do you know what should be in the olympics? (and i'm not, incidentally, mentioned in last weeks Time magazines list of top 100 copmpetitors to look out for. although. since 99% of those athletes were representing the US, my chances were slim to none. because. obviously. there's only one quarter of one continent of the world about which the rest of us revolve.) (where did that come from? i'm usually such a huge amerophile . . .) anyway. what should be in the olympics is extreme vacuuming. you know, using that long, thin attachment that's designed for nooks and crannies? except you use it for zipping around the multitude of discarded toys on your wooden floors. points aarded for various sizes of dust bunny, dog hair, cheerio, coughed up cat hair balls, clumps of what used to be woollen carpet but which the cats claws find irresistable, bit of leaf, twigs retrieved by retriever - the regular roll call of crud. Advanced precision training in this field allows for the swift removal of these items with no fear for the safety of the tiny lego pieces, polly pocket hairbrush, silver sparkly pipe cleaner, pen lid, wobbly penguin from the annoying iceberg game that always turns itself on in the box and makes that dreadful droney sound that you alwys forget is from the penguin game and spend hours trying to discover the grinding source and the batteries never fucking wear out. safe are the tiny wooden beads, the even tinier plastic beads that stick to clothes with wierd static, hair clips you've never seen before and assume belong to a fellow preschooler, the little yellow feathers that unglu themselves from art projects, the shiney discs that unglue them selves from art projects, the bits of ribbon that unglue themselves from art projects. . . . .. BREATHE, WOMAN, BREATHE . . . .
it was P's last day at preschool today, and yesterday she and I spent ages making cupcakes and icing them pretty colours and she proudly took them in a giant box this morning.
when i went to collect her this afternoon, her teacher takes me to one side
"i'm afraid we weren't able to let P share the cupcakes with her friends. we have a policy of only givnig the children store-bought cakes with a full list of ingredients,"
the same place which, last year (albeit with a different member of staff) repeatedly put in front of my child foods which she should avoid because they exacerbate her asthma, foods which she picked up from the table in front of her and returned to the teacher sating that she can't eat the yummy fromage frais or traingle of cheese - this institution now has a policy which says its ok to give them artificial colours and flavours and lord knows what made who knows where. highly processed sugars and preserving agents are now infinitely preferable to ORGANIC wholewheat flour, ORGANIC butter, ORGANIC locally produced eggs, UNREFINED brown sugar and ORGANIC semi skimmed milk, all decorated with all NATURAL frosting.
What was I thinking??
