Dear Sons

Dear Sons,

I am sitting at the kitchen table trying desperately to do my cake accounts.  I say 'desperately' because you are refusing to believe I am 'not here' and keep insisting on telling me 'yeah you are, look, I can see you'.  I have big earphones on.  The big earphones are meant to signify that I am NOT HERE and your dad is now 'it'.  So why oh why do you keep poking me.  He's sitting over there, look.  On the sofa, where he always sits on a fecking Friday,

It's only thanks to T that I am not flt to murder, she gave me drugs.  Yup, your ma is quite happily high as a kite over here.  One xanex and a glass of gin and an hour's worth of deleted accounts that have to re-entered aren't phasing me in the least.  Actually, it's only that high-ness that is enabling me to write you this letter.  If I weren't so calm I'd be halfway to somewhere sunny and far away.

I love you with all of me.  Seriously, I love the bones of you.  But, there's always a 'but' huh?  But, right now, I could happily nail your balls to the floor.  You are young, and I keep reminding myself of this but not so young as to be unable to do a couple of things for  yourselves.  After all you can reach every hidden biscuit and bottle of juice in the house so why in God's name can you not raise your arms 5" to hang up your sodding coats and school bags??  You know you have to hang them up because I made that sheet, remember?  The one that I drew up for each of you and LAMINATED because I was so stressed by tripping over schoolbags, shoes and jackets just casually flung on the floor inside the front door.

Why can't you pee INTO the toilet?  It's a big hole, like seriously???  Also, when you use the last of the toilet roll it's manners to both replace the roll AND put the empty cardboard tube into the bloody bin.  NOT on the floor.  Oh, and if you spit a gob of toothpaste into the sink WIPE IT UP.  You know that kind've shit makes me heave.  

I found something growing in the playroom today, it was making a break for the window.  I don't know what it was but I killed it. Rex and Max, on the other hand, looked too weak to move as they haven't been fed.  Yet.

So, boys, seriously, pick your stuff up or one day you are going to come home to a delightfully clear and Zen like house.  Clear because your stuff will be in the recycling centre.  Given away so that kids, who do tidy up after themselves, can have something to play with.

You are only young but if you don't get it together and learn to stop cultivating life behind the sofa no one will ever EVER let you live with them and that means I will have to move out of home and I like my home.  That's why I want you to pick up your shoes, socks, jocks, Lego (fucking Lego will be the death of me), batteries (also another likely cause of ma death), costumes, shoes, bags, jackets, empty toilet roll tubes, food wrappers (you do know you're not meant to eat in there don't you?) and cups.  There are three of you.  THREE, four including the borrowed boy, yet every day I put upwards of glasses into the dishwasher.  The dishwasher that your father insists on rearranging.  He's a fecker too btw.  I, on the other hand, am utterly perfect.  But only cos I'm every so slightly out of my bin right now.

Lots of love,

Mam x

p.s. When you are old enough to have a partner and perhaps have kids with them NEVER EVER say to said partner when s/he asks you to do something "but it's my day off" 'cos, if s/he is like me, it may well end up being the last thing you ever say.  Us 'homemakers/housewives/gobshites' never get a day off.  E.V.E.R.