I Miss The Good Old Days

In the Good Old Days, I began every weekday being woken at around 7.30 by Fixit bringing me a cup of tea. In bed. The boys would be eating their breakfast in the family room, and chances were that Fixit would have been doing the dishes before he left for work. This meant that I could have a glorious 15+ minutes 'coming to' time where I stared out the window, sipping tea and arranging my thoughts. This also meant that I was nice to my family when I arose, graceful and refreshed, from my slumbers. I still had to organise getting the boys dressed and make the school lunches, but this was not too arduous and I was generally pleasant about it.

In the Good Old Days, I knew I was blessed. I knew other Mums with non-tea-bringing husbands were deeply envious. But everyone has their saving grace, don't they? Maybe they earn more money for lovely holidays, or have a cleaning lady, maybe their partner cooks or maybe they have a child-free weekend every so often. This was my saving grace, and I appreciated it from the bottom of my heart.

In the Bad New Days, Fixit has to start work much earlier. He still brings a cup of tea but it is so early that some days I prefer to ignore it and take the extra sleep. If I do stay awake and drink it, I can't really relax because I know I'm In Charge; so instead of arranging my thoughts, I am listening for what the little people are doing. And in the Bad New Days I have to stagger disgracefully out of bed to plonk the breakfasts on the table, switch on ABC Kids television, make a fresh cup of tea and womble back to bed. Well. I could stay up and read the paper but I am clinging to past glories, don't you know. Despite the fact that the restorative staring out of the windows is not really working because I'm already up and grumpy. So when I do re-emerge for the shower/dressing/lunch-making, I am not that refreshed. This means the poor boys are currently dressing themselves to the accompaniment of the Grumpy Mother Soundtrack, featuring such classics as I said stand UP and I'm turning the telly OFF and Come ON!!! And I am not kind or understanding about accidents (avoidable or otherwise) such as tossing pyjamas onto the kitchen table (why??) which knocks over the glass of water. So the groggy 7-year old has to clean it up himself whilst the morning harridan spits recriminations and conflicting instructions at him. Weirdly, the boys seem not too fazed by the Morning Growl-Meister and still attempt endearing bum-dances and little chats about Harry Potter.

In the Bad New Days, two extra household responsibilities have crept onto my side of the job page; the breakfast shift and the dishes (although I am trying -quite hard- to reject the dishes), and my page was already pretty full. The kickback is that sometimes Fixit is home early enough to peel potatoes for me, and Lord knows, I really don't like peeling potatoes.

But.

And this is how a sign of how I feel about this.

I would rather peel potatoes than have the Breakfast Shift. For a start we don't have them every night.

*sigh*

In the Good Old Days I were 'appy. Tell that to the kids today etc