End of an era

Well folks, today was a sad/happy oxymoron kind of day as it was the last official day of work for the manny. As of 0900 hrs on Monday morning he will return to the world of official work and I shall once again be in charge of up to four children a day (I take in an extra one in the afternoon during term time). Obviously we are thrilled to have an income source but the children will miss him terribly and I am slightly scared of doing it all on my own and not having 'on tap' childcare. I made the most of my last day though, I left the boys at home and spent three hours in the Big Shop spending my entire monthly bills budget on the contents of my trolley. I got ever so slightly carried away with the idea of K being employed again and bought enough food to feed the five thousand (plus a few things from the clothing department). The checkout lady looked relieved when she reached the pinata stick I had bought for a friend and said 'ohhh you're having a party, now I understand'. I did correct her but she said it again towards the end, 'I know you're having a party'. She clearly thought I was trying to conceal a party from her. I'm not sure why, as it is highly unlikely I would ever invite a checkout assistant to any party I might have, merely as a thank you for processing my shopping so I would be more than happy to have told her the truth if I were having one. Worryingly, I put at least £30 of stuff back. It boggles my mind how the total came to twice as much as my usual shop. In fairness to me, the freezer, fridge and cupboards are now full to bursting and I have a rather special pair of cream wedges and three pairs of firm control Bridget Jones pants which will double the number of clothes I can wear, therefore saving us money. It is a difficult kind of logic but do try and keep up.

That is not the most exciting part of the day though - there are two major excitements to report. 1. Way back in October, I spent the day eating and drinking champagne at a party for a friend and on the walk home I managed to lose my purse somewhere between the friend's house, school run, another friend's house and our house. I spent many days making people search under their sofas and K under the seats of his car and all over the house. In turn, I spent many fruitless hours searching under our sofas and in the buggy and bags etc. After five days I declared it officially lost and moved on slightly sadder. Obviously being me, there was no money in it and the only thing of value it held was my driving licence and my boots points card, but the purse itself was valuable as it was a third anniversary present from K and that particular April we happened to have some money so to celebrate the 'leather' anniversary he had splashed out on a Mulberry one. My elder sister stepped in for my Bday in November and gave me her old mulberry purse and life continued as before. That was until today - in a rash moment I started emptying the pit of crap which is our under stairs cupboard where I happened upon our broken hoover and my old buggy bag. I thought the bag might be worth something on ebay so I began emptying it - baby socks, a contact lens and then something harder, concealed somehow in the plastic lining. YES, it was the very Mulberry wallet I had lost seven months ago. That kind of excitement has not been witnessed within these four walls for many, many years. (Since we got a mortgage with a high street lender actually. THAT was ridiculously exciting for us as we are terribly un-credit worthy. Hilariously enough the banking crash followed shortly after and people with adverse credit were particularly vilified so we kept our heads firmly down and tutted and murmured along with the rest of the chattering middle classes). 2. More excitement followed with K ringing me at the checkout to let me listen to the sweet, sweet sound of a working hoover. He had come over all manly and taken the back panel off our broken one, found the loose wire and fixed it. Amazing. I rushed immediately to the lottery counter and bought two tickets for tonight and two for tomorrow. I feel quite sure we will be millionaires in the next 24 hours. We are on a roll.

Bea is not. Her teacher has mis-marked her spelling test. I am outraged at the injustice. They marked her spelling of September as wrong. I am at a loss as to why as all the letters are formed correctly and were carefully placed in the proper order. I have looked and re-looked but can't find a problem. If I ever work out how, I may even upload a photo of it to prove the point. Anyhoo, I have put the test back in her book bag already so that I can return on Monday morning and thrust the offending test in the teacher's face and demand a re-mark. Thankfully Bea came out much better off from my Sainsbury's shop than anyone else as the Barbie DVDs were buy one get one free and she isn't as worried about spelling test injustices as I am so she actually didn't care at all. We also decided to mark the last day of the Manny by treating everyone to a Mr Whippy ice cream on the way home and I decided to do a stint as a 'perfect mother/childminder' so they all made strawberry tarts with squirty cream when we got home. It was chaos but definitely worth it. I had totally forgotten the excitement of discovering squirty cream when I was young. It is incredibly fun. Ted is a huge fan. I also made spaghetti and meatballs for tea which I have never made before. I'm not sure why as it is incredibly simple. Suffice to say I am now relaxing, feeling smug and self satisfied at my wondrous self. And K is in the kitchen slaving over a hot stove on my supper. And Ted is asleep in his new,very cute Gruffalo pyjamas. Things are good again.

I fear the bubbles in my drink have gone straight to my head. I think I should stop. I was planning a Manny evaluation/reference but I don't think I can manage it. I'm not sure much of this makes sense already. I am a total lightweight. I shall just quickly say that from here on in the character formerly known as 'Manny' will now be referred to as simply, 'K'. It is the end of an era. We shall miss him.

See you in the new era. Sob. Smile. Sob. xxx Smile.