Bad Mother

Toby's nursery teacher called me over at pick up time. 'Toby's penis is black,' she told me.
What was I supposed to say. 'Yes, I know?' What kind of mother knows that her son has a black willy and doesn't do anything about it? A Bad Mother.
Or I could have said, 'Oh,' (bright and interested) 'has he?' But tha twould mean that Mrs. Litt would think that she knows more about Toby's willy than I do. That would make me a Bad Mother, too.
Or, 'Oh, yes, we do practice body art at home,' thereby suggesting that Toby's black willy is all part of a Grand Scheme which, whilst it may be eccentric, is neither criminal nor untoward. But weirdness is part of being a Bad Mother.
The fact is that all mothers are Bad Mothers. The only Good Mothers are the ones that haven't got any children yet.
Which brings me to the fact that there is a Good Mother amongst my friends who is on track to become a Bad Mother.
Why has no one said anything yet?

Pleases and poached eggs

It's Saturday again. After a luxurious lie-in, Stephen joined us at eleven o'clock. He wanted poached eggs. I poached eggs. This set the children clamouring for lunch (fair enough, they got me up at six).
Eggs, mummy, eggs.
Eggs what?
Eggs like Daddy.
Eggs like Daddy what?
Stephen looks up from the paper and pours the last of the orange juice into his glass. 'Mine were poached,' he says helpfully.
I poach more eggs. I make toast. Stephen begins three separate sentences with, 'While you're there, Clementine,' and reinforces his newspaper barricade with coffee, a pen for the crossword and the fruit bowl. The children spread eggs and yoghurt over the table cloth. While I'm there, Clementine, I fetch a cloth.
'Aren't you having any breakfast, Clementine?' Stephen asks.
It's all I can do to stop myself telling him that it doesn't look like it.

Hail, Obama!

I found the lids of the marker pens. I locked my dressmaking scissors away and thanked Providence that there wasn't any blood on them. I flushed away the eggs and cleared up the shells. I gave Stephen a look that should have turned him to stone (to which he replied jovially, 'Hard work, aren't they?') and searched in vain for the damage that must have been wrought somewhere by the marker pens, judging by the state of Toby's hands.
I found it at bedtime. Toby, my pink and white catalogue-fodder toddler, has marked the election of the first black president of the United States by colouring his willy and most of his inner thigh area black.
It's permanent marker.
It didn't wash off.
It still hasn't.
Happy inauguration, Mr. Obama. If you're as tenacious, bloody minded and focussed as Toby, there really is hope for the world.

Four hours later

Four hours. I left Stephen in charge for four hours. I didn't even leave him with the responsibility of doing any meals. This is what I found:

• A full tub of ice cream melting on the kitchen floor
• Two permanent black marker pens with their lids off; whereabouts of lids unknown.
• Four eggs, cracked, floating in the toilet; shells thereof in fragments on the floor
• Toby's new rocket pyjamas lying shredded next to an abandoned pair of dressmaking scissors.
• Toby, Beatrice and Stephen asleep on the living room sofa with Monsters Inc. playing on the DVD.

I'm leaving. I don't care who is or isn't pregnant. As long as it's not me.

my untidy kitchen #2

Stephen's late home. I put the babies to bed by myself. Now I'm staring at two melamine plates covered in remnants of cherry tomatoes, ham and breadmen (like gingerbread men but cut out of a slice of bread instead), which I haven't had a chance to clear until now. But if I clear them, how will Stephen know what a hectic day I've had?
Note to reader: Apply the same logic to craft projects, children's paintings, my efforts to read a paper sometimes, the zoo we made last week out of stuffed toys and cardboard boxes and the fact that I have no shelf in here for the children's books, to create a mental image of my kitchen.

My untidy kitchen #1

I go through the post every day and deal with anything that looks as though we might get evicted if I ignore it (or leave it for Stephen, which comes to the same thing). I also open anything handwritten, just in case it's a party invitation or a birth announcement or something else that's fun and exciting and suggestive of a life beyond excavating cold Ready Brek from the floorboard gaps. Everything else gets left in a pile, which gets bigger and bigger until Stephen knocks it over and gets annoyed.
'Why do you keep this stuff?' he asks, brandishing charity appeals and catalogues and invitations to sale previews and exclusive offers on credit cards (yes, they're still sending them out - don't they read the papers?) and once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to consolidate all my debts into one easy monthly repayment (Note to Advertisers: There is NO SUCH THING as an easy monthly repayment.)
And instead of saying, 'Why don't you go through the post, Stephen?' I find myself putting forward one or more of the following arguments:

• I am going to do craft projects with the children and we need the pictures
  
• I may want to buy hand-crafted door knobs or macrame owl wall hangings one day
• I am vastly concerned with the plight of innocent kittens
• There might be something important in the pile
  
• The item in question was addressed to him and it's against my principles to open anything addressed to anyone else or make decisions about its ultimate fate.

None of which make any impression. I throw it all away in a fit of pique and the whole cycle starts again.
And just after I've thrown it all away, I decide that a macrame owl wall hanging would be a perfect present for Stephen's elderly aunt, and then remember half way through going through the bin that Stephen doesn't have an elderly aunt, and feel irritated with Stephen. After all, he was the one who knocked the pile over.

Weekends and other things that happen to other people

Saturday morning. Up with children at six. Instant enrolment in NASA space programme via large cardboard box and craft knife. Toby's demand that space ship thus created should contain 'real fire' supported by his provision of large box of Bryant and May's extra-long matches, kept securely locked in medicine drawer and last used by Stephen. Energy-draining repression of urge to burn Stephen at stake aided by imagining that Toby's screams upon confiscation of said matches are, in fact, those of Stephen attached to said stake. Astronaut-worthy breakfast (dried in packets; senior astronaut sceptical about fresh milk but persuaded by anecdotal evidence of existence of cow on moon. Cow jumped over moon and liked view so much, she jumped onto moon and stayed.) Space exploration halted for purpose of painting rocket red. Sound of rocket launching provided by ancient boiler complaining about excessive hot water demand. Realise that Stephen has woken up and is indulging himself in hot bath.
Unrepress all urges to burn Stephen at stake. Offer Toby and Beatrice the chance to have bonfire in garden. T & B dance with delight.

Mother's instinct

Mum came for lunch. I gave Toby and Beatrice some orange play dough to keep them quiet, then chopped up a butternut squash, thinking about how pale Beth looked the last time I saw her, and I cut my finger. I shoved the baking tray into the oven and remembered that Sarah tripped on our front step twice before she actually made it through the door. I burned myself on the oven door, stood up too quickly and staggered slightly. This reminded me that Ruby complained of dizziness last time I saw her. All signs of early pregnancy. Any one of them could be, and one of them is. Except that Ruby and Sarah are both single at the moment, which would make two things they're not telling me. I frowned as I sliced an avocado, trying to work out which one of them has been running to the loo the most often. Toby announced that he'd made dinner and I pretended I hadn't heard.
Mum was watching the whole performance.
'Clementine,' she said quietly when I sat at the table and served up, 'have you got anything to tell me?'
I rolled my eyes impatiently and snapped, 'No.' Then I swallowed a piece of orange play dough, which made me retch.
Mum's eyes went all soft and misty. 'Clementine, darling,' she said gently, 'a mother knows these things. When are you due?'
Mothers. We don't know a thing.

The plot thickens

There are other things going on, like Mum breaking her leg and Toby spiking a temperature of 40.2 and Ocado forgetting to bring me onions. But I can't stop thinking about the fact that someone who stayed in this house over Christmas is pregnant. More than that, they're pregnant and haven't told me.
I've tried to work it out a la Sherlock Holmes, but I can't get any further than that the person is question is A) female and B) someone I know, which isn't very helpful. If pregnancy tests gave any useful information, like whether the baby's going to be tall, or have red hair, or is wanted or unwanted, I'd have more clues to go on.
I have a very strict code of conduct about such things. If someone hasn't told me something, it means they don't want me to know it, and so I don't pry. When presented with some item of gossip, I smile sweetly and say, 'That's not something I know anything about.'
I'm not wildly popular at the school gate.
The thing is that there's some satisfaction in smiling sweetly and declining to participate in salacious gossip. And I usually get to hear it anyway, so I get the gossip without the guilt. But believe you me, there is no satisfaction whatsoever in knowing something so incredibly significant and being utterly unable to share it with anyone.
And if the person in question is indeed female and known to me, why haven't they told me?
I'm going to drive myself mad.
Correction. I'm going to drive myself madder.
Think, Clementine, think. Where's Doctor Watson when you need him?

Housework and other revelations

Stephen went to work today. I got up at half past six to make him scrambled eggs on toast, even though Toby and Beatrice were still asleep. I don't think he even noticed I was there. He had his head buried in a pile of papers and his right hand glued to his BlackBerry. Men don't grow up, it's just that the nature of the papers and the item glued to the right hand that change. Toby's going to be the same. The other day, I asked him if he needed to go to the toilet and he replied airily, 'No, Mummy, I'm just playing with my willy.' He's only three. There is no hope.
Anyway, Mum came round for lunch. And that meant that, for the first time since Christmas Eve, I had a chance to do some unencumbered housework. First, I walked around tidying up. Two hours later, having put away nothing that was actually mine, I hoovered and dusted, and then, feeling virtuous, I tackled the bathroom. And as I was coming downstairs, dreaming of having a cleaner in the way my friend Sarah dreams about handbags (except my friend Sarah actually buys the handbags), the contents of the bathroom bin escaped through a split in the bin liner and cascaded down the stairs.
First I went to the kitchen, fetched a new bag and put the kettle on. Then I returned to the stairs to harvest the debris. Cotton wool pads smeared with expensive-smelling lotions (Sarah). A collection of receipts and old Post-It notes (Beth, who always uses a stay at our to sort out her purse). Several strings of dental floss (Ruby, who's obsessed with dental hygiene). Hundreds of scrumpled tissues (Queen Victoria's had a cold and believes that one should only blow one's nose in the bathroom). And a pregnancy test.
A used pregnancy test.
A pregnancy test with a blue cross in the window.
I took it all out to the bin and then made some tea.
'Anything wrong?' Mum asked.
'I don't know,' I said. And it's true. Something's either very right or very wrong. Pregnancy tests are like that. The thing is, very right or very wrong for whom?

Happy New Year

Obviously it was a really good idea to go out last night, it being New Year and everything. It all seemed perfect. Mum offered to babysit; I tried on my favourite dress and found that it fitted; the restaurant had a cancellation. We even managed to stay awake beyond midnight (out of choice, you understand, rather than in thrall to the domestic tyrants). We stumbled home at half past one and spent half an hour congratulating ourselves on not allowing having small children to affect our ability to party before we collapsed mid-sentence.
What we forgot to do was to programme Toby and Beatrice to stay asleep until ten or eleven o'clock this morning. Consequently I was back in the family room at half past six with a thumping headache and two merry babies who deserved better, furiously typing comments about Stephen that would probably have meant the end of our marriage had I actually posted them. I'd like to think that my failure to post was due to my generosity of spirit and great maturity.
I'd really like to think that. And so, in the spirit of my suddenly formed New Year's Resolution to treat myself as I would like others to treat me, I will think it. I am so generous of spirit that I won't mention that Stephen is still in bed now. It's a quarter to three. We're expecting friends of his to tea in fifteen minutes. I am so mature that I would get no satisfaction whatsoever from sharing with you that I have had to entertain and feed the babies entirely alone all day, that Queen Victoria (Stephen's mother) rang and had to be conversed with and that Stephen is a selfish, presumptuous slug-a-bed with no more consideration for his hungover wife than a weasel. Happy New Year.