I am So I’m a Career Mum (again)

Rejoice! Rejoice!

It is Friyay…the FIRST Friyay after a FULL week of school and work and routine. And we have all survived. (albeit just about, but survived we have.πŸ˜‚)
We may be frazzled and fooked Mammies, but still we must find the energy to REJOICE in the Fact that we have made it to the MOST wonderful evening of the week. πŸ˜†

This week, after two years of maternity leave, unpaid leave and jobsharing, I have finally dipped my toe back into the world of being a Full-time Mammy with a full-time Job. What have I learned? Nothing. But I have remembered MANY things; Things that I had battered down, suffocated and locked in a tattered old box at the back of the memory part of my subconscious, but which now bounce back to the forefront of my ridiculously tired little mind. 😐

Tired Children:

Tired children are cranky.
Tired children like to find a reason, ANY reason, to cry.
Tired children do not KNOW that they are tired.
Tired children refuse to admit that they are tired.πŸ˜₯
Tired children will bite one another.😠
Tired children do not like to go to their beds, regardless of how tired they are.
Tired children like to wake up at 2am and play with their toys, with the light on, noisily enough to waken everyone so that they have someone to tell that they are NOT tired.
Tired children do NOT like to get dressed in the morning.
Tired children do NOT like it when you bounce into their bedrooms at 7am singing β€œGood Morning, Good Moooooooorning!, opening curtains and declaring that it is time for school. (Especially the not tired children who have been up half the night playing with their fecking toys.😈)
Tired children like to say β€œNo” and β€œNo” and sometimes, β€œNoooooo!” to absolutely EVERYTHING that Tired Mammy asks or suggests.

And along with tired children, comes the Tired Mammy. But as well as being a tired Mammy, Mammy ALSO has to be SUPER-ORGANISED Mammy.
Mammy needs to keep on top of the fridge situation.
Mammy needs to pack lunchboxes and school bags and afterschool bags.
Mammy needs to remember the fecking HORROR that is HOMEWORK.
Mammy needs to think about dinners sooner than when she opens the fridge at 6pm.
Mammy needs to set her alarm to make sure she gets out of bed 30 minutes before everyone else if Mammy wants to pee, shower and have a coffee all by herself.
Mammy needs to be an intelligent and functioning adult.
Mammy needs to rid her brain of references to Peppa Pig and Andy and Bing because they are not relevant to Macbeth and teenagers do NOT respond well to them.
Mammy needs to try to keep the washing basket from puking and Mammy needs to arrange everyone’s clothes before bedtime.
Mammy needs to remain relatively Wifely and interesting enough to hold a brief conversation with Tired Daddy when he comes home from Jim.
And Mammy needs to get used to wearing stupid heels and muckup every single day. (I’ll last until the end of September…)
Mammy needs to cram all of the Mammying and playing and cuddling and scolding and fun into 3 hours in the evening, while being JUST as tired as her beloved Tired Children who are determined to PUNISH her tired ass for abandoning them in school and creche. (Even though they both LOVE where they go and actually CRY when they are collected.)
Mammy can not have grapes or gin during the week… πŸ˜›πŸ˜›
Mammy struggles with balancing the Mammy guilt when she’s away from the girlies, and the urge to sell them on ETSY when she’s spent an hour being screamed at and cried at by her Tired Minions.

Mammy can’t win.

In conclusion. Mammy does INDEED need to rejoice that she has made it to Friday night, has the tired minions in bed, her feet up and the grapes poured. πŸ˜‚And now Mammy needs all of her Lovely Supermums to say Hello and remind her of what I have been missing while abandoning you all this week while trying to keep 286 plates spinning without falling off her heels and onto her poor, muck-uped, Mammy-guilty face.

Cheers Bitcheepoos. xxx

I am Such a GENIUS Mum πŸ˜˜

Mammy is a genius.

A feckin genius I tell you.

As Mini-Me’s ability to COMPLETELY ignore me becomes increasingly professional, I find myself sometimes wondering HOW the FECK to get her to do even the most simple daily tasks?

My orders, my requests and any other hint of a suggestion of her doing something that might please me, seem to float around her head, never quite making contact with her ears. Usually, it’s only when I SHOUT or SCREAM that she eventually acknowledges that my voice HAS in fact been sending massive soundwaves in her direction.

She’s just chosen NOT to surf them. πŸ˜‚

And even when she finally acknowledges that I’ve asked her to do something, she still finds 162 ways to procrastinate or forget or simply not be able to do it.

“Put on your Pjs please Darling.”

“Put on your Pjs please Darling.”

“Put on your Pjs please Darling.”

“Put on your Pjs please Darling.”

“Put on your Pjs please Darling.”

“Mini-Me I am not going to ask you again…”

“Whaaaaaaaaat?!” (Add eye roll or exasperated sigh for effect.)

“I’ve asked you to Put on your Pjs. Get them on right now.”

“But where ARE they?” (Still watching Tellybox/making jigsaw/rolling on the floor etc…)

“Wherever you left them. Now go put them on!”😑

“But…” insert random WTF-inducing excuse/problem/comment here.

“PUT ON YOUR PJS NOOOOOOOOOOW!” Screaming BansheeMammy appears.

“Okay! Okay!” Stomps down hall, muttering something about “no need to shout”. (Little twatsickle.)

Mammy sighs in deluded, false victory, before being interrupted by “MAMMEEEEEEE. I can’t FIND them!” or some other shite like that, then stomps down hall, muttering and swearing to find her standing right in FRONT of the fucking Pajamas, which are the ONLY thing lying on the floor, but which are seemingly fucking INVISIBLE to my daughter.

Cue scolding, fighting, retaliation, defiance, huffing, puffing, threatening, snarling, crying and Mammy eventually putting the fecking things ON HER. (It’s that or throw them AT HER. Bad Mammy. No! Terrible thoughts Mammy.)

Different night, same old shite. Until tonight. Tonight, Mammy is a genius. The requesting, finding and putting ON of the fecking PJs took a whole 1 MINUTE AND 37 SECONDS.

I SHIT YOU NOT.

Why?

Because as I was about to ask her for the first time to “Put on your Pjs please Darling”, I opened the cupboard and spotted thisπŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡ and I had a brainwave.

“Oooooh look what Mammy found! I know, let’s have a race!” (Singsongy voice, think Mary-of-the-poppins.) “I’m going to time you to see how quickly you can put on ypu Pjs. Will we see what number we can get?”

“Yay! I LOVE races!”

“On your marks, get set…GO!” And I swear to God, she slid sideways back into the kitchen, fully dressed in her fricken PJs, a whole minute and a half later…

“Did I beat it?” (Not sure what she’s beating, but when it stops me wanting to beat my head off a brick wall, I’ll roll with it! πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚)

“Of course you did, you are AMAZING!” And it was.

Amazing.

And I am a genius.

And I will try it again tomorrow night, but she’ll probably have copped on to me by then.

Ah well, I’ll enjoy it while it lasts. πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚ How was your day? 😘😘😘

I am She’s on the phone Mum

​”I’m just on da phone Mammy”

“OK Darling.”
I carried on cooking dinner, laughing to myself as she chittered and chattered away on the phone.  She rang her old preschool teacher and had a very convincing one way conversation that went like this…
“Hi Macewa. S’me.  Hi. Yeah. Scuse me Macewa, it’s me here.  I need to speak to Danyel. No not my sister Danyel, ypir kid Danyel.  Yeah..yeah.. no…no.”  Pausing at the proper times and everything.
It was about 100 on the adorascale.
Then, a few minutes later, she announced,

“Scuse me Mammy. I’m just talking to Gwanny Mum, can you pweeeeease be quiet?”

“Ok pet.  You chat to Granny.”
I battered on in the kitchen.  She was sitting on the window sill on the other side of the room having another conversation with Granny apparently.
“You see we took down the Halloween Decorations cos it’s Christmas and now we have to get ready for Santa and I didn’t get to see da fireworks but I did go Twickatweeting and can I come to your house for a sweepover later? Oh Ok Gwanny.  See ya! Byebyebyebyebyebye”
“You finished talking to Granny?” 

“Yup!” And off she went on her next imaginary adventure.
“Wee dote” thinks S-Mum to herself, wondering where on Earth she EVER got the Byebyebyebyebyebye. πŸ˜‚
Fast forward a few hours.

“Gwanny” calls.
We chat about the funeral she’d been at.  We talk about Princess’s nasty cold.  We talk about going wallpaper shopping on Friday.  She says she’ll call for a cuppa later. 

Pretty normal.
And then she asks “Did Mini-Me hang up properly that time?”
Sorry WHAT NOW?😲😲😲
“What you mean Mum?”

“After she called me earlier? Did she hang up afterwards?”
Hole…eeeeeeee shit.  πŸ˜²πŸ˜²πŸ˜²
The little rascal had apparently called Gwanny after all, and had a full conversation with her. 

When Granny asked her if Mummy knew that she was on the phone, her answer was “I’m just talking to Gwanny Mum, can you pweeeeease be quiet?”

And of course, Gwanny heard me answer “Ok darling. You chat to Granny” so obviously assumed that I’d dialed her number for her to have a wee chat.
Oh how Mummy laughed.  

And Oh how Granny laughed.

And THEN, Mummy started to replay the conversation and the PANIC of “JEEEEESUS what were we saying?” set in! Thankfully, all poor Gwanny heard was my bad singing as I cooked.
But I’ll tell ya.

The phone shall be locked from now on, or at least when she’s “playing” with it, we’ll be checking if she’s ACTUALLY playing.
Couldn’t watch her! πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚

I am Survived Hell and Back Mum

​I despise Peppa Pig.🐷

Yes, I said DESPISE!

No, I’m not going a bit too far.
She is a walking, talking, whining, obnoxious little lump of pork, with THE most annoying voice, who tells her Daddy he has a fat tummy, hangs up on her best friend when she is jealous and speaks to her brother George in the most patronising voice EVER! 

Peppa drives every Mummy, including Mummy Pig no doubt, to thinking about wine at 1pm.

She’s bratty and irritating and I TRY weekly (in vain) to BAN her from the tellybox in Smumble Hill.
BUT.

She and I do have ONE thing in common. 😐
We both love jumping in muddy puddles.
Yesterday I completed Hell & Back Hercules in Sligo.
Hell and Back is a 10k (12k really) obstacle course through muck and mud and rivers and all sorts of shit.  (It’s on a working farm🚜, so I do not exaggerate here.)
It.

Was.

AMAZING!!!!πŸ˜€
The start was the worst part for me.  Talk about the gates of hell…😈😈😈
We were met with AN ICE-BATH where you had to step in and duck yourself under a row of tyres to get out the other side. I am not a fan of water and I surprised myself when I did it. I’d like to say it’s because I’m so brave…in reality, I’m just far too STUBBORN for my own good. 

I jumped in, took a deep breath, closed my eyes and pinched my nose and under I went. 
I emerged gracefully, like a dolphin leaping beautifully from the sea, without even a ripple behind me and landed like a gymnast…
Yeah.

My arse.
I remember as I emerge flailing and gasping like a fish that I wear contact lenses and so I have to get my eyes wiped dry before I can open them.  I’m trying to wipe them, but the stupid gloves I’m wearing are simply sloshing more water onto my face.  I know there are others trying to get out behind me so I have to get out quick.  There’s a steward shouting “Focus FOCUS!” at me. I’m shouting back another F word which I shall not repeat right now. He tries to help me out, but the next cretur behind me tumbles me as He emerges from the hell bath and I “graciously” FALL arse first out of the big container and ONTO “Focus Fecker”.  In his defence, he catches me, slaps me on the back and kindly and encouragingly screams “GO! GO! GOOOOO!”
Good start.  

But nothing could be worse for me than that start, so off we go!
We wade through rivers, jump over ditches, clamber over round bales, sink into muck, slide down hills, climb over nets and tree logs, fall into sludge, get stuck in the mud, lose shoes…
We get slapped in the face by rogue briars, and stung on the arse by PAINTBALLS as we run through forests.

We get ELECTROCUTED as we crawl under obstacles and SCRATCHED by barbed wire if we don’t keep our bums low to the ground.
We jump, leap, crawl, run, slip, slide and fall.
It’s like The Blair Witch Project combined with The Hunger Games … with a bit of Carry On Camping thrown in for good measure. πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚
The sounds are memorable.

We hear screams behind us and ominous cheers ahead of us. 

There’s some swearing…

 OK. Swearing us the language in Hell and Back. There is a LOT of swearing.
But mostly, laughter.

Glorious, bellyaching, snorting and snaughling laughter.

Strangers help strangers.

 We get encouragement from people who we’ve never met before. 

We get pulled over walls and pushed up slopes and no one really gives a hoot who owns the hand that has the misfortune of pushing your arse up or over! 
I surprised MYSELF with how easy I found most of it.  I’m fitter than I give myself credit for. I am good at jumping, not bad at falling πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚and I can lift my leg higher than I thought I could! πŸ˜‚ Although the course was long and exhausting, I did it no bother. I think I even surprised the Him. πŸ‘€
But what I wasn’t prepared for, was the comeraderie.

28 of the Rushe Fitness gang went to Hell yesterday and I must thank them for being the nicest, kindest, funniest shower of head-the-balls that I’ve ever had the pleasure to spend a day rolling in the mud with!  

Even those who finished earlier, waited at the 10ft wall to help the rest of us over, and then we all ran through the finish line together. As a team.
It’s tough.

It’s 12km of mayhem, but it’s easily the MOST FUN I’ve had in a long time.

I was 10 again, running through the farm, getting stuck in muck and “accidentally” shocked by electric fencing.

We were grown ups on an adventure.

We were splashing in muddy puddles.
And at the end, I had the nicest Pulled Pork Bap I’ve ever tasted. 😈😈😈
Gotta love Peppa and her muddy puddles don’t ya? 🐷
Look at how shiny and white we were at the start?


But look at how happy we look at the end! πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡πŸ‘‡

Hope you all had a lovely weekend Ladybelles. I’m off for a bath full of Epsom salts…πŸ’–??πŸ’–πŸ’–πŸ’–
#hellandback #hellandback2016 #SMum #rushefitness #muddymummy #peppapig

I am Smashed Cup Mum

​What do you get when you cross a cup and a bin lorry?

Let me tell you a story on this Fablis Friday evening…
Once upon a time, there was a little girl called Princess Mini-Me.  One day, OVER a year ago, Granny brought Mini-Me to a pottery cafe.  

Mini-Me painted a cup, much like the one in the image below.  As Mini-Me was just about to become a Big Sister, they decided that the cup would hereforth be known as “Big Sister cup”.


Cute so far eh?
Mini-Me brought her new cup home and for 3 whole months, the Big Sister Cup sat in the cupboard, where Mini-Me pretty much ignored it, apart from the odd day when she took a notion to ask for it.
Then, one fateful, cursed day, Mini-Me dropped the cup and it smashed into 3 million Smithereens, all over the kitchen floor. Cinderella’s glass slipper didn’t have a look in and THIS fairy Good-GOD-mother, didn’t have a CHANCE of fixing it.  
And so the Big Sister Cup went to the big cupboard in the sky.  OK, I exaggerate.  It went INTO the bin, AWAY in the Bin Lorry and OUT of our minds…


A few months later, it was mentioned again out of the blue.
We drove past a Bin Lorry. She started to shout “Follow THAT BIN LOWEEEEE!” and “BIG SISTER CUP!”

We laughed (Hahahaha!) and hugged her and gently explained, once again, that the cup was BROKEN and it was GONE.

And they all lived happily ever after…

Until this evening.
8 MONTHS LATER…As the Poor Queen S-Mum collected Mini-Me from school, she was summoned by the very lovely teacher, who informed her that Mini-Me had cried for 45 minutes after breaktime.  She was VERY upset apparently, and try as she might, Teacher could NOT figure out what had caused the Tootsy One’s meltdown.

“She kept talking about a cup for her sister?” said Teacher.

“Huh?” said S-Mum.  (Not a single clue.)

“And something about a bin lorry?”

(Penny drops.  Oh. DEAR. GOD…) 

“Aaaaaah! Darling, did you see a Bin Lorry at Breaktime?” ventured S-Mum. 

“Yush Mammy and I wanted my Big sister cup back…”
Well I won’t go into the verbal diahorrea that began projecting from my mouth to try to explain to Teacher why my Daughter had FALLEN APART at the sight of a bin lorry.  πŸ˜πŸ˜πŸ˜
Because, it’s just too fricken weird and too hilariously ridiculous and is YET another example of how S-Mum may get used to feeling COMPLETE MORTIFICATION AND CONFUSION for the foreseeable future.

It seems to come with the territory.

  It should be part of the instructions on the Pregnancy test… “Pee on stick, Wait for line, Get used to being confused about EVERYTHING.” πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚
So what do you get when you cross a cup with a bin lorry?
An ABSOLUTE TRAUMA which will continue to cause Mini Meltdowns WELL into the teenage years apparently.
I smell grapes.🍷🍷🍷
Happy Friday Lovelies.πŸ’–

Watch out for the Bin Lorries. πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚πŸ˜‚