Sausages! Or Why I Can't Write Blog Posts Anymore

Writing these blog posts has got much more difficult of late. 

Less is funny and more is stressful as they each get older. Eddie will reach double figures later this year, Gilby will start secondary school and Gertie is twelve, going on twenty-five. Hormones mean more-moans, and nothing much seems very amusing. Their problems are more complicated these days. Tantrums aren't cute, they are ugly; and I wouldn't want to write about them. 

Successes sound boastful or smug: both boys scored hat tricks for their football teams in successive weekends; Gertie came fifth at the World Irish dancing championships.

And even the stuff that is funny - Eddie has developed a habit of including the word 'sausages' in every sentence - is difficult to convey. (It is both an insult and a compliment, as in, "You left the door wide open, you sausage, " and "He scored a sausage goal!")

So, for posterity, here's an account of yesterday's not untypical Saturday.

Morning:

Eddie played a very ordinary game of football, and didn't really distinguish himself on the pitch. (That's 'ordinary' in the Australian sense of the adjective.')

Gilby's game was off so he stayed home and watched the F1 on YouTube.

Gertie had a lie in.

Afternoon:

Eddie went to a Flip Out Party, didn't end up in casualty, and got dropped home by another mum so I didn't have to endure the two-hour hell of it.

Gilby went cycling with his mates, then for a swim. (If football's off then there cannot be enough sport in the day, no matter what he does.)

Gertie tidied her room and then went to the gym. The unprompted room-tidying thing is a recent and welcome development - she has gone from living in filth to living in immaculate spotlessness - all seemingly prompted by the addition of a couple of fluffy cushions and a fur throw for Christmas. They appear to have turned her from Stig of the Dump into Marie Kondo. I'm not complaining.

And that's it, really.

Ah. I think I have it. I can see why material doesn't present itself. They aren't with me for the good bits - they are each off, doing their thing. 

And I'm only left with feeding them, doing the laundry, being the metaphorical punch-bag for anything that isn't quite right with their world, and hurrying them out of the door for school. Sausages!

Currently reading: When the adults change, everything changes by Paul Dix