Two weeks ago, my husband and I and an incredible committee of people hosted 350 entrepreneurs for a week in Cape Town. It was sensational and exhausting all at once. Lectures all day. Parties every night. I am excessive by nature, so 'pacing myself' is always something that I suck at. Suffice it say that on Night #1, I was dancing on the speakers to Goldfish, shouting "Jaeger-bomb!" In true Type A style though, I didn't miss a lecture, so I came home knackered.
This weekend past, my mom got married, so on Friday night, we hosted a pre-wedding dinner for 35 people at our home. On Saturday night, we went to a friend's 40th and on Sunday, it was all love, marriage and a lot of Champagne.
As you can imagine, I woke up this morning with a swollen brain, a toxic liver and a mountain of work to catch up on. As you can also imagine, after this crazy weekend, my fridge was bare, so when I collected Liam and his friend and sidekick Cameron from school, I thought it would be efficient to take them for a milkshake and do the Woolworths shop.
Fuck me dead. At the best of times, the two of them are a handful, but today, with no liver enzymes left and the kind of exhaustion that makes your veins tired, I was in no state to deal with what these two little buggers had in store for me.
Liam and Cameron have been BFF's since they were 2. I love Cameron (he is a hugely lovable child) and I am mad about his mom, but both he and Liam are a combination of pure, unbridled testosterone and marshmallow hearts that are easily bruised. The two of them are like a paediatric version of Roald Dahl's 'The Twits" - madly in love and then oftentimes, just mad.
So we drove to Killarney with the usual backseat banter:
"Mommy, Cameron's not sharing."
"Liam!! I'm not your friend now. Jo - I wanna go home." (starts sobbing)
11 seconds pass
"Liam - let's scream."
"Ok. I'll count to 3 and then we scream...1, 2, 3..aaaaeeeee&&&********" (this was repeated at least a dozen times until I had developed severe tinnitus - Cameron is extremely loud and Liam shrieks like a mangled bird of prey)
"Jo - smell my stinky lawyers."
"Cameron's got stinky lawyers and a fart brain poo head!"
"NO LIAM!!!! Jo - Liam said I'm a poo head!"
After we had negotiated who got to ride the trolley and who got to walk alongside, I endeavoured to complete my weekly shop with focus and precision. Twas not to be. The two of them screeched through the aisles in an episode of what can only be described as pure mania. Because this situation was not new to me, I did what all good mothers would do: I pretended they weren't mine.
Then we got to the queue. This is where it really must be said: screw you Woolworths.
"Jo - can I have chewing gum?"
"No."
"Mommy - can we get Ben 10 chocolates?"
"Forget it."
"Jo - please can we have these sweets?"
"Definitely not."
When their attempt at hyper-glycaemia failed, they tried a new tactic: bashing the gentleman's trolley behind us and then bursting into fits of laughter. The problem with the queue is that you can't pull the "They're not mine" tactic.
By the time we reached the cashier, I had succumbed to some gummy sweets and strategically placed each child on a tile on the floor (with a tile between them) and told them to eat their sweets while I paid for my shopping. Not 20 seconds later, they were stoning the mannequin behind them with their sweets, shouting all sorts of juvenile obscenities about said-mannequin's poo and farts.
You need nerves of steel and a robust sense of humour to mother boys. I'm lucky. I have both. And if I'm totally honest, I love naughty boys. They are rough and real and exuberant and I wouldn't have it any other way.
But I won't be telling The Twits that. :)
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