Guilty As Charged

Guilt – apparently it’s a wasted emotion, we should spend more of our time on joy, delight, and happiness. If guilt could be exchanged for gold, I would be wealthy beyond my wildest dreams, you see I have a confession to make, sadly I am adept at investing in guilt stocks and bonds.

In actual fact, I feel rather guilty about taking the twenty minutes to write this blog, guilty that I have made a delicious latte with double shots – extra strong, because according to scientific studies I drink too much coffee, there is a coffee shortage on the horizon, and let’s not mention the altruistic lives of dairy cows...giving of their moo-juice so that the café-set can enjoy their lattes, cappuccinos, and flat whites while their wee calves are sent off to become burgers and steaks.

I was a vegan for many years, and a vegetarian beyond that – guilt made me do it, then I read a study about plants screaming when you picked their fruit…I lost a lot of weight that year.

I also feel guilty that I am baking a delicious, decadent chocolate brownie right at this very moment. The kind that is stuffed with sugar and chocolate and sends the kids into a frenzy of hyperactivity before crashing to the ground with an emotional kerplunk. Yes, I feel guilty that I am not baking them a raw kale brownie topped with Andalusian hemp seeds harvested under the first moon of the Winter Solstice – apparently much healthier and endowing your offspring with sacred gifts such as compassion, wisdom, and saintliness.

I watched that documentary War on Waste. Guilty – throwing out enough uneaten food to stock a cruise-ship, drinking out of disposable coffee cups – with plastic lids!

Today I feel guilty because I only work in my regular job every second Wednesday – despite the fact that I have just spent six hours cleaning and polishing my home, feeding children (with those devilish snacks), and summiting Mount Washing-tonne, I can’t help but think of all of the things I handed over to my job-share colleague yesterday. Did I leave him too much to do? Did I provide enough information in my handover notes? Was my tone too officious? Did I remember to ask him how his weekend was? Did I leave him that really difficult matter with the really tricky person , with the complicated issues? Was I a little too buoyant as I skipped out of the office yesterday afternoon wishing the full-time staff an enjoyable rest of the week? I saw their looks of envy, their casual ‘Oh, you’re not in for the rest of the week, that’s right….’

I feel guilty when my father-in-law, or mother has picked up the children from school, and I have to quickly drop into the supermarket on the way home from work to get something (nutritious) for dinner and bread for lunches tomorrow instead of racing straight home to relieve them of their care-taker duties. I feel guilty when I linger too long absent-mindlessly in the crackers aisle (I’m a sucker for a shiny new product), or pick the wrong line at the supermarket – the one where the lady in front of me has one thing in her trolley, but magically presents twenty-seven more items she has been clasping secretly in her giant magician hands, none of which have a scannable barcode, which makes me even later home, after sunset – perhaps closer to midnight than mid-afternoon.

I feel guilty that I forgot the bread…

I get up at 4.30am most mornings. I run (rather jog and gasp for air, face glowing, whilst passers-by clutch at their mobile phones wondering whether to call me an ambulance), watch the sunrise, and drink a coffee, I am home by 6.30am. The kids don’t like me going – they tell me this as I am racing around trying to get them ready for school dishing out frequent ‘Hurry ups’ as I rattle off a long list of items that they need to remember for the day whilst drying my hair and making the bed (multi-tasking and only half-listening to them tell me about the weird dream they had last night). I feel guilty that there isn’t more time in the mornings, that we have to hustle into the car in a whirl of madness, and that I have left the breakfast dishes on the bench, simply because we ran out of time.

I feel guilty that my daughter does her hair in the car on the way to school, trying to catch a glimpse of herself as we take on yet another round-a-bout on the school run. I am unfortunately not blessed with those nimble fingers that magically tame a wild mane into a Scandinavian coiffured masterpiece. Nope, my daughter had a range of headbands as a toddler, and she now scoops her own hair into a low ponytail, or pulls on a hat.

We get to school – I forgot the permission slip. I forgot that it was bring a dish-day, or crochet a jacket for a bald chicken day, or that I was supposed to bring the teacher flowers and a shiny new red Ferrari for her birthday on behalf of the class with the money I had collected the week before – guilty.

I feel guilty that I mostly do a ‘drop and run’ these days – sadly I can no longer linger around the classroom catching up on my child’s progress with the teacher –being filled in on the latest escapades of my youngest – apparently he climbed out of the toilet window recently – parent-guilt – obviously my parenting isn’t up to par. Guilty that I can’t rifle through the stinky lost-property bin finding that missing jumper even though it is only nine degrees and I have sent them to school in only their sports shirt because I didn’t buy a spare jumper or think to slip a singlet on them.

Then I feel guilty because I then arrive at work later than I had hoped. that there were others there a long time before I arrived – that I have to endure the eyebrow raises as I bumble past with my lunch-bag and takeaway coffee (ok, so I did stop in and grab a coffee on the way – yes, in a disposable cup) and now I have mere minutes to print out the agenda for the meeting I forgot I was chairing that morning. I should be more organised…the printer is now jammed, no one else can use it, the meeting is late, it was me, guilty!

I feel guilty because I am usually done after two rounds of cards or board games with the kids - sometimes I find it hard to muster up much enthusiasm for continuing when I have slid down that spiteful orange snake all the way back to the beginning for the third time in a row while everyone else is crossing the finish line – humble (of course) in their victory.

This whole guilt thing is getting a bit ridiculous though – this afternoon I felt guilty because I killed a fly. I swear the door was open for less than twenty seconds, and in that time it invaded my sanctuary. I took it down rapidly in quick-draw stand off – me with the lethal can of Raid and the fly trying desperately to escape through those micro-holes in the security screen. I found the fly around ten minutes later, motionless with legs in the air – it was just a baby fly. I felt sad, guilty that I had stolen a life, that it would never get to experience the joys of wheelie bin day or prawn heads at Christmas time.

The other night one child had tinned spaghetti for dinner, the other had fish fingers…where are the five serves a day…guilty. My husband had no dinner – he had to make do with cheese on toast, that he made himself.

Guilty – as charged.