Firstly, I like that I exist in a time where ‘adulting’ is a word. I would have been no good in the 1950s when everybody was busy being adults and responsible and there were no hilarious Buzzfeed articles about why it was hard. I am glad to live in a world where it’s ok to admit you have no idea what you’re doing, where pretty much everyone finds life overwhelming and where those who don’t stand out for being a bit weird (who wants to be that organised, really?). Sometimes I think I’ve got this whole adulting thing down, then I realise that thinking that alone probably proves that I haven’t.
Here are five ways I’m not very good at adulting:
1. I don’t have any of the right tools
We never have the right tools, we usually end up borrowing them from my dad. Sometimes, after we borrow them, we lose them, and I can tell from my dad’s facial expression that he also thinks I am bad at adulting. The tools we do have, I can never find. It’s actually easier to borrow things from my dad than it is to try and make sense of our utility room. We don’t even have the right ladders for our house. Our ceilings are tall and our ladders are short. This is not good. When Laurie goes in the loft, he has to stand atop our tiny ladders and hope for the best as he leaps towards the loft entrance. I stand at the bottom, crossing my fingers tightly.
2. I never know when the inset days are
Why don’t they just include them in the list of when the school holidays are? Why are they separate, hidden away at the bottom of a long list of days off? It’s like a trap so they can work out which parents don’t know wtf they’re doing. As though the fact we forget to send the PE kit in and our children sometimes have unbrushed air isn’t making things obvious enough for them. We never get around to doing the homework they send home either unless it’s something particularly fun. We’re usually late in the morning and I’m often one of the last parents at pick up. I’m just not great at this whole school mum thing.
3. I can’t answer any of the big questions
I get asked all kinds of weird crap now that Ebony is older. She asks me about the solar system, about what happens when we die, about whether tigers are real (poor vegan kid who has never visited a zoo), about nerves. Nerves. How am I meant to know anything about nerves?! I know nothing. I can look things up on my phone, but that is it. What would I have done if I had been a parent before the internet existed? What did those people do?
4. I cannot budget
I try, I do, but I am still not good with a budget. I feel like I should be because I spent so long as a lowly paid charity working essentially existing on soup, but alas, I am rubbish. I usually overspend and I can never be sure how. I always think life will be easier if I write down what I spend money on, but then I’m busy with Ember and Ebony and many shopping bags and I just forget, then I have no idea where all my money went, again.
5. I stay up too late
My most adult weeks are the ones where I go to bed at 10pm and wake up the next day feeling refreshed and ready to take on the world. These weeks are also my most rare. I am way more likely to still be sat on the sofa at midnight and wake up feeling like death. That’s not what adults do, is it?
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