So day 1 and 2 of the Easter Holidays - as previously mentioned I totally manipulated ways of not having to spend the first two days of what I think will be a very long 14 days of enforced family fun (Easter Break) by purchasing the Husbeast Jimmy Carr tickets which involved an overnight stay in a city 12 miles from home.
Now originally I didn't feel guilty about this, mainly because the demon child is very definitely a daddy's girl, but when she did the what you are both leaving sob.. that turned into a whine (that determined the avoiding the first two days of the holiday was a good idea theory) I did feel a twinge of mum guilt..... the kind of mum guilt that says my poor mother and middle child are going to have to deal with this while we are gone. The middle child as an adult likes to constantly taunt me about all the things I didn't do when he was child so I figured making a memory so I could have something to retaliate when small is an adult child was worth it before I shamelessly abandoned her.
My resource for how to fake being an engaged and crafty mum is the rabbit hole of pinterest. As always it didn't disappoint. I found a simple how to do crafts from Kylie the How to Mum - who clearly is an engaged and excitable mum: https://www.thehowtomom.com/easter-egg-garland/ - just by her photo alone I know she is not as happy as she makes out and probably locks her self in her perfectly organised pantry crying into her home made sloe gin.
Now from experience I know that I am a helicopter mum (when I choose to take on the mumming) and that I have control issues when crafting with the demon spawn. So I set it all up before we started I thought about using a plastic needle to minimise risk and then decided that fuck it the sooner we learned about the sharp end of needles the better. Now I will give Kylie (the wonder mum) 2 elements of praise, yes it was easy to do and yes it did produce something pretty (if you are colour blind and allowed your child to choose the colour palette) What she didn't mention was that small people insist on talking all the way through any activity about anything and everything, they can't focus on the task in hand, you will want to say for fuck sake for every element being strung, that small people are crazy if you give them a needle (there was more than one occasion I feared for my life with the needle wielding spawn who was determined to put that needle in anything other than the assigned task and mainly my face and eyeballs instead) or that the small person will proceed to pull everything we just put a needle through (including mummy) back off the string to do it all again....
Apparently this is her new photo pose... I think its a stage school thing but she wouldn't stop doing it.
So after the torture.. ahem I mean joy of completing an activity together I got the fuck out of dodge...I don't have a photo of me leaving the building because apparently I was too fast to get a photo of but trust me their was skipping and cock a hooping of being childless...
Husbeast drove and got us to our destination amongst much chatter on my part about the fact I could never live in Birmingham let alone drive through it, and he kept his cool while I grabbed onto the dashboard and when he noted that Birmingham does not apparently cater for people who are not from Brum unlike that one time we went to bloody Wales and you couldn't drive down a street without there being dalek signs. This was when I dialled into my social work brain and recalled my knowledge on trauma and that clearly me screaming with excitement halfway down the Welsh Motorway which nearly caused him to crash because I saw a dalek on a road sign is an image embedded into his brain. (I make no apologies that was one of the most amazing moments of my life)
On arrival I had a small meltdown about the digital age and the fact that apparently you can't just check into hotels in the old fashioned way when you announce your arrival and make up fake names because it's fun... now now you have to download a bloody app, which takes FORVEVER to load and despite there being reception staff right in front of you they won't talk to you unless you checked into the app. After much cussing I achieved check in only for the aforementioned reception desk to ask me the same questions I just filled in on my phone in front of them....
They did give us a nicely wrapped gift in our room which aside from the obvious problem I got very exited about... Husbeast did the good dad face and said I wasn't allowed to open the gift and that distressed small person should have it on our return home...
Yeah because she needs more buttons (sugar) and drinks vessels as much as she needs more bags to put all her shit in...
We decided to get the lay of the land so we went to find Jimmy Carr's home for the night in which Husbeast made various comments about not walking down dodgy alleyways while at the same time attempting to get me killed by running across main roads in which people demonstrate questionable driving.
We went for dinner in which he made me laugh because he couldn't be doing with my dietary requirements and the fact I am apparently a pain in the ass to take for dinner... in which Birmingham did not let me down when I said everywhere has vegan...
Yes thats both a vegan milkshake and a vegan burger of which I did not have to place a special order for because in city's Vegan is a thing that no one bats an eyelid at.
We went shopping because despite all my digs at him Husbeast is a loving soul who wanted to buy his wife a frock. What he didn't take into account was the following factors:
- His wife had just eaten a vegan burger and was therefore bloated meaning that clothes were not her friend
- His wife thinks she is smaller than she is (burger or not) and gets pissed off when clothes she would like to pretend she would fit in don't fit
- His wife will go to great lengths to fit in clothes that don't fit and is a woman of a certain age more prone to having hot moments (not the sexy kind the flushing kind) so when she gets stuck in a frock in the changing room will then try to work out if its just easier to put her clothes over the top of the frock that does not fit and is stuck than try to bust her way back out of it..
- When Husbeast finds the frock to end all frocks that his wife falls in love with... and he knows that she did because she started talking about high heels that she won't be able to walk in and strapless bra's she will only wear once and even suggests shaving her pandemic leg hairs and it doesn't fit that the rest of the evening is doomed...
After the frock to end all frocks we walked backed to the hotel and I put on the frock that would never be the frock to end all frocks and I did the wife face.... he did appease me with alcohol.
The frock
A visual representation of what I looked like in the frock...
We went to see Mr Carr - he was as advertised terribly funny... I also had gut ache in a theatre of a zillion people with the vegan farts from hell..... I let more than one slip despite trying to hold them in because if I hadn't there would have been an explosion that no one would have recovered from... I did ensure that I timed them with Mr Carr's funniest moments to ensure that people inhaled them through laughing rather than from through their nose... (not my proudest moment)
We walked home - by this stage we had done 15000 steps which given my daily average is 3000 I thought I was going to die.... we settled down for the child free responsibility free evening that a hotel room gives you - I got over excited by a city (that I wouldn't live in) having Uber eats and Deliveroo for everything and despite gut ache insisted that we had another burger.... While we were waiting we decided to bond through some Netflix which was no different to being at home because we wasted an hour of our life arguing about what to watch.. in which Husbeast announced was a waste of time because we were inevitably going to end up watching Doctor Who or Firefly anyway ( I don't know what he means) which of course meant I had to pick something else which ended up being Friday Night Dinner which by the time I had chosen I decided it was bed time and our room didn't have a TV... so because he is a genius he showed why I would choose him to be on my apocalypse team by using the free ironing board as an iPad stand... (and in case you were wondering this is one of the many reasons I married him)
Apparently I fell asleep and snored for 10 hours straight 15 minutes after this photo...
Upon waking (Husbeast was still on small person time and woke up as if she were in the hotel room at 5 and 6am) I demanded breakfast which absolutely had to include an avocado... Birmingham City Centre let me down... not an avo in sight... and the frock to end all frocks still didn't fit... in a fit of desperation Husbeast suggested a burger in which had I had an avocado to hand I would have thrown it at him...
We both agreed we were not ready to go home and I upset him by announcing we couldn't in fact go to Lego discovery because it turns out you have to have a small person with you and despite me being significantly shorter than him this doesn't count. We went to Merry Hell instead which was quite fortunate for the Husbeast because they did have avocado's in abundance which also was unfortunate because once fuelled by something other than the vegan gas of the night before I was ready to shop (read abuse his wallet). We shopped - he got obsessed by Lego I gave him permission to buy man gadgets (which I will no doubt moan about at a later date).. we spent a ridiculous amount of time in toy shops which resulted in and I kid you people not that despite being a 40+ woman with no co-ordination I convinced myself (with the help of Husbeast) that I could be a good mum (see the mum guilt gets you every time - they should tell you that at birth) and that I was retro and that buying mummy daughter roller skates was a good idea..... (blog post to follow on that disaster when it occurs)
We came home - small demon child and middle demon child demanded gifts..... we played connect four and frustration just so as I could say I parented.... Husbeast took a nap...
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