R & R

Am I the only one who can NEVER relax properly, ever?  I always have to be doing something, even if it’s just thinking and worrying; the only time I can actually lie and do nothing is in bed (much to my husband’s bitter disappointment).

Yesterday, for example, I felt cold and tired all day, so I was looking forward to having a bath when the kids had gone to bed.  I busied myself tidying the bedroom and sorting washing out whilst it ran, then when it had finished I gratefully climbed in, feeling the warm water soothing away the day’s activities.  I washed myself, lay back…and then felt bored, so I got out again, approximately three and a half minutes later.

When I watch television, I either analyse the acting, or, if it’s something live, I worry about people falling down stairs, or swearing, or messing up their lines.  A few minutes into any programme, I find myself looking around the room and checking that pictures and ornaments are straight, symmetrical and evenly distanced (which you wouldn’t think would bother me if you saw the general state of my house 95% of the time).

When I’m on the loo I always have to read or do a puzzle.  I panic in the absence of reading material so I resort to shampoo bottles or tubes of toothpaste.  When I feel I am an expert in how to look like I’ve just stepped out of a salon and how much toothpaste children under the age of 6 should use (a pea sized amount), I put the towels straight, or clean the sink.  (You can tell how small our bathroom is by the very fact that I can reach all these items without moving off the toilet or even having to stretch that much, to be honest).

In doctor’s and dentist’s waiting rooms, I read all the wall notices about chlamydia, flu injections for the over 60s and the number of units of alcohol you can safety drink in a week.  (OK, so the last one probably is targetted at me, to be fair.)

I can’t just wait patiently for food to cool either, for myself or the kids, so I’m constantly and repeatedly burning my mouth because I check it every ten seconds.  I’m like a moth that keeps flying into a light or a wasp that keeps banging against a window; it hurts every time, but I just can’t seem to help it.

If we go out for a meal, I play the sad game of ‘spot the mistake on the menu’ (much to my husband’s embarrassment) and feel triumphant, yet appalled, if an apostrophe is used incorrectly.  I don’t tell anyone though, I just feel smug in my own pathetic knowledge of the fact.

My children can only tolerate me for ten minutes when I’m cuddling them before they want to get down from my knee because I’m constantly picking at them (see ‘Former Baboon’).  I try to make it into a game but they’ve grown wise to it, so if I ‘beep’ their noses they let me do it a couple of times then run for the hills before I start rooting for bogeys.

Funnily enough though, I’ve yet to feel so bored and restless that I feel compelled to clear my ironing pile.  I seem to have a Jedi Knight’s boredom threshold when it comes to that one…