Mumma's comeback tour

The truth of the matter is, I missed my mad gang of bitches from the very moment I made my dramatic blogging exit. It was like – well – do you remember when you were a kid, right, and you’d stamp your feet and announce you were RUNNING AWAY FROM HOME, but you’d get to the end of the driveway – with your mum watching from the lounge-room window – and think, shit, what now? That was me, almost immediately after I’d stomped off.

That was exactly how I felt: WHAT NOW? I had, I think, underestimated just how much I need this blog. My blog is my sounding board and my therapy; my release and my platform to rant and rave. It’s the place where I share all the stupid shit that no one else cares about.

And so, minutes – if not seconds – after my determined and over-dramatic resignation, I started writing a list of the things I WOULD have told you if I’d had the forum to do so. I tried telling my husband, but he glazed shortly after I mentioned “wobbly pelvic floor”. I tried telling my work colleague, after she phoned to ask if I could reschedule a meeting, but she hung up the moment I said I’d been “suctioned to the toilet seat”. I started recounting tales of my children’s toileting and my husband’s unconventional rockmelon chopping to hapless checkout chicks in Coles, who looked on with a combination of fear and a steely determination to never, ever ask a shopper how their day was going ever, ever again.

This is where the list came in. It was my kind-of sort-of blog, in iPhone note form. I’ve still got it. This is what it says:

SHOUTING IN MY SLEEP. {This was shortly after Margaret-gate. I have reason to believe – because Paul told me, wearily – that I shouted, “Fuck off you bitch,” loudly and passionately.}

SUCTIONING TO THE TOILET. {Okay, this is a good one. I was forced to endure a three-hour children’s concert at the Crown Theatre, because Ben tooted on his trombone for eight minutes of it. With no disrespect to the performers, or to the coordinating teachers, it was fucking horrific. It was like the worst school assembly you’ve ever had the misfortune to sit through, multiplied by 63. It was never-ending. At one point, when my hip flask ran dry, I went and hid in the toilet. I sat in there for so long – inappropriately snapchatting my work colleagues about the woman apparently giving birth in the cubicle next to me – that my bottom suctioned to the toilet seat. No actual shit (literally).

BOOZE IN ALDI. {I went to the shops the day before they started selling booze in Perth’s Aldi stores. I saw the booze enclosure and I saw the booze signs, and I took photos, and got all excited and shit, but had no one to share it with, apart from Paul. I tried explaining my excitement to the school mums at pick-up time, but they just muttered about Dan Murphy specials, and tried not to catch my eye.}

BEN AND THE BMW. {I should take this opportunity to apologise to the owner of the BMW that Ben booted with his trombone on the way to the Crown Theatre. And the hapless parents who he unceremoniously kneecapped. Soz and that.}

HAIRDRESSERS. {I don’t know why I’ve written ‘hairdressers’. I went to the hairdressers. That was about it. It was as lovely an experience as usual.}

NUTELLA AND SUGAR. {One morning, I could find neither the Nutella nor the sugar. Turns out, they were both hidden under Alice’s bed, in case she got “hungwy in the night”.}

ALICE GIVING THAT GIRL THE FORK. {At the park one day, a little girl was being horrible to Alice. Alice responded – in what can only be described as one of my proudest moments – by giving the little girl the fork and saying YOU ARE NOT NICE.}

ALL THE VOMIT. {We’ve had a bad run, health wise. Frankie spewed for two weeks before we realised he had – and indeed still has – a kidney stone. Alice was way jealous of her brother, and spent two weeks spitting into a cereal bowl, saying she was also seriously ill.}

APPENDIX DAD. {This still makes me chuckle. The kid next to Frankie in the hospital ward had just had his appendix out. His dad, who was keeping a bedside vigil, threw him a sandwich one day, and it landed smack-bang on his kid’s wound. It was FUCKING funny listening to his dad beg forgiveness.}

Oh shit! I’ve just remembered what “hairdressers” refers to! It refers to me taking Frankie and Alice to get a haircut. I got them all hyped up for a haircut at a child-friendly hairdressing establishment – with rocket ships and iPads and shit – but I was disturbed by the hairdresser, who had bad hair. I dragged the kids away, crying (them, not me), and told them I’d seen the hairdresser chopping a child’s ear off, and we’d have to go elsewhere for a haircut. Except … there wasn’t an elsewhere, so I had to take them back. Shit got emotional.

So there you go. That’s all the shit you missed. Groundbreaking, eh? While I was away, clever, clever ladies mused on the importance of blogging, which made me think, WOO, I can use this as an excuse to make a comeback, but the truth is, I just missed y’all. I need you. I love you.