Whinge, and Super hero stuff.

I'm tired. No, scratch that. I'm exhausted. I think I need a man.

No, not for that! Get your minds out of the gutter. (Though, now I come to think about it... it's been a long time .....)

It is an impossibility for one woman to maintain a house, full time job, car, lawn, whipper snipper, garden, veggie patch, kids' extra-curricular activities, novel, afghan and also attend to various motherly/daughterly/friendy/pet-ownery/'selfish' creative-y things and do them all well. As a Virgo this seriously messes with my mind.

I love my job. Seriously love it. Plus it pays the bills, which is very considerate of it. The downside to working full time is that it only gives you the weekend with any serious chunks of time to do everything that needs to be done. I realise that this is BIG NEWS to anyone reading this, because naturally no-one else has to juggle anything.

But it's weekends like this that make me wish that I had another able-bodied adult around. (Not enough to do anything concrete about it, but those of you reading this that know about my massive tally of internet dates will understand. I'm still on a break.)

This weekend I had to do all the housework, mow the lawns, do the edges, harvest the spinach before it went to seed, novelise, knit, bake cakes and biscuits for the kids for next week, go to the butchers and buy cat meat and make the patties for them (I feed my pets the BARF diet... great for them but a shitload of work for me), do all of the laundry/bedding washing/hanging/folding, take Jordan to a sleepover, come home and welcome one of Brennan's mates for a sleepover here, go to Mum's for a birthday party, take possession of Murphy while Mum and Dad go away for a month, finish off my year 11 correction, anything else I've forgotten to list ... etc.

I did some of the edging, until the f%ck*&g whipper snipper ran out of line. I have plenty. Unfortunately the kids cleaned the garage a few weeks ago and now no-one knows where it is. I didn't mow the lawns. Around the sideway the weeds are as big as triffids. I was wondering where all of the dandelions in the veggie patch were coming from. Now I know.

I made 6 cakes. Four are still around to be frozen and used for after school fodder for the hordes. No biscuits.
I knitted yesterday. Star Wars 2 was on tv, so I had a chuckle and a knit. Good times.
Cat food got made. Only because they would've starved next week if I didn't.
Washing got done. It's still on the line at 6.30pm. The kids don't know it yet, but they're about to be my laundry boys when I get off here. They can do the folding too.
Correction? No way.
Novel? You jest.
I harvested the spinach though. To look at it growing, you'd swear there was enough to feed an army. But once I'd cut, washed, blanched, chopped, weighed and bagged the leaves, I only had four 250g bags. For three hours work (plus a possible sunburned scone) (that means scalp for those who aren't Australian) I wasn't happy. Then I looked at the stalks. Green, fibrey and organic. I bet Ma Ingalls, who you all know by now is my personal hero, wouldn't have wasted them. So I chopped, blanched, bagged and froze them too. Four more bags. I've doubled my yield! Good on me.

I haven't stopped all weekend. No housework, no correction, no nothing. How long is it till the summer break?

But I have to tell you something funny that happened yesterday. Brennan's mate Marcus came over, and they went to 7-11 for a slurpie. They were gone for quite a while, and when they came back they said that a couple of teenagers had thrown waterbombs at them, disappeared, and then five minutes later came back riding bikes and chased them all the way to the oval near 7-11. The kids hid near the cricket players until the coast was clear, got their slurpies, and then came back home via a massively roundabout route so they'd avoid the little shits on the way back. They were terrified.

I listened, asked if they knew where they lived, and when they said yes ( Brennan said they were the same kids who tried to drag Jordan off his bike a year ago) I said, "Get in the car."

We drove around. The kids were in the back seat, and I heard Brennan say to Marcus, "We don't normally do this on a Saturday. This isn't a normal day!"

The kids stayed in the car while I knocked on the front door. I wondered if the door was going to open and I'd be confronted by familiar faces from the school I teach at. I wondered if I was going to get the crap beaten out of me. As I was standing there, a car pulled into the driveway and there were Mum and the two boys. Bingo!

For those of you who aren't teachers, I'll let you in on a little secret. Come closer, because I'm going to whisper this. We don't mind telling off other people's kids. We do it every day. We're professional at it. We do it every day, sometimes for entertainment. It was beautiful.

I smiled at the Mum, but spoke directly to the kids. Asked them if they'd been home in the last half to three quarters of an hour. I'll say it again. It was beautiful. Their Mum was there, so they couldn't lie. You should've seen Mum turn purple when I said they'd chased primary aged kids all the way to the oval.

"How old are they?" she asked. It made me wish (briefly) that Brennan was still in prep.

"They're grade sixers", I said, but then to make up ground, I hastily added in a grave tone, "They were very frightened. You boys are so much bigger."

"We were just having fun. We didn't know they were scared," said one foolish boy. He didn't know he was dealing with a fully trained Drama teacher.

"You didn't know they were scared???? Were they running away and laughing? I don't think so." Mum turned even more purple, and glared at them. Any more purple, and she'd be needing those heart starter paddles.

Then I decided to gamble and said, "My kids say that you're the kids that tried to drag my older son off his bike last year."

They turned pale. "No no, that wasn't us!!"

I wasn't prepared to fight that battle, so I took the high moral/teacherly/motherly ground. I practically waved a finger at them.

"See what happens when you do something wrong? You start to get blamed for things you haven't done." Their Mum nodded.

"Do you go to (bleep)?" I asked. (Bleep being where I teach.) They shook their slimy little heads.

I looked at Mum and laughed. "Probably just as well. They wouldn't want to have me as a teacher after this!"

To their credit, they volunteered to go and apologise. They went up to the kids. I followed closely behind, just in case they were going to threaten them with death or worse. But all was well. They apologised, the boys said "That's ok", their Mum said to me, "Little idiots", and we left.

I'm now officially awesome Mum. I'm reasonably happy with that.

IMPORTANT QUESTION:
Does anyone know if we can post an audio thingy from Limewire on our blogs? Jordan played us the funniest thing I've heard in a month of Sundays, and I'd love to post it. However, he seems to think the police will send me to jail. Is this true? Please let me know one way or another....