Tuesday 26 May 2009

Ask Millennium Housewife!

Crikey a month goes by quickly. It's that time again folks, dilemmas answered, life sorted, torments thwarted la la la, you get the gist. Here we go:

Maternal Tales asks:
Dear Millennium Housewife, I've just realised this morning that my child has nits, but I sent her to school anyway. Does this make me a bad mother?

Millennium Housewife writes:

Dear MT, It would be far too easy to say, in a nutshell, yes, this makes you a Bad Mother. Who in their right mind would send their little darling to school covered in lice if there wasn't an end of year prize in it for them? Obviously if there is a prospect of a prize then this action makes you a positively stupendous mother; willing to risk your child's ostracisation and subsequent mental health in order to get that trophy up on the specially made trophy shelf (which heretofore has held only the pasta shell trophy you made yourself just to have something to put there/show off to your friends), so well done you.
But let's look at this more closely. What, really, constitutes a Bad Mother? At what point do we slide from slightly slummy, to downright dirty? I mean, to start with you noticed your child had nits, that's brilliant! Close Observation skills are coming along nicely, as is the Identification, but not the Elimination, side of your parenting lessons. Another well done is due here I think, and feel free to make another pasta shell trophy, it will really mean something this time.
However, just before you go rummaging in the dry goods cupboard (you do have one of those don't you, it's not just all stuffed under the sink?), you need to consider the circumstances of the aforementioned Close Observation skills. There may be a point in considering when exactly your child contracted nits, and how long therefore it took you to notice them. Of course, if the nits had reached such gargantuan proportions that you first noticed them as they leaped tall buildings in a giant leap, or that their weight was causing your child neck problems that no neck brace seemed to fix, or indeed that they had been there so long that they had developed their own society complete with currency and language, then I suggest you put down that fussilli and consider your shortcomings.
Or, if you would like a more user friendly, and downright easier suggestion, I always find a great deal of comfort in denial, and removing my contact lenses for five days out of seven. Do that and you can place your child's nit ridden head to your guilt free bosom and claim Good Motherhood.
I know which I'd do.



Mud In The City asks:

Dear Millennium Housewife, my new washing machine is being held hostage by the delivery man. I am very close to running out of clean pants. Please help.

Millennium Housewife says:

Dear Mud, firstly I read your blog, and I know that you're a girl (or else a man with serious gender issues, issues too huge to be dealt with in this blog, so sorry if that's where you wanted me to go with this), and girls wear knickers, not pants. Boys wear pants, they're stretchy and large, often with a Y front and usually sport a little wet spot at the front. They also wear boxer shorts, like loose pants, normally slightly larger but still have that little wet spot. In extreme cases boys also wear comedy boxer shorts, that's right, boxer shorts with funny things on them. To make you laugh (hence the comedy title). I'm not sure of the usefulness of these, they seem to serve little or no purpose except to the wearer, who unless he wears a brand new pair every day, with a brand new joke on them, surely tires of the same old gag morning after morning. So the only reason I can see is to entertain anyone daring to enter the boxer short zone, and, surely, that's not the kind of entertainment he was hoping to provide. He's taken time, chatting, wooing, working all his tricks to get her into bed, probably spent a fair amount of his mortgage and made up the equivalent amount about his life to find himself in the desired position of being allowed to take each other's clothes off. Imagine then his consternation when the object of his desires finally (finally!) gets to the boxer short taking off bit, only to laugh uproariously and loudly when looking down there. Is that going to do anything for a chap's self esteem? In a word, no, unless he is using them as a decoy so that when presented with what's under the boxer shorts she is too laughed out to repeat the gesture. In which case they're a brilliant idea.
Anyway, unless the delivery men are threatening to cut off your washing machine's ear or some such grisly thing, I suggest you let them hang onto it and get yourself to Marks and Spencer for some knickers. They look so much better with bras.


Working Mum On The Verge (I think she means on the verge of a crises, I don't think she's parked permanently on a verge) asks:

Dear Millennium Housewife, How can I eat my five-year-old's Easter eggs without her realising? How come she has some left? And how come she knows exactly what she has left?

Millennium Housewife writes:

Dear Working Mum (and greetings to your verge, if indeed that is where you are sitting). Firstly you've asked three questions, a little greedy quite frankly, but then that is what we are talking about isn't it? Greed. You have already eaten your own Easter eggs, and now your prudent and restrained child is going to have to pay the price by donating hers. I know how you feel, and here's how to do it:
  • Send five year old to granny's/school/friends/her room for the day
  • Take all left over eggs out of packaging
  • Make a mould of all pieces of chocolate by pressing it in playdoh
  • Remove chocolate from mould so you are left with an impression on the chocolate
  • Create a paste from flour and water adding enough gravy browning so that the colour resembles chocolate
  • Place paste into the playdoh moulds and put in airing cupboard for two hours
  • Once two hours are up, carefully remove playdoh from the chocolate paste
  • You are left with an identical set of chocolate pieces as the original chocolate
  • Place fake set back in original wrappers
  • Eat child's chocolate
  • Let child eat fake chocolate
  • Consider it a lesson in healthy eating/being too slow at eating Easter eggs

Enjoy.

Send your dilemmas to the comments box or email me at millenniumhousewife@yahoo.co.uk

Tuesday 19 May 2009

New Balls Please

I would just love to keep you all guessing about who it is exactly that needs the new balls: The Dog or The Husband? You decide (if you want to imagine the last bit in a Big Brother stylee voice you may do, it adds to the ambiance).

But I think to leave you all without an answer would be cruel. More cruel than lopping off a man/dog's balls? It depends on where you're standing, and I'm standing next to the surgeon, on her toes, making sure she does it right. And thoroughly. With an extra scrape just to make sure she got all of it. Ha! take that super sperm, and that! I could be the champion of Sperm Space Invaders zapping all I see with the surgeon's scalpel, ferreting out any malingerers with my supersonic eyesight and lightening reflexes. Ah the joy.

Anyway, just before any of you start cheering and whooping me on, adding up the scores as we contemplate the childbirth v vasectomy debate and thinking that Husband finally succumbed to going Where No Man Should Ever Go (TM) I'm afraid it was the dog who went first. Just so he can try it out and let me know what it's like reasoned Husband. It was a hefty argument, especially when garnished with the fear of never being able to go commando again in case the seams rub the scar. Quite. The thought of never again discovering that Husband had gone commando on a romantic night out/black tie dinner/friend's intimate soiree/business lunch/work day would be enough for me to book the vasectomy, children or no children. But he was adamant: not yet, maybe later, I'm going to use the same phrase as my own contribution to our contraception. I do feel for him though, really I do, enough to book myself a spa weekend and shopping trip to Monaco.

So it was poor old Twizzle's turn, yet again the family experiment (ooh I think a dog would be lovely, lets get one and see), I took him in the car after a last breakfast of his favourite sausages. Husband says getting the dog to eat sausages was cruel and metaphorical but I swear Twizzle didn't decipher any hidden meaning in what was, I swear, his favourite food.
Husband refused to come lest I'd organised a sting operation where the minute he entered the vet's a Big Burly Man would wrest him to the ground and clamp a large white chloroformed hankie to his face. "Surgeon and nurse Stat!" he'd yell as Husband struggled, watery eyed, eventually succumbing to going under but not before attempting to cross his legs in one last, futile attempt at defiance. The final indignity being the nurses carrying him into the surgery, legs akimbo, giggling as they compared him to the Persian cat they did this morning.

Husband waved us off at the door instead with a white hankie, yelling at Twizzle to send him a postcard and reminding me to remind the surgeon not to spare the knife. "It'll soon be over" he yelled cheerfully, glass of Champagne swilling over the drive,  "I can't wait to hear all about it".

Twizzle meanwhile was oblivious to it all, big spaniel tail wagging furiously at the adventure he was going on, mild curiosity as to why the children had been left at My Mother's, but hey ho, it must mean he's really important and special which of course he is. Even more so with out his balls.

So Twizzle as we know him is no more, a couple of pounds lighter and a little more worldly wise than at the beginning of that fateful car journey. He's doing well though and has assured Husband that he's got absolutely nothing to worry about. Not only did it not hurt but Husband won't have to wear the stupid cone he's got round his neck. He thinks it's ruining his chances with the ladies.

Sunday 10 May 2009

Things I have said To My Parents Today

  • I'm fine
  • No I'm just eating a sandwich so I sound a little muffled
  • No really I'm fine
  • I know I shouldn't eat on the phone
  • No don't call me back I'll put the sandwich down
  • Peanut butter
  • I don't have a nut allergy
  • Why would I need an adrenaline pen if I don't have an allergy?
  • But I don't need one
  • Shirley's daughter has one because she's allergic to nuts
  • I'm not allergic to nuts
  • There's no could be about it, I'm not allergic
  • OK I'll go to the doctors tomorrow and ask her for an allergy pen
  • She'll laugh at me you know
  • I know she wouldn't be laughing if I went in dying of a nut allergy
  • No thanks you don't need to come with me
  • Yes everything else is fine
  • How many times do I what?
  • Sorry, I thought you asked how often I was mating
  • You did
  • What kind of question is that?
  • I don't care if Oprah said it was a good indication of the state of a marriage
  • It's just not something you ask
  • I'm not telling you
  • This conversation is not happening
  • la la la la la la la
  • About three times a week
  • Well I'm glad Oprah thinks that's healthy
  • I'm really not interested in how often you and dad mate
  • I said I wasn't interested
  • Please stop discussing dad's mating habits
  • In the shed?
  • I really wish you hadn't told me that
  • No don't put him on I really don't want to know
  • Hi dad
  • I really don't want to know
  • I don't care whether you were alone or not
  • Well Mother gets these weird ideas
  • Just stop her watching Oprah that should do it
  • Yes I'm sure you are missing a good night's sleep
  • It's just a phase it'll be something else next
  • Yes hopefully something to do with growing tomatoes