This is a message for the grumpy old man and the younger male driver who yesterday took umbrage at me pulling over to the side of the road with my hazard lights on and making it a little difficult for them to get out of their road because they had to pull out more than usual to see what was coming.
Did you think that because I was a stressed Mum that you could Tut at me, shaking your head and get away with it? I don’t think so! I don’t need any rules or laws to stand up for myself mate. Bet you wouldn’t have done it if it had been the Big Hairy Northern One parked there (partially because he is quite big and grumpy looking, and partially because you would have assumed that a man had a valid reason for parking there).
What is our world coming to when people see hazard lights and don’t think of helping, but instead choose to be irritated?
Clearly my hazard lights were on.
Clearly there was a problem.
When I pointed them out to you, and explained my baby daughter was puking, you said ‘but there’s no ambulance’.
Of course there wasn’t an ambulance you idiot. That’s because I pulled over, and lifted her forward so that she didn’t choke on her puke. That’s what I was doing when you were ‘tutting’ at me and shaking your head.
If she hadn’t still been puking, you would have had a big bag of puke thrown at you so that you could appreciate it yourself.
Word of warning: Don’t mess with a Leo Mum, because we are very protective of our children.
Then funnily enough, no, I didn’t drive off leaving her covered in big mounds of puke that she would have thrown over my car, and screamed about. No, I took off her top, and put it in a plastic bag that I keep just in case (gold star to me for being organised), and I wiped the mounds of puke off her chair, so that they didn’t then also slip elsewhere in the car. Lastly I wiped her hands, mouth and chest.
Do you know why? Because I was taught a wonderful rule by my mentor Dr John Demartini called ‘The Law of Lesser Pissers’. This rule means that if you are going to choose between pissing someone else off and pissing yourself off, then piss them off, as you will spend your life with yourself, and probably never see them again.
I wasn’t stopping the traffic, I’d gone as far as I could to park safely, and not put my baby in danger. Then my priority was to help her, and then to reduce the SMELL. (Luckily I also now travel with febreze in the car, following my tips for travelling with kids in a car). If I had moved out of your way, I would then have had hours of cleaning to do, just to give you a couple of minutes extra because you could pull out more easily. In my calculation I made the right choice.
By the way, when school starts again, and you are trying to get out of that road into a busy line of traffic, this is one car that won’t be letting you out!
Rant over!
On a more serious subject I was talking on twitter the other day about how sad it is that Mums often feel so powerless and lose their self-belief so much that they often lose their ability to hear their own intuition. I’m trying to do my small part to help strengthen Mums, especially with my blog and my soon to be published book (working title: Six Weeks To A Sparkling You). My big plan has always been to get my books well enough known that I then had enough clout to start some kind of group of well known Mums to focus on changing society’s view of the importance of Mums. But maybe with the London Riots we need to do something sooner to empower families and bring us back to the centre of life in the UK? Do you know of any groups already running with this sort of plan? Please put a comment below if you are interested, and I will let you know when I find out more about what’s already out there or make a plan for making something new.