My god,is it December already? And can we all stop saying that already? We all know this year’s just flown, and this is what I’ve discovered in its wake:
- Outsourcing your kid’s birthday party entertainment with an out-of-work actor dressed up as a fairy or a pirate is expensive, ridiculous and 100 per cent worth it. We resisted for years, preferring the old-fashioned at-home approach of silly egg-and-spoon races, pass the goddam parcel and musical bloody statues, and what did we get – tears, mostly, because not everyone can win. So this year we got a witch for my five-year-old’s birthday party, and for the first time in years I was able to finish a sentence, take some photos and watch my kid enjoying her own birthday. It’s not easy juggling a video camera and a plate of sausage rolls, and that’s where witches come in handy.
- Don’t google health websites. In the past I’ve only used them for checking out the colour of the kids’ rashes and nasal emissions. But this week, when I typed the words “migraines and night sweats” into the computer, I admit I was expecting something serious. A tumour, some strange virus, something that needed scans and chemotherapy. So I laughed out loud when I found the common cause of “migraines and night sweats” is perimenopause. So I’m off the health websites. Some things you just don’t need to know.
- Parent-Teacher Association politics are hysterical. There’s an ongoing discussion at our school at the moment about the value of pagan festivals in the yearly fund-raising calendar, and the email trail would make for a best-selling novel if someone was brave enough to publish it. A friend told me there were fisticuffs and accusations of kickbacks at her kids’ school over whether to have peanut butter sandwiches at the canteen. So let’s calm down in the parental playground, folks. School is for the kids, remember?
- It’s hard to know whether it’s good to be too busy or not busy enough. Or whether a weekend with nothing planned is better than one that is too full. Going out on Saturday night is fun, of course, but after you’ve fed and bathed the kids, squeezed into something you thought still fitted and tidied the house for the babysitter, is it really worth it?
- Same goes for the have-kids or don’t-have-kids debate. There’s envy to be had on both sides. Me who has them can’t stop thinking about all the free time and travel I’m missing. Imagine if all I had to do at night was go home and drink wine and work out what shows I’m going to watch. Friends who don’t have them seem to think it’s all cuddles and happy family picnics, but they need to come over to ours at 6pm on a weeknight for a reality check.
- And I still don’t know who Kim Kardashian is.
That’s it, really.