What shall I do...now they're out for the morning?

What on earth shall I do? I have just waved them off, all three in the car and I have a whole morning all to myself.
Utter, utter bliss.
Shall I indulge in a long deeply scented bath knowing that no one will come to importune me? No one will come rushing in and at the top of their voices demand that I bear witness with: "Mum,Mum Bog Boy/Boy hurt me!" followed by an equally go ferocious denial from the accused. In these circumstances I know that it is my judgement that has been called upon, that I am the sole arbiter of fair play in the household. I am just below God in the hierarchy, although unfortunately for my children I have not been given the wisdom of Solomon.
Shall I lay slug-a-bed and indulge myself with my favourite book? The house will be silent and there will be no need for me to rush to the aid of one or both of my boys before they tear each other limb from limb for usually that is what it sounds like so I have learned to read with one ear attuned for emergencies of one sort or another.
Shall I have time just to be without one of them moseying along down to ask: "What are you doing? Why are you doing that? Can I do that with you?"
So I sit here and I write this and all the time I think: "It's awful quiet." And do you know what? It's not quite right and I just can't seem to relax. So instead of all those things that I thought would be so nice to indulge in I think I had better do things such as cooking and cleaning and tidying up, I need to keep myself busy until they come home and then, only then will I be able to relax and be me, then I will be able to indulge myself!

I've eaten half a pizza and I think I'm going to be sick...

I've eaten half a pizza and I think I'm going to be sick. It's not that I've eaten too much, it's just the enormity of how I did it. I was  like a ravenous dog whose master is just about to come in through the door and catch me at it. I am sure it's not a good thing to bolt food like that.
Now I am trying to work out WHY?
Of late I have been so well controlled about food but today has been one of those days. I had to eat. It started off so well with bacon and eggs but by the time I got back off the school run I had to have 2 stale ginger biscuits (they should be called snaps but  they hardly do that after two weeks in the cookie jar). I love stale ginger biscuits, so much nicer than the fresh crunchy ones, they remind me of cake mixture. I should have restricted myself to 'just the one' but the temptation was just way too strong. I lumbered on until lunchtime when I bolted a small bowl of pasta and pesto left over from the boys' supper the night before with a hunk of bread and again fell into temptation with the last two ginger biscuits
Everything OK until the boys' supper tonight when I was revoltingly like the Wickedest Whippet. I mean I positively growled at the children as we fought over the last peices and I wolfed down all their crusts. The dogs were MOST put out.
To assuage my guilt I ate three clementines.
Now looking back at the amount of food I ate today I see it's really rather lacking in the old green stuff stakes and a tad high on the old carbs but in my defence I needed it, I was hungry and tired, oh and stressed. I gather not a good combo when you are trying to lose weight.
I think I had better start again right now with a relaxing bath and a good book, perhaps I will be calm enough not to eat again when my husband gets in from work. I know he likes me to have supper with him but today he'll have to lump it. I will not sympathy eat just to keep him company.
The piazza keeps repeating itself and I feel kinda bloated...eeew, pardon me, I won't say what happened just then but I feel an awful lot better now.
Off to soak in my bath and dream of celery sticks....

You know that brilliant piece I wrote...?

I’ve been admonished by a three year old. I was in a happy reverie upstairs contemplating my blog entry after getting out a bath; feeling deliciously relaxed, warm and smelling of roses.

Stomp, stomp, stomp coming up the stairs and a little blonde head appeared with brow furrowed and eyebrows meeting in the middle:

Bog Boy: “Whatcha doin’?”

Me: “Nothing, go on downstairs you little bugger, bedtime.”

Bog Boy - not moving: “You comin’ down too?”

Me “In a while…when I get dressed.”

Bog Boy – still not moving: “When yer goin’ t’get dressed?”

Me: “Soon!”

Bog Boy - satisfactorily: “Your goin’ t’die like that.”

Probably! Me: “OK! Now! I’m going to get dressed, now.”

He’s happy now, I’ve got dressed, he’s had his goodnight kiss and he’s bargained a place in my bed in the early hours of the morning –ah well, I presume this is merely a prelude to his glittering career at the Bar!

The Whippet – by which I mean the Tattie dog whose name I use in vain – has also badgered me into doing something I wanted to do in my own time. She and the rest of the gannets have just been fed - earlier than usual but I fear it was the left over gravy in her bowl just that little bit out of her reach that prompted her to rush up the stairs and sit on my lap as I was trying to say Goodnight to the Boy. She’s one for direct action in these cases – it works and now that everyone is satisfied I can turn to the matter at hand. There’s just one problem; the brilliant piece I wrote in my head as I lay soaking like Cleopatra in the bath has gone…

Flutrek: voyager

You can manufacture incredible release when you are really ill, I know I’ve done it. In fact I did it every forty minutes or so for seventy two hours just by turning my head. Do you want to know how? Well, you know when you are really bunged up and the pain radiates from ear to ear and you can hardly breathe? Lie on one side until you don’t think you can stand it any more then flip over. As the never ending gunk that’s inside your sinuses slides from one side to another and before it settles there is the most amazing few seconds of relief. Absolute bliss for those few seconds before you have to start the whole cycle again.

Then of course there’s the coughing. You try to stifle it because sometimes it fades away without becoming a true cough. A true cough is one that makes you rise out of you slumber like a reanimated corpse for that is what I have been feeling like for the past five days – actually it’s what I have been looking like. It’s no wonder my children have abandoned me and no one wants to visit. Or it might be because I growled at them to all "Pugger Orf and leave me alone!" when they asked for the umpteenth time if I needed anything just, and I mean just, as I finally started to doze off into some proper sleep.

The solicitations of one’s family are hard to bear at times, especially when you are not in your own home. I have been in Yorkshire in my childhood home and the things I delight in and think of with great fondness when I am well and only staying a night or two, start to tarnish rather fast as my illness wears away my humour. The heating comes on and off rather than being on at an ambient temperature so the feeling of being very cold then suddenly coming over in a hot flush could actually have very little to do with the fluctuations in my body temperature and more to the erratic behaviour of the boiler in the outside shed.

Then there is the fact that just when you need a really hot bath, there is no hot water or worse it never quite gets hot enough to do the job properly and you know that when your Mum asks if you had a lovely one (bath that is) you have to say yes because you know that she has sacrificed her bath just so that you can have one so it would be churlish to say how awful it is. Mostly I would dip my foot in and pretend to be having a bath while secretly wrapping myself in a big warm towel while half sitting in the airing cupboard until such a time as I though would satisfy her; but that’s not so easy to accomplish when she says she’ll come into the bathroom and sit with you. I had to lie in a bath full of just above tepid water, and say how lovely and relaxing it was while she sat and chatted! It wasn’t until she commented on how blue I looked round the lips that it was deemed I had better get wrapped up and sent to bed.

Despite that, being at home rather than in my own house and being looked after, is rather special and not something that happens very often. There were no worries about what will there be to eat? Nor worries about where it will come from or who will make it. No worries about how will the boys be entertained or kept quiet or even who will let the dogs out all this was done by someone else. I could indulge myself by being really really ill.  And I was.

Picture: Flaming June by Frederick Lord Leighton 1895 it can be found in the Ponce Museum of Art in Puerto Rico