Reasons to be stressful, part three

• Littlest has insisted on a goldfish. Long-term readers of this blog will know how that always goes. 'Rosie' - the most antagonistic goldfish I have ever seen -  commenced her inevitable swim toward death in our home at the weekend. I have yet to understand why people claim to find fish so stress-relieving. To my mind, Rosie moves in a manner that suggests a good deal of suppressed anger.
  
  
• Night-times - and their accompanying wakenings in order to replace Eldest's orthotic foot and leg splints - have begun to take on a hallucinatory quality. (The child is a miniature Houdini, who can undo 18 straps of heavy-duty velcro in the dark without a sound, and without even opening her eyes.) Mr Coffee and I take it in turns to set our alarms at roughly 2-hour intervals, but the mind works in strange ways at 3am. Last night I heard the alarm, woke up, dutifully put it back on for two hours later and then went back to sleep, fully convinced that I had set myself an alarm in the middle of the night solely as a reminder to set myself an alarm in the middle of the night.
  
  
• The garden is turning into something worthy of its own strange dream. The thick spiky hedge rivals the thicket from Sleeping Beauty; the gardener who spoke with such promise of his chainsaw never arrived. The courgette plants that my mother's friend coddled into life for us whilst we were on holiday have actually shrunk since July. We have not harvested a single red tomato from about 15 plants. The peppers gave up growing several months ago, having proudly reached two inches high. It rains. It rains. The strawberry plants are sending runners out into the cracks in the patio.
  
  
• In November, Eldest goes into hospital to have a large amount of surgery on her hips, legs and feet. Yes, I did just throw that in amongst a load of stuff about fish and strawberry plants. We will spend two weeks in hospital before returning home for a period of rehab which could last up to a year. The decision to go ahead with the surgery - which is intended to stave off the loss of mobility that  children with increased spasticity experience as they grow - has not been easy, but nor has it been a decision we have made alone. Eldest wants to keep walking. Her bravery makes us proud. And it makes getting up at all times of the night a price worth paying.

I must go down to the sea again

So I was talking to a mother that I met in the street the other day. We were saying how tired our children had been before the Easter holiday; how ready they were to just relax. We were saying we hadn't done much at all with the lazy days, and how that was just what everyone needed.

"On one day," I said, "The Lattes watched Mamma Mia two-and-a-half times through."

She looked at me. She said something about day trips. I realised we were not having the same conversation at all.

And so it was that the next day, the one day that Mr Coffee was using the car, I decided that we should all get on a train and go to the beach. It wasn't far! It would be fun! Fun, that is, after I had stopped hyperventilating on the landing because I didn't know where the sunhats were. Fun, if you discount the fact that the buckets that were meant to go with the spades were actually in the garden full of spent fireworks from last November. Fun, if you like trying to push a wheelchair whilst carrying a rucksack, a pair of crutches and a bag full of sandwiches. Fun, after I had gone out into the world and shouted "If we stop every minute to look at your foot we will never catch this train" so loudly that a woman in a parked car wound her window up.

But we made it, in the end, and were soon sitting on the beach enjoying our picnic. Luckily for me, Joseph Heler had sent me a delicious parcel full of free cheese, and I was finding that their White Cheshire cheese with ham and a bit of Uncle Roy's cherry sauce that my mother had brought back from holiday was a very fine sandwich indeed.

Well, it was until a child threw some sand in it.

We couldn't get very far onto the beach because you can't go very far with a wheelchair on sand before the wheels stop going round. And then you have to stay quite close to where you abandoned it, because though surely no human being would steal a child's wheelchair you would be extremely b*ggered if they did, and you really don't feel like taking the risk.

It all just added to the excitement, because we were so far from the actual sea that we lost sight of where Littlest was paddling every five minutes. These little adrenalin rushes where we thought we had lost her kept Eldest and I on our toes. Eldest went for a bit of a paddle but not much of a one, because I had all our valuables stuffed into my pockets so I couldn't leap right into the water if she stumbled and began to drown.

(I took a book! How ridiculous was that? As if I thought I was going to get a rest!)

Still, seawater was experienced. A bucket of candyfloss was annihilated. A tick was placed in the box marked 'Day trips', and another step towards a successful Easter was made.

(Don't forget I'm giving away marshmallows and aprons on the last post! There's still time to enter.)

Reasons to be stressful (part 2)

1. I made pumpkin and ginger teabread this morning and it sank in the middle. I'm pretty sure this was not the plan. I haven't made it for a couple of years; I can't remember it sinking last time.
   
2. Even if the cake is delicious, I can't eat any of it because I am on The Diet. Again.
3. The Diet insists that this morning I eat a cold chicken breast for my elevenses. That's not right.
4. Because school had an INSET day on Monday, I'm left trying to cram five days work into four. And failing.
5. Apparently running and swimming breast stroke are Satan's gift to dodgy knees. Now I have to teach myself front crawl and buy a bike.
6. I have nowhere to store a bike. Nowhere at all. Unless we count in the middle of the kitchen.
7. Around this time last year I won a holiday to Chatsworth in a Mumsnet competition. This year I have won some sunglasses and a month's supply of Dole Fruit Pots. Now, these are very, very yummy, so much so that the Lattes may well have scoffed them all by Tuesday, but Mr Coffee is still muttering about Not Delivering The Goods.
   

Reasons to be stressful

I'm really loving friday playdate's Grace in Small Things. I love the idea of counting blessings.

Sadly, however, this is one area where I have to live vicariously. I'm not a blessings-counter. I can always find some reason even in the happiest moments to moan about something. The other day we went to see Inkheart, and (look away now if you don't want to know what happens) in the end the family are reunited after many years, the wife gets her voice back, and everyone is happy.

"I don't believe that," I told Mr Coffee. "I can't believe she's not telling her husband what a bad time she had. She hasn't been able to speak for years."

Mr Coffee nodded, sadly. He knew that's exactly what I would be doing if I found myself reunited with my loved ones after many years of loneliness and heartbreak. Moaning about a niggling pain in my leg or how no-one had offered me a decent hot drink in months.

So, let's play to my strengths. I offer you:

Reasons to be stressful, part 1

1) It's all very well having fancy-ass lights, but not if you can't get replacement bulbs for any of them. Our kitchen is increasingly descending into gloom. And the Black and Blum reading light looks downright alarming without a head.

2) My incomparably marvellous chocolate brownie recipe, by Bill Granger, seems to be broken. It has turned from a wonderful and delicious thing into an overly sugary affair which bursts over the side of the tin.

3) Watching the last fish die, slowly and painfully, was tragic enough (we couldn't bring ourselves to just flush it), and I'm glad that its final torment is over, but the empty tank is FREAKING ME OUT.

4) I've been to Waterstones, and can't bring myself to buy any of the Orange Prize shortlisted books. I had such good intentions, till I started reading the blurbs. Alzheimers. Death. Bombing. Death in penury. Alcoholism. Death. Maybe I need to turn into my mother, and start reading Terry Pratchett all the time.

5) The Littlest Latte's swimming instructor is planning to come off the poolside next lesson and get into the pool with us. A handsome young man in a wet shirt - I may have to be stretchered off. And then who will drive the children home?