Out of the mouths of babes ...

Bradley came down to my room this morning and said to me through the ensuite door, very seriously, "Mum, we need to replace Dad."

Curious as to the reason behind this sudden pronouncement, I asked him why.

His equally serious response?

"Because he's a pre-1980's gas appliance."

Love it!

(There's a campaign on TV at the moment telling people they have to replace their pre-1980's gas appliances due to some upcoming changes to the gas supply. He's just taken that idea and run with it. Love the way his mind works!)

The boys have changed their names ...

They have all taken to calling everyone Captain something-or-other so now we have:

• Captain Buzzkill (Alex),
• Captain Obvious (either Drew or Brad) and
• Captain Awesome (either Drew or Brad again)

I have asked when the next round of promotions is due because I think Major Awesome and Major Pain-in-the-butt sound more impressive but I just got pitying looks and a slow, sad shake of the head.

Obviously I'm Captain Fail-to-get-the-point-of-this-game.

At least I made it to Captain!!

The first step is admitting you have a problem ...

The last couple of weeks, which just happened to have been school holidays, have been crammed full of exciting activities like weeding, cleaning out Peter's garage, de-crappifying (yes it's a word 'cos I said so!) most of the rooms in the house and just generally making the house resemble something liveable and appealing, rather than the post-apocalyptic nightmare it was before.


As a result, I have had lots of time to think while performing these not-exactly-mentally-challenging tasks and have come to the conclusion that, as much as I try to deny it, I too am a hoarder. I have been calling Peter a hoarder for years, with very good reason (car magazines from the 1980's anyone?), but have finally come to the realisation that he has rubbed off on me and not just in that way, so get your minds out of the gutter!


I have managed to fill the council wheelie bin in less than 30 minutes with my frantic efforts to reduce the amount of stuff I will have to pack (and yes, it is me that will have to pack as Peter is still working away). The main problem is that I tend to get carried away and fill the bin within 24 hours of it being emptied and then have to spend the next week telling the children to stop creating kitchen waste as there's nowhere to put it!

On a side note, do you know anyone who really enjoys packing to move? If so, they have more problems than me .. yay someone weirder than I am! .. and can you please send them my way?


The children aren't too happy with my new-found de-cluttering skills and have been found surreptitiously sifting through the top layers trying to 'rescue' items they deem to be of extreme value. I feel bad for all of two nanoseconds before encouraging them, in the nicest possible way (snort!) which can probably be heard at least ten streets away, to "put that back right now mister, unless you want to join it!" They couldn't really join it as there's no room for another scrap of paper, let alone a rapidly growing, increasingly hairy teenager or his slightly smaller siblings, but the threat does sound slightly impressive and has worked so far.

As the kind of child who regularly rearranged my room, had my books organised 'library fashion' and who purged 'stuff' on a very regular basis, I am really struggling with the boys' keep-it-just-in-case mindsets. We have found things like a scrap of paper with a hand-written Yu-Gi-Oh game score from more than two years ago, broken elastic bands, bent paper clips, dead batteries, pencils sharpened down to be so small even Tom Thumb would have been able to use them, empty chip packets from before the last packaging change three years ago and various other assorted 'things' that have to be kept .. just in case. Thank goodness they're back at school because now I can get into their rooms with no interference and I have yet to have any of them ask me "where's my ... ?"

I shall have to get them to admit their hoarding issues so we can get some help .. hopefully a bulk discount at the local shrink! While I'm working on that little problem, I'd best go and finish some of the million other things to be done before the house officially hits the market on the tenth of August. Real estate agents can be soooo particular about things .. who says you need to finish painting a half-painted wall?



Or make the beds?



Or weed the gardens?



Or de-crappify the carports?



Or mop the floors?



Oh, potential buyers do. Best be off then .... lots to do!

Woohoo .. the finance is approved!

Now we're in more debt .. oh yay!!

Seriously though, it's great news 'cos it means we're one step closer to moving into the home we have all had some input into. Peter will have his hhuuugggeee garage, I will have my central kitchen, practical linen cupboard and pantry, rooms that aren't traffic areas, lots of storage space and heaps more. Even the boys have put forward several ideas for the new place we're building; some of which have been accepted and more which have not. At least they're helping!

Now we just have to:

• pick colours for tiles, roofing materials, bricks, bench tops and walls,
• work out where all the lights and power points are going (and then add more .. can never have too many power points!),
• deal with inevitable hiccups in building process
• sort out reticulation and landscaping
• paint everything
• actually move in.

And that is after we/I:

• finish painting this house ready for sale,
• finish throwing out all the accumulated junk,
• finish getting rid of excess furniture (anyone need a student desk with hutch/ set of wall units/ extra desks?)
• sell the house
• find a rental
• move into said rental
• find a job
• work at said job without killing anyone, least of all self or children
• survive living in said rental whilst running around like a headless chook organising everything for the new house

Remind me again why we're doing this?

Those who know me well will understand ...

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Andrew wants to die a slow painful death ...

or maybe that's just my interpretation of the way he keeps reminding me of my, in his opinion, extremely advanced age.

Example one:

"I'll help you set up your sewing machine Mum. I know how to thread them and everything."

"OK but be careful. My machine is a bit different from the ones at school."

"You're telling me! Wow, this thing is ancient! Does it plug in or do you have to pedal it?"


Example two:

"Mum, did you watch this program when you were my age?"

"No darling. It wasn't around then."

"Oh. What did you watch?"

"Whatever my parents wanted to watch because we only had one TV."

"Oh. Were you guys like poor or something?"

"No darling. We just had one lounge room and that's where the TV was."

"One lounge room and one TV? I'm so glad I didn't live in the olden days!"


Example three:

"Mum did you have electricity when you were little or did you have to use candles for lights and go to bed when it got dark?"

"Yes we had electricity and we only used candles when it wasn't working .. same as we do now."

"Wow! Electricity really has been around for a long time hasn't it?"


After delivering these little gems, he usually looks at me with an innocent face before registering my reaction, then running for the relative safety of his room before I come over all weak and decrepit and start demanding my dinner at 4 o'clock in the afternoon with "it had better be mushed up so my poor old teeth can take it sonny boy" added for good measure.

Now I know why my mother always looked so upset when I asked her about what type of dinosaur she rode to school.

Kids .. gotta love 'em (I think it's a law!)

I have no idea what I'm doing here so I'm just going to ramble for a while ...

I'm feeling the urge to update this little ol' blog but can't think of anything interesting to update it with. And by 'update', I mean write something wonderfully witty or at least faintly funny (shows how sad things are at the moment, I'm resorting to alliteration to satisfy my OCDness!) As nothing is presenting itself for inspection, I'll just have to resort to giving you the rundown on school holidays so far ...

Saturday/Sunday: Now I know lots of people don't regard Saturdays and Sundays as part of the school holidays, as they are days we would normally be responsible for our own offspring. I do count them because of the slight major attitude change that takes place at the final siren on the last day of school. It seems to change the children into some sort of otherwordly creatures .. a kind of a cross between a sloth and a locust .. you know, something that wants to lie around all day yet still manages to consume every food-like item in your kitchen, seemingly by osmosis as they don't appear to move, all the while complaining that there's nothing to eat.

So now we have that clear, Saturday and Sunday went almost exactly as expected for the first days of the holidays .. minor skirmishes as they re-established the pecking order of the home, then all out warfare for control of the TV remote.

Monday was better as there was a small amount of extra oestrogen, in the form of Debbie's daughter Amy, to help ease the testosterone overload. They all played (relatively) well together with no blood, broken bones or trips to the emergency room and I even got some biscuits made for me! Actually they weren't specifically for me but my house, my kitchen, my ingredients, therefore my biscuits! Seems fair to me...

Today, I managed to drag myself bounce joyfully out of bed, get dressed before 8am and was writing an appointment I had just remembered on the calendar, when I noticed that the boys had a dentist appointment at 9am. Figuring I still had plenty of time, I woke Alex for the first time and sent the other 2 to have breakfast and give their teeth an extra good brushing.

At 8:30am, I woke Alex again telling him we were leaving in 10 minutes and that he had to be up and dressed with his teeth brushed properly. We finally left at 8:50am and arrived in plenty of time after freezing ourselves half to death in the car. (Don't you hate it when the car trip is not long enough to heat the engine and therefore the heater doesn't work?)

Got the dentist over and done with (nobody needs any fillings .. yay!) then decided that seeing as we were already all dressed and out of the house, we may as well do a couple of things on my to-do list.

We went to a favourite plant nursery of mine (wholesale prices for much larger/healthier plants than at the local hardware store) and got a load of plants to try and make the house look a bit more presentable for sale. Then it was on to Spotlight (fabric/craft/haberdashery store) for some curtain material for the ensuite, bathroom and toilet (again with the 'more presentable' thing). Just happened to find myself in the scrapbooking section after buying the curtain material .. not at all sure how that happened! .. and spotted a border punch I've been trying to find for a while. Treated my self and then treated the boys at McDonald's for lunch as they had behaved themselves beautifully all morning.

After finishing lunch I felt all inspired to get outside, despite the cold (still only 12 degrees according to the radio news), so of course I dragged the boys along with me. They helped me weed, shift excess dirt and plant most of the new plants. The ones that weren't planted have been given a lovely drink of wetta-soil and placed in the sun for some warmth. Now all I have to do is get some mulch to keep the weeds away and it will look lovely.

Now I think I should spend the rest of the afternoon trying to find my sewing machine and dig through the deep dark recesses of my mind for the ability to use it, so that I can honestly say I have done something towards selling the house. Though exactly how a toilet curtain is going to sell the house I'm not sure but .. meh .. it sounded impressive just for a second!

Hope you're all surviving the school holidays!!

Oh yay .. it's school holidays!

19 days of fun-filled, full-on, in-my-face time with the boys (I'll leave it up to you to determine whether I'm being sarcastic or not!) and it all started so well ...

I had, when in a state of mind most people call insanity, offered to have a friend's two boys over yesterday afternoon after work/school to entertain play with my three boys. Then a different friend rang and asked if I could have her daughter for the afternoon as she had an appointment. No worries said I breezily and made appropriate arrangements for food and drink, causing the lady behind me in the supermarket queue to ask if I was a scout leader or something. After assuring her that the quantity of snacks was only for six children, she launched into protracted praise of mothers with more than the standard 2.4 children and congratulated me on bucking the trend. It was quite sad to see her face when I informed her that only 3 of the children were mine and that the other 3 were 'blow-ins' for the day.

The mother of the two boys came and collected them at 5:30pm after only a few instances of raised voices and threats of bodily harm (which I stopped making when I realised the neighbours were listening!) and then settled in to enjoy a lovely chat with the second friend (we'll call her Debbie .. Hi Deb!) over an extremely healthy dinner.

During the afternoon/evening, there had been some conspiring amongst the children and after some cute puppy-dog-eye looks, Andrew ended up spending the night at Debbie's house. I arranged to collect him at around 9:30am and went off to bed at a relatively decent hour for a great night's sleep and sleep-in the next morning.

After a bit of a mad panic to get out of my clown pants pyjamas, I went on my way to collect Drew, leaving the other two at home with strict instructions to stack the dishwasher before I returned, knowing full well that it would probably still be sitting there emptier than my bank account at Christmas time when I finally deigned to re-appear. A girl has to have dreams, right?

Anyway, I collected Andrew and headed to Kmart to attempt to lay-by some items for Christmas (mission accomplished), checked out the clothes sale at Miller's (nothing caught my eye enough to make me buy it) and then headed for home to make the children work spend some quality time with the children outside in the backyard.

Alex managed to start the lawnmower and mow the lawn; Bradley and I swept the patio area and got rid of some things things that had just been hanging around and Andrew pulled some weeds and helped Alex with the emptying of the lawnmower catcher. Very productive effort with a lovely result .. the patio and backyard look much better. Everyone worked well together with very few arguments discussions as to the merits of particular methodologies.

After finishing up, I told the boys the rest of the afternoon was theirs and set them free. Of course they all immediately headed back inside (I think I'm raising vampires!) and to the comfort of their electronic entertainment.

Things then took a turn for the worse when Alex tripped over his laptop computer, which was on the floor in the TV room after being told repeatedly not to leave it there, and has now broken it beyond any sense of redemption I could offer. The only thing that would have kept him away from his brothers, yet still occupied, has now gone to laptop heaven.

He has spent the last half an hour crying and throwing himself very dramatically onto his bed (silent movie heroines have nothing on this kid and his over acting abilities!) but is now laughing maniacally at something his brothers are doing .. one extreme to the other in ten seconds flat .. welcome to my world!

So now, as I sit here listening to the replacement washing machine trying to remodel my house by knocking out a few walls, I am in a bit of a quandary:

Do I attempt to have his laptop fixed to save my sanity over the next 18 days or do I let him suffer this natural consequence?

Do I spend money on getting the laptop fixed or on Valium and other sedatives to get us all through the next 18 days?

Or do I just give up and go chocolate myself to death?

Hmmmmm? Which option people? Let me know what you think ... please??!!

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... because if you lie on the floor and pretend the ceiling is the floor, everything looks so much cleaner and tidier.

Except for the chocolate milk stain near the dining table (too much vigorous shaking resulting in a minor explosion) and the shoe print on Andrew's ceiling (put there by Alex when it was his room) and the numerous daddy-long-legs spiders that have taken up residence in every available corner and the fact that the now-ceiling has oodles of stuff on it making it very uncomfortable to lie on and that seems to be defying gravity to create an obstcle course of mammoth proportions and ... let's just leave it there shall we?

I have enough to do today as it is!

I'm back ...

... working at the canteen, for the next two weeks anyway!

The canteen manager called me on Wednesday and asked me to work Thursday to which I said yes, of course. Any extra money is good money! While I was at work on Thursday, she then asked me if I would be able to work Friday as well. Once again, I said yes with all the speed of the Road Runner .. beep beep! .. and thought to myself how great it would be if I could work at least one day a week for the next two weeks, as we could really use the money at the moment, but at the same time resigning myself to that not happening.

You can probably guess where this is going by now, but for those who aren't with the program (hurry up people!) today I was asked to work three days a week for the last two weeks of term, which just happen to be the next two weeks. So as of next week, I'll be working Monday, Thursday and Friday while I continue my search for a 'real' job (one that involves more than 18 hours a week and hopefully heaps of extra money!)

Speaking of searching for jobs, I have just found the perfect one for me so please cross all applicable body parts and send good vibes my way. Cheers!!

Brain teaser time

See if you can figure out what these words have in common:

1. Banana
2. Dresser
3. Grammar
4. Potato
5. Revive
6. Uneven
7. Assess

Are you peeking or have you already given up? Give it another try.

Look at each word carefully.

You'll kick yourself when you discover the answer!

Scroll Down ...





Answer:

In all of the words listed, if you take the first letter off, place it at the end of the word and then spell the word backwards, it will be the same word.

And today's mascot is ...

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The good, the bad and the just plain annoying

The good:

We are in the process of cleaning up around the house to try to make it more saleable so that we can pursue my dream of building a house that will be miles too big when the kids leave home but won't ever be big enough 'til then.

After checking out the laundry side of the house, with my eyes open for a change, I realised just how many triffids weeds there were and decided to put Alex to work helping me clear them out. Whilst he approached this task with all the enthusiasm of someone going into surgery to remove their brain via their rectum without anesthetic, we have managed to achieve a lot. We have filled the trailer to overflowing and apparently now I need to take it to the tip and empty it by myself, because he has 'other things' to do. Hopefully one of them is to study for the exams he has to sit as soon as he gets back to school ...

Anyway, what started out as a punishment, in conjunction with the suspension, has turned into some good one-on-one time together, where we are discussing anything and everything (when I can get my brain to keep up with his!)


The bad:

The usual worry about whether I'm doing enough to help Alex, the endless list of things to do and trying to find a job.

The just plain annoying:

Our fence was damaged in a storm (for those Perthites .. THE storm) back in March and the neighbours and I have been trying to get someone to fix it pretty much since then.

We had a few guys come out and give quotes, who surprisingly enough were on time and which weren't inflated past the stratosphere, but when it came time for them to come out and do the actual job, they all seemed to vanish quicker than chocolate during PMS time.

"I'll call you when I can fit you in."

"Next Wednesday .. definitely."

"Sorry. Can't make it then. Have to make it Tuesday .. week after never."

"What do you mean this is an insurance job? I don't want to wait for my money."

So in which part of "I need a quote for my INSURANCE company to be able to replace my damaged fence" did he hear "Sure. I have a spare three-and-a-half thousand dollars just sitting around for you to have up front"? Because I'm positive that I said the words 'insurance claim' at least four times during our conversation and specifically asked if he was OK with dealing with the insurance company at least twice. (Can you tell I've been burned before?)

Yet he still managed to misunderstand and rang me the night before he was due to start, to tell me that cash was preferable for the full payment, due as soon as the job was completed. When I said that I didn't have access to that much cash, he said to ring him when I had it all together and then he would be out to do the job.

At that point (Wednesday evening), I gave up on him and rang someone else who was only too happy to take an insurance job and who could fit me in Friday. I then spoke to the neighbour to let him know what was going on, only to find out that all four guys had rung him on Wednesday wanting to do the job on Friday. Never rains but it pours!

So ultimately the whinge is what is so hard about doing the job for the agreed price, under the agreed conditions on the agreed date? Apparently all of it!

One step forward ...

... and five steps back again!

Alex has been suspended from school .. again .. for having an altercation with another student. He is four years older than the other child, along with a few other factors that I would rather keep to myself, so the school has taken a rather dim view of things and suspended him for five days. We are very lucky that he wasn't just expelled this time, especially given his past history.

I totally understand the school's view on this and am in total agreement with the punishment, but I am struggling with what to do about his continuing impulse control issues. I have tried to seek a referral to a different doctor, to see whether changing medications or dosages would help but they are all so busy, we'll be waiting a while for an appointment, even with private health insurance.

When I went to pick him up from the school, I was able to have a 'chat' with him before the deputy principal came in. I didn't yell, threaten dire consequences or rant and rave. I simply sat down and told him how disappointed I was to receive another call from the school when he had been doing so well. I told him how using the excuse of "I have a bad temper" just wouldn't cut it in the real world after school and doesn't even cut it now.

It was about this point that I began to cry as I talked him through my fears of having a phone call or a visit from the police to say that they had him in custody for seriously hurting or killing someone. Or that he himself had been injured or killed as a result of an argument probably started over something small. And that I wasn't sure what to do to help him as I can't be there to watch over him every second of every day 'just in case'.

Please don't get me wrong .. I'm not trying to paint him as the innocent victim in all of this (not by any stretch of the imagination!) and am extremely grateful to the school for taking mitigating factors into consideration. I'm just at my wit's end and am totally out of ideas of what to do to help. I'm so tired of this constant fight with the world because most of the time it feels like I'm fighting him and not allowing him to just 'be'. I feel like I'm constantly having to defend his right to even be here.

I know that we all have to conform to a certain degree to survive in society and I'm scared that he won't be able to do it. I'm scared that he will always be like this and will be bounced from one bad situation to another and not have the skills to get himself out. I'm scared that he will end up being in the wrong place at the wrong time, because he can be so easily led down the wrong path without even realising it.

I'm terrified that I'm failing him; that I'm not doing enough to help him get the right skills to deal with these sorts of situations. That I should have pushed harder and earlier for help. That I should have done this or that differently. That I should just let him figure these things out on his own (but given the severity of this incident, that isn't really an option.) That it's all too hard and I want to just scream "Stop the world! I want to get off!!"

And then I look around me and see how I don't have it anywhere near as bad as some others. And I think I should be grateful that he is healthy, (overly) verbal, mainstream schooled, intelligent, capable, wonderful, loving, helpful and all the other good things that make him who he is .. and I am grateful. He is who he is, I love him and I will continue to fight for him.

I'm just so scared that I'm not enough and I won't be able to help him.

I'm just so tired of this battle.

And then there were two ...

... teenagers in the house!

Happy Birthday Drew!! (or do I have to start calling you Andy like everyone else does now that you're a teenager?)

It's another case of 'where has the time gone?' It seems like only yesterday .. OK maybe last week .. that he looked like this:

and now he looks like this: (protecting his birthday cake from everyone!)

At least he still wants to receive hugs from his dear old mum!

When he was asked what he would like for his birthday dinner, he very seriously replied that he would like to continue the 'tradition' of going to Sizzler with the extended family ... a 'tradition' that was started with Alex but I suppose they all have to start somewhere! Then he asked Peter "seeing as it's my birthday, can we take the (motor)bike to dinner?" After establishing that he didn't actually want to take it inside the restaurant for a meal "duh Mum!", we agreed that he could ride there with Peter but had to come home in the car with me. I also had to continue the tradition by making a cake and decorating it with a number 13 done in rainbow style with mini M&M's. Ta-dah ... the finished product:

We managed to get just about all the extended family together for dinner and all had a great time especially when it came to singing happy birthday... it's been a while since I saw him that embarrassed! After eating some cake and dessert .. hey it was a birthday party! .. we headed outside for a photo and then I made the executive decision that he could ride home on the bike too.

We're going to let him stay home from school tomorrow for a day out with Mum and Dad (another part of the tradition) and hopefully get him a decent watch that he can keep.

All in all, I'm very proud of the young man he's becoming (even with the occasional bit of attitude!) and hope that he continues to be true to himself. Love you Drew!!

Computers suck!

More precisely .. computer problems suck!

My desktop had been running more and more slowly over the past couple of weeks but I had put it down to the fact that the boys had always been on the 'net at the same time I was. Last Monday it decided to turn itself off in the middle of my morning blog reading session and hasn't been playing at all since then.

I tried using Alex's laptop but it didn't want to let me have access to my posting page, Andrew's laptop has the ominous blue screen of death appearing at random times and Bradley's laptop didn't have internet access so I have been unable to post for a while.

I have finally managed to get Bradley's laptop to talk to the internet and the printer so I am back .. when I can wrest it away from his vice-like grip. Apparently, playing games is ever so much more important than allowing your mother her internet fix.

After a little 'chat' (give Mummy the laptop or she will go even more crazy than usual!), he agreed to let me use it on the proviso that I "don't break it as well." According to him, I have the computer death touch .. I touch it too much and it dies. We have yet to negotiate exactly what constitutes too much but hopefully I will be able to get mine fixed before his dies. Then we can share again ... oh what joy!!

Thank you Brad for being nice to your internet-deprived mother and allowing me to hog your laptop while you are in bed! I promise I'll try not to kill it ....

And this is why my blog is called 'life, one day at a time'...

If you met Alex this afternoon, you would never guess he was the same changeling child teen that was causing me to want to tear my hair out just the other day. I realise this is the nature of a teenager, never knowing what you will get from one day to the next but it was nice to have my happy obedient child back, if only for an afternoon.

Alex doesn't have an aide officially assigned to him at school, as the structured environment does more to help than having someone constantly looking over his shoulder ever could. However, one of the special needs aides does check in with him and his teachers on a regular basis to ensure he is coping and fulfilling his homework obligations. She, angel that she is, also volunteers her own time one afternoon a week to help guide him in the right direction with any longer-than-overnight homework assignments. Betty drops him home after these 'study sessions' as she lives just around the corner and today stayed for a chat.

She started by praising Alex for the amount of work he had managed to achieve this afternoon and went on to give more praise for the vast improvement in quality. Without any prompting from either of us, he thanked her for her help then voluntarily went and finished the project he had been working on. I was flabbergasted and jokingly asked her what she had been feeding him during the afternoon to make him listen to her.

Her reply was "I didn't feed him anything and the only reason he listens to me is that I'm not you. Haven't you figured out that teenagers never listen to their own mothers?" We both laughed before she added "Anyway, he's a really good kid and has beautiful manners. You're definitely doing something right."

And that is what I mean about taking life one day at a time. Each day is a new opportunity start over and to remind yourself to rejoice in the good things.

A recipe ...

... for a lovely picnic for Mother's Day a very stressful day.

Ingredients;

Absent husband (due to being away for work)
Me
11 year old boy
almost 13 year old boy
14.5 year old boy ('Slightly' autistic is best. Even better if you can find one with ADD as well!)
My Mother
Sister and Brother-in-law

Method:

Mix Me, Mother and Sister together to make arrangements for a lovely day out at Araluen Botanic Park for a BBQ and picnic to celebrate Mother's Day. Bask in glow of expectation of nice day out, in good company, with good food.

For the week before, prepare 14.5 year old repeatedly for the prospect of going out in public with no electronic device to entertain him or bed to throw himself onto when he doesn't get his own way. Repeat process (and expectations of behaviour) numerous times in days leading up to minor 'obviously huge' event.

The night before, ensure that 'Me' gets little sleep, due to a bed-hogging 11 year old and a slightly totally psychopathic dog, who barks like the four horsemen of the apocalypse are trying to break in at 2:30AM, when it was just a pot plant waving in the breeze outside the window. Allow 'Me' to feel small amount of resentment towards peacefully slumbering children, especially the 11 year old who is hogging all the blankets and most of the space in a queen size bed.

Have 'Me' return to bed, only to toss and turn for at least an hour before finally falling asleep. Allow 11 year old and 12.5 year old to energetically wake 'Me' up at 7am with many hugs, kisses and several gratefully received and appreciated presents, followed by 14.5 year old making his way into the room resembling a drugged sloth soon after. Enjoy some family bonding time before going to have breakfast at McDonald's.

Have 'Me' fight through the crowds at the bakery to get the boys the treat food they have requested for the picnic then have a mild panic attack at the prospect of not being able to purchase the main item 'Me' was asked to bring: hot dog buns. Relax slightly when hot dog buns are found, then make trip to pick up 'Mother.'

Enjoy short visit with 'Mother' before 'Mother' being interrupted by a somewhat upsetting phone call. Console 'Mother' then corral boys and 'Mother' into car and drive to picnic destination. Endure constant repetition of "He's in my space", "He's touching me", "Now he's leaning on me", "Mum, make him stop touching me!", "I didn't touch you! I invaded your space but I didn't touch you!" from the boys and "how much longer?" from the voices in Me's head.

Park car and let out the passengers. Find nice picnic spot and settle in for quiet, enjoyable time. Upon review, realise that the 14.5 year old has managed to combine teenage attitude, over-stimulation by somewhat busy surroundings, a sense of deprivation at being removed from the usual mind-numbing electronic entertainment and mild hunger, with his autism and ADD.

Prepare 'Me' for 'not-quite-so-relaxing picnic' and then rapidly downgrade to 'Lord-grant-me-patience-because-if-you-give-Me-strength-he-will-die!' Make allowances, within reason, for 14.5 year old's repeated button pushing as well as physical pushing of 11 year old and almost 13 year old. Allow 14.5 year old to play in creek until large rocks start rising from water and landing too close to picnic table. Distract 14.5 year old and endeavour to keep entire party on even keel.

Soon after, adjust 'Me's mental state to one of 'ignore-ignore-ignore' then pray for people hogging BBQs to hurry up so 14.5 year old can be fed something other then simple sugars. Praise 'Mother' for pushing her way onto corner of BBQ plate, then curse laws preventing BBQ from being hot enough to cook sausages in less than 30 minutes. Finally mix 14.5 year old with food then pack up so 'Me' can retreat to sanctuary of friend's house.

Place boys and 'Mother' in car for return trip. Endure another round of "He's in my space", "He's touching me", "Now he's leaning on me", "Mum, make him stop touching me!", "I didn't touch you! I invaded your space but I didn't touch you!" from the boys before depositing 'Mother' at home.

Reluctantly decide that 'Me' would not be very good company right now, due to lack of sleep and homicidal tendencies and retreat to study to write long, whiny blog post. Insert occasional verbal outbursts about extreme level of noise and lack of chores being done, then stew for an hour or two. Cook dinner (or not!) then send boys to bed before their normal bed time. Sit back and try to enjoy 'Bones' on TV without falling asleep.

Happy Mother's Day!

Sometimes I ...

• ... don't answer the phone at home because I just want to be left alone.
• ... wonder what my life would have been like if I hadn't been able to have the kids (as the doctors predicted!)
• ... let people take advantage of my generous nature and I always end up angry at myself for letting them.
• ... wish I had travelled more on my own before settling down.
• ... hide special treat food from the kids just so I can have it to myself.
• ... wonder 'what if this is all there really is?'
• ... just have to laugh at the stupidity and ignorance of the people I seem to encounter on a regular basis, but only because homicide is still illegal.
• ... just don't want to and you can't make me!
• ... wonder when I got so cranky.

Let the bridge crossing commence.

Remember how I told all and sundry about my new job in this post? And how I was so happy to finally stop contributing to our financial decline be helping with the boys' school fees? Just in case you missed it (tsk, tsk!), here is part of the aforementioned post:

I will be working Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays for the rest of this term, unless the other part-timer wants the hours back, in which case I'm back on the scrap heap. Let's cross that bridge, climb that mountain, whatever else you can think of to symbolise 'getting over it', if and when we get there. Almost all the money I will now be getting paid will be going straight back to the school to pay the fees, but it's better than having to find it myself!

I would like to draw your attention the section I have oh-so-conveniently made bold for you. Apparently, she does and I will be at the end of the week.

I'm off to climb the mountain, cross the bridge and find some chocolate.

Oh Lindt, Lindt, wherefore art thou dearest Lindt?