A Mother of a Day.

"I'd like to be the ideal mother,

but I'm too busy raising my kids."- Unknown

I started my day with a 2hr lesson for a student who couldn’t come on Friday because he was having fun somewhere else.
Our lesson was interrupted by the sound of screeching from the yard.

Daughter 1 “Be careful Granddad!”
Daughter 2 “The cat’s going to fall!”
Daughter 1 “Granddad’s going to fall.”
Grandma “Get down from there before you fall.”

I went to investigate and found the cat up a tree and Granddad, who is 87, up a ladder. Both my children and Grandma were shouting at him from below. My husband was drinking coffee and ignoring the situation.

My student, never one to miss an opportunity to get out of grammar lessons, sprinted into action. He soon had Granddad off the ladder and the cat out of the tree and the whole family praising him for saving us..

This is pretty normal.

Other events of the day include comforting my youngest daughter who was upset when a fly landed in her bath. She tried to save it but it died. She was upset because she wasn’t sure if it had drowned or if she had killed it during the rescue attempt.
Whatever, she now wants to bury it in the garden.

Further death and disaster was thankfully averted when she remembered that she had a snail in her pocket and managed to remove it before it suffered any permanent damage. It is now installed in a box, on a bed of lettuce, for the night and will be reintroduced to the wild tomorrow morning.

I’m happy to have the snail as a houseguest as it isn’t that long since my daughter caught a cockroach and put it in a box with some breadcrumbs. Needless to say I did not let it stay overnight.



You know you’re a mother when…

Your child throws up and you catch it.
You hide in the bathroom to be alone.
You stop criticizing the way your mother raised you.

or in my case…
you don’t swat flies.

Come to think of it today was fairly uneventful.

The Best Laid Plans...

Diet Plan - day one

Breakfast - Glass of skimmed milk and 2 melba toast.
Yuk!
I’ll substitute coffee for the milk, coffee isn’t that fattening and…
… well melba toast is dry so I’ll have a couple of cigarettes.
So coffee and cigarettes, same as usual.


Snack 1 – 2 pieces of fruit.
Who the hell’s got time to snack? By the time I’ve gotten the house straight it will be lunchtime anyway!

Lunch – 1 chicken breast without the skin, I slice of bread, salad,.
Damn it! no chicken and the kids want hamburgers.
Substitute - hamburger in a sesame bun, ketchup,
it’s made of tomatoes
and I’ll have a pickle too
because that is cucumber, nearly .


Snack 2 - a piece of fruit.
Give me a break I’m working here! Like this kid is going to understand my explanation of passive voice if it’s muffled by banana.


Evening meal. – Lentil soup, salad, 1 slice of bread.
YUK!!
Just a minute, lentils are similar to beans, cocoa is made out of beans…mmm
Substitute, Hot chocolate and toast, yummy.


Note. DRINK PLENTY OF WATER.
I always drink plenty of water so that’s alright then.

I think that went quite well.
I’ll just peek at tomorrow’s menu before going to sleep…

… Breakfast, same as today.
Ok coffee and cigs is fine by me


Snack – A glass of fruit juice.
Good I think I can manage that.


Lunch, Poached fish and boiled greens...

...Yeah, Right!!

.

DYING IN A LIE

.

Lengthening shadows creep across the walls.
Eyelids close as the dream world calls.

A gentle caress, a warm embrace,
A welcoming smile on her lover’s face

Affection found in the touch of twilight,
Longing for the kiss of gentle midnight.

.

.

She wears a sad smile as she cooks and cleans.
Caressed by the whisper of half forgotten dreams.

The siren call of the unloved wife,
“There must be more than this to life!”

Caring for her children as each day passes by,
Just another mother dying in a lie.

.

Message in a Bottle Meme

Mimi of Peaceglobe fame has tagged me for her message in a bottle meme. So here is my message which I would also like to put on almost everything that we so wantonly waste. In fact I would prefer to go further.
We need to regress for progress. If you don't understand what I mean just think back to your grannies cupboards and drawers with their bits and bobs of saved string and brown paper, Jam jar vases painted on rainy afternoons and groceries wrapped in paper rather than prepackaged in plastic. Recycling isn't enough, we have to stop using the world's resources in such a selfish, shortsighted and irresponsible manner.

(Don't worry I'll soon be back to my usual style of irregularly posted miserable poetry.)

Right before I go, If you are on my blogroll or have commented on one of my last five posts then you are tagged.

Go HERE for the rules/instructions, I don't do rules but you will need the instructions on this one.

Waiting For The Storm.

My soul is oppressed
By the black and angry sky.
Surrounded
By the heavy velvet silence
Deceptive
Soft with foreboding.

Tension snakes up my neck,
Gripping me like a vice,
Squeezing out my sanity.

Stab!
A dagger of light gashes the defenseless air,
Screeching.
The darkness retreats,
Temporary surrender.
It swallows the blade.

Boom!
A thundering crash of sound,
Punches a hole into my world.
The beat of my heart
Leaps to join the rythmn,
The drumbeat of pain.

The storm lashes out.
The raindrops,
Dancing with my migraine.

A Day in the Life

A a a a a aa aa! I was woken by the sound of “u and ur hand” playing on my beautiful pink telephone. 7am, time to wake the kids. I slid out of bed and stumbled groggily into their room. With my one open eye I spied a Bratz doll skiing nonchalantly across the carpet, she’d better watch out for the coloured pencils, I thought groggily.

After waking the girls the next step as I stagger through to the kitchen to make coffee is to boot up the computer in the lounge ready for daughter #1 to organize our early bird playlist. Daughter #2 usually emerges at about 7.40am complaining about the seams in the toes of socks and the unfairness of having to wear clothes in general. Thus in a haze of Evanescence combined with early morning grumbles and punctuated by my own screeches of “we’re going to be late!’ we prepare for the day.

Arriving at school just in time, as usual, I am greeted by the president of the PTA who is intent on informing me that 3 snow whites and 11 dwarfs are still missing and she needs $250 to pay for the carpenter and the coat hooks. I do a quick reality check and realize that she is actually talking about carnival costumes and the bloody idiot who put up our new curtain rails after a 6 week delay due to a bout of flu which he followed by falling off his ladder and dislocating his shoulder. Surprisingly enough I have little confidence in his abilities and insist on inspecting the finished job before handing over any money.

When I return home I find my mother in law serving coffee to the handyman who is doing some work on her back wall. Without even looking I can tell that there has been little progress in the yard because she proceeds to tell me his life story. He is 76 years old and has a nice pension but is now working to help pay for his grandson’s university education.

It would be nice if I could ask about the wall but I know that it would be considered extremely rude so I listen and compliment him on his ability to “work” at his advanced age and on his dedication to family. He is visibly pleased as he happily slurps some coffee and helps himself to another biscuit.Shrugging off my irritation about how much it is costing us to show proper hospitality to our “guest” I go upstairs to sort out my own chores.

Our house is built on top of my in laws’, a fairly common practice in Greece and we more or less live as one family keeping our doors open and often sharing meals etc. I won’t bore you with the details of my housework, anyone who has a house knows how it goes and it isn’t as if I had gotten much done before my mother in laws screeches had me rushing back down the stairs.

Once the workman had finally started to do some work Elevtheria decided to clean out my daughter’s pet squirrel’s cage, not a good idea unless my daughter is there to assist. Somehow the squirrel had gotten out of the cage. I found my mum in law running round the kitchen with blood dripping from her hands and her skirt bunched up displaying her respectable white knickers and shouting “Squirrel, squirrel!” At this point the aforementioned rodent wriggled out of her bunched up skirt and started running round the kitchen floor. I placed the top half of the cage over it and it sat there quivering in fright as I inspected Elevtheria’s wounds and decided that she would probably need a tetanus jab.

I called my husband who was at a strike meeting in Athens and asked him to come home to help deal with our minor emergency. With the squirrel back in its cage my mum in law treated at the first aid centre and my kids fed a hasty meal of chicken and rice with sweetcorn that I had managed to rustle up while granddad picked them up from school I decided to take a breather. Looking at the clock I realized that I had 20 minutes to get to work at 3pm so I set off for my first lesson dodging heaps of garbage piled in the streets (the dustbin men are on strike), making my way round holes in the road which were dug in readiness for the laying of gas pipes just before the council workers went on strike and I hope against hope that I will finish my lessons before the lights go out due to power cuts as the power station workers are on strike.


At 8pm about half way through my final lesson the lights go out. I make my way home through pitch black streets wondering what we will eat for supper and hoping I don’t get mugged. Arriving home safely I set about making some sandwiches and once they have been eaten organize the kids getting ready for bed by candlelight. Fortunately the power is restored at 10.30pm which means I can start writing this post instead of twiddling my thumbs in the dark.

So there you have it, between missing mythical figures, catastrophic carpenters, minor emergencies, navigating streets like middens and coping with kids by candlelight you can see how a blog gets so sadly neglected, can’t you?

NB. I SEEM TO HAVE LOST MY INTERNET CONNECTION SO I WILL HAVE TO POST THIS LATER.

Fun With Food

What’s on the Menu Tonight?

It can be very confusing choosing a meal in a restaurant these days so here are a few tips to help the uninitiated to work out what is, or rather what isn’t, on offer. If you prefer eating at home you might find my previous post on cooking useful.

http://litcor.blogspot.com/2007/03/cooking-instructions-explained.html




Cockie-Leekie - is not made from post coital penises


Wontons - are not heavy


Vol.-au-vent – is not an Italian smart car, yet!

It is however the name of a film about a deaf and dumb guy
who lives with a chicken , Go figure!



Soufflé – is not much help if you want to hide your bald patch.


Vinaigrette – Has nothing to do with wishing you hadn’t drunk so much wine.


Mortadella - Only smells like something that died,


Gazpacho - has nothing to do with military police.


Tagliatelle & Fettucine – have nothing to do with kinky sex.

Unless you know differently...?


Cannelloni – is not a solo dance form


Tzatziki – is unpronouncable unless you’ve been practicing from birth.




Anyone looking for useful information can click on the links.

If you would like to add your own helpful hints, you know where to leave your comments.