Not So Yummy Mummy

redecorating

It is probably not because I just turned forty that I decided it was time to do something about the ramshackle place we call home but after ten years of living here while always planing to move, we are now up to our necks in virtual debt. I say virtual because so far although we have committed to spend money on four different projects, not much has yet been paid.

We got a new floor in our bedroom and it looks so smart that it was heart breaking to have to movve back in all the horrid old mismatched furniture older richer people gave us to tide us over until we could afford to buy good stuff (never). The room also looked quite large for the hour or so before everything got piled back in again. Still at least I know that I will soon have a built in wardrobe and then all this stuff can go to the dump.

I have been completely ignoring my poor kids for the last two days since most of the time was spent carrying everything out of the room and then back in again. I realised that the reason we had no storage space left and that all the cupvboards were stuffed is because of all the clothes the husband and I have been storing until we suddenly turn back into the slim young people we were when we met. I'm beginning to think that turning forty and still looking as if I had a baby yesterday but sadly misplaced it, is a sign that I'm never going to. Mind you the husband looks much the same and he has never produced a baby (as far as I know). I half expected to find a few of them stuffed behind the wardrobe when I moved it, but only found a few surprised spiders.

Had dinner last night with a dear friend who is delightfully slim and beautiful and she spent the night telling me how she would give anything to be forty and chunky and have babies. Anything except her figure and fun lifestyle, I suspect. Everytime a nice young man comes her way, she sighs and decides he is just not good husband material. I told her that if we all thought that way we would never marry. I suspect I am not the only person who married a guy because he was fun and handsome and kind and expected that we would have fun and be cool young marrieds. The husband was  nothing like a married man and in fact he still isn't.

The kind of married men my friend is looking for are invariably someone else's husband. Still, it is nice to be envied for somehting more than your ability to make truly disgusting faces. The dog lover (7) reckons this is my greatest talent. You're not much good at anything else, he often remarks (playstation, football and lego mainly) but you do make horrible faces. I am proud of that too.

The film director (10) had a nasty experience today when he started playing with a new bunch of kids. Since I am an insane, over protective Mammy I have not let him play out on the street much. All the other kids in the neighbourhood do play out though so I  finally agreed he could this summer. He was thrilled for two days. Today though, a bunch of them started to call him names and he came home furious at first then devastated that people could hate him so much. I found it very difficult not to run down the street and beat the life out of them all myself. Why OH why are children so cruel? There is nothing you can do to make that better. I first wanted to say he could never go out again, now that I have calmed down a bit, I'm hoping he will and that he will find that they don't all hate him...but what if they do?