Tag: car

Sibling battles: car wars

“Mum can we sell her?”

This infuriated Georgie so much that she took off her slipper boot and started hitting her brother with it.

If the kids are in the same room, or even if they are not, they will definitely have a row. I’m getting so sick of it that today when they were arguing in the car I threatened them with no snacks after school. It worked for about 5 minutes. Their car row was about which of them was the blue power ranger and which was purple.

“I am blue Archie,” said Georgie firmly.

“No you are purple and I am blue,” said Archie defiantly.

“I AM BLUE” yelled Georgie fiercely almost leaping out of her seat to shout in his face.

“No Georgie you have to be purple because I am blue,” said Archie more loudly puffing out his shoulders and showing her that he was bigger so he must be right.

“You can both be blue,” said Grandpa diplomatically. He had the bad luck of being in the car with us that morning.

This row came a few minutes after Archie had yelled at Georgie for looking at his privates when he went for a wee. “I’m not looking at your winkie,” said Georgie primly (who was clearly looking at his winkie). “I looking at your feet.”

However all of this pales into insignificance compared to the car argument of last night. It started off with Georgie throwing a massive tantrum because I wouldn’t buy her skittles from the vending machine at the swimming baths. I offered her a bag of crisps instead (inferior) which she rejected and then hit me. I bundled her into the car where only the threat of telling her teacher that she was naughty made her hold still enough for me to fasten her seatbelt. Then she began kicking the back of my seat. “I want my crisps,” she yelled. This made me laugh. “No chance. And you are going straight to bed when we get home. You don’t hit Mummy”

She wailed and then turned on her brother who was enjoying the show while contentedly munching his way through his salt and vinegar walkers. “Not fair,” she yelled as Archie gloatingly scoffed his crisps.

“Mum can we sell her?” asked Archie

This prompted a burst of laughter and infuriated Georgie so much that she took off her slipper boot and started hitting her brother with it.

“Perhaps we could just leave her in the forest like Hansel and Gretel,” I responded.

“Noooooooo, don’t do it,” she cried.

“I’m joking, I wouldn’t do that. But you are going straight to bed,” I said.

Georgie decided she was not getting anywhere with violence. So she stopped whacking us, composed herself and then said: “I want my crisps please.”

But after attacking her Mum and brother this was closing the stable door after the horse had bolted.

By now Archie had devoured his crisps and turning to Georgie with a twinkle in his eye, he said “You can lick my fingers if you like,” which brought about a fresh bout of uncontrollable laughter and another whack with the slipper from his sister who was also trying to scrape him with her nails.

There was nothing else I could do but put her straight to bed when we got home and of course when she woke up in the morning she was an angel. The mild row they then had over Mr Bean seemed like nothing.

Georgie: “Mr Bean doesn’t have a Mum does he?”

Archie: “Yes he does Georgie, she is just not in the programme.”

Georgie: “No Archie, he doesn’t have one.”

Archie shouting: “He does Georgie. Everyone has to have a Mum or you can’t get born.”

Georgie: “Mr Bean prays for a Mum.”

*This was 24 hours. There are sooooo many more. Like the fight over a sick bucket, who gets in the bath first, who has the best belly button and so on. In fact there is nothing that can’t become an argument and at 4 and 7 years old I suspect this is just the start……

Trying not to die on the way to football

I am sharing my experience because a lot of people suffer from physical manifestations of stress and anxiety and until it happened to me I didn’t think it was real. Now I know better.

I had been slightly breathless all morning but I didn’t have time to dwell on it. The mild respiratory virus that had been bothering me for a few weeks was refusing to shift but there wasn’t much I could do about that. Life sped on. I needed to file an article that I’d finished the night before; my 7yr old son needed to be ready for his football tournament which was starting at 9am (where were his socks – arrrggghhh); my 3yr old daughter needed getting ready for nursery (“I not going to nursery today,” she yelled) and I had planned to throw some food in the slow cooker before we left (it wasn’t going to happen).

But by the time we were on our way to the football, 20 minutes later than planned and struggling to find the ground, the breathlessness demanded my attention.  Every inhalation felt inadequate. There just wasn’t enough air getting into my lungs. My chest was tight and sore in a burning, itchy kind of way. I put my head back and inhaled harder. Only when my lungs were fully inflated did it feel OK. I did it again and again. But the dizziness and disorientation were getting worse. There were pains in my chest, high up near my left breast.  I opened the car window and the cold air flooded in. It felt better, a bit. “Mum it’s cold,” shouted a voice from the back. I ignored it.

I was so dizzy that I thought I was going to faint. I gripped my car seat and looked straight ahead hoping that I wouldn’t pass out. We were running late as it was. My son did not need to see his Mum fainting. My husband stoically kept driving. I don’t know what he was thinking.

A few minutes later we arrived at our destination. I couldn’t get out of the car because I couldn’t stand up on my own. I was too weak and I was shaking too much. “What the fuck was happening?” Surely a virus couldn’t cause a heart attack? Was I going to die? I didn’t know what to do. I used the car door to pull myself up. My husband took my arm and helped me out. My son ran ahead oblivious, excited about his match – I was glad that he hadn’t really noticed. We walked over to the pitch slowly and I leaned on my husband like I’d lost a leg. “Phone the doctor,” he said.

The duty GP at the surgery told me to go to the nearest A&E. “I had a chest X ray last week because of a respiratory virus and it was clear.” I said not wanting to waste anyone’s time. “Things can change in a week,” said the GP.  “It is not worth taking any risks.”

Luckily the grandparents had come to watch the football too, so we were able to get me to hospital without ruining the day for my son. By the time we walked into A&E it was all starting again. As I struggled to breathe, the dark patches in front of my eyes got bigger and I had to cling to the wall to stay upright. I was helped into a wheelchair and I wasn’t even embarrassed about it. I knew I couldn’t stand up. Then the shaking started. The only time I had ever had the shakes was when my body reacted badly to all the drugs I’d had when I was having my first baby. But it was happening again.

A nurse took me into the triage room and started to monitor me and ask questions. They did an ECG. My heart was galloping and I had an arrhythmia “But that can be normal,” she said gently.

They would take blood and monitor me for a couple of hours they said. I was put on a bed. I felt bad that I got a bed when there were some very frail and poorly people in that waiting area. “I am healthy. I am only 38. It was my birthday last week. I go running.” I said more to myself than anyone else. And to be honest I hadn’t run for weeks now.

IMG-20160515-WA0002
Norm being his usual sympathetic self

Next to me a lady was crying as she sat in her wheelchair. Blood from her hand was slowly dripping onto the floor. The man next to me was vomiting sporadically into a bag, you could hear that his stomach was empty from the empty wretching sounds. A drip was attached to replenish him. The girl opposite looked like she had been beaten up, her face was swollen and she was crying. Two police officers sat with her, two more were by the doors. In the corner a man sat coughing, hacking up flem into a cup every ten minutes or so. The woman next to him yelled “for God’s sake” every time he did it and sat with her back turned to him in disgust. An elderly man nearby was yellow and quiet, he told the doctor that he had the runs. They told him that his kidneys were struggling, he was very poorly and he needed to be admitted.

There is no such thing as privacy in A&E.

“Hello Sweetie,” said a gentle voice, so kindly it brings a lump to my throat to remember it. “I’m going to put this cannula in so that we can take some blood,” she said. Her name was Maria and despite the full waiting room, the police, the hacking, the bleeding, the crying and the relentless pressure that she was undoubtedly under, Maria still cared enough to make eye contact with me and be kind.

After 4 hours of tests and waiting the results were normal. I was not having a heart attack, there was no fluid in my lungs. But the score for a protein related to blood clots (D Dimer) was on the high side so they decided to do a CT scan to check for pulmonary embolisms. That too was clear. There was nothing wrong with me. I wasn’t dying. I should go home. But what was going on?

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CT scanner: the drugs that show up any clots make you feel like you have wet yourself – odd

“These were classic panic attacks, brought on by hyperventilation, brought on by stress,” said the GP that I visited a few days later to try and make sense of what had happened. “You can’t get over a simple virus because you are too run down. You need to make some changes.” he said*.

*He said a lot more than that and I’ll give more information in a future post

**I am sharing my experience because a lot of people suffer from physical manifestations of stress and anxiety and until it happened to me I didn’t think it was  real. Now I know better.

 

 

Women’s work: car maintenance

We were two independent, educated women who could add oil to the bloody engine all by ourselves. Except we couldn’t. Shit

Last weekend I went away with the girls for a leisurely 2 days of relaxing, drinking wine, sleeping for over 8 hours a night, having naps and eating food that I had not had to cook. It was blissful. I was feeling liberated after flying solo for 2 days but on the drive home the oil light started to flash on the car dashboard. What does that mean? I discussed the implications of the light with my co-pilot Jo, and then rang the husband, he is a mechanic after all. And as he is so fond of saying to me (in your face Norm): “You don’t get a dog then bark yourself.”

His advice was simple: “If it is orange stop at the next garage and put oil in. If it is red pull over now and stop the car,” he said. It was orange.

At the next garage I bought a litre of engine oil (£14.99 – what? Probably the same price as the pick and mix) and then the fun started. Where the hell was the button that pops open the hood? This was already embarrassing. Not only did I not know how to check the oil after 18 years of driving I couldn’t even open the bonnet to start to get it wrong. We even asked a stranger who fortunately couldn’t find it either. Then Jo demonstrated a flash of genius. “Where is the manual?” she said. Oh yes. I’d had the car since December and had not yet looked at the manual which was in the glovebox.

The manual told us that the bonnet button was just behind the fuel button, which it was but tucked around the inside of the panel down by the accelerator. Not obvious. Obviously.

We popped it open.

Where?
Dipping
Holes
Screwed tight

Next stop – the dipper, which we couldn’t miss because it was bright orange. We pulled it out and looked for the minimum and maximum lines. There were none. We looked harder. There were two tiny holes and the oil hadn’t even come up to the first one so it was definitely low. Excellent. This was not rocket science. Now which tank was the oil tank? “It usually has an oil lamp on it,” said Jo who, with her powers of practical deduction, was fast becoming my hero. To my mind there were three different openings that could have been the oil tank so I consulted the manual again. It was the black one, which once I wiped it clearly had an oil lamp in it. Bingo.

I tried to twist it. Nothing. Jo tried to twist it. Nothing. We alternated a few times and then looked at each other in dismay as the bloody thing refused to shift. We were on the final lap (of a very short race), we didn’t need a mechanic husband or anyone else for that matter, we were two independent, educated women who could add oil to the bloody engine all by ourselves. Except we couldn’t. Shit.

A few people had noticed our struggle most notably a bearded gentleman in overalls. We waved. He sauntered over and after a few seconds of explanation he reached down and immediately turned the cap which turned as easily as a  child’s windmill in a strong breeze. “It has been over tightened,”  he said kindly. Then he smiled, nodded and sauntered away as we thanked him, our politeness disguising the resentment that we had needed to ask in the first place. Fifteen minutes later we were back on the road feeling empowered. The car needs a service in January. Perhaps Norm would like me to do it instead……

 

The Seatbelt Standoff

There had been murmurs of dissent in the weeks leading up to the seatbelt standoff. Yelling from the back seat with shouts of “Mummy I can’t lie down” and “This seatbelt hurts my twinkle” were becoming increasingly common. Her arms were repeatedly coming out of the four point harness as she sought to burst her way out of the seat, grabbing on to the driver headrest to create more leverage. Every time she did this I would stop and explain that if we crashed she would be chopped in half or I would go to prison but none of this deterred my little madam from seeking to escape. “I don’t care if you go prison, as long as I have my freedom I don’t care about yours,” she would have said, if she could.

Usually once she realized that she didn’t have the strength to break out of the seat she would dissolve into tears, or I would manage to distract her with food or an episode of Team Umizoomi on my tablet, and we usually made it from A to B. But this was not the end of the matter. Like an evil genius she continued to plot her escape and one grey evening on the way home from nursery all hell broke lose.

It started the same way that it always did. “Mummy I can’t lie back,” she wailed as she sought to recline, tired after a hard day of playing.  “I don’t want my seatbelt on,” she yelled and dragged her arms out of the straps. I firmly told her to put them back in. She ignored me. So I pulled over and put her arms back in.

As soon as I started driving again she yanked them back out. I stopped again. She tried to hit me. I tightened the straps as far as I could so that she couldn’t pull her arms out. “Mummy it is too tight”she wailed as we set off again.

And then it happened. She worked out how to pop the button that released the harness. Both thumbs and most of her bodyweight were needed for this operation and once her mission was accomplished she stood up defiantly and did a little victory dance.  “Mum she has taken her seatbelt off,” yelled my 6 year old who was in raptures because

a) he was the good one

b) siblings getting into trouble is just utterly brilliant

c) he thinks she is really funny when she has a tantrum.

“Right. I am stopping the car and we are not going anywhere until you wear your seatbelt properly,” I said pulling over into a nearby car park. The standoff had begun.

At first she enjoyed the freedom, climbing into the front and giving me her biggest smile. I ignored it and told her that I was not happy because I wanted to go home. She began stroking my hair and trying to win me over with her massive cuteness. But I was not having it. “Get back into your seat so that we can go home.” I said.  “And if you don’t Rainbow Bear is going back to the shop.”

This stopped her for a moment and she got into her seat. Rainbow Bear is the softest bear in the world and he sings “Let it Go”from Frozen. She could not love him more. I did a mental high five and gave her brother a knowing look as I fastened the seatbelt. No sooner had I started the ignition but she undid it.”Mummy the seat is itching me,” she wailed pulling at the seat cover and crying out as if in mortal agony from the pointed spikes that were surely ripping open her skin. Of course there was nothing wrong with the soft padded seat.

It was time for Plan B. I pulled out the chocolate that was in my bag and gave some to her brother for being so good. “You can have some too if you sit nicely and keep your seatbelt on,” I said. “No” she yelled. “NOOOOOOOO NOOOOOOOO.”

It was time for Plan C. The plan of last resort because it means admitting that I was being outwitted by a three year old. “Right that is it. I am getting Daddy to come and help me,” I said. “Unless you are going to be a good girl?” I asked daring to hope that she might decide to comply rather than face the wrath of no nonsense Dad. “NOOOOO” she screamed. Shit. I admitted defeat and rang The Husband.

Fortunately he was on his way home from work and made a detour to come and help. He would use his practical skills to fasten her in to the seat in such a way that she could not undo it. As soon as he arrived the three year old sensed that the tide was turning in favour of the parents and she was livid. The scenes that followed were like something from The Exorcist as she screamed in her Dad’s face and tried to batter him with her little fists. Her brother and I couldn’t help but laugh as she pounded her father with the ferocity of a rabid dog. She then spat at me for good measure.

Daddy arrives to a punch in the face. He is not amused.
Daddy managed not to hit her back. Just.

As Dad got into his car and we set off home in convoy my daughter realised that she had only one weapon left in her arsenal: “Mummy I am going to wee on my seat,” she said in a sing song voice. “Don’t you dare,” I said. She dared. “I done it,” she declared. It was a liquid “fuck you” to her loving mum. “You may have won this battle,” she was saying with her urine, “but I will win the war.”

*Since writing this I purchased a Belt-Upp for £17.99 as recommended by a lovely friend. The three year old has therefore been an angel every time we have got into the car. She must know…..

 

 

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