Pinky's Book Link

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

The day Pinky snapped - or one of them anyway.

           

This morning as I precariously balanced two full coffee mugs up the stairs, a certain baby Chihuahua somehow became tangled up in my feet and I lost the lot. On the previous night I’d let myself slip into holiday mode and requested that Scotto set the alarm a half hour later than usual. 


“Are you sure?” he asked warily, knowing how I already cut it fine. No, if I prune my usual frivolous activities (like wasting valuable minutes on the laptop) I can get a bit of extra kip and still get to work on time… I optimistically thought.

As the coffee slopped all over the stairs, walls and dogs I knew things weren’t going to pan out as planned. Three bedroom doors opened simultaneously with a chorus of voices exclaiming, 

“What the hell?”, 

“Mum! You woke me up!” and “Are you okay? (Scotto).

Scotto came down and helped me do a slip shod job of sopping up five hundred millilitres of liquid and I thought about the stench of sour milk that would probably linger for weeks. Not to mention two dogs that smelled like Brazilian baristas.

Scheduling me time never really materialises into reality these days. Last year we invited an old friend of Scotto’s to stay with us for a week or so. Excited at the thought of a house guest I could impress with my domestic goddess prowess I set about cleaning out Jonah’s old room. 

I made up a fresh bed, plumped the pillows and folded a towel at the end of the bed just like they do in hotels. Classy! He had to share the room with my treadmill but that was auspicious on two levels. Firstly he had something to hang his towel on and secondly, I had an excuse not to use my treadmill for an entire week.

My gastronomic repertoire would be stretched …Read this funny post!  but I was hopeful I’d be able to place a different delectable dish from my culinary catalogue on the table for each of the seven nights.

The only tiny problem I could foresee was that you can’t really be yourself when you have a house guest - at least not in Pinky’s world anyway. You can’t walk around the house in your knickers and bra, you have to speak sweetly to your children (no disgraceful cussing) and you can’t take your dinner upstairs in disgust at your teenager’s attitude and eat it in bed. Nevertheless, I love a challenge and was fairly certain I could maintain the façade for a week.

“Greg commented to me that he can’t believe what a well organised household this is,” said Scotto towards the end of the visit.

“Really? How nice of him,” replied a very pleased Pinky, Queen of the Smug.

Towards the end of Greg’s visit it was decided that Scotto would take him to watch our home team play in the NBL game at the entertainment centre on Friday night. Hagar, Padraic and Lulu were all going out which meant I would have the house to myself; a rare, hungered-for luxury.

My plan was to drop them off at basketball at seven o’clock, drop Lulu off at the restaurant on the way, then drive home to an affectionate date with a bottle of Chardonay and ‘Better Homes and Gardens’ on the telly. 

I drove home late on Friday after a stressful week of work, ferrying my kids to basketball training, footy training, netball training, tutoring and part-time jobs to find an anxious Hagar pacing the driveway. “Mum! I need a lift to Kevin's.” 

Sh*t! It was a forty minute round trip. “Get in.” I growled, happy, at least to be getting rid of him.

As soon as I walked in the door when I got home Padraic ambushed me. “I need a lift to Josh’s.” Another half an hour later I pulled up once more in our driveway. It was late and Scotto and Greg were waiting for me out the front, along with a hostile Lulu.

“Hog’s Breath, Mum. Can you hurry? I’m late.”

Hog’s Breath was in the opposite direction to the entertainment centre and Cactus Jack’s, where she had originally told me she was going. It was a bloody fifty minute round trip. 

I may have overreacted. I know Greg looked frightened and Scotto looked decidedly nervous.

“What am I a f*#ing taxi driver?” and “Why the f*#k did you tell me it was f#*king Cactus Jack’s when it was f#*king Hog’s Breath?” were among the colourful, expletive- filled phrases that vomited from my mouth. I must have sounded like a large sow giving birth. 


As if the neighbours didn’t already have enough to disapprove of.

Greg and Scotto timidly and unobtrusively caught a cab and sadly, my ‘hostess with the mostess’ reputation went eddying down the drain.