Making it to the Top of My Own List

Friday’s packed lunches are always depressingly sparse.   One of us does the food shop (also known as The Big Shop)on a Friday, which means by Thursday night when I make the lunches for the next day (really, who has time to make it in the morning?), there are slim pickings.   Not for Daughter, of course.   She has the same every day – sandwich (egg or ham on strict rotation, and the exotica of egg has been a fairly recent addition), bear crisps, a mini chocolate bar that is apparently approved by mums due to the high milk content, apple juice and until recently a well-travelled pot of grapes.   It was well travelled in that she very rarely ate them and they went back and forth.   The lunch-box police would probably take me away, but they want to try living with a fussy eater.   So of course there is always everything that she wants, and let’s face it, I’d do a midnight run to the supermarket in my slippers if I discovered something missing for her.  ...

I have 24 cans/bottles/sprays etc of hair product on my shelf in our bedroom, so this of course doesn’t include the ‘wet’ hair products that crowd the bathroom (at least 9 that I can think of from the top of my head, pardon the pun). I know what you’re thinking.   You’re imagining me with a different hairstyle every day, all carried off with that ‘just stepped out of the salon’ shine and gloss.   Wrong, wrong, wrong.   I wear my hair the same EVERY DAY.   Loose and straightened for work, palm tree style with fetching fringe clip when I get home.   So what’s with all the stuff?   I’ve got nice hair, if it’s not too big headed (there’s another one!) to say.   But I live with the desire to have nicer hair.   Glossier, fuller, straighter, curlier, more defined…and clearly those 24 products have promised me a variety of those desires at some point.   And have they?   Mostly, no.   Do I keep falling for the promises?   Yes. ...

Daughter and I enjoyed a bit of retail therapy this weekend.  Well, when I say enjoyed, perhaps I should say 'participated in with only minor levels of discomfort' . First stop, Primark. I'd forgotten our sunglasses and it was a glorious day in Liverpool today, so in we went to splurge a couple of quid on some sunnies.  Despite having promised myself I wouldn't buy any clothes until I've lost some weight and saved some money, I don't get into Liverpool very often and the lure of city centre shopping was too much for me, and I had the clearly ludicrous idea of having a quick look. And quick it was, because Daughter was keen for me to know she didn't really want to be there. I'm used to her moaning, so I could have put up with that, but she tried to wander, and there's nothing to send my stress levels rocket higher than Daughter being more than about 10cm away from me. My fear isn't that she'll fall over or get lost, it's that she'll be...