I’m at my office computer, glued to the very same screen I’m glued to now.  He has come skipping in to talk about Water Day at his school. He’s got his swim shorts and UV-protective shirt on. He’s jazzed about messing about with hoses and buckets and mud, and he wants to share it.

I, on the other hand, barely glance in his direction and just utter “Uh-huh”, “Mmm” and a mock-excited “I know!”

Then his head falls into his hands and he says it: “You’re no fun, even on water day.”

I stop, take him onto my lap, kiss him and tell him: “You’re right. I have to work on that, don’t I?”

I love my work. I feel privileged to be able to do what I do. Journalism and P.R. feed my creative, curious, people-loving, personality perfectly. But sometimes I love it too much. I was brought up in a household with high work standards and strong work ethics. My brother and I had part-time jobs from our mid teens. We picked fruit for extra pocket money (so did our parents) from an early age. I am grateful for that. Hard graft is a beautiful thing, and I want my kids to think the same. But it’s a double-edged sword when you don’t know when to stop. A therapist told me I treat myself like a factory. She may be right.

Now, thanks to my iPhone, I find it hard to escape work. I am ‘on’ 24/7. I can check emails and update the four (yeh, count ‘em) Facebook pages I am in charge of any time I want. I can think of a feature idea and go to Google to start researching it that very second. Smart phones prompted a conversation last night among a few of us mothers. We shared tips on how to separate work from home, how to take time answering an email or text message from your boss without them thinking you were a slacker. Because if you offer yourself 24/7, like I do, then that’s what’s expected of you.

Changes are afoot for me. I am working my notice at a job I still love and adore. I truly am ambivalent about leaving. But between that and the increasing success of 3 Story Magazine, other freelance commitments and a house to run, something had to give. It seemed that I turned around and suddenly Sweetpea was almost a teenager, and Munchkin was about to wrap up kindergarten, and where did that time go? Once, I asked my Gran Drummond what was her biggest regret. The last few years of her life, we exchanged long, ruminating letters, mostly consisting of me asking for her memories and advice. This was a woman with a brilliant brain, who ran a business, was comfortable financially, owned some gorgeous properties in her lifetime, and traveled. What did she regret? “That I didn’t spend more time with my children.” Work can be wonderful, she said, but you mustn’t let it take over.

That’s hard for me, seeing as work is a huge part of my identity. But I’d rather be remembered as the mum who made her little boy giggle and danced with her daughter, than the mum glued to her phone.

It seemed fitting that I resurrect the blog (neglected for several months now) on Mother’s Day. I had high hopes. I would catch readers up on the kiddos turning six and 12 (yikes!), me making a job switch, Hubby’s new employment, and hopefully without much drama or swearing.

Heck, there might even be glimmers of domestic bliss! I could throw in some cute anecdotes about my kids, talk about what a great Sunday brunch my Hubby does, share the note Sweetpea wrote me.

Maybe the whole theme of my blog could start shifting, away from four-letter-word-ness and more towards Gwyneth-at-home-style Mother Earth-ness.

But really, who was I kidding?

The day started well. The famiglia let me stay in bed till 8.30, and I woke to Sweetpea bearing a tray with a mug of my fave Earl Grey, a tall vase of flowers, and the Sunday New York Times. Perfect! Then she placed it on my chest (why, oh why?) and the vase and tea toppled.

No worries though. We laughed it off, and got ready for a long dog walk. We pretended we lived in a copy of Parenting magazine or a commercial for life insurance, acting out a scene where Hubby and Munchkin test-drove a new go-kart down the hill in the park. (Yes, he may not have filed his taxes, but my man made time to create a go-kart from scratch. But that’s another blog entry.)

Sweetpea tolerated the outing, but I could tell by the scowl on her face and the iPod plugged into her ears that she was really wanting to scream, “OMG, this is, like, soooo lame!”

Croissants, scrambled eggs and salmon, more tea, and orange juice awaited back home (take that, Gwyneth! yeh, we went carb crazy). And then this:

Me: “Can I have the big mug [of tea] please?”

Him: “No, get a big mug yourself.”

Kids: “ Mom, I need a fork. Mom, cut this croissant in half. We want frozen yogurt!”

Me: “Did I get it wrong, or is it in fact Mother’s Day?”

Then came the text from M, mother of Munchkin’s friend: “Happy Mother’s Day! Need to tell you guys, J has lice!! Check your little guys’ heads just to be on the safe side.”

We did, and there they were: the nits. And Hubby and I went into overdrive. Flashlight out, nit comb ready, bedding being pulled off the beds before Munchkin could utter, “Hey I haven’t finished my croissant yet.”

And with that, dear readers, Mother’s Day was over. It turned from almost-an-insurance-commercial, with a few fights among the actors behind the scenes, into mega laundry day, spraying-of-mattresses-and-pillows-with-lice-control-solution day, smothering-of-Munchkin’s-head-with-tea-tree-oil-and-olive-oil day (it works, I swear.)

We did it calmly, however. There was no panic. There was no swearing. We’ve been through the lice thing before, remember?

OK, I lied a bit. I am swearing inside my head. A lot. Because, in truth, I’m feeling sorry for myself. Can I please have a Mother’s Day do-over?

They were horrible today, my kids. It was as if they’d planned it.

Her: “Tell you what, I’ll be the evil one in the morning, and you be Lucifer tonight, OK?”

Him: “Yeah, and really wind her up, yeah?”

Her: “Yeah! Till she really shouts at the top of her voice. Till she shouts so hard it’s funny.”

Both: “Mwah-ha-ha!!!”

I gently awoke Sweetpea with a tousle of her curls and a quiet “Hey honey, you’re running late. Into the shower with you, come on!”

The eyes opened, the horns came out, and she was Evil Teenager (only a year to go, but who’s counting? She’s there already in mood and disposition.)

“I had a shower yesterday!” she bellowed.

“Yes, but a shower every day is good, now that you’re in middle school and everything…”

“I don’t have TIME!!!!!!” Screeching now, and horns growing. “I need to go to student hours and I’m late already!!!!!!”

Student hours is extra tuition time. This is the first Hubby and I have heard that she wants to attend today’s student hours, which begins a whole hour before school starts.

“OK, I’m not liking the fact that the first thing that comes out of your mouth is screaming and arguing. Get in the shower now. It will take you five minutes.”

She gets in the shower. I stand in front of the bathroom mirror drying my hair. I hear a noise that I believe is her practicing the high notes in her latest musical production. But then I realize it’s crying.

“Are you OK?” I ask.

“I’m going to fail my TEST!!! And it’s all YOUR fault!”

“OK, wait. What test? Why is it my fault? And why didn’t you tell us you had a test last night when you were sitting playing with your iPod until 10pm?”

“I forgot to bring home my stuff to REVISE!! That’s why I need to go to student hours!!!!!!! Waaaaaaaaaah.”

Hurray for me that I ‘had to’ leave home early today for a 7.30 am meeting. So I happily handed the situation over to Hubby and went.

Nine hours later I’m picking her up and she comes skipping out, grinning, pecks me on the cheek as she gets in the car, with a “Hi mom!”

“Well aren’t you in a much better mood than when I left you,” I say.

“Oh that. It was just cos it was the morning. I’m fine.” As was the history test, as it happens.

Then we’re home and I’m taking both kids for a bike ride and it’s Munchkin’s turn to turn psycho. First he says he wished he’d worn gloves. Then he says his legs hurt. Then he says his tummy aches. Meanwhile he is going so slow, and I am going so slow because of him, I’d be better off rearranging the cushions on my sofa, for all the exercise I’m getting. Sweetpea is racing ahead (psychotically), shouting behind her: “I have two New Years resolutions. One is to tidy up after myself, the other is to be athletic!”

Munchkin, by contrast, has a face that’s pouting, and tears are stream down it.

I periodically stop and wait for him to catch up. He’s laying it on thick. “I swear my tummy is so sore I’m going to throw up!”

“Go on then,” I say, arms folded. “Go and throw up in that ditch over there. I can wait.”

A woman walks past with her dog and looks at me hatefully like I’m mother-from-hell. No love, I want to tell her. It’s the child that’s from hell.

It is tortuous, excruciating, the worse bike ride ever. (And now I sound like my Luciferous kids). But seriously, it takes us about an hour when we could have done it in half of that. By the time we are on the home stretch, I pedal ahead of Munchkin then stop at our driveway, watching him (a couple of hundred yards away) slowly, as slowly as he possibly can without just falling over because the wheels aren’t moving, making his way along the road.

A card draws up beside him. Great, I think. And now a child molester. Just what I need. It moves along beside him for a few seconds, then speeds up and approaches me. A woman, who is driving, winds down the window.

“Your little boy is crying,” she says.

“I know. He’s not having a great bike ride,” I say, and smile.

“It’s because you’re so far away from him,” she states.

Great, I think. Not a child molester but a busy-body, and the second woman this hour to look at me like I’m Mommy Dearest.

“Actually no, it’s not that. I’m keeping an eye on him. And we live right here. But thank you for your concern,” I say, with a fake smile, one that’s really saying F*** you and mind your own business, lady.

She drives off, Munchkin rides up. He throws himself on the ground, gripping his belly. He and Sweetpea have clearly been sharing acting tips as well as tips on how to be devil children.

“Right then! Best get you inside and sit you on the sofa with a bowl. Then it’s pyjamas and bed for you.”

Within ten seconds of sitting down on the living room sofa, the TV now on, he has made a swift recovery. I storm out the door with the dog, needing no-kid time. Blessed dogs, I think. They’re far less trouble.

And then, as I am writing the paragraph before last, The Mutt trots up to my Persian rug, one of the most expensive items we own, and pees on it. I swear to God. It was as if he’d read this blog entry and thought ‘You can’t end it there! I’ll give you a much better ending. Here!’

So now there are three: two psycho kids and a dog. Anyone want to swap lives?

At the age of 45 and a half, I still feel like I’m 16 a lot of the time (and about 12 when I’m with my parents). There are days when I congratulate myself for driving a car in a straight line, or keeping my two children alive without giving them scurvy, or avoiding leaving them at the Post Office because I’ve forgotten they exist.

Which, given their propensity for electronics, is more than likely. They have descended into silence and clicking a lot of the time, their faces lit-up by the glow of, in Sweetpea’s case, a new iPod 5 and, in Munchkin’s case, Sweetpea’s old iPod.

And I have turned into my dad, who used to periodically shout at us to “switch that thing off!” (that thing being the TV) and demand conversation, causing me and my older brother to sneer and say ‘Yeah riiigggght’ under our breaths.

This year Sweetpea will turn 12. She might as well be in her teens already. Hormones are turning her into quite the moody, stomping, huffing and puffing little lady. I find it quite fascinating and more than a little entertaining, which makes her stomp, huff and puff all the more.

And then the huffing and puffing reaches whole new levels when Mummy embarrasses herself, such as last night when I and friend W did a bumping-and-grinding dance to Pulp in the front room, whilst Munchkin and his friend filmed it on my iPhone. See, told you I was too young to be 45 and a half.

I don’t have any New Year’s resolutions as such, which I am considering a healthy sign. Of course it would be nice to shed that extra ten pounds and practice yoga every day. But I’m getting to the stage of just wanting to be healthy, and of being grateful that I’m here. Just before Christmas an old classmate from primary school was found dead in her home, a sudden death that’s still shocking to think about. So I’m here, and happy, and am seizing the proverbial day rather than knocking myself out about being model-thin whilst doing it.

I have no idea what 2013 will bring. How can I when this time last year I didn’t even know I was going to start a new magazine? Life races by these days in happy, and sometimes stressful, fits and starts. Technology is behind us, propelling us forward, making us ever-busier and opening up amazing opportunities. But it makes everything so fast-changing it’s also much more uncertain. This is a world where a job, a career, a marriage, a home can change in the blink of an eye. And sometimes it would be nice to just stop… don’t you think?

It’s telling that my favorite times from the festive period were:

1. Sitting on my bum for two hours and 20 minutes listening to a comedienne and laughing my a*** off. Her name was Paula Poundstone. She entertained me and hundreds more in the glorious old Fox Theatre in Tucson, and she totally screwed up my New Year’s Eve eye make-up.

2. Sledding down the side of a snowy hill. iPhones couldn’t touch the moment, quite literally. I tried to catch us all hurtling down, but we were too fast. Ha! Take that, technology.

3. Watching my first episode ever of Downton Abbey. I know, I’m a little late to the game. But I’m glad I finally checked it out. Hubby and I made up a tray of tea and shortbread, ensconced ourselves on the sofa (kids gone to respective friends’ houses – hurray!) and tumbled headfirst into England, 1912, where much of the discussion surrounded electricity. (“Her ladyship wants to get it in the kitchen. Why on earth would you need it?”)

And all over the house

Not a creature was stirring

Except for me, who was screaming, “****!!!!!”

I had committed the ultimate motherly sin and forgotten to buy my own son a birthday present.

Screeeeeccccch! That’s the sound of the rewind button. Because I really have to explain myself.

First off, let me point out that Munchkin’s birthday comes but three days after Christmas. Not enough of an excuse to forget to buy him a prez, but still, have sympathy for me. It ain’t easy, in the fog that is a family Christmas, to be super-organized.

Second, let me say that I bear the burden of buying Christmas presents and birthday presents for my kids on behalf of my parents and my grandmother, who put money in my bank account (and very kind that is, thank you) then ask me to do the shopping.

Consequently, because of aforementioned fog and that extra shopping, there are lists. And more lists. And updated lists. And scrawled-out bits and notes on the side. It’s quite a mess, but it’s needed. I learned to make the lists on Munchkin’s first birthday, that I could not function without allocating presents and checking them off when bought. Because here is what I buy every year:

a Santa present for Munchkin

a Santa present for Sweetpea

a mum and dad Christmas present for Munchkin

a mum and dad Christmas present for Sweetpea

a Gran and Grandad Christmas present for Munchkin

a Gran and Grandad Christmas present for Sweetpea

a Great-Gran Christmas present for Munchkin

a Great-Gran Christmas present for Sweetpea

a mum and dad birthday present for Munchkin

a Gran and Grandad birthday present for Munchkin

a Great-Gran birthday present for Munchkin

That’s eleven presents to buy and keep track of, eleven presents to wrap, eleven presents to label, eleven presents to hide. It drives me nuts. Which is why it came to be the evening before Munchkin’s birthday and I realized, to my tearful and hand-wringing horror, that I had failed to put the ‘mum and dad birthday present for Munchkin’ on the list. We had nothing.

I checked my watch: 4.45pm. Hubby and the kids were on their way back from somewhere. He had taken them out to get them out of my hair whilst I tried to work. I realized there was always Target along the road, open till 9 or even later, and that all was not lost. But shopping at Target would break the resolution I had made (and thus far successfully kept) to shop local this year.

So I called Kid’s Center, the best toy shop in the universe, and local, to see when they closed. They told me 5.30pm. Quick call to Hubby: “You have to get back here NOW. I have a crisis.” After a quick pow-wow behind closed doors – kids banished and told to watch some T.V. and for once reluctant to do so, because they knew something was up – we went for the Kid’s Center option.

I floored it, speeded most of the way there, cursed every red light I hit along the way, and arrived, sweating, to a store with four employees, not one other customer, and seventeen minutes to spare. “I need a birthday present for a six-year-old boy!” I cried. “Into science, the human body, cars, trucks, LEGO.” The beauty of Kid’s Center, and indeed any local store, is that you get actual human help, and not just a limp finger pointed in the direction of a toy aisle.

They were marvelous, finding me some cool construction straw thingies with plastic bits that hold them together, that you can make a million shapes out of. And I played the indulgent auntie card because no way was I going to admit the boy was my son.

But then I did. It was their fault. They made me warm to them. I let the cat out of the bag in a confession that was almost tearful. “I can’t believe I forgot. I’m the worst mother ever,” I said. The young lady serving me nodded in pretend empathy and said, “You were thinking of everyone else. That’ s OK.”

“I know!” I wailed. “That’s right! I was!!!” I think they were glad to get me out of there.

On all other fronts, let it be said that I could have won birthday-mother prizes. I could have collected trophies and filled a room with them. I did our traditional thing of taking down the Christmas tree ornaments and turning it into a Birthday Tree, with hanging treasures and goodies, and birthday presents underneath (my friend K, mother of another Dec 28th baby, gets full credit for that idea – thank you K!). And I and Sweetpea made a peppermint cheesecake from scratch. I tidied and prepared, arranged cards and emailed grandparents to make sure they knew what they had ‘given’ him, so that when they called the next day it was all good. I got to bed at 1.30am.

The next day we hit the snow an hour away up a nearby mountain. I bruised my back sledding, but I didn’t care. We only half-made snow angels because the snow was so icy. Munchkin slammed into a kid’s sled and cried, but after two minutes he didn’t care either. The hot chocolate we had was the creamiest, dreamiest ever, and the fudge from the store up the mountain was delish. So was the Mexican food back in Tucson, and the home-made cheesecake.

One day I might tell him I almost forgot. But not now. He adores me (and I him, needless to say). Let it be that way for some time to come. And let me learn a lesson: to be more careful with my lists. Like Santa, to make it and check it not once but twice.

Merry Christmas everyone, and Happy New Year when it comes.

But gosh, how can I? At least I and my children will have a Christmas. The same can’t be said for the 26 victims of the Connecticut shooting. At least my children are tucked up safely in bed, one of them close in age to so many of the kids who were shot dead. He is excited that one of his teeth seems loose, just as one of the little victims at Sandy Hook Elementary was said to be.

We weren’t going to tell Munchkin. What good would it have done? He is 5, going on 6, and doesn’t need to feel scared that a gunman might break into his elementary school. But when I went to pick him up from school on Friday – early for once, so desperate to hold him – the Principal told me they were planning on addressing the shootings at Monday’s school assembly. She advised me to tell him myself over the weekend.

This weekend has been a flurry of messages, texts, emails between parents I know: “Should we tell them? What should we say? Have you told yours yet? With what result?” So yes, I told both of my kids, and the speech wouldn’t have won any prizes from a psychologist, but it was real and it was honest. “There was a bad man… children were hurt… He had a gun. But you do not have to worry. You are safe. This will not happen to you.” And hugs and kisses and squeezing them tight.

A similar thing happened in the small Scottish town my parents used to live in when they first married. A man with a gun broke into a primary school in Dunblane. He killed 16 children, an adult and himself. It was 1996 and I was a journalist in London. Later, I would interview a British TV personality who paid a visit to some of the families. One of the mothers of the deceased was still in shock. After talking to the TV presenter (privately, off-camera), the mother invited her upstairs.

“Do you want to see her?” she said. “She’s up in her room. Come and meet her!” And she proceeded to lead her upstairs, where her daughter’s body was lying, fully clothed, not yet departed for the funeral home. This TV lady is a feisty thing, a tough cookie. Relaying the story to me made her cry hard.

But the Dunblane massacre will go down in British history. It was a tragedy so unthinkable in a country where guns are more or less outlawed*. Here in the USA, there are so many mass shootings (according to the Huff Post, 19 in five years), it’s honestly getting difficult to keep track.

And that, President Barack Obama, Governor Jan Brewer, NRA, Washington politicians, lobby groups, gun businesses… that is a tragedy.

* Gun laws in the U.K. are among the tightest in the world. Ownership (which is usually by hunters, gun club enthusiasts or antique collectors) requires a firearms certificate from the Police, and the rules are strict.  Following the Dunblane massacre, residents in the town formed the Snowdrop Campaign, calling for a ban on handguns. It started with a petition and collection of signatures, and soon became law.

The minute I decided to resurrect it, whatever higher power, force, blogosphere God there is (Blod, perhaps?) looking down on all things blog-like decided that things should take a godawful turn in this house, and thus justify the existence of Home Is A Four Letter Word.

Hubby has a back injury. Not just a pulled muscle or something that needs a packet of frozen peas held up against it but, it turns out, four bulging discs. Ouch. Yeh. Nasty.

After screeching in agony all weekend, he pulled some strings to get himself an MRI scan at a hospital. Funny that you pay hundreds of dollars a month into a private health insurance plan and yet you can’t even get to see your own doctor, isn’t it? So many calls were made to our general doctor and to specialists, and we got stuck in a loop: he couldn’t see a specialist with getting a scan; he couldn’t get a scan without getting a referral from his general physician; the physician wouldn’t see him because she was too busy. Lucky for Hubby that a physician pal could call up a hospital ER department and insist on an appointment. Otherwise, well, I don’t know where we’d be.

So in he goes to ER, whereupon he is given much pain medication. Like, enough to make Keith Richards blush or Lindsay Lohan to widen her eyes in horror. Through the same physician pal, Hubby already had a prescription for codeine. Plus he was taking Benadryl to try to help him sleep. Then in hospital they piled on some Percocet, Valium and morphine. Just the Percocet would have done me fine, thank you. Lucky him. Or so I thought. Despite resembling one whole episode of Breaking Bad, he still didn’t sleep that night.

So this, tonight, is now his third night in hospital.  They might operate, they might not. Meantime Hubby is feeling better. I know he his feeling better because today, when I and the kiddos went to visit, he was sitting in a chair wielding a stick with a grabber thing on the end of it, all the better to boss us about with. He could lift it up and jab the air to make a point. The kids didn’t like it one bit, although Munchkin liked that the end of it was magnetic, and he and Dad’s grabber stick attached themselves to various metal bars around the room.

Hubby is also bored. I know this because he started talking about the various other implements we could consider buying, in addition to the grabber stick thing. There was a whole catalog of medical help-me-I-can’t-move gadgets, sitting there on a table (just far enough out of reach that Hubby could happily demonstrate the grabber stick thing).  The page of the catalog was flipped open to what looked like giant scissors, but double scissors. You put our fingers through two big loops at one end, and very far down on the implement, after a few more loops and crossed bits of metal, there was room for…

Oh God I almost can’t say it. Toilet paper. Yes, really. You bunch up a bit of bog paper, grab it with this scissor thing and wipe your bum. It’s for people who can’t turn around enough to do it normally.

Hubby also wants a seat for a toilet, one that fits on top so he doesn’t have to bend down too much. My Gran has one of them. Which kind of drives home my point. I mean, for God’s sake – are we 80 already? I see my future and I don’t bloody like it. To hell with ‘in sickness and in health’. If I have to wipe my husband’s bottom I’m outta here. Which is, presumably, why this clever catalog exists: as much to save marriages as to preserve bad backs.

Humph, I say. When did Facebook turn into Hallmark greetings cards? Why is it not OK to post what families really do on a Sunday: dads watch Formula One racing for hours, kids get bored, mum shouts and complains that she’s the only one who ever walks the dog, everyone ignores each other, and there is way too much TV watching and too little exercise.

I try. I do. On Thanksgiving Day I rounded up the kids and the dog, declared that we would walk all the way round Reid Park, then regretted it halfway round, when there was no going back. Sweetpea moans if she has to lift a fork that’s too heavy, so her grunts of disapproval were nothing new. But if Munchkin, my little livewire, gets tired, I know I’ve pushed them too far. And my doggie only has tiny legs, so the 3 miles round the park was really a stretch for him.

Bike rides were happening fairly frequently, but then just as frequently came punctures. That’s the trouble with living in the desert: too many prickly things to stab at your tires. We haven’t fixed the latest flats, so that’s that. And my last ride, with Munchkin, was interesting. I was carrying a bottle of wine in one hand, en route to neighbor W’s house for drinkies.

Munchkin looked at me seriously, as he is wont to do. ”How are you going to cycle and carry that at the same time?”

“I thought I could pop it in your water holder,” I said. But, alas, the holder on his titchy bike was too small for the Merlot. “Watch me,” I said, and expertly steered with just one hand. My son is learning a lot from me.

But back to Facebook. It is one huge, glorious distraction, isn’t it? Goodness, people are even getting paid to upkeep other people’s Facebook page. I want that job. But on the other hand, I don’t. How wearing would it be to post upbeat stuff all the time?

No, I’m all about the non-Hallmark moments. We got in the door from our 3-mile walk and Sweetpea declared that she hated me. Maybe I’ll start an anti-perky-and-jolly-family-posts on Facebook trend. “The kids have been watching Cake Boss for three whole hours! How I love my family!!”

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I launched a new magazine with a view to writing more about homes and design, with another view to thus feeding my blog with new material. Instead I get sucked in so much to the mag (which I luuuurve – and you will too if you haven’t yet sampled it) that I totally ignore the blog.

Harrumph. What to do?

The blog, I feel, needs to turn a bit of a corner anyway. The way I see it, if I’m bored of it, you, dear readers, must be too. There’s only so much of my moaning about being crap at DIY and having a Hubby who won’t lift a finger and running a home that’s far from organized that I/you can take, right?

So it may be time for a hiatus, or a change. Bear with me while I try to work out exactly what direction to go in. And  thanks for sticking with it for, gulp three whole years!

Gillian x

I’ve known some of them for a couple of years now, purely through preschools and now school, but never really chatted… you know?

I swear not a drop of alcohol was consumed, but we might as well have slung back several martinis, because before long, as we got all got comfortable, tongues loosened. Until it felt like we were in some AA meeting.

“I’m a yeller,” said one.

“I drink a lot,” said another.

“I’m much nicer around him when he has a play date,” said another.

“”My kids actually tell me they want play dates just so I’ll be pleasant to them.” (That was me.)

Out they tumbled, the tales of slacker mom-hood. And it was glorious and hilarious and bonding. I found and somewhat embraced my slacker mom  self a long time ago. And I welcome any new people into the fold. It’s really quite liberating. I encourage it. You get to not only laugh at yourself and many of the eager-beaver mothers around you, but you get to do outrageous things and you just blame it on…. being a slacker mom.

But even my slacker mom self has standards. I don’t ‘do’ fast food, no matter how late or disorganized I am. My children know this. They plead with me nevertheless, but I never give in. Not until last Friday morning. I’d been busy busy all week with the not-so-very-light task of launching a magazine (you can read it at www.3storymagazine.com) and all things had gone to the wayside. Laundry was piled up, the fridge was almost empty, and I hadn’t felt sleep deprivation like it since having Munchkin. I’d awoken on Friday morning all woozy – kind of drunk, actually – because of my mere five hours in the sack. Time was running away with us until suddenly we had to leave for the school drop-off and Munchkin had had no breakfast.

“Why don’t we drive through McDonald’s?” I said casually in the car.

Silence. Sweetpea was pissed off, and rightfully so, as she’d had her breakfast and felt shafted. Munchkin just stared at me then croaked, “OK”, not believing his luck  but somehow sensing something wasn’t right.

He thought and thought. Even though this was a good thing – he was going to get to eat crappy fast food – it bothered him. His brain zapped and short-circuited. This was not how his mummy, how his world, was supposed to be. He needed his parameters again. So in the absence of me setting them, he would set them himself.

“But why do we need fast food?” he finally asked.

“Because we need food, and fast,” I explained. But years (since birth) of me telling him how rubbish it was had scarred him. In a good way, as it turned out. I have to admit I felt a certain amount of pride when he suggested Starbucks instead.

And yeah, I admit that Starbucks’ egg and sausage sandwich is probably just as nutritionally sad as McDonald’s Egg McMuffin or whatever the hell they serve nowadays. So I’m a snob. I admit it.

And then later, much later, whilst imbibing with my friends (it’s become a ritual: neighbors and pals piling round to ours on a Friday night for food and serious drinking), something hilarious happened.

God bless my pal R for being a fellow Brit because I don’t think I could have done this with anyone else. She has a baby and the babe finally got off to sleep. Not wanting to deposit him at the other end of the house where we wouldn’t be able to hear him because of the loudness of Scooby Doo right next door, she looked around the kitchen/adjoining office for a suitable spot.

“There’s always….” I started, and she caught my eye and we both stared at it. The dog’s bed. It’s got a fake sheepskin lining and it’s the right size. Our Mutt probably weighs exactly the same as her baby.

R shrugged. “Why not?”

We pulled a blanket off the sofa (to make us both feel slightly better about it, I suppose) and there he lay, arms splayed upwards and outwards, little T-shirt up to his chest and cute pudgy belly on show. The Mutt didn’t seem too happy. At one point we feared he’d lifted his leg against the baby. But it turned out he was just sniffing around. And even if he had have peed, I’m sure R wouldn’t have cared one bit.

Yay! Slacker moms rejoice! Dog beds for babies! McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch and tea! OK, maybe no on that last one, because I really couldn’t bring myself to. But anyway, long live the slacker moms. God knows we need each other in this world of mothers being waaaaay too hard on themselves.