In celebration of the end of the Football season - or two kids, one car, in the dark with nowhere to go!

Just a walk on the lighter side today -

I always feel like a bad mother when I'm relieved the football season is over or practice is cancelled.
W is always so disappointed and I do try to stifle my relief, really I do.
But it absolutely is relief - and this is why.

In the past years W has had football practice on a Sunday afternoon. P takes him to practice and usually N tags along. W races off to be with his mates and has a good hour and P and N get some father/son time on the adjacent playground.
Back in the really good old days T would have an afternoon nap and I'd get some total down time. More recently it meant that T and I get a good stretch of mother/son time with no interruptions of 'total emergencies' from N. It's astounding how many emergencies we can have a day according to N...
Sounds lovely right?

It was.

But this year they changed the day - to a Tuesday.

Anyone who has known me for a while knows I hate Tuesdays. I've hated them since I was 14 at least.
If something can go horribly wrong it will be a Tuesday, a day which is grotty all out of proportion - it'll be a Tuesday. When I was 14 Tuesdays were my black hole day because we had a double maths class.
I always struggled with maths so a double class would be bad enough but the evil timetable fairies had it totally in for me. We had a class second thing and then last thing of the day.
That's bad enough to split the torment but no, there's more...
We had a total fiend as a maths teacher and so he'd set homework after the first class and expect it to be done by the next class at the end of the day. Someone obviously forgot to teach this teacher the meaning of the home part of homework. So Tuesdays were a day to dread all that year.

Later in my school career Tuesdays were when we had a double class of Art History with what has to have been the most boring teacher in the school. Yet again the evil timetable fairies had it in for me because it wasn't consecutive classes but divided by lunch. It was amazing the number of students who magically got ill in the lunch break. I got through it because at least I had a free class last of all and got to go home straight after the last Art History lesson.

At University I had classes from 5:30 - 6:30pm at least 2 years in a row, not because of the classes I chose to take but because those were the tutorials I was assigned to. In the winter it was dark and cold and I was starving by the time I got home.

It was absolutely predictable that when the boys each needed their nissens, major surgery, the day of the month the surgeon operated at the relevant  hospital was - a Tuesday.

And so when they said this year it was a choice between the usual Sunday afternoon or Tuesday evening I just knew what was going to happen. Just to make life truly wonderful they decided on 6:30 - 7:30pm for a practice time. This meant I'd be leaving the house around 3pm and not returning until about 8pm.

The older boys have swimming on a Tuesday afternoon - in town. They finish a bit after 5pm and so there was no way in the world I was going to get through rush hour traffic back to our place, feed the kids and turn around to football practice which was a good 20 mins from home.
Where's P in this timetabling nightmare? With a choir which has ALWAYS practiced on - Tuesday evenings.

And so Tuesdays during the football season this year had me hoping and praying for a text message saying practice was off. Every second week they were on the artifical turf so barring snow (which did actually happen one week - the week they were on the grass so likely to be cancelled anyway!) it was certain to be on.

Every Tuesday would see me making a dinner I could transport in the car, re-heat at my parents' house, feed the kids in the 50 mins I had between swimming ending and having to leave to go to football practice.


But W's practice was only an hour long so there wasn't time to drop him off, go home and come back again. There would have been no point anyway as P was out. The other parents live close to the field so they could drop and run. I wound up sitting in a car, with two grumpy kids, in the dark and simply getting colder and colder by the moment.

Many evenings ran something like this -
We'd arrive about 5 minutes early.
The second W had left the car N or T would ask how long it was until W finished. I'd reply "He hasn't even started yet!".
I'd hook T up for his night time tube feed and the boys would spend a 'peaceful' 5 minutes planning how to annoy each other for the next 75 minutes - as the practice never finished on time - and yes, I mean never - I was a clock watcher!


They would continue to alternate asking when W would be finished - at roughly 30 second intervals.

Last week, thankfully the last practice of the season, N discovered a new method of annoying the heck out of T. T had had a hard day and he was tired. He had already announced he wanted to sleep in the car this evening. By some miracle we had actually arrived 10 minutes early this week.
And so once W had left and I'd hooked T up to his feed and persuaded him, if he was going to go to sleep that it'd best best if I strapped him in now so as not to wake him doing it later, N started his new trick.

He started to flick his overhead light on and off over and over and over again.
T asked him nicely to stop.
N kept on flicking.
I asked him to stop.
N kept on flicking.
T screamed at him to stop.
N kept on flicking.
T screamed more and I asked N firmly to stop.
N kept on flicking.
By now T's literally working up a sweat and is in tears because all he wants is to sleep but N keeps on flicking.
In the end I tell him he's now lost 10 minutes computer time from the next day, yes that includes watching dvds on an old laptop he uses and if he doesn't want to lose more he will stop flicking the light on and off right now!
N stops flicking.

Peace reigns - for about 40 seconds.
T starts humming, gently and quietly at first. It's not really too intrusive and so everyone seems to cope with it. But gradually it gets louder. It's seriously not annoying but N isn't going to let this pass - after all he couldn't flick the light so why should T be allowed to hum? The difference in annoyance levels totally escapes N.

As so, going from 0 to 100 in typical N style he screams at T to stop humming - a hum which is loud enough to be aware of but not much else.
T stops, for a few seconds. A thoughtful look passes across his face and I sit, waiting for what gem is going to come next.
"Hmm" says T, tapping his chin with his finger pensively, "What do I need??? Hmm, oh yeah - a microphone!"
This last word is delivered at full volume.
An evil grin spreads over T's face as N erupts into predictable screams, yells, threats and a hail of whatever missiles he can find at the back of the car to throw towards T.

And through it all T is heard to ask "How long til W's finished Mummy?" "Over an hour!" I say through gritted teeth.

And so, I'm not really a bad mother. Honestly I'm not.
But the relief that P and W are currently at the end of season function is flowing very strongly today.