"The Age of Amazing-ness"

How can I not sit here today and take a moment out from my washerwoman duties to highlight the fact that this is the first time in a millions years (okay...over a decade anyway) that I can sit here, however briefly, kiddie-less, in our House of Shambles and NOT hear the distant drone of CBB's telly on in the background...or plaintive wails of "I'm hungry...what should I eat?...I want something crunchy...no something soft...no something _____"

It's true.  I think I jumped the gun yesterday when I announced that our last, littlest weeny sprog had hatched the nest so to speak, and ventured off to Nursery for the first time.  Really it's today that must be marked as truly historic, for after dragging a reluctant Squit off to school, I actually got to leave him there and have a little bit of time to myself.  (Shamefully, I got round the highly traumatic 'leaving' issue by setting him up in the little kitchen and rattling off a litany of foodstuffs I expected him to prepare for lunch upon my return.  The little guy totally fell for it, and began mixing and pretend pouring in earnest as I hightailed it out of there, expecting a plaintive wail which never came. Well I'll be...maybe after all this time the little guy is in need of more stimulation that he's thus far gotten watching me clean, launder and grocery shop these many months.)

So what did I do with my newfound freedom?  Nip off to my local coffee shop, laptop in hand, and celebrate with a double shot cappuccino? Come back and have a leisurely bath and rearrange my wardrobe? Catch up on a few chapters of my latest book with a cup of tea?

Nope.  True to form I spazzed 90% of my first day of freedom on kitchen cleanup, bed making, yet another load of laundry, and concocting a killer green juice from scratch courtesy of my Dualit juicer (which unfortunately takes eighteen times as long to clean as it does to conjure up said juice.)

Anyway, in two minutes I must dash across and collect little Squit and then likely get told off the entire way back about how i deserted him and be informed in no uncertain terms that there is no way he is going back.

I have news for you little man.  You are SO going back and moreover, tomorrow I shall not squander my 2.5 hours of morning freedom.  Oh no...housework be damned.  I am going to use my time decadently artistic fashion and see what comes of it.

Perhaps a new tune is just waiting to be put down...or that novel that for years I've been meaning to write is going to be birthed at long last...or maybe I'll just get to grips with the mountains of paperwork and documents which need to be sorted and collated in order to move us out of here and into a new home.

Whatever it is, I do know that last night when the husband asked me whether I had felt teary dropping off our youngest 'onto the conveyor belt of the rest of his life', it took me a millisecond to realise that I had not.  Not at all.  Yes, it's the end of an era, and yes, that munchkin voice and eggbeater run of Squit's is on the way out...as are tiny jeans, baby breath, and blowing kisses.  I know that in a blink of an eye I'll be a ladyshape in the midst of four big menfolk, sniffing the testosterone in the air and being held ransom by infinite smelly sweat socks.  But...I will also get my life back.  And while the boys grow monstrous and come to see me as little more than a meals on wheels/drycleaning service, I shall quietly be concocting my next move on the sly.

I am already daydreaming my future incarnation into being as we speak...