If you're gonna rise, you better shine!

Mornings definitely pose the biggest challenge in my day. I love mornings, I’m a morning person…but that all changed when I became a wife and mother. I still love mornings, but every day it gets ruined by my dear loved ones.

Trying to get everybody to rise and shine is always the first battle. A battle I loose every day. The only person in the house whom I get cooperation from, is the most unlikely candidate: our 17 year old son. Yes, a teenager that gets himself going in the mornings all by himself; There is hope. The only interaction I have with him is a quick “bye mom” and “please open the gate”. He walks to school.

At this point I have turned off both my husband and daughter’s alarm, which has no effect on their sleeping carcasses anyway. I can understand a six year old turning over and pulling the duvet over her head, but a grown man! I have to keep the warnings and threats at a low decibel to prevent waking the 4 year old. He only gets woken 5 minutes before he leaves for school…to give the rest of us a running start and get a full face of make up on, at least half a cup of cold coffee down the hatch and pack the school lunches.

Speaking of school lunches, every year I buy woman’s magazines giving hints and tips on getting creative with your kids lunch. Every year I try these exciting ideas only to revert back to the same peanut butter on white for her and marmite on brown for him. How can a person eat the same lunch every day of his or her life? Getting creative is clearly a waste of my precious time.

We will skip through breakfast; I’ve covered that in one of my earlier blogs. Now it’s almost time to go, lunches are packed, tummies are semi-full, hair is brushed and faces clean. It takes a little coaxing to get everybody out to the car, especially the little one. He just wants to crawl back into mom’s womb and stay there forever. But with the necessary bribe of chocolate or marshmallow they are all in the car ready to go, at which point Dad gets out of the loo to go and shave…

I’m a morning person with an afternoon family!

I'll have a coke!

Today, one year ago, I got drunk for the last time. I always knew I didn’t handle liquor well and even went as far as admitting that I had a problem. But being an alcoholic...no, never. I quit drinking during my pregnancies, something I thought alcoholics couldn’t do. I didn’t hide flask of booze in my underwear drawers or underneath the car seat. I drank wine for goodness sake.

When a clinical psychologist explained to me what it really meant to be an alcoholic and what the implications were on my health and life, the penny dropped. It dropped like a 5 ton anvil and I realised that I can never have a drink again.

I live in a mediteranian climate province where growing vineyards is what makes the industry famous. Making and drinking wine are what people do in this beautiful part of my country. Having a glass of wine in a restaurant or tasting room at 11 in the morning never raised an eyebrow and were in fact encouraged. Having a cold class of sauvignon blanc after a crazy day with the kids helped take off the edge and put me in a better frame of mind to receive my husband after his long day at work. Giving advice to a girlfriend that experience a tough day, always includes having another glass of wine, or what the hell, crack open another bottle. You see, being an alcoholic and wine being your weapon of self destruction, it’s so easy to move underneath the radar.

Alcohol didn’t almost destroy my marriage, I did. I refused to look at my addiction to wine as more than a slight problem that needed a firm hand to control it every now and then. My husband’s threats and warnings were brushed aside and filed under: The things he can’t accept about me. Being labelled saved me from drinking. Being named an alcoholic, going to a rehab centre for counselling and recognizing my susceptibility to alcoholism, made me finally realise that this is more than a control problem. I could never drink again. I was shocked and sad. I loved wine, I loved the wine culture, I loved the whole experience.

My father’s family were cursed with alcoholism and I suppose on looking back, I could not remember a day passing where my dad didn’t have a beer or six. My mother’s family was cursed with depression and it seems like this combination of genes that came together to produce me…well, lets just say I didn’t have a fighting chance in hell. Genetically predisposed is what we call it. So along with your mom’s eyes and your dad’s nose you can get your grandfathers urge to hit the bottle.

Like I said, it’s a year of sobriety and life’s challenges are still there, only difference is; now I can face them head on with a clear mind. Last night my husband thanked me in the car on our way home from a friend’s party. He thanked me for our three children and for my sobriety. Your life does not belong to you to fuck up; your life belongs to your family. They own you; they own a right to have a good mother and a good wife. Let’s go have a coffee.

Do you wanna play poker?

Unless your kid is dying of leukaemia or something similar, I will beat you at this hand. Today’s blog is angry and dark and if you were hoping for funny…go look for Robin Williams…funny will not be posted here today. My two boys are on the Autistic Spectrum Disorder and I'm pissed off.

We were at a friend’s house last night for dinner. The mother of the house has two kids, an eight month old baby girl and a 5 year old boy. The eight month old had supper, a bath and went to bed without a peep. The other kids (Momzilla’s 3) were playing and making a huge racquet, none of which had any effect on the sleeping little angel. Were do you get those? Those quiet, sweet little angels which grow up on autopilot, which eats well, sleeps well and grows up well?

By now my three kids are old enough for the monster in me to only surface maybe twice a year, usually during a holiday when everybody’s just plain sick of being in the same house together all the time. But Momzilla runs this house, you are lucky if you see Sweetmom twice a year. I really despise Momzilla and the mere fact that she exists makes me upset. I tried drowning her for many years, but that never really worked. It was like fuel and just made her stronger and fiercer. I often wonder how my children will remember their childhood. Will they suppress the nasty screeching mother and remember the fun mom that played with them, made stuff with them or just loved them. Or would Momzilla scar them forever?

I spend 30 minutes with the TV remote this morning trying to figure out what my 4 year old son wants to watch. I went through 6 categories with 5 sub categories and about 60 programmes or movies in each sub category…TWICE. His response either being a crying “no” or just a crying.  My 4 year old can’t really speak.

I love my children, if I didn’t I would of left long ago. I’m just not sure if I love their mother.

Don't call me MOM!

I woke up this morning not wanting to be anybody’s mother. I have 3 children, two boys and a girl. After the third request to please get up and get dressed for school, my 6 year old daughter finally responded to Momzilla. (The ranting bitch that threatens in a low, slow voice, pronouncing each syllable of each word as if speaking to a foreign tourist).

The doorbell rang announcing the arrival of our domestic worker, my 4 year old streaked naked through the house to meet her at the gate, in his birthday suit of course.

Now it’s breakfast time. Luckily I had a left over Mc D’s cheeseburger in the fridge which my daughter was elated to have for breakfast. My son is another matter entirely. For one whole year he will eat the same breakfast cereal every day, and then without warning one morning he will turn on his favourite breakfast. No amount of pleading, bribery or even threatening will convince him to have a bite. Then the fun starts…suggesting every imaginable breakfast food until….BINGO….yes, he wants bacon.

At this point my dear supportive husband comes in to remind me to relax and calm down. I can actually hear the horn and alarm bells going off. (The ones in the loony Tunes cartoons.) Momzilla replies that she doesn’t need his advice of support; she needs him to feed the kid. End of conversation.

Why is it that my kids want me to have all the answers, fix everything, drop everything to help them with projects and finding stuff…and still think Dad is the clever one? My husband is a night owl and usually comes to bed much later than me. My 17 year old walked past the TV room where dad was watching a show…AWAKE… to wake me ASLEEP…to catch a mole in his room. Yes we have moles in the house…with four nifty cats you would too have moles in the house too…but that’s a whole other story. The point is, he had a problem, which at 17 I think he is quite capable of solving himself, and immediately comes to mom asking for assistance. INSANE.

Today I want to be a young air-hostess flying across the world, sleeping with hot Italian strangers and having cocktails on a beach. Today I don’t want to be anybody’s mother.

Tick tock

People always tell me that my life is almost surreal and I often wonder if that isn't a polite way of saying : you must be making that up! Well here it is...finally I can tell you about my incredible world, filled with ordinary stuff that morph into weird and wonderful events. So stay tuned and watch this space!