First day back at school today. And it wasn’t without the stock standard “I feel sick” from Godzilla as we’re participating in the morning’s Get Ready For School fun activities.

“Just hurry up and get dressed,” was my reply. It is my usual reply. and usually comes accompanied by a FFS-eye roll and a quick glance to make sure he really is ok.

After one more attempt and the response being “Have you unstacked the dishwasher” he gave up. He knows I don’t buy into bullshit. Also, he was well and truly able to annoy both his brothers, older and younger, and to adequately piss me off enough to inform him he was pissing me off and to “hurry up!”

The older two boys rode to school and Chippie was delivered to childcare, where he cried as we crossed the carpark, and ran off, ignoring us, to play outside with his friend who arrived at the same time.

Meh.

Whatever.

What occurs next is entirely my own fault. You see, Grumpy Pants and I went for a walk to get some milk, as ours had run out before I had my coffee this morning. That, in itself, may very well have accounted for my low bullshit tolerance levels and general grumpiness. On our way home, we stopped and had a quiet coffee, and some really lovely time together.

“It’s nice not to have to wash any bedding today,” I say.

And I go about my day as he goes off to work, and it’s suddenly time to collect the children. I walk up, feeling a sense of achievement after having completed much of my To Do List and two of the 38 loads of washing still to be done.

Monkey Boy rides on ahead, and Godzilla happily chats to me about his day (“What did you do at school today?” “I can’t remember.” “Oh, right ….”) and races off after his brother.

Oh, happy days.

I arrive home many minutes later, as my legs are not bicycle wheels, and they are happily devouring any food-like substances in the Tupperware laden cupboards.

“Unstack the dishwasher,” I say to Godzilla. “We have basketball tonight.”

And I go and do something mildly less mindnumbing than arguing with an eight-year-old about household jobs.

I check the time, see I have ten minutes before we need to leave, and see Godzilla lying on the couch, under a blanket.

“Dishwasher,” I say, because it is all I need to say.

“I have a headache,” he whines at me.

And so on and so forth with the “I’m sick” and wishing he’d use his imagination and come up with something less boring than “I’m sick” or, preferably, tell me the real reason he doesn’t want to go to basketball.

It ends in tears, his at this point, when I confront him re going and ask why he wants to even play basketball if every training session and game he is coming up with excuses to not go, and if he does like going (which he has just told me he has) then why it makes him cry, and why he thinks I would force him to do something he doesn’t want to do (aside from the fact I really like basketball and have been most supportive of this particular fancy about playing a ball sport and he will frigging enjoy basketball because I like it, so there!) and if he doesn’t stop crying soon, I will not take him because I don’t want to be doing something twice a week that neither of us want to do, and even typed up a text message to the team manager informing her of his inability to play this season, showed him and said “Do I need to send this or are you going to smile and show me how much you want to go to basketball!!!!????”

(Then I had a little cry as he went and put his shoes on … I’m feeling it today!)

Off we go, collect Chippie and arrive at training, where Godzilla promptly runs on court and does a few layups. I’m just relaxing into the fact that he really isn’t unwell, when he comes out, crying and says “I have a headache.” He’s crying a lot.

Hrm.

Dubious, because he is rather talented in this area, I suggest he go and watch his team train, and I can keep an eye on him and this alleged ‘headache’ and ‘sickness’. Sure enough, he sits and looks sad, and next time I look, he’s running around. This goes on for the next 40 minutes.

He does look a little ragged and tired at the end of it, but, hey, don’t we all? He looks like how I feel, so, you know … we’re all just tired.

Off we go, heading home, and he’s happy but quiet. Suddenly, but subtly, a minute from home, he puts his hand over his mouth.

“What’s up?” I ask.

“I feel sick,” he mumbles.

“Like you ‘feel sick’ or ‘you’re going to vomit’? Let me just get around the corner and pull over.”

I do get around the corner, incident free. Of course, I cannot pull over, because it is evening and everyone is home from work and parked out the front of their houses.

“BLEEUUURGH!” says Godzilla, vomiting all over himself, the dashboard, the seat and the floor.

And my handbag!!!

“Bleaargh!” he says again, with added chunkiness.

Rinse and repeat.

I have the car, at some random angle, off the road-ish, but on the road-ish,  the carseat covered in ick, and him standing on the side of the road.

Thankfully, the half-arsedness of my children net a ‘wipe up’ towel, three pairs of Godzilla sized board shorts and a discarded water bottle full of water. This from out trip to the beach yesterday where whomever had been asked to pack the swimming bag had grabbed a handful of stuff that the beach towels were on and dumped it in the bag.

Half-arsed children do have their uses.

I wiped him down, washed his hands, gave him my drink bottle and got him to change his shorts.

He was crying and crying.

“Why are you crying?” I ask. Not in a “shut up and stop sooking” kind of way, more just to see exactly what it is that he was upset about, and to rule out any significant pain strong enough to cause tears.

“Because I told you I was sick and you still made me go to school,” he sobbed.

Yes, I want to say, because how am I supposed to know you’re really sick when you keep fucking lying to me about feeling sick, and when you are able to annoy everyone and ride to school and home again and only ‘be sick’ when it’s time to unstack the dishwasher or do something that you don’t feel like doing at that moment? I didn’t fucking know! OK?

I hug him as best I can without getting ick on myself, and apologise and just have to slip in a lesson: “If you’re going to keep lying to me about being sick, then this is what will happen,” I say.

Although, I’m also highly aware that the more horrific of the consequences are aimed directly at me, as Grumpy Pants is not home, and normally I would say “can you just go do the car whilst I make sure he is ok and put him to bed?”

Noooooo. Karma, I suspect, is having a little fun.

You see, under normal circumstances in this situation, the child would throw up at school and a mother would only feel mortified at having the school contact her. Instead, child has thrown up in the car with only the vomit-adverse mother to take care of it!

Thankfully, I have had Monkey Boy at home cooking dinner, and Godzilla hops in the bath of his own accord and I set about tending to the vomit ridden car.

I don’t do too badly and I clean it out well.

I return inside, manage more of Godzilla’s tears and his request to eat dinner because he is hungry (I’m not surprised. The only think I’m surprised about is that he didn’t vomit up his own toes, given how forceful the five or six episodes were) and I relent and allow him some plain pasta for dinner, before sending him to bed.

At which point, I pick my phone up to alert Grumpy Pants to the home situation.

There is vomit on my phone.

And that’s when I lose it …