So now, on the eve of the new year, let us take a moment to reflect on the 365 days past. The thrills and the sorrows. The joys and the triumphs. And all the crappy boring bits of domestic banality in between.
Mostly, I have spent the year of 2011, picking stuff up.
I don't mean interesting things that you could pick up like, say, 'a bargain in the sales', 'a bit of French while en vacances' a 'pleasantly muscled plumber' or even chlamydia. I'm talking about the bent-over laborious collection of voluminous amounts of kid-related crap sort of picking stuff up.
Back in the day when I were a wee lassie, when we carried a three legged donkey 30 miles to school and had naught but a rotten lump of coal to play with, our house wasn't overrun with crap. We didn't have four billion-trillion toys like kids these days and were content with a rusty 3rd hand Malvern Star and a cheap cricket bat to keep us entertained for the summer.
We had a little gang of neighbourhood kids who roamed the streets like a pack of feral puppies searching for a stray biscuit or a mum who had baked a cake. We played out in the street, mostly didn't wear sunscreen and occasionally came inside for a drink of something highly artificial and E-number ridden or to marvel at the wonder of video.
No, us hardy gen X-ers didn't need much stuff. We were enlightened by the joyful fresh-aired loveliness of our pre-pubescent innocence, frolicking around on roller-skates and climbing trees in our blissful suburban paradise. (Or maybe we were just high on E numbers?)
My mum didn't spend all day hunched over as if she hailed from Notre Dame, scouring the shag pile for fear of foot impalement by Slutty Schoolgirl Barbie's* seven-inch stiletto. In fact, according to my foggy recollection, I do not remember her ever picking stuff up. I do, however, recall that she drank shit loads of wine and regularly shouted something along the lines of 'clean up this pigsty or I'm chucking everything out'.**
So what's happened to our bratty little pampered gen Z-ers who require Everestian mountains of toys, books and craft materials in order to find fulfillment? Why does my living room floor constantly resemble the aftermath of a hideous massacre, littered with Barbie corpses and gruesome matchbox car pile-ups? How come the dining table, with it's carpet of glitter and sequins and texta stains, looks like the morning after some sort of gay fairy disco?
Personally, I blame Suri Cruise.***
I'm not one to make new year's resolutions but perhaps this year I will resolve to spend less time on crap collection and work very, very hard on doing my best to perfect my mum's old 'drinking and shouting' parenting technique.
Cheers, my lovelies and a very Non-Crappy New Year to you all!
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In light of my hero/guru Mareike Hardy's recent defamation charges against material containted in her blog, I have now added bonus disclaimers just in case any of you 27 lovely readers wish to sue me.
* There is no such thing as 'Slutty Schoolgirl Barbie'. The particular doll I make reference to is in fact 'Princess Charm School Barbie'. She is wearing a provocatively-styled uniform of sorts however, it would be un-feminist of me to label her derogatorily despite the fact she looks 'well up for it'.
** My mum is quite posh. She would never have said the word 'chucking'.
*** It's not Suri Cruise's fault my kids are disobedient, messy little buggers. It's mine. And Mr D's. And my mum's cause she always buys them loads of crap. Oh and have a look at this hilarious blog.
(Laimīgu jauno gadu to my Latvian reader.)
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