After a hectic weekend, I had every intention of settling in this week with a bucket of caffeine and getting some work done. Such is the joy of freelance writing, you can stagger your working hours around other commitments although there is a constant rejuggling required when life gets in the way. I discovered this the hard way on Tuesday.

You see on Tuesday, I got the Phone Call. All parents of school-aged children know about the Phone Call. Generally it’s a school office staff member or teacher who calls and hopefully greets you with “Don’t panic!”  I like to categorise and colour-code these calls, depending on severity, much like the terror threat or bushfire warnings.

Code Green is a popular one around here. It matches the colour your child is when you arrive to collect them. Code green signifies that your child who wasn’t sick this morning has come down with a Potentially Infectious Virus and must be quarantined immediately. Having a son who can’t differentiate between hunger and the bubonic plague means I have had that call a few times over the years, but I can hardly tell the secretary to “give the kid a sandwich for Pete’s sake”. Fair enough too. If I were a teacher being coughed, sneezed and occasionally even vomited on by someone else’s children, I’d be donning a surgical mask and handing the little blighters to their parents with a pair of long-handled tongs.

And then there is the Code Electric Blue (for DRAMA!). Because I live almost adjacent to our school, I don’t mind these so much. There’s a whole feelgood Disney movie vibe about running across to the school with netball shoes because an excited child has phoned to say they have had a last-second call up off the bench to the School Team. Or organising someone to dash out and check the busstop where a musical instrument has been misplaced. And I really didn’t mind running a second set of clothes up to a kindergartner who had fallen into a puddle. Mummy Saves the Day!

But Tuesday was the Code Red of school calls. “Your son has fallen in the playground and injured his arm. Can you come straight away?”. All thought of work left my mind, as I raced across to the school. So much for a calming parental presence, as I appeared wild-eyed in the sick-bay door wearing what my grandmother would have kindly called a “house dress”, thongs and hair in a frizzy top-knot. Don’t judge me! Writers are known for their  comfort dressing, I’m told. Even Jo March had her “scribbling suit”. Thankfully teachers and school office staff know their stuff and my white-faced, trembling little boy with a broken wing was well looked after while I quickly gathered my wits about me. His arm had been expertly bandaged, I was given all the pertinent details about how he had fallen so I could correctly advise the hospital(he wants me to tell you he fell off a llama, but he tripped over a tree root and quite possibly his own feet) and I was even accompanied along the short walk home in case he got woozy and I needed assistance.

A trip to emergency, x-rays and a plaster cast later, I am once again grateful to the wonderful people who spend their days looking after our kids. I say it so often, but it bears repeating: Schools are so much more than we give them credit for.

Last week my old friend, colleague and blogging buddy Susan at Reading Upside Down wrote a lovely tribute to our years of friendship. She kindly neglected to mention my extreme tardiness, but the lateness of this response no doubt makes that evident to all.

So – why I am still friends with Susan, after all this time:

• She often recommends great tools for keeping track of to-do lists, planning menus and general home organisation, but doesn’t make me feel bad by actually being organised herself.
• Her iTunes playlist makes my iTunes playlist look cool, even though it really isn’t.
• She didn’t laugh when I thought waterproof shower notebooks sounded like a good idea.
• Keep your friends close, your enemies closer and don’t let people who have photos of you at 14 in your choir uniform out of your sight.
• She always brings food – often homemade for me to taste test. We really need to synchronise our health kicks a little better though, as I will inevitably be craving chocolate when she has her biannual “I need to eat better” attacks and my own fitness frenzies have been spectacularly derailed by her awesome caramel slice.
• We often think of the same thing at the same time, which thanks to the world’s best typo, is now referred to as a Vulvan Mindmeld.
• She tolerates my geeky references even though she doesn’t often understand them.
• She happily plays the wise, sarcastic Dorothy to my combined Rose/Blanche. (Yes, I’m daffy and yet slightly slutty in a scary old lady kind of way.)

Thank you for being a friend

Travelled down the road and back again

Your heart is true, you’re a pal and a confidante.

Today I should be cleaning. Unfortunately I would have to be one of the world’s worst housekeepers. I understand that doing a little bit every day should make the load lighter but other than washing the clothes and dishes, it’s a bit beyond me. Usually I just wait until it gets out of control or visitors are expected and then set to like a woman possessed for three days and get things into shape.

I’ve tried all the handy hints that have been offered to me to help establish a routine. One suggestion is to get up and put your shoes on straight away. This is meant to make you feel like you are busy and going out, so you will be less likely to laze about on the lounge eating bonbons instead of spit-polishing the shower. This doesn’t work for me because I hate wearing shoes. Plus if you can’t feel the grit under your feet it is all too easy to ignore it. (Found this one out the hard way, when the children got stuck to the kitchen floor.)

Another plan was to put on a timer and just spend ten minutes at each task. The idea is that because you have limited time, you work faster and get things done quicker, plus you don’t lose interest because you are moving from one job to another. I was just left with about 20 jobs half done at the end of the day.

I have friends who schedule cleaning and won’t go out at all on Cleaning Day. If they do have to let it go for some important event, it throws their whole week out.  I’m all “Well I was meant to be cleaning out the fridge today, but hey, you want to go look at paint charts? I’m there!” If life was animated, this would be the point where you’d see a me-shaped hole in the dust.

As for ironing – (yes, I’m looking at you, Mr Abbott) – ugh! My husband happily irons his own shirt every morning while watching the news. Everything else gets hung carefully to avoid wrinkles, and I am often to be seen madly scrunching at clothes in shops to check the material for creasing tendencies.When we were moving I seriously considered knocking back a perfectly good house because the local school’s uniform had pleated tunics. Luckily we found a better house near a wash-and-wear school!

What lengths will you go to to avoid cleaning?

I understand some women enjoy watching tearjerkers like Grey’s Anatomy .  Apparently watching McDreamy and Whatsherface dance around their romance while saving and losing patients can lead to a very cathartic sob-fest. I don’t really get it. It’s not my thing. I tend to prefer comedies. Each to her own.

My daughter loves animals. Any animals – mammals, birds, reptiles, fish or insects – she’s not fussy. As a result we watch a lot of animal-related TV. I am well acquainted with David Attenborough, Dr Harry, Steve and Bindi Irwin and (my personal favourite) the Bondi Vet. (What?!)  It is not uncommon for me to be summoned urgently to the lounge room to look at the social habits of seahorses or the breeding cycle of dragonflies.

Last night was the series return of RSPCA Animal Rescue. We recorded it during dinner and then we girls tucked ourselves up on the lounge to watch. Of course, second story in, it hit us. A ginger cat. A ginger cat, lost and riddled with ticks. Paralysed in his back legs and losing his voice. Who belonged to a little girl who loved him and was missing him. Who may not make it through because of the extent of the poisoning. For the record, I lost it when we first laid eyes on the cat. Unfortunately before we could find out whether the cat survived, the recording stopped! That’s when my daughter lost it. The picture at left may explain our reaction somewhat.

So a big shout out of thanks to the random strangers on Twitter who answered my query as to the fate of the cat. It helped both of us get some sleep. And the sob-fest thing? Quite cathartic. (Oh, like you didn’t see that one coming!)
Do you like a good sob-fest? What TV shows set you off?