A Day Off From Life

I never take it easy. Even when I’m taking it easy I’m not taking it easy. So of course I jumped at the chance to “take it easy” when my mum offered to have the kids for the day. I immediately set about making a list of all the things I could achieve, all those things that are so difficult to do with kids. Oh the possibilities! Collecting a repeat prescription was top of my list. I could collect it without having to unload all the children and faff around with a buggy first at the surgery and then at the pharmacy. Next up? Go home and clean the house from top to bottom, do all the ironing, catch up with email correspondence and school related mailings, sort out the teetering pile of paperwork on the kitchen sideboard, organise my backlog of photographs, work on my blog, book a mini break, maybe pop into the city to buy presents for my husband’s upcoming birthday (and Father’s Day), oh my God I could even go to the cinema! LOL, who was I kidding? As usual I forgot that having kids wasn’t the only obstacle in the way of productivity! The result? I got back from the pharmacy and flaked out on the sofa. Switching on the TV I was horrified to find Jeremy Kyle spitting and yelling abuse at a sour looking couple – I of course switched it off immediately… once I’d heard the DNA results. Perhaps it was the exertion of collecting my prescription, perhaps it was the stress I’d absorbed from The Jeremy Kyle Show, or perhaps it was simply my body realising that for the first time in months I had an opportunity to do nothing and therefore doing nothing was all I could do. Whatever it was, an almighty wave of fatigue washed over me and my to-do list, as is so often the case, remained un-ticked on the side.

So, what does doing nothing actually involve? Well, for me it involved lying in bed and watching ‘Mamma Mia’ with my cat purring next to me, happy to have my rare and undivided attention. I never take it easy in this manner. In fact, I usually hate taking it easy in any manner. Being forced to lounge around is my worst nightmare. But on this particular day I not only embraced it, I flippin’ loved it. Screw the cleaning (who was I kidding? I never get further than dusting the telly anyway), screw the ironing pile (keep an eye out for my post, ‘for the love of ironing’), screw the emails and the teetering pile of, of, of… what the heck is in that pile anyway?! Screw it all. I was taking a day off from life. And it was pure bliss.