The Pastie, the happenings of one very trying day a year or so ago

Well the day started off just like any other Monday, get out of bed way to early to the sounds of the twins playing like puppies in the lounge room and hearing Thomas on the monitor making beautiful squealing noises.

The morning was full of cereal, toast and “hurry up Paige we haven’t got long” spoken way too many times at a higher volume than is optimal to receive the mother of the year award.

I ran around the house like a chook with it’s head cut off trying to find a paper bag for Paige’s and my lunch order, just one bag was all that I wanted , how hard could it be!.   If I had done like my mum had advised many times before and got the lunch order ready the night before well I wouldn’t have high blood pressure at this moment and I may feel calm and organized but I don’t and I needed that damn bag!!

Finally we got out the door to the car, I had to make the obligatory run back inside to get a music book that Id forgotten like I do every week, its not always the same book but there is always something that I forget and I have to run back inside and get Thomas upset all over again.

So there we are off to school driving way too fast, I try and use the next ten minutes to settle myself down and just breathe and get myself together as the last hour and a half has seen me running around like a crazy woman trying to do many things but getting nothing done.

Once at school off I go to the library where I teach singing, I don’t even have a music room at the moment as they are building a new one but at present this is it, a room full of books with a piano and a constant stream of children coming in to get a book or the lap tops or who knows what they keep annoying the hell out of me for.  I sound very intolerant I know but I'm not an intolerant person the problem is that when my students hear the creak of the door opening they instantly stop singing and wont let out a peep as they are terrified that someone might actually hear them sing, well that is what I thought they were there for, but no they almost become catatonic and their faces go bright red, its as if they were standing there naked and the whole school was looking at them, any way they stop signing and then we have to wait until our little visitors cease to intrude on our space any longer before we can recommence the lesson.

Any way this particular day I was trying to teach a young female student of mine how to use her diaphragm to sing and she is a little bit of a stubborn child, she has a beautiful little voice but has no projection and anyway I was trying to help her become louder by breathing the correct way etc, etc and she just yelled at me “I can’t do it” she hadn’t even tried to ‘do it’ but there she was face red as a beetroot raising her voice at me, me the nice cheerful always happy singing teacher!, well after the crazy morning I had had I can't tell you what I felt like doing at that precise moment but I calmly placated her and we moved on to other things.

Well that was the start of an already crappy day, the next thing was that one of the teachers wanted to use the library (my pretend singing room) so I got shoved into this tiny little room that the counsellor uses, its like a mouse house, tiny, and I am not supposed to mind because I’m not a real teacher anyway and singing isn’t a real subject that matters its just something that people with too much spare cash do for their kids to shut them up so off we go into the mouse hole (not only is it tiny it has a bright green wall!, what the hell were they thinking!! and to those of you that think green is a calming colour it isn't!!)

Finally it is lunch time, it is actually way past lunch time and my pastie hasn’t arrived yet from the tuck shop like it normally does so off I go to investigate and retrieve it as by now I'm starving and that is the only thing I have had to look forward to all day so I need my pastie now!      As I am walking over to the tuck shop I see a lady I haven’t seen before leaving with two kids in tow, I could see that she had been doing the lunches, filling in for the usual lady and now she is leaving and where is my pastie I wonder so off I go after her running a little but trying not to look to panicked.   "Excuse me" I say sounding calm but screaming inside (“where the hell is my pastie??”) “I was wondering where my pastie was that I ordered for lunch”  “ahhh” she says “I gave the left overs all away” (she gave MY pastie AWAY!) “I had ordered one” I say calmly, “sorry” she says “I didn’t realize , they are all gone” “that’s ok I say” holding back the tears. "I didn’t need to eat today anyway”  I tried to conceal my distress but I'm sure it was written all over my face as I try to remain cheery and act as though I didn’t require food to survive. 

Off I go back to my mouse hole with my tail between my legs feeling shattered in side, I get to my hole and shut the door and can feel the tears welling up, I start blinking to try and make them go away and fan my eyes with my hands, does that really help? I  think not.  All I want to do is bawl my eyes out and sob for hours all over a pastie, what has my life become?

I consider leaving and going to buy my lunch and not come back, I so desperately want to but have three more students, so being the dedicated singing teacher that I am I decide to stay and finish my lessons even if my stomach does sound like an angry bear.  After about an hour there is a knock on the door and in she comes, the cause of my distress is standing there with a brown paper bag in her hands concealing a pastie, my pastie!.  She has this beautiful huge smile and says sorry way too many times making me feel like such a horrible person.  Not only did she bring me a pastie she drove to a bakery and got me one and brought it back, now yet again I want to bawl my eyes out!  I am so touched by her gesture and it makes me realize how silly I was to get upset over lost lunch but I did and I couldn’t help it but it all seems so insignificant now and I feel like a fool.  I apologized and thanked her profusely and told her she shouldn’t have gone out of her way for me but she did and that was lovely. 

So after she had left I sat down alone and began to devour my pastie, the one thing that I so desperately wanted, but while I was eating it I realized that it didn’t really taste that good and  I couldn’t even eat it all, it just didn’t taste that nice , I couldn’t tell if it was because I had been so dramatic and it had made such a fuss and now I was just over it or if it was because she got it from the bakery down the road where everything tastes bad.

The moral of this story, ummmmm well don't get in a tizz when there are no pasties left because they are bad for you and don't taste that good any way and don't be so lazy next time take your own damn lunch!!

And to the beautiful fill in tuck shop lady, I'm so sorry our first ever meeting had to be when I was chucking a tanty over lost lunch.

Lessons Learned

Tonight I learnt a great lesson in humanity  from my 6 year old angel Mitchy, I should give a little back ground to the story really as it is a little involved.

About 3 months ago Mitch and I found a frog in the back garden and he has always been a bit of an 'animal whisperer' and holds bugs and critters that he finds in the garden without being frightened and he was so happy with his find and wanted to keep it as a pet and due to the fact that a frog would be a very easy pet to have and a very cheap pet to keep I said yes without hesitation.

Well Mitch was on cloud nine and you couldn't wipe the smile off his face and so happy was he in fact that he decided to take the frog to nanny's to show off his new baby! well as I'm sure you can imagine this was a disaster waiting to happen and the little frog escaped and was most probably eaten by nanny's dogs or cat but anyway Mitch was totally devastated and cried his little heart out.

Anyway Mitch's Aunty Nome has been fishing frogs out of her pool filter all week so when she told me this I asked her to get me some frogs for Mitch, so yesterday we presented Mitch with three new babies and he could not conceal his excitement.

So we brought them home and set up a little glass fish bowl we borrowed from nanny and Mitch was so proud of his new little critters spending the afternoon with his hand in the bowl, I'm sure they will all need counselling from the trauma of a 6 year old spending all afternoon with them but anyway they survived the afternoon and the night.
The next afternoon Thomas had been locked out of Paige's room so he was crying very dramatically and I needed a diversion so what better thing to divert him than holding a frog! it was perfect and worked like a dream,. he stopped crying and was laughing watching the little critter hop around the kitchen floor and not only was he happy I was loving it, I love frogs and he looked so cute jumping around until he jumped under the dishwasher, yes you read right the dishwasher! frig what have I done was my first thought and my second thought was I hope Mitch doesn't walk in and catch me looking for his lost frog and I lay on the floor with a steak knife trying to reach the little critter Pete asked me if I planned to stab him with the knife, of course I wasn't going to stab him just slap his butt with it so he would jump out but I couldn't do that because he disappeared under the dishwasher maybe never to be seen again. I don't know how he could even fit under there because there were so many foreign objects it wasn't funny one of them being my tiny babushka doll  that had been lost years ago!

Anyway I was breaking out in a cold sweat because I knew what was coming and I went through all the scenarios in my head and all the lies I could make up so I could avoid breaking Mitch's heart , I could tell him it escaped, well it did didn't it! I could just omit my involvement and all would be good wouldn't it? I could call nome and ask for another frog! just replace the slimy little beast and no one would be the wiser, well the trouble is Mitch would know, he knew every little dot on that frogs back so he would be too smart for that.

The horrible reality of it all was that I would have to come clean and tell my 6 year old the awful truth that his mother had lost his precious little frog and it wasn't coming back, so I waited about 2 hours til I summoned the courage and I asked him to come sit with me for a talk, he looked so beautiful his big brown eyes looking at me with innocence and love, I was about to break his heart.  I explained to him that I had something that I was really scared to tell him and I was worried he would be cross with me, I was such a pathetic mess, I actually had butterflies in my stomach over a lost frog, but only because I knew how precious this amphibian was to my Mitchy.  So I told him I had lost his frog and I was sooooo sorry and I asked for his forgiveness, he looked up at me with those big brown eyes holding back the tears and rubbed my arm and said that's "ok mum" and cuddled me, he didn't get cross he didn't cry but i know he wanted to, he held back all those emotions like a grown up, he was behaving like he was 40 not 6 and at that moment he taught me so much.  He taught me how I should behave when my children come to me with a problem that they are too scared or ashamed to tell me, that I should act like I'm 38 not 6 and that I should show forgiveness and understanding with out ranting or raving and that nothing is that bad that we cant talk about it or fix it, that frog was Mitchy's whole world and he was so understanding and forgiving even though I had done a stupid thing.  

Thankfully an hour or so later when I walked into the kitchen who should appear? yes you guessed it one little frog so I pounced and grabbed the slimy little critter who is now safely back in his bowl and I was so excited I started screaming "I've got the frog, I've got the frog" which made all the children run and cuddle me with the tightest longest cuddle coming from Mitch, he was so thankful that his little frog was home safely and thanked me for finding it when in reality it found me, thank goodness now we can all sleep well tonight.