Back to 'normal'

We have finally returned to ‘normal’ after the long, long, jeepers creepers they were so very long months of summer. Normal in our house means everyone getting up grumpy in the morning, shouting a lot while mouth is full of breakfast cereal/toast/toothpaste and much finding of shoes and losing of minds.
Getting four kids ready and out the door is a task not for the weak. I know my kids will grow up thinking their mother was either a retired drill sergeant or directly descended from some random nasty European military dictator or other.
From the minute they rise in the morning I yell a chorus of orders. ‘You! Eat!’, ‘You! Shoes!’ and ‘You! No talking, brush!’, ‘You! Stop looking so cute!’ with a load of finger pointing thrown in for dramatic effect.
Such was my hurry to get the lads back to where they really belong that we showed up at the school, uniformed, suited and booted, the day before term officially started.
We rose early on Monday morning. I fed babies and threw bowls of breakfast at various people, shouted a little, told individuals to remove their sleeping, slobbering faces from the kitchen table, hunted for shoes under beds, cursed a lot and tamed some seriously unruly hair.
I packed them all into the car and set off with 10 minutes to spare until the bell (hey, get me). I should have guessed when we pulled out onto the almost deserted main road that things were amiss. I should have realised when we got to the school and the only thing moving was a big bit of tumbleweed gently bobbing along past the very locked gates.
I drove at high speed past the school, kids squealing with delight from the back. I gave a big ups to Jesus and Ford Motors for inventing tinted windows so that other ‘normal’ humans going about their ‘normal’ day-to-day business – like going shopping in their pyjamas – couldn’t see my utter mortification. And I’m glad that the windows offered some UV protection because I wouldn’t have wanted any innocent members of the public to have been scorched by the severity of my pure, undiluted embarrassment.


So off we went home to suffer another day in each other’s company. And by that I truly mean to enjoy the last day before the summer holidays actually concluded.
These ‘hiccups’ are all too common these days. I blame lack of sleep; the husband blames lack of brain cells.
I waited in last week for the obligatory visit from the health visitor. I arranged for the older boys to be minded so that we’d have a reasonably quiet house. I waited and waited and cursed a bit for having my day held back – for I am one extremely busy lady, really I am.
I cursed this lovely woman for keeping me from drinking coffee, eating chocolate biscuits and watching rubbish daytime TV programmes in peace. Heaven forbid she would have called half way through Murder She Wrote and I would have converse with her and miss who actually killed the rural hotel owner. I just couldn’t risk that.
Three hours later I was positively pacing the living room floor. When the TV presenter mentioned that it was Monday, not Tuesday I realised that the late health visitor wasn’t actually late, she was early. As in not due until the next day early.
A few days later I had the baby in town and met an old friend who cooed over my little girl and asked me what we had named her. I swear there was a 25 second delay where the question reached my ears, made it’s way through the sea of dead and malfunctioning cells in my brain, processed the question, registered it and sent back a message for communication through my mouth. My friend stood gawking at me while this slow process progressed and breathed again when my brain and mouth worked once more in unison and allowed me to utter my daughter’s name. I told her the child is to be christened Maolíosa Grace but for some strange reason about our house she is referred to only as Maggie Moo mirroring the nicknames of my boys – DanGo, Caolan Bailen and Finnbo O’Neillio.
Things may have gone back to routine with regards schools, but it’ll be a rather frosty day in hell when the word ‘normal’ is used to describe any member of the O’Neill house.