Hestia...gets her priorities right

Hmmm - Tom Ford? Doesn't he make cars?

I know that it's hard to believe, but there ARE downsides of being with the Domestic God that I live with - let's call him Tartarus (Greek mythology = the darkside of the underworld) for ease of reference.  Yes, he's a control freak. Yes, he's uber-tidy and yes, there is not a sliver of romance glistening in the coal-black darkness of his soul.

But let's not say those things like they're BAD.


I *need* a control freak because, well, you should see the trouble that I can get myself into while he's out of the country (just in the past 6 weeks alone - threats of litigation, weeping, inadvisable purchases on ebay and the possible transfer of a large portion of our savings to the wrong bank account).  I also need a tidy man because I'm not tidy at all:  I'll happily step over the same pile of laundry that needs ironed for...oooh, weeks.

As far as the romance thing goes - here's an example of how unromantic he is:  When our son was born, I didn't get a dozen red roses, or even a single one. 

No, I got a printer for my computer. 

Now, don't raise your eyebrows and wonder about how close I came to stabbing him with a big jaggy knife.  The truth is, roses ARE beautiful, but a printer is more useful - and, 10 years later, I still have the printer......

I prefer to see him as PRACTICAL rather than unromantic.

He doesn't tell me that he loves me unless I do that irritating 'let's talk' thing in bed when he's deeply engrossed in a Wilbur Smith book.  He SHOWS me he loves me by washing my car, making me cups of tea, giving me breakfast in bed of a Sunday, going downstairs to the freezing kitchen in the middle of the night to get me a glass of water clad only in the fur God gave him.

So believe me, he does have his good points :-)

However, the very worst thing about living with Tartarus is his job.  Being away from home for six weeks at a time comes at a high cost.  Sonshine misses him dreadfully. I'm not so bad because I've had several decades to get used to it.

Today was a bad day.  Tartarus was due to be in Glasgow on Thursday, but now he won't be home until Saturday.  Yes, it gives me a couple more days to try to knock the house into that casual tidy-but-not-specially-tidied-up-because-you're-home state of grace....but it's also another couple of days for the bits that ARE tidy to descend into my habitual sloveliness.

This news that Tartarus would not be home as planned led Sonshine to storm off up to his room and do a bit of pre-teen door slamming and emitting a suitably irritating 'JEEzus' as he huffed off.

Worse than upsetting our son, the news has totally ballsed up my plans for the weekend.

My dearest friend, the Vet, is getting married in October.  She's never been married before and it is A Big Deal.  We agreed to meet before midday at Rogano (don't call it The Rogano btw) for a bite of posh lunch before braving the wilds of.....Daniel-land.....  for a spot of make-up madness with all manner of wildly expensive products purchased For The Wedding.

I'm no makeup expert, but next to the Vet and my other friend, the Mad Woman from Kilmarnock, believe me I'm positively Gok Wan.

After we had burned our credit cards to a frazzle, we were going to chill out at her flat with a glass of something white and cold (or in my case probably a bit pink and fizzy) and pass out quietly in front of 'Young Frankenstein'.  We are not sophisticated.

But now Tartarus will be expecting to be picked up at Glasgow airport at the very minute I'm hoping to be shoving a silver fork into my gob at Rogano.

Readers, I could tell you that I am torn in my duties and responsibilities to both Tartarus and the Vet, but I'm not.

I am off to Rogano with my friends.  Does that make me a bad person?

Possibly.  Sonshine will be farmed out to a suitably responsible family from Friday to Saturday (ie midnight telly watching sessions of America's Next Top Model under the duvet, plus the same socks/pants for two days) and, to show my Goddessly irritation,  I have issued Tartarus with a shopping list for make up from Mexico City Airport.

Tom Ford lipstick - two shades
Chanel lipstick - two shades
Chanel nail polish - the nice turquoise one

He will do what he usually does, print out the e-mail with all the details and thrust it into the hands of a suitably fierce make-up diva in the airport shops and tell her to Get Everything, while he goes to The Friendly Man bar and gets the first of many *cough, cough*  'cocktails' to prepare him mentally for his lengthy flight home.

The thing is, until I started blogging and hanging around, in the ether at least, with the likes of the Blogging Gods (see the list to the right) I would never have coveted something like a Tom Ford lipstick or wanted to wear an armful of silver bangles.  But now it's all I can think about.  Does that make me shallow?

Don't answer that!