Hello. Welcome to my 'HOLIDAY'. Hope you're having a good one. I am. Yes, TRULY. Oh, and sorry I'm a bit shouty. It's just that being TRAPPED in a BEACH house with one's ENTIRE FAMILY in the WIND and the DRIVING RAIN tends to do that to ONE. (And yes, I know, capitalising 'one' was overkill and didn't really make grammatical or emphatic sense, but that's just the kind of mood I'm in.)
Everything is fine, I just have a touch of cabin fever. Nothing to worry about. In fact, being confined to a house with my husband, kids and parents in inclement weather is a good thing, really. As seven individuals of wildly disparate personalities (except for my husband and father, who are really quite alarmingly similar) we are forced to forget our enormous differences and get along. (Or to lubricate our differences with frequent consumption of alcohol, which, happily, is working quite well for the adults, but is clearly not appropriate for the kids.)
We are all bonding quite nicely. My father's lame jokes at my expense aren't bothering me like they used to, and his equally lame jokes at my husband's expense are sounding, well, pretty amusing really. And my mother's obviously superior raising of my children isn't rubbing me up the wrong way - in fact, I'm working it to my advantage by giving her time and opportunity to demonstrate her skills to me. As for my husband, well, I barely even notice him anymore - in the face of so much Sackville Family Of Origin crazy he has become a touch passive - and really, one can't hope for more than that at this stage of a marriage.
And the kids, well, I'm coping with their delightfully robust ebulliance extremely well. No longer am I bothered by Boo's ongoing renditions of 'Look At My Cute Bum Bum' (complete with bum flashes and points) or her insistence on administering some kind of nasal delivery technology to me via a small, green plastic bottle. Nor is her Bob The Builder Song Book irritating me at all, not even when she presses that damn button for the 756th time and the elevator version of the theme song plays for what seems like 17 minutes.
I'm incredibly proud of Pinkela, as she has been beautifully behaved, and I don't mind at all her using this holiday break to perfect the 'El Trumpeto' nose blowing technique favoured by her father and maternal grandfather. It's loud, it's proud, and when it comes from her nose by GOD it's a feminist statement. And Little Man, well, nothing he does ever worries me, not even when he does his Happy Dance Of 'You're A Loser' after thrashing me at Scrabble, though I've tried my absolute best and have sneaked looks into the dictionary and hate that stupid idiotic game anyway.
So all in all, it's been a very nice holiday break. And the fact that I'm sleeping 10 hours a night and then retiring to my room to nap for another two or three hours during the day is not at all related to any desire for space or solitude, but rather my need to recharge my batteries after a long hard year. And besides, what else am I going to do in this weather? For the love of god, people - it's FREEZING outside! WHERE'S THE SUN???? For GODSAKE! WHERE'S THE SUN??????
Er, sorry.. I'm fine now, truly. So how is your holiday going? Getting any rest? Be quick; I've been up for two hours already, I'm getting a bit shouty, and I really need to be heading back to bed....
