Warming Up

Unbelievably my little boy turned two today and just what I needed as I struggle to operate on the edge of exhaustion - a birthday party at our house with 10 two year olds and assorted other kids. I tried to have a nap just before it began, but the house slowly filled with noise and there was no escape. 

Ernie didn’t quite understand what was going on, but was very happy to have presents to open and a brand new scooter to play on and he was very excited about the bit when the cake came out, jumping up and down. He is his father’s son.  I meanwhile was keeping myself going on a diet of Haribo and Moam. Shortly after the party ended I decided I had to add sweets, cake, biscuits and ice cream to my list of forbidden foods. But this was a great blow-out to end my sugar addiction. 

My son won’t remember his second birthday party and I doubt that I will either. All I will recall is the sense of disbelief that two years have passed since the terrifying day of his birth. The kids continue to make my hypothalamus non functioning and destroy all short term memory. At least this means that I still believe I am 47.

I had  been really looking forward to an early night, but suddenly I realised that tonight was the village PTA quiz and we’d committed to a team. I really didn’t want to go, but I couldn’t like my quiz crew down. We’ve already been to two of these and they’ve been a fabulous night out (though to be fair, I was very pissed at the other two) and last time we’d come to unseating the regular champions, if only we had played our random joker on a different round.

Our rag bag team seemed like no match for the egg heads who always won, but we found ourselves taking the lead, even with a few silly errors that might have cost us dear, but we went into the final music round only a couple of points in the lead, knowing that none of us were very good at music. We got a few, but there seemed a lot of blank spaces. As every answer was an animal we just chucked in some random answers hoping to get lucky. And I think somehow we did manage to match up one of these guesses to get a point, by guessing “snake”. Which was amazing as we won in the end by a half a point.

The village eggheads were devastated by this victory, with three of them coming up to our table to complain of their poor luck, so our names will be mud in the village. But it was worth it, because we got the trophy motherfuckers!

Maybe sobriety is actually a help. Who knew?

I forgot how tired I was until I got home riding high on quizzing victory. Then I remembered. I’ve got to go to Exeter tomorrow. Oh shit.