Happy Days

Hubby due home in less than a week, hurrah (I think, although I will now have to resume the tedium of leg-shaving and cooking decent meals once in a while).
Decided to enjoy the last weekend of not having to slave over a hot stove to satisfy my man's appetite by erm... not slaving over a hot stove at all. Lovely neithbour cooked lunch for Twins and I on Friday, then we had 'Fun' Friday in the mess for supper (aka: 'managing-to-stuff down-a-couple-of-the-kids'-chips-whilst-they-narrowly-avoid-A&E' Friday - see previous entry).
On Saturday we trekked back to the mess for brunch (next time we should just take our sleeping bags on the Friday and save ourselves the hassle), then on Saturday evening another kindly neighbour popped to the chippy for us. I did actually have to flick on the cooker on Sunday for brunch at home as I was just way too embarrassed to turn up at the mess yet again with my wailing snotty entourage, but fortuitously there were kids' parties to go to for Sunday lunch and supper. Happy Days.
This kind of thing will all come to an abrupt end soon, as Hubby regards both mess functions and children's parties as ... I was thinking then whether Hell-on-earth would be too strong a phrase to use, but it's not, actually... which is a shame as I've been doing a good job training my children in being liggers, scroungers and freeloading generally: At brunch on Saturday the waitress remarked on how good my children were, sitting down and eating all their food without having to be nagged or bribed. I replied that they were just grateful because they never got fed at home, and she laughed, like I was joking...

Billy Mental

Well, Hubby didn't go Billy Mental, but he did go very glum.
I doubt even the homemade chocolate fudge I sent out to Afghanistan in some Very Important Colonel's hand luggage this week will have cheered him up. I also asked the Very Important Colonel to pass on a big sloppy kiss, with tongues, if he felt inclined to do so (think I may have been slightly tipsy when we discussed this at the Valentine's function). Not sure if he has done this or not, but don't think this will cheer Hubby up either. Although, hey, in today's modern army, snogging your boss is probably encouraged - but not sure if the VIC sees it this way. Should have sent the fudge/kiss with Tarquin, instead perhaps? Although he's not in the army and actually, keep having to remind myself, is not real...
However, as one friend has remarked, the advantage of having an imaginary gay friend when your car breaks down is that he can advise you on suitably stylish walking shoes.
So, you know, there's always a silver lining in there somewhere. Even if that silver lining is a fictitious homosexual.

No Escape

You know how when things start to go wrong and you imagine the worst case scenario and then think about how you'll deal with it, so you're prepared for the absolutely most awful outcome possible? What happens when it's worse than your worst case?
I just found out this week...
Well, I thought I had prepared for the worst when I managed to get the car and its rinky dink suspiciously loud woodpecker-ish noise to the garage. As I suspected there was much dark muttering and sucking of teeth and talk of little ends, big ends and cam shafts. Then they said the job was too big for them. The car has since been sent to another garage, who are sending it onto some specialists. It is in the car equivalent of intensive care. And I don't have health insurance.
It's so depressing. I keep thinking of how much it's going to cost and thinking about how many family holidays we could have for that money. We could quite easily buy a horse with what it will cost to get the bread van back to normal, and a horse would probably be a more reliable proposition at this point in time.
I have cried many tears and eaten much chocolate over the last couple of days (best to get the chocolate in now, as we won't be able to afford such luxuries in a couple of weeks when the bill comes in).
So I am stuck on camp. No car, no money, no Kleenex left in tissue box, and have just emailed Hubby to let him know. He will go Billy Mental...

the Great Escape

I know it's been a while, but I managed to get out! Went to North Wales for half term. Terribly exciting - I could almost hear the theme from the Great Escape playing as we headed out of camp on our big adventure to the outside world (luckily as I was only visiting my sister I didn't have to paralell park/lock doors/talk coherently, so it all went v. well).
And talking of the Great Escape, it was one of the theme tunes played by the military band at our Valentine's dinner night last night. Along with the Corps marching thingy (which, wierdly, half the people there hummed along to).
Now I'm not one for big romantic gestures, but even so, I don't think spending the evening tapping my feet along to some oompah music would really get me in the mood for hot lurving.
(I may have married a military man, but in many ways their psyche remains a mystery.) Not that this was an issue as Hubby is still in Afghanistan, of course. I did take along a tall, dark, mysterious and invisible man called Tarquin as my chaperone. But he turned out to be gay (should have guessed, with a name like Tarquin). Its a bit sad when even your imaginary escort is a sexual disappointment. Still, Hubby can take comfort from the fact that I can't ever be unfaithful to him if even my fantasy men turn out to be homosexuals...
And continuing on the Great Escape theme, last week may well be my last escape for some time as the family car (or bread van, as it's known) has suddenly started making this wierd rinky dink woodpeckerish noise (yes, that is probably how I'll describe it to the mechanic tomorrow and he will sigh and roll his eyes and say something incomprehensible-yet-somehow-innuendo-ish like "Ooh, sounds like your big end's gone, luv"), so I am utterly unable to escape at the moment. I am just praying the car actually makes it to the garage without blowing up.
Haven't mentioned the rinky dink woodpeckerish noise to Hubby yet, who will no doubt make face number three at the other end of the phone (the Basil Fawlty one, not the angry seagull or Captain Mainwaring one). And I don't want to be left with the image of his deeply furrowed brow and manically bulging eyes when he takes a sharp intake of breath and tuts about how I always manage to break things.
Tarquin never does a Basil Fawlty face at me. But then again Tarquin is absolutely no good in the sack. Oh, and he's not real, either.
Guess I am stuck with a broken down people carrier and a husband with a face from a 1970s sitcom.

We are all very excited because Twin 1 has learned how to wee both on the potty and on the super-dooper family toilet seat that I spent an eternity bidding on ebay for. The deal is that every time she does a wee in the correct place, all the children get a chocolate. They will get two chocolates for a number two, although this is yet to happen. However, I am quietly confident that it will: I think that chocolate, peer pressure, and big girls' pants with sparkly fairies on are a pretty big incentive to a two-year-old girl. Twin 2 is jealous, but I can't face double potty training and furthermore she is not to be trusted, as she finds nothing more hilarious than scuttling about in the nude and wee-ing in innapropriate places.
Tragically, the whole potty thing has been both the focus and the highlight of my week so far. I have barely made it out of the house, let alone to the exotic delights that lie 'beyond the wire'.
When our posting finally ends here, and they drag me blinking and quivering back into the real world, I will have completely lost the ability to lock my front door, parallel park, or have a conversation that doesn't revolve around poo, infant cold remedies or disturbed sleep patterns.

winter wonderland

All winter so far I've been hoping for snow, imagining how much the children will love it. I've had this vision of us all out in the cold, building snowmen, throwing snowballs for Dog and generally being rosy cheeked and wholesome.
Then, on Friday night it snowed, hurrah. How exciting!
Take a look outside, I said to the children on Saturday morning at about 6am.
And that was the start of it.
Son immediately wanted to rush outside, but I said best to get dressed first and have breakfast. Nobody wanted to eat breakfast because of the big snow excitement thing, and I started to mutter darkly about waste and breakfast being the most important meal of the day, etc (my parents would have been proud of me).
Finally got a bit of toast down them, only by smothering it in chocolate spread, and threatening no snow play unless some of it got eaten.
Son and Twin 1 then managed to get themselves dressed and in wellies in about a nanosecond.
Twin 2, however, decided she really didn't want to get dressed at all, that she would rather take off her nappy, wee on Son's bedroom carpet and then scuttle away, screaming.
So Son and Twin 1 were already outside, scraping snow (and probably a few chunks of rusted bodywork) of Hubby's car. I was trying to simultaneously get myself dressed, capture Twin 2 and win an epic battle of wills to get some clothes on, meanwhile yelling at Son and Twin 1 to get off the road and leave Daddy's car alone. And for God's sake shut the front door, all the cold air is coming in (I was thinking of the look on Hubby's face when he gets back from the war zone to a trashed car and an enormous fuel bill: it will be his angry seagull expression - one of my least favourite and just above his Captain-Mainwaring-and-the-tuxedo-disaster face).
Finally I made it outside with Twin 2, ready for the wholesome winter fun thing to begin, only for Son to sidle up, saying, Mummy it's really cold in the snow so I'm going in to watch some telly.
I think that was the moment when my icy wonderland dream finally shattered.
No, I said, you bloody well wanted to be outside in the snow and that's what we are going to do. And I huffed off down the street, carrying the still-screeching Twin 2 and with Son and Twin 1 trailing along behind, sniffing and complaining self-pityingly about cold knees.
Dog did a sort of cowering shamble at a distance, not really wanting to come out with Evil Mum and whingeing kids, but knowing that it may well be his only walk of the weekend.
I think in his secret Doggy heart he wants to be adopted.
And sometimes in my secret doggy heart I do too...

Families' housing meeting at the welfare centre today. Twins viewed it as a good opportunity to ask for as many chocolate biscuits as possible, in the knowledge that I was bound to capitulate simply to keep them quiet. This is a tactic they practised earlier on in the week when we went to Son's class assembly at school (the affect on them was probably quite similar to taking 10-year-old girls to a McFly concert: they screamed with pure adoration when Son recited his very important line from 'The elves and the shoemaker', spouting sprays of half-chewed chocolate jungle animals all over the yummy mummy in front).
Went along to the meeting at the welfare centre because a friend wants to get a new play park put in on camp. This is a good thing, as the current one is a soulless hole of metal frames and wierd springy things, whose main aim appears to be catching ambitious toddlers and sending them straight to casualty. I have been there once with all three children and had to have a very long lie down afterwards. So I'm fully behind the idea.
Unfortunately there were lots of other things that had to be discussed. At length.
Should we name and shame people who park with their wheels on the curb? What's to be done about the teenagers who drink alcopops in the play park in the evenings (I say leave them to it - kids that age have no concept of their own mortality, so let them down ten bottles of WKD and have a go on the killer climbing frame)? Why have married soldiers been using the skips that are only for the use of soldiers in the block? Are there enough dog poo bins? What's to be done about owners who don't clean up after their dogs?
At this point I managed to look outraged, but kept quiet. Decided it was best not to mention the time that Dog was caught short in front of the Brigadier's house and I found I was out of nappy sacks. Although to be fair, that was a long time ago. I don't think Dog has contributed that much to the current military turd crisis, mainly because I keep forgetting to feed him, so I think he rarely poos at all these days. Not quite sure how he is managing to sustain himself as I don't seem to have had to buy dog food for months. Maybe all those times when I let him out into the garden and forget to let him in, he's nipping out through a hole in the fence and skedalling in search of nourishment. Perhaps he's even got some other family leaving out titbits for him (quite likely, actually, as I know of one family on camp who leave out roast chickens for the foxes). The traitorous tart.
Eventually it was decided that a new play park was a good idea, and that one of the dog poo bins should be relocated.
So that was an hour and a half well spent.