Its funny the things you just realise

My mum had Toots on Wednesday afternoon and when she dropped her back home again, Toots went straight upstairs for her bath and my mum and I sat chatting for a while as we often do.

Ten minutes later while desperately trying to catch my breath from laughing so hard I realised that most of my memories of my mum are like this.

She's one of those people. I think everybody knows at least one and the world would be a much more dismal, dreary place without them, but she is just one of those people that can have you in a complete wrinkle, creasing yourself laughing just by telling you about her trip to get a carton of milk.

My mum seriously missed her calling, she should have been a stand up comedienne. Nobody I know spins a yarn or tells a tale quite like my mum.

She's such a bright, cheerful woman and manages to inject humour into even the most humdrum days.

She's always full of life and laughter and I'm so grateful for that. I can't understand why I didn't really notice it before. I guess we just get used to the friends and family who surround us and sometimes take their best attributes and the finest elements of their personality for granted.

I've been crafting away tonight since she went home again, but I've been remembering some of the things she got up to when we were kids.

I remember her bobbing for apples and practically emptying the entire contents of the basin of water all over the kitchen floor, because dammit she was getting that apple if it was the last thing she did.

Or smiling unashamedly to anyone she met for he full week it took to get a dentist appointment after she broke one of her front teeth eating a candy bracelet. She didn't care that she looked like something out of Dumb and Dumber.

I remember a guy calling door to door selling indoor fireworks before Halloween. Maybe these were only a UK thing but if you remember them let me know. Anyway, she lit one of them on the drop down oven door and then proceeded to beat the dung out of the thing with a wet dishcloth because the smoke alarm was going off and she thought the house was going to burn down. Just the thought of her screaming at that firework to "go out, why won't you go out" as though it might reply "oh alright then" has me in stitches.

She could be very creative with the punishments too. I remember the first time I ever had a drink. Not the worst thing I ever did, but it was bad enough (it gets worse, wait for it). I was 14 at the time and went a tad overboard shall we say. I was convinced I'd made it. I managed to let myself into the house and into the downstairs loo to freshen up. I called goodnight to her and thought I was free and clear as she called goodnight back and I headed up the stairs.

I was almost there too when I tripped and fell over a pair of my dumb ass brother's trainers that were lying on the second to last stair. I tried to keep as quiet as possible and shrug it off and as I was picking myself back up again I heard this snort from behind. I turned around and there was my mum standing at the bottom of the stairs trying to look angry and trying to stop from killing herself laughing at the same time.

Well apparently I was thoroughly smished because I immediately burst into tears, told her I was drunk and tried my best to apologise.

She bundled me off to bed, telling me I was in for it in the morning. I woke the next morning, feeling like someone had stolen my head and left a bag of hammers in its place and I could hear my mum on the phone downstairs telling the school secretary that I wouldn't be in that day (told you) because I had a bug.

Well, I lay in bed like Little Miss Smuggy McSmuggerson thinking my mum was the coolest mum in the whole wide world and I drifted back off to sleep....

Until a soaking wet, freezing cold wash cloth landed squarely on my face and I scrambled out of bed to face the sight of a bucket of cleaning supplies and a smiling face and pointing finger aimed directly at the bathroom.

Ever scrubbed a bathroom at 8am after a night on the sauce? No, well I don't recommend it and let me tell you it was a very very long time before I dared touch another drop of drink.

Honestly, every beer smelt just like bleach and that awful floral disinfectant until I was in my early 20s. She never used that disinfectant before and she's never used it since. I think she may have went out at the scrake of dawn to get a bottle on purpose.

So thank you mum, for always smiling and giving everyone around you no other option but to do likewise.