My New Year's Eve

Well, I found my way back, due mainly to my clever Husband bookmarking the page and putting a link on it to Facebook (to help me find it rather than for other people's benefit!). When I came back imagine my delight when I found a new addition! I would like to welcome my first follower! How exciting. I see everyone else is keeping safely away but I would like to commend Catherine for her bravery and wisdom, I will not bite if you dare to follow me! I don't know though, how people who don't know me will ever read my blog. I have tried but failed to read someone else's-anyone else's-blog but with no avail, so logic tells me that if I can't find theirs, they won't find mine. Hmmm. I'll keep going though, if only for Catherine's sake. I also just opened a Twitter account but am similarly lousy at that, I have no idea how people that I don't know can read my Tweets, yet someone who runs a sex shop in Worcester has become my second follower! It could only happen to me!

So New Year's Eve. We are going nowhere and doing nothing this year. Usually when we are alone on New Year's Eve my husband gets into a really bad mood at around 10.30-11 and stomps up to bed for his only early night of the festive period. Crossly, I sit on guard downstairs in case the world ends with Big Ben's bongs. Jools Holland is my television programme of choice for this fearful event, although since I discovered that it is pre-recorded in July or some similarly ridiculous time, the solace it offers is negligible. I generally slink off to bed when Jools says goodbye, reminding myself that there's no reason that the world-ending-on-New-Year's-Eve won't be put off by a couple of hours (due to bad weather or staff shortages due to seasonal flu) and am thus well aware that just because the bells have bonged doesn't mean the bells won't bong-if you get what I mean.

We are all in a bad mood today. My two sons, aged 10 and 8 have had their umpteenth lego set spread all over the lounge floor since 9am, and since I accidentally bought a christmas tree that was far too big for the lounge, I am unable to access my television and sink into my sofa with a cup of tea and a Midsomer Murders/Poirot/Marple, as the room looks like a Scandinavin lego factory explosion and I'll only want to tidy up and take the tree down if I try to go in there. So there's me grumpy. The said sons are grumpy because their 3 year old sister is valiantly attempting to go into the lounge via the lego-pass, encountering shouts of 'you're treading on the crane section' or more personally 'you're so annoying-I hate you' or most irritating of all from my point of view 'go and see Mummy and ask her if you can have some chocolate'. Grrr. My daughter is grumpy in part due to the lego incident but also due to tiredness as she was up reading in her bed until goodness knows when (when I say reading, I mean pulling pages out of books) and also because she didn't eat for several days over Christmas and is therefore quite rabidly hungry.

Then we have my husband. Why is he grumpy? He requested a Ministry Of Sound CD for Christmas, and I dutifully bought it. Well, I bought one of them. I didn't know there were two- Annuals and Anthems. 50/50 chance of getting the wrong one for most people, for me, a 100 per cent chance. Not a problem though as he decided to head into town to change it (and the aftershave I got him-right brand, wrong whiff). All I had to do was provide the reciept. No worries. This year, to avoid losing any reciepts, I kept a small plastic document wallet in my handbag, and another in my kitchen cupboard. When I bought something, I would put the receipt in the wallet, and on returning home, transfer all receipts into the wallet in the kitchen. Well done I hear you all say, what an organised lady. Some shopkeepers even commented on the idea, suggesting that I was the most organised shopper they had seen, and I would smugly smile and reply 'Well, I do like to keep on top of my spending' or some other inane comment designed to impress. However, and to cut a long story short and reach the anticipated outcome without further ado, I have lost the 'mobile' receipt wallet, with all of the receipts (which I forgot to transfer), one of them being the HMV receipt. Hmmm. I rang the shop and they did say that as long as it is a simple exchange I'll probably be able to do it without a receipt but I'm still in trouble....

So New Year's Eve is already a flop, and will only get worse. I had thought back in November when it became clear that the New Year party invitaions were not going to be forthcoming, that we would put our daughter up to bed and have an evening of board games and snacks with the boys. On reflection, that was one of my rose-tinted-spectacles plans. A more realistic plan would have been, we cook tea too late, the children will be too tired to eat much, but the small amount that they do manage to ingest will be enough to fire them up into a hyperactive frenzy, involving running around the table in the lounge. ( I have already persuaded them to remove the lego from the floor in readiness for my afternoon who-done-it by promising the oldest he could have access to the computer but here I still am... should I add that to his reasons for being grumpy?) They will then compete to see who can jump furthest across the lounge following a high launch from our aching sofa. We will be clearing the last of the dishes when we hear the scream as someone (no doubt our daughter) lands badly banging a toe or the dreaded head knock. Bedtime will then be a festival of anger and tether's-ends, with added worry over the head/toe damage and the final straw of Grump will be reached. I will resort to chocolate and TV, my Husband will stand and watch in the doorway for ten minutes complaning that it's all crap, and off he'll go. Need I say more? No, I think not.

Except the ubiquitous Happy New Year to all my follower. (Not a typo.)

Lucy x