Categories: uncategorized
Date: 13 March 2004 20:52:49
I could do with a remote control to turn it off, or at least lower the volume of it. The unjustified sense of guilt, I mean - the one that haunts my days no matter how hard I try to do the right thing. Lowering the volume would be fine.
Examining the evidence, I know exactly where I went wrong. If I were a good mum (don't worry, I know I am really) I'd have found a way to take my enthusiastic but slightly nervous eleven-year-old into the Chamber of Horrors and stay outside with my six-year-old simultaneously. If I had done that my eleven year old would still be full of the excitement of "the best thing ever" while my six year old would be feeling left out but would not have had a nightmare.
I had told Dad I couldn't bath him in the morning as the boys have swimming before church. I wanted to bath him at teatime tonight but he was too tired and wanted a sit down. I agreed to do the running-back-and-forth routine between the two bungalows once the boys were fast asleep. But that was before Smudgelet decided that the waxworks had been far too horrific for him to be able to sleep. And I don't want him to wake in a panic and find me not here. A few rapid mental calculations and I realise that if I have my bath tonight and get up half an hour earlier in the morning, I can bath Dad before I take the boys swimming so I ring to tell him to be ready to get straight in at 7 a.m. (He takes an hour to bath). He is first of all cross that I told him I couldn't bath him in the morning as that was what he wanted to do in the first place, and now I was saying I could have done it all along. And because he's got his clean pyjamas ready and put a towel on the floor, he doesn't want to leave it. So he declares he will bath himself. Tonight. Even though he is very tired. He'll manage somehow.
At least he's promised to take the phone in with him, but I am sitting here worried sick that he'll fall or get soap in his newly-cataract-free eye or hurt his shoulder again. I know it's emotional blackmail on his part, forcing me to choose between him and the children. I know there's no point feeling guilty too, but since when have our emotions listened to rational thinking?