Despicable Heggie

Okay...so today is my 40th birthday (UGH!) and...where to begin?

So it all started with work, where there are helium balloons, and ever since I started there I wanted to buy Minions balloons for my birthday. And that is just what I did. A dozen Minion balloons just for me.

BUT I had never seen ANY of the films. I just thought the little Twinkie-looking critters were cute.

My eldest, Erin, got me a whole bunch of DVDs and I bet you can guess what (if you can't, I fear you).

We just watched Despicable Me and all I can say is as a film about my life it's not particularly accurate but...I LOVE IT!

I am Gru.

I acquired children, two girls not three unless I have miscounted, with somewhat misguided intentions. Not in the attempt of accomplishing the crime-of-the-century but in the attempt of keeping the man I was with. Not in the usual sense of entrapment (*glares at my mother meaningfully*) but because he claimed to want a family.

Yeah, right. That lasted all of about five minutes. He *ahem* off and I got screwed over, literally and figuratively. As a homeless 17 year old I didn't think I could cope and begged to put my poor elder beastie up for adoption. Fortunately no one listened.

Three years later, exact same scenario, exact same guy. Look. I never said I was smart. In fact, a high IQ has absolutely no correlation to common sense. I am / was / ever more shall be a complete dumbass. Got it?! 

I went from struggling to get by to absolutely shitting it. At one point, when my kids were 4 and 1, I actually dragged them to Social Services and BEGGED them to take my kids cos I couldn't cope. They ignored me. I was living hand-to-mouth with virtually no adult contact and my kids were *ahem* not the easiest of little cherubs. 

The point is, like Gru, I didn't think my [evil] plan through and ultimately I love my kids and am so glad I got to raise them. Being a single parent on welfare is SHIT. I got zero support. I had a health visitor who scared the bejeezus outta me talking about her psychiatrist. My parents...HMMMM...they felt that the best thing was to compel me to step up by means of their not helping me out. Not saying they were necessarily WRONG just that it was harsh and the fact the three of us are still alive to tell the tale is probably just sheer dumb luck.

That bit where Gru's girls are destroying EVERYTHING? Utterly relatable. If I'd had access to a freeze ray they'd still be defrosting! (*thinks about that time K poisoned the ketchup / curried her sister's shoes / painted herself blue / got drunk on sherry AGE 4 / salad-creamed her sister in bed etc*)

I wish I'd done better.

I wish I hadn't fucked up once...instead of the 57,73,888,947,465,635,434 times I actually did.

I wish I had possessed even ONE maternal instinct.

I wish it had only taken me the length of a kids' movie to accept the situation and step up.

I wish I'd got my kids all the fluffiest unicorns.

I wish I'd read all the bedtime stories. Even though Erni would've pitched seven fits and hurled all the books like an anti-literature poltergeist.

Why? Because now my kids are adults and I can't turn back time. Because now the hard times have passed it's hard even for me to understand why I was struggling so badly. Because I am so proud of the young women my daughters have become in spite of being burdened with a mum like me.

I am sorry, kids. I love you. I am proud of you. 

You did me good. I only wish I had been good for you, too.

Keep Out Of Reach Of Children

Six little words, so often noticed on everyday household items yet so rarely understood, let alone heeded.

So many people foolishly think the warning refers to the item on which the words appear - that the batteries, lighters or whatever are to be kept away from children. Wrong!!! After all many things are dangerous to children but do not carry such a warning. For example - a bottle of vodka would be hazardous in the hands (or stomach) of a child but it it is more likely a harrassed parent, driven to the edge of sanity, will be the one reaching for the bottle. For a parent to see that warning all too painfully late might be the last straw which sends them in a swan-dive off the nearest multi-storey car-park. Therefore no "keep out of reach of children" message appears on the label of the vodka bottle.

The words are, in fact, a warning to the reader to keep at a safe distance from children. Children are dangerous to your mental and physical wellbeing; they drain your resources and destroy your property.

Men take this well-meant advice far more than women. A man at the first hint of a child will often flee - literally! A woman tends to go all sappy and often doesn't realise the error of her ways until the child is a teenager...by which time the woman's hair has prematurely greyed from stress.

I can't stand children. Never could, even when I was one! How I ended up with two of the little blighters I am still not entirely sure about. "Hormones" had a lot to do with it, and a persuasive ex who subsequently fled in the best time-honoured tradition.

There are no maternal-instincts in my family. My own existence is similarly a confusion to my own mother - and she has had over 32 years to ponder the question. Perhaps instead of maternal-instincts in our genes we have a kind of hereditary insanity that causes us to have children despite despising the little beasts?

Thankfully my little monsters are not so little now; in fact I am well past the halfway stage! I hope and pray that by the time I turn 40 they will have flown the nest and I will be in peace at last...although the way things are going that peace might be more of the "eternal rest" variety... A friend of mine has rug-rat commitments until the age of 52. Rather her than me!

Can you tell I have been having some trials and tribulations with my offspring? Stealing, lies, fighting, cheating, betrayal of trust...and that's just the last 24 hours! Some days I really wonder how come I have managed to not kill them...