So its 3pm and I'm flitting about the car line picking up the screamies, exchanging banter with the other mums and inhaling a lot of carbon monoxide. Miss 4 greets me in her usual way...
"Have you got a special treat??"
I respond in my usual way...
"No."
And let the screaming commence...
Eventually, after promising apple juice when we get home, we get to the car and I bundle my two tired and tearful termagants inside.
It's at that point I realise my midriff is cold. Colder than it should be. Much colder than if it was tucked into my jeans and hiding discreetly under my top.
Oh yes. My midriff has escaped.
Let me describe the horror. No. I want too. I want the internet to forever remember how attractive my midriff really is, post kids.
The scarf serving as a belt is where it should be, around the top of my hips. But my far-too-big jeans had sagged, and then sagged again, forming attractive flappy handfuls of fabric, held up only by the belt loops. Mmm, pretty.
But it gets worse.
You see at the front, the sagging had caused the jeans to unzip themselves, exposing my pink dog-chewed underpants, AND (if that wasn't enough) the bow of the scarf was fetchingly supporting my post-kids jelly belly as it peered out from under my top.
I just keep telling myself that noone notice. Because who goes around staring at other people's midriff in car line? I mean Who Does That??
Given that little embarrassment, that I had Miss 4's Kindi interview and that my husband was about to stage an intervention, I decided it was time for shopping.
Shopping is not something I view as a past-time.
The first disaster was that this year's colours are nude, pinky nude, beige and pinky beige. All colours that make me look like a warm corpse. I was persuaded into a puffed sleeves pinky nude thing by a desperately eager sales assistant. She actually flinched when I came out of the change room. Yes. That bad.
So this year I shall be wearing black and longing for when the reds, dark purples and blues come back in again. Black is fine. I picked up some nice tops and a couple of pairs of jeans, and even a jacket IN SIZE 10.
The next disaster occurred when I glanced at my watch and realised I needed to be at the Kindi interview asap. So, still dressed in my saggy jeans, I hurtled to school and commenced a quick change in the front seat of the car, ripping off labels as I went. Two minutes to go and I was sorted. Looking and feeling good. I even had a real belt.
I managed to get all the lables - and didn't wander about with 12s 12s 12s 12s plastered down the back of my leg (the s stands for short-arse). But it was as I got out of the car that the random thought 'security camera' entered my head. Ah yes. Hello there disaster number three. Carefully, and without turning my head (so it wouldn't see me looking) I scanned the car park and spotted it. Just where I had a nasty feeling it would be, staring directly into the windscreen of my car with its one dead-eye.
Some things in this life are better not to know. I have decided that there was no way I could have been filmed pulling off my top and squeezing into jeans that I have every intention of shrinking into. No way at all. I have also decided that no one actually watches security footage and they'll have recorded over it by next week anyway.
Ah denial. Its warm in here.
sigh.
