"Argh! What the hell do you think you're doing?" John complained, as I pulled the blind cord and gave him a rousing chorus of a Boo Radley's classic.
"Today is the day that we're starting our new regime, remember John? I've made you a cup of peppermint tea. I'll give you five minutes to come round then I'll go through today's plan with you."
"Plan? Daisy!"
Despite promising to turn over a new leaf only the day before (when he was on a promise of pudding and custard) John wasn't as enthusiastic about my plans as I'd hoped. He must have fallen back to sleep because I didn't hear a peep from him for fifteen minutes. I had to stomp back into the room and poke him in the ear a few times to get his co-operation. Extracting the kids from their beds wasn't easy either but like a warrior, I pushed on.
There is usually a plentiful supply of fruit in our house, on account of the fact that the kids try to ignore it, so I whizzed up a nutritious smoothie. Marcus gagged but everyone else managed to get it down. As it was too nice outside for indoor exercise, John set up circuit training in the garden. He organised four stations: the trampoline for bounces, the far end of the lawn for star jumps, the main section of lawn for jogging on the spot and the patio for skipping with Molly's skipping rope. He said that as there were only four stations, he would man the stopwatch. It was great to see the kids getting so involved (even Cleo) though it did annoy me a bit that John was sitting on a patio chair with a stopwatch in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other, throughout the proceedings. We kept this up for a good ten minutes before Cleo tripped over the skipping rope/cat combo and fell into the paddling pool. She threw the rope down in temper, shouting about how it was ridiculous that we forced her to participate in something that was so PATHETIC, signifying the end of the session.
I wasn't deterred. I thought it only fair that as it was officially the school holidays, we shouldn't get involved in anything mathematical and that an hour reading a book and another hour playing Scrabble as a family, was sufficiently educational for now. It was most certainly a huge step up from what had been going on in this house of late.
I took the opportunity to calm Cleo down, with the help of a Dairy Milk (she's her mother's daughter) while the twins were reading, and was feeling pretty damn pleased with myself when ten minutes later, I surveyed a lounge containing three children kind of reading books while only indulging in very low-level squabbling. John had selected himself a David Walliams and was already engrossed. This was when it occurred to me that I should probably check in on the office, as it'd been a little while since I'd checked my emails.
At first I was confused:
Olivia's email said that she'd like a video conference on Friday to catch up with all of the developments regarding the launch my end (??) I had to be careful how I worded my reply as I was under the impression that the launch was postponed indefinitely. Had I imagined that? She got back to me straight away, informing me that she was in the process of persuading Victoria to go ahead with it at the end of May/early June and reminding me that in a Monday meeting that we had over two weeks ago, I had agreed to conduct research regarding the skincare needs of the modern woman. I had no recollection of this whatsoever and scoured my brain for memories of that meeting, but all I could see in my mind's eye was Daryl, dressed in lycra, grappling with his plums and blueberries. Ffs! How could I have been so careless as to agree to something while lusting over Antonio's super-ripped boyfriend? Schoolgirl error!
"Is it time for Scrabble now?" Molly asked, as I was desperately rummaging around in my work documents, getting more irritable by the second.
"Sorry, Moll! Ask your father. Mummy has to work."
"It's not fair, I want you to play. Daddy cheats."
I took a very deep breath. "True. Ok, I tell you what - we'll cancel Scrabble for today. Go over to the washing machine and open the door. Take the big bar of Galaxy out of it and share it with your brother and sister. You can play on your X Box till it's time for lunch, darling. Mummy's really got to get something urgent done for work."
She didn't hang around to ask any more questions.
Getting my head back into the world of luxury skincare wasn't easy. Anyone could see that it hadn't been a priority for me for the past few weeks. Every task took five times as long as it usually did. How the hell could I pull it all together by Friday? Could I wing it? Would Olivia and Antonio even notice? They weren't the sharpest tools!
"So any ideas for our super-healthy lunch?" John asked after he'd finished reading 'Billionaire Boy'.
"Sorry John. Something's come up in work so can you just give them some Supernoodles or something? I can't be disturbed. I'll leave you to it and take all this upstairs to the bedroom," I said, gathering up handfuls of paper.
"But ….. what about the rest of your plan? We were gonna bake wholemeal banana muffins, weren't we?"
"Healthy family living is postponed till next week," I said, unplugging my laptop. "Normal service has been resumed."
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