More ways to tell you have been married too long

Recently, I offered you an idiot's guide to assessing your marriage here. Since writing that, I have suffered excessively in the name of marriage research and come up with yet more, incontrovertible proof that I have been married far too long.

Like many people, I am not great in the mornings.  I like to haul myself out of bed and shuffle around doing the shower/hair/tea thing solo and in silence. After a hefty dose of caffeine, I may be able to manage a few words, but not before.

The Shah, by sorry contrast, is irritatingly cheerful at any ungodly hour.  He thinks it's a huge wheeze to stand in front of the mirror, blocking my view whilst I am trying to dry my hair and avoid the Lion King look, pulling faces and leaping about like a loon.  It drives me to the borders of insanity and beyond.

He also talks.  I don't do talking until I get to work, by which time I might have just about woken up and I certainly don't want to discuss the ins and outs of high finance then or ever, to be honest.

Clearly, this perturbs the Shah and, of late, he has gone to ever more extreme lengths to get my attention in the mornings.  This week, he re-enacted something he had found on YouTube.

Chums - imagine the full, pouting horror of having this dancing around your bed at 6.30 in the morning:- 

WARNING - THIS IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART OR THE WEAK OF STOMACH!

Kill me now ....

Texts and Rugs and Cinnamon Rolls

Gosh chums - where has the summer gone?  Not having been away (saving ourselves for a big holiday in October) I seem to have had very little R 'n R and a great deal of driving miles and miles and doing things for others and not much for myself.  There's been lots going on - we celebrated son's graduation with a very creditable 2:1 and his new job which he will start at the end of this month.  My mum turned 90. NINETY!  Amazing - especially considering some of her lifestyle choices. Ahem.

I have had a birthday (although not a significant one) and daughter has turned feral and has hardly been seen.  I wrote about her Ayia Napa activities here, following which she was home for a week before taking off again - back to Greece for a spot of island hopping with her two best friends. Nice to be rich, huh?  She got back at midnight the day before her A level results came out.  Having heard all about the holiday, we got to sleep at 2am and I was woken by her jumping on my bed at 7.30 shrieking "I got in! I got in!"  so, although we had no idea of her grades at that point, we knew that her first choice Uni had pushed the 'yes' button and she is onto her chosen Journalism course. Of course we're thrilled for her.  And for ourselves.  There's no doubt that we will miss her madly but, to be frank dear reader, if she stayed at home, one of us would die.  And anyone else who has lived with a teenage girl will know what I mean by that!

Which leads me on to the topic of this post.  Ah yes - a visit to Ikea was deemed necessary to stock her up with requisites for the great departure in a couple of weeks' time.  Naturally, she had been out the night before and was a wraith at 10am when I woke her.  It took almost 2 hours to get her out of the house, via some "like, really urgent" phone calls to a friend and friend's mother which involved a degree of arse covering on behalf of the friend and which I chose not to ask too closely about.

We live roughly half way between two branches of the Swedish superstore so we had the enviable choice of driving to the shithole that is Wembley or the shithole that is Croydon.  Whoop, whoop.  Several hours of crawling round motorways, dual carriageways and gyratory systems later, we landed up in the gorgeous environs of Wembley. Famous for its stadium and, er, its stadium.

Naturally, Ikea was mobbed - mainly by stressed-looking women and bored-looking 18 year olds whose answer to every question was the same.

Mother: Will you need cups and plates or are they provided?
Teen: Dunno
Mother:  Shall we get some of these towels?
Teen: Dunno
Mother:  Would you like one of those nice rugs?
Teen: Dunno
and on and on and on.  My own child seemed to have mastered the art of shopping with one hand whilst texting non stop with the other, pausing only to complain that "there is like NO signal down here".

I'm certain they pump something into the air in Ikea stores.  Why else would I ALWAYS find myself unable to resist about fifty quids' worth of tat?  Why do I trot round the Marketplace grabbing fistfuls of paper napkins, yet more glasses, mugs, kitchen knives, plants, and CANDLES, sodding stinking CANDLES that I could well do without?  It drives the Shah insane and I can understand why.

Yesterday, I exited £183 lighter.  A hundred and eighty three quid! FFS! And that was spent on what?  Well, it was spent on this:-

Doesn't look like much but doesn't everyone need two sets of fairy lights and a butterfly picture?

In the queue to pay, we got chatting to another lady whose daughter crossly accused her mother of not loving her as much as I love my girl on the grounds that I had bought so much more stuff.  I glumly suggested that she should take lessons in mother-conning from my daughter and the pair of them sniggered complicitly.

To add final insult to injury, it seems that Ikea no longer sells packets of cinnamon rolls, beloved of both children for years.  It's all the excuse I need not to go back for a very long time....

Stuff my mum says...

My mum is very elderly now and, although her memory is failing, she is still as sharp as a tack in other respects.  Never try and get the better of her where money is concerned!

However, one thing that has always mystified her is technology of any sort.  Take her to an ATM and she talks herself through the whole experience, including bellowing her PIN number out loud and is then inclined to turn to the crowd patiently queuing behind us to let them know exactly why she has chosen that chain of numbers and why they are so memorable and throwing in information about her current account balance for good measure (true story). 

Try and answer a question such as "so what exactly IS the internet?" in words comprehensible to someone who has absolutely no concept of what a computer can do.  Equally tricky is "so what is a website?"  I tried explaining the internet as a giant encyclopaedia - it was the nearest analogy I could come up with at short notice but it kind of fell down when she asked how you could use an encyclopaedia to do your shopping. (I told you she was sharp).

Along with venerable age and a failing memory comes the disappearance of social filters.  She speaks as she finds.  Always. Loudly.  She has finally accepted that she has to go round the supermarket in a wheelchair.  She actually rather likes it because she no longer has to concentrate on wheeling a trolley and staying upright so she can eye up good looking men instead.  Really.

Unfortunately, eyeing up is not all she does.  She feels the need to comment on abso-bloody-lutely everyone and is relentlessly and unapologetically un-politically correct.  Consequently comments like "Phwoar - look at him - what a hunk!" and "Look at the size of her bottom!" are torrential and I have had to affect selective deafness and an innocent face.  Once I thought I could get away with an apologetic shrug and silently mouthing "Alzheimer's, poor old thing" at an affronted shopper.  After all, I was behind her pushing the wheelchair - she couldn't see or hear me, could she?   She turned on me instantly.  "I DO BLOODY NOT HAVE BLOODY ALZHEIMER'S" she roared.  "CHEEKY COW!"  And that was the last time I tried that trick.

Along with the falling away of social filters comes the fruity language.  I have written about this before here and, frankly, things haven't improved much.  Over lunch today she mused about her home situation.

Mum:  You know I have those carers in every day?
Me: Yes - why?  Is there a problem?
Mum:  No - they're very nice girls.  But every so often I just want to say "Oh just piss off!"

She still reads a broadsheet newspaper every day.  She maintains an incisive interest in the world around her.  Although popular culture confuses her, she is still keen to understand it.  Which is probably why she asked me recently "Darling - what exactly is a blow job?"

Reader - I told her....

Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents

Here in the UK, there is a TV programme that goes by this name.  It consists of several pairs of misguided idiot savants who inexplicably think it would be a really good wheeze to secretly follow their teenage son/daughter on a holiday to one of the many terrifying fleshpots of Europe that attract young people, such as Malia, Ayia Napa, Kavos, Zante etc and observe what they get up to.

The only thing I can find to say about this is WTF?  WHY?  Why would you want to watch your precious baby slobbering all over some spotty boy/groping a boozed up slapper?  We all know it happens - why torture yourself?  Well that's how a sensible parent would think.

We've now survived two rounds of the 'Napa experience and come out the other side, still with two living, breathing children.  But only just.

When he was 17, our son did the 'Napa thing.  I was terrified but like to think that I hid it quite well.  He would probably say different.  I made him show me the hotel they were staying in on t'interweb before he went and it looked vaguely ok...but then it would.  I pretended I didn't see his eyes rolling every time I mentioned yet another hazard to be aware of.  And I made the Shah go out and buy him a gigantic box of condoms.  The Shah was vaguely shocked.

Shah: - Do you really think....?
Me:  - Yes I bloody do!  Buy millions.  He can share them out amongst the others.  I'm too young to be a grandmother and I don't want him coming home with the clap.
Shah: *Goes pale* (which is some feat).

Some time after son got home, I noticed that an episode of Sun, Sex and Suspicious Parents was being aired from Ayia Napa, so the Shah and I decided to watch, feeling totally smug that our boy was okay...well, he'd come home in one piece, hadn't he?  What's the worst that could have happened?

OH.  DEAR.  GOD.

What can I say?  Other than click on the link above if you are a parent with a taste for masochism.  Never, ever again will I watch something like that while my children are under 35.

This year, it was the turn of the daughter.  Even worse.  I know we all spout tripe about treating boys and girls exactly the same, yaddah, yaddah, yaddah. Fergeddit.  They're not and you can't.

And another delight is that other parents are queuing up to tell you tales of drinks being spiked, girls losing their friends and being followed home by swarthy types and worse.  My only comfort was that she was going in a group of 8 girls who had been firm friends since meeting at school, aged 11 and I trust them all to look after each other.  Ahem.

We had a text on the day they arrived, saying that everything was ok. So far so good.  Nothing more for 3 days.  Then on Wednesday, the phone rang.

Someone with a croak for a voice:-  Hello mum?
Me:  OMG - what's happened?
The Croaker:  I'm okay, I've just had a little accident.
Me: (phone in one hand, other hand Googling flights to Cyprus) Erm, what sort of little accident?
Croaker:  Well, I fell over because I was running down a hill in heels and my body sort of went faster than my legs.  I've skinned my knees really badly and I have to go to hospital.  Will I have to pay?
Me:  Gaaaaah!  what about your voice?
Croaker: Oh that's fine - I've just been screaming in clubs.
Me:  Oh good. (Sarcasm completely lost on child).

By the time they got home the injury tally was as follows (all to different girls I should add!):-

Hideously skinned knees x 1
Tonsillitis & Chest infection x 1
Lost voice x 1
Foot swollen due to drunken boy falling on it x 1
Broken knuckle due to punching a wall in anger x 1
Tattoo which has to be kept secret from her parents x 1
Nose piercings x 2 and yes, one of those was MY daughter.  FFS.

And here's the proof:-

So the moral of the story is....lock up your daughters.  It's far, far worse with girls because girls do detail.  They will tell you about their injuries and their squabbles in a way that boys never do.  Boys adopt a 'what happens in Napa, stays in Napa' attitude and that makes me weep with gratitude!

In which the Shah is confused...

Enuff said....

Captcha that

Although I have resisted comment moderation for some years, the tidal wave of spam my pathetically unloved little bloggette is receiving has become irritating beyond measure.  So you will notice that, nowadays if you are kind enough to leave me a comment, you will received a snotty little message in return which, rather arrogantly, announces that your comment may be visible after blog-owner approval.

However, having watched the video I have placed here, I've changed over to using a captcha code for verification.  Slightly more fiddly and involving more work on behalf of you, the punter, but watch this and you will see why.

I discovered TED talks a while ago and, when we have nothing better to do, the Shah and I are given to perusing Netflix where you can find many short TED films (none longer than around 16 minutes) on hundreds of fascinating topics.  This one is delivered with humour and, if you have a quarter of an hour to spare, I recommend you watch it.  You'll learn something!

Finally, all I can say is that I am delighted to have thwarted the spammers and I hope they leave me alone from now on (unlikely, but I can dream).  At least I can say that the code means that I captcha the arseholes.  Sorry but you didn't think you were going to get away without one appalling pun, did you?!