‘life admin’, mermaid scrunchies, rude donkeys

There are a few words and phrases that I hate because they sound really pretentious, and yet I keep finding myself saying them by accident.

The writers I love to read — the really intuitive, beautiful writers that make it look effortless, the writers whose books I consume compulsively — keep it simple. No stupid flouncy sentences (like that last one I wrote then. I’m not one of those masterful writers). No nonsense phrases when you could just say what you mean instead.

They wouldn’t say, for example, ‘life admin’ when they could just say ‘jobs’. Everyone knows what I mean when I say ‘I need to get some jobs done’. Or rather, no one cares what I mean when I say it.

So every time I say ‘life admin’ out loud I feel like a pillock. Quite rightly. It’s like announcing you’re going to cook a frozen pizza by saying ‘I’ll just whack this in the Aga’.

Anyway, I’ve had a lot of life admin to do, and therefore, I keep saying it out loud and giving myself working-class full-body shudders.

It’s like all the most boring sucky parts of being an adult have piled up on me at once. Tax return, sorting out insurance policies, finally setting up my self-employed pension scheme, etc.

A lot of it has to do with money. I’m trying to be a proper grown-up, but it’s horrible and I don’t like it. Once you start pondering how much money you’re going to live off in retirement there’s no going back. It’s like peeping into a black hole. It looks mildly interesting from afar, but then you realise it goes on forever, just an endless black void, and suddenly the feeling gets sucked out of your legs and you’re consumed by feelings of inescapable hopelessness and despair.

I’m sure it’ll be fine though.

Borrowed my daughters’ hair scrunchie the other day. Scrunchies are superior to hair elastics for many reasons, but I’ve lost mine somewhere. I chose one from my daughter’s ‘Hair Stuff’ drawer that looked like a mermaid’s tail — turquoise and purple and glittery.

Me (rummaging): ‘Can I borrow this?’

Her: ‘Yep.’

Me: ‘And an Alice band?’

Her: ‘Sure.’

Scraped my hair back off my face so I could do my (pointless, not-working) skincare routine, and my daughter gave me a funny look.

Me: ‘What?’

Her: ‘You’re not going out like that, are you?’

Me: ‘Why not?’

Her: ‘You just look a bit … awkward.’

Feel like we’ve skipped several stages of parenting and now I’m the one being gently criticized for my style choices.

My son is getting quite grown-up now, and the instances of him saying hilarious things by accident are getting rarer, and my days of writing cute stories about him are probably numbered for privacy reasons.

Back in the day the kids used to say all kinds of funny and adorable things and I could never bring myself to correct them, and it would be up to Chris to tell them the real words for things, and they would look at me, wounded, like I was purposefully winding them up. I wasn’t. I just prefer the word ‘disonaur’.

Anyway, the other day we were playing with his toys and he pulled out a slightly cross-eyed donkey from the bottom of the basket and yelled ‘LOOK MUMMY! I FOUND A WANKY DONKY!’

Didn’t correct him obviously but thinking maybe I should have done.