Chicken pox, Gas leaks, and Potty training

It's been a mad few weeks, beginning with a lovely trip to Cadbury world to see my good friend Bex and family, and then at the end of the day Bex messaged me to say her middle boy AJ had chicken pox. My boys had not had it yet so we were holding out in anticipation. 2 weeks passed and nothing happened and then we discovered Eric had it. In some ways I was relived, we needed to get it over with and now was as good a time as any. If I was still doing self employed stuff in the day, I would have been so stressed out. When you're paying for nursery and getting paid well per day but not working everyday something like this can end up costing you hundreds of pounds and you feel guilty for thinking about money when your kid is sick.

The first full day of spots went fine, I decided since we wouldn't be going out I might as well potty train him at the same time, which is actually going loads better than it did for Percy, he was a nightmare. Eric actually seemed fine in himself chicken pox wise, I kept Percy of school too because I was sure he'd get it in the next few days. I also personally think 5 days of school is a bit much for a 5 year old and that what they learn in school is not very varied... this is sort of a whole other blog post in itself, but in my opinion they learn too much phonics and maths and not enough of everything else in the world that there is to know.

Have you got a primary school aged kid? Ask them to name the colours in the rainbow. I once asked a whole class of year 4 or 5s, only one kid knew, he was Polish and had learnt it there. Another questions you can ask: "what is charcoal?" You might get the answer "its a tool from Minecraft" and I bet if your kid knows that blue and yellow makes green they've never actually been allowed to do it for themselves. If you ask them to mix a skin tone colour they will have absolutely no clue. It's one of the things I used to teach kids to do, back before there was no money for anything but maths and phonics. If you asked a specialist in humanities or other forms of arts I'm sure they would say the same kinds of things.

Anyway that was a huge digression, all I really wanted to say is that we all stayed home and invented chicken pox the board game, which was fun for a bit. But after Percy had 2 days off I phoned the school and they told me to send him in (even though he would probably spread chicken pox) but that's all I wanted: someone to blame.

Then just after Eric started getting better we had a new long burner thing put in. It replaced a ugly old fire that just made a noise and a smell.

I'm a tiny bit in love with that shade of green.

Unfortunately when they took the old one out they detected a gas leak under the floor boards. It couldn't be fixed without ripping them up, so they just re-piped the whole thing for quite a lot of money. It meant that for about 5 days we had no gas which meant no heating or cooking or hot water or showers. Except after 3 or 4 days I thought I'll just test the shower...and guess what it's electric! There was one day when Percy had a swimming lesson that I thought while me and Eric wait we might as well have a shower. Eric normally loves showers but this time because it came on when he was not prepared he hated it. I realised this whole thing looked bad, me with a screaming child who is skinny and still coved in chicken pox scabs trying to have a sneaky shower in a pool, because we had no heating and no way of cooking anything nutritious. We could have been out of a poverty documentary.

The day after that I went to pick up an electric heater after school pick up, and then I was going on to a gig in Nottingham which I needed to leave at 5pm for. There was no spare time in my schedule which is why Eric pooing himself in the car just after school pick up was REALLY ANNOYING! If it was in a nappy I could have changed it, but in pants is really hard to change in the car even if you have all the stuff, even though school is pretty close in rush hour it take a long time. This resulted in me eating burning hot microwaved lasagne while straightening my hair when fellow comedian Alex (a girl) came over.

We left late but managed to get to the gig just in time, the venue was a room above a pub. We arrived to find a room full of male comedians, we said hi and one comedian told me everything he'd ever achieved in comedy. I find 5-10% of adults have not yet learned that saying everything you've achieved to someone you don't know well doesn't make them like you. (The way to make people like you is usually to ask about the other person and take a genuine interest.) I don't think these people are bad people, they just didn't learn that when they were like 15 or whatever. Like I never learned how to tie a tie or do long division.

The lady in charge of the night went down to get people from the pub, she managed to get a crowd of really weird drunk men. They heckled often and badly. I was headlining so I was nervous to do 20 minutes in front of them, no one could do well with this crowd. It was reminiscent of my days teaching kids that had been expelled. In the break they all left which was sort of great but also not so great because we had no audience. The lady in charge was talking about cancelling it and I was not sure where I would stand payment wise if they cancelled the gig. I needed the money to reimburse me for my petrol costs, so me and the girlfriend of another comedian went down to the pub to see if we could get a new audience. On the way down she asked me who I was here to support, I said myself.

We went up to everybody in the pub and invited them even to a couple who were clearly in the middle of an argument and the woman had been crying, whoops! We managed to get a nice group of older ladies and 3 lads - the show was back on. I did my set and loved it, the audience were great and it was just a lovely atmosphere. I felt happy that I'd done ok even though I sort of don't look like a comedian. It was probably the best time I've ever performed my parody song "dependant women"(since then I've done it 3 more times, all worse).

It was a nice road trip too. It's pretty intense talking to a comedian for 5 hours on one day, but sort of nice to have that time. It would take me 2 weeks to have 5 hours of meaningful conversation with my husband. Sad face.

I was about to write a paragraph listing my achievements in comedy last week, but I have to be careful after writing the paragraph about the 5-10%.

So all I will say is if you're free on 11th December and live near Liverpool, me and Dan are hosting a comedy competition/ slightly offensive nativity play/ craft fair. Its a great mix!