This week gardener, writer and mother of five, Debbie Webber, realises that organisation and a good memory are not her strong points....
I am feeling slightly stressed. I hate admitting that. If I'm honest, it's rather more than slightly. When in this state I don't lose my appetite, forego sleep or bite my fingernails.
I lose things. Not just any old things. I lose car keys. Such is my talent that we are down to the spare set. And I've just mislaid them.
Our super duper set which operates the central locking with a beep are -- you've guessed it -- missing. I haven't a clue where. I did worry, for a while, that someone had picked them up in the road outside the house and was waiting for the moment to steal the car, burgle us or murder us in our beds.
So far that hasn't happened but I have a feeling Hubby may be on the verge of committing murder if I don't get a grip, literally, on my car keys.The thing is, in my defence, that I have so many things to remember, children to deposit or pick up that occasionally my brain will just malfunction from the overload.
We do have a dedicated place to hang them but when I stagger into the house laden with book bags/shopping/screaming little ones I just go blank and we then spend the five minutes before we need to drive somewhere else in a state of blind panic. Or rather I do.
The answer to all of this is to a) buy a keyring the size of a brick and attach to the keys (I've tried this and it always breaks) or b) buy a whistling key ring (which I am seriously going to investigate) or c) reduce my stress levels.
'C' is obviously my preferred option but one that I have least chance of implementing now the school year has started. All the children arrive at their various destinations five days a week with the right kit at the right time but - ugh - it is so much harder than I thought it would be.
Now we've added after school clubs into the mix, after some encouragement from me, and the situation is a little harder. It's not as if the children do a lot of clubs, the older three do two each, although seeing that written down I am now wondering if that might be "too much", at least for me.
The fact that it's always my car keys that I manage to mislay is not lost on me: I reckon my subconscious is trying to give me a message
Hubby is too. "Be more organised", he says. "Hang up the keys". I'm working on it. And the missing car keys? I'm working on finding those too....