"Where's The Cat In The Hat When You Need Him?"

Today it rained...all day. We are due to fly to Canada for the duration of August in mere days, so it would have been the perfect time to get a head start on packing.

Or perhaps I could have had another crack at the verbally/mentally challenged human(?) from the dodgy energy company threatening to sue me for non-payment of £57.09 from two years ago. Yesterday I squandered an hour I'll never get back, trying to communicate with someone who shouldn't be allowed to speak on the phone - let alone order at a restaurant.

Despite my immediate assessment of the situation, implementing only universal slang vernacular and purposely omitting any words cheeky enough to be more than two syllables - it still failed to yield a result. By the forty-five minute mark, I'd clearly lost the plot and should have just hung up, taken a valium and sunk into a hot bath to calm my nerves.  Instead I tried one last time to make her understand the purpose of my call, nose-diving deep into 'use only in emergency' patronisation, which of course was equally unrewarding for both of us.

"The bill is in your name so you have to pay it," she said for the 47th time.

"Yes but we have never been with you, and even if we had, why would it take you almost two years to send me the bill?! Why is this the first I'm hearing of it, and why are you threatening to sue me and take me to court in two days?"

"Umm...the bill is in your name so you have to pay it."

"TWO YEARS THOUGH?!" I yelled. "You are not making any sense! We were never even your customers!!"

"The bill is in your name so you have to pay it." Click.

So as I was saying, today it rained all day. I had two bored as hell male specimens trashing the house, one of whom has just gotten braces fitted and as such has been refusing all food save berries and Pringles, so I had to cart them both to an emergency orthodontist appointment on foot and bus. They refused to don appropriate wet weather gear or carry umbrellas. Ergo they got soaked, cold, miserable, and we were forced to nip into a rather sad, down on its luck charity shop to get dry, whereupon Egg immediately demanded I hand over my phone in order that he be allowed to set the stop-watch for 10 minutes or else I owed him £20.

We must have looked (and sounded) a pathetic sight, for within minutes (8.42 to be exact, as Egg was sat on a stool announcing random time countdowns), the sweet fellow manning the shop alongside a Cyndi Lauper lookalike (think she had a soft spot for me on account of our matching bright red lipstick) took pity on us.

"Good for you for getting your kiddies out on a day like this," he kindly said.

Meanwhile Squit is grabbing all manner of junk (think brightly coloured stick on fake gems which will be decorating our house for months to come...'bathtub crayons' because there are still areas of our walls not yet graffitied, and armfuls of stupid dvds...), Egg is continuing his verbal time keeping tirade at full volume, and I'm trying to frantically peruse the bookshelf for ANYthing to take my mind off my internal, pitiful hell.

Hence the purchase of these:

Anyway, the point is, at the cash register where I was rooting around inside my rain-sodden wallet, they kindly told me that every two weeks there is a bus trip, funded from the charity shop, which takes young people like my two, out to the countryside for a day to give them a bit of fun.

"And it's a break for you too Love," Cyndi Lauper's doppelganger kindly offered.

I sighed. I was gracious. I told them that I'd definitely keep it in mind, and wished them a good rest of the day before barrelling back out into the deluge, into the nearest Cafe Nero, and buying the little buggers whatever they wanted just to BE QUIET for FIVE MINUTES. We then proceeded to miss not one but two buses, whereupon I lost all desire to continue existence in my current form.

As if things couldn't get any worse, once home Egg ended up watching an unbelievably tragic teenage cancer movie, got teary-eyed and wanted to discuss death for an hour, then escaped to his room to do some serious frenzied twisting of his 57 odd Rubik's Cubes and put his world back to rights. Given that there are no Pringles and only a handful of blueberries in the house, all he has eaten today is a lemon-poppyseed muffin I barely recall purchasing in a frenzied, depressed state. Egg is adamant that he needs a Masala Dosa, and if I can't provide that, he will not eat for the remainder of the day.

All this to say, as I look down at my semi-naked five year old who has not only stolen my iphone and locked me out for another fifteen minutes, but refuses to wear any bottoms and has kept up a ceaseless "I'M BORED!" mantra chant for the past forty-five minutes, I say to myself that maybe Mummy needs to pick up her newly purchased hard copy of Valley of the Dolls and bury herself into the lives of women possibly more tragic than herself. (Or maybe not.)

Oh yeah, and the fact that I'm now wearing trackie bottoms really says it all.