Mud & Mischief

Oh yes - we have room to move. In fact, the playroom is now an integral part of the downstairs rooms. Yesterday they fitted skirting board, loft hatch, cleared the floor and removed various bits of machinery. James brought home a huge piece of carpet that had come out of his parents’ house a while back and spread that out on the bare concrete. He vac’d it, put the dining table, 2 drawer filing cabinet and a few stray boxes in one corner, and suddenly, we have a table to eat at and a huge big empty space in the dining room! The children are ecstatic, and have spent today demolishing all three rooms. Why is it the mess created expands exponentially to fill the space available?

And the reason for the flurry of activity? I lost my temper (eta with the builder!)

And I don’t mean I got annoyed, irritated or snappy with him. Yesterday morning, I lost the plot completely, for a variety of reasons, not least being the fact he’d left his phone at his mother’s and therefore hadn’t had any of my texts to say he had to pick up the plasterer along with half a dozen bags of various plastering compounds at 8.30am. So 9am came and went with no plasterer, 10am came and went… at this point I should have been heading out of the house to pop to Asda then over to Kirsty’s for lunch.

10.20 and I found the phone book, rang his mother, got a tad upset at her and asked her where her son was as it was a week until Christmas, I had three small children in my house and no kitchen or running water. She said his phone was sat right in front of her on her table.

20 minutes later, he appeared, very sheepish and looking like he’d just rolled out of bed. When he told me he’d ‘lost’ his phone, I saw red and, well, let’s just say I’m a little ashamed of myself.

I turned into a screaming banshee. Never, ever, in my life before have I had someone back away from me going ‘calm down’. I think I genuinely scared the kid. I dragged him to the kitchen window and pointed out the hideous mess out there, telling him in no too uncertain terms that I was rather pissed off with not being able to let my kids outside. Drragged him to the front of the house and pointed the skip and piles of concrete and sand and stuff out there and told him the neighbours had been complaining. Dragged him into the kitchen and pointed the appalling mess, into the dinig room to point at the dust and the crap and the piles of everything onmy dining table and that my kids were having to eat on the living room floor due to his fucking imcompetence and that I was *this* (holds up finger and thumb an inch apart) fucking close to fucking killing someone and that he was at the top of my fucking list and that he better pull his fucking finger out before I lost the plot completely…

*draws deep breath*

I have no idea what I must have looked like, as I was a swearing, sobbing, furious, screaming mess. I have never lost my temper like that before. Ever. It was most disturbing. And also, in some ways, most theraputic. He’s now tiptoeing round me like you’d tiptoe round a live cobra…

But I have had one of his ‘lads’, Aaron, here all day, clearing, tidying, shifting stuff, doing bits I’m pointing out; the plumber is here plumbing in my sink (poor guy didn’t know I had a list of stuff for him to do - he thought he was here to tighten up a drippy joint). Aaron is now fixing the skirting boards in the kitchen. I’m also having trouble typing as I’ve got yet more plasters on my fingers, but I also have a nice stretch of counter top and my cupboards along the far wall are all fixed and level and in place ready for me to put the doors on when the plumber has gone. Will blog pictures later.