Marvin Gaye got it wrong.

Mark says he can always tell how tired I am by how much I'm moving around. If I'm a bit tired, I might potter about doing random tasks. But when I'm full-blown exhausted, there is nothing I will not attempt to achieve (generally badly) as I whirl around like a whirling dervish.

In my defense, there is a perfectly good reason for this, which is that: Recognizing I’m a bit worn out, I try to finish everything I might need to finish before I sit down, because I know that once I do sit down, I'll glaze over and stare into space.

This week, I've been heavy on the whirling dervish. We have a lot going on. We opened two new venues for Fish And Bear, which is lovely, but on top of the regular slate of work and end-of-the-school-year bullshittery, it's been a lot. Or at least that's what I decided it must be when I found myself sitting in the Rabbit Taj Mahal.

And yes, the Rabbit Taj Mahal in our backyard now has a designated chair because rabbits (even controlling ones) get lonely. Now, when Grendel is looking a bit on the solitary side, one of us can go in and sit and keep him company. When I realized I was a bit wiped and noticed Grendel thumping his giant rabbity paws against the wire of his enclosure, I figured I could sit in there and rest.

You know, when Marvin Gaye sang that “We are all sensitive people,” he got it wrong. He should have sung, “We are all sensitive creatures instead.”

Here in Tweddley Manor, there are a lot of personalities. There's me, Mark, Fergus, and Lachlan, and Arthur the dog, Grendel the rabbit, Genghis the rooster and his 9 hens, and all of us have attitudes. Even the bees (that we call Audreys) have their own moods depending on the weather.

And as if to prove that point, whenever I do take a seat in Rabbit Taj Mahal, Arthur and Ripley, our rescue chicken, perform a bloody horrendous duet - in a very un Marvin Gaye manner - with Arthur taking the lead by whining and Ripley clucking needily in backing vocals at what they see as an unfair transfer of attention.

So, staring into space, trying to ignore Grendel jumping playfully over my feet and the dog and chicken Milli Vanilli blurting out some power ballad about betrayal, I let my thoughts wander.

This year seems to be rattling along, and I feel like I'm constantly behind on everything. Somehow we're here in May already, and I can't really work out how that happened. And Lachlan will be graduating school in a couple of weeks, and that will be it. Because both kids will be done with school, and there'll be no more school potlucks, and fundraisers, and endless bullshit email chains about nothing. Surprisingly, I found myself smiling. No more bullshit email chains. That will be awesome.

But gone are the school runs and packed lunches and parent teacher conferences because my once podgy little smudges are grown men who don't really need me anymore. And then suddenly I find myself horribly sad, and the ridiculous dog and chicken background music strangely apt.

And it's Mother's Day this week. And my mother's not here anymore. And one day I'll not be here anymore, but my kids will still have to deal with Mother’s Day, and they'll have lives of their own because everything is passing so quickly, and there's so much to do and not enough time to do it and…

My thoughts stopped abruptly as a couple of pounds of rabbit sat on my foot.

I looked down to see Grendel staring at me expectantly. Clearly snacks were now required. I reached into my hoodie pocket and pulled out some lettuce.

Outside the enclosure, Arthur and Ripley stop singing in anticipation.

“I have snacks for you guys too. Just give me a minute.” I said.

And as the dog chicken Milli Vanilli painfully resurrected some painful ballad about being all alone and forgotten, I let myself out of the rabbit Taj Mahal.

Now, it's a well-known fact that you can't feed one chicken without all the other chickens finding out, so before long I have 10 chickens and a dog eating snacks, while a rabbit has his full face in a lettuce.

And I think to myself how tired I am, and how I ought to sit down but I want to keep moving. Because I recognize that tiredness and thinking go together with as much harmony as Arthur and Ripley. And that clearly I have more feelings about Lachlan graduating than I thought I did. And that Mother's Day always bothers me because it involves celebrating a role rather than an individual. And I love those that I love for the individuals they are and not for the roles they play. And that life seems so very precious right now, and I'm mad at myself for seeing it as a set of tasks I have to get done, rather than just allowing myself to be.

So chickens, dog, rabbit fed, I went indoors, poured myself a big fat cup of tea, sat in an armchair, and promptly fell asleep.

When I woke up, Ferg was just heading out in the backyard to spend some time with Grendel. He asked if I wanted to come and I said that I’d been already. Then Lachlan appeared, wanting to borrow my silver shampoo to tone down the yellow in his hair. Vera, one of the chickens, had escaped and Genghis the rooster was kicking up a storm about it, so Mark was running about the backyard trying to catch Vera.

And as I sat, doing nothing but sipping on a new cup of tea and looking out at the trees and daft wee cotton wool clouds scattered across the sky. I thought to myself how, on Mother’s Day, most of all we should celebrate Mother Earth. And also that, as brilliant as Marvin Gaye was, he definitely got it wrong.

Lynn

Xo

PS: Every time you click on the wee heart emoji, Ripley and Arthur duet in tune. obviously that’s a total lie, but it does wake up my algorithm.

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Marvin Gaye got it wrong. - Audio