Planet of the Crepes

[DukesOfTripHazard]

New bowl of crisps, tuck in Ruby!

I am thrilled at this Pixi lust. Another of their things wot I like is the cheek gel in natural. It doesn't stay on very long but while it does it's well pretty.

I felt a bit rubbish yesterday and spent much too long hunched over the computer looking at not very edifying things. Today is better. Have shredded, spot cleaned the stair carpet, written a letter to DD who will be at an outdoor pursuity place with school next week and am now going out to buy some fabric conditioner at Wilkos. When the mice are away the cat does rather boring things, it would seem .

I shouted really horribly at my children tonight. Unforgivable screaming. I am so ashamed of myself. I love them and hadn't behaved like this for ages and I want to boil myself, I am so ashamed.

Yes, good luck with the play development, Dukes. Wish I could get away with cutting my own hair. If I did it now I don't reckon the results would be any better than the last time I tried it, about 44 years ago (still have my mother's shrieks ringing in my ears).

BTM, the Boden shirt episode was a few years ago now and my mother has now shrunk so much that she doesn't have a waist any more and definitely can't get into very small trousers now. Although she did try and give me some of her vintage skirts a month or two ago and smirked mightily when I couldn't even get close to doing them up. I dunno why I even bothered trying them on, I should know better after all these years, especially as I wouldn't have ever worn any of them anyway.

oh MI dont be too hard on yourself... we all turn into screaming snarling banshees sometimes (well i certainly do). no one is perfect and mothers are human too. when i am in the wrong i do make sure i apologise when i've calmed down and normal service can be resumed.... i try and persuade myself that it's a good life lesson to be able to make up after a falling out.... chin up.

Nooooo, MI. Don't be too hard on yourself. We've all done it. Besides they must have done at least a little something or other to annoy you...

Yes, I agree with oldqueenie. If I've really overstepped the mark, I go and apologise. Just like I would expect them to do when they have been bloody foul. Which they are quite often.

I have grovelled apologised and when they said it was 'all right' I said no, it wasn't all right and that I was ashamed of myself, and I think we are friends again.

phew! see, valuable lesson learnt and not just by you...

MI, we've all been there. Sometimes I hear myself arguing with one of mine, and wonder who's the adult......

I'll budge up and you can join me on my bed of nails, MI. But apologies make a huge difference and can mend most things. My mother was a screamer who never explained and almost never apologised and I remember once seeing my aunt (who remains one of my shining examples of motherhood but was not short of a loud Croatian expletive or two when the occasion demanded) yelling at my cousin for some form of foul teenage behaviour and then later apologising and explaining the reason for her temper. It blew my mind as that had never happened to me. Aunt and cousin have the most marvellous relationship, too, which is what I'm aiming for.

And I had a small delightful interlude in an otherwise pants week, and sent dh and the ds1&2 out for 2 hours cricket nets while dd and I snuggled up and finally watched the Great Expectations I've had on Sky+ since Xmas. She loved it and it was bliss not to have fecking Top Gear on.

I shouted "Shut up!" and a few other choice words at dd last night. At 9.30pm, dh and I were still working and dd was doing her homework - which she had chosen to leave until the last minute and was consequently having a panic about. Unless her hw is MFL or English, we generally aren't qualified to help, but last night she was moaning and grumbling so much about her Geography that I tried to ask how I could help, but then both dh and I got an earful of abuse. So I told her to shut up otherwise she could go downstairs and do the hw olden-days-style with a paper and pencil. Strangely, this seemed to be a very helpful approach as her writer's block suddenly disappeared and she produced rather a large presentation. I'd like to hope that the next time she has a 4-hour homework she at least tries to start it at the w/e. She won't, though.

Must be something to do with the weather - DD is being particularly snotty ATM.

And I had a heated discussion with DS this morning over his cornet - last week he said he wanted to give up, so I agreed it with DH and popped into tell school on my way to work. This morning he got very upset that I had done that without checking with him - apparently he doesn't want to give up Luckily when I rang school, they hadn't given his place away.

And DH and I realised last night that DS has a maths lesson at the same time as DD's parent's eve tomorrow (can't cancel as it's only the second one)..... she is not going to be happy when she hears that I'm not going

Stropps, that scenario sounds horribly, horribly familiar I would have done exactly the same!

Surely you can think of someone, ruby - Ann Widdicombe, Paul Daniels, Robert Mugabe....

Well I have a strangely angelic DD at the moment (DD1, who is 10), to the point that DH and I are starting to wonder if she's been switched by some mystery alien force. She is being helpful, efficient, mature.....I'm not complaining, at any rate.

But it's funny how the family dynamic changes. Up until recently, DD2 was the angel of the family, and was generally adored by her siblings, while DS1 and DD1 spent the whole time fighting, or lounging about being uncooperative and irritating. Now all of a sudden DD2 has become an irrational little madam, DS1 and DD1 have started to actually gang up on her (which really winds her up), and DD1 has turned into the Stepford Daughter.....I can't keep up!

Thankfully, DS1 hasn't changed and is still lounging about being uncooperative and irritating.

And on a completely unrelated note, I got stung yesterday by a bastard queen wasp which was hiding in my box of eBay stuff. My right wrist is still throbbing.

Evening crepusculars.

Still feeling a bit fragile after drunken weekend, which resulted in waking up sweatily at 3am yesterday, and unable to go back to sleep. Gah.

Feeling a bit bad today. Our NCT gang is still surprisingly cohesive, but there's one member who is a bit, well, emotional. She often organises things with individual members of the group, but hates to be left out of anything herself. I tend to be a totally open book, and invite everyone to everything, to avoid any politics.

Anyway, today another member of group had organised for a few of us to go to a park. We got there, and who happened to be there but emotional woman. Who hadn't been invited. Oops. I texted her afterwards to see if all was OK, and she said 'been in tears all day'. It wasn't actually my fault, as I didn't do the organising, but I feel bad.

In other news, saw the zebra mumsnet scarf in the park. Lot of them about in east London!

In more other news, I too had a massive shout at DS, after he had five 'lying on the pavement, totally floppy' type tantrums then wouldn't get in his car seat. I bellowed into his face. He went all quiet and stared out of the window all the way home, while I apologised profusely.

You lush, Herbs.

Emotional Woman sounds a complete PITFA, but I think you always get one in every group. Perhaps someone should tell her to Man The Fuck Up and Grow A Pair. (Spent too long working with the military, me.) Or perhaps not. It is probably not very nice of me, but I do tend to ease out, and have less contact with, people who are emotional drains or have this victim mentality. Unless they have some other redeeming quality that shines through the shit, which makes it worth bearing with, helping them and being there for them. But most of the time they just seem to be emotional vampires. Don't get me wrong, I would absolutely be there for any friend in need (and have been) - it's just the "it's all about meeee" ones that get on my tits.

Children, ah yes. Unfortunately, I've found that the only way to get children to do something that you want them to do/they need to do, is to shout. I have tried smiley niceness. I have tried reasoning. I have chewed up and regurgitated "How to listen so that teens will talk and talk so that teens will listen". I have tried rewards, praise and cajoling and it is all bollocks. But if you scream "Tidy your fucking room" (I know, absolutely not my finest moment, but I had just trodden on, and broken, a plate which was cowering under a pile of clean and dirty pants, empty yogurt pots, sweet wrappers and a discarded sanitary towel) three centimetres from their sweet little faces, it means action, and the room is tidy within minutes. If anyone has a more pleasant alternative that works, I'm happy to try it. I even tried doubling pocket money, but that didn't work either.

Mmmm, MrsS, we seem to belong to the same school of parenting.

I am already quailing at the thought of how much shouting I am going to have to do next w/e to get dd to tidy and clean her room so that the lucky, lucky French exchange student can have somewhere to sleep and put her stuff.

Dh has had his biopsy. It went OK, but he isn't able to sit down for long at the moment. However, the *%$$ing idiot managed to poison himself slightly this morning by not reading the instructions on the monster dose antibiotics he had to start taking 2 hrs before the op. He took 2 tabs instead of 1 and failed to notice the info about not taking them within 2 hours of having milk. He washed them down with his coffee and now has an upset stomach (not ideal with the procedure he's just had done, ahem). I'm afraid I shouted at him as well.

Mrs s, you have her down to a t. I spent the first year of our acquaintance trying to please her, bending over backwards, until i realised i was being played. Some of the time I feel charitable, and that her dramatics and manipulation are down to raging insecurity, and remind myself that she's good company.

Crikey. Hope she doesn't lurk here!

Hope dh is okay Stropps - when are results due?
Ruby did you enjoy Stomp?
No shouting here at present, but ds is a funny mood as all his friends have gone on school residential.....

Stropps - what is it with men and instructions? The amount of times I ask dh "well, what did it say on the box/in the leaflet/on the tin?" and he looks at me blankly like I was speaking Swahili. Glad your dh has has the biopsy done, though, hope the wait for resuts is not too long.

Herbs - sympathy for the floppy toddler tedium. Ds1 used to do that regularly - we had a buggyboard for the pushchair after dd got too big for her sling, but we failed to realise how much cooperation from the toddler a buggyboard requires. Ds1 would refuse to get on the board, I would manhandle him onto it, holding his hands onto the pram handles and he would just collapse, or hang there floppily. It used to make steam come out of my ears.

Oh, and that same toddler, my precious baby boy, came home last night in a high state of worry because a friend of his had brought a book on puberty into school, or got it from the school library, and there was much misinformed fnarr fnarring by the boys in his class over diagrams of penis / vagina / body hair etc. To be fair, ds1 knows all the facts already (and has been vocal in expressing his feelings that it all sounds like a terrible idea ), but I think this was the first time he'd really come across the "manly" way the subject is approached by most 11 yr old boys, which god knows is only going to get worse. So we had a full and frank discussion about the word vagina, about how slang words for sexual parts are often used as insults, and what the word "rape" means . Really happy that's a term being flung hilariously round at school, not. When we got to his question about why X at Scouts kept saying "Y eats vaginas", I ran out of liberal steam and said that X was being childish and that ds1 should ignore him.