Ted goes to work

It’s a turbulent week in politics – again. And this is only the end of the start. I spent part of xmas trying to help my partner apply for permanent residency. We didn’t get very far before he was asked to list every occasion he has left the country since 1993. I can feel him becoming more and more Catalan by the day. Earlier this week he celebrated the international day of the croquette.

But life goes on. My mum is due home this week from two months solid babysitting in Argentina with my brother’s family. She has been incommunicado for at least a month as their tv, landline and internet are down with no prospect of being restored. I think she is going to require some serious respite time in a dark room before she faces our kids. However, only son is keen to go over and take his teddy bear as his homework involves photographing his teddy in different places. Currently, the teddy is in daughter three’s locker at school. She took it in to take a photo in the canteen and forgot to bring it back. Ted has already booked his place on work trips and may be popping up at the women’s march on Saturday.

Apparently, because Ted is stuck in the locker I have to cuddle only son all night. He informed me of this earlier in the week so I am hoping Ted comes back today because the week did not begin well sleep-wise. Not only was I up late on Sunday writing about dads’ lack of work life balance [while my partner was snoring beside me], but then daughter three loomed. “I’m seeing stars,” she began. It appeared she was having a migraine so she got into our bed, but was unable to sleep.

Thirty minutes passed. I was drifting off. Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz. A mobile alarm went off incessantly. I climbed over daughter three and located the phone halfway down the stairs. Who puts the alarm on for 1.30am? I went back to bed. Thirty minutes passed. “Muuuuuum,” came the sounds of only son. Now only son could not fit in the bed with daughter three so I decided to get into his bed. It is not the most comfortable, but eventually I got to sleep.

I virtually had to drag daughter three out of bed in the morning. She had had a migraine last Friday, stomach pains [possibly also a migraine] and a temperature so had taken the day off. I rang the school and left a message. Four hours later I got a text, an email and a recorded phone call asking me to explain daughter three’s absence. I then got a phone call from my partner. “The school just texted to say daughter three’s absence needs to be explained,” he said. It felt like we were being hunted down for bad parenting. I am seriously considering homeschooling again. Surely people are allowed to be off sick for one day without schools freaking out?

Anyway, I got daughter three out the door and into her dad’s car. It’s unlikely that the end of the week is going to promise much more sleep. I’ve been informed there is a parents’ evening on Thursday for daughter two and only son has finally got his best friend to agree to a sleepover on Friday – his first sleepover outside his gran. He is cock a hoop. So cock a hoop that he is sending long messages to his friend’s mum on my phone, full of emoticons. “Is he packing yet?” read the Sunday one followed by six lines of smiley faces, balloons and the like.

He has made a list of all activities and informed me that his best friend is a cheese lover. This has gone down well among the vegetarian wing of the family, which may soon include daughter three who is teetering on the edge. Meanwhile, the vegan front is holding a bit of a grudge against her mother due to her getting “the wrong kind of quorn burger” in a last-minute dash to Tesco on Sunday. She had been hoping for quorn burger in her packed lunch and specified that it should be quorn brand vegan burger. How was I to know that quorn do a vegan and a non-vegan version? I bought three packets as well because they were on special offer. Daughter one is making her way through them slowly.

*Mum on the run is Mandy Garner, editor of Workingmums.co.uk. Picture credit: Teds in space from Wikipedia.

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