School of reality - Friday
I've skipped the routine of the week and cut to the chase for Friday's events...
Having made the children sleep in their uniforms (Yes I did do this once upon a time) for Thursday so that I can for once try and make it in early to the office stuffed my energy in re-telling what went down on that day. It was too traumatic that the memory would prolly not only scar my kids but myself if I have to re-live it.
Anyway...What people drink in the staffroom tells you a lot about them. Most stagger into the coffee/tea room clutching Starbucks hard-core espresso these usually are the younger colleagues. You'll soon be able to identify a milky-tea-two-sugars-type from a rosemary-infused-herbal colleague just by the stance those that effect bonding with such take on. The jury is still out on which of the latter I can stand least.
The rest of the day we boil the old kettle full of limescale and drink randomly from ironically sloganed mugs handed out by drug repres trying to push us to front their drugs onto the unsuspecting public. Why is you can never find a clean mug when you need one - I mean there's plenty of them lying around - just that I'm willing to bet all you'll need is to just add water to them and a stomach so tough it makes a goat jealous. And I'm sick and tired of being the one to fill the kettle - I mean why is that? Is there a school that trains some people that in communal situations, time others to be at the receiving end of skiving out of roles other than just riding off the backs of others?
I realise I'm verging on getting a breakdown over this little issue and I slump onto a threadbare sofa which resembles a yak that has been dead for some time and sip a cup of staffroom coffee. It tastes as lukewarm as I feel - I remember I shouldn't be drinking it anyway as it leaves me so jumpy I can't concentrate on any given task. Never mind about staying awake, I can hardly tell my heart to be still! I dwell dispiritedly on my past week. Like tidemarks left around the bath, like toenail clippings abandoned on bedside tables, the evidence has begun to mount up that I've truanted from the How To Be A Good Mother School.
Whoever said , 'Life is just one thing after another'? For working mothers it's just the same thing, again and again and over and over. But at a very fast pace. Like jogging in quicksand. For working mums, every day is a lot like holding a live hand grenade with the pin pulled half-out.
No matter how much I wanted to be one of those women who can change a nappy with one hand whilst whipping a souffle with the other at the same time as I'm taking a conference call, what I had become, instead was a cliche. When I hear those homilies coming out of my mouth like, 'Where were you born? In a tent?' it's as though I've been secretly brain-washed during my sleep by suggestive tapes entitled Wifely Cliches, Vol. 2
Is it any wonder then that come Friday night I've developed the demenour, aching legs and mood swings of a long-haul flight attendant? Now I had to add sulking to an already over-booked schedule. The cheery invitations of younger colleagues to join them for a drink with a possibility of hitting a nightclub is as welcoming as a visit to the dentist for fillings.