So I started last week with a blog describing perfectly how I predicted my half term would be, I feel it only right that I write this week with the actual reality….
Beginning….
I finished work on the Thursday before half term, I had been looking forward to this for weeks as I knew it meant I could have a lovely productive Friday to kick start my half term week off with my girls…the day went pretty well, it started off with an hour helping up at school, then I had my run and met my lovely mummy friend for a bracing dog walk in the torrential rain! I then ventured home prepared for some productive and overdue housework, to be surprised by Max finishing work early! Now I don’t know about anyone else, but this just totally throws out my day as like one of my children, he needs to be entertained and is genuinely put out if I don’t immediately suspend my plans to lavish him with the attention he desires so listening to him jabbering on, no housework was achieved. I then sent him up to collect the girls so I could run round with the hoover, and prepare for the usual friday night routine of swimming lessons, McDonalds or pizza for the kids and then ‘date night’, which essentially means he cooks something nice that the girls would reject and I get to drink gin!
But this week Max has decided to begin his next gym phase. At this point I need to explain, Max is a bit of a talker, his yearly cycle is that he’ll spend 3 months talking about his latest gym ‘thing’, 6 wks actually doing it, when it’ll be all consuming and he’ll be the ultimate smug gym goer and bore the shit out of me and anyone else that listens to his sanctimonious preaching about it (nevermind that I consistently and quietly run all year, he talks at me like I do faff all!) and then he’ll completely stop for 6 wks until the next cycle begins. So this time it’s some kind of Alpha competition that he’s starting and it so happens that the first, and all subsequent sessions are for two hours on a Friday evening, ie, date night! As the ever supportive wife, I of course nod encouragingly when he informs me of this and comfort myself with the knowledge that my children all totally chill out in front of screens, with their respective friends on a Friday night, so I should get a couple of civilised hours drinking gin and either reading the paper, watching a bit of crap telly or even writing! This week however, Bella decides she wants to play Lego, with me, so despite trying to persuade her otherwise and chastising myself for discouraging my daughter in imaginative play and also wanting to spend time with me, I spend my intended ‘grown-up’ Friday night playing Lego, and although perhaps not my intention, actually ended up really enjoying it, and when Max did eventually come home in his smug post gym, ‘I’m such an athlete and you’re not’ haze, I pretty much just ignored him and carried on, although Bella had by now of course ditched me for her sisters and their screens…
Middle…
The first couple of days went exactly as predicted! Lovely lunch and play dates on Monday and day trip out on the Tuesday, to a place where I now go filled with anxiety every time, as I helpfully, but totally against all the rules, lent my membership card to a friend who came over from America in the summer, and unfortunately but all too typically for me, they announced to her that my card needed a photo ID on it, so she then had her photo taken and told them she was me…so faced with the option of either confessing to my rule breaking (which quite frankly brings me out in a cold sweat as I’m a general goody two shoes!) or complete denial, I’ve chosen the latter option and try at all costs to use the queue jumping option that avoids going through the kiosk where the computer is that would show her photo. I managed to wing it through, even successfully signing my friend in too and making a mental note to purchase something from their very expensive shop to alleviate the guilt of what I did!!
Halloween….
Wednesday and Thursday were spent preparing for the Halloween party, that despite my futile protests, was insisted upon by my children and Max.(People often ask if I’d have ever been tempted to try for a boy, and I tell them I don’t need to as, being married to him is mostly the equivalent of having a boy child!) So as always in our house, these wondrous, extravagant plans are made by others, yet the donkey work is executed by myself! While my days were spent decorating the house, producing costumes, food shopping and cooking. Max spent the Thursday distributing actual bones that he’d been collecting from the butchers all week, in our garage, destroying old mattresses, covering our shed and garage in red paint and eery messages then filling buckets with various disgusting contents for the children to search through for sweets! He then managed to persuade my brother and Lucy in to some ‘live acting’ for his big performance.
When the evening came and the guests arrived, he took them outside, looking pretty scary himself, a group at a time, to tell them the story about the butcher that used to live at our house and how every year a greedy child would go missing. He then lead them out into our now dark and quite frankly terrifying garden, where a ‘werewolf’ (my poor brother!) jumped out, ‘kidnapping’ Lucy and running off with her to our shed, he then lead them all into our tree house where he slammed down the trapdoor, plunging them into darkness until he jumped out on them, he then sent them down the fireman’s pole and over to the shed that housed the most frightening cackling witch decoration you’ve ever seen, and then for his finale, lured them to the garage where he proceeded to plunge them into darkness once more before throwing open the garage door and jumping out on them brandishing a chainsaw. One poor child ended up in tears, others wouldn’t even venture in to the garden after the horrific tale and Max paraded around the house smug in the fact that he’d successfully scared the shit out of children and adults alike. Like I said, boy child. ( I feel I should mention that all children and parents had been forewarned and thankfully by now, know what he’s like!!) When our final guests (the usual’s!!) left after midnight, we then began the clean up operation, Max abandoned it for his bed at 1, and I continued until 3am in the knowledge we had an early start on Friday so wouldn’t be able to do it then…
End…
I woke up in the morning with the kind or hangover that renders you confined to your bed with a cold flannel over your eyes managing only to take some paracetamol. Unfortunately, knowing we had places to be that day, I didn’t have the luxury of wallowing time, so after half an hour of forcing myself not to vomit and sipping water, I staggered into the shower and ate a loaf of toast and Marmite. Then I proceeded to pack and organise the girls for going away overnight, make lunch and complete the happy task of collecting bones from around the outside of my house. In the meantime, Max, having not very wisely decided earlier in the week he was an actual body building legend, and lifting 145 kgs on his third day back at the gym, had the small issue that his arms had been gradually swelling up over the course of the week, for the previous couple of days he’d been proudly showing off his ‘guns’ but by this day they were now completely and utterly swollen to almost comical Popeye like proportions completely masking the fact he even had elbows. When he walked into Boots, he was told by a very alarmed pharmacist that he would need to see a GP, ASAP. Unfortunately by this time we were already hours behind on our schedule which involved taking the girls to my Dads and then going up to see his Mum, and taking her to where she needed to be, so after a conversation with a GP, we set off. 5 hrs in a car, girls successfully dropped off, mum in law successfully visited and settled, an emergency post hangover McDonald’s and lots of anxious head pecking from me later, we went to the glamorous venue of A&E to spend our rare child free Friday night, having Max’s by now quite frankly ridiculous arms seen. His perception of the visit is that the Doctor was flirting with him and awestruck by his massive ‘guns’. The reality was she was simultaneously trying not to laugh while also visibly quite shocked by the size of them and after ruling out a blood clot, treated them with medication and advised us to closely observe for any signs of renal failure developing. Suffice to say he’s also been advised to avoid the gym for a few weeks but being the ridiculously silly and competitive man child he is, has obviously taken his own version of that advice which is that he can still go but just not use his arms (No words…)….Anyways, leaving A&E at 11pm that night we booked into a premier inn for some much needed post hangover food and sleep…
Thankfully the rest of the weekend was pretty uneventful and and I was predictably sad to wave the girls off to school on Monday…Max and his massive arms, not so much…..!
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