Raining and pouring

I’ve been a little grumpy the last few days. Etienne is away on a work thing tonight, which means I am herding cats today and tomorrow.

At the end of the month he is also going away for 5 whole days (of which 2 are a Saturday and a Sunday) on his annual, very well-deserved, boys’ trip.

I have stocked up on happy drugs, vodka, wine and invited myself to all our friends, so we should be fine. Getting 3 kids mobilized is a true team effort at the best of times, not because the kids are bad so much, it’s just that events aren’t always as synchronized as I would like them to be. Yes, OCD, I know.

If they do everything together it’s manageable, but if one of them is dressing, one is eating and one is making the biggest poo on the planet and shouting to have their bum wiped (MAMMA KOM VEE MY BOOOUUUUDE AAAFFF!!), it gets a little tricky. I would lie if I said I don’t get annoyed.

It went pretty well this morning, the only hiccups were Isabel demanding to wear a pair of stockings with a hole as big as my fist because “they like to poke it with their fingers” and Daniel that refused to brush his own teeth. I refuse to argue with Isabel, so she went to school with the stockings. I really don’t care what they think.

Even the drop-off went like a dream. I zipped into a parking bay right in front of Daniel’s school gate, bundled him out of the car, gave him a big fat smooch and a hug at the gate and off he went. I caught the light green across a busy intersection, pulled in at the girls’ school, they hopped out of the car and bounced into school and weren’t bothered at all when I left.

I then tried calling the house early this afternoon to chat to our live-in domestic lady. No answer. I kept calling until the time that Megan was supposed to arrive home with the kids, by this time rather frantically, to see what was going on.

Megan then tells me that Sylvia is sitting “sleeping” at the kitchen table and they had to wiggle their way in through the back gate as she wouldn’t answer the door. She was sitting right next to the phone that had been ringing for the last hour. I admit, I jumped to a rather obvious conclusion that involved alcohol as it is a rather stern conversation we have had with her before. I had a little freak-out and called my Dad to try and get to the house as quickly as possible. She couldn’t stand up straight, so he suggested she rather retire to her room to “rest”.

By the time I got home she was falling around her bedroom and there was that lovely boozy smell, and the house was a complete tip. My Mom and I then asked her why she was drinking and she said she was “tired”.

I know this might sound like someone’s middleclass problems, but I am absolutely furious at having my children exposed to that. And on the one day that Etienne isn’t here. And I have to go to work tomorrow and worry about my house and my children. She has been banned from the house for the day until Etienne gets back and we can decide how we want to deal with it.

To top it all off Daniel finally managed to lose his first big front tooth that has been loose for absolute ages, so there was a bit of a scuffle to round up money and cheese for the tooth mouse.

At least the kids seem to not have noticed much, but I did tell them tonight that Sylvia “wasn’t well” and that the 4 of us have to work together as a team tomorrow morning.

Let’s hope.

Edit to add: I also literally stepped in dog shit when I got home today. Figures.