Bedlam strikes…..!

It is promote Christmas week here in France. Which means for us, collating all the shops’ publicity is a MAMOUTH task, millions of the things (2.5 tonnes weight in paper we have collated and shifted this week, fact.)…..will it ever stop? (I sob) but at least it buys us our ticket to rights and such like in France…..always a positive, right (?!). In fact last night Alex and I found ourselves having an in depth conversation comparing the best techniques in swift hand movements and arm nimbility for collating in the fastest time. An actual conversation about the best collating techniques….what’s that all about? We are still young, and yet we converse on these topics……..time to change our life!

Oh my word, what a day!….. My so called friend, the one who left me her overexcited dog to look after for a week, ‘Driver’ he was called, came round today. I had just finished collating the leaflets we distribute and put together every week at 4.30pm and had promised the kids to do something ‘fun.’ We were coated up and shoed up and on our way OUT, finally……She has brought me round a few puzzles, she informs me, she strolls in with her son, muddy boots, and chucks the puzzles on the table with a ‘there’s a few pieces missing, but I thought they’d do anyway.’ Hmmm, thanks. She then sits down and says she fancies a coffee……off I trot. Bedlam strikes…..to start with, Esmie falls down the stairs as I am not paying them much attention as I have coffee to prepare for the bringing round of useless gifts lady sat at my table with muddy boots on. The cat has diarrhea in the corner of the kitchen. The kids are charging round, sensing mummy is on the brink, so taking full advantage. I down the coffee, clearing up the diarrhea and seeing to hurt and crying toddler, kids screaming and apparently throwing around everything that is not nailed to the floor or too heavy, although I am sure they gave it a go, whilst listening to her preempting every sentence with, ‘well, I don’t want to tell you what to do, but…..’ then a stream of pearls of wisdom pour from her lips, and I want to curl up in a corner and weep…….!. In all this Esmie is going through a ‘lets constantly take out clothes off and be naked in the freezing cold even seconds after mummy has just redressed me for the 8^th time in 8 minutes’ phase. Obviously the chickens are feeling left out and they hop up at the kitchen window, they do this at dusk when they want to go to bed, it would be sweet if it wasn’t so irritating….! They peck away at the window as I try again to get the guest, her son and my 4 out the door again. Still raining, grey etc. we do it, we go out for some fresh air, at my insistence, despite the rain…..and then we get home. The chickens have somehow found their way in and the cat is chasing them (fair enough, she obviously smells food). I do manage to get them in their house, carrying 2 at a time, get me!

I have also burned everything today, I made the kids their porridge, burnt it, was in the process of trying to get them to eat it anyway, I’d leave the burnt bit in the pan, they are in tears as it still smells rank, so I say fine I’ll try it, which I do, whereupon I get it, and I bork so hard I regurgitate the burnt porridge right there and then in the middle of it all……classy. And guilty…!!! That is the last time I try and make them eat something regardless…the truth is, they DO know! I then burned the replacement breakfast, toast. Scrapey, scrapey and good as new, we chow down. I later left the oven to warm up waiting to put more bread in to cook, forgot about the soup I had made earlier, covered with a plastic plate to cool. Soup now full of blue melted plastic, a melted, plastic ladle and now inedible, I reach for it and grab it with my bear hand, clever, and am now a victim of 3^rd degree burns on the left palm of my hand. I should have given up, but determinedly I get on with the day, pulling at Esmie’s poppers to get her top off, I yank and pling buttons everywhere, yep buttons do not do the same thing as poppers do when pulled under great vigour…….that was my day, can’t wait to get up tomorrow………..!!!