I often find myself, both in this blog and in real life, asking people (particularly childless ones) to put themselves in my place before judging me too harshly. I’m pleased to say that there are many people who put themselves in my place – unfortunately, it’s usually my parking space.

Parent & Toddler parking – probably one of the most misunderstood bays in the car park. Why on earth would parents need their own special bays? Why can’t anyone use them?

More and more I see people using them because they have a smart car and they want an extra wide bay so their door doesn’t get scratched, or because they’re convenient for the cash machines, or by parents of teenagers because… hey… they’re parents too so surely they qualify! They don’t understand how frustrating it is for a parent of very young children not to get one of these spaces (although I’m quite happy to struggle along without as long as the P&T spaces are being genuinely used by other parents).

Take five minutes next time you go shopping and watch a parent of a small child. You see those tall car seats they all have to have? Do you see how difficult it is for a parent to get their child in and out of them when they can’t open the door to its full extent? This to me is the biggest reason for having an extra wide bay – of course, if it’s nearer the door it’s a bonus as I don’t have the added stress of escorting a rebellious two-year-old across a busy carpark where drivers are too busy looking for a space to notice someone who’s head height with their bumper. These spaces are not just a nice “perk”, they really do make the difference as to whether a shred of sanity remains at the end of your shopping trip.

I don’t tend to confront these rogue carparkers. I’m not that brave. I do know of some people who have though and would love to be bold enough to tap the offender on the shoulder and say “excuse me, I think you’ve forgotten something … your child.” I do have a good line of glares though, which have varying effectiveness.

We stopped off at the service station on the way to London yesterday and saw a very smart two-seater sports car parked in a parent and child bay with both adult occupants eating their refreshments. Noticing my glare, he started the engine and moved (yay me!) a few feet forward into a disabled bay (hmm, not quite what I had in mind). Morally disabled maybe… but hasn’t quite got around to applying for his blue badge.

So, feel free to put yourselves in my place. However, if it’s my parking space that you’re putting yourself in, at least have the decency to take my toddler and shopping list in with you and I’ll go back to bed.

Okay, it was last week really, but today we travelled down to London to help celebrate her birthday with a meal out with a twist. The twist was that while she was expecting a table booked for eight (with guests being children + spouses + grandchildren) we’d upped the list slightly to nineteen without her knowledge and included just a few more people. Then just as soon as she thought she’d got over the surprise… the birthday cake was brought out!

All in all, a very nice day with family – Akra Jr in particular had a lovely time with his cousins. Only problem was, he wore himself out so effectively that he fell asleep in the car all the way home and now won’t go to sleep in his own bed. ARGH!

Will think of a better written/more witty blog for tomorrow when we’re not chasing a toddler back to bed every four seconds. What do you mean, “that’ll make a change!”?

Some days just exist to highlight what a terrible parent you are.

It started just after waking. I came downstairs to see Akra and Akra Jr playing happily and a couple of parcels waiting for me on the dining room table. One of them was a much awaited “birth ball” – bought on the internet in a fit of enthusiasm after my last ante-natal yoga class.

Using the pump, I decided to see how easy it was to inflate. A little time later, aching from using the hand pump, it was finally done. I removed the pump ready to reinsert the valve stopper, half the air escaping in the process. “Fuck!” I exclaim quietly to myself. “Fuck!” says a cheery little voice from across the room.

Oops.

Today was a chore day. Akra carried on with the grand “painting of Akra Jr’s new room” project. I decided that not being able to close the fridge door due to the ice protruding from the smaller freezer compartment was probably a bad thing, and got into Scott of the Antarctic defrosting mode. Akra Jr was left to his toys and the TV. Probably a bad parenting move on our part, but the chores have to get done somehow, right?! Akra Jr wasn’t too impressed with this scenario, however, and did his best impression of Poor Deprived Child for most of the morning.

At lunchtime we stopped, and as a treat and sop to our consciences, took Akra Jr to MacDonalds before making our weekly stop to Homebase (for my non-UK readers: it’s a DIY superstore we seem to frequent rather too regularly). Akra Jr was more excited about the prospect of visiting Homebase than going to MacDonalds. That’s a bad sign, isn’t it?

Finally, there’s a Mr Men promotion at the evil multinational fastfood corporation MaccyDs. Unfortunately, Akra Jr’s dreams of finally getting his mitts on a Mr Tickle were thwarted yet again. Mummy, in an attempt to cheer the crestfallen chap up a bit looked inside the Happy Meal and declared “don’t worry, you’ve got a Mr Snow!” What a pity Mummy hadn’t read the actual label first and realised the character was actually called Mr Good. Akra Jr (to Akra’s constant amusement) now constantly refers to it as Mr Snow despite all our best efforts to correct him. He’s going to get so annoyed when we try to read the accompanying book.

Never, ever, EVER let me make popcorn again.

We sat down to watch our latest LOVEFiLM.com selection last night (Sex and the City Season 2 disk 2 if you’re interested) and I got the munchies. “I know!” I say to myself, “there are those boxes of microwave popcorn sitting in the kitchen untouched for months, I could have one of those to help finish them up!”

Well, it seemed like a good idea during the first attempt. It’s a new microwave (as my longer-term readers will be aware) so I was a bit paranoid of over doing it and hovered by the door watching the bag revolve round and round. It was a bit of a novelty having a microwave that wasn’t too small for the packets and not having to stop, reach in and unjamb the corners every thirty seconds or so. As soon as the popping hadn’t been heard for about 4 seconds, I launched myself at the door and grabbed the bag. One slight problem, I had the bag upside down. All the hot butter sauce poured out the opening and all over the kitchen floor.

Have you ever spilled hot butter on your kitchen floor? Pew’s top tip – DON’T! It’s *impossible* to wipe up. Mopping just seems to spread the oil slick further around making it lethal to any innocent (and not so innocent) bystanders. To add insult to injury, the vast majority of the kernels in the bag hadn’t even popped!

On to bag number 2.

I was bored of hovering at that stage, and obviously they needed a lot longer in the microwave than last time, so I started to watch the DVD from a hover position by the kitchen doorway. I got engrossed, I heard the microwave beep to tell me that the 5 minutes were up. I opened up the microwave door only to be engulfed in a cloud of black smoke – oops, think I slightly overdid these.

Have you any idea how LONG burnt popcorn smoke hangs around a house?! Well put it this way, we had the back door open, the kitchen window open, the extractor fan on and we were still choking every time we walked in there a quarter of an hour later. I can still detect a lingering aroma of incinerated corn even now, a good 17 hours later.

On to bag number 3.

Okay, I didn’t incinerate this one. Nor did I add to the skating rink floor. The kernels were still only half popped though. Unfortunately, as this one was the last bag, I kind of had to live with it.

They tasted bland. My jaw ached from chewing after only a few mouthfuls. But I ate the lot on principle.

I was opening a new bottle of Daddies Brown Sauce last night (see how exciting my life is?!) and marvelled at how thickly it poured out compared to the old bottle which had got quite runny towards the end. I don’t know what it is about this sauce that makes it change consistency so drastically after only a short period of time, but it probably indicates something good, like less additives and preservatives or something.

Of course, it’ll never be like the sauce I remember from childhood. No, they didn’t change recipe (as far as I know, anyway) and it’s not just the miopic memory of youth distorting the past.

My parents were always rather blasé about use by dates, which was probably just as well all things considered. My father, at one time in his chequered career, worked as a buyer in a cash & carry and was always bringing home crates of various bizarre things for my mother to a) find a use for and b) find somewhere to store in the meantime. One time he brought home a huge crate of the aforementioned brown sauce.

Now, at least this was a novelty in that it was something we actually used, which is always a bonus, but really… how much sauce *do* a family of three get through in a year?! We weren’t vast consumers even then – at best estimate … two maybe three bottles a year?

We did get through the whole crate eventually after many many years. It was nice sauce, it was a shame to get rid of it even if it was a few years out of date. It wasn’t until we finally got around to buying a whole new bottle that we realised just how different the flavour was in an in-date bottle of Daddies Brown. Our best guess was that the old bottles after a year or two past best were actually fermenting in the bottles and becoming alcoholic…

… it did taste damn nice though.

I’m sure this is a familiar scenario to most parents of young children. Christmas has been and gone, the already full toyboxes are now bursting at the seams, and there’s no more places to put new toyboxes.

It’s time for a toy cull.

Either that or build an extension.

Anyway, the cull made sense – get rid of some of Akra Jr’s tackier toys, take some to charity and put some aside in the loft for the new baby to play with when they get to an appropriate age, regain tons of space. Why didn’t I suspect it just wasn’t going to be that easy?!

The problem is how to decide whether a toy is appropriate for culling. Each time I’ve decided on a criteria and then hit a major stumbling block.

First criteria: all broken toys go directly in the bin. Problem: some of his favourites are broken and he still gets a lot of fun out of them regardless – many of his toy cars are missing windscreens, doors, etc and are still well used. In fact, the shabbiness is a pretty good indication that it is well loved. Okay, can’t use that one.

Second criteria: mummy can’t stand this toy. Great opportunity to cull all those toys that drive me insane. Problem: many of these are also counted as his favourites and I don’t have the heart to get rid of them. Even the tacky cereal box and MacDonalds toys. Need to rethink that idea.

Third criteria: toys that have been grown out of. Problem: how do you tell?! He will still play quite happily with the rattle he’s had since a baby or the stacking rings, despite him technically being far too old for them now. Nope, time for another criteria.

Fourth criteria: toys he no longer plays with. Problem: again, how do you tell?! Okay, he has a small range of favourites that always get dragged out, but he’ll quite often rediscover something in the back of a box or drawer and get really involved for a while. It’s just not cut and dried. ARGH!

Of course, if he was older, I could get him to sort his own toys out to get rid of, but at two and a half I think I’d just distress him – far better to do it in secret, I’m sure lots of these toys he’s forgotten he has anyway. That’s what I keep telling myself, at least. I’ve been ruthless and he’s a couple of bags of toys lighter now (and I’ve only done the upstairs toys, downstairs is Friday’s job). Problem is, the guilt has just hit in, and I’m convinced he’s going to open his drawers and cry “where have all my toys gone, Mummy?!”

So how much are extensions these days?

There isn’t much on television that shocks me anymore. I’m becoming fairly immune to the cheap “programming” that passes as entertainment (mainly by not bothering to actually watch any of it – why bother when you could get engrossed in a good computer game instead?) However, the latest reality TV offering, Shattered, has completely utterly amazed me – I’m even more stunned that there hasn’t been a national outcry yet.

Sleep deprivation is a very nasty thing. There’s a reason why it is used as a torture technique. Even just inadequate sleep can radically affect the brain – tests have shown that response times and brain response can be worse in a sleep deprived person than in a heavily intoxicated person. Regularly sleeping outside your normal body clock times (such as shift workers) has been shown for increased risk of various disorders including mental and psychological problems.

So what about no sleep whatsoever? Within 36-48 hours severe mental affects kick in – hallucinations, some effects similar to dementia, loss of memory, paranoia, suicidal feelings. For the seven days this “experiment” is running, it will almost certainly cause permanent brain damage and possibly a radical change of personality.

I’m sure that if this was a legitimate scientific experiment being run then it would have been exposed nationally as an ethical disgrace regardless of whether volunteers were chosen with full knowledge of what they were letting themselves in for. Instead, for a chance at a mere ?100,000 and the opportunity to appear on national TV it’s classed as “entertainment”. I’m certain the participants can’t know the full implications, as I sure as hell would want a lot more than ?100,000 for deliberately causing that much damage on myself.

I really hope the participants sue the hell out of the producers of the show when they’re out. You never know – if reality TV becomes a litigation nightmare, we may start getting quality programming again.

Some references:

Sleep Deprivation
Brain Basics: Understanding Sleep
The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Brain and Behavior

Akra Jr wakes up every day between 7am and 7.30am. Not a bad wake up time all things considered. Occasionally, if we’re unlucky, he’ll wake at 6.30am but you can hardly complain. We do have a radio alarm clock, but to be honest we don’t rely on it … Akra Jr is reliable enough.

When I say every day, of course I mean every day except when you make a midwife’s appointment for 8.30am thinking you’ll have plenty of time. The radio alarm came and went, I dozed back off (dreaming of having a blazing row with my mother for some reason). Next thing I know I wake with a start and it’s 8.10am and Akra Jr still isn’t awake yet.

I still don’t know how the hell we managed it, but two of us and a toddler managed to get out the door reasonably presentable by 8.20am. Got to the doctor’s surgery. They have no record of my appointment. Seems like the midwife doesn’t know how to use a computer (she’s written the appointment in my notes herself, so I know I wasn’t just imagining things!)

From that point on, you just KNOW the day isn’t going to go well.

Why is it that on the rare times you have a dream that you are aware is a dream and consciously think “this would make a great plot for a short story”, you either:

a) wake up next morning with only minimal recollection of what happened and nowhere near enough to make a coherent story out of it.
b) remember just about enough to realise that it was, in reality, absolutely useless as any sort of creative writing material except maybe dream analysis to see just how screwed up you are.
c) suddenly realise it was completely ripped off a film or book you’ve read recently.
d) all of the above.

Warning. I’m grumpy.

No particular reason why – just over the last 24 hours or so I’ve been in a very snappy, morose mood. Nothing has happened to put me that way, but I’m reacting to the normal daily irritants about twenty times worse than I normally would: the final toilet seat in the house has decided to break completing my record, the decorating is taking longer than expected due to the spot welded paper border, our already poor internet connection has taken a nosedive for the worst, Akra Jr has become whiny, clingy and generally very annoying (probably reacting to our evil moods).

All in all, great timing for my patience to have evaporated to zero. Best stay out of my way for a couple of days until I get out of this funk.