Day 3 of Summer Hell-idays

So, as the title suggests, we are only on day 3 of summer holidays. I don't know how we'll get through to be honest, based on the last three days!

Day 1 - I was awoken in the middle of the night by that familiarly horrible 'cough, cough, retch' sound of a child vomiting heartily. When I told my eldest to wait for a while after his tea before he went to bed (yes, he took himself to bed! Early! In the holidays!) or he'd be sick, I really didn't know how right I was! Sadly, he'd decided he couldn't possibly puke in his own bed, full with washable bedding, oh no! He had to throw up over the side of his top bunk bed. This resulted in his very nice solar system rug being covered in diced potatoes and noodles and being completely ruined, and also his brother and brothers bed being totally covered! Luckily his brother stayed asleep while I sponged him with hot, soapy water. The rug didn't make it though and went off to rug heaven, along with eldest's school leaving jumper, signed by everyone but chucked up on by himself! 

Day 2 - We had a "plumbing" emergency. And I use the quote marks for a reason. Shortly after lunch I heard a freaked out child calling me from upstairs - "Mum, Mum! The bathrooms making a funny noise!"! Now I've not long had my boiler serviced and the guy managed to get air in the system so I assumed it was just knocking after he'd turned the tap on or flushed the loo, so I kept shouting up to flush the loo again or turn the tap on and off. Because there's not many problems that can't be fixed by switching things on and off again. But it didn't stop. So begrudgingly, I left my warm bum shaped indentation in my sofa and dragged myself upstairs. When I got there I heard this horrendous noise and I can only describe the noise as the noise you shortly hear before your boiler blows up, so I started to panic we were all going to be killed by a boiler! I started pressing buttons on the boiler, turned the water off, the radiators, pressed reset, turned all the knobs, all to no avail! So then I switched it off in panic. And the noise carried on! Like a high pitched drilling sound! So I followed this noise and it was coming from behind my sink! At this point all I could think was that my water pipe had gone pop and the high pitched noise was water being forced out of a very small hole and was seconds away from exploding hell and high water (sorry....😏) into my bathroom and we'd all die from shrapnel! Not that I'm a doom and gloom kind of girl or anything. So at this point, I realised I couldn't stop it, had never heard it, and was panicking. I knew there was only one thing for it - I needed a Dad! Dads can fix everything, right?! As mine was miles from me I sent the eldest round to the neighbours house to borrow their Dad. After he'd gone on his Dad-finding mission, I looked again and noticed the toothbrushes had started to vibrate. Not understanding how this could possibly come from a water pipe, I looked closer. And closer. And closer. And then I noticed it. The toothbrushes were vibrating violently against the beaker they were in. I pulled them out one by one and SWITCHED the electric toothbrush OFF!! Yes, that's right! Eldest had brushed his teeth and put his toothbrush away whilst it was still on! The noise was it jumping and vibrating around the heavy acrylic bathroom beaker! I had to send middle child to go and get eldest child who was just starting to tell the neighbour about the fact our boiler was about to explode, mortified, the message I gave was that I had fixed the problem! And that wasn't a lie, I HAD fixed the problem! My eldest was in so much trouble - oh the shame.....and now my neighbour will read this and realise that it was just a vibrating electric toothbrush rather than a plumbing emergency!

Day 3 - This was going fairly well. No dramatics, except I felt rough as sin. I'm generally sick anyway, as in ill, but a summer cold on top had left me feeling shaky and weak, because of how it affects my scarred lung from a previous bout of septic pneumonia and a lung operation. So when I finally finished the morning basics, I'd just fed the cats and was shakily trying to carry my sorry old body to the sofa so I could sit down before I passed out. At this point my black cat walked past and I stroked her. And then my hand stuck to her. Yes, that's right, stuck to her. All her underside and legs were covered in lots and lots of sticky gloop! As I yelled and shouted out "what's happened to the cat?! She's covered in gloopy stuff!" my youngest started to cry and started muttering that it wasn't her fault (which means it was), but that the cat had apparently walked right into a tube of gel toothpaste just as she was squirting it, and for some reason the entire tube of tooth gel had ended up in my cats luscious, shiny coat! As I was stuck to her, I had no choice but to carry her to the sink for a rescue operation! One handed I had to remove all the breakfast bowls from the sink, run the taps til they were warm and then get a towel out if the very bottom of the cleaning cupboard. Eldest had to come to do that and of course, as an 11 year old boy, he couldn't see any towels so proceeded to empty the entire contents of my cleaning cupboard out. All the while I was attempting to rinse the cat! Have you ever tried to rinse a cat?! Well I can tell you, they don't like it! Not one bit! However I did manage to bath my minty fresh cat! Then I needed to get this dripping wet mass of twisting fur and claws dry....lets just say the towel got near but did not manage to make it around the cat before the cat escaped. At the end of this debacle I had a kitchen covered in bubbles of toothpaste and clumps of black fur and water just about everywhere, my t shirt was dripping wet, and my hands had some new holes. The cat ended up under the table trying to lick herself dry. This took quite some time but her teeth were sparkling clean and she had minty fresh breath instead of slightly rotten fish breath! Her coat also smells lovely! Still a bit sticky but at least she's no longer foaming at the mouth when she cleans herself! Although Id like to point out that childrens toothpaste does not agree with cats tummies and shortly after, I had to clean up a different splattering of a rather more unpleasant kind! I don't know how I managed to crawl to the sofa after that but I'm thinking of not moving for at least 3 more days.

I can only wonder what delights await me tomorrow and for the rest of the school holidays. Let's not mention that one of my cats is due to give birth in the second half of the holidays.....we all just know I'm going to have to get involved in membranes, fluids and placentas don't we.....and no doubt bottle feeding every 2 hours around the clock. I can only hope she has a small litter! 

How long is it until September?! 😱

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