Family Affairs and other matters

WEREWOLF WARNING

I am exhausted.  But reassured.  I’ve been around the world tonight.  Well, around my world – otherwise known as the blogosphere and there seems to be a common theme appearing.  Everybody is fed up.  Fed up with being overlooked and overworked.  I wonder if it’s something to do with the full moon?  It appears to have caused many female bloggers that I know to have a rant about their lives.

I have just done exactly the same thing with my kids tonight during our evening meal.  I sat them down and tried to remain calm.  I’ve done a little too much shouting at the kids this week and my voice is suffering.  Which isn’t a good thing when I have to go and teach a class with a husky, barely there voice and be calm – it really isn’t appropriate to be explaining that I’ve lost my voice owing to turning into demented werewolf of a mother on several occasions.

So.  I tried to remain calm.  I simply pointed out that I was bored of having to do everything myself.  That I didn’t think it was fair that they don’t help me do anything around the house.  That my house is a tip and I’m exhausted.  My daughter had the bloody nerve to tell me that I was a hypocrite because my room was a tip too and I calmly pointed out that “IT’S MY BLOODY HOUSE AND I CAN DO WHAT I WANT WITH MY BEDROOM”.  I complained about having to spend all day teaching on Saturday only to come back, via the supermarket to cook for five, pay for pizza’s for three, give more money to teenage son to get back home safely, wait up and worry about them, cook a huge breakfast for 7 enormous children, including taking my daughter’s food up to her room because she texted me to ask for breakfast in bed, which was a first (and last) and then give money that i apparently owed although can’t remember to my daughter so that she could go and meet her friends, empty the dishwasher about 85 times, put 38 loads of washing on, bla bla bla you know the score.  I did an “it’s not easy on my own thing” wondering if that would find a way through their hard shell of “we don’t give a shit, you boring old ranty fart”, but it didn’t even touch the sides.  I’m pretty sure I didn’t get through even a chink of their disdain.  I even thought about crying but then couldn’t be bothered.

So.  New tactic tomorrow.  I’m charging £1 an item that isn’t where it’s meant to be and I am going on driving-them-to-school-strike.

They can bloody walk.

I might even hide their shoes and make them walk in bare feet.

Maybe with a bag full of bricks on their back.

This worm has turned.

Momentarily.

Until somebody buys me some orange chocolate and tells me they love me.

Or maybe all my pissed off blog friends and I should just bugger off for a week or two leaving all our kids home alone to fend for themselves.  That’ll teach them.  Although after my last blog post about teenage parties, I’m not sure I dare.

Anybody want to come with me??

THE CRESTA RUN

A friend of mine has just flown off to St Moritz to do the Cresta Run. I googled it. Holy shit. Why would anyone want to do that? It looks terrifying. You are given a small toboggan. Kitted out with a helmet, knee, elbow and hand protectors and heavy boots with Bond-esque spikes sticking out [...]

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“I’LL SLEEP WHEN I’M DEAD”….

My new approach to life Is “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”. It has to be. Otherwise, I’d spend my whole life feeling tired and wishing I could get some more sleep. Well, actually I do spend my life doing that, but it doesn’t really matter. It’s just how it is. One day when my kids have flown the nest, I will have more time than I have ever had before and more sleep than I will need and I will miss my busy life. No doubt about that.

Last night I was exhausted. I’d done a workshop (although fab friend did most of the hard work admittedly) during the day and had loads of kids about. I did have some plans but because my youngest child had a friend to stay the night and my daughter was in and tired, I stayed in with them. I was hoping for a decent night’s sleep.

!0.30pm Go to bed
10.45pm Youngest child needs drink and tissues
11.00pm Have to remove cat off youngest child’s friend head
11.05pm Remember to text teenage son not to be home after 1am
1.18am Text from teenage son saying “party got shut down, 5 police vans and 4 people arrested 3 in ambulance. We’re trying to find way back now”.
2.15am Teenage son and two friends come home. They eat pizza, gently sway and generally discuss the night. I check they’re all OK and weigh up odds as to whether I need to get sick buckets, but they’re fine. They’ve sobered up. One of his mates had his wallet and keys stolen from his coat pocket. They tell me the house party must have had 250 people in it. ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING got broken, they said – totally, totally trashed. Shit. Poor parents again.
5.00am Need a wee (although you don’t really need to know that bit)
7.00am Woken up by youngest child and friend who ask if it’s alright to make a cheese and ham omelette.

Good grief.

No wonder I look 85.

8.45 am Now just off to watch youngest child in a football match
10am: Back home. Match cancelled due to ice on pitch. -5 degrees outside. Bloody freezing.

OMG. Additional information on party from hell….listening to the three boys talking over scrambled eggs – “think there must have been 400 people there, house was completely trashed before they arrived, kitchen units hanging off hinges, cereal everywhere, people sliding on kitchen floor full of seeds etc, one boy so drunk in corridor people were urinating on him” – that is disgusting….I am going to ban my son from going out anymore. We never behaved that badly at parties – apparently the family are Indian – how awful for them to have to deal with such a lack of respect and frankly criminal behaviour from their children’s friends and random gatecrashers.

What is the world coming to.

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SPINE “INSTABILITY”

A friend and I took a two hour workshop yesterday on posture and alignment and how to stretch. It went very well – enhanced actually by the fact that one of our clients is a well-known female comedian who kept making comments from the back. Telling us to ignore her because she was made of [...]

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SCHOOL FRIENDS

My youngest and most sensitive child is feeling a bit low. He spends his life fluctuating between thinking life is brilliant one minute and thinking life is shit the next. I can go from being the best mum in the world where he buys me a Terry’s Chocolate Orange and hides it in my bed to somebody who has somehow managed to ruin his life in a millisecond.

He is feeling a little sad at school. Sometimes he decides that nobody likes him or wants to come back to his house for a play after school and then suddenly the whole world seems to be against him and he drags himself up the road to school and other times he positively bounces. This was not helped yesterday by being asked by his teacher to talk to another little girl in the class about how it feels to have separated parents. I think it’s a good thing that the teacher has asked him to talk about it, I hope he did manage to make her feel a little less isolated, but I’m not sure.

“Mum, she’s really sad. The teacher asked me to talk to her because her parents are just splitting up and he said that because my parents have already split up maybe I could help her. I didn’t know what to say to her. I told her that she had to just try not to think about it too much. To just get on with other things. She said did she just have to stick her chin out and I’m not sure what she meant, but I told her that it’s not easy and that sometimes I’m still sad about it”.
“That was really lovely of you to talk to her” I told him “and did you tell her that sometimes it’s not all bad? That you get to have two houses and more holidays and sometimes even new families to play with?”
“Well, no mum, I didn’t, because that is just not true. It’s not better to have any of those things. It’s worse. It wouldn’t have made her feel better”.

…and then my heart just breaks a little bit more for him.

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“RUN” BY SNOW PATROL, SUNG BY A 13 YEAR OLD

Here is something extraordinary. Introducing one of my best friend’s daughters. She’s sitting in her bedroom singing to a Snow Patrol song and frankly not expecting anybody to watch it. She’s 13. I think she’s got a really amazing voice, even if the sound recording isn’t that great towards the end. She gave me goosebumps:-

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DIARY OF A DIVORCE

PART 3

This was written two weeks after I found out about my husband’s affair. This was the moment it was over. This was the moment I lost all trust and respect for the person who up until I found out had been my best friend:-

DAY 14

Well, it’s got a lot worse over the last few days. We had our dinner party for 10 as planned. All our lovely local friends. It was predictably difficult because I felt as if I was hovering above it all, watching myself pretending and watching my husband ignoring me and not helping at all. They all left at 1.30am and we talked until 3.30am. Lots more of the same, but the crucial moment came when he told me that he still loved her and that is why he has been behaving like he has/is. He’s confused, tormented, miserable. I threw my wine over him when he told me that.

For me, it’s now over. I have to accept that I cannot live with that knowledge. I know I will worry every second that he is thinking/talking/wanting to be with her and not me. His heart isn’t in it. He believes it’s not been good for a couple of years. He says he still loves me. I believe he does. In a way. but not in the way that I want and need. I think his love for me is all tied up with the history, the children, the finances, the fact that he doesn’t want to hurt me.

But how can I go on when I know in my heart that he doesn’t love me like he does her, or in the way he used to. I have to take control, otherwise I will sink. I believe that deep down he wants me to make the decision for him. Easier that way. Having him leave will be the hardest thing I’ll have ever done. But I don’t want to be in this anymore, feeling like I do, knowing it will never be the same again. For at least the last 6 months he has been reinventing himself, both physically and mentally. Ready to take that last giant step into another world. A world I am no part of. It is all unbelievably sad and I can’t imagine a life without him and I’ve done more crying today than any other day. But I’m now crying for our marriage and what we had and what we will never have again. I’m beginning what will be a long, slow grieving process, but for me it is the only way I can maintain both my dignity and my sanity.

I might as well let him read this entry. there is nothing more to say. I will carry on pretending until after Christmas as agreed and then he can have her and his new life, whether he wants it or not.

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