Yummy Mummies

Why is it that my bed is the warmest and comfiest place to be at 6.29am on Monday morning just before the alarm clock starts screaming its head off, whereas the night before, when I need to sleep, it’s the most hostile environment on earth? It’s cold, lumpy, hard, and it contains a duvet-hogging man who is the ringmaster of the all-snoring, all-flatulating circus.

As I lay in the darkness willing myself to sleep, the LCD display on my bedside clock taunts me. It may be the only visible thing in the room; a gentle red glow that is deceivingly comforting. Make no mistake though, the clock is evil. With every glance in its direction it gloats at me that in less than five hours it will, at a crucial moment, catapult me out of my blissful Johnny Depp dream using a sound akin to a robotic cockatiel, causing me a mild heart attack.

If I’m lucky, by 8.50am, I’ll have successfully dressed, groomed and fed our four zombie-like children and made it to the school yard without losing one of them on the way there. After very little sleep I’m scruffy, aggravated, and dragging several uncooperative children along with me. So why does every other woman in the schoolyard look as though they’ve just stepped off the cover of Vogue? A “Yummy Mummy” is the new fashionable thing to be, anyone who knows me would find that prospect hilarious.

I’m filled with admiration for these women. How do they do it? There just isn’t the time on frenzied school mornings in our house to apply make-up, do something Nicky Clarke-like to my hair, choose a knock-out outfit, and don killer boots. Between yelling at the girls, dressing Charlie, and removing toothpaste from ear holes I’m lucky if I manage to shove a banana clip through my hair, let alone brush it! I’m just not prepared to get up an hour earlier; that’s an hour’s sleep I’d lose. I’m already at the mercy of the ringmaster and the shrieking clock.

I seriously believe anyway, that no amount of make-up, no matter how expertly applied could make me look remotely human before midday. I also know that the effort would be wasted as it would inevitably slide off my face as I speed-march the kids to school, sweating profusely. Either that or my foundation, and all it supports, would be battered like the Norwegian coastline by anything from fine drizzle to torrential rain.

I once straightened my hair before leaving for school. By the time we reached the end of our street my freshly straightened hair was whipped around my head by the autumn wind creating a lovely bird's nest effect, nicely finished it with a few stray twigs and leaves. I can only conclude that the women in our school yard must use hairspray created by nuclear physicists.

Yummy Mummy my arse!

Earthquakes at Tesco

There's nothing better than a calm reassuring presence in a crisis is there? I wouldn't know. In a crisis the person I usually have to guide me through the misfortunes of life is Stig (the phrase "the blind leading the blind" springs to mind).

As I was reminiscing about the fridge palaver the other day, another buried memory surfaced. In 2002 we lived in Wrexham, where an earthquake struck. Wrexham was not the epicentre but nevertheless the effects were felt in Hayes House, and indeed across most of North Wales. It was late at night and the girls were in bed (this was pre Charlie and Sam era). Stig and I were laying on adjacent sofa's watching crap telly because we couldn't be bothered to get up and go to bed.

When the earthquake struck there was an eerie rumble and the sofas seemed to gyrate towards each other. It was quite startling and for a moment I was reluctant to put my feet down on the floor because a second ago it had looked like a sea of carpety fluid.

Stig, on the other hand, approached the whole thing from a more practical standpoint.

"The chimney!" He said

I gave him my what-the-hell-are-you-on-about? look.

"That chimney isn't stable".

Our house was a big red brick building and the wonky old chimney towered high above the roof. Stig went on to explain that the chimney could have been destabilised during the quake and that if it came down, it would crash through the roof and kill us in our beds. In fact the whole house could be unstable.

Fair enough, I could see his point about the chimney, it did look like it had been built by a drunk person. Stig went outside to look at it (in the dark) and concluded that it was more "rickety looking" than before, and that the only safe thing to do was evacuate the house.

Ah, that familiar sinking feeling. We woke the girls and bundled them, along with copious amounts of bedding and baby supplies (Nicki was only about a year old), into the car. As I glanced round from my front passenger seat and saw two pairs of wide eyes looking back at me from over the top of a large pile of duvets, I wasn't even surprised at the ridiculousness of the situation. This was typical Hayes House.

"Now what?" I asked Stig, who was deep in thought, complete with muttering.

"We need to go somewhere flat" he decided.

Was this decision based on years of earthquake training on the San Andreas fault, I wondered? Maybe in a prior life he was a secret government agent and encountered many situations like this?

Any such notions were soon dispelled however, when he drove to Tescos.

As he stopped the car in the middle of the vast car park, I felt a pang of incredulity at how impossible it was to find a space here when the shop was open. Again I asked the "Now what?" question, this time by glaring at him because saying the words out loud would have inevitably been followed by a huffy torrent of abuse on my part.

"Phone the police" He said.

"WHAT?"

Well you never know, Wrexham police may well have a resident geologist, but I doubted it. So, humouring him, I phoned the police, who in turn humoured me and confirmed that Yes; there had been an earthquake, and No; they didn't know if we could expect any aftershocks, nor could they comment on the structural integrity of our house, but given that the only reported damage was the odd broken roof tile, and the fact that our one-hundred-year-old house was still in standing, they thought that it was probably safe to return to it.

We drove home, too tired to be embarrassed. Only as we pulled up outside our house did it occur to us to check that our neighbour was OK as she had a baby son the same age as Nicki. A sleepy voice answered the phone and I explained that we were just checking that they were alright after the earthquake.

I had forgotten, in the midst of our "crisis", that my neighbour had lived in LA for ten years and earthquakes of this magnitude (piddly) were a regular occurrence there. She went on to say that the quake had woken her so she had got up to get a glass of water and seen us trudging out of the house complete with bedding and children but she figured, after the fridge incident, that we were just a tad weird.

Even our neighbour's (the only person we knew with ten years of earthquake experience) reassurance wasn't enough for Stig. We spent the rest of the night "camping" in the living room.

So if you want to be embarrassed in front of your neighbours, the local police, and spend an hour or two in Tesco's car park in the middle of the night; Stig is definitely your man in a crisis situation.

Having Trouble Relaxing?

It seems there's more to relaxing than I first thought. In my quest to restore Stig with some sanity, I discovered the website of the wonderful Heather Bestel. Heather is a qualified psychotherapist and hypnotherapist. She also specialises in relaxation techniques. "Helping you move from mad dash to organised serenity" is her mantra.

I've always been sceptical of the whole positive thinking and loveliness approach, but given Stig's condition, two autistic kids, and a very short fuse, it's time I accept that Hayes House could do with some serenity. Desperate times...

I have got to know Heather a little over recent weeks and she is fantastic. She is very frank and open on her website about her past and the reasons for choosing her career. Heather's motives to pass on the wisdom that has been so helpful to her in escaping a turbulent past are clear. Not that you have to be traumatised in any way to benefit from the art of relaxation. She has a free download called More Me Time which is aimed at busy women primarily, but contains advice and know-how that most people could benefit from.

Heather has a range of CDs for sale including Just Ten Minutes; all you need for total relaxation, Deep Sleep, 7 Secrets for Quitting Smoking and she is launching a new range of CDs in July called Magical Meditations 4 Kids, for 4-7 year olds and 8-11 year olds.

Sam had the privilege of a sneak preview of the new 4-7 year olds CD, as Heather was looking for reviews from children about her material. Sam loved the recording and it definitely had the desired effect. He lay on my bed with his eyes closed and smiled all the way through the "Magical Space Adventure", one of the special relaxation stories. Never have I seen him so calm and relaxed. You can read what he had to say about it, along with reviews from other children, on Heather's new Magical Meditations 4 Kids Blog.

Heather has been nothing but friendly and helpful to me, without so much as a sales pitch. There are few like her left in the world and her material, what I know of it so far, is definitely helpful. So I'm pitching for her, and for me because I have become an affiliate. I can't wait for the full kids' CDs to come out and in the mean time I'm getting Stig her relaxation CD.

If you're on the verge of mental meltdown, struggling to find a bit of "me" time, or just looking for the proverbial warm fuzzy feeling, have a look at her stuff.

You can read about Heather or buy any of her material, as well as download her free More Me Time e-book (PDF) here

Heather is also on Twitter and Facebook.

The Perils of Supernoodles and Freon

I just read a Facebook comment (yes - even us old farts know about Facebook) by a friend of ours about the discovery of the use of a hair dryer to defrost a fridge/freezer. It reminded me of life before frost-free freezers and that very same method.

I'm not very good at maintenance. I will live in blissful denial that our fridge doesn't need defrosting until it contains more glacier than fresh produce. At this point I would normally bash chunks off the ice-stricken fridge with my best kitchen knife and a steak hammer. Resourceful, that's me.

This method, despite causing abject frustration to Stig, suited me just fine, until I was pregnant with Nicki and had taken to midnight snacking. I would sit at my kitchen table, basking in fridge light whilst I "made" Supernoodles. Given my compulsion for multi-tasking, I would chip away at the resident ice sculpture whilst I waited for the microwave to turn my noodles nuclear.

So one evening, heavily pregnant and starving, there I sat, chipping away. Then I heard a faint "puff" above the humming of the microwave. I'd got carried away with my rhythmic tapping and punctured the fridge. I mightn't have panicked if it hadn't have been for the high-pitch hissing sound that followed. If I'd have consumed the normal amount of alcohol that my non-pregnant self would have drunk on a Friday night, I would have been forgiven for thinking that there was a schizophrenic serpent overthrowing me in my own kitchen.

I contemplated going back to bed and pretending that the fridge must have had a spontaneous pneumothorax in the middle of the night, but being pregnant I thought I'd better be safe than sorry (For those of you who've never been pregnant; everything from cat poo to a north-westerly breeze to a farting tramp could maim your unborn child). I woke Stig up and explained what had happened, expecting my calm, reassuring husband to take charge and check that everything was fine.

Instead what I got was a bollocking...

"You've done WHAT?"

Followed by a scampering, desperate man. Have you ever had to travel down a flight of stairs in an urgent situation? In my experience it seldom goes well but it's amusing when you get to watch someone else doing it.

Having cannonballed himself into the kitchen, Stig forbade me to cross the kitchen doorway threshold with a Hitler-like salute. He then stood stock-still with his neck craned in the general direction of the fridge.

F****** Hell, it's leaking freon!"

I was instantly transported back to year one highschool chemistry, trying to remember what the hell Freon was.

"We'll have to get it out of the house" He said. Aw, my hero.

Actually my heart sank because it was 1am, I was seven months pregnant and I knew that I was going to have to drag a fridge down a flight of stairs in the middle of the night with him. I was also profoundly aware that my noodles were sure to be a cold, rubbery blob of stodge by now.

Stig then began rummaging wildly though the kitchen drawers.

"Tea Towels!" He shrieked at me, again in Hitler-like fashion.

I pointed at the secret tea towel drawer. He grabbed a handful of them (which instantly concerned me) and proceeded to fold one longways and wrap it round his face, covering his mouth and nose and tied it in a knot at the back of his head. Like a cross between a surgical mask and a tea towel-wearing child at a nativity play. He then folded another one in the same fashion and handed it to me. It's amazing how little verbal comunication is required in a marriage. He didn't say anything but I knew that I was expected to truss my face up like a gay ninja before he'd even consider letting me enter the kitchen. It was a moment that didn't need any words.

We then had to carry (one step at a time) the fridge down the stairs (our kitchen was on the second floor) and out of the side door into our garden. My one saving grace was that at least at this time of night, no one would see us. I really should have known better. Our neighbour later told us that we looked like desperately inept suicide bombers.

I don't know where Stig found the breath, but on the return journey up two flights of stairs to our bedroom he managed to lecture me about the advantages of regularly defrosting one's fridge, and not attacking it with a steak knife in the early hours of the morning.

So, with regard to the hairdryer solution, even thought water and electric don't mix, neither do steak knives, freon, paranoid husbands, and Supernoodles.

Marriage vs Kids

About six-and-a-half years ago, I was laying on a chair-come-bed with a bladder full of vimto, holding Stig's hand while we stared at the grainy image of our unborn child on a screen. We were expecting our third baby and I was already huge, even at sixteen weeks.

This was the first time were going to find out the sex of the baby before the birth so we were quite excited, but I knew in my heart it was going to be a boy. Sure enough Sam was happily flashing his tackle for his parents, the sonographer, and the three students in the room so we were left with little doubt of his sex. The bump was promtly renamed "Baby Sam". They gave us a due date of 1st June. Great, I thought, babies never come on their due dates so maybe our wedding anniversary (also 1st June) was safe...

Nope. I spent our second wedding anniversary in labour, trying to part with a 10lbs baby. 10lbs, 1oz to be exact, and believe me, that extra ounce is relevant. Every ounce counts when you have a baby that big. Around the time I should have been having a romantic meal with my long suffering husband, I was giving birth to a toddler.

The first of June is Sam's day and always will be. Yesterday he turned six. He got his first bike without stabilisers (that will be interesting) and he had a party with half of his classmates and other friends. This was the third wedding anniversary we have spent in Johnny's Fun Factory surrounded by shrieking children; not the most romantic of locations but ultimately, how can we top the look on his face when he saw his shiny, new big boys bike, and squealed with excitement each time another one of friends arrived?

Stig and I held hands as we watched him running about with his new toys, just like we have on all our kids' birthdays and at all of the scans when we saw them for the first time. That should be what anniversaries are about, celebrating the life and the family you have nurtured and treasured all those years (casually disregarding the many times of being on the verge of a nervous breakdown).

Finally when they were all settled in bed, we had the last few hours of the day to ourselves; flopped on the sofa, knackered but smiling, the same way we've spent our last few anniversaries. Plus, like a friend of mine once pointed out; Sam's eighteenth birthday will be our 20th wedding anniversary, and we'll have one hell of a party!

The Best Sangria Recipe

Seeing as it's summer (almost), I thought I'd share with you this recipe for Spanish Sangria. It's great for summer BBQ's. Just be warned, it's quite strong so go easy people...

You'll need:

Red Wine
Lemonade
Sugar
Triple Sec or Cointreau (or any orange flavoured liqueur)
Bianco Martini or Vermouth (you can use Dry if need be)
Brandy
Fresh lemons, limes and oranges, diced or sliced
A large jug, something to stir with, and some ice

Mix the Martini, Brandy, and Triple Sec in equal measures in your jug, you need about 2-3 inches of this mixture in the bottom, depending on the size of the jug.

Add a tablespoon of sugar and stir in well.

Then add the chopped fruit and give it another good stir. I use a quarter of a lemon, quarter of a lime, and half an orange per jug.

Top up the remainder of the jug with the red wine and lemonade in equal measures.

Tips:

Leave the Sangria in the fridge for a few hours before drinking it. It tastes much better when it has absorbed the juices from the fresh fruit.

Also it's better when the lemonade has gone flat. We leave the tops off the lemonade bottles off for a while first and give them the odd shake, it can get a bit messy though. Another way of taking the fizz out of lemonade is to put sugar in it, be warned though this creates a sort of lemonade fountain so sit the lemonade bottle in a large bowl if you're going to try this.

You can alter any of the quantities to your own taste but we find that these measures give it that authentic spanish flavour.

Enjoy!

Wine Sniffers

I love wine. This is not a cultured appreciation of hints of oak or fruity flavours. I don't care if my wine goes with my chicken or fish dish. I like Ernest & Julio Gallo's White Grenache from the Californian Sierra Valley. The only reason I can remember that mouthful is because it's what I've drank for the last ten years and I'm used to putting my hand up when someone asks "Anybody want anything from the shop?"

Do I have to know the significance of "good legs" or know the origin of the cork to appreciate my wine? Er, no. Should I feel the need to sniff it every time I pour a glass? All I know about corks is that Sam likes to collect them and make little people with them. Worryingly, he has enough of them to populate a small country.

The only way in which I wish I was more wine savvy is that I should have bought shares in the Gallo family business years ago. I could have bought my own damn vineyard for the money I've parted with in honour of their fine wine.

All that remains for me to know about wine is that there is plenty of it to go around!

Click here for a free download of Gallo's Rose wine summer cocktail recipes.

Stress Management!

The stress levels in this house have always been high but it's reached optimum peak recently. Stig has been off work for months now. He has had worrying symptoms for years; severe headaches, random pains, numbness, pins and needles, drowsiness, blurred vision, difficulty speaking, and what we now know (after dragging the paramedics out on more than one occasion) to be panic attacks. He has never been that well-adjusted truth be told, but this last year it has escalated to the point of taking over his entire personality.

It's amazing; when you claim to be "stressed" you can almost see what people are thinking: Just get on with it, like everybody else has to. After all; we're all stressed, aren't we? We didn't understand the extent to which a person can be affected by it until recently. Even Stig had trouble believing that all his symptoms are merely down to stress and anxiety. When you consider that he has been back and forward to various specialists and neurologists for the best part of ten years with these mysterious symptoms, it's no wonder. He has undergone a catalogue of tests including MRIs, Electrical Impulse tests, Evoked potential tests, EEGs, ECGs, the list goes on.

He can feel like he's having a heart attack, or be completely numb down one side, or have sudden, sharp shooting pains anywhere in his body without warning. He has fits and passes out when his blood pressure suddenly drops, headaches that are so severe they interfere with his vision and speech; it's both amusing and embarrassing when people think he's pissed. He constantly moans that he is "shaking like a shitting dog". It's rare that there isn't a part of him which isn't tingling, twitching, or numb. Imagine having pins and needles for ten years...

Added to this is the sleep apnoea, which makes him sit bolt upright in the middle of the night, clawing at his chest like a man possessed whilst gasping for breath. The first few times this happened I thought we were being murdered in our bed, and I have the grey hairs to show for it. I'm now used to these histrionics, but trying to hold a serious conversation with someone who's face is doing the highland fling is never straightforward.

There was constant fear in the early years. Brain tumor? MS? Parkinson's? All sorts of theories were mulled over and tested for by the experts. Finally I told him that if he had anything that serious, he'd have dropped dead by now; it's been that long. Then we met his most recent consultant, who is fabulous. Our first appointment with him was such a relief for me. He sat across the desk from us and told me all about my husband. He's impatient, highly strung, can't handle just sitting and doing nothing, remembers about 20% of what has been said to him, always fiddling, can't relax, always thinking etc, etc, it continued. For the first time in ten years, someone who knew exactly what we were dealing with.

I came out of there feeling fantastic because we finally knew what the problem was, and it wasn't going to kill him or turn him into a dribbling, quivering wreck (well actually I may have been wrong about the latter!). Stig, on the other hand, was horrified and thought the man should be struck off for malpractice. He just couldn't accept that all this was down to stress.

That was a year ago. Now he knows, and it has been rough. For a while he was a different person to the lovely, idiot man I married, and not in a good way. But things are coming good, and we're learning to handle it better, he has drugs and therapies, and I have a bit of my Stig back.

I post this not to whinge, but it has struck me that more and more people seem to be suffering in similar ways. Every other person we speak to is or knows someone who is off work, on medication, or completely burnt out. It's been said that one in four people will suffer mental health issues at some time in their life. That seemed to be most likely depression at one time. Now it seems we're all so highly strung and stretched to our limits living modern day life. Maybe we all need to learn new strategies to cope with it.

I can come and write about my family life on my blog, take the mickey out of them when they have narked me, make jokes, and feel better, maybe that's my therapy. We all need something and the journey for us at the moment, is finding out what that something is.

Never Say Goodbye

Do you have any of those "friends" who you just can't get rid of? I mean the ones who sit in your house for hours and hours, then just as you're considering self-harming they say:
"I really should get going"
Oh the relief! It's shortlived, however, because it then slowly dawns on you that this was no more than an unlikely glimmer of hope because, lets face it; they're not going anywhere for at least another two hours.

Why do people do that? I mean if you want to stay; stay, if you want to go, just leave. But why pretend that you've no idea how long you've been here, or that you haven't noticed that I'm having a nervous breakdown thinking of all the things I was supposed to get done this afternoon.

It's always the people who I don't know quite well enough to throw them out of my home. Don't get me wrong, I have tried everything short of shoe-horning this friend out of the door. I've tried running out of milk, saying I must nip to the shops (she came with me), I've tried the old:
"Yes well, I really must get on" (standard response to her "I really should get going"), but this is just met with:
"Oh don't mind us (us being her, and her dog, Jessie), you just carry on love".
Is it normal to have a friend who you feel murderous tendencies towards?

There she sits, glancing obviously at her empty coffee cup waiting to be offered another one. Three coffees later:
"Ooohh look at the time, have I really been here that long?" YES YOU HAVE!
"Well I really must get home and feed the dog"
Actually she mouths the words "feed the dog" whilst gesturing obscurely at it, because she doesn't really have any intention of leaving and she doesn't want to excite the dog with the prospect of food. The dog speaks English, you know; she understands every word.

Unfortunately the "feed the dog" comment is often followed with
"Jessie does love coming here, it's a special treat for her".
At this point I'm lucky if they leave within the next hour. Jessie might well love coming here, and I don't mind her being here either. It's a fair exchange, I think; a few dog hairs on the carpet in return for clearing some of the food debris left by the kids, but please don't stay all bloody day, and please don't think that mentioning yet another reason why you should get off your arse and leave, buys you another hour!

Eventually, somewhere in my distant future, my "friend" will address the dog directly:
"Come on Jessie, let's get you home for some dinner".
Jessie, who by now has also lost the will to live, will then cast me a "Thank-Christ-for-that" glance and drag her stagnant self to the door, hoping that this time they will actually be leaving and she may get her long-promised meal, because what her owner doesn't realise is that Jessie knows she's full of crap too.

If you recognise any of the behaviour described here, I urge you, seek help immediately, before your friends start pretending they aren't home. You know who you are!

Lord of the Flies

What the hell is going on with Charlie and Sam? I'm not used to all this fighting, it's is all new to me. I mean, the girls have their squabbles, but that's more of a sulky, whiny affair with a bit of crying thrown in, not an all out war.

The boys are two and five years old. Even at two, Charlie is a force to be reckoned with. They're the always first up in the morning (6.30am today) and this tends to be when the fighting starts. They get settled in the living room and proceed to shriek at each other over the TV channel, the amount of cereal they have, the volume of the keyboard (which resides in our living room - and yes, I knew this was a terrible idea when we put it there), who gets to open the curtains, etc, etc. Then the physical abuse starts. Charlie has no qualms about picking on his big brother, even though he's almost twice his size. This results in Sam yelping as Charlie slaps him away from his treasured keyboard and steals his toys.

Sam, to his credit, never retaliates, as he knows this would incur a bollocking of epic proportions, so instead he squeals like a pig at the top of his voice until I, or their father, stumble into the living room and play hell with the pair of them. There's absolutely no point in trying to get a lie in when Lord of the Flies is being played out in our living room.

Realising the error of their ways; ten minutes later they're the best of friends, conspiring together on the issue of how to get biscuits out of me. This usually involves a united front of brotherly solidarity, complete with hugs and kisses, lots of giggling and displays of unparallelled generosity with their toys.

Charlie: "You have the toy car Sam"
Sam: "It's OK Charlie, you have it"
Charlie: "Oh, I couldn't possibly"
Sam: "I insist"
Charlie: "Thank you ever so much"
Sam: "You're very welcome"
They then hug, making sure that I'm watching this spectacle.
In unison: "Can we have something nice?"
Me: "OK, seeing as you're being so good"
I distribute bananas and apples (well it is only 7am remember?) Then drag my backside back to bed with a brew.
Sam: "She's gone now, gimme my car back".
Charlie: "Piss off it's mine".