The Housewife's 'Day Off'

When living with my parents, I would spend most of my days off in the winter sitting on the sofa in my pyjamas, drinking endless cups of tea and watching episode after episode of Diagnosis Murder or catching up with friends at a push; I wouldn’t have to move all day if I didn’t need to - I don’t think I ever appreciated these days enough.

Yesterday was my first day off in my new flat, though I will no longer use the phrase ‘day off’. That just no longer seems to fit the description. I spent half the morning cleaning the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom. Living with Mike is like living with the Tasmanian Devil; he leaves every room in a state of carnage: clothes everywhere, stacks of washing up, various endless wires lying around from numerous extension cords. It would seem that the bathroom towels are also a species of Tasmanian Devil, leaving copious amounts of bright pink towel fluff on every white surface imaginable!

The second half of my morning was spent shopping for a top-up of food, going to the Post Office and to the bank (I started to feel like my mum at this point) and waiting for what felt like hours at the railway crossing, before returning home to vacuum every room and have a shower before the men came to fit our Sky box. Not knowing what this would involve, I simply removed all items from around the TV. It turns out that because we’re having Broadband fitted in January that this isn’t enough – all boxes stacked against the wall needed to be moved for the phone line to be fitted, as well as the heavy dining table and my little Christmas tree. It’s possible that the Sky men made more of a mess than Mike! To add to my embarrassment of not knowing anything about installing phone lines and what fitting Sky entails, I was walking around with freshly blow-dried hair double its normal size and make-up streaks down my cheeks from my shower – I looked like a member of Kiss!

As soon as they were out the door, I switched the Sky Box on for an episode of Diagnosis Murder, only to then realise the time and had to start preparing dinner – toad in the hole. When this was eventually in the oven, I still didn’t have time to enjoy the new Sky box as I had to get ready to go out (i.e. get rid of the Kiss make-up and flatten my hair!).

By half 5, dinner was cooked and eaten, the washing up had been done, Mike’s half of dinner was in the oven and I was ready to leave the house for a relaxing evening at the Amex Stadium watching Brighton v Millwall. Did I say relaxing?