A strong allegation I know. I mean, who doesn’t like the Easter Bunny? He’s a symbol of hope and the coming Spring, not to mention the chocolate... But then again, there’s the Easter holidays from school. Now that the children are both at home and not tied up with school, etc, (i.e. with someone else looking after them) I can’t get out and run. Don’t get me wrong – it’s nice having them at home and all and I’m particularly enjoying not having to get up at the crack of a*** to chivvy two recalcitrant children out of their nice warm beds and into school and nursery respectively, but I can’t exactly just slip out for a run now that they’re at home all day every day. Plus – and this is the final insult to injury – it seems when they don’t have to get up at 06.40 hours every day, they decide that actually, it’s quite good fun to – they particularly enjoy getting up at some unearthly hour and playing a game together outside my bedroom door. It doesn’t really matter what the game is. Any kind of game – as long as it’s noisy. (This morning’s involved throwing toy cars at the bedroom wall). So, in short, the upshot of this is, I’m still getting up at the crack of anyway.
None of this would be a problem if my husband was around to help out like he usually is. Sadly, this being Easter time, and therefore, as I have said, Spring time, and being as my husband is an ecologist, and every newt/toad/bird/badger/bat in the world is breeding at this time of year, this is a really busy time for him, and he is out early every morning and late every night surveying/counting/ generally looking after the interests of every amphibian/mammal/bird in the South Yorkshire/Derbyshire/Manchester areas. I've hardly seen him during this school holidays (although this may be a deliberate ploy on his part just to evade the worst excesses of the children after too much chocolate). I've almost forgotten what he looks like. Still, he spent Tuesday night on a landfill site near Manchester looking for Great Crested Newts, so it's not all been fun and games for him (he assures me).
And then, as I mentioned before, there’s the chocolate... The kids got loads this year. I mean LOADS. We had an Easter egg hunt in the garden with some of their little friends and they found about 10 small chocolate eggs apiece during that. Then there were the other, bigger, chocolate eggs. The lucky so and so’s got two each from Thornton’s, TWO Lindor gold rabbits each, a chocolate buttons egg, two Kinnerton Chocolate character eggs, a Milky Bar egg each, two Thornton Easter Bunny lollipops, and so on and so on... The list just goes on and every time I go into the pantry it’s all there... Just piled up... A great big delicious mountain of chocolate. I’ve got no willpower. I keep pinching bits. I am, officially, the worst mother in the world. And I know... I KNOW the chocolate is officially the property of the children and I shouldn’t be half-inching it (I mean if they can’t trust their own mother who can they trust?), but I just can’t help myself... So there’s another reason I can’t run a faster 10k... The extra stone I’m carrying which is made up entirely of Cadbury’s Cream Eggs (I particularly can’t resist those miniature ones... I can’t just pinch one of those... I have to steal about twenty).
And finally, because it is school holiday time, and because my sister’s a teacher, it’s holiday time for her too, she’s come to stay for the week, which has just been brilliant. It has, however, meant lots of luxurious treat-style outings to places like Chatsworth House (large picnic and cream tea); Buxton Pavilion Gardens (luxury hot chocolate with marshmallows and whipped cream, complete with toasted teacake – and you would have thought I should have been able to control myself here too – especially being as one of my events is the Buxton Half-Marathon and every time I go there nowadays I look at the hills around there and think, Oh My God, What was I thinking?) and tomorrow I’m going out for a large Italian meal with her. All fantastic stuff (apart from the Pavilion Gardens, which, probably after the sugar rush, induced the biggest tantrum I’ve ever seen in my youngest son. I literally had to carry him bodily out of there whilst he kicked out at me and screamed at the top of his lungs. There’s another place I can never show my face in again – which is a shame – because the Art Cafe at the Pavilion Gardens is really nice now that it’s all been refurbished – This, I hasten to add, did nothing for my stress levels which I usually manage to keep quite nicely under control with the training I do – running is a great stress buster). However, it’s not great for healthy eating and has done absolutely nothing for the training I should be doing.
So, in short, what Easter has meant for me this year is extra calories (too many of) and cutting down on runs (much too much of). And, being as my next event is the Sheffield Half-Marathon and being as this event is in precisely ten days’ time, I’m in trouble. Somebody hand over that bunny... I’m gonna bite his head off.
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