Redneck Mommy's Questions!

Redneck mommy kindly 'tagged'(is that right, don't know all the vocab for blogging yet, suffice to say, she asked for someone to answer some cool questions and I begged to be picked!) Great questions, really made me think and that doesn't happen often!

If you could only listen to one musician for the rest
of your life, who would you choose?

Mmmm, oh this is so hard but I'll go with what first sprang to mind and that's Joan Armatrading, I can listen to 'Love and Affection' till the kids beg me to turn it off, when she sings it reminds me of past loves and really pulls at my emotions. I first heard her on on a late night radio concert, didn't know who I was listening too so stayed up late into the night to hear the end of the concert to find out the artist and have been hooked ever since. I actually don't listen to her that much, I sort of save her for a special treat or (cough) occasion if you get my drift...

If you could go ANYWHERE right this second, where
would you go?

The moon, sounds silly I know but I would love to look at the Earth from somewhere not on the Earth!

You meet God in an elevator. What is the one question
you would ask him?

Now this is difficult, as my upbringing religion wise is weird, half my family are good honest folk, never had so much as a parking ticket, drink a small sherry at Christmas and generally do as they would be done by but don't belong to any local church or religious establishment, the other half are Witness's which means they go to 3 meetings a week and 'door knock' every Saturday. And I'm somewhere stuck in the middle, I'm not a witness and only attend the yearly event 'The Memorial' to please my dad but I don't disagree with what they have to say. So if I met God I'd ask him simply 'Why?' if he has the almighty power to change everything and he will one day, why not now, why let us destroy our planet and each other, why not prove your existence and sort us all out?

A magical fairy swoops down and turns you into a guy
for one day. What are you going to do in that day?

This one makes me laugh, I have no idea as I've never thought about it, even as a five year old I told my mum that I was glad I wasn't born a boy, simply because I thought girls had so much of a better choice in shoes! I guess I'd like to experience an orgasm as a bloke (with a woman, not much point on your own!) but I might need more than a day!

Do you twirl your spaghetti or cut it?

Lol, I don't eat spaghetti, pasta makes me bloaty and windy! C, at the age of 6, swirled a huge spoonful put it in her mouth and swallowed with out chewing, she started to choke, half the ends came out of her mouth so I just grabbed them and pulled and hey presto, all the spaghetti came out!

Lazy afternoons

Do you ever have afternoons you wish you could save and keep in a little box? We've come back from shopping with a new puzzle which Jude has done on the floor, with the sun streaming in through the windows, we have a cd of childrens songs playing softly in the background, fairy cakes are baking in the oven made by J's fair hand (only he will eat them, so germ transference is low risk!) Its just nice, even outways the fact that I have the headache I always get on the second day of my period, no matter how much I try to stay hydrated, keep my blood sugar levels up and take enough painkillers to keep an elephant happy!
Oh and J is feeling better....!

Saturday mornings

My children and I have very different ideas about what saturdays entail, I like to have a small lay-in, maybe 9am 9.30 at the latest but C idea of a lay-in stretches way past noon and longer if she wasnt yelled at 3 or 4 times. Now we usually catch the bus to shop in a town two towns over, grab a burger and a pointless toy that will languish in the bottom of my bag for weeks till I throw it out, shop around for things we dont really need but its the pound shop, how can we resist? But before we set off on this merry jaunt, I'd like all three of us to be smelling fresh, dressed nicely, I'm not talking sunday best here but C dragged a very crinkled pair of jeans out of her ironing pile and declared them 'not too bad', see what I'm up against here? I'd also like the house to not illicit groans of despair when I walk back in, washing up down, the hoover ran around, a load of laundry in the machine, just normal stuff so we can flump down when we get back, read the paper, watch a dvd etc and not have to think too much about housework, it just makes for a relaxing teatime and pleasant evening, now that doesnt seem to unreasonable does it and with three of us being quite capable of all the above it shouldnt be too hard? So explain to me why I was last in the shower, yet am fully dressed, make up on, contact lenses in (thats no mean feat, 2 years I've been wearing them now and still cant do my right eye first time!) I've loaded the dishwasher, washed up the non dishwasher stuff, hoovered, put laundry in, put laundry away even done some ironing and where are the children, still faffing around upstairs, its 1.30pm and we havnt even left the house yet! grrrrrrrr.....

Anyway as I was yelliung words of encouragment up the stairs, I realised that every family has its own vocabulary that no one else would understand, for instance, Jude loves his froggy kandoo soap dispenser so when ever he showers he has to be reminded that letting the water just run over you doesnt get the smell away! So we say 'have you kandoo-ed your bum?', which has been shortened to 'did you kandoo?' 'are you sure you kandoo-ed?' 'dont forget to kandoo!' what phrases do you have in your family that make perfect sense to you but nothing to others!

We have new antibiotics and they are not splattered over any of my floors! Rang the doc and he agreed that four days of the initial standard antibiotics should not still have J delirious at 1am with a 39 c temp, also sweet talked him into prescribing more calpol so I wouldnt have to pay for it, have spent £15 over the past week on meds and it didnt help that I knocked the bottle over in the wee small hours and being the scrooge I am, I grabbed an egg cup and tried to catch some of the precious liquid as it poured over the worktop and onto the floor! Good job I had sanitized the worktops after dinner last night or I may have given him more germs than he already has! He's pretty good in himself, but every four hours as it weres off he starts to go grey and shake with cold even though he is burning up, but give him the mooty, he will fall asleep and in 20 minutes be fine again!

From my hips up I am a lovely light brown, my eyes look bright, my teeth look whiter and I appear to have lost 10 pounds, but my legs..arrgghhh, thank goodness its not summer yet, even after careful exfoliation, moisturising, they look like I let J paint me with a large paintbrush and brown powder paint! There are whole areas missing, its like someone sneaked in and wiped off random areas! So they are on a strict scrub and heavy moisturising plan for a week then will try again, maybe I could just wear long white trousers all summer?

J was awake at 1am with a 102 temp again, have to ring the doctor in 5 minutes for his opinion, am concerned that the antibiotics don't seem to be working or the infection is too big for it too handle and that unless J is taking nurofen and paracetamol every four hours then is temp is that high and he skin feels like its burning. Four days of living on kiddy meds and weak juice and antibiotics cant be good?

that orange glow...

I took two painkillers for my aching back, ran a nice hot bath, dug out a compliation cd that I hadnt played in ages, annoyed the neighbours by singing 'lifestlyes of the rich and the famous' very loudly, shaved my oh so hairy legs and then covered my self in that 'build a tan day by day' fake tan for light skins, if you knew me well you would now that I'm as pale as a sheet of copier paper and even by the end of the summer I have a healthy glow and thats it, so even this lightlylightly stuff is like varnish on my skin, will let you know in the morning whether I glow in the dark or not!

Just a quick update that the mice have gone, they do hate lavender! Havnt seen a single little poo, seen any scurrying and the humane traps havnt been touched! So if you ever get mice, just a buy a little bottle of lavender oil and sprinkle near a mouse hole, you wont see them for dust!

Bleeeauuuggghhhh

I'm so tired, J is still running a 101 temp, has been sick twice and is sleeping a lot, trouble is I cant sleep when he does as I'm worried he will wake up throwing up, he's seen the doctor twice, the second time was only becuase I rang to say 'if he has just thrown up his pain meds and antibiotics 30 secs after taking them, should I give them again?' and the receptionist told me to bring him straight in. We only live five minutes away so I took him in only for the doctor to look oddly at us and ask us why we were back, It sounded lame to say he had thrown up, what did I expect with a sick child? Anyway, same old, plenty of fluids, rest and mooty to keep the temp down if he can keep it down!

101 degrees F

J woke me at six this morning, calling from his bed that his neck, arms and legs hurt, nothing like the threat of meningitis to have me hurtle from my room to his, he sleeps in just pants so I quickly checked him all over for a rash, nothing but he was a little toasty, always fifficult to tell with J as to how hot he is as he always feels hot first thing in the morning from being under the duvet, even his forehead but cools upon getting up, but this time he lay in bed, eyes glassy, cheeks red and that hot smell kids have when they are ill. I couldnt call the doctors till they opened at 8.30, so decided to get us ready in case they said bring him straight in, they didnt deem it too serious when I rang so he was seen at 11am. A quick check-up and a history taken that he had had a slight cold and cough for a while and that yes he had a fever and probably a sinus infection as his head hurt whenever he coughed so we're on a course of antibiotics, the first course he's had since he was 18 months old and was hospilatized with pneumonia, took him home, gave him one dose, and within 10 minutes he was sound asleep, sat with him and within 20 mins he woke with such a fever it frightened me, 101 isnt that high as illness's go but J rarely gets one so to see him slightly disorientated, so hot you could hold your hand an inch away from his skin and feel it and unable to get up was scary, then the realisation that we had no kiddy meds left in the cupboard! great, scooped him up, put him in the pushchair for which he is far to big and almost ran to the pharmacy, was in such a panic as he was grunting by this point that I knocked over a display on my way in, assistant wasnt too impressed till she saw J looking dreadful in the pushchair, gave him a dose of paracetamol liquid and one of ibuprofen and he lay back down, within half an hour, he sat up, asked where he was and was it lunchtime? Been fine ever since and he giggling at 'Happy feet' on dvd, you'd never know I was worrying about febrile convulsions a few hours ago!

To shop, perchance to dream

C my 12 year old, loves to shop, just like me, nothing soothes the soul like browsing and buying things we dont need, we want! But is it a female thing, my son hates to shop, rejects new things, I slide new clothes in amongst the old ones and pretend he's had it for ages, family have long since learnt not to give a gift with great gusto but rather to leave it on the side and casually mention if he knows anyoe who might like it...? Shoe shopping with J is so difficult, every pair will be declared "too small, they huurrtt!" and clenched teeth (me) and folded arms (him) are always part of the bargain, but C will try on every pair in the shop, declaring each pair more wonderful than the last and we may leave with two pairs for her and none for him. (I've just realised how much I'm a mum, my kids have new shoes and mine have a hole in each heel, I'll replace these tomorrow!) J is very self-concious, one of the reasons he does like new things is because "people will look at me and smile" where as C wants the world to look at her and admire the lashings of eyeliner and shapely figure that makes me look like a sack of potatoes in comparison. But clothes shopping with C is dreadful, I want her to have a nice wardrobe of good fitting basics, ok clothes that dont make any male of any age look at her, and she of course wants the opposite, to her there is no point buying white t-shirts or any other such staple when you could have the ripped black affair or the low cut top with the inapropiate comment across the front, she wants her moneys worth, actually that goes across the board for C, she likes to wear all her fashion at once, as much make up as is humanly possible, the highest heels (mine) and all the jewellery she owns, I never thought I'd ever have to say "You're not going out like that!" but its become a staple part of my vocabulary!

I'm even excited that its food shopping day tomorrow, its not a chore for me, I like planning what were going to eat although the kids do complain that they have to eat vegetables with every meal, I'm such a cruel parent, trying to get goodness into their growing bodies, although thinking about it, if I stopped, they wouldnt grow and I would have to suffer the clothes and shoes shopping..? Yep stunt their growth and bind their feet and then I can spend all the money in the pound shop!