Smidge

My mornings go something like this…

5am – I or the boy get out of bed to feed the cats. We have a strict rota system.

(One that I can cheat by sneakily feeding them at midnight, but shhhh!)

5.01am – cats are locked out of bedroom.

7am – I or the boy get out of bed to open the bedroom door to let the kitten in who has been scratching for 10 minutes to get in for a cuddle.

7.01am – yelping ensues as kitten sticks claw in foot to wake me up.

7.02am – kitten licks face and purrs in ear. Kitten gets cuddle. Kitten sits on chest. Kitten is kicked off bed.

7.15am – tomcat rattles blinds to go outside, gets sworn at.

7.30am – first alarm goes off, I switch it off and roll over. Snore.

8.30am – second alarm goes off. Boy growls at me to get up.

8.36am – I finally get out of bed

8.37am – cats start whining for more food.

8.38am – I shower, put on whichever of my 5 work outfits (3 dresses, one pair smart trousers) I have yet to wear that week, search for un-laddered tights, dry hair, put on make up. Search for hairbrush kitten has hidden under sofa. Find 3 missing lighters and a sock.

9am – make fresh coffee, watch news headlines, turn over to Elaine and feel sick as she is always cooking something vile too early in the morning. Drink coffee. Smoke fag. Check bus times. Do teeth.

9.23am – kiss boy goodbye, leave house and run for bus.

9.45am – smoke another fag, arrive at work.

10am – start work.

That’s right; it takes me 3 hours every day from the moment I wake up to starting work. I think that is a little excessive don’t you? I wish I could make my mornings more efficient and actually get up at 7.30am. The problem is that however early I get up I always seem to arrive at work at 9.45am.

Most of the problem seems to be my ability to be a proper domestic slut. I am lazy. I don’t spend my Saturdays washing my work uniform and Sunday’s ironing each outfit for each day and hanging them up perfectly in order for that weeks meetings. Instead I scrabble around for whichever has been washed and the iron rarely leaves the cupboard. I’m not dirty; i’m just disorganised. Tonight I am going to have to wash and tumble dry every piece of underwear I own because yes, that’s right, I have run out…and I own enough to fill up an entire machine.

The boy seems to be in awe of my messiness. I catch him standing in the bedroom, pristine jumper in hand admiring the crinkled mess that I have left my expensive John Smedley dress in and the amount of cat hair on the black jeans I usually wear to work on a Friday. His clothes are ordered, hung up and protected. Mine are flung on a chair, on the chest of drawers and shamefully still in the bag I took to my friends house last weekend. My clothes look old, his like they have never been worn.

I need lessons in domesticity, I might still be a student, but I need to stop acting like one. I need rules for adulthood…so here we go…

1)      I will get home and get changed so not to wear out fancy stuff.

2)      I will hang up my clothes straight away and not leave them for the cats to use as a bed.

3)      I will wash my work wardrobe on a Saturday.

4)      I will not then leave said work wardrobe in the machine for 2 days.

5)      I will remove nail polish from weekend before it becomes chipped and nasty (so not professional) and replace with a more appropriate colour than silver.

6)      I will not throw on boots to hide ladders or unshaven legs.

7)      I will not continue to wear socks with my heals. Particularly if they are odd. This is not work professional.

8)      I will throw away socks that have lost their partners, or search for them under the sofa more regularly.

9)      I will clear out, at least once a week the odd items of clothing that fester at the bottom of my washing basket and therefore are never worn as they don’t fit neatly into the only two washes I ever do ‘blacks’ or ‘whites’.

10)  I will get my trousers taken up rather than walking round with safety pins on the hems.

Ahem. That looks worse written down…

Are you a domestic slut or a pristine working girl? What would your rules be?

I would like (Edit: see you just have to ask nicely!)

…to work out how to change a song on the ipod on my iphone without having to take out the phone from my bag. Surely that little control on the headphone does more than volume? If not, sort it out Apple…

…England to qualify…obvs…

…my tummy to go more than 3 weeks without having a fit and landing me in bed for the day, swelling or giving me nasty cramps. So close, but so so, far…

…things with me and B to carry on exactly like they are right now… lovely, happy, coupley niceness, I am a very lucky girl…

…the sun to be out for the canal festival I am working at this weekend. It was miserable last year and I can’t face 6 hours standing in the rain again. If you are in Edinburgh come down and see me, details are here. There is a raft race and everything…

…to have a holiday or weekend away to plan, May and June have been brilliant and the summer is stretching a long way ahead of me with nothing to look forward to right now. Need cheap options…

…for good things to happen to the Strawberry Fox (the boy I was in love with for years, but no more) as he has had a very tough year having watched his father battle a brain tumour. Sadly he passed away last week and the funeral is on Friday. RIP…

…for the boy to get one of the jobs he is interviewing for this week, he needs to get his career of the ground now he’s graduated. If anyone is looking for an editorial assistant, designer, events organiser, fab jack of all trades, then get in touch (please!)…

…and finally, last but not least, to say a very happy birthday to my mummy. She’s in france, so I cant treat her, but I hope she’s having an amazing day…

Do you ever get a shocking, overwhelming girl crush?

I did this morning.

I’m not sure if it was the fact she had a high powered job (normally I find this intimidating, today I just found it impressive) or that she had hair just how I want mine, or even the fact she was getting away with wearing a beautiful abstract print dress that I’d never dare to wear, well not for work anyways.

Normally women intimidate me, but this one made me stumble over my words like a man meeting the woman of his dreams for the first time. I forgot to order her coffee, I forgot what we were there to talk about, I think I even drooled a little.

I found myself wondering “why can’t I be you??”

(Not out loud of course, that would be even more embarrassing than my very obvious “wooah!” reaction when I saw her)

It didn’t help that today I am dressed like a tramp, with a ladder in my tights and fluff on my dress.  Oh. I have my charms, but with men who prefer a delightfully disorganised, tomboyish in a cute way kind of girl. I’m not really a girl’s girl and if I am honest, meeting such an amazing specimen like the girl this morning, It’s made me want to be.

Really want to be.

I am a law abiding citizen. It appeals to my control freak nature. If I doing something wrong, then I just feel wrong, a bit shaky, out of sorts. However, this does mean I miss out on a lot of adrenalin induced fun. Well I assume its fun, cos otherwise why would people break the law?

There have been occasions where I have ‘forced’ myself to do things that I consider ‘wrong’ – In Paris at the weekend I jumped a metro barrier, I had bought a ticket like a good girl, but could I get it to work… no… so in frustration I jumped and spent the rest of the day worrying about cctv cameras.

Parties are the worst. In Manchester our apartment booked for 5 had about 12 people in it at one point, despite the booking saying no parties. I went with it, went with the flow and of course there was no problem, no one complained, there was no repercussions.

Unlike Saturday night. When I found myself opening the front door to the police.

How shameful. I never have parties because I am afraid of exactly this happening

Yes, we were having a wee party, but there were only 10 of us.

Yes it was late, but come on, it was a Saturday night and graduation time, despite the fact the only person who was a student in the place was B who was the one graduating.

Yes, there was music, but I don’t think the police would get very far threatening to take away my ‘sound system’ – I meekly explained that I would turn off my iTunes on my iPhone and that I didn’t own a stereo.

I think I’ve fallen foul of the fact my flat has been rented out to students for years. I guess that this isn’t the first time this has happened because of instead of just coming and knocking on the front door, one of my neighbours had the audacity to call the police and obviously made it seem a very big party – there were four policemen.

Four policemen! I wonder what they were expecting when the front door opened, not tiny little, slightly squiffy me…

Anyways, I apologised, they read me a formal warning.

..and then I drunkenly perved a little as these guys were rather cute. And stern. And in uniform. With big hand cuffs….

Maybe being a little naughty from time to time is no bad thing after all!

What is the naughtiest thing you have done? Do you break ‘the law’?