Do You Know the Muffin Man?

Yesterday, Emily came home from preschool, singing "Have you seen the muffin man?"

Now, I always thought that the lyrics to that catchy song were, "Do you know the muffin man?"

But then a lot of nursery rhymes are different in California than back in Britain.

And then I started thinking, "Well, who the hell was the muffin man, anyway?"

So whilst the song went round and round in my head, I decided to take my own trip down memory lane and investigate this important matter. Instead of cleaning the house, or making a delicious dinner for Jimmy, who is returning from two nights away, I find myself taking a tour of history on my favourite web sites, which usually begin with wiki.

(Whenever Henry asks me a question about a sea lion with elephant sized testicles (oh, that would be the Elephant Seal) or whether birds fart, I refer to a wiki site. Apparently birds do fart but you can't hear it or smell it because the stuff they eat doesn't make smells and they don't have any bottom cheeks to fart out of. I am not sure I agree in the case of vultures - I am quite sure that if they farted, it would smell bad. I mean, they eat rotting carcasses, don't they? I am sure somebody could get a Ph.D. on the back of that one. I will have to look it up. But later.)

So the first verse of the nursery rhyme goes,

"Do you know the muffin man,
The muffin man, the muffin man,
Do you know the muffin man,
Who lives in Drury Lane?"

I discover that the concept of grocery delivery to your door is not a new one. So whilst I have blueberry and high fructose corn syrup muffins delivered to my door along with the rest of my food and wine, in the Victorian era, they had unsweetened muffins brought to the door by the muffin man.

The nursery rhyme appears to be about a specific muffin man, who lived in Drury Lane. Where or what is Drury Lane? It is a street in London, partly in Camden and partly in Westminster. It used to be where some posh bloke (man) called Sir William Drury lived.

Drury House got more interesting and became a pub, run by somebody's mistress, and by the 18th century, Drury Lane was one of the worst slums in London, full of whores and gin palaces. I like the sound of the pub and gin palaces.

So, by deduction, the muffin man on Drury Lane must have been delivering his wares to prostitutes and their customers. I wonder if the muffin man did a bit of muff-diving whilst completing his rounds.

Now, if the muffin man had been around a few centuries earlier, he may have been delivering to a street with a totally different name because it was normal for a medieval street name to reflect the activity taking place there.

The name Drury Lane may well have been Gropecunt Lane instead. This was a common street name in English towns during the Middle Ages, and was thought to refer to the loose-knickered (loose-pantied) activities in that area.

Luckily for us, the last recorded Gropecunt Lane was in 1561 and the name was usually changed to a less vulgar name such as Grape Lane.

Otherwise our kids may have come home singing,

"Do you know the muffin man,
The muffin man, the muffin man,
Do you know the muffin man,
Who lives in Gropecunt Lane?"

The Mother of All Resumes

For some strange reason, my darling husband does not think that looking after kids and blogging constitutes a proper job.

"Why ever not darling?" I ask him (Actually I scream at him and swear and tell him that I am going to get an evening and weekend job in a bar so that he gets to put the kids to bed every night and have the entire weekend by himself in their company.) I, on the other hand, will be bought drinks by lots of men in the bar because my boobs are bigger than the other barmaids.

And so I am preparing my resume or curriculum vitae, which is Latin for "course of life". Isn't everybody's course of life the same?

Dribbling and crapping, bullshitting to get a job / wiping up dribble and crap, dribbling and crapping.

We just encounter different arseholes along the way who defecate on us from a great height or we become the arseholes who shit on others.

Years ago, my resume was foolproof in getting a job. I have a friend who used my entire CV and just changed the name at the top to hers and got the job (not that I am implying that she is a fool!)  But that was an office job and I don't want to be in a smelly, stuffy office being told what to do by wankers, who take the credit for my work. Nor do I want to manage an office full of idiots who think that they should be paid just for sitting on their sweaty arses, preening their bum fluff and doing jack shit else.

I do have a degree in Marketing and German, which is very useful if you can think of anything to sell to Germans. Now, they are not going to buy cars from us, are they? Theirs are the most superior in the world. I don't think they would want to purchase books from us because they would be in the wrong language and would not be serious enough.

We might be able to sell them some manners. Now, that is a brainwave. I will set up a course called," English and Manners for Rude Germans." Now, I am not saying that all Germans are rude. I once met one who verged on the polite. That is to say that after ramming me with a supermarket trolley three times in a queue, she did attempt to apologize. I had already completed my check out and left the shop because the German word got lost somewhere between the fifth and the tenth syllable.

I did try to sell air cleaners to a Kraut in a shop in Garmisch Partenkirchen in the Alps. Having driven nearly 500 miles to get there, he explained in German, "Are you crazy, woman? Why in God's name would I be stupid enough to buy one of your little shitty machines when we have the cleanest air in the whole world?" I thought about telling him that actually he was wrong and that Hawaii has that claim to fame but restrained for three reasons:

1.) I did not want to start World War 3 and have the SS putting their drab, brown towels down by the swimming pool and on the beaches of Maui.

2.) I was bloody knackered from chasing him round the electrical shop 16 times before he went and hid in the back room and locked the door.

3.) I shared his opinion that what I was trying to sell was a pile of crap and decided against trying to peddle any more that week. I booked into a hotel overlooking the Alps and spent the rest of my week skiing and wining and dining at my company's expense. Admittedly I did not get paid much that month but I had a mighty fine holiday, enjoying the beautiful, clean mountain air and poking the locals with my ski sticks.

"HR people Google you when they are looking at your resume so you must not have anything on the Internet which will deter anybody from employing you," my lovely Jimmy said, reading a particularly rude comment that I had written on "WankedIn".

And so I think I may start my CV with a false name. It would be nice to have a fresh start. I try to think of names that will stand out in my precious resume. I remember coming across the name, "Nunfucker" when I was working on databases in my research analyst job. (That one is quite appealing, although none of my lesbian fantasies have ever really extended to under the habit activity.) We even got the secretary to call the number listed and ask if there was a "Nunfucker" living there. She was bright red in the face and did not look very content with her course of life at that time.

Power verbs are an essential part of any resume and indeed they have got me jobs in the past.

Bullet points are also important, but I have not quite mastered those on my new computer (which my husband bought me seven years ago).

My key achievements to date:

*Managed to get stuck in a lift (elevator) for two hours during a fire drill.

! Proved my team playing skills by writing a bogus report for the director to present to our sister company in Hamburg. The rest of the sales team was coerced into collaboration. The director, who did not speak much German, read our report, word for word, to our German colleagues and managed to call the manager there a garden gnome and a dysfunctional cocksucker. Apparently, German factory workers did have a great sense of humour that day.

. Minimized postage costs for the department by losing all of the names and addresses on the database.
 
# Liquidated my computer by throwing a cup of coffee at the keyboard when it lost my entire research project.

; Disproved the theory that German cars are superior by winning an off-roading race in my company car in Germany.

@ Restructured that Ford Fiesta so that it was unrecognizable.

+ Administered a very painful blow to the groin of the taxi driver who tried to grope me when he finally found me sitting by the smouldering remains of my company Fiesta.

? Fabricated a great story about what happened and why I needed to fly back from Germany and abandon the company car.

" Distinguished myself as the most reckless worker that the company had ever had the misfortune to employ.

007 Investigated the affair of my boss and the director and bridged the gap between being fired and getting a brand spanking new Mercedes for my next trip to Germany.

I am currently studying for a Ph.D.
"What will you be a doctor of?" you may ask.
Why, Bullshit of course - what other kind is there?

Now what sort of job would I like to apply for?
Nothing to do with kids or animals.

I am fed up with telling Henry to get his hands out of his pants when he is doing homework. "We don't want any more poo on the pencils, now do we?"

Cleaning up mouse and rat guts has become monotonous too. Marbles, who we were told was an indoor cat when we rescued him from the shelter, is a killer extraordinaire. The remains of a huge rodent are pinned to the deck like a biology lab rat dissection. It is decapitated and swarming with blue bottles (blow flies) and ants. Its guts are revolting and black and congealed. It lies next to the corpse of a shrew and some other unclassified innards. They will need to be scraped off with a high powered sander.

 I just opened the sliding door to take a photo for my resume and a swarm of blue bottles tried to enter the house and one succeeded. So now I am chasing it around with Henry's homework folder, which looks like it has already been responsible for housing a whole family of roadkill.

Actually, when I wanted to blag my way into the United States, I was considering becoming a minister as there is a special visa for clergy. I did not have the required number of years of work experience (none to be precise) in my country of origin so that kind of scuppered these plans. My early years of convent life did not seem to count towards the prerequisite.

However, I have taken a keen interest in theology ever since and you may wish to view my prestigious spiritual publications. If you are a publisher of quality religion and would like to take a look at them, they may be found here.

Publications

Sunday Morning Worship - primarily investigates theories of getting rid of unwanted religious zealots.

http://laughinthefaceofpms.blogspot.com/2010/08/sunday-morning-worship.html

Praise the Lard - discusses humility in the face of trying to disperse an almighty hangover.

http://laughinthefaceofpms.blogspot.com/2010/09/praise-lard.html

The Mother's Morning Prayer - an analysis of how to cope with the heavenly joy of raising two monsters and preventing the removal of teeth and eyeballs.

http://laughinthefaceofpms.blogspot.com/2010/11/mothers-morning-prayer.html

Like the course of life, my resume remains a work in progress.

Forgetoirs of a Harassed Housewife

The kitchen looked like a battlefield this morning with blood and guts everywhere. The mice are back and Jimmy was in full trap-setting mode last night. I was just snapping one dead mouse out of the sprung device and into the bin, when Marbles, the cat, took a dive under the dishwasher. He found the other trap that was set, which I had no idea was under there. All I could see was the wood and spring dangling out from his whiskers and I was terrified it was going to snap on his face. Little did I know that there was a big, fat, live mouse still wriggling around in his mouth. Marbles dropped the whole thing on the carpet and the mouse writhed around. I had to bludgeon it to death with the laundry basket. It was the closest I have come to vomiting in a very long time. Mornings are not a good time for me ever and I have PMS into the bargain.

I had to take Henry and Emily to school and was in a horrible rush. Jimmy had scheduled an early dental appointment so he could not take Henry today.

I wandered around the kitchen mumbling to myself in a way I had once laughed at my own grandmother doing. Standing with my head in the fridge, I wondered what on earth I was looking for. Trying to make packed lunches in a rush made me even more absent-minded than usual.

Down the stairs I flew to put the washing in the dryer, went into Henry's room to turn his light off, stood on a piece of sharp vacuum cleaner fodder, and then forgot why I had gone downstairs in the first place.

Drinking several more cups of caffeine did not seem to help and in fact left me with third degree burns on my tongue. My brain is less like a sieve than a large fish landing net most mornings. I truly am losing my marbles, and I don't mean the cat.

I set the timer on the cooker earlier to remind me to do something before I left the house, but can I remember what that thing is? Can I f*ck?

Later, I went for my swim and whilst in the water, I remembered that I had forgotten to remind Jimmy about paying the credit card bill. He had asked me to do this yesterday. I had asked him to remind me to remind him and had also written it on my "To Do" list. But then somehow that list disappeared and I spent half the afternoon looking for it and trying to recall what was written on it. I found several other To Do lists that I had mislaid weeks ago, but not my current one.

Now, as I swam, I knew exactly where my list of jobs had disappeared to and I recalled that I was supposed to remind Jimmy of the bills. But I don't usually carry a waterproof pen and paper with me in the pool. I got out and dripped all over my cell phone. I called myself at home and left a message on my voicemail.

"Hello, you wonderful but forgetful woman. Don't forget to remind Jimmy to pay the bills. And your To Do list is in the kids' "Memory Game" box where you left it. Goodbye and looking forward to seeing you later. Love you." My voicemail is usually full of calls from me.

There was a message on my phone from Jimmy, ranting about the fact that I had not reminded him about the bills.

Back in the locker room, a woman who I see every day at the gym said good morning to me. Her name, which I have called her by many times before, was not so much on the tip of my tongue, but more embedded deeply somewhere beneath my tonsils.

My brain basically resides on bits of paper or on voicemail, apart from occasional lucid moments, like when I am swimming or driving the car. Sometimes, I will be driving along, and suddenly remember something crucial, like the fact that I have forgotten my friend's birthday. I rustle around under the dashboard looking for a pen so that I can write a reminder on my hand, which is harder to lose than a piece of paper. Somebody honks at me because I am weaving along at a pensioner's pace. I swerve off the road at the petrol station and prepare to write down the important piece of information. Can I recall what it was? Can I bollocks?

When I got home from swimming, my answer phone was flashing "low battery" and had lost my message from earlier. My computer then told me that it was out of memory. "No, that is me!" I shouted back at it.

Often, I ask the kids to remind me of something. "Don't let me forget to get petrol." or "Remind me to put the cat out before we leave the house or "I need to put the bins out. They stink."

Do the children jog my memory? No, of course not, unless it benefits them. If I tell them to remind me to make pancakes, they will always do so. Similarly, I never forget where a good pub is, or to pour myself a glass of wine when I get home in the evenings. I suppose we all remember the things that are important to us in life!

My kids, although they inherited most of my memory cells the minute they were conceived, leaving me with fewer than a retarded barnacle, seem to be selectively forgetful. Does Henry ever remember to pick up his dirty clothes and put them in the laundry basket?

Does Emily ever know which of her 93 Jean Paul Toddlier handbags she has shoved her new mermaids in? Yet, they expect me to have a photographic memory for the placement of their kiddie junk. And when I can't even remember things like where I hid their Christmas presents or the stash of confiscated Halloween candy, they are taking the piss if they expect me to have the slightest clue where their bearded Zhu Zhu pets or pink, fluffy Barbie shoes are.

Giving my children a bath is not something that always springs to mind after I have taken them to all of their after-school activities, given them dinner, done Henry's homework for with him, enjoyed the after-dinner entertainment (screamed at them to stop telling knock knock jokes). It is Emily's job to remind me to give them a bath. But sometimes the lure of TV is too great and Emily selectively forgets to remind me, until it is bedtime and then she throws a hissy fit because I have been neglectful.

I remember a conversation between my grandparents when I was a child which went like this:

My Granddad said, "Love, if you are going to the kitchen, please can you get me some desert. You'd better write it down so you don't forget. I'd like some canned fruit please. Write it down so you don't forget."

"Fred, I don't need to write it down. I won't forget."

"And please put some of that condensed milk on top. Write it down so you don't forget."

Granny was getting a little irate by this time. "How many times do I have to tell you? I don't need to write it down, Fred."

Granddad added, "And don't forget my cup of tea with sugar in. Do you need to write it down?"

A while later, Granddad was watching the news for the ninth time that day, probably because he had forgotten what happened in the eight previous episodes, when I smelled cooking and could hear a frying pan sizzling. We had just eaten shepherd's pie with vegetables that seemed like they had been cooking for the entire 30 years that my grandparents had lived there. My Granny was famous for saying to chefs in restaurants, "I like my vegetables to have at least touched the boiling water dear."

In came Granny carrying a tray with bacon, eggs, fried tomatoes, brown sauce, and a cup of tea.

Granddad took one look at the tray and shouted, "I knew you should have written it down, woman. You forgot my bread and butter."

I was a little confused but also very amused as my Granny wandered off to get the bread and butter. It was lucky that my Granddad was such an active man in between episodes of the news. It was not a problem for him to eat an extra dinner every so often.

Granny, on the other hand, used to start on the brandy at 8 a.m. "Just a teaspoon for medicinal purposes dear." Then she would forget that she had imbibed her morning medicine and have another teaspoon. The size of the spoon got increasingly larger as the day went on. One time, she had obviously used all of the available spoons and I caught her guzzling brandy out of a ladle.

Gran would then pop out at nighttime to have a look at the stars, forget where she had put her glasses and binoculars and lean so far back to get a look at Orion's Donger (or whatever it is called) that she would fall back and hit her head on the concrete. Still, she lived to be 95 and was in extremely good health, apart from her memory, and a few dents on her head.

She was fascinated by flowers and would often take little cuttings of plants when we were at the garden centre, much to my Mum's embarrassment. But she could never remember the plants' names. We had a little joke when she would ask me what I thought it might be called and I would always answer, "It's a Forget-me-not."

Our history teacher at school had a brilliant memory for historical dates such as the birthday of the first prime minister of Britain's Auntie Edith. But she could never remember our names. We had to wear name badges for every lesson with her for five years. Of course, we were always switching badges with others just to confuse her and we would end up with somebody else's homework books being returned to us. But, it certainly made history lessons more fun and it did mean that my friend got a detention for locking the teacher in the cupboard for an hour, rather than me.

My brother and his wife once forgot to take their luggage on holiday with them to Ireland. They realized and bought a bag and a solitary toothbrush before they got on the ferry to Ireland, and when they arrived at their hotel in Dublin, they were asked by a porter if they needed help carrying their bag! However, it did give my sister-in-law a good excuse to go on a shopping spree in Dublin. Now, whenever they go anywhere, they are always asked by family members, "Did you pack your bags yourselves? Or are you travelling light today?"

Nothing quite rivals forgetfulness like "foetal fuckwitness" "baby brain". This is a condition experienced by mums when pregnant. It is the start of the brain cell robbing process that leaves us with the antithesis of an "an elephant never forgets". Instead it is more a case of "an amoeba never remembers." However, we may well reach the physical size of an elephant during pregnancy, which really does not seem fair - a great lumbering creature with a single-celled brain.

Whilst pregnant with Emily, I left the engine running in the van for two hours whilst I took Henry to the supermarket. When I came back, the vehicle was surrounded by police. A concerned friend at the park had noticed that I was not with the vehicle and had tried to call my cell but had realized that it was in the van on the dashboard along with my keys in the ignition and my purse. Consequently, I had totally broken down in the supermarket when I came to pay because I thought I had lost all of my belongings in the store. The whole staff had been alerted and told to look for my missing items. I had finally given up and wandered back to my van, only to find a very anxious friend, who had alerted the police that I may have been kidnapped. She was pregnant too and realized on my return that she had left her first child unattended in the park.

There are some painful childhood memories which I will never forget, such as persuading my Granny to pick a poppy in the neighbour's garden. She was furious because she ripped her brand new raincoat on the barbed wire fence which she had to scrabble under to reach the flower. Her coat had replaced one which she had forgotten about and left on a train.

Emily has some painful childhood memories which she will never let ME forget, like the time I almost drove the van into the creek at the bottom of our narrow road, whilst trying to make way for an approaching vehicle. We missed her ballet class as a result - an unforgiveable error! Jimmy will never let me forget it either as he wasted several hours trying to get the camper out of the ditch and being splattered from head to toe with mud. He finally conceded that we needed a tow truck. He complained of the indignity of it all. We did, however, get his car towed to the garage using the same tow truck, hence killing two birds with one stone. His vehicle would still be sitting on our driveway with no brakes to this day if I had not persuaded him to get it towed. I will never let him forget that either.

Human memories are a bit like old cell phone batteries. Once they are worn out, the rest of the device becomes increasingly useless. However, at least a cell phone battery can be replaced.

Anyway, what is the moral of this story? I don't know. I forget.

The Mother's Morning Prayer

Every day, after the alarm clock abuse ritual is over, I say the Mother's Morning Prayer:

"Good morning to you, if you are awake at this ungodly hour of the day. I bet you are past the kid phase now. Either that, or you have teenagers who don't get up until midday.

First of all, I implore you to give me the patience to deal with my exasperating children. (If my darling husband were around, I would ask for composure to put up with him too.) Fill my cup with a proportional amount of patience to the red wine I imbibed last night. Help me to have a tantrum-free day. By that, I mean, please don't force me to bang my head against the wall in frustration.

Please give me strength to carry all the sports gear and other junk associated with children. In fact, let me have turned into an octopus in the night so that I have eight arms. Actually, make that a whale and then I won't have to force my blubber into a swimsuit or feel cold in the pool. I will also be guilt-free at meal times.

I pray that Henry will not put his shorts on first, followed by his underwear, and hop around laughing hysterically, expecting me to find it amusing. As you know, I never find anything funny before 12 noon. I ask you to return my stolen sense of humour along with the missing portion of brain, both of which went AWOL when I gave birth to my two lovely monsters.

Please don't let me have to do "a bite for me, a bite for you" with Emily at breakfast today. It makes me want to vomit, sharing mashed up kids' cereal.

I pray that it did not really rain all last night and that I did not actually leave the sunroof and windows open in the van. On the other hand, if it did, I ask that it continues to rain for long enough to cancel soccer practice. I pray that Henry and Emily don't ask to go to the park to play in the blocked drain water, and make me feel like a bad mother when I refuse to take them. And I beg you not to let Henry fill his rain boots up with water from a dirty puddle and then empty them out onto the driver's seat of the van again.

Please don't let last night's hole that got bashed in the wall still be there when Jimmy returns from his business trip. And please let the most recent cat sick stain remain hidden under the rug.

I beg you to ensure that we do not need any band-aids today since the children used them all up on their not-so-private-parts and their stuffed animals. Please don't let Henry return from school with used toilet paper in his ears today.

Let there be peace in the world, or if that is too much to ask for, let the fighting be confined to fists and plastic weapons, but not involve the removal of teeth or eye balls. I don't want any of that eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth stuff going on in my house today thanks. And on the subject of pearly whites, please let Henry's baby teeth come out by themselves before he is seven, so that he does not feel the urge to tie fishing line and dental floss around them every day and ask Emily to pull. I feel that he does not quite understand the purpose of dental floss. I am a bad mother. But, by the time the kids have cleaned their own teeth and those of six or seven bears, dogs, cats, and other toys, I really feel that my instruction on flossing might be a little on the aggressive side. Oh, and forgive me for swearing at the animal nurse again when she suggested that I clean the cat's teeth at least once a day. She clearly does not have children.

I ask that the preschool teacher does not notice the steady stream of green snot dribbling down Emily's face. I have given Emily strict instructions to say she has allergies if the teacher does remark upon it.

I repent for ramming that miserable woman with a trolley (cart) when I had PMS-induced supermarket rage. (I guess I do not have to translate into American English for you, since you know everything). I hope and pray she does not turn out to be the mother of one of Emily's preschool friends or, worse still, a first grade substitute teacher at Henry's school. He is in enough trouble without having his mother identified as a foul-mouthed lunatic.
 
Please accept my travel prayer to make sure that the Safeway delivery man is safe on his way here this afternoon and arrives early with my supply of red wine, so that I don't need to resort to using my emergency bottle of Two Buck Chuck.

And finally, I know I have asked for an awful lot, but I beseech you, to please help me to lift my weary body out of this bed and give me protection from the kids jumping all over me. Amen."

Tick Tock, It's Wine O'clock

Tick tock.
It's wine o'clock.
Time for a glass of wine I think.
Now shall it be white, red or pink?

I yell at the kids, "Don't you whine!"
It's the hour for Mum's wine time.
"Whoever hides the corkscrew needs to stop."
Oh thank God for inventing the screw top.

Whatever the weather, never mind the reason.
Wonderful, cheap wine is always in season.
With kids around it's hard to stay sane.
It must be time for bottled sanity again.

Whether it's GMT or PST or EST or PMS
My intellect allows for a calculated guess.
There's something hard-wired in my brain
That says, "Oh, it must be wine time again."

As I hear the hubby's car pull up to the fence,
I collect the empty bottle to conceal the evidence.
But whatever the time of day, month or year,
He invariably asks, "Been on the wine again dear?"

Praise the Lard

Ohhhh my head. I am never going to drink again. Lots of wine cured my PMS yesterday. It was great. Whatever self-help books and the Internet say about not drinking alcohol when you have PMS is utter bollocks. Of course it helps. And then the hangover masks the PMS and you don't know which is making you feel worse. But the mojitos at the end of last night were a little stronger than usual and are probably responsible for the hammer pounding the rim of my skull from the inside.

I staggered out of bed, lurching from side to side.

"Lard, I need lard. Now."

Oh joy, I found a packet of bacon in the fridge. Without contact lenses or glasses, finding the frying pan was a little more challenging. I stuck my head all the way to the back of the kitchen cupboard and Henry came up behind me and shouted, "Boo".

I smacked my head hard and swore profusely.

Soon the bacon was sizzling sexily. Of course I forgot to put the fan on. The kitchen filled with black smoke and fat was splattering  merrily all over the glass cook top.

I stirred it a bit and then saw what looked like bits of pepper in the pan. But I had not added pepper. The grim realization that there must be mouse sh*t in the pan slowly dawned on me. There was no more bacon in the fridge and I contemplated washing the already blackened offerings. But even I could not bring myself to be that gross. Whilst lifting the pan and sticking my face almost in it to get a closer look, the greasy handle somehow escaped my grip and the pan smashed down onto the already cracked cook top. A few shards of black glass amassed in the pool of grease.

"Jimmy will kill me."

Having a hangover is a bit like being pregnant. I feel nauseous most of the time and have strange cravings. This morning it was for meat. Maybe I have a bit of German in me after all, although it wasn't substantial enough to feel.

At the back of the fridge I found a lamb chop with a shiny green tinge to it. Or was it silver? The smell as I took it out of the bag was sickening. Lamb does last a long time but maybe this was slightly past its sell by date. Well, I was prepared to give it a try. I put it under the broiler, turned it on high and closed the oven door.

I fancied an egg with it but the frying pan was full of burnt bacon and mouse excrement so I decided to do a hard-boiled egg. Not wanting to risk another saucepan of mouse poo, I decided to cook an egg in the microwave. Never, ever, ever try to put an egg in its shell in a microwave! Ever!

Emily needed her bottom wiping so I left the kitchen to help her. But the stench in the bathroom was so great that I had to chunder in the sink. Bits blocked the drain which has a very sad inflammation of the U-bend anyway.

I got back to the kitchen which now contained even more particles wearing black. Jimmy stood coughing, glaring into the oven which contained a small but significant fire. The odd flame lashed out at him. Henry was watching the microwave, luckily from a distance, just in time to witness the big "BANG". The door blew off. The decimated egg came flying out, shell embedding itself all over the kitchen, yellow and white globs flying angrily through the air to the other side of the living room. The eggy microwave door had landed on top of the brand new laptop which sits on the kitchen surface.

"Cool!" screeched Henry in response to his favorite concept in abundant display - mass destruction.

"Holy f*ck!" screamed Jimmy as he tried to see through the thick black smoke that now filled the whole house.

"Why did we just buy a five hundred dollar gas barbecue?" he yelled. "It was to stop you setting the two thousand dollar oven on fire AGAIN!"

After putting the incinerated bacon and lamb chop in the bin, I hunted around in the back of the freezer for an alternative meat source.  Luckily, the light in the freezer allowed me to see a little better. There were a few gnarly sausages that had virtually disintegrated over time and had layers of discolored frost on them. There was my placenta from Henry, but that would have to be defrosted and the microwave door was missing. Something black and furry appeared. Oh, it was the missing slipper! I had thrown my other slipper away last year. Peculiar indeed.

"Fish finger sandwich - mmmm - my favourite." I hurried out to the barbecue as that was the only operable cooking device.

"I'll have you lovelies in a delicious sandwich in no time." I told them.  I wandered back into the house in search of bread and ketchup.

But Jimmy had cordoned off the whole kitchen with "Crime Scene Do Not Cross" tape.

Suddenly a yellow jacket (called a wasp in all other English-speaking countries) started buzzing around in the dining room. I was horrified that the religious fly (see Sunday Morning Worship) had morphed into a more severe and deadly nun. Which reminded me that I had received an invitation to a breakfast from the pastor at the non-denominational church. I had not been there for nearly a year and I would have missed most of the service. But the lack of breakfast in the house meant that I was hungry for something, even if not spiritual arousal.

I got the kids in the car under great duress. They are not keen on going to church but I told them that there would be yummy food in a smoke-free environment. I guess swearing at your kids on the way to church is not high on the list of good religious etiquette. But I did not use the "c" word today.

As I left in the van I saw Jimmy out on the deck waving his fist at me. I remembered the fish fingers, which would now be nicely cremated on the barbecue. I also remembered that I was still not wearing my contact lenses.

We arrived near the end of the service and made the mistake of trying to creep quietly into the back of the church. What was I thinking?
Creep and quietly are not words that should ever be used in conjunction with two children under six.

There were two guest speakers answering questions about their experiences of spreading the word. I could not see that far. I could just hear their droning voices.

"There are those Jehovah guys that you showed your not so private parts to Mummy." shouted Henry at Mach 10 decibel level. The whole church turned its pious head towards us and even though I had blurred vision, I felt the intensity of the sanctimonious eyes upon me.

"What a strange coincidence," said the one Jehovah.

"There is the sinner we mentioned in our question and answer session," added the other.

My hunger subsided and I felt the urge to puke again so I dragged the protesting kids out of the church and back to the car.  I think it may be another year before I visit the lord again. And next time I feel like lard, I will just go to a restaurant for breakfast like normal people.

Sunday Morning Worship

Sunday morning is a special day for me as a devout catholic. I always go to church when I don't have a hangover - rarely actually.

This morning, the religious fly made another appearance. I think it is a reincarnated nun from the convent I went to as a child. It lies dormant during the week behind the curtains, languishing in the purgatory of the cobwebs. But on a Sunday, without fail, at dawn, before my monsters wake me up, it starts off with a slow, meticulous, reticent buzz from corner to corner to corner to corner of the window, stopping to put on its tunic, its habit, its crucifix and its rosary beads.

Suddenly the mother f, I mean mother superior, blasts out from behind the curtains, ready to rouse the entire nunnery, in full buzzing frenzy.

20 Buzzy Hail Marys and 20 Buzzy Our Fathers later, whilst swooshing down low, almost close enough to alert my nasal hairs to her impending landing, my clerical alarm clock which has been saying, "Go to churchhhh sinner, go to churchhhhhhhhhhhhhhh sinner," secretes herself for a little while to prepare the communion wine.

The only Mary I am interested in right now is a Bloody Mary to ease my pulsating hangover. Staggering around the room blindly, contact lenses not yet aroused, I lurch at the curtains with a book, trying to find the shrouded fly, mumbling obscenities which would have resulted in a lengthy stay in the nun's punishment cupboard if I had dared to utter them in the convent. I want to splat that holy mother out of existence. "Bugger off!" I bellow.

Returning to bed, I contemplate what I would say if I went to confession in this day and age.

"Please bless me father for I have sinned. It is almost seven years since I last bit a Hare Krishna on the arse and considerably longer since my last confession.

I have been swearing profusely for many years and I lost my rosary beads the night my bra also mysteriously disappeared. Please don't ask me why I took the holy necklace out drinking. I think it was part of my fancy dress costume but my memory evades me right now.

Although I have not committed murder, (unless the mouse that the cat caught in the middle of the night and I bludgeoned to death with the new toilet plunger and threw out the window counts) I have contemplated the assassination of the little bastard yapping dog next door on many occasions.

Certainly I did not covet my neighbor's ox as he does not have one, nor his ass for that matter. I did, however, have my eye on the potential new neighbor's bottom as he perused the property with a view to buying it. His jeans clung just perfectly to make him look tasty from the rear. I did fall off the fence trying to conduct a survey of the front of his pants though and swore loudly enough to get his attention. But, by that point, I was lying on the ground on our side of the fence, so luckily he could not see me coveting. Rumor has it that he is the new head of Henry's school, so I am glad he did not see me recumbent in the thistles, although he may well recognize my accent when he hears it again.

As for remembering the Sabbath day, and keeping it holy, the next incident might not hold me in such good stead to enter through the pearly gates either.

The buzzing sister of no mercy had taken a pew at the back of the bedroom and was evading death by a whisker, and believe me, most of the nuns in the convent I went to had more whiskers and facial hair than your average woolly mammoth.

So frustrated and unable to go back to sleep was I, that I took a long contemplative shower (the sort that important authors take before writing a thrilling piece on the life cycle of pubic hair.)

Emerging naked and dripping, because our housemaid (that would be me) had forgotten to put any towels in the bathroom, I heard Jimmy up on the deck talking to somebody that was obviously not one of our kids.

"I have asked you politely to leave twice. Now I am telling you to please bugger off and don't come bothering us again on a Sunday morning. I am an atheist and wish to remain that way."

I thought that the fly had resurfaced after some relaxing rosary time but heard other male voices and called upstairs to ask Jimmy who he was talking to.

"Bloody Jehovah's Witnesses."

"Oooh, are they still here?" I squealed in anticipation.

I flung open the front door, still stark naked, and rushed out into the driveway, scene of their retreat. I jumped up and down in front of them, my not so small appendages jiggling in euphoria. They had not flashed men of the cloth for several years now.

One of the zealots had already hopped into his shit brown Lada replica and was reversing at some speed. The other buffoon, who had the demeanor of a pair of holey, graying underwear, but without the fortune to get as close to anybody else's genitalia, was so intimidated that he stumbled towards the rapidly moving vehicle and got the dangling piece of sock at the end of one of his Jesus sandals run over. He tripped and grabbed at the rusty door handle with all of his holy muscle. Leaping into the car with adrenaline dripping down the collar of his off-grey shirt, he almost smothered the driving ecclesiastic and caused him to reverse into and flatten a poorly tended flower bed of towering weeds.

Henry shouted out urgently, "He's dropped his library book."

Emily added, "The car has runned it over. That grumpy librarian will fine him cos the pages are all flying out."

"Oh, I am sure he will be back next Sunday to collect his leather bound bible. He will probably bring a whole bus full of happy clappers and disciples then, " snorted Jimmy with uncontrollable glee as most of his cup of tea exited through his nostrils.