1. fresh start for 2011

Sometimes, friends, I fell a teeny bit short of the gold standard of parenting in 2010.

There have been occasions in the past when, sadly, I failed to recognise my child in her school photo. Or posted video of her emotional trauma on the Internet. Or there was that time I sent her to school with pictures of monkey porn.

But it’s a fresh start. A New Year.

I have high hopes for 2011. And resolutions, and stuff. Oh yes.

My 2011 resolutions are to do less of this sort of thing:

  1. Forgetting school pick-up time, necessitating a last minute cry of “Oh, bugger” and an undignified race to school with un-brushed hair and the remains of my lunchtime soup down my front
  2. Telling Flea that she can’t have a bath and needs to go straight to bed because the boiler’s broken and there’s no hot water, so I can have a long soak myself
  3. Screening my phone calls to avoid speaking to people I’m related to
  4. Paying for £2 of petrol in loose change because yet again I forgot to take my bag on the school run
  5. Inventing games with potentially compromising names like “Close your eyes and guess who hit you round the head”.  Other people never entirely believe that Flea *asks* me to play these games
  6. Spending 20 minutes trying to work out who the heck just unfriended me on Facebook. Note to self: if you can’t work out who it is, it probably wasn’t a CLOSE friend.
  7. Pretending that rice with frozen peas and soy sauce is a balanced meal for a 5-year-old
  8. Recycling PR freebies as birthday gifts for friends and family
  9. Telling the Mums at the school gate I’ve been working hard when really I’ve been at the cinema all afternoon
  10. Laughing when Flea refuses to kiss her Dad because “he’s not handsome enough”
  11. Saying things like “I hope my niece likes it” when buying books like Twilight, hoping that the shop assistant will think I’m not the kind of sad loser who reads anti-feminist Mormon propaganda
  12. Making Flea hide with me in the dining room when the window cleaner knocks on the door and I don’t have any cash
  13. Writing a blog post about my teenage crush. Using his full name (yes, this one still makes me blush just to think about it)
  14. Posting passive aggressive status updates on Twitter about how ‘some people’ need to get a life. The chances of them reading it and thinking “She’s absolutely right!” are fairly slim, after all
  15. Ordering take-out from Dominos just because I’ve run out of Diet Coke and can’t leave the house to get more
  16. Muttering “Think good thoughts about Jesus” while using ATMs, thereby causing the people behind me to think I’m some kind of religious nutter
  17. Telling Flea that the clothes in the laundry basket are perfectly acceptable if there’s nothing clean in her wardrobe
  18. Waiting until my mobile voicemail fills up and then deleting all the messages without listening to them on the basis that if it was REALLY important, they’d have called back.
  19. Throwing away pans because I’ve burned dinner (again) and can’t be bothered to clean up the consequences
  20. Inadvertently teaching my child phrases like “pick a lane, any lane” and “It’s called fourth gear, Granny, heard of it?” while on the school run

 

(* Probably. I mean, I’m not promising anything, obviously)