tip toeing...

shhh! its christmas eve! we're all tip-toeing around the house. I mean. shit. Father xmas is. He's filling.
he's doing his stocking thang. Anyone with a stocking fetish in fact, Father Christmassing is the perfect job!
anyway. stockings are being laid out at the end of sleeping childrens' beds.
there they lay, peacefully dreaming of the logistics of one man and 800,billion children's stockings to fill in one night (anxiety dream onset: how will he do it in ONE night only? it's worse than an anika rice challenge...), and the true luminesence of Rudolphs nose in this fog (will they just crash into the first tower block in a Porstmouth suburb?).
so we're tip toeing around Granny Darlings' house down in the country. there is even a bit of snow in the garden. and we've just eaten our weight in stilton. and drunk a lot of rioja (it should probably officially be claret... but we're more cosmo than you think down here in the sticks...). and chewed some home made truffles (courtesy M-in-Law & Husband) and the scene is quite dare i say it, perfect?
and if you can guess where granny darling has put the turkey then I'll give you the last truffle...
answers on a postcard.

oh. and if anyone else does want to sign up as a "follower" that'd be a lovely christmas present for the slightly tipsy Ruined Mother.
(I discovered tonight that my mum has read it once and the rest of my (grown up) family hasn't actually even clicked on the link...- apart from Bert.... fellow brother blogger... which made me feel a bit sort, y'know? sad? mind you, not that my life is that damned interesting...)
But enough self pity! there is a night to sleep through and then a day of smoked salmon, champagne, wrapping paper and general mayhem!
Rock on Jesus! good luck down the birth canal tomorrow!

The holidays are actually here.

Snow!
Twinkling lights!
Log fires (if your wood isn't too damp)!
Chestnuts!
Tinsel!
More Snow! In your wellies, down the back of your neck, all over your hall floor, up the stair-carpet!
Credit card melting!
Mol & Liz were playing like street-urchins last night, on the pavement, and made a respectable 3ft-high snowman with bamboo arms and a carrot nose and stone eyes... And some arse in the night kicked it down and trampled it away. Typical Harringay YOBS. Kill joys.
I was waiting for Mol to ask me if we could bury the dead snowman (we have in the past buried dead ladybirds and butterflies) which would've been a confusing ceremony.
So, snowman death aside, it is all Christmassy and I've done lots of wrapping and the tree is dressed (although its needles are falling and its getting a bit autumnal) and we're packing up the house for the annual family Christmas get together.
Which means Mothers Ruin is having a little Christmas break too (although our destination does have internet and a mac-computer despite being in the depths of rolling countryside) and will report back later on after Christmas (that's if I haven't gone and exploded a la Creosote...).
So, merry Christmas! And if you don't celebrate Christmas then merry holidays!
Bon Vacances!
Joyeux Noelle!
(And lets hope you've all been very good girls and boys and the mysterious Father C gets down your chimney and gives your stocking a right and proper filling.)
Until next time, friends...

bad diet

oh god. I forgot that with Christmas comes major nibble food galore overload and wine flowing out of every possible oozible-place and parties and more cakes and oh, just have a small one for the Christmas cheer... and then by New Years Eve everything in the body is heaving and sighing and moaning and pleading STOP STOP no more - not another drop, not another raison soaked in brandy, no more Quality Street (not even the green triangle ones) and your head is saying, well, y'know, I mean, you've already eaten 3/4's of the tin and drunk nearly 2 bottles of Claret in less than 48 hours what does one more wee-snifter really matter?
And then like that fat bloke in Monty Python Mr Creosote, you, in your head at least, feel that last sip of Baileys slip down the throat and ignite the fuse that results in spontaneous combustion and the walls of your mothers house are covered in 4 days worth of partially digested food, a couple of chocolate wrappers (sometimes there is no time to unwrap them completely... you just shove 'em in and hope that like chewing gum, it won't block the gut for 40 years as the urban myth suggests), a few hair balls and maybe even a couple of pennies you swallowed as a child. All out in a big fat-man-explosion.
And that is what Christmas is all about. Surely? Nothing to do with Virgins, Bright Stars, Wise Men (that's a mad idea! Wise Men! It must be the undoing of the whole Christmas Story...Like the tooth fairy, Wise Men Do Not Exist) and a small wee babe in a cot of straw... No! Its just about food. Drink. Piles of wrapping paper. Getting over the cold you contracted on Christmas Eve. And wondering how inpolite it would be to return the unwanted strange looking items from John Lewis which have piled up at your feet.
(Talking of colds. All the girls in the Mothers Ruin Family caught colds last week. And by Friday we were sort of feeling a bit less dreadful. [Husband now has it I believe - its before 11pm and he's sloped off to bed. Not a good sign.] But the point to this small side-chat is that on Friday I went to collect Liz from her school-nursery and bent down to give her a tender motherly loving kiss, at which point I managed to injest a mouthful of freshly-run-snot which was surrounding her mouth/nose area. And because it was in front of a lovely gentle teacher, and this is true, I felt I simply couldn't spit in the middle of the classroom. Yes. I slugged it back. Eyes shut. And thought of Britain. Or something. OH TOTAL VIOLATION! 30 seconds later and I nearly did a Mr Creosote there and then in the school playground. So. Watch out for those tender motherly moments when children have colds. Its just not worth it.)

glitter cont... and other things

Just a small continuation from the glitter debate have a look at this clip. This is actually how my entire house feels right now. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJbYMHLmamE

And to continue with the feeling-christmassy-theme, we're off to watch The Snowman, for real, this morning. A family trip! Imagine that. I wonder how many arguments we'll have throughout the whole adventure? I'd say on average about 3 per hour?

Brrrrr.
Its actually too cold to type. My. Fingers. Have. gone. sort of wierd dead-colour.

all that glitters...

All that glitters today, in my house, is glitter. All over my house. All over my washed floors. All over the kitchen table. All over the radiator. All over the kidz' fingers / hair / faces. Up my staircases. On the sofa. etc. And the thing about glitter is that it embeds itself into the surfaces. Liz once had glitter stuck to her scalp for about 3months, despite weekly washes and scrapings with the metal nit-comb. I wonder what would happen if glitter got into the blood stream?
Why, you may be wondering, are Les Enfants at home on a Wednesday?
Well, the simple answer is that they are ill with nasty green snot and wheezing chests.
So we're kicking back in N8 getting down with the Christmas cheer.
And today has been well-Christmassy despite grotty kids. (I keep saying to them If you're well enough to fight then you're well enough to be at school...But they're still fighting and still snotting.)
I lit the advent candle! No.16 already!
It snowed!
We got a parcel!
In the parcel were 'glitter-up your own tree decorations'.
We glittered 'em up!
I cooked some hot soupy lentil broth.
We watched The Snowman sitting under a rug on the sofa, and I cried but tried not to let Mol see because otherwise she'd cry too. And then we'd both probably start flailing and wailing.
And we got a Christmas card! (I'm sure the postman is hiding ours... seem to be much fewer than usual... maybe WE'VE been struck off everyones list? - Wracking my brains thinking who I've offended lately? - Oh, can think of a few people I've let down... maybe...)
And its snowing still!
And the Christmas tree lights are twinkling.
And we're all snotty and exhausted - and isn't that just the surest sign that Christmas is looming?
And I have my red Christmas nail varnish on!
Glitter-on dudes.

Sunday best

Today consisted of:
3 night time wake up calls from hot sweaty snotty Liz;
spilling iboprofen on her carpet 2 times in the dark;
knocking over water beside her bed in the dark;
washing all her sweaty sheets this morning;
snot snot and more snot;
carrying Liz pretty much everywhere;
suffering extreme shoulder/arm pain;
wondering if I'll get my post natal Madge arms back as a result?;
the house smelling of roast chicken, leeks in white sauce, maple syrup, apple crumble;
decorating an oversized needle-dropping Christmas tree;
anticipating more needles on the floor in the next couple of weeks;
snot;
one kids party;
one lunch party;
one cold walk in the park (saw a mouse);
hoovering needles;
watching last nights (shocking) Strictly results;
ironing;
smoked salmon;
nearly dying on the sofa watching BBCs sports personality of the year, but saving myself by forcing butt off sofa and upstairs for bath.
All lots better than last nights report. Although I missed a damned fine party by all accounts.

Christmas Time Is Fun. Yes. Really.

Oh well, I didn't chuck myself off the blogging. Not just yet.
And today my head is going to explode with all the stuff that is going on in it. So much going on inside because there's so much going on outside. Life. Busy. Busy. B.U.S.Y. I thought Christmas was meant to be fun. But tonight as I write I'm feeling all clogged up - like I've eaten my entire weight in chewing gum and then been put in the freezer and now I'm stuck.
Today was meant to be a fun Christmassy day. In fact it started off quite badly with Liz coughing insessantly from 5.30-7.30am and it sounded a bit like the cough that Mol had which was actually an asthma attack that hospitalised her for 4 days. So I lay in bed wondering whether to get up and listen to her chest. But after 2 hours it was morning time and we all woke up. And she stopped coughing and starting snotting instead. Fair exchange.
And then things picked up a bit - Husband made bacon and eggs for Mol and himself and then they skipped off (well, drove) to pick up our American-style-over-sized Christmas tree (discount at the garden centre you see) and bought it back and the house immediately smelt of Christmas and out of the cellar I dug our slightly dusty damp decaying decorations (they'll do, again).
And then we all jumped back into the car and drove off on phase 2 of our day (lunch in Waltham on Thames). Hurrah.
But disaster struck outside the Sobell Centre (I went ice-skating there once when I was a teenager) when some STUPID COW with her totally MORONIC fuck-wit teenage son (with bad bum-fluffy hair growth - she just had mad womans' stubbly hair on her face in a beardy fashion) drove her VW into the side of our car. And then because she didn't speak very good English she got a bit overly-loud and started say "I no liaaaaar" at which point I was like 'Husband, she's probably given us a false telephone number' and Husband started taking photos of her and her sons' hairy faces and their car.
Meanwhile Stan who was sitting in the bus-stop with a white plaster stuck on his most recent shaving accident on his chin gave me his number and said he'd be my witness (even though he's from Leicester- not that that means he shouldn't be a witness, but just that he's quite not local, so it could be a bore for him...).
So after 30mins of standing in the no.91's bus-stop and causing a bit of a jam, I implored Husband to stop talking to the by now almost ranting woman and her fuck-wit teenager ("please can I have your address?" I asked him. "What? I don't know my address. I'm a teenager?" - and that's the absolute truth. See? Fuck-wit.)
So we drove off and I was so cross. Daft idiotic woman. And we were 1hour late for lunch. And lunch was lovely but hard work as I had Liz on my knee getting clammy and refusing to eat her pizza and I was spilling butternut squash soup every where and each conversation got cut short by one of the 7 kids falling off a chair/biting a tongue/wanting more/wanting less/not sitting next to the right person/needing a pee/doing a fart/screaming for the sake of it/snotting on their mother (me) - y'know? And then before I could put the last scary monster on to my godsons most impressive Castle Of Doom (comes with monsters which really are the stuff of nightmares)
it was time to plod on to the next session - phase 3 of the day: tea with sister in law in Shepherds Bush, followed by their Xmas party (have been looking forward to it).
Phase 3 goes as follows: arrive at The Bush of Shepherd, unpack 50 fairy cakes and a ton of brownies made last week in spare moments for the party. Feed Mol a giant plate of spaghetti. Realise that Liz really isn't feeling very well (sweaty coughing refusing pizza, again - refused brownie - even), make executive decision to not put on gold party shoes, load the car with crying Liz (covered in snot) crying Mol (who'd wanted to hand out fairy cakes to her grown up friends at the party) and myself - with a phone running out of battery, a car with a battered rear end (a bit like mine I guess) two crying snotting kids and a 45 minute journey to N8 (and a traffic jam on the West Way).
So here I am.
And this is why I'm wondering where the fun bit of Christmas is? This run up to the Big Day is mental. Office parties. Neighbourhood parties. School parties. Nursery parties. Shopping. Making endless lists. Going round in circles. Having moronic hairy women smash into your rear. Feeling anxious about the credit card. Wondering if this will be the last year your child believes in Father Christmas. Not knowing what to get Husband for Christmas when he asked for a jumper and yet came home from work last week having bought himself a - yes, you guessed - jumper! Worrying about the crack in the ceiling above my bed. Trying to remember to send cards to all the right people. Its sometimes just too much. Or am I just a bit too precious?

Actually I think I'm feeling guilty. I have guilty mothers' syndrome: I don't spend enough time with my kids, (and when I'm with them my mind is elsewhere). I don't spend enough time at work (so permanently feel poor). I don't spend enough time with Husband (and when I do we talk about money and work and house and try to make plans for the future that don't seem realistic). I don't spend enough time cleaning (finally cleaned the top of a picture in the bathroom - it was black). I don't have enough time for friends and when I do I'm thinking that I should be at home with my kids or Husband. I worry about my liver. I worry about my skin. And my wrinkles. And my expensive eye-sight. And my cheap clothes. Oh, and I guess I worry about the childrens' education, sometimes.
So that is why my head is a bit spinny and I guess that's why I'm feeling a bit bah-humbug. Or maybe it's just plain and simple: I'm peeved that I'm not in my gold high-heels drinking a bottle of bubbly that I saw in sister-in-laws giant fridge... sneaking a fag in their garden and trying to find a star in the black clear December sky...

cutting the mustard

Is the expression "cutting the muster" or "cutting the mustard"?
Husband sent me the link to another North London blog and I was really upset that
a.) he'd been sniffing around other ladies' blogs (a bit like having a sexy dream where the object/victim of your desire isn't the one who shared the bed with you for the last 12 years - not that that's ever happened to me, obviously) and;
b.) that her work was probably going to be loads funnier/intellectual/politically-wise/observant/more read/higher-amount of followers than mine, and;
c.) this forced me into a horror Latin class flash-back (GCSE) where the teacher would look at me in pity when it was my turn to answer a question about the River Styx or the declension of idioticum and I'd simply want to melt into the maroon carpet because I was clearly too thick and shouldn't even be doing Latin GCSE - and its that feeling I'm not good enough I'm going to fail again my brain is only semi-developed I'll never know what a noun is let alone a declension my 6 year old is already better at maths than me, and;
d.) that there are more Mother Bloggers in the world than there are £'s what bailed out the bankers in the recent bank-crisis, so who would want to read another anyway?
So now I'm wondering about this whole blog business. Too many bloggers ruin the... ? (Internet soup?)
My life isn't very interesting and my children's lives are quite similar to lots of other children's lives in N8 (well, maybe not quite the same as the children who go to Rokesley or Fortismere...) and what goes on in my life probably isn't even very well represented by the words I put together anyway. Another author could probably articulate my daily angst far more accurately.
And I don't even know if it's cutting the muster or mustard (I always thought it was mustard, because I like the idea of cutting mustard, because, now here's the clever bit, mustard doesn't actually need cutting, so its like a double-bluff? Similar to a Spooks plot line...).
And so I am going to spend some time deliberating my fate. Its a bit like America's Next Top Model and if I fail the next task (um, like, maybe, not gaining another "official blog follower" between now and the next blog I write) then I guess maybe I'll be kicked off the blog-scene. Some other colourful laugh-out-loud kind of blogger can fill in your next spare 6.5minutes while you sit on a loo in your echoey office facilities...
(God, I've just thought of another invention: internet that gives you sensory experiences: if you could smell the farts (click on that link its he he he) that Liz has been letting off whilst I'm sitting here, you'd be laughing/crying/gagging/re-gurgitating your sushi... - its a sensory overload.)
Anyway. Enough self pity.
I've got to go sort out Liz's rear-end, and then think about who is on my Christmas card list this year. And put icing on about 50 fairy cakes for the school Bazaar on Friday.
See? Plain and simple dull dull dull dull (a la Craig off Strictly...).

Is it that time again, already?

Jingle Bells Batman Smells Robin Flew Away!
Oh what fun it is to ride on a one horse open slay...
Jesus Mary Holy Lord how did it get round to being Christmas all over again? I'm sure it was not all that long ago that I was making a list of people I had to buy presents for and cursing my bank account for not being fatter and cursing my arse for being too lardy and here we are all over again. But we've had spring and summer and autumn and now its winter and cold and wet and miserable and dark and the shops have their dreadful Christmas Window Displays (I want that one Mum) and through the fog and drizzle a street light has the haze of cheery Christmas lights planted up its trunk... And the post office sends out reminders "You only have 20 days left of Royal Mail deliveries! Panic! Come and join the queues! Share some germs with the other 50 queue-ers, get swine flu while you're here and we'll offer you some health insurance to go with your over priced stamps!" And get on the phone to your friends and ask them if they're sending Christmas cards because if they are then we are and if we are then they are and we'll all hopefully receive the same amount of cards without feeling like we have no friends. And if someone doesn't send a card this year REMEMBER it for next year - cross 'em off the list! In these times of bad finances every card counts.

Cliff Richards Shaken-Stevens Pogues Mariah Carey hangovers mince pies too many parties sore livers exhaustion colds illness no money lists satsuma's and gold coins where's the sun actually gone too many people on the bus no money house smells of Christmas tree's and laundry.

And so Mol and Liz drag themselves out of bed each morning in the darkness and we send them downstairs for their breakfast, their eyelids drooping, their hair stuck to their cheeks where snot may have run in the night, their dressing gown cords trailing on the (occasionally a bit dirty) floor, and then when they reach the kitchen its HEY! WOO HOO! Advent calendars! And they suddenly wake up full of joy and happiness at the endless possibilities of what sweet Granny will have hidden in their (home made, per-lease, as if we'd have shop bought...) calendars. This morning Liz disappointed by her green Opal Fruit (sorry not called that any more, its a STAR BURST!!! BURSTING WITH SYNTHETIC FLAVOURS! - hey I've just thought of a really cool multi-billion-pound-business: create sweets that mimic vegetables, but make the kids think that veggies are delicious desirable and, um, sweet? Hey, I'll swap your brocolli for my cream of sweet-corn? Well, only if you give me the deviled-beans with it. I'm on to something here, definitely...).
But advent calendars are good for waking kids up on shitty black cold raining school mornings, even if the meaning behind them is lost. What are they for, other than counting down to Christmas - when "I get loads of presents and chocolate money from Father Christmas".

Do you think Madonna's children ever get confused by their mums name?

Anyway. So, I'm thinking about Christmas a little bit more. I've done some Amazon ordering for the god-kiddy-winks. I've only gone made not one but two goddamned Christmas puddings and to celebrate the fact that I've only gone made my own goddamned Christmas pudding I took a photo of the mixture and then drank all the rest of the bottle of beer that didn't make it in it. Yee ha. Drunken domestic goddess.
I need to get Husband a present.
I once got him a weekend in a nice hotel.
And once I got him a Christmas jumper.
And once I got him a book of photos which were verging on erotic (I think there was a picture of a willy that wasn't in its down position) and that kind of freaked him out.
Last year I think I got him 4 Haruki Murakami books which have mostly been read by me.
So this year is going to be a real humdinger. Just not sure yet. And if you're reading this oh Husband you could drop some hints...?
I'd like some time off. Time. It's free and comes in all sizes / colours / fragrances / locations - so its quite a versatile concept. Do you think its on offer this year? Good for the bank and good for the Mothers Ruin.
Tomorrow is Friday. One of my favourite days of the week.
Oh, did you see Spooks tonight? My keyboard is the VERY same as the computer-techy-wizzo's and frankly I think he got the idea from me.
22 days to go...