food flasks

I reached an all-time low, appearance wise this morning.  While mooching around the kitchen, coughing, mixing diorlyte for two sick kids and loading the dishwasher, I noticed my two year old following me, saying “Dat! Dat!” and pointing to the back of my cardigan.   

I looked behind and saw that there was a lump of cookie dough stuck to it. A lump of mid brown cookie dough. I had made some with him last week so it had had almost a week to harden.  Basically, I looked like one of those shaggy sheep you see with bits of poo stuck to the wool around their bottoms. You know, those sheep that us city folk see and think “Why doesn’t the farmer just get nail scissors and trim that area?”  Oh, I was a sight for sore eyes.

It all started with the food flasks. I bought them on Monday in a flurry of supermom-ness, smug in the knowledge that from then on, my kids would have warm delicious dinners at school. Soothing broths, noodles, Laksa soups with rice, tinned tomato with a swirl of cream, warm, tasty meatballs with pasta and a sprinkling of grated cheddar. Of course, I hadn’t really considered that to do all this, an awful  lot has to be achieved early in the morning. And the night before.

 And then there was the boasting . I just couldn’t stop myself. Every mum I met on the way in and out of school had to hear about them. Even as I watched tired early morning mothers eyes glaze over, I went on with my list of benefits of hot food in the middle of the day, recipes and the wonderfulness of it all. It just didn’t seem worth it unless everyone knew my kids were using food flasks. What can I say? I’m only human.

After three days, four soups, one curry, noodles  in chicken broth, and a few extremely bored friends, I was tired. Very,very tired. They had gone from “Food Flasks!” to “fucking food flasks”.

By Friday I was coughing and by Saturday, neatly coinciding with my middle son starting the vomiting bug that was circulating in school, I had a temperature and felt truly rotten. Over the next few days his brothers fell like dominos, leading to nights loading the washing machine with sheets, glasses of coke being sipped uncharacteristically cautiously, duvets on the couch and the feeling of profound exhaustion that for me, results in the complexion of a used j-cloth.

And of course, the appearance of a smelly sheep.

So how was your week?