At 8am this morning my daughter sauntered into the kitchen and informed me that her school shoes were getting too small. I asked for more details hoping beyond hope they might last two more weeks until the holidays but of course she admitted they were crippling her.
I posted this on Facebook musing as to why she couldn't have mentioned it AT ANY POINT over the weekend when I could have easily taken her to the shoe shop in a relaxed fashion to suit my timetable.
I was amused to see how many other mothers felt my pain, having had the exact same thing happen to them.
I made a plan to take her after school today then seconds after she had left to catch the bus I realised I had also promised to pick my big girl up from work, a short walk from the school. So I called her mobile (which of course I pay for as she's only 11) and when she didn't answer, tried her brothers phone.
I sent a text each, and What's Apped them. I know it's sensible for them to have their phones on silent while at school but I bet if I was FlamingoOddling9827 (otherwise known as Julian or Isabel or whoever from their forms) sharing a cat meme they would have answered straight away. But I think their phones (and possibly their brains) are automatically programmed to ignore any request from "Mum".
Finally one of them spotted 1230 missed calls and rang back. Meanwhile my blood pressure was so high I think you might have actually seen steam coming out of my ears.
It's been one of those weeks. My health and temper has not been helped by the fact that both of them have coincided on the school's timetable sequence and are both doing cookery or domestic science or food technology or mealtime manipulation or whatever they are calling it this term.
As an aside can I ask - resistant materials? Really? Was metalwork and woodwork too complicated? Who comes up with these titles? Retired estate agents after spending years describing tiny as "bijou" and completely wrecked as "a project"?
Anyway, back to cookery. I am sure I am not the only parent to have been presented with a lengthy list of ingredients late at night or actually on the morning of the lesson.
I can usually procure the basics but the children's school is keen on letting the children improvise and modify recipes. All well and good but when you child wrote a plan the week before to use swan eggs and caviar in their recipe which means that is what you have to provide it can be tricky to locate them in the cupboard, village shop or even our small local supermarket.
Last week it was cranberries for scones. I tried to pursue her that sultanas, of which I have many, was a perfectly acceptable scone addition unless you are Cornish apparently and then it is a hangable offence to add sultanas to your scones according to a friend who grew up in that area of Britain.
But sultanas were not deemed interesting enough so off I popped to Tesco where I spent £2 on bloody cranberries. I noted with a wry smile I could have bought a pack of luxury scones for less than I spent on one ingredient for the school scones.
Meanwhile the boy had a list of ingredients which he actually helpfully emailed me a week in advance for his recipe which was a cheesy pasta sauce. The recipe called for grated cheese. I HATE cheese, loathe even touching the stuff so I always have a supply of ready grated cheese to spoon over pasta or cauliflower or toast for the children.
Turns out the point of the cookery lesson was to actually grate the bloody cheese so he lost marks. Sorry son. And no-one would eat the sauce which had random bits of pasta floating in it, including the child who made it so I threw it away.
This week it is apparently either vegetable risotto OR flapjacks. He's not sure and the teacher isn't replying to his emails. These recipes include very different ingredients and since we got it wrong last week resulting in a glut of bananas I refuse to buy anything til he knows for sure.
My daughter is making pizza but doesn't know how much she has to supply so I am fully anticipating making pizza dough at 7am on Thursday morning and milking the cat to make mozzarella.
ARGH!
I know I'm not alone living this nightmare - what is the weirdest or most inconvenient request you've had from your children at the last minute?
I posted this on Facebook musing as to why she couldn't have mentioned it AT ANY POINT over the weekend when I could have easily taken her to the shoe shop in a relaxed fashion to suit my timetable.
I was amused to see how many other mothers felt my pain, having had the exact same thing happen to them.
I made a plan to take her after school today then seconds after she had left to catch the bus I realised I had also promised to pick my big girl up from work, a short walk from the school. So I called her mobile (which of course I pay for as she's only 11) and when she didn't answer, tried her brothers phone.
I sent a text each, and What's Apped them. I know it's sensible for them to have their phones on silent while at school but I bet if I was FlamingoOddling9827 (otherwise known as Julian or Isabel or whoever from their forms) sharing a cat meme they would have answered straight away. But I think their phones (and possibly their brains) are automatically programmed to ignore any request from "Mum".
Finally one of them spotted 1230 missed calls and rang back. Meanwhile my blood pressure was so high I think you might have actually seen steam coming out of my ears.
It's been one of those weeks. My health and temper has not been helped by the fact that both of them have coincided on the school's timetable sequence and are both doing cookery or domestic science or food technology or mealtime manipulation or whatever they are calling it this term.
As an aside can I ask - resistant materials? Really? Was metalwork and woodwork too complicated? Who comes up with these titles? Retired estate agents after spending years describing tiny as "bijou" and completely wrecked as "a project"?
Anyway, back to cookery. I am sure I am not the only parent to have been presented with a lengthy list of ingredients late at night or actually on the morning of the lesson.
I can usually procure the basics but the children's school is keen on letting the children improvise and modify recipes. All well and good but when you child wrote a plan the week before to use swan eggs and caviar in their recipe which means that is what you have to provide it can be tricky to locate them in the cupboard, village shop or even our small local supermarket.
Last week it was cranberries for scones. I tried to pursue her that sultanas, of which I have many, was a perfectly acceptable scone addition unless you are Cornish apparently and then it is a hangable offence to add sultanas to your scones according to a friend who grew up in that area of Britain.
But sultanas were not deemed interesting enough so off I popped to Tesco where I spent £2 on bloody cranberries. I noted with a wry smile I could have bought a pack of luxury scones for less than I spent on one ingredient for the school scones.
Meanwhile the boy had a list of ingredients which he actually helpfully emailed me a week in advance for his recipe which was a cheesy pasta sauce. The recipe called for grated cheese. I HATE cheese, loathe even touching the stuff so I always have a supply of ready grated cheese to spoon over pasta or cauliflower or toast for the children.
Turns out the point of the cookery lesson was to actually grate the bloody cheese so he lost marks. Sorry son. And no-one would eat the sauce which had random bits of pasta floating in it, including the child who made it so I threw it away.
This week it is apparently either vegetable risotto OR flapjacks. He's not sure and the teacher isn't replying to his emails. These recipes include very different ingredients and since we got it wrong last week resulting in a glut of bananas I refuse to buy anything til he knows for sure.
My daughter is making pizza but doesn't know how much she has to supply so I am fully anticipating making pizza dough at 7am on Thursday morning and milking the cat to make mozzarella.
ARGH!
I know I'm not alone living this nightmare - what is the weirdest or most inconvenient request you've had from your children at the last minute?