Coping, puppies and wifi…..

People often say to me…

“I don’t know how you cope.”

Clearly I invite in a pity party by writing about my life online and discussing the different unique conditions my children are afflicted with, but in the whole, I generally don’t think I need much sympathy.

Except for the nights when Type 1 Diabetes keeps me awake from dusk till dawn.  Those days I need sympathy in a bucket and chocolate by the tonne.

And for the most part, everything I do, I choose to do, so I cope by keep stupidly busy…

I may finally hold the straw that has broken the metaphorical camels back.

So, I am a single parent, with three kids, three cats, currently managing my daughter’s absentee pancreas, whilst also chasing up surgery for my son, and helping my eldest cope with a complex pain condition.

But am coping.

Well I was.

Meet the straw….

She is a pretty cute straw.

But behind those puppy dog eyes is a destructive streak that makes my children look on in adoration.

I never really believed anyone when they said getting a puppy was like having a baby again. Turns out it is true, without the breastfeeding and the hormone surge.

She has my heart, and currently my Ugg boot.

Trying to fit a puppy into our world is mayhem. I live by the code of distraction, the dog needs to be distracted from biting the children’s ankles.  The children need to distracted from winding the dog up into a frenzy, then I need wine to distract myself from going round the bend.

Aside from that all is peachy.

The dog is distracted by food, the kids are distracted by TV, and I have wine.

Of course, it can all go wrong.

Which is why last night I found myself sobbing down the phone to Mike, the lovely customer service rep at Virgin Media, as the kids were running through the house squealing as the over excited puppy was playing nibble the sibling.  All because our wi-fi went down.

Virgin is our world

So we use Virgin for our phones, broadband, TV, music.  It is part of our day to day living.  They were there for us when we moved house, the customer service team helped me set everything up and Virgin keeps my parenting sane.

At some point last night, the puppy nudged a child, who nudged a Giraffe wooden statue which nudged snagged on a lead, and somehow made the magic of the TV stop working.

It was bedlam.

Not being one who has numbers to hand, I located their phone number at this page and quickly got in touch with Mike.

It only took one glass of wine, one puppy accident to clean up and 10 minutes on the phone to get our world running again.  If I have another child, I am calling it Mike, regardless of gender.

Suddenly one child was googling puppy training, one was lost in the world of Dora the Explorer and the last was sitting calmly with a puppy on her knee chatting away to Nanny on the working phone.

These are my questions for the day.

How did we live before wifi?

And puppy crates?

And, finally, why don’t puppies lie down anywhere else but the sofa (which she isn’t really allowed to do.)

Answers on a postcard, and now I have to get back to my straw – she just peed all over the carpet…..

But man, she is cute.

 

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