the laundry nightmare...
That's all it took really - a bowl of lemon risotto and some fine red wine - and I was happy as a clam. Because if you don't have time to stop - down tools, and take in the view - you never get time to appreciate the nice bits, in between the face painting and the bum wiping. The bits that remind you why you liked each other in the first place and why you are still on this journey together - battling children, money, weather and jobs and trying to remember who you are in the process. Right, now I'd better get back to all of the above...
1 comment:
Oh, sister! You and I have had a very similar week!, I also get to throw in being in charge of an event day for all 150 8th graders at my school. I read this as I am laying in bed. I'm afraid I don't have the strength to get up and make coffee, or face my arguing children. Exactly! One woman. Where's my children's freakin village?? I could certainly use a village right now! I so hear you!
Post a Comment