As you can imagine, after devoting the last five months to living and breathing running I have quite a bit of catching up to do on all sorts of other things now my mission has been accomplished! In particular I'd like to spend time with my children - unfortunately they have reached the age where they no longer want to spend time with me. Hanging out with your mum is definitely NOT cool - especially when you have much more exciting females in your life. Yes, my boys both have girlfriends and, blissfully happy as they are, they are finding early on that girlfriends are expensive. Ali and Summer have had a love-hate relationship since the first day they met; even though of course everyone knew they didn't really hate each other at all. She is as tall as he is short and they are both delightfully mad. Her name suits her perfectly, although Noel says she should really be called Summer Breeze, because she just breezes along wherever she goes with a beatific smile on her face. Considering she and Ali always supposedly hated each other it was rather amusing how much time the two of them spent chatting on Facebook or texting each other every night but I knew something was definitely up when Ali went through his entire $20 mobile top-up in less than 24 hours. 'Err - that's really not good mate! You know I'm not going to buy you another top-up now, don't you?' I told him. 'Yes', Ali blushed sheepishly, before heading straight for Facebook where he could chat for free. What's wrong with actually calling each other on the phone for free is beyond me but hey, this is 2011 - why talk when you can type?!
Liam however has been the most surprising one. For someone who always said he hated talking to girls on the phone because he didn't know what to say, he certainly seems to have overcome this obstacle. His girlfriend Talia is a closely guarded secret but we have it on good authority from Liam's mates that she is a 'good chick' and she definitely isn't a figment of his imagination judging by the last phone bill. It was so large that Noel actually thought it was two months' worth and accused me of not paying last month's. 'I did!' I said indignantly. 'Then why is is $561?!' he demanded to know. He proceeded to go through the phone bill with a fine toothed comb and couldn't believe what he saw. 'Who the heck has been making calls to a mobile at 2.00am for 153 minutes? Here's another one at 1.00am for 90 minutes!' And on they went, to the same mobile number until the tally reached almost $300.
What on earth was going on? It couldn't possibly be Liam - after all, Liam is just so quiet! It had to be Ali - but he never, ever stays up that late, he literally falls asleep where he stands by 10pm. Either way, we had to get to the bottom of it and waited eagerly for the boys to get home from school. 'Right boys! We need to talk to you', we grinned. 'One of you owes us an awful lot of money!' Liam relaxed visibly - after all, it was always Ali who owed money, never him. Until we mentioned the phone bill and his eyes suddenly rolled skywards. 'Er - what's the number?' he asked, already knowing the answer. 'Who is it?' asked Noel as he read it out. 'Who do you think?' grinned Liam, blushing scarlet. 'Well this is how much you owe us!' said his dad. 'But - but - you always told me if I called my friends from a landline it was free!' spluttered Liam. 'Not to call a mobile! Only landline to landline!' I explained, laughing. Oh dear, does that make me a bad mother? Did I not teach him right, or did the message simply not compute? Either way, the poor lad is currently trying to sell all his worldly goods on Trade Me to pay off his debt!
The really sweet thing is how much Liam has grown as a person now that he has somebody else to think about. He's always putting her first, bless him. For example, the same day we received the phone bill he came home from Youth Group that night and we asked him 'So, did you tell Talia how much the pair of you had racked up in phone calls?' 'Oh yep kind of - but I only told her $100', he confessed. 'How come?' Noel asked. 'Are you kidding? She went crazy when I told her it was $100, saying 'you have to let me help you!' and stuff. The kind of person she is, she'd have kittens if she knew the full amount!' Noel burst out laughing and patted him on the shoulder. 'You've learned a lot about women already son!'
