Mad-house

Great. I have incompetent central heating, which fails to stay warm for a whole hour at a time. We have temperatures below freezing and snow which keeps threatening, but never actually falling. The torn ligaments in my shoulder are STILL hurting, over three months after my chiropractor ripped them from humerus and scapula. I live with four untidy children, one of whom is going through a rip-roaring tantrum stage, the like of which has not been witnessed since he was a toddler. Nick is slightly more messy than the kids and invariably does the opposite of what I tell him to do. My cat is both incontinent and senile, so despite having a litter tray in the bathroom, he craps on the dining room floor and leaves puddles for my kids to walk through in their stockinged feet.


Take tonight's scenario: The kids have little requests from school along the lines of 'please provide a set of Mary and Joseph costumes', which, oddly enough I don't have. I'm tired and cold. I have re-pressurised the heating system twice since I got home, because the radiators keep going cold. I discover that Nick has left one of my magazines on the dining room floor and the cat has pissed on it. While I'm clearing this up, one of the children leaves their dinner unattended for a moment and the cat helps himself. Meanwhile, Nick is having hell's own game extracting the car from Mum's drive after being expressly told not to try to drive up it, because it is so slippery. Mel is having a freak-out because I chucked cheese at his dinner and Donny is giving it the full on whine because her music stand is more complicated to put up than one of those interlinking metal puzzles you get in Xmas crackers.

Then, the pieste de las résistance; I discover the painter has turned the freezer in the garage off, leaving me with a freezer full of melt water. Each tray now contains the rotting remains of frozen food, floating in a smelly mush of defrosted ice of its own making. The whole lot will need to be thrown away.

My stress levels are through the roof.

Is it me?