Do you know what I realised the other day?
I mean other than the fact I should have worn that bikini back when I had the body for it. (I’m glaring at you stretchmarks that look too much like trifle on Christmas day.)
No, I realised that I have lost my ability to chill. It’s freaking gone guys. Like the girl in Taken, but I have no Liam Neeson to bring it back.
Sharon (from The Blessed Barrenness), Megan (from By Megan Kelly) and I were chatting on Twitter the other day about terms of endearment for our spouses. I had a good giggle at the things they call their husbands and then to my utter shock and horror, I was smacked right through the face with a toy horse.
After I sat Knox down and threatened him with imminent death should he ever do that again, I was slapped again with the realisation that Seth and I used to be like that.
Except we’re not anymore.
Our shared love for each other was often sweetened with affectionate terms like poop head, fart bum and who even knows what else – Seth is rather creative when given the chance – the gems he used to come up with, too funny. We were constantly sarcastic, ambiguous and just generally goofy.
Now we’re just one of those couples.
Thankfully we haven’t resorted to calling each other sweetie or pudding pie or sugar muffin – if that were the case, I think I’d pack it in right there. Enough. Get out and get out now. Except we know I wouldn’t actually do that because I’m like, committed to this relationship and stuff. But there would be serious repercussions: I’d expect the end result would be for me to be found buried under roughly 1726 party sized Nik Nak packets, mumbling “He called me love, he called me LOVE”, with New Girl reruns on repeat in the background.
But the truth of it all is that I blame the kids.
Those little critters are just far too much like those old tape recorders – not recording the right stuff in time, like your new favourite song, but playing that swearword you said once by accident (after splitting you head in half with an open cupboard door), on repeat. I don’t particularly want my 4 year old walking up to his buddy at school and calling him a butt head. We’d know that he was joking but somehow I don’t think that little kid will. His parents might be upset. I’m not in for those kinds of chats. General small talk is hard enough for me, thanks.
The result is that ever so slowly, as our children began to grow and pick up our not so endearing terms, we’ve filtered ourselves. All that’s left is someone who now takes everything too seriously. Tell me to shut up (even when I know you’re joking) and suddenly I’m skeefing you so hard you face might actually melt right off.
It sucks. I hate having no chill.
So, instead of moping and arranging a funeral for said chill, I’m going to do something profound.
I’m going to chill.
Cheers for beers!
4 comments
So true! We’ve had to watch ourselves carefully around our kids to make sure we don’t use our…. um… terms of endearment around them, especially because one of our terms of endearment is often accompanied with some lewd gestures and bizarre facial expressions.
The number of Nik Nak packets made laugh loud enough to distract my stepson from The Witches movie so I said good, now go and do your frikkin homework for the 100th time!! And I call my husband Fleabag, it’s been a thing for a few years now hahaha! I love reading your stuff!
Even without kidlets I have zero chill. Life has been beating me up lately. It has actually been beating us both up lately. We’ve been married 2 months shy of 6 years and been together 8 years. We used to wrestle. All the time! It was our thing. A way to get each other to laugh and relax a little bit when we were feeling down. I can’t remember the last time we did that.
Could have been us – honestly. But as ours are getting older I am finding we are bringing more of it back. They seem to be of an age where they know when to say what – mostly. And A is starting with her own little brand of sarcasm.