The Lousy Sleepover

I don’t know about anyone else but I really love an ‘adult sleepover’ – you know, when you stay over at a friend’s house (often with your kids) instead of having to dodge breathalisers or taxi driver small talk on your way home.

I mean, what’s not to love about staying  in someone else’s house where they’re in charge of the meals and the dishes, you get to tuck your kids into beds made by someone else and then sit and drink and chat and laugh until the early hours of the night before rolling into yet another bed made by someone else? It’s perfection itself.

And so I was particularly pleased when the kids and I were recently invited by our good friends KC and MM to have a sleepover while my husband went un-flatpackin’ crazy with our new kitchen.

I am sad to report, however, that our sleepover became more about sleep than anything else. Both MM and I fell asleep on the couch during the last fifteen minutes of watching 80s classic ‘Heathers’ and KC ended up throwing a couple of blankets on me and dragging MM and herself to bed before it was even 9:30PM.

“You can’t let this be known,” KC told me the next morning. “My reputation as a party girl will be ruined forever more.”

(Now, I’m not sure where exactly she’s earned this reputation but I should add – to minimise damage control – that the last time KC came over to my house by herself she brought not one but TWO bottles of Prosseco and, handing them to me, gleefully exclaimed “I’m an enabler!!!”.)

Anyway, you’ll be pleased to know that we made up for our lack of a ‘Wild Night In’ with the grim discovery that Tiddles McGee and The Pixie were both hosting sizeable lice settlements on their scalps. KC and I subsequently got to sit outside for two hours in the freezing cold and occasional light rain shower while we carefully (and somewhat obsessively) combed through the kids’ hair in full daylight.

Yes, we are a pair of regular Good Time Gals.

Afterwards, KC kindly checked my scalp. Luckily, her extensive search uncovered only a small number of adult lice and no eggs.

“Let’s hope they were new arrivals and just didn’t have time to get into some hot louse-on-louse lovin’ action,” I remarked. “Unless, of course, they’re all females and it was hot louse-on-louse lesbotic lovin’ action. That’d be okay…”

At this point, MM passed by. Since he is a well-read sort, I thought I’d check my theory with him.

“Do you think there are lesbian lice, MM?” I asked.

“To be honest, I haven’t really thought about it,” he replied.

“Sure, you haven’t,” I said. “Sure.”

You see, I knew he would have. His mind has never been the same since I accidentally made him look at hardcore man-on-man porn.

Anyway, for the record, I’m hoping there really *are* lesbian lice and that those brave pioneers who chose to set up home on my scalp were some of them.

Unless, of course, they were progressive lesbian lice who had arranged a different sort of ‘adult sleepover’ with a gay lice couple on Tiddles McGee’s scalp before moving to mine… in which case, I think it’s fair to say that me and the lesbian lice are all fucked.

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Message In A Bottle

Like many people, I loathe having to make the double-goodbye – you know, when you go through the whole “I’m leaving now. Great to see you. Catch you again soon!” routine with, like, EVERYONE in the room, only to reappear a couple of minutes later because you’ve left one of your children behind. It always makes me feel a little like a dog returning to its own vomit – a phrase I admittedly tend to over-use in the same way that, well, a dog might return to its own vomit.

So is it any surprise that, having made my farewells at the kindergarten the other day and dragged Tiddles McGee, his bag and his portfolio of ‘pasting’ masterpieces (= patty pans stuck randomly to cardboard) to the car only to have him suddenly start tugging furiously at the front of his pants, that I opted for my now patented pee-in-a-bottle method?

Now, every time I employ this method, I promise myself that I will dispose of the bottle at the earliest opportunity, to avoid any “I’m thirsty! Ooh, there’s a bit of apple juice left here in this here unlabeled bottle…” high jinx.

And every time, I totally forget about it.

You might ask how anyone could forget about a bottle of urine on their car passenger seat. Let’s just say it takes a special kind of person.

Of course, a few days (yes, days) later, I was driving along when I saw my friend The MR walking along with his daughter on the other side of the road. I hastily pulled over to the side of the road to offer them both a lift to the school. And as I hastily pulled over, I heard a distinct noise. It was the distinct noise of a plastic bottle full of piss rolling off the passenger seat and falling down into a place that could only mean the first thing that would happen when The MR opened the passenger door was that the bottle would roll out and land cheerfully at his feet.

And so I began scrabbling furiously down the side of the passenger seat to retrieve the bottle before he opened the door.

See where this is going? Yes, instead of opening the passenger door to have a plastic bottle of piss fall and explode on his feet, The MR opened the passenger door to find a middle-aged woman stretched seductively across the passenger seat. Holding a plastic bottle of piss.

I think we’ll all agree that’s what’s called a result.

Of course, you’d think I’d remember to dispose of the bottle after that. Yes, you’d think that.

But no. The bottle had to remain in the car long enough that the next time we were parked outside the school, Tiddles McGee was able to pick it up from where I’d hastily stashed it and, holding it out to a large group of parents and children passing by, announce proudly “Here’s my wee!!”.

Needless to say, when we got home from that particular school run, I prioritised putting that particular bottle of wonderful straight into the outside bin. And I’m delighted to report that I got to have a prolonged chat with one of my neighbours while doing it…

By the way, in case anyone’s wondering, the little girl equivalent of “Piss In A Bottle” involves the car bin. But I’ll spare you the details, mostly because I’m still trying to block them out and not return to them like a dog… to its own piss-filled car bin. Oh, and subsequent vomit, of course.

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Crush And Blush

I’ll be frank with you. Turning up at a live music gig with my friend The Fabulous Miss Jones to see my very first Childhood Crush play felt a little bit like going to my school reunion with a supermodel.

Before the gig, I left a message on my Childhood Crush’s facebook wall saying:

“If I don’t get to talk to you tonight, can you pretend that the tall leggy blonde you saw in the audience was me? Thanks.”

When I told my husband about my misgivings, I thoroughly expected he would give me a little pep talk about how I’d impress the Childhood Crush with my sparkling wit and personality. Instead, he said “You should wear a dress that shows off your breasts.”

So I did. I mean, there’s something about revisiting the flames of your past that makes you want to look your Absolute Best – even if it’s just your breasts looking their Absolute Best.

Sadly, I once saw a Former Love in a food court in the city. I instantly knew it was him – after all, the bastard had broken my heart. He, in turn, looked over at me with some uncertainty. You see, it was shortly after the birth of The Pixie and I was the bloated shadow of my former self. So I kept my head down and thanked the Lord that I had used my ‘Starbucks Name’ when ordering my Boost juice.

[An aside: for those of you who are unaware of the Starbucks Name concept, it’s an easy-to-grasp pseudonym adopted by those poor souls endowed with Eastern European names with complex spelling who don’t want to be shouting “NO, NO! THAT’S ‘M’ FOR MOTHER!” over the din of a food court. ]

So when my Starbucks Name was called and it clearly wasn’t my name, the Former Love obviously decided it wasn’t me and went back to his conversation with his colleague. And I was able to waddle home to my suburban lair, Boost juice in hand.

Of course, ever since I became sohotrightnow, I have not seen him. Not once. The universe must hate me.

Anyway, back at the live gig, my Childhood Crush was very handsome and charming and gave The Fabulous Miss Jones, me and my breasts equal attention and I went home with that reassuring feeling that I’d had excellent taste in men at the age of 13. Result.

But here’s the thing… I also went home perilously late and extremely very drunk (another good reason not to go places with The Fabulous Miss Jones: neither of us have ‘Moderate’ as our middle name) and woke early in the morning fully dressed on the couch.

Except, I wasn’t fully dressed.

As I tried to drift back to sleep, I became suddenly – and terrifyingly – aware of the fact I wasn’t wearing any underpants. And, not being one to go commando for no good reason, I knew for certain I had started the evening wearing underpants…

When I got up later, I started looking for them. I looked everywhere: the laundry baskets, the bin, the fridge (yes, the fridge), under the couch, in the toilet. But they were nowhere to be seen. I even rang The Fabulously Hungover Miss Jones to ask her if she knew where they were. She denied all knowledge.

When my husband got home from work, we casually chatted about our days for a while before I tentatively raised the question of my underpants.

“Oh, yes. I found them with your handbag on the back table,” he said. “I put them in the washing machine because I didn’t think your father [our current house guest] needed to see them.”

Which at least explained their whereabouts… but not why they had been taken off or, indeed, when they had been taken off…

Listen, whatever happened, I’d like it to be stated for the record that it wasn’t me. It was someone who looked a helluva lot like me but had my Starbucks Name. Yeah, that’s it.

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