Saturday, April 17, 2010

Bring me your tired, your hungry volcano refugees...

I've got my very own volcano refugee coming tonight! And it is none other than my partner in crime from my Parisian nanny year! So excited!! Am trying to quickly organize a brunch at mine for tomorrow with a bunch of our old school friends who live in Paris. I don't know if I can even get ahold of everyone, and between staying up late last night (honestly, what is with all the wild parties, Neighborhood?! I finally got the downstairs neighbors to fall into line and now its the kids who live in the building next door and install their DJ's speakers against our party wall. You know it was loud when two solid concrete walls are vibrating from the bass. I spent my remaining 4 hours of sleep dreaming of the quiet Wisconsin countryside.) and all the sickos in our house, its probably a terrible idea. BUT. But I haven't done anything but sit around and be miserable all week and I know it would be a great party and only I will really mind how absolutely filthy the house is. So I'm going for it. Knowing full well that I will be in panic mode from 11 til 12 tomorrow but hey! I am stocked up on steroids! Surely those athletes don't use them for nothing!

As an aside, I am so pumped up after I take one. I don't know if there is some sort of psychosymatic thing going on or if they are really giving me some very enjoyable side-effects. But I like it and I am using it.

Also find myself pondering the wisdom of taking two a day. Just as an experiment, of course...

You have to have heaps of sympathy for my little refugee, though. She was in Montenegro (she does consulting work for the UN and usually is in Kinshasa, so I can only imagine that this was supposed to be a quick stop before flying back to London) and just managed to sneak on a flight to Zurich before all the flights got cancelled. Her boyfriend, god bless him, got himself to Zurich and is driving her to Paris tonight and they will catch a ferry back to London tomorrow at 8 pm. They are missing out on a romantic night in London with dinner at a Michelin starred resto, so I am desperately phoning around trying to get her something similar in Paris, to make up for it, without much luck. Not quitting yet!

So wish me luck. Today, despite the lovely weather, is turning out to be hellish. The girls spent the morning discovering new ways to torment each other, and me. Lunch was worse than usual, between Georgia 'feeding herself' and Ella refusing to eat anything. For the third day in a row. I don't know what happened to get them playing so nicely for the last half hour so that I could write this and drink a nice (calming) cup of green tea, but I thank god for it. I was very much at my wits' end.

That is really one of the hard parts of parenthood- the erratic swings between complete and utter pleasure at the simple presence of your children and then 5 minutes later the exhausted scream of frustration as they push every single one of your buttons, in rapid succession.

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