Ok, I don't get it. School starts back and the weather gets warm...
So, here we go again. Back to those happy days of endless paperwork to sign/fill in/remember to return by specified date; back to newsletters informing us parents how rubbish we all are at everything; back to packing a lunch for your child and wondering if it'll end up being inspected by a government nutritionist (not to mention whether your child will actually eat it) and back to trolling up and down to school wondering if your car will get impounded even though you don't think you're breaking any laws and every Volvo XC90/BMW X5/Landcruiser/Pajero etc seems to be taking up coach-sized spaces in the entire vicinity of the school gates.
Is it me, or am I the only person who actually enjoys being free of all this during the summer holidays?
And now, the second child has started too. After 9 years of having small children accompany me everywhere I go, I am now the mother of two kids at school. And it feels pretty wierd, too. I haven't adjusted yet. Like my looming 40th birthday (pause to sob and enter new phase of denial), I'm taking the journey by the scenic route, so to speak.
Not that I have a lot of choice. Not only is our school the only school I know of that has no before or after-school clubs, it's also the only one that stretches out the starting school bit for a whole term. More specifically, I drop both kids off for 9 (in the alloted ten-minute window), go back at 12 for the youngest and then go back at 3.15 for the eldest. And I do this from September to December. And the government want more mothers to work. And that's without the 13-odd weeks you need to cover the school holidays.
Yeah, I know loads of jobs outside working in a school that will accommodate that. Or pay me enough to afford someone else to do it. That's why I'm an under-the-tax-limit worker from home.
Happy New Term, Gordon. And thanks.
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
Thursday, July 19, 2007
On summer festivals and one's inner Gordon Ramsay...
They called it the Glastonbury of the East, aka the East Anglian Latitude festival. Home to about 4 million teenagers and far too many Boden parents. There's something about Southwold, Suffolk and the Kensington-on-Sea set. Which is odd, because no one goes to London from Suffolk and starts trying to convert everything to something a little more 'hedgemumbly'.
Anyway, it's taken me this long to recover. And we only stayed one night. But I felt it imperative to record to empty cyberspace my personal fire/bath highlights of the whole thing - perhaps best exhibited by a list of do's and don'ts'
Don't take children who spent a week recovering from a sick bug anywhere, let alone a Glastonbury-esque festival, and if you do, don't camp.
Don't expect it to be anything like the experiences you had pre-kids, ie hedonistic summer fun.
Do make the effort to find the family area - hence avoiding pitching next to sneering teenagers/2am teenagers/shagging or 'who's that c**t snoring'-shouting at 6am teenagers.
Do take a portaloo. I could go on for hours about the toilets. (And I spent time in the arse end of nowhere in Africa pissing on cockroaches for three months, so I'm not exactly doing an Anthea Turner here.)
Don't expect to part with anything less than your monthly mortgage payment (and that's just on food and drink).
Don't expect to feel anything other than Gandalf-like in the presence of Young People bearing signs saying things like 'Old People - No!'.
Do prepare yourself for the Inner Gordon revelation you will have about yourself.
Do expect to understand what people mean when they say that the closer you get to 40 the more your body knows it.
Don't eat anything that will make you need a No 2. (Eggs every meal for a week beforehand may help).
Don't stay the night that your Arthritic Son has to take Methotrexate. Unless you are Mother Theresa reincarnate.
Having said all that, the bits that were enjoyable were great. The bits that weren't... well, let's just say, we were all in the car with the tent packed by 10pm on Saturday night - 3 of us in tears. Yet again, Slack Mother learns that while she may think Arthritic Son is just tired like his school mates, he is actually a child on mild chemotherapy. So much for those DLA forms that tell me we're not entitled to any more financial assistance because he can now walk around and use his limbs again - not needing 'any more assistance than a normal child his age.' And yes, I do know about the people who diddle the system, and yes, I would like an hour in a trapped lift with them.
But hey. It's the end of school today, so what am I whining about? Now it's just the holidays to get through - and like zillions of other parents lured into a false sense of security by last summer's summer, we're going away for two weeks. To the Norfolk Coast, where it has been monsooning since about last February. One wooden bungalow, four boys, potential flooding and (if like the rains of 99) a backed-up toilet. Just don't ask me to donate any organs if I die there. I intend to consume enough wine to inflate my liver to the size of a small Virgin island. Oh, and sod the government's recommendations, it's cirrhosis or homicide. Which would they prefer?
Anyway, it's taken me this long to recover. And we only stayed one night. But I felt it imperative to record to empty cyberspace my personal fire/bath highlights of the whole thing - perhaps best exhibited by a list of do's and don'ts'
Don't take children who spent a week recovering from a sick bug anywhere, let alone a Glastonbury-esque festival, and if you do, don't camp.
Don't expect it to be anything like the experiences you had pre-kids, ie hedonistic summer fun.
Do make the effort to find the family area - hence avoiding pitching next to sneering teenagers/2am teenagers/shagging or 'who's that c**t snoring'-shouting at 6am teenagers.
Do take a portaloo. I could go on for hours about the toilets. (And I spent time in the arse end of nowhere in Africa pissing on cockroaches for three months, so I'm not exactly doing an Anthea Turner here.)
Don't expect to part with anything less than your monthly mortgage payment (and that's just on food and drink).
Don't expect to feel anything other than Gandalf-like in the presence of Young People bearing signs saying things like 'Old People - No!'.
Do prepare yourself for the Inner Gordon revelation you will have about yourself.
Do expect to understand what people mean when they say that the closer you get to 40 the more your body knows it.
Don't eat anything that will make you need a No 2. (Eggs every meal for a week beforehand may help).
Don't stay the night that your Arthritic Son has to take Methotrexate. Unless you are Mother Theresa reincarnate.
Having said all that, the bits that were enjoyable were great. The bits that weren't... well, let's just say, we were all in the car with the tent packed by 10pm on Saturday night - 3 of us in tears. Yet again, Slack Mother learns that while she may think Arthritic Son is just tired like his school mates, he is actually a child on mild chemotherapy. So much for those DLA forms that tell me we're not entitled to any more financial assistance because he can now walk around and use his limbs again - not needing 'any more assistance than a normal child his age.' And yes, I do know about the people who diddle the system, and yes, I would like an hour in a trapped lift with them.
But hey. It's the end of school today, so what am I whining about? Now it's just the holidays to get through - and like zillions of other parents lured into a false sense of security by last summer's summer, we're going away for two weeks. To the Norfolk Coast, where it has been monsooning since about last February. One wooden bungalow, four boys, potential flooding and (if like the rains of 99) a backed-up toilet. Just don't ask me to donate any organs if I die there. I intend to consume enough wine to inflate my liver to the size of a small Virgin island. Oh, and sod the government's recommendations, it's cirrhosis or homicide. Which would they prefer?
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Of Schools and Sick...
Back to normality. It's almost the end of term and everyone is knackered. Consequently, the school ups the ante and ensures we're all mental and emotional wrecks for the holidays. Teachers are sadists, I don't care what anyone says. They always have been, they always will be. If it's not Sports Day (fair enough - it is allegedly the summer), it's school trips, or assemblies, or leavers plays, or prize givings or discos or school fayres or organ donation...
Talking of which, we did two of those last week. Sports Day on Friday didn't get cancelled - much to my chagrin - which entailed standing around in the wind/rain/sleet and watching plastic eggs get blown off spoons with a pre-schooler whinging for Britain. Just as we are leaving, and I'm elatedly telling everyone how within half an hour I shall be sinking my teeth into a nice bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, whingy pre-schooler blows chunks everywhere. Great. Journey home in the car was nice. He continues to offer up the contents of his stomach as sacrifice to any sanity I might have had remaining for the rest of the night, stopping at about 11pm. Very considerate, although Husband and I barely slept anyway - waiting as you do for the inevitable tap-tapping of the 3am puke-dripping-down-floorboard scenario.
Next day is the school fayre. It was sunny (shock!), the kids were happy and the Exorcist Child not puking, so we went mad and virtually remortgaged the house to pay for endless tombolas, tattoos, second-hat tat and all the usual school fair shmutter. We even got the paddling pool out in the afternoon, such was the unencumbered joy of a bit of sun. Arthritic Son, however, decided it was his turn to whinge. And then, at 12am precisely, to start with the whole chunk-blowing routine. For 13 hours. Oh, how I love the old Methotrexate. It does so liven up anything to do with immune systems, no? We wade through Sunday and its associated bleaching/laundry fest and manage to get to bed early only to have Husband up at 2am performing the Huey & Ralph opera. Cue Monday. Both kids off school/nursery, both parents doing a pretty exceptional imitation of what might happen to you if you decided to downsize on frontal lobe activity and eat cryptosperidium at the same time.
It was supposed to be our 'chilling out' weekend. This weekend (pause to sob and wring hands in despair) we are off Camping at a 'family' festival (an oxymoron if ever I heard one). This being my life - and my life being the sort of bath/fire thing already talked of in this blog - I am staying open-minded. I may be gone some time....
Talking of which, we did two of those last week. Sports Day on Friday didn't get cancelled - much to my chagrin - which entailed standing around in the wind/rain/sleet and watching plastic eggs get blown off spoons with a pre-schooler whinging for Britain. Just as we are leaving, and I'm elatedly telling everyone how within half an hour I shall be sinking my teeth into a nice bottle of Sauvignon Blanc, whingy pre-schooler blows chunks everywhere. Great. Journey home in the car was nice. He continues to offer up the contents of his stomach as sacrifice to any sanity I might have had remaining for the rest of the night, stopping at about 11pm. Very considerate, although Husband and I barely slept anyway - waiting as you do for the inevitable tap-tapping of the 3am puke-dripping-down-floorboard scenario.
Next day is the school fayre. It was sunny (shock!), the kids were happy and the Exorcist Child not puking, so we went mad and virtually remortgaged the house to pay for endless tombolas, tattoos, second-hat tat and all the usual school fair shmutter. We even got the paddling pool out in the afternoon, such was the unencumbered joy of a bit of sun. Arthritic Son, however, decided it was his turn to whinge. And then, at 12am precisely, to start with the whole chunk-blowing routine. For 13 hours. Oh, how I love the old Methotrexate. It does so liven up anything to do with immune systems, no? We wade through Sunday and its associated bleaching/laundry fest and manage to get to bed early only to have Husband up at 2am performing the Huey & Ralph opera. Cue Monday. Both kids off school/nursery, both parents doing a pretty exceptional imitation of what might happen to you if you decided to downsize on frontal lobe activity and eat cryptosperidium at the same time.
It was supposed to be our 'chilling out' weekend. This weekend (pause to sob and wring hands in despair) we are off Camping at a 'family' festival (an oxymoron if ever I heard one). This being my life - and my life being the sort of bath/fire thing already talked of in this blog - I am staying open-minded. I may be gone some time....
Wednesday, July 4, 2007
It might as well rain until September...
Heard that on the radio the other day and thought, well, yes. Seeing as we now know it's going to. It's monsooning even as I speak, warm and cosy now that I swapped my sandals for socks and boots.
But I'm not going to moan on about the weather, no indeedy - not when I have 4x4s to get my teeth into. This weather, these floods and mudslides, it's their time, isn't it? So why is it that the Bodens who pay through the nose for some semi-aquatic mountain-munching Posemobile - while conveniently showing the rest of society they are a) higher up, literally, than them and b) loaded - drive them like they're in a gold-plated golf buggy? Oh, I could go on. And on. Perhaps it's because they seem to have multiplied recently in the rain, like mosquito larvae do. And cryptosperidium.
While I'm at it, I'd quite like to have a go at the media as well. Perhaps if they hadn't told us all through the winter how fantastic the summer was going to be, we might not be feeling quite as cheated as we are. Some baboon was on TV this morning telling people how not to get depressed about the weather. Great coming from a man who had clearly just come back off holiday (permatan) and has a great job telling other people the Secrets of Recognising the Blatantly Bloody Obvious (if you watch too much telly and don't see anyone, you'll get depressed). I particularly appreciate the fact he obviously has about as much understanding of life indoors with small frustrated children as my doorbell.
All of which leads me to believe it's the media that 's the biggest problem, not the weather.
P.S. There is one other problem with the damp that I am quietly doing a little research into. Arthritic Son is not doing so well in this weather and has complained several times of pain in his knees. This is unusual for the summer months. Perhaps if anyone else out there (yeah, I know, like anyone ever reads this...) has any arthritic thangs going on, they'd let me know.
But I'm not going to moan on about the weather, no indeedy - not when I have 4x4s to get my teeth into. This weather, these floods and mudslides, it's their time, isn't it? So why is it that the Bodens who pay through the nose for some semi-aquatic mountain-munching Posemobile - while conveniently showing the rest of society they are a) higher up, literally, than them and b) loaded - drive them like they're in a gold-plated golf buggy? Oh, I could go on. And on. Perhaps it's because they seem to have multiplied recently in the rain, like mosquito larvae do. And cryptosperidium.
While I'm at it, I'd quite like to have a go at the media as well. Perhaps if they hadn't told us all through the winter how fantastic the summer was going to be, we might not be feeling quite as cheated as we are. Some baboon was on TV this morning telling people how not to get depressed about the weather. Great coming from a man who had clearly just come back off holiday (permatan) and has a great job telling other people the Secrets of Recognising the Blatantly Bloody Obvious (if you watch too much telly and don't see anyone, you'll get depressed). I particularly appreciate the fact he obviously has about as much understanding of life indoors with small frustrated children as my doorbell.
All of which leads me to believe it's the media that 's the biggest problem, not the weather.
P.S. There is one other problem with the damp that I am quietly doing a little research into. Arthritic Son is not doing so well in this weather and has complained several times of pain in his knees. This is unusual for the summer months. Perhaps if anyone else out there (yeah, I know, like anyone ever reads this...) has any arthritic thangs going on, they'd let me know.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Wet, wet, wet...
it is now a week since I last wrote and it still hasn't stopped raining, making it officially the wettest June on record. Poor old Sheffield, my student home, is a lake, South Yorkshire itself is becoming like a Hollywood disaster movie (we can't let that dam break, goddamit!) and people have even died. So, youd' be thinking, don't start off on one Angela, you're not doing so badly.
And I'm not. Here in the People's Republic of East Anglia, we are getting off reasonably lightly - if you don't count the cryptosperidium infiltration to a couple of areas. And the endlessly flooded roads. Or the life-sapping damp. Or cold. Or the Japanese torture-like effect of having to listen to the endless rain drumming into your brain like a stroke. There haven't even been any medical emergencies of late - save for one pelvic scan (normal) to see if cysts might be the reason I'm mutating into Brian Blessed since I hit my thirties. Or account for the crippling pain of ovulating. But no. (Still, at least I can number knowing yet another area of my local hospital. Which is great - I now even know which waiting rooms have the best magazines/comfiest chairs.)
However. There is one thing. I'm talking to you, 4x4 owners. Perhaps someone could enlighten me - why is it that you buy a car specifically designed for trekking across Nepalese mountains/through lakes and yet you can't pull over on to a two-foot high bank when the weeny little country roads in Britain get a bit damp and muddy? Don't get me wrong - I was raised on a farm and I know the need for a landrover on a field or for transporting livestock, or even just to fit the dogs in when one is checking one's land. I don't mind if you have big dogs, or a horse box. But if I have to smack my head on the roof of my car while trying to manoevre my Focus so that Mrs Boden doesn't get mud on the wheels of her gargantuan Volvo one more time, I shall not be responsible for my actions. You paid for the wretched planet rapist. Now USE IT!
And I'm not. Here in the People's Republic of East Anglia, we are getting off reasonably lightly - if you don't count the cryptosperidium infiltration to a couple of areas. And the endlessly flooded roads. Or the life-sapping damp. Or cold. Or the Japanese torture-like effect of having to listen to the endless rain drumming into your brain like a stroke. There haven't even been any medical emergencies of late - save for one pelvic scan (normal) to see if cysts might be the reason I'm mutating into Brian Blessed since I hit my thirties. Or account for the crippling pain of ovulating. But no. (Still, at least I can number knowing yet another area of my local hospital. Which is great - I now even know which waiting rooms have the best magazines/comfiest chairs.)
However. There is one thing. I'm talking to you, 4x4 owners. Perhaps someone could enlighten me - why is it that you buy a car specifically designed for trekking across Nepalese mountains/through lakes and yet you can't pull over on to a two-foot high bank when the weeny little country roads in Britain get a bit damp and muddy? Don't get me wrong - I was raised on a farm and I know the need for a landrover on a field or for transporting livestock, or even just to fit the dogs in when one is checking one's land. I don't mind if you have big dogs, or a horse box. But if I have to smack my head on the roof of my car while trying to manoevre my Focus so that Mrs Boden doesn't get mud on the wheels of her gargantuan Volvo one more time, I shall not be responsible for my actions. You paid for the wretched planet rapist. Now USE IT!
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Global Warming? Bring it On!
Oh, that's going to make me popular, I can tell. But let me put my case first...
It's currently the middle of June and I actually cannot remember the last time we had more than one day without rain since April, when it was freakily dry for almost an entire month. It has rained and rained and rained and rained. My lawn is like the Everglades, my roses are composting on the bush. It's rained so much that if I were an M&S advert, I'd now be breathing huskily and coming over all sotto voce and sexily Irish to tell you that 'This is not just rain, this is full-on Kenyan Bush, green-up-the-desert January monsoon rain...'. You get the picture. (And I live in South Norfolk where we still have drainage. People in Yorkshire are floating around their living rooms trying to salvage their children as I write this.)
So much for flaming June. I've barely hung anything out on the washing line and only just turned the heating off. Which means I have no way of getting anything dry without using the drier, which in turn makes me feel that I'm stamping on the planet's face with the biggest carbon Doc Martens I can find. Ironically, when it rains it's not too cold, but when it's not raining it's like February. Consequently, with all the sweat/shiver dichotomies going on, plus the wet, airless, damp classrooms/cars/offices we all cram ourselves into, viruses are breeding like rabbits. And mutating like Mixie rabbits. So everyone's ill. If it's not the flu/cough virus it's the throat or the D&V or the Lurid Running Snot bug peculiar to kids.
Now. Don't get me wrong. I know that years ago people just dealt with this. Years ago no one had tumble driers. Years ago no one was hyper-clean enough to get simple bacterial/viral bugs that didn't actually kill or disfigure you in some way. Anyone over 50 will happily tell me this. BUT. Years ago they didn't have enough clothes to warrant washing more than once a week; years ago they were begging for sanitation to wipe out childhood killer diseases, and years ago, they did not have the bloody media ramming down their necks what a great summer it was going to be.
I mean, look at it. In April, the sun shone and that was it. All the stuff on the news about how this would be the hottest summer on record (again. Can it be the hottest summer EVERY year?), how the elderly were all going to die in droves unless they watched GMTV and picked up the latest how-to-keep-cool advice, how the nation would soon be swapping good old English flowers and veg for grape vines and olives, and how taxidermy would soon be the only way we'll get to admire most British wildlife.
I even had a letter from Arthritic Son's rheumatology team informing me, due to the warning of the hottest summer ever, that the Methotrexate means we must remember to be extra Sun Safe with him. Which, should the sun ever bother to make another appearance, of course I will. It's just classic that yesterday he had a school trip and on the list of things he needed was 'wellies, a raincoat and a sun hat'.
Also, I do my bit for the planet (yes, actually, I do - I am a 4-bin woman, a recycling queen and I'd give anything for abusing 4x4s and the drivers of to be made legal) but I can't help thinking that the planet does do a bit of its own thing anyway. I mean, I live in Norfolk and once upon a time it used to home to woolly mammoths. Before that, volcanoes. I was alive in 1976 when the entire country turned savannah, and stranded by the summer floods eight years ago - the reason I bought my first ever mobile phone.
So, is it me?
It's currently the middle of June and I actually cannot remember the last time we had more than one day without rain since April, when it was freakily dry for almost an entire month. It has rained and rained and rained and rained. My lawn is like the Everglades, my roses are composting on the bush. It's rained so much that if I were an M&S advert, I'd now be breathing huskily and coming over all sotto voce and sexily Irish to tell you that 'This is not just rain, this is full-on Kenyan Bush, green-up-the-desert January monsoon rain...'. You get the picture. (And I live in South Norfolk where we still have drainage. People in Yorkshire are floating around their living rooms trying to salvage their children as I write this.)
So much for flaming June. I've barely hung anything out on the washing line and only just turned the heating off. Which means I have no way of getting anything dry without using the drier, which in turn makes me feel that I'm stamping on the planet's face with the biggest carbon Doc Martens I can find. Ironically, when it rains it's not too cold, but when it's not raining it's like February. Consequently, with all the sweat/shiver dichotomies going on, plus the wet, airless, damp classrooms/cars/offices we all cram ourselves into, viruses are breeding like rabbits. And mutating like Mixie rabbits. So everyone's ill. If it's not the flu/cough virus it's the throat or the D&V or the Lurid Running Snot bug peculiar to kids.
Now. Don't get me wrong. I know that years ago people just dealt with this. Years ago no one had tumble driers. Years ago no one was hyper-clean enough to get simple bacterial/viral bugs that didn't actually kill or disfigure you in some way. Anyone over 50 will happily tell me this. BUT. Years ago they didn't have enough clothes to warrant washing more than once a week; years ago they were begging for sanitation to wipe out childhood killer diseases, and years ago, they did not have the bloody media ramming down their necks what a great summer it was going to be.
I mean, look at it. In April, the sun shone and that was it. All the stuff on the news about how this would be the hottest summer on record (again. Can it be the hottest summer EVERY year?), how the elderly were all going to die in droves unless they watched GMTV and picked up the latest how-to-keep-cool advice, how the nation would soon be swapping good old English flowers and veg for grape vines and olives, and how taxidermy would soon be the only way we'll get to admire most British wildlife.
I even had a letter from Arthritic Son's rheumatology team informing me, due to the warning of the hottest summer ever, that the Methotrexate means we must remember to be extra Sun Safe with him. Which, should the sun ever bother to make another appearance, of course I will. It's just classic that yesterday he had a school trip and on the list of things he needed was 'wellies, a raincoat and a sun hat'.
Also, I do my bit for the planet (yes, actually, I do - I am a 4-bin woman, a recycling queen and I'd give anything for abusing 4x4s and the drivers of to be made legal) but I can't help thinking that the planet does do a bit of its own thing anyway. I mean, I live in Norfolk and once upon a time it used to home to woolly mammoths. Before that, volcanoes. I was alive in 1976 when the entire country turned savannah, and stranded by the summer floods eight years ago - the reason I bought my first ever mobile phone.
So, is it me?
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Why Can't I be a Time Lord?
Seriously. OK, so I've OD'd on Dr Who recently, what with both sons suffering some kind of OCD about the programme and all related merchandise, but It would solve all my immediate problems.
Having survived the onslaught at the start of the year, and with The Husband Formerly Known as Sick now plain old Husband again, you'd think life would be getting sooo much easier. In many ways it is and you'd be forgiven for thinking that I really ought to stop moaning.
So, I won't even go there with trying to fill in on what's been happening since last blogging, like summer half term. (Sorry, did I say 'sumemr half term', those words that conjure up lazy sunny mornings and easy, time-slack, fun'n'sun-filled days? I do apologise. What I really meant was the abject torture that was a week of freezing rain – boiler blew up just before the bank holiday - bored, fighting kids and a national snot infestation). Nor will I inflict the details of my anemia on you. Or the cold from Hell. Or the Candida. No. I'll spare you that.
But I digress. If I were a Time Lord, I could scoot off into the future and come back with a cure for the above ailments instead of turning my kitchen into some kind of I-can-make-you-better-honest snake spleen dispensary and my body into an experimental fungal battlefield. If I were a Time Lord, I could find a way to take my oldest to school for 9, wait half an hour before the youngest starts his morning, get home at 10, go back at 12, come home and go back again at 3 and not lose the will to live. If I were a Time Lord, I could don an pinny, sod off into the future (say at the point both kids are in full time school), cook like a fiend a la Nigella (it really is time I moved on from my inner Gordon Ramsay...) and come back with a freezer full of healthy home-made ready meals.
The Doctor must be pretty moral, really. He talks of not upsetting the space-time continuum in case it affects adversely some poor Little People here on earth. However, The Doctor has no kids and spends his life having a whole pile of fun with no one else to think about. He can't even commit to the string of beauties virtually fellating him. Which means The Doctor cannot possibly understand what it's like to spend a grim June morning wondering when Global Warming's going to kick in (bring it on!), scrubbing wee off the toilet floor (they call mothers of boys 'Smug' for a reason) and wondering if the highlight of your day will be a visit to the new Co-op.
Top this with an email from an old pal who is blissfully childless and spends his and his (not even 30) girlfriend's time/money when they're not working (in the jobs they love, naturally) doing such things as "off-roading in the Sahara", "sailing round the West Indies as part of the crew on a tall ship", "skating in Central Park" etc. Now tell me even the Dr wouldn't develop a little tic around the eye and an evil leer as he contemplated a little visitette into the future to check the progress of the hormonal time-bomb dormant in that girlfriend's body. Will it be a dud, or will it explode and mug her with shrapnel like all ours did?
We live in hope.
Having survived the onslaught at the start of the year, and with The Husband Formerly Known as Sick now plain old Husband again, you'd think life would be getting sooo much easier. In many ways it is and you'd be forgiven for thinking that I really ought to stop moaning.
So, I won't even go there with trying to fill in on what's been happening since last blogging, like summer half term. (Sorry, did I say 'sumemr half term', those words that conjure up lazy sunny mornings and easy, time-slack, fun'n'sun-filled days? I do apologise. What I really meant was the abject torture that was a week of freezing rain – boiler blew up just before the bank holiday - bored, fighting kids and a national snot infestation). Nor will I inflict the details of my anemia on you. Or the cold from Hell. Or the Candida. No. I'll spare you that.
But I digress. If I were a Time Lord, I could scoot off into the future and come back with a cure for the above ailments instead of turning my kitchen into some kind of I-can-make-you-better-honest snake spleen dispensary and my body into an experimental fungal battlefield. If I were a Time Lord, I could find a way to take my oldest to school for 9, wait half an hour before the youngest starts his morning, get home at 10, go back at 12, come home and go back again at 3 and not lose the will to live. If I were a Time Lord, I could don an pinny, sod off into the future (say at the point both kids are in full time school), cook like a fiend a la Nigella (it really is time I moved on from my inner Gordon Ramsay...) and come back with a freezer full of healthy home-made ready meals.
The Doctor must be pretty moral, really. He talks of not upsetting the space-time continuum in case it affects adversely some poor Little People here on earth. However, The Doctor has no kids and spends his life having a whole pile of fun with no one else to think about. He can't even commit to the string of beauties virtually fellating him. Which means The Doctor cannot possibly understand what it's like to spend a grim June morning wondering when Global Warming's going to kick in (bring it on!), scrubbing wee off the toilet floor (they call mothers of boys 'Smug' for a reason) and wondering if the highlight of your day will be a visit to the new Co-op.
Top this with an email from an old pal who is blissfully childless and spends his and his (not even 30) girlfriend's time/money when they're not working (in the jobs they love, naturally) doing such things as "off-roading in the Sahara", "sailing round the West Indies as part of the crew on a tall ship", "skating in Central Park" etc. Now tell me even the Dr wouldn't develop a little tic around the eye and an evil leer as he contemplated a little visitette into the future to check the progress of the hormonal time-bomb dormant in that girlfriend's body. Will it be a dud, or will it explode and mug her with shrapnel like all ours did?
We live in hope.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
We don't need no education
Which is just as well, what with teachers constantly needing to meet targets, nag parents a lot and generally concentrate on keeping authoritative adults happy.
It seems, now that Husband has become plain Husband again - back at work, out of my hair and reasonably healthy - and I've got some time to myself to chase up work and think about writing, that I've got the time and mental space to start becoming Angry from Norfolk again. Which always happens in the case of me and school. It did while I was there and it's worse now that I'm not but my child is.
Is it just me? Or does it seem to anyone else that schools, thwarted of the right to power-trip over kids anymore, now pick on the parents?
Not only do we get terse, snitty little letters home about how crap we are because we don't basically sign over the equivalent of a mortgage payment and seal a document in blood allowing them rights over our time, but two days ago, I turned up at school to find a couple of policemen taking down people's number plates during the morning school run.
Then, yesterday, a pompous, threatening letter home informing parents that those who flout parking 'rules' will be fined, slapped with penalties and, should they dare flout again, have their car taken away. A tad strong, I feel, for a village cul-de-sac road with no lines and no signs.
Not to mention that it is the school's policy to have a mere 10 minute window for parents to drop their kids off. I know. I KNOW. The answer is blindingly obvious. But the Acting Head, failing to be convinced that to open the gates for even an extra 10 mins a morning, might just help with congestion a little, refuses to accept this. Apparently, they can't afford to staff the playground for an extra hour a week, and they need all their time to get ready for the day.
I hate to sound like I have a problem with parochialism, but have these people forgotten what life in a city is like?
This is a village school with 110 kids. There's no breakfast club and no after-school club. And while it might be a great little school, it hardly boasts the same workload as a junior in inner city London, Manchester, Birmingham, or even, for the love of God, Norwich. There isn't even one child in the school who doesn't have middle-class English as its first, probably ONLY language. (And I don't care what teachers say about how hard it is. You do a short day and get 13 weeks of paid holiday a year, so you have plenty of time to recover, don't you?)
Lordy mama. If it's not paperwork, or trying to make you bring or buy something, remembering tokens, spellings, homework, keeping up with your 'bills', attending the assemblies, sports days, plays, party, fete, barbecue, fundraisers, booksales, it's outright threats.
Vive la revolution!
It seems, now that Husband has become plain Husband again - back at work, out of my hair and reasonably healthy - and I've got some time to myself to chase up work and think about writing, that I've got the time and mental space to start becoming Angry from Norfolk again. Which always happens in the case of me and school. It did while I was there and it's worse now that I'm not but my child is.
Is it just me? Or does it seem to anyone else that schools, thwarted of the right to power-trip over kids anymore, now pick on the parents?
Not only do we get terse, snitty little letters home about how crap we are because we don't basically sign over the equivalent of a mortgage payment and seal a document in blood allowing them rights over our time, but two days ago, I turned up at school to find a couple of policemen taking down people's number plates during the morning school run.
Then, yesterday, a pompous, threatening letter home informing parents that those who flout parking 'rules' will be fined, slapped with penalties and, should they dare flout again, have their car taken away. A tad strong, I feel, for a village cul-de-sac road with no lines and no signs.
Not to mention that it is the school's policy to have a mere 10 minute window for parents to drop their kids off. I know. I KNOW. The answer is blindingly obvious. But the Acting Head, failing to be convinced that to open the gates for even an extra 10 mins a morning, might just help with congestion a little, refuses to accept this. Apparently, they can't afford to staff the playground for an extra hour a week, and they need all their time to get ready for the day.
I hate to sound like I have a problem with parochialism, but have these people forgotten what life in a city is like?
This is a village school with 110 kids. There's no breakfast club and no after-school club. And while it might be a great little school, it hardly boasts the same workload as a junior in inner city London, Manchester, Birmingham, or even, for the love of God, Norwich. There isn't even one child in the school who doesn't have middle-class English as its first, probably ONLY language. (And I don't care what teachers say about how hard it is. You do a short day and get 13 weeks of paid holiday a year, so you have plenty of time to recover, don't you?)
Lordy mama. If it's not paperwork, or trying to make you bring or buy something, remembering tokens, spellings, homework, keeping up with your 'bills', attending the assemblies, sports days, plays, party, fete, barbecue, fundraisers, booksales, it's outright threats.
Vive la revolution!
Thursday, May 10, 2007
If 50 is the new 30, what's 40?
Does that mean 40 is the new 20? 30 the new 10? I'm confused. One minute we're all being told that 40 is the new 30, thanks to the likes of Madonna et al and all their vampiric avoidance of sunlight, carbs and anything remotely fun, and now we're being told 50-somethings live like 30-somethings. Probably having a better time, if anything. None of that career angst or inner turmoil about relationships and whether or not you should be freezing a few eggs for the future.
But 40 being the new 20? Purlease. Like I want to go back to being a naive, binge-drinking, diet-obsessed, angst-ridden, bad-choice-making bag of insecurity. When I can have wrinkles, sagging, food intolerances, fungal issues, hormonal civil war, more than a healthy curiosity about Tena Lady pads, and total and utter confidence annhilation thanks to encroaching middle age and being out of the workplace to child-rear for what seems like eternity.
But I've had a break. A week's holiday without the kids. The equivalent then to about 6 weeks with them, it being one of life's great oxymoron's: A Holiday With The Children.
And I needed that break. Husband has almost lost his moniker. Soon he will stop being Recovering Husband (in about four days' time) and become simply Husband again. Or, because he's starting a new job, some other title that will reflect how he copes. Bearing in mind that his default setting under stress is usually Rage, it will be interesting to see.
But anyway, I went to have some bloods done this morning - I think after the negligence with which they handled Recovering Husband's illness, they're intent on doing absolutely everything they can to and for both of us (would it be cynical here to think about shutting gates when horses have bolted?) in the form of some kind of MOT - and got chatting to the phlebotomist about this being the year in which she and I both turn the dreaded 40. Why do we dread it? It's so irrational. It's only another day. Only a zero on a birthday. Your teeth aren't suddenly going to drop out, or your hair blue rinse itself in the the night, or your clothes magically transform into polyester florals and shoes that can accommodate gout. It's still relatively young, although also the time you really do need to start thinking seriously about your health. (I know. I KNOW. I've made the appointment with the Stop Smoking Service...)
So is it because we're simply half way or more through our lives - and feeling it? Or because you know that change now is going to get harder on any level, psychologically, physically, environmentally? And that you're running out of time. If it needs changing, it needs changing soon or before you know it, you'll be middle aged and watching years pass you by like cars on a motorway while you're stuck on the hard shoulder waiting for the AA and wishing you'd remembered your Tena Ladys.
Whatever, we agreed on one thing. It is bloody horrible.
But 40 being the new 20? Purlease. Like I want to go back to being a naive, binge-drinking, diet-obsessed, angst-ridden, bad-choice-making bag of insecurity. When I can have wrinkles, sagging, food intolerances, fungal issues, hormonal civil war, more than a healthy curiosity about Tena Lady pads, and total and utter confidence annhilation thanks to encroaching middle age and being out of the workplace to child-rear for what seems like eternity.
But I've had a break. A week's holiday without the kids. The equivalent then to about 6 weeks with them, it being one of life's great oxymoron's: A Holiday With The Children.
And I needed that break. Husband has almost lost his moniker. Soon he will stop being Recovering Husband (in about four days' time) and become simply Husband again. Or, because he's starting a new job, some other title that will reflect how he copes. Bearing in mind that his default setting under stress is usually Rage, it will be interesting to see.
But anyway, I went to have some bloods done this morning - I think after the negligence with which they handled Recovering Husband's illness, they're intent on doing absolutely everything they can to and for both of us (would it be cynical here to think about shutting gates when horses have bolted?) in the form of some kind of MOT - and got chatting to the phlebotomist about this being the year in which she and I both turn the dreaded 40. Why do we dread it? It's so irrational. It's only another day. Only a zero on a birthday. Your teeth aren't suddenly going to drop out, or your hair blue rinse itself in the the night, or your clothes magically transform into polyester florals and shoes that can accommodate gout. It's still relatively young, although also the time you really do need to start thinking seriously about your health. (I know. I KNOW. I've made the appointment with the Stop Smoking Service...)
So is it because we're simply half way or more through our lives - and feeling it? Or because you know that change now is going to get harder on any level, psychologically, physically, environmentally? And that you're running out of time. If it needs changing, it needs changing soon or before you know it, you'll be middle aged and watching years pass you by like cars on a motorway while you're stuck on the hard shoulder waiting for the AA and wishing you'd remembered your Tena Ladys.
Whatever, we agreed on one thing. It is bloody horrible.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Life Begins...
Although it's a lie that it starts at 40 - unless the next 6 months see some kind of miraculous rebirth. Or some kind of end to the Hormonal Civil War... .
I guess what they meant when that phrase was coined was something to do with being a woman, well over your childbearing years and looking forward to the kiddies leaving home - so that you could spend the next 20 years weaning yourself off the valium and working out what to do with your beard/garden/life and wondering if you'd be happy working in the local charity shop.
Life is different now. I had my kids at 30 and 35 (pause to smile and reflect on whether that classifies me as a 'young mum' in today's world) and so by the time I hit 40 although my second child will be leaving home, it will be to start Reception, not college. Therefore my Life will Begin at around 55. Which means that hopefully I'll have a good few years before the Alzheimer's/osteoporosis/arthritis kicks in to Get Out There and Do My Thing. Perhaps I'll be able to have a Gap year (never did that in my 20s) and head forth into the great beyond to compare beards with Indian Yogis.
Anyway, on a lighter note, the Lump has been checked and all is fine. Fine being the kind of loose word you employ when you mean it's not cancer, but it's not going away either. Please don't get me wrong - I'm ecstatic there's nothing untoward with Lump, and profoundly grateful that I'm lucky not to be facing the Big C, but all the same I'm not wildly pleased to know that Lump is now a bit of a permament fixture.
Apparently, at My Age, these things tend to be 'cyclical', which means that it will let itself be known every time my breasts react to a bit of pre-menstrual hormonal flow - so for about two weeks of every month, my left boob will feel as if someone's set about it with a baseball bat. Great. An attention-seeking Lump to go with the crippling ovulation pains, insomnia, night sweats and acne that already predate a period at My Age. (I apologise to the women out there of My Age who don't suffer any of this stuff and who think that women like me have it all going on in our heads. I'm really, truly sorry you haven't got a bloody clue what it's like. I SO wish you did.)
Still, having spent yesterday morning at the GPs (my yeast issue is now so prevalent I'm contemplating changing my name to Candida) and another entire morning at the hospital, at least maybe now this particular 'medical' phase of my life will stop and I can get on with other issues. Like normality, how to earn some money again, and getting back to the writing I so loved before my life became about waiting rooms, squidgy plastic chairs and scones.
You know you've spent too much time in medical institutions when you leaf through the pile of mags on the 'coffee table', realise you've read all the Hello's, Good Housekeeping's and Best's from this year AND 2006 and actually feel excited to see the Woman and Home you started but had to put down in a hospital in Cambridge. Worse, as time ticks on and you've finished that, flicked idly through a 2005 Country Living and nodded off with a couple of National Geographics, you actually find yourself picking up a Saga Magazine. And enjoying bits of it. Trust me, it is possible to lose the will to live in a hospital without actually being remotely ill.
There are, at this precise moment in time, no imminent medical institution visits. Arthritic Son has two checks in August, Recovering Husband has one at the end of May and I have a follow-up with my GP in June. By my reckoning, that means I should be able to go a whole month - maybe, dare I even think it, LONGER - without setting eyes on latex gloves, signs for prostrate checks, hideously patterned curtains or photos of La Beckham's latest haircut or horribly dessicated limbs. Yippee! Bring it on!
I guess what they meant when that phrase was coined was something to do with being a woman, well over your childbearing years and looking forward to the kiddies leaving home - so that you could spend the next 20 years weaning yourself off the valium and working out what to do with your beard/garden/life and wondering if you'd be happy working in the local charity shop.
Life is different now. I had my kids at 30 and 35 (pause to smile and reflect on whether that classifies me as a 'young mum' in today's world) and so by the time I hit 40 although my second child will be leaving home, it will be to start Reception, not college. Therefore my Life will Begin at around 55. Which means that hopefully I'll have a good few years before the Alzheimer's/osteoporosis/arthritis kicks in to Get Out There and Do My Thing. Perhaps I'll be able to have a Gap year (never did that in my 20s) and head forth into the great beyond to compare beards with Indian Yogis.
Anyway, on a lighter note, the Lump has been checked and all is fine. Fine being the kind of loose word you employ when you mean it's not cancer, but it's not going away either. Please don't get me wrong - I'm ecstatic there's nothing untoward with Lump, and profoundly grateful that I'm lucky not to be facing the Big C, but all the same I'm not wildly pleased to know that Lump is now a bit of a permament fixture.
Apparently, at My Age, these things tend to be 'cyclical', which means that it will let itself be known every time my breasts react to a bit of pre-menstrual hormonal flow - so for about two weeks of every month, my left boob will feel as if someone's set about it with a baseball bat. Great. An attention-seeking Lump to go with the crippling ovulation pains, insomnia, night sweats and acne that already predate a period at My Age. (I apologise to the women out there of My Age who don't suffer any of this stuff and who think that women like me have it all going on in our heads. I'm really, truly sorry you haven't got a bloody clue what it's like. I SO wish you did.)
Still, having spent yesterday morning at the GPs (my yeast issue is now so prevalent I'm contemplating changing my name to Candida) and another entire morning at the hospital, at least maybe now this particular 'medical' phase of my life will stop and I can get on with other issues. Like normality, how to earn some money again, and getting back to the writing I so loved before my life became about waiting rooms, squidgy plastic chairs and scones.
You know you've spent too much time in medical institutions when you leaf through the pile of mags on the 'coffee table', realise you've read all the Hello's, Good Housekeeping's and Best's from this year AND 2006 and actually feel excited to see the Woman and Home you started but had to put down in a hospital in Cambridge. Worse, as time ticks on and you've finished that, flicked idly through a 2005 Country Living and nodded off with a couple of National Geographics, you actually find yourself picking up a Saga Magazine. And enjoying bits of it. Trust me, it is possible to lose the will to live in a hospital without actually being remotely ill.
There are, at this precise moment in time, no imminent medical institution visits. Arthritic Son has two checks in August, Recovering Husband has one at the end of May and I have a follow-up with my GP in June. By my reckoning, that means I should be able to go a whole month - maybe, dare I even think it, LONGER - without setting eyes on latex gloves, signs for prostrate checks, hideously patterned curtains or photos of La Beckham's latest haircut or horribly dessicated limbs. Yippee! Bring it on!
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
On Keeping Yourself Occupied...
Which is what they tell you to do in Times of Worry, isn't it? And what better way to do that than to immerse yourself in Family Life?
Well, actually, I can think of one. Instead of taking your 8-year-old to a Dr Who Trading Card convention at the local city library, with his 8-year-old mate, Teenage Toddler and a few other 8-year-old mates thrown in when you get there, why not try drinking yourself into a coma? Far more pleasurable and infinitely less probability of inducing a stroke.
Picture the scene. It's Saturday afternoon, unseasonably warm (so unseasonable no one's yet turned their heating systems off) and there you are crammed into a corner of a glass-constructed library with 4,000 card-hungry 8-year-old boys, a smattering of strange, tic-infested men who are not there with children, and a bright red Dalek.
It's carnage. No one's allowed to touch the Dalek, which shrieks, has flashing lights and comes complete with all the egg-whisk attachments that work like spiritual magnets to young boys, plus an oddly enthusiastic, slightly wierd 'guardian' who lynches you as soon as you make eye contact. It also has a sign saying 'Do Not Touch' which might as well be written in Skaro for all the notice five excited boys take of it.
As I'm busy wishing I'd bought a choke chain to restrain Teenage Toddler, one of the 8 year olds gets barked at by Wierd Guardian.
'OI! It says don't touch!'
'No it doesn't!'
'Read the sign.'
'What sign?'
'The one that says Don't Touch.' Angry pointing. Accusing eyes in my direction. (Not his fault. He can't be expected to know which of these four 8 year olds is mine - incidentally, not the one touching the Dalek. Oh no. Mine's currently on the floor pretending he's been exterminated. I let go of TT and snap at him to get up at once. I will have control, I will, I will.)
'Oh, THAT,' says oldest son's 8-year-old mate. 'I thought that said Donut. I thought it meant you got a donut if you dared touch it.'
I raise my eyebrows at Guardian, smile weakly and shake my head.
This seems to signal to him that I'm up for hearing everything there is to know about his Dalek friend. It's from the 60s (aren't we all?), it's called Derek and it cost £1400 to make. A kit would cost three grand. His mate's got a white one called Minty. Another mate's got a grey one called Wolfgang, which he once took to an airport where it caused mayhem, ho, ho. (I am not making this up.)
I nod like one of those dogs in the back of a car, aware that two of the 8-year-olds are now chasing each other round the library. One streaks past me with the other in hot pursuit. I haul at the back of my older son's t-shirt and place my hand on his mate's head - hoping to infer physically that I am to kids what Victoria Stilwell is to dogs. I am reminded of chariot racing Ben Hur/Gladiator style.
Wierd Guardian is happily telling me how Derek et al will never depreciate in value when I see a small flash of red and white bombing through the library doors into the large, open and probably-full-of-nutters-and-paedophiles foyer. I fire instructions at the two 8 year olds and pelt after TT who is happily trotting off into the shark-infested crowds.
'Hey!' I shout. He turns and looks decidedly annoyed that I've curtailed his little adventure. 'Where are you going without telling mummy. You NEVER leave mummy.'
He pouts. 'I find Daddy. I want Daddy.'
'Well, I would've taken you. You never, ever go off like that.'
He looks at me stubbornly. 'I want Daddy.'
'Right, we'll go and find Daddy.'
'I want Daddy. I don't want you.'
'Alright! I've said we'll go and find Daddy. Just let me tell the boys where we're going.'
'But I want him now!'
I grab his hand and semi-drag him back to the Seventh Circle of Hell. Three of the boys are waiting. One of the others streams past like an escaped terrier.
'Mum! I touched the Dalek!'
'Mrs Felix's Mum, do you think it's strange there are grown-ups here without any children?'
'Daddy! I want to find Daddy', sobs TT.
'Boys, wait here. Don't touch anything. I'll be back in a minute.'
'Can we have a drink?'
One of the other boys returns, face streaked with tears. 'Someone's stolen my ultra-rare's! Where's my dad?'
'I'm hungry.'
'Let me go! I want Daddy. Not you. Dad-deeeeeee!'
'They - sob - were my - sob - only ultra-rare's! I want my dad.'
'Can we have something to eat?'
When I die, In A Minute will be engraved on my headstone.
I cheered myself up on Sunday by gardening. Before I had kids, this meant a nice, quiet day pottering about and listening to the birds whilst also being Creative and Productive. Nowadays, it's the bits I squeeze in between catering for kids, answering endless questions for kids, sorting out kids' fights, administering plasters to kids or locating dock leaves and Anthisan to put on kids' nettle stings.
Even so, I'd still suggest gardening to anyone who has Issues of any kind. If you're worried, anxious or restless, calm yourself with a bit of gentle weeding and/or a little bit of planting - a kind of yoghurt-weavery meditation in movement. If you're blocked or frustrated, dig a bloody big hole. If you're feeling snappy, pissy or PMT-y, prune and hack - there's something tremendously, destructively therapeutic about it. If you're feeling like you want a fight, tackle tying up a rose, ripping out some nettles, forking over some hardened, globally-warmed soil. And if you're a mess, like me, do all of them. Extreme Gardening is where it's at for those of us who can't afford acupuncture.
And for the last couple of days? Well, I'd love to be the Julie Andrews, spiritually-sorted type who just needs to sing about raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string to make myself feel better. But I'm a 21st century woman. Vacuous, shallow, and Western. So, naturally, I went shopping.
Well, actually, I can think of one. Instead of taking your 8-year-old to a Dr Who Trading Card convention at the local city library, with his 8-year-old mate, Teenage Toddler and a few other 8-year-old mates thrown in when you get there, why not try drinking yourself into a coma? Far more pleasurable and infinitely less probability of inducing a stroke.
Picture the scene. It's Saturday afternoon, unseasonably warm (so unseasonable no one's yet turned their heating systems off) and there you are crammed into a corner of a glass-constructed library with 4,000 card-hungry 8-year-old boys, a smattering of strange, tic-infested men who are not there with children, and a bright red Dalek.
It's carnage. No one's allowed to touch the Dalek, which shrieks, has flashing lights and comes complete with all the egg-whisk attachments that work like spiritual magnets to young boys, plus an oddly enthusiastic, slightly wierd 'guardian' who lynches you as soon as you make eye contact. It also has a sign saying 'Do Not Touch' which might as well be written in Skaro for all the notice five excited boys take of it.
As I'm busy wishing I'd bought a choke chain to restrain Teenage Toddler, one of the 8 year olds gets barked at by Wierd Guardian.
'OI! It says don't touch!'
'No it doesn't!'
'Read the sign.'
'What sign?'
'The one that says Don't Touch.' Angry pointing. Accusing eyes in my direction. (Not his fault. He can't be expected to know which of these four 8 year olds is mine - incidentally, not the one touching the Dalek. Oh no. Mine's currently on the floor pretending he's been exterminated. I let go of TT and snap at him to get up at once. I will have control, I will, I will.)
'Oh, THAT,' says oldest son's 8-year-old mate. 'I thought that said Donut. I thought it meant you got a donut if you dared touch it.'
I raise my eyebrows at Guardian, smile weakly and shake my head.
This seems to signal to him that I'm up for hearing everything there is to know about his Dalek friend. It's from the 60s (aren't we all?), it's called Derek and it cost £1400 to make. A kit would cost three grand. His mate's got a white one called Minty. Another mate's got a grey one called Wolfgang, which he once took to an airport where it caused mayhem, ho, ho. (I am not making this up.)
I nod like one of those dogs in the back of a car, aware that two of the 8-year-olds are now chasing each other round the library. One streaks past me with the other in hot pursuit. I haul at the back of my older son's t-shirt and place my hand on his mate's head - hoping to infer physically that I am to kids what Victoria Stilwell is to dogs. I am reminded of chariot racing Ben Hur/Gladiator style.
Wierd Guardian is happily telling me how Derek et al will never depreciate in value when I see a small flash of red and white bombing through the library doors into the large, open and probably-full-of-nutters-and-paedophiles foyer. I fire instructions at the two 8 year olds and pelt after TT who is happily trotting off into the shark-infested crowds.
'Hey!' I shout. He turns and looks decidedly annoyed that I've curtailed his little adventure. 'Where are you going without telling mummy. You NEVER leave mummy.'
He pouts. 'I find Daddy. I want Daddy.'
'Well, I would've taken you. You never, ever go off like that.'
He looks at me stubbornly. 'I want Daddy.'
'Right, we'll go and find Daddy.'
'I want Daddy. I don't want you.'
'Alright! I've said we'll go and find Daddy. Just let me tell the boys where we're going.'
'But I want him now!'
I grab his hand and semi-drag him back to the Seventh Circle of Hell. Three of the boys are waiting. One of the others streams past like an escaped terrier.
'Mum! I touched the Dalek!'
'Mrs Felix's Mum, do you think it's strange there are grown-ups here without any children?'
'Daddy! I want to find Daddy', sobs TT.
'Boys, wait here. Don't touch anything. I'll be back in a minute.'
'Can we have a drink?'
One of the other boys returns, face streaked with tears. 'Someone's stolen my ultra-rare's! Where's my dad?'
'I'm hungry.'
'Let me go! I want Daddy. Not you. Dad-deeeeeee!'
'They - sob - were my - sob - only ultra-rare's! I want my dad.'
'Can we have something to eat?'
When I die, In A Minute will be engraved on my headstone.
I cheered myself up on Sunday by gardening. Before I had kids, this meant a nice, quiet day pottering about and listening to the birds whilst also being Creative and Productive. Nowadays, it's the bits I squeeze in between catering for kids, answering endless questions for kids, sorting out kids' fights, administering plasters to kids or locating dock leaves and Anthisan to put on kids' nettle stings.
Even so, I'd still suggest gardening to anyone who has Issues of any kind. If you're worried, anxious or restless, calm yourself with a bit of gentle weeding and/or a little bit of planting - a kind of yoghurt-weavery meditation in movement. If you're blocked or frustrated, dig a bloody big hole. If you're feeling snappy, pissy or PMT-y, prune and hack - there's something tremendously, destructively therapeutic about it. If you're feeling like you want a fight, tackle tying up a rose, ripping out some nettles, forking over some hardened, globally-warmed soil. And if you're a mess, like me, do all of them. Extreme Gardening is where it's at for those of us who can't afford acupuncture.
And for the last couple of days? Well, I'd love to be the Julie Andrews, spiritually-sorted type who just needs to sing about raindrops on roses, whiskers on kittens and brown paper packages tied up with string to make myself feel better. But I'm a 21st century woman. Vacuous, shallow, and Western. So, naturally, I went shopping.
Friday, April 20, 2007
The Lady of the Lump
One vowel is all it takes to mark the change. Recovering Husband is going from strength to strength, Arthritic Son is unaware of anything other that Dr Who, he's so well, and Teenage Toddler has stopped screeching for Calpol like some old alcoholic in a nursing home. So inevitably, it would seem, it's my turn. I'm booked in to have the breast lump checked at the hospital next week.
'There may be a bit of a wait,' warned the appointments woman. 'Be prepared.'
Ordinarily, with no child in tow, the prospect of a waiting room, a comfy chair and a mag would have appealed in no small way. However, now, after the last few months, it's just about enough to make me reach for the veg knife and wonder if I'd be suited to self-harming.
The one good thing about being the sort of women who attracts problems like cow's backsides attract flies, is that they never come along on their own. Sometimes that is deeply distressing and sometimes -admittedly rarely - it has a positive side. Therefore, today, the virus Teenage Toddler has so kindly shared with me is actually helping. Yes, I feel like crap. Yes, I am Queen of Snot, and yes all I want to do is curl up in bed/cry/put off swallowing until 2010. But at least I'm not worrying about my lump. See? A healthy bit of PMA for you.
The other thing I wanted to mention, briefly, although I could go into so much detail if I had the energy, is how crap some friends are. Someone wrote in my autograph book when I was about 8 that 'A True Friend Doesn't Just Stay While the Sun Shines' and I remember thinking what a load of rubbish it was - I could have named at least three little chums who'd have happily played with me in the rain. Well, not for the first time, but still just as upsettingly, at the age of 39, I have realised the essential truth of this. My phone, when I was happy, smiley, witty, good company, rang all the time. So much so, I got into the habit of letting the answerphone get it it drove me so mad. My calendar fair bulged with people wanting to spend time with me. And now? Cue ghostly whistle, tumbleweed and silence.
It hurts.
'There may be a bit of a wait,' warned the appointments woman. 'Be prepared.'
Ordinarily, with no child in tow, the prospect of a waiting room, a comfy chair and a mag would have appealed in no small way. However, now, after the last few months, it's just about enough to make me reach for the veg knife and wonder if I'd be suited to self-harming.
The one good thing about being the sort of women who attracts problems like cow's backsides attract flies, is that they never come along on their own. Sometimes that is deeply distressing and sometimes -admittedly rarely - it has a positive side. Therefore, today, the virus Teenage Toddler has so kindly shared with me is actually helping. Yes, I feel like crap. Yes, I am Queen of Snot, and yes all I want to do is curl up in bed/cry/put off swallowing until 2010. But at least I'm not worrying about my lump. See? A healthy bit of PMA for you.
The other thing I wanted to mention, briefly, although I could go into so much detail if I had the energy, is how crap some friends are. Someone wrote in my autograph book when I was about 8 that 'A True Friend Doesn't Just Stay While the Sun Shines' and I remember thinking what a load of rubbish it was - I could have named at least three little chums who'd have happily played with me in the rain. Well, not for the first time, but still just as upsettingly, at the age of 39, I have realised the essential truth of this. My phone, when I was happy, smiley, witty, good company, rang all the time. So much so, I got into the habit of letting the answerphone get it it drove me so mad. My calendar fair bulged with people wanting to spend time with me. And now? Cue ghostly whistle, tumbleweed and silence.
It hurts.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Crises-R-Us
I told you there was a reason for this blog's title. Just to prove I'm a) not lying or b) the victim of some kind of bizarre Munchausen's-like syndrome, or even c) so bored/weird this is what I do for kicks, I shall share with you my latest 'adventure'.
What with Recovering Husband having seen his GP yesterday (another 3 weeks' sick note, mind) and Arthritic Son seemingly declared in drug-controlled remission in his last clinic, things would be looking up, wouldn't they? Even the Teenage Toddler has stopped behaving like Mussolini in the last few days. Although this could be owing to the fact he's passed all his viral symptoms on to me - rather like the transferral of demonic possession in the Exorcist but without the added benefit of its taking place within a work of fiction.
So, having been feeling a tad rough, and wondering if I ought to start looking at my own health now that I've Florenced my way through everyone else's for what feels like eternity, I decided to have a word with the Nurse Practitioner about stopping smoking - I felt rough, hadn't had a cigarette for almost 24 hours and wanted to seize the moment. I also wanted to ask a few q's about the depressing and hideous event that is Significant Rise in Amount of Facial Hair. (Well, all hair if I'm honest. And think yourself lucky I don't mention the other Bodily Issues. What joy it is to be nearly 40 and undergoing hormonal civil war - is it any wonder we're all such sour, pike-faced old bags?)
Having explained myself, I waited expectantly for her to offer me some patches.
'Well,' she said. 'I think really you need to pick a date.'
'I thought I was. Um, today. Carpe diem and all that.'
'Ye-e-es,' she said in that way that people use when they want to sound thoughtful and well-meaning but are really saying, ''Oh God I've got one here who could get lost in a phone box.''
'It doesn't really work like that though,' she continued, eyes awash with pity at the hapless pariah before her. 'You need to set a date.'
'Oh. So, no patches today then?'
Smiles. Looks at me like I'm as naive as the Andrex puppy. 'You see, you haven't prepared. People have more of a success rate if they prepare.'
Haven't prepared! I've just spent the last few months wondering if my husband has cancer. I've never thought or read so much about smoking in my life - I am now virtually the Grim Reaper's Bitch. I sort of explain this.
'Fear really isn't the way. Really, I think for you writing down the pros and cons, filling in an Action Plan, would be a good idea. Seeing a smoking councillor. Recognising that those addiction patterns need changing. Working out how you're going to feed those little hungry birds in there.'
'Birds?'
'The little receptors in your brain. But I've got all the information you need here.' Busies herself collecting lots of photocopies and shiny cardlets with numbers on them. 'Take it home and have a look. You can always come back and we'll talk some more when you've set a date.'
At this point, I feel utterly depressed, and realise that if I really, really wanted to stop I'd just bloody do it.
As if that wasn't enough, I quickly, forlornly, mention the hirsutism and associated hormonal stuff - I can't face coming back again (how long before 'Munchausen's?' pops up on the computer screen?). It transpires that because I've had periods for 30 years (yes, I was only 10) and early menopause runs in my family, it's fully possible I am peri-menopausal and/or have polycystic ovaries. Tip top. Plus for all of that, I need to see the doctor.
Suddenly, for the first time in 24 hours, I really, really want a cigarette.
So today, I went back. A speculum and an internal later, and my GP's booking me in for a pelvic scan, which will take a few months to come through. While I'm lying there wondering if she thinks I have Munchausen's - and if, in fact, I actually do - I remember to ask her to check the wierd thing in my left breast, adding that I'm pretty confident it's probably all in my head. Stress and all that.
But no. Lumpy massy thing it is and she'd like it checked.
'Are you worried?' she asks.
This makes me smile. 'I've kind of gone beyond worry recently. What will be will be.' (While this may sound philosophical and Big of me, it's important to remember it's only because I'm so knackered I can't even seriously think about it.)
'OK. Well I think for what's it worth, I'll get it looked at pretty soon. Not that I'm worried, I'm pretty sure it is hormonal, but I think you've gone through enough recently. You've kind of been through hell, haven't you?'
If it weren't for the fact she'd probably certify me, I'd have wept, clung to her knees and begged her to take me home with her and make me some soup.
'I'll get you in in the next two weeks,' she says.
So, here we go again. Still, if I'm good and don't eat much in between now and then, at least I can treat myself to a scone while I'm there.
What with Recovering Husband having seen his GP yesterday (another 3 weeks' sick note, mind) and Arthritic Son seemingly declared in drug-controlled remission in his last clinic, things would be looking up, wouldn't they? Even the Teenage Toddler has stopped behaving like Mussolini in the last few days. Although this could be owing to the fact he's passed all his viral symptoms on to me - rather like the transferral of demonic possession in the Exorcist but without the added benefit of its taking place within a work of fiction.
So, having been feeling a tad rough, and wondering if I ought to start looking at my own health now that I've Florenced my way through everyone else's for what feels like eternity, I decided to have a word with the Nurse Practitioner about stopping smoking - I felt rough, hadn't had a cigarette for almost 24 hours and wanted to seize the moment. I also wanted to ask a few q's about the depressing and hideous event that is Significant Rise in Amount of Facial Hair. (Well, all hair if I'm honest. And think yourself lucky I don't mention the other Bodily Issues. What joy it is to be nearly 40 and undergoing hormonal civil war - is it any wonder we're all such sour, pike-faced old bags?)
Having explained myself, I waited expectantly for her to offer me some patches.
'Well,' she said. 'I think really you need to pick a date.'
'I thought I was. Um, today. Carpe diem and all that.'
'Ye-e-es,' she said in that way that people use when they want to sound thoughtful and well-meaning but are really saying, ''Oh God I've got one here who could get lost in a phone box.''
'It doesn't really work like that though,' she continued, eyes awash with pity at the hapless pariah before her. 'You need to set a date.'
'Oh. So, no patches today then?'
Smiles. Looks at me like I'm as naive as the Andrex puppy. 'You see, you haven't prepared. People have more of a success rate if they prepare.'
Haven't prepared! I've just spent the last few months wondering if my husband has cancer. I've never thought or read so much about smoking in my life - I am now virtually the Grim Reaper's Bitch. I sort of explain this.
'Fear really isn't the way. Really, I think for you writing down the pros and cons, filling in an Action Plan, would be a good idea. Seeing a smoking councillor. Recognising that those addiction patterns need changing. Working out how you're going to feed those little hungry birds in there.'
'Birds?'
'The little receptors in your brain. But I've got all the information you need here.' Busies herself collecting lots of photocopies and shiny cardlets with numbers on them. 'Take it home and have a look. You can always come back and we'll talk some more when you've set a date.'
At this point, I feel utterly depressed, and realise that if I really, really wanted to stop I'd just bloody do it.
As if that wasn't enough, I quickly, forlornly, mention the hirsutism and associated hormonal stuff - I can't face coming back again (how long before 'Munchausen's?' pops up on the computer screen?). It transpires that because I've had periods for 30 years (yes, I was only 10) and early menopause runs in my family, it's fully possible I am peri-menopausal and/or have polycystic ovaries. Tip top. Plus for all of that, I need to see the doctor.
Suddenly, for the first time in 24 hours, I really, really want a cigarette.
So today, I went back. A speculum and an internal later, and my GP's booking me in for a pelvic scan, which will take a few months to come through. While I'm lying there wondering if she thinks I have Munchausen's - and if, in fact, I actually do - I remember to ask her to check the wierd thing in my left breast, adding that I'm pretty confident it's probably all in my head. Stress and all that.
But no. Lumpy massy thing it is and she'd like it checked.
'Are you worried?' she asks.
This makes me smile. 'I've kind of gone beyond worry recently. What will be will be.' (While this may sound philosophical and Big of me, it's important to remember it's only because I'm so knackered I can't even seriously think about it.)
'OK. Well I think for what's it worth, I'll get it looked at pretty soon. Not that I'm worried, I'm pretty sure it is hormonal, but I think you've gone through enough recently. You've kind of been through hell, haven't you?'
If it weren't for the fact she'd probably certify me, I'd have wept, clung to her knees and begged her to take me home with her and make me some soup.
'I'll get you in in the next two weeks,' she says.
So, here we go again. Still, if I'm good and don't eat much in between now and then, at least I can treat myself to a scone while I'm there.
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
I love the smell of formaldehyde in the morning....
Or whatever that disinfectanty smell is in hospitals. Where I seem to spend most of my 2007 thus far. Back today for an entire morning checking up Arthritic Son. Typical. Everyone else gets to take their kids back to school, I wind up at the Norfolk and Norwich in a waiting room with no magazines, no windows, too many people and a couple of ten year olds trying (badly) to parent a Baby on the Edge.
The only entertainment to be had was watching an undercover member of the Mummy Mafia as she patrolled the waiting room Properly Entertaining her own fat, smiley toddler and shooting surreptitious, raised-eyebrow-knowing glances at the oblivious couple. I know her sort. Years ago she would have terrified me, with her make-upless face, and her sartorial statement that she doesn't really care what she looks like because Being A Good Mum is More Important ACTUALLY, but I'm wise now. Oh yes. I know that she's just Smug Mother of One. She's done the baby stuff and emerged relatively unscathed with Smiley Properly Entertained child who's fully used to being the centre of the universe and having parents whose mission in life is to make him happy and stuff him with as much breastmilk/omega 3s/organic produce as he can humanly take.
So, I'm sitting there, feeling really sorry for the teenage parents, feeling really sorry for the purple baby in designer clothes going hoarse in his car seat or being passed from disinterested knees to having his back pounded by his dad, bored rigid while Arthritic Son plays the resident gameboys and getting my kicks by imagining the MM with her second.
Preferably, I'm thinking, with an evil leer, a second boy.
Not even a scone basket with which to cheer myself up - which is actually no bad thing. The scone habit, the fact it's just been Easter and the Contact Eating Disorder I've developed while Recovering Husband gorges to regain his lost weight, have culminated in a rather unattractive stomach/thigh event. A sort of 'hey, look I'm suddenly five months' pregnant' type of event.
Anyway, back to Arthritic Son. It's now 2 years since he was first diagnosed, almost 2 and a half since I first noticed that my 6-year old had looked particularly unwell for an entire term. I was talking to his teacher one day after school - she'd called me in to tell me he was having problems concentrating in class - and he popped his head up just beside her elbow, and as I glanced at him I was struck by how pale and sickly he looked. It was one of those horrible shocks you get when you see someone every day but suddenly realise they look quite dramatically different - not right, somehow - an image that engraves itself right there and then on your mind forever.
I knew, just knew, there was something wrong.
He was tired and snotty a lot, complaining of feeling ill a lot that Christmas, which we just put down to the weather, to the full-on nature of the winter term and school Christmases (God, when did THAT start happening? We'd have died under that kind of pressure in the 70s...). When he started limping in the mornings and complaining of knee pains, we put it down to growing, sleeping funny, damp weather - anything to explain what seemed pretty, well, unexplainable. When one knee puffed up, I took him to the GP who told me it was probably viral (oh for a quid every time I've heard that in my life) and gave me some ibuprofen.
A week later, when he burst into tears after school for being shouted at for not concentrating, too scared to tell the teacher it was because his knees hurt so badly while he was sitting, I went back. This time I was told it was probably 'housemaid's knee', which came as a bit of a surprise what with him being 6 and never having scrubbed a floor in his life (I may be many things as a mother, but I've a way to go before I get quite as bad as a character from a Dicken's novel). And on it went. More trouble with school, more fighting with teachers and GPs, more tears, more pain and more encroaching disability for my son.
Eventually, several months after we first saw the GP, and with the other knee now swelling and a child who could no longer get out of bed or the bath without help, up or down the stairs, or, in fact, walk for two hours every morning, we got referred. And I mean referred. I had a phone call at 8pm from the GP at home telling me he wanted my son in the N&N the following morning for tests first thing. A whole day of them.
From there, we've had a long journey. From diagnosis to change in diagnosis. From knowing in myself the arthritis was spreading, to locking horns with his consultant who told me that it was probably growing pains and I should 'play it down' (from a kid who never 'played it up'), to being proved right four months later. From one knee being affected to both knees, both ankles, wrists, fingers, toes, jaw, shoulders, neck. From simple anti-inflammatories to steroid injections to more steroid injections to different drugs, leg splints at night, strict physio regimes and eventually, a year ago, to the drug that turned everything round - methotrexate.
For those who don't know, this is the same drug that is used, in higher doses, for chemotherapy as it suppresses the immune system and arthritis is an auto-immune disease. It's not nice, it comes with a list of side-effects/contraindications two pages long and you have an hour's appointment with a specialist nurse to talk about it before you sign on the dotted line. It also costs a lot, so the NHS are pretty specific about needing it before they hand it out. While he's on it, we have to be pretty careful. For example, it makes him photosensitive, he can't have immunisations, or many antibiotics, he has bloods monthly to check liver, cell counts etc. We can't go somewhere malarial (just as well it isn't an option) and chicken pox, if he hadn't had it would be a real problem. There are also complications should he get a chest infection (great in light of the recent chest plague suffered by Sick Husband).
We still don't know what will happen with the arthritis. We don't know if he'll have it when he's older or whether it will burn itself out before he hits his teens or twenties. We don't know if it will flare up again should he catch an unpleasant virus (we're supposed to keep him away from outbreaks at school), or if something else will trigger another attack, if he'll get it when he's older.
All we do know, thanks to mornings like this, is that he's doing OK. His bloods aren't great, but compared to what they were, they're good. His physio is really pleased with his legs - we've spent two years trying to straighten out his knees thanks to the damage caused by the disease - and she feels he's fit enough to maybe leave with an 'emergency only' follow-up after this summer. Which is great news.
We've been a long time getting here. There are many, many times I've sat and cried for my son because of his pain, because of what we've had to do to help him. I'd gladly have taken all his pain myself and trebled it just to watch him be like all his friends, like all my friends' kids. I've wanted to literally kill some of my friends when they've told me they've kept their kid off school because they 'looked tired' and I've taken my son, hopping, limping, crying with pain, because that's what we've been told to do. I've had other mothers who had no idea of what was going on look at me, with my make-up on and my hobbling, crippled-up son, like I'm Myra Hindley's sister, just dumping Tiny Tim off so I can go and get a manicure. I've learnt that you can't fight every battle.
I could sit and cry now because my boy is virtually 'normal'. It might be drug controlled, but hopefully that part of the nightmare is over for him. Pain is almost not a part of his life anymore. He doesn't have to be the Guardian of the Den in the playground because he can't run around with the others, or not join in with the football, or walk around in lessons, or take in a cast to get his mates to sign it so that we can try and teach him about acceptance. He doesn't cry or moan when I go to get him and tell him we're walking, we don't have to have the conversations on the way home about how important a role Guardian of the Den is (think Hagrid, I always told him) or at what point of the evening physio gets done (it's weekly now) alongside homework, which is, I agree with him 'totally unfair'.
I can be more of a 'normal' parent now. I'm not looking for how much slack you cut because the kid's got a lot on his plate already, or is in pain, or feeling rough due to a new drug. I don't need to watch him like a hawk anymore, always on the case for new evidence of the disease spreading, or side effects, or wrongly working joints. And I don't need to fill in those godawful disability living allowance forms that ask me to specify how long - in minutes - he needs help for during the day, or in the night, or going to the loo, or getting out of the bath... I can breathe again.
I've learned a lot of things throughout this journey. Too many to go into here. But I've learned one thing above all, all you mothers out there. Never, ever, doubt your own gut feelings about your child.
The only entertainment to be had was watching an undercover member of the Mummy Mafia as she patrolled the waiting room Properly Entertaining her own fat, smiley toddler and shooting surreptitious, raised-eyebrow-knowing glances at the oblivious couple. I know her sort. Years ago she would have terrified me, with her make-upless face, and her sartorial statement that she doesn't really care what she looks like because Being A Good Mum is More Important ACTUALLY, but I'm wise now. Oh yes. I know that she's just Smug Mother of One. She's done the baby stuff and emerged relatively unscathed with Smiley Properly Entertained child who's fully used to being the centre of the universe and having parents whose mission in life is to make him happy and stuff him with as much breastmilk/omega 3s/organic produce as he can humanly take.
So, I'm sitting there, feeling really sorry for the teenage parents, feeling really sorry for the purple baby in designer clothes going hoarse in his car seat or being passed from disinterested knees to having his back pounded by his dad, bored rigid while Arthritic Son plays the resident gameboys and getting my kicks by imagining the MM with her second.
Preferably, I'm thinking, with an evil leer, a second boy.
Not even a scone basket with which to cheer myself up - which is actually no bad thing. The scone habit, the fact it's just been Easter and the Contact Eating Disorder I've developed while Recovering Husband gorges to regain his lost weight, have culminated in a rather unattractive stomach/thigh event. A sort of 'hey, look I'm suddenly five months' pregnant' type of event.
Anyway, back to Arthritic Son. It's now 2 years since he was first diagnosed, almost 2 and a half since I first noticed that my 6-year old had looked particularly unwell for an entire term. I was talking to his teacher one day after school - she'd called me in to tell me he was having problems concentrating in class - and he popped his head up just beside her elbow, and as I glanced at him I was struck by how pale and sickly he looked. It was one of those horrible shocks you get when you see someone every day but suddenly realise they look quite dramatically different - not right, somehow - an image that engraves itself right there and then on your mind forever.
I knew, just knew, there was something wrong.
He was tired and snotty a lot, complaining of feeling ill a lot that Christmas, which we just put down to the weather, to the full-on nature of the winter term and school Christmases (God, when did THAT start happening? We'd have died under that kind of pressure in the 70s...). When he started limping in the mornings and complaining of knee pains, we put it down to growing, sleeping funny, damp weather - anything to explain what seemed pretty, well, unexplainable. When one knee puffed up, I took him to the GP who told me it was probably viral (oh for a quid every time I've heard that in my life) and gave me some ibuprofen.
A week later, when he burst into tears after school for being shouted at for not concentrating, too scared to tell the teacher it was because his knees hurt so badly while he was sitting, I went back. This time I was told it was probably 'housemaid's knee', which came as a bit of a surprise what with him being 6 and never having scrubbed a floor in his life (I may be many things as a mother, but I've a way to go before I get quite as bad as a character from a Dicken's novel). And on it went. More trouble with school, more fighting with teachers and GPs, more tears, more pain and more encroaching disability for my son.
Eventually, several months after we first saw the GP, and with the other knee now swelling and a child who could no longer get out of bed or the bath without help, up or down the stairs, or, in fact, walk for two hours every morning, we got referred. And I mean referred. I had a phone call at 8pm from the GP at home telling me he wanted my son in the N&N the following morning for tests first thing. A whole day of them.
From there, we've had a long journey. From diagnosis to change in diagnosis. From knowing in myself the arthritis was spreading, to locking horns with his consultant who told me that it was probably growing pains and I should 'play it down' (from a kid who never 'played it up'), to being proved right four months later. From one knee being affected to both knees, both ankles, wrists, fingers, toes, jaw, shoulders, neck. From simple anti-inflammatories to steroid injections to more steroid injections to different drugs, leg splints at night, strict physio regimes and eventually, a year ago, to the drug that turned everything round - methotrexate.
For those who don't know, this is the same drug that is used, in higher doses, for chemotherapy as it suppresses the immune system and arthritis is an auto-immune disease. It's not nice, it comes with a list of side-effects/contraindications two pages long and you have an hour's appointment with a specialist nurse to talk about it before you sign on the dotted line. It also costs a lot, so the NHS are pretty specific about needing it before they hand it out. While he's on it, we have to be pretty careful. For example, it makes him photosensitive, he can't have immunisations, or many antibiotics, he has bloods monthly to check liver, cell counts etc. We can't go somewhere malarial (just as well it isn't an option) and chicken pox, if he hadn't had it would be a real problem. There are also complications should he get a chest infection (great in light of the recent chest plague suffered by Sick Husband).
We still don't know what will happen with the arthritis. We don't know if he'll have it when he's older or whether it will burn itself out before he hits his teens or twenties. We don't know if it will flare up again should he catch an unpleasant virus (we're supposed to keep him away from outbreaks at school), or if something else will trigger another attack, if he'll get it when he's older.
All we do know, thanks to mornings like this, is that he's doing OK. His bloods aren't great, but compared to what they were, they're good. His physio is really pleased with his legs - we've spent two years trying to straighten out his knees thanks to the damage caused by the disease - and she feels he's fit enough to maybe leave with an 'emergency only' follow-up after this summer. Which is great news.
We've been a long time getting here. There are many, many times I've sat and cried for my son because of his pain, because of what we've had to do to help him. I'd gladly have taken all his pain myself and trebled it just to watch him be like all his friends, like all my friends' kids. I've wanted to literally kill some of my friends when they've told me they've kept their kid off school because they 'looked tired' and I've taken my son, hopping, limping, crying with pain, because that's what we've been told to do. I've had other mothers who had no idea of what was going on look at me, with my make-up on and my hobbling, crippled-up son, like I'm Myra Hindley's sister, just dumping Tiny Tim off so I can go and get a manicure. I've learnt that you can't fight every battle.
I could sit and cry now because my boy is virtually 'normal'. It might be drug controlled, but hopefully that part of the nightmare is over for him. Pain is almost not a part of his life anymore. He doesn't have to be the Guardian of the Den in the playground because he can't run around with the others, or not join in with the football, or walk around in lessons, or take in a cast to get his mates to sign it so that we can try and teach him about acceptance. He doesn't cry or moan when I go to get him and tell him we're walking, we don't have to have the conversations on the way home about how important a role Guardian of the Den is (think Hagrid, I always told him) or at what point of the evening physio gets done (it's weekly now) alongside homework, which is, I agree with him 'totally unfair'.
I can be more of a 'normal' parent now. I'm not looking for how much slack you cut because the kid's got a lot on his plate already, or is in pain, or feeling rough due to a new drug. I don't need to watch him like a hawk anymore, always on the case for new evidence of the disease spreading, or side effects, or wrongly working joints. And I don't need to fill in those godawful disability living allowance forms that ask me to specify how long - in minutes - he needs help for during the day, or in the night, or going to the loo, or getting out of the bath... I can breathe again.
I've learned a lot of things throughout this journey. Too many to go into here. But I've learned one thing above all, all you mothers out there. Never, ever, doubt your own gut feelings about your child.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Normal for Norfolk
I'm trying to get my life to return to some kind of normality - just a fleeting visit to the GP's surgery in the last few days to pick up a prescription and clock the look of alarm on the receptionist's face fading as she realised I wasn't there to 'stay' so to speak.
Recovering Husband is still at home, as he will continue to be for the next month until he can start the new job. Oh, if I had a quid for the times I've been asked how I cope with Husband at home. And another quid for the times women have told me how hard they'd find it. Which they would, believe me. So, how do I cope? Well, how does anyone? It's a waking nightmare. Kind of like the reverse of having a bad dream and pinching yourself to make sure you are actually awake. In this scenario, you feel profound disappointment that you really are.
Anyway, today I took the chance to escape. Now that Recovering Husband is capable of Doing Things, he took the kids to his parents for lunch and dropped me in the city. Or 'Up the Ci'ee' as they say in Norfolk. I had an appointment with my contact lens man and a few things to pick up for a 40th birthday party at the weekend which has specified a 70s/80s dress code. The days of dressing up as Abba or Madonna without looking like a drag queen are decidedly behind one in one's 39th year, so I'd thought I'd slip into Claire's Accessories for some glittery things to accessorise the sort of thing my mother used to wear to Pippa Dee parties in my childhood. Now, I am the mother of boys, and have just spent three months inhabiting waiting rooms, so shiny, sparkly girl-palaces don't tend to characterise my shopping experiences and I was rather looking forward to it. I now have a Mental Note to Self for the future: unless shopping with young girl and/or wishing to feel as old and hairy as Gandalf, avoid Claire's Accessories at all costs. Stick with John Lewis, Boots, Superdrug, or better still, the cosmetic enhancements offered by Superglue and Vaseline.
Refusing to be subdued by the culture shocks of a) being Up the Ci'ee and b) how bloody old I am (it's easier to see the traces of youth left in yourself when you spend weeks discussing scones with pensioners), I found myself relieved to have the excuse of my contact lens appointment to avoid more shops. I've been seeing the same opti-whatsit for years. Mr Lens (we'll call him Lenny) and I have, over the years, become somewhat acquainted with each other's lives - he's followed my pregnancies and journey through small-boy motherhood, I've followed his journeys through big-boy fatherhood - and I'm comfortable with that. It's nice. Gives you a feeling of being more than just a number on the Direct Debit transfers. But as I said, this is my life and my life doesn't really do 'normal'. Even for Norfolk.
'Now,' said Lenny, as I settle in the chair after the initial greetings. 'When did I see you last?'
'Oo, er, some time last year? Autumn time, was it?'
'That's about right,' he says, consulting his notes. 'Now. Was that before or after I had the trouble down below?'
'Pardon me?'
'I told you about it, didn't I? The old, you know, swollen testicle.'
'Um. No. I don't think so.'
'Didn't I? Oh, worrying times, we've had. One so much bigger than the other, you know. Massive. Had to do all the old BUPA visit, you know. Bit of an op.'
'Oh. Dear. Is it–?
'Oh, fine. Yes. Worrying though, waiting for a while to find out.'
'Yes, I can imagine, we've just-'
'All sorted now though. Apart from a little bit of trouble in the night. You know. Going. Get up with the urge and go to the bathroom and nothing. Get back into bed and have to get up again and go no trouble. Drives the wife mad.'
'Mmm.'
'Still, you'll laugh. One of the things they told me after the op was that it's quite normal - 60 per cent, in fact - that when you make love, you still get the orgasm but there can be a distinct lack of fluid.'
'Oh, really? How, um, mm-'
'Told the beloved that, quite seriously, you know, sat down at the kitchen table - I mean, I'm quite attached to all that down there, don't want to think there's something really wrong - and do you know what she said? ''Well, I hope you're in the 60 per cent'', she said, ''less flaming laundry for me!'' ' Lenny laughs heartily. 'Thought you'd find that funny!'
Laugh totally falsely. Resist temptation to ask why. Do I look like the sort of woman tickled by stories of other people's bodily fluid functions? Do I?
'Still', he says, wiping his eyes, 'At least they know it's not the prostrate. Thank God.'
'No. You don't want-'
'No. I mean the surgeon said to me, he said, normally your prostrate is fine, I can give it a prod and it's like' - gestures with hand like child imitating star in Twinkle Twinkle song - 'but this time he really had to fiddle about. So he wanted the tests to be sure.'
'Yes. He would.'
'So,' says Lenny, finally leaning in towards me. 'How are we getting on with these eyes then?'
It's not like I don't try to have a normal life. You just try carrying on with your shopping 'normally' after that little lot.
Recovering Husband is still at home, as he will continue to be for the next month until he can start the new job. Oh, if I had a quid for the times I've been asked how I cope with Husband at home. And another quid for the times women have told me how hard they'd find it. Which they would, believe me. So, how do I cope? Well, how does anyone? It's a waking nightmare. Kind of like the reverse of having a bad dream and pinching yourself to make sure you are actually awake. In this scenario, you feel profound disappointment that you really are.
Anyway, today I took the chance to escape. Now that Recovering Husband is capable of Doing Things, he took the kids to his parents for lunch and dropped me in the city. Or 'Up the Ci'ee' as they say in Norfolk. I had an appointment with my contact lens man and a few things to pick up for a 40th birthday party at the weekend which has specified a 70s/80s dress code. The days of dressing up as Abba or Madonna without looking like a drag queen are decidedly behind one in one's 39th year, so I'd thought I'd slip into Claire's Accessories for some glittery things to accessorise the sort of thing my mother used to wear to Pippa Dee parties in my childhood. Now, I am the mother of boys, and have just spent three months inhabiting waiting rooms, so shiny, sparkly girl-palaces don't tend to characterise my shopping experiences and I was rather looking forward to it. I now have a Mental Note to Self for the future: unless shopping with young girl and/or wishing to feel as old and hairy as Gandalf, avoid Claire's Accessories at all costs. Stick with John Lewis, Boots, Superdrug, or better still, the cosmetic enhancements offered by Superglue and Vaseline.
Refusing to be subdued by the culture shocks of a) being Up the Ci'ee and b) how bloody old I am (it's easier to see the traces of youth left in yourself when you spend weeks discussing scones with pensioners), I found myself relieved to have the excuse of my contact lens appointment to avoid more shops. I've been seeing the same opti-whatsit for years. Mr Lens (we'll call him Lenny) and I have, over the years, become somewhat acquainted with each other's lives - he's followed my pregnancies and journey through small-boy motherhood, I've followed his journeys through big-boy fatherhood - and I'm comfortable with that. It's nice. Gives you a feeling of being more than just a number on the Direct Debit transfers. But as I said, this is my life and my life doesn't really do 'normal'. Even for Norfolk.
'Now,' said Lenny, as I settle in the chair after the initial greetings. 'When did I see you last?'
'Oo, er, some time last year? Autumn time, was it?'
'That's about right,' he says, consulting his notes. 'Now. Was that before or after I had the trouble down below?'
'Pardon me?'
'I told you about it, didn't I? The old, you know, swollen testicle.'
'Um. No. I don't think so.'
'Didn't I? Oh, worrying times, we've had. One so much bigger than the other, you know. Massive. Had to do all the old BUPA visit, you know. Bit of an op.'
'Oh. Dear. Is it–?
'Oh, fine. Yes. Worrying though, waiting for a while to find out.'
'Yes, I can imagine, we've just-'
'All sorted now though. Apart from a little bit of trouble in the night. You know. Going. Get up with the urge and go to the bathroom and nothing. Get back into bed and have to get up again and go no trouble. Drives the wife mad.'
'Mmm.'
'Still, you'll laugh. One of the things they told me after the op was that it's quite normal - 60 per cent, in fact - that when you make love, you still get the orgasm but there can be a distinct lack of fluid.'
'Oh, really? How, um, mm-'
'Told the beloved that, quite seriously, you know, sat down at the kitchen table - I mean, I'm quite attached to all that down there, don't want to think there's something really wrong - and do you know what she said? ''Well, I hope you're in the 60 per cent'', she said, ''less flaming laundry for me!'' ' Lenny laughs heartily. 'Thought you'd find that funny!'
Laugh totally falsely. Resist temptation to ask why. Do I look like the sort of woman tickled by stories of other people's bodily fluid functions? Do I?
'Still', he says, wiping his eyes, 'At least they know it's not the prostrate. Thank God.'
'No. You don't want-'
'No. I mean the surgeon said to me, he said, normally your prostrate is fine, I can give it a prod and it's like' - gestures with hand like child imitating star in Twinkle Twinkle song - 'but this time he really had to fiddle about. So he wanted the tests to be sure.'
'Yes. He would.'
'So,' says Lenny, finally leaning in towards me. 'How are we getting on with these eyes then?'
It's not like I don't try to have a normal life. You just try carrying on with your shopping 'normally' after that little lot.
Monday, April 9, 2007
Thank God for Chocolate
Is it me, or is the only point to Easter?
Admittedly, I'm still a little wierd, not having been anywhere near a hospital now for at least ten days. Perhaps I'm simply struggling with having to adjust out of my scone comfort zone - although I am rediscovering hot cross buns. Caught myself wondering what they taste like at Papworth/Addenbrookes/the Norfolk and Norwich and thought, with chagrin, that I'm probably only a step away from the 'mature' lady who dresses up to go and visit sick people she knows 'just to get out'.
Anyway, Recovering Husband is doing well. He has managed to put half a stone back on, a third of the weight he's lost, and he's in the enviable position of Eating For Britain. Trouble is, he's trying to recruit me to the cause. Now, I'm no biffa, I'm reasonably proud to say - I don't cut a bad gib for nearly 40 (clothed, and if you don't look at the face in daylight hours) - but I'm no sylph either. In today's terms, as far as Size Zero goes, you're looking at an upper thigh on a good month when I've managed to get to yoga more than once, walked to school a few times restraining Teenage Toddler, and haven't sat near a pot of double cream. Also, Recovering Husband is still not smoking and has replaced that addiction with a new one that seems to focus on vanilla ice-cream and home-made chocolate sauce. Have some cocoa with your butter...
We've also been out. Well, I say 'out'. I mean we've been to see my family and we've been to see one of my oldest friends - all people I can cope with in my current post-traumatic wierded-out state. It's been great to get out of the house somewhere other than a waiting room, and it's been nice being taken care of, albeit that they're all trying to feed up Recovering Husband too, and I have developed some kind of Contact Eating Disorder. I feel like a walking Christmas Dinner.
Spent the rest of Easter watching crap TV and a DVD of 'Syriana' with 'Gorgeous George' Clooney. Who must have got an Oscar for Best Supporting Beard, as far as I can make out. It's a long time since I've watched a film so dull I'd rather watch the news instead. Such a shame. I was prepared to like it, just as last week I was prepared to hate 'Casino Royale' and ended up smitten with Daniel Craig and shouting 'ditch the bitch, James!' at the screen. No comment from RH, as he was still up beyond 9pm and too tired to multi-task by watching and listening to me at the same time.
Also watched a rather good documentary on the infamous Outback Pom Murder with the rather lovely (if rather wrinkly these days) Bryan Brown as a bit of a tip-top QC. Mentioned to RH that I'd love to do a job like that instead of my rather pointless holiday copywriting. Still not used to him responding, so the 'Well, why not get on with it then? Do a course' like all I needed was to apply to a Learn Direct advert, came as a bit of a shock. I'd rather grown to like Passive Sick Husband. I've a sneaking suspicion I'd rather grown to like it a little too much.
Admittedly, I'm still a little wierd, not having been anywhere near a hospital now for at least ten days. Perhaps I'm simply struggling with having to adjust out of my scone comfort zone - although I am rediscovering hot cross buns. Caught myself wondering what they taste like at Papworth/Addenbrookes/the Norfolk and Norwich and thought, with chagrin, that I'm probably only a step away from the 'mature' lady who dresses up to go and visit sick people she knows 'just to get out'.
Anyway, Recovering Husband is doing well. He has managed to put half a stone back on, a third of the weight he's lost, and he's in the enviable position of Eating For Britain. Trouble is, he's trying to recruit me to the cause. Now, I'm no biffa, I'm reasonably proud to say - I don't cut a bad gib for nearly 40 (clothed, and if you don't look at the face in daylight hours) - but I'm no sylph either. In today's terms, as far as Size Zero goes, you're looking at an upper thigh on a good month when I've managed to get to yoga more than once, walked to school a few times restraining Teenage Toddler, and haven't sat near a pot of double cream. Also, Recovering Husband is still not smoking and has replaced that addiction with a new one that seems to focus on vanilla ice-cream and home-made chocolate sauce. Have some cocoa with your butter...
We've also been out. Well, I say 'out'. I mean we've been to see my family and we've been to see one of my oldest friends - all people I can cope with in my current post-traumatic wierded-out state. It's been great to get out of the house somewhere other than a waiting room, and it's been nice being taken care of, albeit that they're all trying to feed up Recovering Husband too, and I have developed some kind of Contact Eating Disorder. I feel like a walking Christmas Dinner.
Spent the rest of Easter watching crap TV and a DVD of 'Syriana' with 'Gorgeous George' Clooney. Who must have got an Oscar for Best Supporting Beard, as far as I can make out. It's a long time since I've watched a film so dull I'd rather watch the news instead. Such a shame. I was prepared to like it, just as last week I was prepared to hate 'Casino Royale' and ended up smitten with Daniel Craig and shouting 'ditch the bitch, James!' at the screen. No comment from RH, as he was still up beyond 9pm and too tired to multi-task by watching and listening to me at the same time.
Also watched a rather good documentary on the infamous Outback Pom Murder with the rather lovely (if rather wrinkly these days) Bryan Brown as a bit of a tip-top QC. Mentioned to RH that I'd love to do a job like that instead of my rather pointless holiday copywriting. Still not used to him responding, so the 'Well, why not get on with it then? Do a course' like all I needed was to apply to a Learn Direct advert, came as a bit of a shock. I'd rather grown to like Passive Sick Husband. I've a sneaking suspicion I'd rather grown to like it a little too much.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
Post adrenaline fall out
Is that a syndrome yet? It ought to be. Having run on adrenaline and cortisol for the last three months, wondering if Sick Husband had cancer, worrying about what would happen if he didn't get/couldn't start his new job and dealing with the demands of the house/kids/Florence Nightingale duties, I'm now experiencing the aftermath. Think of all those pictures of Hiroshima after the bomb dropped and you've got a pretty good picture of my mental and physical state.
I decided yesterday that it might do me good to try and get back into 'normal' life - if that is in fact at all possible with Recovering Husband still at home - and headed out to a bit of a mums'n'kids get-together for the Easter hols. Several shocks awaited me. The first was how out of touch with seeing people outside of medical institutions I am. I can do the non-verbal stuff really well now - I could ask anyone in anyone language if they've finished with that copy of 'Hello' - and I'm totally at home having a discussion with a complete stranger about the merits of a scone. I'm even confident these days at twisting my tongue round the names of certain procedures or medications. But put me in a room full of normal women talking about normal things and I'm completely out of my depth. I'd have been better off spending my time communicating with the 6-week old baby. She and I seem to be on pretty much the same level (look at the pretty light, look at the pretty light...).
The second shock was how normal everyone else actually is.
'No medical emergency today then?' asked my friend as she came to pick us all up. (Guardian readers note - although I may be in my car almost as much as I'm in my bed, we country-dwellers do sometimes share our planet-raping behaviour.)
'No, not today,' I smiled, almost breaking Teenage Toddler's foot as I rammed it into his shoe.
This fact hit me more as I listened to what they'd all been up to. I hadn't seen them since November last year and I have to say they're a fairly normal bunch for an NCT group. For the uninitiated, the NCT is an organisation for pregnant women and mothers of small babies to meet each other, get birth info etc in a kind of hessian-weave way (they're very hot on natural birth, 'empowerment', organic food/nappies and breast-feeding). It is supposedly for 'intelligent' women with 'awareness' but what that really means is it's for the middle-classes. I met, and still see, one group of women when I was pregnant with my first son and attended a refresher course when pregnant with the second. I'd love to paint a picture of myself as Earth Mother and say that I only went to learn how to massage my perineum, but the truth is I went to meet women I could moan to/drink wine with post-partum. My other, first NCT group (who I'll talk about another time) are Very NCT. Last time I saw them we had salmon and fine wine for lunch at one of their beautiful Norfolk farmhouses, discussed private schools and talked about skiing and Mark Warner holidays. Well, they did. I sat and got quietly pissed after depressing them all about Sick Husband, how worried about money I was and how knackered I felt.
This lot, however, are far more normal, if less alcholic (there are pros and cons for everything). They're decorating their houses, thinking about moving and not being able to afford it, planning for people to come and stay over Easter, sorting out activities for the kids, shopping at Primark and organising things. The woman who was hosting had even labelled little bags for an Easter egg hunt, labelled beakers for the kids so they wouldn't keep asking where their drinks were (she is admittedly a teacher, but even so!) In a kind of suppressed-hysteric way, I joked about how inadequate she made me feel, how organised she was. The other mums were equally impressed/scared too, so I didn't feel I was talking out of turn.
'Oh, I have to be that way,' she said. 'It's probably the part of me that's such a control freak I can't cope if things don't go according to plan. At least I know if I've planned I can relax and accept that whatever happens happens.'
'But you're so together!' I enthused. 'I'd never think of doing that even if I'd managed to think of doing an Easter egg hunt before Easter Sunday.' (My limit would probably be handing a bowl of eggs around and letting them fight over it like dogs with a fox.)
'It's from years of being a teacher, I think,' she said - modestly, let it be noted. 'Years of having to plan and think ahead.'
I laughed. 'Not like me then. Years of having to lurch-'
'From crisis to crisis?' suggested one of the others.
I was actually going to say 'from one crap freelance job to another', but I guess that made the point quite succinctly.
The third shock was how tired just eating a bit of home-made cake, drinking some tea and chatting made me. By the time I got home I felt like I'd been mugged. Funny how you can do school/nursery/paygroup runs, food shop, keep your house in order, drive to and from hospitals, run Arthritic Son to and from an appointment, do playdough Fruit Bowls with Teenage Toddler, cook, sort laundry, answer the phone, fetch wood, keep a fire going, remember to do homework, bath kids, read stories AND embed some deep worry lines into your face all in the one day, yet two hours relaxing makes you feel like you've been hit by a truck.
I got up this morning and cancelled the playdate for today. Call me the Antimother, but I just couldn't face it. Instead, I decided to use Recovering Husband and went back to bed for a spot of Jeremy Kyle and a doze. It's Good Friday tomorrow. I'll try again then.
I decided yesterday that it might do me good to try and get back into 'normal' life - if that is in fact at all possible with Recovering Husband still at home - and headed out to a bit of a mums'n'kids get-together for the Easter hols. Several shocks awaited me. The first was how out of touch with seeing people outside of medical institutions I am. I can do the non-verbal stuff really well now - I could ask anyone in anyone language if they've finished with that copy of 'Hello' - and I'm totally at home having a discussion with a complete stranger about the merits of a scone. I'm even confident these days at twisting my tongue round the names of certain procedures or medications. But put me in a room full of normal women talking about normal things and I'm completely out of my depth. I'd have been better off spending my time communicating with the 6-week old baby. She and I seem to be on pretty much the same level (look at the pretty light, look at the pretty light...).
The second shock was how normal everyone else actually is.
'No medical emergency today then?' asked my friend as she came to pick us all up. (Guardian readers note - although I may be in my car almost as much as I'm in my bed, we country-dwellers do sometimes share our planet-raping behaviour.)
'No, not today,' I smiled, almost breaking Teenage Toddler's foot as I rammed it into his shoe.
This fact hit me more as I listened to what they'd all been up to. I hadn't seen them since November last year and I have to say they're a fairly normal bunch for an NCT group. For the uninitiated, the NCT is an organisation for pregnant women and mothers of small babies to meet each other, get birth info etc in a kind of hessian-weave way (they're very hot on natural birth, 'empowerment', organic food/nappies and breast-feeding). It is supposedly for 'intelligent' women with 'awareness' but what that really means is it's for the middle-classes. I met, and still see, one group of women when I was pregnant with my first son and attended a refresher course when pregnant with the second. I'd love to paint a picture of myself as Earth Mother and say that I only went to learn how to massage my perineum, but the truth is I went to meet women I could moan to/drink wine with post-partum. My other, first NCT group (who I'll talk about another time) are Very NCT. Last time I saw them we had salmon and fine wine for lunch at one of their beautiful Norfolk farmhouses, discussed private schools and talked about skiing and Mark Warner holidays. Well, they did. I sat and got quietly pissed after depressing them all about Sick Husband, how worried about money I was and how knackered I felt.
This lot, however, are far more normal, if less alcholic (there are pros and cons for everything). They're decorating their houses, thinking about moving and not being able to afford it, planning for people to come and stay over Easter, sorting out activities for the kids, shopping at Primark and organising things. The woman who was hosting had even labelled little bags for an Easter egg hunt, labelled beakers for the kids so they wouldn't keep asking where their drinks were (she is admittedly a teacher, but even so!) In a kind of suppressed-hysteric way, I joked about how inadequate she made me feel, how organised she was. The other mums were equally impressed/scared too, so I didn't feel I was talking out of turn.
'Oh, I have to be that way,' she said. 'It's probably the part of me that's such a control freak I can't cope if things don't go according to plan. At least I know if I've planned I can relax and accept that whatever happens happens.'
'But you're so together!' I enthused. 'I'd never think of doing that even if I'd managed to think of doing an Easter egg hunt before Easter Sunday.' (My limit would probably be handing a bowl of eggs around and letting them fight over it like dogs with a fox.)
'It's from years of being a teacher, I think,' she said - modestly, let it be noted. 'Years of having to plan and think ahead.'
I laughed. 'Not like me then. Years of having to lurch-'
'From crisis to crisis?' suggested one of the others.
I was actually going to say 'from one crap freelance job to another', but I guess that made the point quite succinctly.
The third shock was how tired just eating a bit of home-made cake, drinking some tea and chatting made me. By the time I got home I felt like I'd been mugged. Funny how you can do school/nursery/paygroup runs, food shop, keep your house in order, drive to and from hospitals, run Arthritic Son to and from an appointment, do playdough Fruit Bowls with Teenage Toddler, cook, sort laundry, answer the phone, fetch wood, keep a fire going, remember to do homework, bath kids, read stories AND embed some deep worry lines into your face all in the one day, yet two hours relaxing makes you feel like you've been hit by a truck.
I got up this morning and cancelled the playdate for today. Call me the Antimother, but I just couldn't face it. Instead, I decided to use Recovering Husband and went back to bed for a spot of Jeremy Kyle and a doze. It's Good Friday tomorrow. I'll try again then.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007
If you're reading this, that's a miracle in itself...
Because the last two times I've tried to write a blog, I've failed. Once because I didn't know what I was doing, and the second time because I still didn't know what I was doing, but was in the rather more dangerous position of thinking I did. Wrong button pressed, 3 hours work disappeared in a nanosecond.
Anyway, I'd better introduce myself. Firstly, by way of explaining the name for this blog. I have joked throughout my adult life of wanting one of those lives that, in visual terms, would look like a hearbeat monitor flicking across a screen - straight line, little jolt up, little jolt down, straight line again - and what I've actually ended up with is the kind of display you'd get if you wired up a monitor to someone who'd just dropped an electric fire in their bath.
A little precis of my life as it stands, dripping forlornly in the rain with its broken umbrella, may help... . I love introductions almost as much as I love being asked to give myself some kind of 'witty' moniker at selling parties where someone gives you a name sticker and asks you to describe what kind of cook/reader/body lotion user you are. So, I'm going to do mine in the manner of Maximus the Gladiator: I am 39 and in my 40th year, Mother to a an Arthritic Son, Wife to a Recovering Husband, Loyal Servant to a Stroppy Pre-Schooler, Frustrated Writer and generally Woman on the Edge.
I shall begin with the start of 2007. Christmas was fine - in the way 'fine' can be quantified when your husband discovers he is to be made redundant in February, your arthritic son has taken a drop in dosage of his horrible-but-essential medication (its magical immuno-suppressant qualities being a touch too magical) and your 3 year old discovers early onset Attitude. However, such was the Walton-esque festive vibe in the house, that I was rather looking forward to a new year. We had been through a lot, we felt, what with Arthritic Son being diagnosed in 2005 and not stable until mid-2006, Husband having already been through one redunancy when Teenage Toddler was born in 2003, and 2004 taken up with minor problems like a spot of marital separation, attending Relate meetings and the like. Things were so good, in fact, I couldn't help wondering where the catch was.
Anyway, we'd been invited to Loaded Friends for a party to see in the new year. We're talking Bacchinalian feasting, rivers of quality alcohol, a bedroom with its own en-suite and the first morning of 2007 spent detoxing in the sauna and dipping in and out of the indoor pool... in short, for cap-doffers like us, a bit of a tip-top mini-break at no charge other than having to be Entertaining - which isn't exactly demanding in those circumstances. However, 24 hours before we were due to go, Husband ended up on a course of antibiotics for his window-rattling cough and Teenage Toddler had transmuted into King of Snot. Deciding to err on the side of caution, especially in light of Arthritic Son's compromised immunity, I spent New Year's Eve watching other people's fireworks through the haze of cheap fizz, not unhappily, and chiding myself for being such a glass-empty kind of psycho moan beast that I could even wonder about 'catches'. I resolutely determined to be more positive in 2007 - and therefore attract a more positive kind of luck.
It is now the beginning of April and since New Year, I have spent the equivalent of one month in and out of hospitals and surgeries, and probably another one just driving to and from them. People at my son's school are now starting to look at me as if I have Munchausen's by Proxy and the pharmacist in our local surgery has begun to seem really quite pleased there's a two-foot thick wall separating us.
The husband ended up with what is known as a 'pleural effusion', which is a lot of nasty fluid on the lungs. Thanks to spectacularly bad handling by a GP at our local surgery, he had six courses of antibiotics, a mis-read x-ray, none of the appropriate tests and had reached almost collapse point before this got diagnosed. At which point, during the February half-term, I phoned aforementioned GP for advice and got asked what I wanted to do. Thankfully, another GP referred him under BUPA cover (part of the work package) and we got onto the treadmill of What Caused It. One ultrasound scan, a mini-fluid drain, a CT scan, endless hassle with BUPA, a stay in Papworth Hospital, a full chest drain, four more x-rays and a couple of pleural biopsies later, we now know, as of the end of March, that it's not cancer. Thank God.
As well as having a Very Sick Husband (and, in fact, a husband at home for two months), dealing with the endless running around to and from appointments, the driving to and from hospitals in Cambridgeshire (we live in South Norfolk), the Dark Places you go to when you hear words like 'biopsy', there's also been the worry about Husband's job. In between being Sick and Very Sick, he'd attended an interview (complete with fake-tanned face and resolution not to take off suit jacket in order to try and hide new-look Concentration Camp physique), and somewhat miraculously, got the job. But of course, all things being equal, half an hour after he took the phone call being offered it, subject to references and a medical report from his doctor, he received a call from his surgeon to say he'd ordered a biopsy.
Given that while all of this is going on, I am still dealing with two full-on boys, my mother is away in Spain for 5 weeks, my sister is hospitalised with vomiting and my husband's family think that I'm over-dramatising a bit of a winter cold (oh, if I had a pound for every time someone asked me if he had man-flu), to say all of this - the not knowing, the waiting, the sheer physical and mental toll - has been stressful is a little like describing the Iraq War as a 'wee hiccup' in Tony Blair's career.
People I know ask me how I cope. Take this example.
It is the week after half-term. My parents are abroad, my in-laws are in Scotland. I have four days out of five planned with hospital visits, three with Sick Husband, one with Arthritic Son - an eye check-up, which he has every 6 months (alongside monthly blood tests, three-monthly clinic visits and physio sessions) as uveitis can be a side-effect of his type of arthritis. I have already spent my Saturday trying to scrounge childcare from women at school and playgroup - which I feel bad about as it's for the first day back and I know what it's like and I'm wondering if any of them are secretly thinking I might as well ask for a kidney donation while I'm at it.
I've spent my Sunday treating the kids to a visit to the car wash (which we had to go through twice as it didn't work properly first time and then we got stuck behind an old man whose driver's side window got stuck) and a trip to the park. Arthritic Son runs headlong towards the playground and stops short clutching both knees. This is the second time in a week he has told me his knee joints have started hurting again. The first time you put it down to something like the weather, the second time you just feel sick and start having visions of going back to the 'Tiny Tim' days.
On Monday, I take Sick Husband to Cambrige for an ultrasound and a supposedly straightforward chest drain. It does not go well. Words like 'complicated', 'not quite what we thought', 'something solid behind the fluid' are bandied about. Husband has smoked for years, so it's no mental quantum leap thinking about the difference between something being wrong with you and something being wrong with you because you smoke. (Yes, I know. I KNOW.)
On Tuesday, I take him for a CT scan - Cambridge again.
On Wednesday I take Arthritic Son to hospital. I'm driving round and round the car park trying to find a space when Son asks me if I remember the last time we came and I shouted at 'that woman'.
'What woman?' I am genuinely mystified.
'You remember. The lady in the car park who didn't have any children in her car.'
'Who?'
'The one who parked in that space you saw and you asked her if she minded if you had it 'cos you'd been driving around for ages and she said no, and then you a bit annoyed and then she said tough and something about boats, and then you argued for a bit because you said the car park was meant for kids, and then you got really cross and went all red and got out of the car and I thought you were going to hit her. That woman.'
I cringe so badly, I crick my neck.
'Oh, THAT woman,' I say brightly. 'Oh, I'd forgotten all about that. It was just a silly little-'
'No it wasn't mum, don't you remember? You shouted at her that people like her made you sick and I wondered if you were going to puke in the car park, like on your shoes or something.' Laughs in the way of 8 year old boy at mention of puke.
'Ah, ha-ha-ha-ha-HA!' I enjoin. 'Well, grown ups do do things they shouldn't sometimes when they're very, very tired. But it was wrong of mummy and you must never copy it. Never.' Rapid change of subject.
We then enter the hospital, in the wrong side because I'm so tired I've lost the plot, and walk for a mile before sitting for an hour in a waiting room full of children with TB who've weed on the radiators, or so it seems – a perfect place to contemplate what a nutter/failure of a mother I am. There's not even a Grazia to cheer myself up with (well, at least I'm not Paris Hilton). Son talks endlessly about Dr Who. Pre-eye test examination happens. His are fine, mine I realise, with ageing horror, are not. See consultant. Son's eyes are given the all-clear. We talk about his drugs and I realise how this once-foreign medical language now trips so easily off my tongue. Fight off sadness about that (at least he's better than he was thanks to Nasty Wonder Drug). Head for WRVS shop as is our way - it being formerly the best method to rid him of the impression hospitals were all about needles, pain, tests, physio regimes and cortico-steroid injections - to buy chocolate. Stand in queue at till. Son skitters off to check out toys. Woman in front and woman behind till have following conversation:
'How's your mother?'
'Oh, better than she was now she's had the breast off. I can't talk about it too much though, it upsets me.'
'Oh, I know. I had the lung out a year ago now. I know what it's like with the cancer. You give her my love and tell her I know what she's going through.'
At this point, watching customers on other till hurtling through, thinking how much I do not want to be listening to this, Son runs up and tugs my elbow.
'Mum! They've got Dr Who toys!'
'Have they? That's nice.'
'Can I have one?'
'No.'
'Just one?'
'No darling,' I say wearily. 'Not today. You've got Maltesers.' Unfair exchange I know, but you have to draw lines at times like this, coming here the amount we do.
'Oh-uh! Not fair! Why not?'
I look at him. The snap in my voice comes out much harder than I meant it to. 'Oh well why not have five! What do you think?'
The two women stop talking and look at me like I'm Satan's Bitch.
Drive home with the word 'cancer' buzzing round my head like a fly I can't swat, feeling my stomach trying to ingest my spleen. Have incessant Dr Who conversation about the merits of Christopher Eccleston vs David Tennant with Son. Drop Son off, go to collect Teenage Toddler from nursery who greets me with a bottom lip the size of Wales because I'm 'not daddy', and refuses to let me see the picture he's made because it's 'just for daddy'. Get home, load washing machine from gargantuan pile overtaking landing upstairs, cook pasta for kids, prepare supper for us for later (way too full of healthy veg, garlic and chilli for kids, plus accessorised with salad) get accosted by Sick Husband who is up, sweating and trying to rage about his boss, who he's just found out put him on Statutory Sick Pay after the first two weeks he was ill. Open fridge, swig from half-drunk bottle of wine I'm trying to abstain from until weekend. Clutch it fiercely to breast and intermittently slug while lighting cigarette and smoking outside back door (I know. I KNOW). Sick Husband looks at me with faint disgust and says, 'What's up with you?'
So there you have it. The truth is you don't really 'cope', you just have no choice. You just look like you're coping to the people who know you because if you're anything like me you don't fall to bits in front of them.
What would they prefer to see?
There are times I have wondered. How I've resisted self-harming - like carving Justify Your Bloody Salary on my torso and chaining myself to the roof of the doctor's surgery screaming for Watchdog - because I've felt so angry at the treatment of my husband by that one GP. Or gone so mad at a complete stranger, I wondered if I need locking up/sedating for the protection of the public. I've obsessed about someone who's pissed me off to the point of almost creating an internal ulcer, cried enough to make myself look like the Face of Boe (Dr Who again), talked to myself enough to wonder if it's too late - I've already gone mad and realisation is just as fleeting for me as moments of madness are for the normally sane.
Well, I'm a writer. And my coping mechanisms are whinging a lot (hence this blog) and being as mad as a box of badgers. Which pretty much fills the bill for writing a blog into cyberspace where no one will ever read it. If nothing else, it's an outlet for me, and I'm aware I need one. The most contradictory thing of all is that you'd think after all this, with good news (it's NOT cancer), you'd be skipping around with joy in your feet and sunlight in your heart.
Well, in one way you are. But in another way, all the adrenaline I've lived on for the past three months, all the worry and the waiting and the coping and the caring has taken its toll. Think of it like the mother whose heart stops at the sight of her child running out into a busy road. Does she grab that child when she realises its safe and cuddle it to her speaking calm, happy words of reassurance and delight?
Does she hell.
Anyway, I'd better introduce myself. Firstly, by way of explaining the name for this blog. I have joked throughout my adult life of wanting one of those lives that, in visual terms, would look like a hearbeat monitor flicking across a screen - straight line, little jolt up, little jolt down, straight line again - and what I've actually ended up with is the kind of display you'd get if you wired up a monitor to someone who'd just dropped an electric fire in their bath.
A little precis of my life as it stands, dripping forlornly in the rain with its broken umbrella, may help... . I love introductions almost as much as I love being asked to give myself some kind of 'witty' moniker at selling parties where someone gives you a name sticker and asks you to describe what kind of cook/reader/body lotion user you are. So, I'm going to do mine in the manner of Maximus the Gladiator: I am 39 and in my 40th year, Mother to a an Arthritic Son, Wife to a Recovering Husband, Loyal Servant to a Stroppy Pre-Schooler, Frustrated Writer and generally Woman on the Edge.
I shall begin with the start of 2007. Christmas was fine - in the way 'fine' can be quantified when your husband discovers he is to be made redundant in February, your arthritic son has taken a drop in dosage of his horrible-but-essential medication (its magical immuno-suppressant qualities being a touch too magical) and your 3 year old discovers early onset Attitude. However, such was the Walton-esque festive vibe in the house, that I was rather looking forward to a new year. We had been through a lot, we felt, what with Arthritic Son being diagnosed in 2005 and not stable until mid-2006, Husband having already been through one redunancy when Teenage Toddler was born in 2003, and 2004 taken up with minor problems like a spot of marital separation, attending Relate meetings and the like. Things were so good, in fact, I couldn't help wondering where the catch was.
Anyway, we'd been invited to Loaded Friends for a party to see in the new year. We're talking Bacchinalian feasting, rivers of quality alcohol, a bedroom with its own en-suite and the first morning of 2007 spent detoxing in the sauna and dipping in and out of the indoor pool... in short, for cap-doffers like us, a bit of a tip-top mini-break at no charge other than having to be Entertaining - which isn't exactly demanding in those circumstances. However, 24 hours before we were due to go, Husband ended up on a course of antibiotics for his window-rattling cough and Teenage Toddler had transmuted into King of Snot. Deciding to err on the side of caution, especially in light of Arthritic Son's compromised immunity, I spent New Year's Eve watching other people's fireworks through the haze of cheap fizz, not unhappily, and chiding myself for being such a glass-empty kind of psycho moan beast that I could even wonder about 'catches'. I resolutely determined to be more positive in 2007 - and therefore attract a more positive kind of luck.
It is now the beginning of April and since New Year, I have spent the equivalent of one month in and out of hospitals and surgeries, and probably another one just driving to and from them. People at my son's school are now starting to look at me as if I have Munchausen's by Proxy and the pharmacist in our local surgery has begun to seem really quite pleased there's a two-foot thick wall separating us.
The husband ended up with what is known as a 'pleural effusion', which is a lot of nasty fluid on the lungs. Thanks to spectacularly bad handling by a GP at our local surgery, he had six courses of antibiotics, a mis-read x-ray, none of the appropriate tests and had reached almost collapse point before this got diagnosed. At which point, during the February half-term, I phoned aforementioned GP for advice and got asked what I wanted to do. Thankfully, another GP referred him under BUPA cover (part of the work package) and we got onto the treadmill of What Caused It. One ultrasound scan, a mini-fluid drain, a CT scan, endless hassle with BUPA, a stay in Papworth Hospital, a full chest drain, four more x-rays and a couple of pleural biopsies later, we now know, as of the end of March, that it's not cancer. Thank God.
As well as having a Very Sick Husband (and, in fact, a husband at home for two months), dealing with the endless running around to and from appointments, the driving to and from hospitals in Cambridgeshire (we live in South Norfolk), the Dark Places you go to when you hear words like 'biopsy', there's also been the worry about Husband's job. In between being Sick and Very Sick, he'd attended an interview (complete with fake-tanned face and resolution not to take off suit jacket in order to try and hide new-look Concentration Camp physique), and somewhat miraculously, got the job. But of course, all things being equal, half an hour after he took the phone call being offered it, subject to references and a medical report from his doctor, he received a call from his surgeon to say he'd ordered a biopsy.
Given that while all of this is going on, I am still dealing with two full-on boys, my mother is away in Spain for 5 weeks, my sister is hospitalised with vomiting and my husband's family think that I'm over-dramatising a bit of a winter cold (oh, if I had a pound for every time someone asked me if he had man-flu), to say all of this - the not knowing, the waiting, the sheer physical and mental toll - has been stressful is a little like describing the Iraq War as a 'wee hiccup' in Tony Blair's career.
People I know ask me how I cope. Take this example.
It is the week after half-term. My parents are abroad, my in-laws are in Scotland. I have four days out of five planned with hospital visits, three with Sick Husband, one with Arthritic Son - an eye check-up, which he has every 6 months (alongside monthly blood tests, three-monthly clinic visits and physio sessions) as uveitis can be a side-effect of his type of arthritis. I have already spent my Saturday trying to scrounge childcare from women at school and playgroup - which I feel bad about as it's for the first day back and I know what it's like and I'm wondering if any of them are secretly thinking I might as well ask for a kidney donation while I'm at it.
I've spent my Sunday treating the kids to a visit to the car wash (which we had to go through twice as it didn't work properly first time and then we got stuck behind an old man whose driver's side window got stuck) and a trip to the park. Arthritic Son runs headlong towards the playground and stops short clutching both knees. This is the second time in a week he has told me his knee joints have started hurting again. The first time you put it down to something like the weather, the second time you just feel sick and start having visions of going back to the 'Tiny Tim' days.
On Monday, I take Sick Husband to Cambrige for an ultrasound and a supposedly straightforward chest drain. It does not go well. Words like 'complicated', 'not quite what we thought', 'something solid behind the fluid' are bandied about. Husband has smoked for years, so it's no mental quantum leap thinking about the difference between something being wrong with you and something being wrong with you because you smoke. (Yes, I know. I KNOW.)
On Tuesday, I take him for a CT scan - Cambridge again.
On Wednesday I take Arthritic Son to hospital. I'm driving round and round the car park trying to find a space when Son asks me if I remember the last time we came and I shouted at 'that woman'.
'What woman?' I am genuinely mystified.
'You remember. The lady in the car park who didn't have any children in her car.'
'Who?'
'The one who parked in that space you saw and you asked her if she minded if you had it 'cos you'd been driving around for ages and she said no, and then you a bit annoyed and then she said tough and something about boats, and then you argued for a bit because you said the car park was meant for kids, and then you got really cross and went all red and got out of the car and I thought you were going to hit her. That woman.'
I cringe so badly, I crick my neck.
'Oh, THAT woman,' I say brightly. 'Oh, I'd forgotten all about that. It was just a silly little-'
'No it wasn't mum, don't you remember? You shouted at her that people like her made you sick and I wondered if you were going to puke in the car park, like on your shoes or something.' Laughs in the way of 8 year old boy at mention of puke.
'Ah, ha-ha-ha-ha-HA!' I enjoin. 'Well, grown ups do do things they shouldn't sometimes when they're very, very tired. But it was wrong of mummy and you must never copy it. Never.' Rapid change of subject.
We then enter the hospital, in the wrong side because I'm so tired I've lost the plot, and walk for a mile before sitting for an hour in a waiting room full of children with TB who've weed on the radiators, or so it seems – a perfect place to contemplate what a nutter/failure of a mother I am. There's not even a Grazia to cheer myself up with (well, at least I'm not Paris Hilton). Son talks endlessly about Dr Who. Pre-eye test examination happens. His are fine, mine I realise, with ageing horror, are not. See consultant. Son's eyes are given the all-clear. We talk about his drugs and I realise how this once-foreign medical language now trips so easily off my tongue. Fight off sadness about that (at least he's better than he was thanks to Nasty Wonder Drug). Head for WRVS shop as is our way - it being formerly the best method to rid him of the impression hospitals were all about needles, pain, tests, physio regimes and cortico-steroid injections - to buy chocolate. Stand in queue at till. Son skitters off to check out toys. Woman in front and woman behind till have following conversation:
'How's your mother?'
'Oh, better than she was now she's had the breast off. I can't talk about it too much though, it upsets me.'
'Oh, I know. I had the lung out a year ago now. I know what it's like with the cancer. You give her my love and tell her I know what she's going through.'
At this point, watching customers on other till hurtling through, thinking how much I do not want to be listening to this, Son runs up and tugs my elbow.
'Mum! They've got Dr Who toys!'
'Have they? That's nice.'
'Can I have one?'
'No.'
'Just one?'
'No darling,' I say wearily. 'Not today. You've got Maltesers.' Unfair exchange I know, but you have to draw lines at times like this, coming here the amount we do.
'Oh-uh! Not fair! Why not?'
I look at him. The snap in my voice comes out much harder than I meant it to. 'Oh well why not have five! What do you think?'
The two women stop talking and look at me like I'm Satan's Bitch.
Drive home with the word 'cancer' buzzing round my head like a fly I can't swat, feeling my stomach trying to ingest my spleen. Have incessant Dr Who conversation about the merits of Christopher Eccleston vs David Tennant with Son. Drop Son off, go to collect Teenage Toddler from nursery who greets me with a bottom lip the size of Wales because I'm 'not daddy', and refuses to let me see the picture he's made because it's 'just for daddy'. Get home, load washing machine from gargantuan pile overtaking landing upstairs, cook pasta for kids, prepare supper for us for later (way too full of healthy veg, garlic and chilli for kids, plus accessorised with salad) get accosted by Sick Husband who is up, sweating and trying to rage about his boss, who he's just found out put him on Statutory Sick Pay after the first two weeks he was ill. Open fridge, swig from half-drunk bottle of wine I'm trying to abstain from until weekend. Clutch it fiercely to breast and intermittently slug while lighting cigarette and smoking outside back door (I know. I KNOW). Sick Husband looks at me with faint disgust and says, 'What's up with you?'
So there you have it. The truth is you don't really 'cope', you just have no choice. You just look like you're coping to the people who know you because if you're anything like me you don't fall to bits in front of them.
What would they prefer to see?
There are times I have wondered. How I've resisted self-harming - like carving Justify Your Bloody Salary on my torso and chaining myself to the roof of the doctor's surgery screaming for Watchdog - because I've felt so angry at the treatment of my husband by that one GP. Or gone so mad at a complete stranger, I wondered if I need locking up/sedating for the protection of the public. I've obsessed about someone who's pissed me off to the point of almost creating an internal ulcer, cried enough to make myself look like the Face of Boe (Dr Who again), talked to myself enough to wonder if it's too late - I've already gone mad and realisation is just as fleeting for me as moments of madness are for the normally sane.
Well, I'm a writer. And my coping mechanisms are whinging a lot (hence this blog) and being as mad as a box of badgers. Which pretty much fills the bill for writing a blog into cyberspace where no one will ever read it. If nothing else, it's an outlet for me, and I'm aware I need one. The most contradictory thing of all is that you'd think after all this, with good news (it's NOT cancer), you'd be skipping around with joy in your feet and sunlight in your heart.
Well, in one way you are. But in another way, all the adrenaline I've lived on for the past three months, all the worry and the waiting and the coping and the caring has taken its toll. Think of it like the mother whose heart stops at the sight of her child running out into a busy road. Does she grab that child when she realises its safe and cuddle it to her speaking calm, happy words of reassurance and delight?
Does she hell.
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