Fear not, any of you who have children leaving for university soon – what I hadn’t realised when I tearfully waved my child off to university was that they come back all the time. This is different from our day when we left for whole terms and didn’t come back at all. They seem to come back for all manner of reasons; to get some peace and quiet (ha ha), revision, for parties, to raid the fridge, my socks, clothes, make-up wipes, phone chargers, food from the fridge, you name it, they take it. In addition they have their friends over, make a hideous amount of noise, drink your alcohol, sleep, eat and generally MAKE A BLOODY MESS AND DON’T CLEAR IT UP. Then they skip off again with a car load of stuff they had managed to sneak out of the house.
My daughter has been recently back at the ranch and because I’m having such a trauma about how to sort my life out this year – she and I went to my favourite place for tea. I thought it would inspire me to take wonderful photos and make me feel all “lifestyley” – prompted by a period of massive blog envy for the lifestyle bloggers of the moment who seem to take amazing photos and live the dream. But I’ve realised there is really no point in even trying to pretend that I can do that. It doesn’t work. Last night for example, I tried to bond with my youngest son by decorating the gingerbread house I’d bought him for Christmas – but yet another fail. He refused to let me help him decorate it because he wanted to do it himself.
So look what he did:-
My tea experience at Petersham Nurseries was lovely (and I will write a separate post about that), but I failed to take gorgeous food photos because she’d already made a smeary mess of the cake before I’d taken a picture….it just doesn’t work. I need to stop trying to bother. Instead, I have to admit to having a house that is a total tip. She had a loud pre-lash party and then a few nights later, my youngest son had a “gathering”. My house, by Sunday evening looked appalling. Everywhere and everything had crap in it.
Even the glasses:-
My surfaces looked like this:-
Even a letter that I was about to send ended up here as it had something poured all over it:-
My sitting room was full of bodies – no idea how many:-
My sink looked like this:-
So you see? It’s all a disaster. I cannot live the glossy magazine dream. My life is hectic and full of messy children.
But to be honest, I wouldn’t want it any other way.
“Messy house, happy soul”
Who said that?
janelle
January 28, 2015oooh christ. know the feeling. i hope you made them wash up? i do. on sundays. big time. yes. we wouldn’t change it for anything but….KERRIST, they can be annoying and take up so much space and mess everything up….tsk. xxx
Family Affairs
January 29, 2015No!! They don’t even do the washing up…very often anyway L x
Expat Mum
January 28, 2015Hmmm – I do think they take the P sometimes though. I found a big pile of clothes in front of the dryer the other day. My son (who now does his own washing) had simply taken all the stuff in the dryer and dumped it on the floor. I am happy to say though, I gave him a complete tongue-lashing and made him fold it and put it in the basket.
Family Affairs
January 29, 2015That’s exactly what mine does – and he then generally breaks the machine by stuffing it too full Lx