MONDAY MORNING

Monday morning. Absolute bloody chaos. Kids finally all gone to school, but what a nightmare. All three children required major attention. Things lost. Things needed ironing. They needed feeding and watering and everybody was stressed. I had to write three separate notes for my daughter:-

Dear Teacher,

I am very sorry, but my daughter has lost her school bag. She has to manage taking her weekend luggage on a regular basis to two separate houses and hasn’t lost it before. She is very upset about it and we will endeavour to find it ASAP.

Dear Teacher,

I am afraid my daughter will be unable to go swimming again today because she still has infected ears.

Dear Teacher,

I am afraid my daughter has to leave school early today because she has a dental appointment.

It was tempting to write a long and heartfelt letter about the true reasons for the state of disarray we found ourselves in this morning. It would have gone something like this:-

Dear Teacher,

I am so sorry. My daughter is hysterical and emotional owing to a long drawn out weekend of late nights and early mornings. She has spent the entire weekend saying goodbye to one of her best friends who is moving abroad. She had a sleepover on Friday night and a party on Saturday. The party on Saturday unfortunately got completely out of hand because her friend advertised the party on Facebook. About 100 people turned up and managed to completely trash her friend’s house. Teenagers were drunk and drawing on the walls. They walked mud all over the house and vomited in corners. One girl was so drunk she tried to take all of her clothes off before my daughter and some friends managed to get her upstairs to be sick in the bed, but sadly not before a number of boys had taken inappropriate pictures of her.   Apparently it is because she has family issues and her father was arrested last week for attacking her mother.  One of the mothers turned up at the party and screamed at everybody to leave. She spent ten minutes shouting “GET THE F*CK OUT OF THE HOUSE” and banging on locked doors screaming for people to open them up. The father of the house then appeared and stopped the woman from shouting “F*CKING GET OUT OF THE BEDROOM AND STOP SHAGGING” by telling her that he had been the one to lock the door and that there was nobody in there. My daughter was completely traumatised by the whole experience and apparently tried very hard to help her friend get everybody out. At 11pm all the revellers ran off in different directions when several neighbours threatened to call the police. I picked my daughter and two of her friends up from an incredibly dishevelled house and they stayed the night here. In the morning they went back to help wash the walls and clean the floor.

Last night we had a birthday party for 9 for a friend’s teenage son. This was lots of fun, but meant it wasn’t until 10.30pm that she realised she couldn’t find her bag. All hell broke loose. In the meantime, her infected ears still look revolting and I may have to take her to the doctor AND in addition to all that she suddenly shouted “and why are my Ugg boots on sale in the charity shop for £10!! I KNOW they’re mine. You’ve given them away. I can’t believe it. HOW COULD YOU”. Have to go and find her Ugg boots in her room to show her before she believes me but pissed off by then.

I myself spent most of Sunday freezing by the side of two separate football pitches watching my boys play in their games. Luckily they both won (in fact my youngest child scored the winning goal and my teenage child got Man of the Match) BUT the second game went into extra time and because my youngest child was cold I sent him off to the car to get my wallet so that he could buy himself a hot chocolate and by the time he had got back to me he had managed to lose my car keys. After getting back home much later than I thought I spent the afternoon tidying and cooking and may have in fact put my daughter’s bag away somewhere but can’t remember where. I am also distracted by the fact that I have a huge pile of bills to pay, a congestion charge letter to write, my tax to do by the 30th January, a charity function to carry on sorting in the next two weeks, a meeting to have with my ex tonight about my son’s university choices, a book to read by Wednesday for my book group, a class to plan for a workshop I’m doing on Thursday, a practice session with my daughter tonight on how to interview people for a pilot TV show she has been asked to do tomorrow, a basketball game I promised to go and watch my son in tonight that he doesn’t want to play in, a dental appointment at 4pm for my daughter to get her braces removed, a session with my youngest son to explain why I am taking my oldest child out to see his father without him when he doesn’t understand and is going to freak when he gets left behind to be looked after by his sister and a house to clean up of sparkly happy birthday signs and party popper stuff strewn about everywhere and many dishes to wash and beds to make that won’t get made before the kids get back in them tonight and a bloody school bag to find.

Bollocks.