Pink & bubbly

Following hot on the heels of The Wonderful Weekend, I just had to blog about the tail end of it.

As mentioned, I headed off to the local, very lovely pub for the monthly pub quiz. Until now, taking part in the quiz has involved blokes. And we've done fairly well. And they obviously put it down to their masculine genius. Admittedly, they did know far more of the answers to the car insignia round...

So it was with some trepidation that we entered an all-girl team. But we were determined to prove that we had just as much spurious general knowledge as blokes do, even though we normally have far more important things to talk about (shoes, Boden sales, weight watchers points) than the trivial shite than men seem to discuss for hours, thus equipping themselves well for pub quizzes.

Anyway, there we were. Five of us. All mummies with kids at the same school. All wearing a shade of pink or purple, all slightly glowy from the weekend of sun. We weren't quite Sex & The City glamour but it wasn't our normal jeans and t-shirts uniform either.

We shunned our inside table to sit at an outside banquette. It was glorious. A warm evening and chilled pink prosecco in long glasses. Girly conversation flowed, the pink bubbles flowed faster, and then the quiz started up.

We were on fire! At last a quiz where I actually knew more than one answer. Maybe it's because we took a very feminine approach to it all. We discussed it, all threw our thoughts into the hat, debated the merits of each and finally democratically came to an answer. A stark contrast to the uber-competitive masculine approach of getting the answer out first and having to be right.

As it turns out, we came a very respectable fourth. Ta da! Equalling our last position with the boys.

But that wasn't the highlight of the evening. No, the perfection came when I realised that I was sitting outside, on a gorgeous evening with girls, giggling, chatting and gossiping and it felt like a real evening out, like something I haven't done in a long, long time. It was as though the veil of motherhood that has been covering my eyes for the last 6 years was lifted and I got a sneak peak of what lies beyond. And it was fabulous.

So I raise my virtual glass to girly friends. Because they are what make life pink & bubbly.

What weekends are meant to be

Despite being from Africa, I don't do very hot weather very well. I long to live somewhere warm, where flip flops and t-shirts are the order of the day, but with a gentle cooling breeze making it all bearable, rather than oppressive.

Which is why England on a sunny summer's day is about as good as it gets. Honestly (to you lot with raised eyebrows). You wake up to a dawn chorus, with a perfectly blue sky and a sun that promises a day full of potential. So often in this country, you are faced with a choice of wet, grey or cold, or possibly a combination of all three. It doesn't inspire adventure or the sense of opportunity that a sunny day does. When there is sun, the whole world opens up.

So with 3 whole days (that happened to coincide with a weekend!) of glorious sunshine, we were all set for perfection. And it would have been had my husband been in the country instead of me being a single parent. But despite this one small snag, it was exactly as a weekend should be.

It started with friends to play on Friday afternoon while the mummies sat in the sun sipping on chilled drinks. The kids got to swim in the newly opened pool. The same pool that one short month ago was home to 8 frogs (all now sadly perished from a choline overdose) and was almost solid green with multiple congealed worms floating in it. But after 30 days of hard graft on my part (again, someone tell me why the pool is my job?) it is now sparkling blue, if a little chilly. After swimming (them) and chatting (me), Son1 went off to football practice in the evening while son2 and I vegged out enjoying the evening sunlight.

Saturday - and another morning that you could write poems about. Morning cartoons for the boys, a long hard session on the cross trainer for me, setting me up for a day of virtuousness which meant I could eat with impunity. And indeed I did.

Then off to our first ever cricket practice at the brand new cricket club in the neighbouring village. I sat in the sun with my Saturday paper wearing a sun hat and occassionally giving a little clap when the boys got close to a ball. If I'd taken a flask of tea and a few scones with jam and cream, it would have been perfection. What's more I got to talk to other adults. This is always a novelty given that I work at home on my own and seldom leave the village, even to get groceries (see previous post).

Grilled sandwiches on the BBQ for lunch, followed by the friends who live over the road coming round and the boys spending all afternoon in the pool. And then another BBQ for dinner (because if it's BBQ weather, we SHALL BBQ). And then a quiet evening on my own with a chilled bottle of chablis and full control of the TV remote.

Sunday morning. And possibly even more glorious that the one just gone. French toast with syrup and cinnamon for the boys (something slightly less calorific for me) before heading out to the nearby nature reserve for a bike ride with friends. I didn't bother to do any exercise this morning as I knew what was coming up. Attempting to teach son2 to ride a bike without stabilisers. I challenge anyone to come up with something more strenuous that running semi- crouched holding someone upright.

Then back home for - you guessed it - a BBQ! Sausages and garlic bread this time. And then more swimming in the pool, the boys climbing over the fence to go fetch their friends from across the road, them racing over, all of them shrieking and splashing and generally having a ball while I got to read the Sunday papers. Eventually even I was too hot to stay out of the water and spent ages chashing the boys around the pool.

We finally all lay on a big blanket in the garden, drying out. The lazy heat of the late afternoon sun, combined with the gentle breeze left me feeling all tingly as my body tried to figure out if it was hot or cold. Eventually it settled on sleepy and I drifted off with my son lying in my arms.

And now, I'm just about to put two small boys to bed before I head off to the local pub with an all-girl team for the pub quiz, which will involve wine and other things not approved by weight-watchers.

It has been lovely. Utterly lovely. Carefree, spontaneous and exactly the way I want my children to remember their childhoods. May all weekends be as good as this.

Apparently I am lazy.

Today my 6 year old son said to me: "Mommy, you're getting quite lazy you know."

(I should just explain here that they call me mommy because I'm South African and we are mommies, not mummies, even though I say mummy to people here in case they think I'm strange).

Given that I have been getting up at 6am, doing the usual laundry, tidying, lunchbox packing, breakfast making, cross training, crazy mother trying to get kids out to school-ing, working like a mad women on multiple new business pitches and two client launches, racing to do pick ups, more work-interspersed-with-cbbc-and-breaking-up-fights, making dinner, charging off to karate classes, bed/bath and more work till midnight most nights, I didn't really feel like I'd been lazy.

So I politely asked why he felt this way.

"You've been lazy with the groceries mommy."

Oh right.

True. Tonight they did have to eat an instant lasagne from the freezer (thanks husband for stocking those). And as there was nothing instantly weight watcher friendly in the freezer, fridge or cupboard, I was forced to enter into a WWII ready steady cook event. (Note how World War and Weight Watchers have the same initals. Hmmmm. Interesting.)

I was rather proud of the soup I made out of 3 limp carrots, 2 sticks of celery, an onion, some sprouting sweet potatoes, a tin of lentils and a hefty (a little too hefty in hindsight) sprinkling of curry powder.

I did point out that the avocado man (Ocado for those of you who don't speak child) was coming tomorrow but that yes, perhaps I had left it a little late in getting some food in, particularly as tomorrow's packed lunch for son2 looks likely to involve pasta salad sans salad. i.e. plain boiled pasta, cold. Or a frankfurter and a celery stick. Or as son2 pointed out, he could have cheese and crackers. Because we still have both of those. Just. Scraping the mould off shouldn't take long.

So yes, maybe I have been a little lazy on the groceries front, but we somehow seem to manage to eat our way through an exhorbitant amount of food, particularly as husband is away abroad (eating steak and drinking great South African wine not that I'm in any way envious) and I'm still on my starvation kick and the kids ignore most of the stuff I put on their plates anyway. Where does all the food go?? Surely it was only seconds ago since I bid farewell to the last avocado man (Bob, in the Cabbage van, nice to meet you).

I seem to spend vast sums of money on food that lasts minutes. Besides the expense of it all, it's rather time consuming all this shopping, even with the wonders of instantly filled online shopping baskets.

So yes son, I have been lazy. And you know what, I don't actually care. Tomorrow, if Petr in the Strawberry van doesn't get here in some cruel twist of fate, you'll be having dinner comprising meringue nests (a left over from election night dinner's Eton Mess), topped with frozen peas and corn (possibly defrosted if I can be arsed) and a side serving of frozen frankfurters. Because that's what we have. Suck it up.

Stuff you may like to know. Or not

Life in the home of Home Office Mum is busy. As always. I seem to go through these crazy swings where I feel as though I can take on the world, build a business empire, achieve anything...to wanting to just lie down in a quiet place, have a rest and say 'sod it, it's all too hard.'

Which is why my blog posts are starting to resemble buses in West Berkshire - seldom seen and when they are, they trundle along aimlessly without really going anywhere.

But I have been tagged by not one, but two lovely bloggers so this post is for them. First of all, the ever gorgeous Metropolitan Mum has asked me to rummage in my photo files, go to the oldest folder, find the 10th picture in it and tell the story behind it. So here it is. Wish it was something slightly more visually stimulating.

In December 2002, husband and I decided to bid farewell to our time in the USA by driving all the way across the Southern states, from coast to coast. This was in the early part of the journey as the sign says South Carolina. Had I been asked for the 50th photo in the file, I would have been somewhere around Texas, but the pictures all look pretty similar. Long, long, long stretches of road. In case you hadn't spotted this on a map yet, the USA is quite a big place. It took us four days to drive across Texas. So we have a whole photo album of cars driving on the wrong side of the road. You can imagine our friend's joy when we invited them around to see our holiday snaps.

The second tag I received was from someone living in the US no less. Nappy Valley Girl, who lives in Long Island but formally of a different wetter island, has kindly given me the Beautiful Blog Award, which comes with a lovely logo, but I can't figure out how to copy it and am time pressed with starving children demanding breakfast. I am to reveal 7 things about myself that you might not know. Due to starving children, I'm going to have to keep this brief:

1. I am terrified of caterpillars. Particularly silkworms. They literally make my skin crawl and give me a violent urge to gag. My children obviously make a point of trying to find caterpillars so that they can watch their mother shriek and run.

2. My first job was a being a PR poppie (that's an Afrikaans term for...well how do you explain poppie? I suppose an African luvvie dahling is as close a description as any) for the South African Blood Transfusion Service. Part of my job was attending blood donor clinics (wearing a nurses uniform), pricking people's fingers and doing the iron tests. Not quite sure how this was helping our reputation with the public, but there you are.

3. Part of the aforementioned job also involved me having to tie posters for blood donor clinics onto street poles along busy motorways. There I'd be in my little nurses outfit, reaching up to tie the posters on, causing my skirt to creep ever higher, with all the charming, gentlemanly males of the country driving past, hooting and cheering for the nurse poppie on the side of the road. Who says PR isn't glamorous?

4. I am allergic to seafood and in one particularly dramatic incident, I had to be 999d out of a fancy restaurant in Manhattan during a PR launch. That probably wasn't a career highlight either. There appears to be a theme emerging here.

5. I make very good lasagne. I'm not saying it's the best in the world - because that would be boastful - but I can say hand on heart that my lasagne is pretty bloody tasty. There are three secrets to it and I will share them with you here (obviously if you tell anyone I shall have to kill you). One - always cook the sauce for a long time. Two - always add carrots but chopped small. Three - crumble cornflakes on top for the ultimate crunch.

6. I once stayed at the Ritz Carlton in Bali for a week all paid for by British Telecom. This was probably one of the genuinely more glamorous parts of being in PR. While on another British Telecom PR lark in Bangkok, I got taken to a titty bar. It was awkward. Do you look at the (male) client and discuss how to build the BT brand or do you look at the ladies on stage? Seemed rude to talk during the show but I didn't really want to look at other people's bosoms.

7. I once had a job cleaning heavy machinery (diggers etc) at a dockyard in Rotterdam, Holland. Don't ask.

Many of these seem to have been about past jobs. Didn't plan that, just happened. Right, I should pass this onto other bloggers but unless I get cereal down the throats of these children in minutes, there is going to be a riot.

When votes really count

Today is election day. And this is one election that really has had me glued to the screen. So much so that I've been watching the Campaign Show on BBC instead of Desperate Housewives or Glee. Now that is saying something.

Even my 6 and 4 year old know all about it and can name the leaders of the 3 main parties. My eldest is in favour of Cameron because he had a friend called Cameron once and he thinks he looks like a nice chap. My youngest prefers the Lib Dems on account of the fact that he likes the colour yellow. As for me, I'm one of the undecided but think I know which way I'm going to go, although I'm not utterly convinced by any of them.

However, as much as the UK thinks this is an exciting election, it pales into significance when compared to the first time I could ever vote.

It happed on 17 March 1992. I was at last old enough to vote and I am so pleased that my first vote was for something so incredibly meaningful. This wasn't an election. It was a referendum. The choice was simple: Vote Yes or No.

Voting Yes meant ending apartheid in South Africa. Voting No meant staying with the status quo. Never had the choice been quite so simple. Never had votes counted quite so much. Never had the queues been longer at polling stations. Never had an outcome been quite so important.

I clearly remember that day and being moved to tears that I was getting a say in how the country would change. And change it did. It's hard to believe that Apartheid was such a recent occurrence that I was able to vote to end it (or maybe it simply means I'm old) but the excitement of that voting day will stay with me forever.

While today might not have quite such life altering consequences, it's just as important to go vote. Because voting is a priviledge. So use it.

Life is there for the eating

While on holiday in sunny New Zealand, we spent a fair amount of time on beaches. Which meant a fair amount of time in swimsuits. A bikini to be exact. Foolish, I know, but I was on the other side of the world, far away from the people who see me on a daily basis.

Except that there were people there with cameras....

So, upon returning home, jet lagged and in need of some comfort eating not to mention intense alcohol consumption following the flight from hell, I got to view photographs of myself looking like an out of shape rugby prop forward. And believe me, you do not want to see prop forwards in a bikini. Ever.

It was the catalyst I needed to kick my not-so-bony arse into diet mode.

I've been on proper diets twice in my life. Once before I got married. I did Weight Watchers online (because there is no way I'm going to a dreary building to get weighed in front of a bunch of people who all would just like to eat each other). It was while we were living in the NYC. It was easy. No children's leftovers to nibble on. Hours of free time to work out. Delis with low fat salads to choose from. It was a cinch.

The second time was after the birth of child number 2. I went on the GI diet. For 3 months we ate our body weight in lentils, wholegrain rice, leafy greens and high fibre bran. We were like a farting von Trapp family, belting out gassy tunes with gay abandon. I managed to teach my mouth to prefer skimmed milk to semi-skimmed and to choose sweetener over sugar. I even genuinely grew to like some of the recipes - Chermoula Chickpea Burgers anyone?

And this too worked. While there were kids leftovers to nibble on, there was less of them as only one child was on solids and his food was pretty bland and unappetising. I didn't get much chance to exercise, other than run around after a two year old and all the lifting and carrying that goes on with a baby. Through sheer bloody mindedness, I lost the baby weight. Or most of it.

But gradually over time, the wholegrain rice reverted to white. The chickpea burgers became the full fat juicy beef variety. The sweet potatoes became good old Kind Edwards. And so the fat accumulation recommenced....

This time round, dieting is a whole lot harder. I have two children who eat (or rather don't eat) very tasty food. I can't stand food waste (all those starving children in African and all that) so I tend to eat theirs ...and mine. And we guzzle lots of wine (Ok - I do, it's all me dammit). And due to my husband's bad influence, curry take outs are a regular occurrence. I also love cooking. And baking. Cakes. And I love eating the things I cook. Not being allowed to eat takes away not one, but two big loves of mine. It's just plain mean.

But with a good deal of motivation (i.e. those hideous bikini shots), I signed up to Weight Watchers online again this week and so far, have been the very picture of virtue. I've been well below my allocated points most days. I've gone for 3 mile runs or done 30 minute work outs on the cross trainer every day. I've been wearing my Reebok Easy Tone trainers (which the kind people of Reebok sent me, obviously knowing in a psychopathic way that this is just what I needed).

And I can feel a difference. For the first time in a long time I've actually felt hungry. I haven't felt that horrible, uncomfortable over full feeling. I've also had headaches and sod all energy and a definite loss of the will to live. But, to hell with that, my butt feels firmer and my tummy is definitely not quite as easy to confuse with a half melted jelly.

But I have a way to go.

And now it's Friday evening. And I really, really want some wine. Sure you'll say. Have a glass. WW allows it. But it's Friday. One glass isn't going to do it. And then there's dinner. I've already had to cook the kids pork chippolatas with potato wedges and veg - and had to resist eating any of it. The mind control could have bent spoons had I been glaring at one.

Instead I am waiting for my husband to return home. And because it's Friday, I have a sneaky suspicion that he might suggest a curry take out. And I have a sneaky suspicion that my will-power might decide to pack its bags and leave for sunnier climes.

But if I fall off the wagon now, I still have a three day weekend to get through complete with a pub quiz with friends on Sunday night during which it is imperative to drink your body weight in wine AND they give out free pizza. I'll have to have a glass and a slice and that will be my full day's worth of WW points. Weep. Dieting is just so sodding dull. Life is there for the eating!

So for tonight at least, I think I might just throw the scale out of the window and run 6 miles tomorrow.

Sleep is for the weak

Well we survived the billion hour flights. There and back. Even with a sodding Icelandic volcano to add to the joy. And you know, the kids weren't even awful. We had one weeing in pants incident that resulted in a very over tired little boy crying because he couldn't understand why he was wet, and a mother who didn't really want to cuddle him too closely because of said wetness, and several extremely grumpy Germans who felt the child should stop crying, and a mother who wanted to tell them to knob off but couldn't remember any German swear words having had no sleep for 48 hours.

But besides that, they were fine. Except that they were small boys in a confined space for 26 hours a pop. Even as an adult, getting free drinks from the wine trolley (and believe me, I had many of those) and having a full understanding of how to use the remote controls for the on-board entertainment system, 26 hours is a long, long time to sit in one small space.

So this is sort of how it went:

son1: Can you help me get the games on? No, not that game, this game.
son2: I also want the games on.
me: attempt to juggle two remote controls, finding games for son2 and a film for me.
son2: I can't work the controller. Show me how.
me: sigh. Like this....10 seconds of peace. I choose a film of my own and watch 2 minutes of it
son1: I'm hungry. When can we get food?
son2: I'm also hungry. Can we have a sweet yet?
me: food is coming. They only have to serve the 200 people seated in front of us, then we'll get ours. And no, you can't have a sweet yet.
son2: are we there yet?
me: No. We still have 25 hours and 50 minutes to go.....
etc
etc
etc

The food trolley finally arrives, just as the nagging and cries of 'I'm starving' start to get quite volumatic. We're served our little over-filled trays of plastic nastiness. The children rip their cutlery packets open like presents on Christmas morning, immediately dropping their knives and forks on the floor under their seats with no way of getting them out without me loading up three trays in front of me like the leaning tower of Plastic, while they scrabble on the floor looking for their feeding implements. As I set their food trays back in front of them and am about to take a bite of congealed egg (which may have been breakfast, lunch or dinner but my body clock is way out of kilter and it's hard to know what meal it's meant to be) one of them will announce that they need to poo.

It will invariably be the child closest to the window that needs to poo, thus requiring the three way tray pile again, only now less evenly balanced as things have been openened and rearranged. It wobbles ominously. The child will attempt to walk across the seats but will stand on his brother which will prompt a swift punch by the stepped on brother to the legs of the brother in need of a poo. He will then attempt to bunch / kick back resulting in the teetering food tower to wobble precariously.

We'll finally manage to extricate ourselves from our seats, wait with a small boy holding his hand on his bottom, indicating the immediacy of the poo while the food trolley moves painstakingly slowly out of the aisle. When we finally make it there and the job is done, we will have the usual angst of having to block our ears while we flush as airplane loos are a little loud. Why is that?

Then we go back to our seats and repeat the whole performance.

Eventually one child will fall asleep. I will attempt to fall asleep. The other child will wake me just as I finally manage to drift off asking me to put a different film on or perhaps saying he needs a wee or a drink of water or a blanket. As that child drifts off to the land of nod, the other will wake up and ask for a film, a wee, a drink of water or a blanket. The result is absolutely no sleep for the lone parent trying to juggle this.

After hours and hours and hours of this I give up all hope of sleep and opt to watch films instead. Here are the films I started watching:

Avatar
It's Complicated
Up in the Air
The Hurt Locker
An Education
Blind Side
New Moon
Couples Retreat
The Time Travellers Wife

I don't think I saw the end of any of them, due to previously mentioned interruptions.

All in all, from when you wake up on the day you are due to fly out, to going to sleep in your destination, it will be roughly 48 hours. That is 48 hours of no sleep, eating crappy food, sitting in a teeny space getting a very numb bum, constantly whispering: DON'T KICK THE SEAT, and dealing with foreign customs people who aren't blessed with humour or understanding.

Once you get to your destination, you might think you can now sleep. But jet lag kicks in. And even though your body is way overtired, it's also telling you that it's day time, not night time and you should be awake. So you lie there wishing yourself to sleep. And just as sleep eventually steals over you like a heavy blanket, you hear: 'Mummy, I can't sleep.' And just as you settle that one several hours later, you hear the next one say the exact same thing.

And then the sun rises and you have to face the day. Your brain feels like its clogged with soggy cotton wool and your vision is slightly blurry around the edges.

It took me 10 days to get over the jetlag going there. We got back home on Friday. Today is Monday. I can still barely lift my head off my desk. I might be this way for some time to come.

PS - we had a fab holiday. But next time, I want a Star Trek Beam me up Scottie machine to get there.