Help! My mum is coming to dinner!

My sister sent me a text yesterday asking what she could bring to dinner. I suggested a cleaner. But I settled for a bottle of wine. I’m supposed to be on one of those ridiculous no-drinking-Monday-to-Friday jags – again – but I needed something to soothe my frazzled nerves.

My parents are going to a funeral in Sydney this morning, so I suggested they stay at my place last night. In for a penny, I invited my sister and nephew to join us for dinner.

And I spent the rest of the day in a complete flap.

Reading group with Sprog 2’s class went by the wayside. There’s no way I’d have been ready for my mother’s arrival if I’d spent an hour getting snippy with six-year-olds about not paying attention.

In a dramatic cost-cutting measure, I sent the cleaners on an extended holiday a few weeks ago, so I was on my own to get the place schmick. This was a hard job. There were 500 pieces of Polly Pocket crap and 500 pieces of Lego crap scattered through the playroom (pictured above). There was two weeks worth of food cemented to the stove. Every benchtop in the kitchen had something sticky smeared on it. The floor needed a vacuum, but I couldn’t remember where I’d put the bloody thing.

I had to make the bed in the spare room. But first I needed to remove all the getting-ready-for-the-accountant piles of crap on it. And then I had to find sheets with  functional elastic and no rusty washing line streaks (because they look a lot like another sort of streak).

I had to scrub the poo smears off the toilet bowl. I had to remove the slime from around the base of all the taps. And I had to do it all the Sprog 1’s 2-in-1 blueberry shampoo and conditioner because I’d run out of Jif.

I had to clear away the pile of washing on the bottom step.

I had to tidy up both Sprogs’ bedrooms.

Then I had to make dinner – a lamb and potato casserole. It was a bit complicated. Slicing potatoes with a mandolin and that sort of malarky. Timing was tricky too, since I had to ferry Sprog 1 and 2 around to gymnastics and trumpet lessons and didn’t get home until 5.45pm.

As I was preparing the casserole, it dawned on me that it wasn’t nearly big enough to feed five adults and three children. So I had to rush out and get some ravioli for the kids and pretended I’d planned it that way.

I was nervous about dessert, because the mandarin curd I made on Sunday – to put in tart cases – was too sweet (and sloppy). But I didn’t have time to make another batch, so it just had to do. Everyone was very polite about it, as the sickly sweet curd dribbled down their chins, but my heart was clenching with shame.

God it’s exhausting being me.

HOW ABOUT YOU? DO YOU TURN INTO A DERVISH WHEN YOUR MOTHER IS COMING FOR A VISIT OR DO YOU JUST IGNORE HER LIP CURL AND CONTINUE LIVING IN FILTH?

WHAT ABOUT IF IT’S YOUR MOTHER-IN-LAW?