Wednesday 11 September 2013

New housemates

So I'm house sharing. Yeah, it kind of crept up on me, but here I am - just like in certain flat sharing days, living with folk I don't want to be with. Listening to their endless complaints, having to put up with their irritating habits and their bathroom hogging. How did this happen?

Oh yes. I had children.

If only I could just change a tampax in peace, life really would be ok. But even that small dignity has been stripped away from me, as my daughter AKA The Shadow - follows my every move. Does a two year old really need to know about periods at such a tender age? Well, seems she does now.

My son meanwhile - AKA The angel - has begun to be less angelic. He answers back. Demands later bed times. Refuses meals. (This one aint so new to be fair). Every time I sit down, it appears I have lost control of the TV to either some godawful Fifa (spelling?) soccer game on the X Box, or actual football is blaring away.

My make up bag is pillaged on a daily basis by my 2 year old, who it has to be said, doesn't appreciate the cost of a LancĂ´me mascara - but likes to use it to streak her hair a fetching black. Regularly I look for my phone only to discover that it has gone - and so have 30% of my cherished photos on it, and half my contacts. Yep 2 year old Sproglette thinks she is fucking David Bailey - with an I phone as her camera, and insists on taking daily pics of her ears, the sink, a wall, a stray cat she has invited in, etc.

What else? These 'housemates' also like to get up early. Like 6am. And just scream at the top of the stairs for no reason. Or have dreams where Aliens take me away (I freakin' wish) and so crawl into bed beside me of an evening. They then proceed to demand Oreos for breakfast and scatter raisins liberally around the wooden floors - because standing on a sticky squished raisin is my FAVOURITE thing. Nearly as much fun as standing on a small toy car that is usually placed helpfully by them, on the stairs. At night. In the dark.

They also like on occasion to (in no particular order): piss their pants in the middle of restaurants, crap in the bath, sing nursery rhymes until they're horse, squabble endlessly, repeat requests in a Goebbel's Nazi-esque repetitive fashion until you relent, break anything within a 100 metre radius, steal copper money from your bag, eat the end of the ice cream you had hidden at the back of the freezer and draw over important documents and walls because 'I wanted to.'

Gone are the days I wake of my own accord; gone is any privacy, gone is any time to read or think without someone asking for a drink, a wipe, chocolate or a new mother. Gone is the time I used to spend alone - including in the shower - the house guests LOVE chatting to me as I try to shampoo my hair and then ask questions about pubic hair, 'why is your tummy wobbly?' and 'what is that star on your hip Mummy?' 'An legacy of New Zealand, a tattooist call Phil on the hill and too much liquor, child.'

In short: I fantasise about leaving this house share and going to live with some Kiwis who want to smoke bongs all evening and make home made potcheen (poitin). To only have to cook single girls' soup (covent garden in case you ask) for dinner and watch whatever I freakin' want on tv. To shower alone, and to never have to justify why it aint so cool to eat crap American biscuits for breakfast. And to never stand on a fucking mashed raisin again.

 

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