The Easter holidays are now in session. This means that all day every day, nobody feels they need to follow any timetable or do anything helpful and or useful. The Primary school sent their last work missives last Wednesday so I am now four days in to being a full time, stay-at-home Child Entertainer. I am struggling. Half of my brain thinks 'ahhh feck it - it's the holidays, let them watch a screen all day in their pyjamas snacking on cereal whilst you luxuriate in bed' and the other half is thinking 'oh my god they are becoming obese and brain dead and they won't sleep - QUICK DO SOMETHING'. I am still very much filled with a sense of trying to 'keep busy' and I struggle with watching the children vegetate in their pyjamas achieving nothing all day. In the old days, BC, I was always busy. I can't seem to get my head around the fact that there is a great big 'nothingness' of plans, work and activities and in order to avoid having to confront my fear, I just keep being busy. Luckily, with six children under my roof, it is proving pretty easy to do.
I have read many FB status updates from people who have been spending their time very wisely during the lockdown and I obviously commend them. I see many 'my kitchen has never BEEN so tidy/organised/clean'. I find this amazing. It will not be a surprise to people who have visited my kitchen, that this is very much not the case for me. As I sit here now, (which I'm doing to avoid having to deal with it), there are saucepans piled high in the sink. The bin is full. The door to the mug cupboard which started to break off a few weeks ago, is now hanging from a jaunty angle by the remaining hinge. Plastic bags litter the floor as two children foraged for bags and trays in that cupboard and then studiously ignored the mess they left behind. The oven splash back and extractor fan are splattered with dark chocolate and there are smears of chocolate where the teenage boy made an exceedingly lacklustre attempt to clean it off (he was making chocolate bowls using balloons as the mould but two of them exploded mid-chocolate coating, but he decided not to clean up the chocolate bomb effect there and then, instead preferring to wait for it to harden and become much harder to clean off so he gave up shortly after trying). The floor is littered with sprinklings of grated cheese after a pasta supper (I'm super over cooking now - in the first week it was home made gluten free chicken goujons and even at the start of this week it was home made lasagne, but now it is grated cheese and pasta with ketchup and be sodding grateful for it). The glass bottles which need to go out separately to the recycling are sitting above the bin with a hopeful air that ANYBODY or indeed the other adult of the house, might recognise the need to transport them outside to their allocated dumping ground because they can't, as most people can attest, WALK THEMSELVES THERE.
In short, my kitchen is what one might call, a bomb site. It has, over the past two weeks had to become much more than a kitchen. It is a 24 hour diner, an arts and crafts activity centre, a skating rink, a dance studio, a cookery school and an actual primary school to boot. There is stuff absolutely everywhere. In life BC, I wouldn't panic quite so much as I would be able to sort it all out on a Monday morning. I could drop them all off at schools, do my Monday Morning Sigh of Relief after the final one is deposited in the loving embrace of her gorgeous Reception class teacher and assistants and then I could go out for my run, come back, chat to my friend on the phone whilst tidying the shit pit in to something resembling a normal home and 'reset'. I no longer have that option and I am getting a TAD worried about when that option is going to return. It was all very well when it seemed like a slightly fun adventure. It's even lovely today, with the beautiful heat and cloudless blue skies giving us a whole day in the garden - but always in the back of my mind, is that nagging fear that this month might continue on in to the next month. And that that month might continue on and on and on until the summer holidays. I hate not having any control over any of it. I hate doing what I'm told at the best of times and I am entirely on board with the whole, let's keep everyone safe motto - I am - but I'm slightly worried that two months on I may not care at all about anyone's health as we have done every sodding craft idea out there, there is no more PVA glue left in the world, the children will have broken everything we own and the notion that anyone ever did what I told them to do is a very dim and distant memory. And all the gluten free snacks in the known universe will have sold out due to over consumption.
My house has never been a shining example of excellent housewifery. I am, at best, disorganised and at worst inherently messy. The house, as I like to call it, has a very 'lived in' look. It is extremely well 'used'. Every inch of it. It is the very antithesis of the Mrs Hinch/Stacey Solomon school of thought which seems to encourage an insipid colour palette of only shades of grey and white with everything contained within the walls to be organised and labelled to within an inch of its life. These women seem to require a special way of storing absolutely everything, even crisp packets and every bit of food, lotion or cleaning product they bring in to the house has to be decanted in to a specially pre-bought glass vestibule with black writing on the front. It is a world I cannot imagine inhabiting. The contents of this house provides me with an endless game of 'memory pairs' where I come across one thing, that is requiring its pair/home/set and I have to try and recall where I last saw the pair/home/set or where I put it, or where a child may have put it, in order to 'pair' the items. I am hoping this constant use of my brain will help stave off any future deterioration later in life and I can smugly tell the news reporters, with my brain function entirely in tact, when they ask me what the secret is to making it to 100, that it was a glass of gin every night and a messy house. I appreciate it may give them a feeling of calm, knowing where everything is at a moment's notice, but to me it takes the fun out of everything. If you know where all of your children's birth certificates are - where is the sense of triumph when you manage to track one down when it is vitally needed?
I may yet be persuaded to come around to the dark side though. I recently made a total U Turn on my long held belief that running was a ridiculous and unnecessary past time fools undertook because they didn't know any better. After my Best Friend's 40th in January, we both looked at our photos from the evening and decided that it might be best if we do something about getting a little lighter and healthier in the immediate future. To that end, I downloaded the app and commenced the 'Couch to 5k' course. I was encouraged by the fact that the starting week only required you to run for 1 minute at a time with some welcome walks in between. I thought even I could manage a minute of running. I have always assumed, that even though I am comfortably in the morbidly obese section on those terrifying weight graphs (I think my fat is denser than everybody elses because to most people, including me, I simply look fat), that I somehow managed to retain a base level of fitness thanks to all the general care and maintenance of attending to five children every single day. After the 3rd minute on that inaugural run, I realised I had been woefully and dreadfully misguided. That realisation thankfully spurred me on to keep going and I managed to complete the 9 week course at the start of the lockdown which was deeply pleasing.
My only slight issue was with the misleading title of the app. 'Couch to 5k' very heavily implies that by the end of the 9th week, I would be managing to run 5 kilometres. I am most definitely completing the half an hour aspect of the task, but I'm only travelling 4 kms in that time. I think it should be renamed 'Couch to 5k unless you are on the heavier side, in which case it may well only be 4k'. If you count the warm up and warm down walks either side of the run then it may well be around 5k but I feel somewhat cheated. Nevertheless, my transition in to a 'runner' is as miraculous as if Kim K decided to embrace 'natural beauty'. Indeed, on learning of my move to the dark side, my elder sister sent me a one word text. It read 'JUDAS'. She and I formerly shared an absolute loathing for anything that involved donning Active Wear. Although, I would hasten to add that what I do isn't exactly 'running' as no. 2 son pointed out when he accompanied me once (he then started running backwards and around me in circles to emphasise his point). As my distance covered might imply, I am anything but fast. It is more of a spirited shuffle. It had long concerned me, having watched umpteen million police dramas, that I wouldn't be able to run from harm if my life depended upon it, so when I began this running malarkey I was filled with a sense of optimism that this would open up a whole new world to me in more ways than one. Now I have completed the course, I can safely say I am still very much in danger from anyone and everyone. I thought I might be safe from someone chasing after me in a motorised wheelchair, but alas, having looked it up, it would appear those things can get up some speed and so unless someone is on crutches with a broken foot, I'm still a very easy-to-catch victim. I am also a little miffed that the 'runners body' I see all the other runners sporting still also evades me. I should SURELY look like Kendall Jenner after two months???
I shall away now and see if I can tempt K in to sharing some profiteroles to celebrate our wedding anniversary. 17 years is a jolly long time and is definitely worthy of some note, but I am still heavily in the dog house after finally tracking down a perfectly priced large trampoline which I duly erected with the children yesterday. He is not at all a fan of trampolines and is pretty annoyed I have burdened our already over crowded garden with one. However he is not the Child Entertainer in charge and has no concept of how much effort it takes to keep them entertained for weeks on end so he can remain as annoyed as he likes. Today I managed to sit down to eat my lunch so it was entirely worth every penny. Sod it. Those profiteroles are all mine. Happy Anniversary to me. As you were people. xxxxxxxxxxx
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