Thursday 18 October 2007

an average day


So last Sunday I'm at home with a rotten streaming cold, looking dreadful, feeling worse than I look. I'm dosed up on Lemsip and Fisherman's Friends and going through balmed tissues as fast as a Grand Prix driver goes through tyres, as fast as Britney goes through men. I'm feeling guilty for making my daughter go to school with the same cold. There's a used tissue up my left sleeve, two used tissues up my right sleeve, one in each pocket of my jeans and an empty packet in my handbag. My head feels like someone has crammed it overful with newspapers. I can't think straight. I can't think round corners either. And I have excruciating period pains so I have a hot water bottle stuffed down my jeans, which isn't helping much, let me tell you. I'm scared to take any aspirin with the gallons of Lemsip I have already sloshing around my system. So I walk through the kitchen and my 16 year old son, no 17, how did that happen? Anyway, he cringes in the corner at the sight of me. I tell him I'm doing research on how pregnant women walk because it's such a long time for me, nearly fifteen years since I was waddling under my own steam. I splay my feet and lean back slightly, my hands supporting the small of my back. He cringes even more at that. But somehow it seems more acceptable to me to make him think I'm practising being pregnant rather than tell him I have period pains. Why is that?

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