The other day I had a massage. I walked into the little therapy room to the sounds of whales and coral and stuff, and when the therapist asked me why my back and neck were so stiff I made something up about sitting at my computer all day, when in reality I should have just waved my hands all around my body and told her I had kids and that’s why everything was stiff. (Quiet at the back, wash out your mind with soap.)
Anyway, after the massage my shoulders were relaxed, my neck flexible, and I felt like my muscles were sleek and lean as opposed to knotted up and worn like an old Victorian rag.
And then I went home, and after ten minutes of the kids I was back to this.
My children, lovely as they are, know how to push my buttons and wind me up. I’m like a supercar, but instead of 0-60 it’s calm to really stressed in about 2.6 seconds, especially when they do things like:
Talking over you whilst you’re explaining something.
This normally follows you refusing them something, like time on the computer or a hearty meal, and it goes something like this.
Me: No, you can’t have that right now.
It: Why?
Me: Because I said s-
It: But I haven’t been on it in ages, and you said that (Me: Don’t talk over me.) I could go on the Kindle as soon as (I said don’t talk over me) I got home, and BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH CHILD STUFF.
If it’s not talking over you, it’s…
Butting in when you’re trying to have a conversation.
Goshdarnit child, although you’re the apple of my eye because you have to be that doesn’t give you the right to swan into a room and start talking at me when you can see that I’m trying to have an actual adult conversation for once.
The thing is, if I start talking to my child then he or she will just talk over me, so I’ve taken to the whole ‘talk to the hand’ gesture. So far, it seems to work.
Turning over the page of the book when you’re not finished.
Occasionally I’ll be a nice parent and read a book to one of my children, and I get quite into it – funny voices, making sure my voice isn’t monotonous, maybe even the occasional action. Somehow, though, my children rarely share my enthusiasm, and do that really annoying thing when they want to turn to the next page even though I’m not finished yet. It’s around this time that you feel like lobbing the book into the air and mincing out of the room as it tumbles to the floor behind you.
And, finally, they:
Just so happen to remember something they had to tell you when they should be asleep.
It happens every night. I’m sitting in the lounge, minding my own business, enjoying that time of the day when the kids are in bed, and I hear the pitter patter of tiny disgusting child feet padding down the stairs. It’s always the 8 year-old, who has decided that sleep is not important, but what is important is that one of his teeth hurts when he presses really hard on it, or that his teacher has said that he needs to take a book into school in three weeks’ time. Unimportant stuff, pointless drivel concocted only so he can have another few minutes out of bed.
And, when we try to tell him to go back to sleep, he talks over us. Oh, the joys of parenthood. Anyone know a good masseuse?
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