AMT

I seem to be getting twice hit most months – PMT and then AMT (actual menstrual tension) which is a combination of being pissed off that I have stomach cramps and pissed off that it wasn’t Ady or the children being extra annoying, it was me being extra-stroppy that caused a bad day two days ago after all.
So today was AMT day.

Ady and I watched Lead Balloon last night – Jack Dee’s sitcom which is being repeated on Dave (sky channel). I watched it first time round but Ady didn’t and we were laughing at the scene where Jack Dee’s character is all chatty first thing in the morning while all his partner wants to do is sleep. I was laughing because that is so me and Ady – he leaps out of bed, radio blasting, ready to chat and be awake. I groggily follow about 2 hours later and really shouldn’t be spoken to for at least half an hour or until I’ve had two cups of tea. So why he thought it would be a good idea to ring me at 745am, wake me and then gabble down the phone into my ear about various items for sale in Sainsburys long before I was capable of either coherant speech or thought was very puzzling.

I got up, came downstairs and he rang again, this time just as I was walking into the kitchen to discover he’d not only not washed up from last night but had left the kitchen in bombsite state and added to it with his own breakfast detrius. Now I really appreciate him doing the washing up from last night when he gets up in the morning, I don’t expect it, it is a nice gesture but when I had to be out of the house in half an hour, had a load of washing to hang out and another to get on otherwise the kids swimming stuff won’t be ready for Saturday and their Badger uniforms won’t be ready for Sunday, I needed to make a picnic to take out with us and get the kids breakfast and me my two cups of tea and had been hoping to sit down for ten minutes to drink the tea walking into that mess didn’t endear him to me. So I called him a git and he hung up on me!

Scarlett and I fell out over sandwich fillings; she wanted marmite, we don’t have any, I offered about 12 different other options and she said ‘I’ll think about it and let you know in an hour’. She then got upset when I shrieked at her. She amended her initial timeframe and let me know rather quicker.

We finally got out of the house and hit major traffic on the way to Tasha’s but used a couple of rat runs and were amazingly there only five minutes after I’d said we would be (which had been quite ambitious). They already know us well enough to not be waiting on the pavement and to stay in their flat and peep out the window – wise people :lol:. They had had a similar morning except it was Toby in a bad mood so while Tasha and I chatted, Davies and Scarlett played a rowdy game involving chucking soft toys around which pissed me off in the front and Toby off in the back – he sat most of the way with his head in his hands, poor child. He recovered straight away as soon as we were out of the car and was soon running around being rowdy with them in the carpark.

We arrived at the same time as K and his daughter N and son C who we’ve met a couple of times and a not-very-local-at-all HEor who I have met over at Julie’s a couple of times but who’s parents live over that way and thought she’d come along. The meet up was a local HE get together at Spring Barn Farm. We’ve been once before, last summer for Freya’s birthday and it was very good then. For some reason I had in my head that it was cheaper than it was so I was slightly wrongfooted by paying nearly 20 quid to get in and went straight into tightwad mode telling the children they wouldn’t be able to have anything from the shop etc.

There was some guinea pig feeding and handling shortly after we arrived so Tarly got straight into that and was loving it. I had no idea guinea pig babies are so big and so ‘ready to go’ – although they do drink milk they are also able to eat things like carrot straight away and are far from the blind, bald little creatures I’d have expected them to be. There was a noisy cockerel who was crowing almost nonstop and because it was so cold in the barn he was sending out plumes of ‘dragons breath’ warm breath air when he did which tickled Scarlett and I no end.

The children all played with some go kart tractors, did some leaping around on the haybales and then we headed outside. I chatted to Fiona for a while and then Tasha and I sat on a bench while Davies, Tarly and Toby played. Then we went inside to warm up just as the rest of the group decided to come outside. Ali and Freya arrived and joined us inside for a while while we ate lunch. Finally we went outside too and most of the people who were meeting there were together for a while.

There was a huge great jumping pillow which was very cool and took all the kids very comfortably. Unfortunately it was surrounded by sand and puddles so predictably part of the fun was getting very wet and very sandy, in bare feet, in November. The fun lasted for well over an hour before we all decided to go back inside. At that point several of the children were got changed into clean dry clothes by parents more prepared for this eventuality than me, or indeed were children who had not quite enjoyed the wet sand to quite such a degree as Davies and Scarlett. Scarlett had some spare trousers because Ali had just given me a pair of Freya’s outgrown ones and we took her dress off and put her coat back on so she was warm and dry at least. Davies refused my offer of waterproof trousers from the car but was clearly freezing.

Most of the other children were bought ice creams at that point and my two got very upset with me for refusing to buy them one each. My reasons were: I’d already told them I didn’t have the money, I was cross with them about getting quite so wet and then getting arsey with me about it, it is November and they were freezing – I think buying them frozen treats would be taking my neglectfulness just a stage too far. I did however buy myself a cup of tea which Davies protested about and got an earful back in return for. This was enough to upset him and after stalking past me every so often with disdainful looks he crumbled into a sobbing heap who just wanted to be cuddled and to go home.

I was slightly fed up about this as actually I was having a nice time chatting but Tasha said she was about ready to go anyway so we called it a day and headed off. The children all miraculously recovered in the car and the 3 of them (Vinnie slept) sat and chatted really nicely all the way home while Tasha and I got to chat too.

We got home around 4 ish and I showered out the childrens’ clothes in the bath, then showered them and got them warm and dry and in pjs and apologised for being ranty with them and all was well with the world again. I was in the process of brushing the sand and straw out of Tarly’s hair when I realised Candle was missing. We looked all over the house to no avail so I checked the garden (having the daily battle to put the chickens away while outside – two of the hens have taken against their henhouse and prefer to flap into the hedge to roost so I have to shake them out of the hedge and shove them into the other henhouse) with no luck. Bearing in mind she is totally blind now I was pretty concerned and happened to glance across the road and see a black cat wandering about over by the doctors surgery. I really didn’t expect it to be her but it was getting dark and I was worried so I nipped across the road to check. Sure enough, wandering around in the carpark amoung moving cars there she was. I scooped her up and brought her home. I’ve no idea how she found her way out of the garden and NO idea how she got unscathed across the road but her being outside without us days are not officially over!

The children played on their DSs on a game borrowed from Andrew while I sorted their tea. Ady came home and while he and I were chatting in the kitchen my Mum arrived, on her way home from a job interview that she had been successful at and starts on Monday :). Hurrah! She wanted a glass of wine so I had one with her to celebrate and then she went home, I read the children a story and they went to bed.

An in the main very pleasant day with odd bits of crapness. A very full weekend lies ahead, the other side of a day at work for me tomorrow so now I really should go to bed and hope all the PMT and AMT is passed for this moth.