Well, whoops.

I meant to blog and I meant to blog and I got on my laptop and found I couldn’t focus my eyes. I tried to comment on a couple of peoples’ blogs and had trouble concentrating enough to put together a sentence. I have had a cold. We have all had colds. I have spent the day today still lying about moaning.

I am pathetic. It’s just a cold.

We went to Rhubarb’s qualifying regatta on Saturday. The team he is coxman for qualified for the Head of the River regatta that is on Saturday. Yay. I was soooooooo excited. I nearly embarrassed myself (and Rhubarb) by running up and kissing him as he removed the oar thingies and helped carry the boat out of the water. I managed to maintain  my composure and he is still speaking to me.  I thought I was just a little tired after all the excitement until, on the card ride home, I developed a sore throat. I have been lying about and whimpering ever since. It didn’t help that we had to tidy and garden for a house inspection that took place on Monday and the blasted children seem to constantly require taking care of. It is not restful at all.

It’s amazing how, when you take a little break from blogging, it seems inconceivable that you could find anything to write about. What on Earth could I possibly have to say? Why in the name of all that is purple would I write about nothing and then ponce about the internet letting people know where they can find it? Seems quite odd if you ask me.

I had to actually force myself to open up an “add new post” window and type something. Kind of getting back on the wagon, if you will. I still have the feeling that I have swallowed razor blades and every movement that I make has all the speed  it would possess if I were submerged in wet concrete. I don’t really want to blog but I am scared. What if I stop and then I just put it off for one more day and then another and before you know it I have no blog, no bloggy friends, then where would I be?

I am delirious and feverish – can you tell?

After all of that annoyance with Rhubarb the other day, he seems to have settled back into his usual muttering, grumbling but generally cooperative self. That episode seems to have been but a brief spike in TAAM activity. I am a little bit annoyed, however because it turns out that meeting that he missed would have been beneficial to attend. It was to select three Year Eights who would be allowed to row in the “very big regatta”, which is being held in a couple of weeks. The manager of the team told Rhubarb that he may have been selected if he had attended the meeting. They chose him to be cox for the Year Nine boys in the end, which was actually quite an honour but suggests that they thought he possessed the skill to participate. Anyway, there’s always next time and it will be fun just to see him out there on the water joining in with his team.

Not content to leave me harassment free (because they are the minions of Beelzebub) Rhubarb has passed the torch to Pudding. The difference is that Pudding can be as annoying as you please and he still has the cuteness to temper it. You can never be truly annoyed by Pudding because he is three. While he is still three (in fact I believe the official cut-off age for overarching cuteness is seven), most of the things that he does are funny or  endearing in some way. You may have to cover your face when you laugh so that he doesn’t know he was being funny and takes your stern rebuke seriously but he is still amusing. Pudding has reached some sort of developmental turning point and has enter the “questions phase”. Consider the following examples of Pudding’s questioning prowess:

• “Mummy, how does my body move?” – he is insistent that, as your brain has no mouth, your brain can not be telling your legs and arms what to do. His answer : “Your bones have magic”, um, yes, far more plausible.
• “Mummy, what’s inside my tummy?” – after explaining basic anatomy and physiology of digestive tract I was thoroughly overruled. It is preposterous to suggest that your food makes it’s way through your digestive tract and ends up as poo, it somehow becomes invisible and makes it’s escape via the mouth, perhaps while you are sleeping.
• “Mummy where do boogers come from?” – I tried to be vague but he would not be fobbed off with anything less than a full description of  glandular epithelial cells. He nodded sagely and seemed well satisfied with this.
• “Daddy, why do my pants fall down?” – Beefcake* tried explaining the concept of objects being attracted to one another – gravity. I argued that it may not be appropriate for a three-year-old.

There are more but I won’t bore you.

As a side note, the handbag arrived this morning. I am overjoyed. I haven’t taken it on an outing yet but I will tomorrow and I will post pictures of handbag’s first trip out. I know, you’re excited!

* I nearly hit publish with Beefcake’s REAL name typed into this post. I have never done that before. I am not on the ball.

I had a little stomach clenching moment today when Rhubarb said this to me. I actually felt quite wounded.

“Can you just come and chat to me while Daddy and Poss are at her parent teacher interview, my pelvis is bad, it will help to have you out here with me and the small children?” I asked him.

“I don’t want to talk to you and I don’t care.”

Well, that sums it all up really doesn’t it. In the end he agreed to stay in the room as long as I didn’t try to speak to him. The Teenage Angst and Apathy Monster has definitely  taken up residence in my son’s brain. The TAAM feels the need to make a smart-arsed comment each time I speak to him or tell him something he needs to do. The TAAM is messy and a touch smelly. The TAAM has absolutely no empathy or compassion. The TAAM cares not what happens to others.

He is not yet a TAAM host all the time but he is like it more and more. We had friends over for an impromptu meal on Sunday night. Ordinarily he would hang around and play with the small children, chat to the adults, socialise. He was there and his usual pleasant, funny self during dinner but spent the rest of the time in his room or basically wherever the rest of us were not.

The TAAM is really taking over now and I don’t want it to. I have been smugly applauding my own fabulous parenting ability up to this point. Our friends and family have always commented on what great kids we have. Nice polite, funny, clever children. Even non-child friends have enjoyed spending time with our children. I have been aware that the TAAM would take over at some point but I think there was a part of me that hoped that Rhubarb would be somewhat immune to it.

I feel to my core that Poss, having traditionally been the placid, sweet-natured young girl, will be an absolute horror of a teenager. We see shades of it now and I can just feel it in my bones. I thought maybe Rhubarb would stay in this good place that we’ve finally found. He was a moody and sensitive kid early on. He took the divorce (and his subsequent neglect by FW) hard but he was five and it was only natural. The last few years he has been wonderful. We have been close. I have really liked him.

I don’t like the TAAM. He is a bastard.

Rhubarb does team rowing with the school. He trains twice a week. It is an expensive and demanding sport but I am so pleased that he is doing something. I spent my teenage years telling my PE teacher I had period cramps at every lesson, I loathed physical activity in any form (*ahem* well, not any form I guess or the whole pregnant at 17 thing might not have happened).

I am thrilled that he is sporty  but I expect him to take his responsibilities to his sport seriously. He missed a team meeting at school today. He came home, told Beefcake this and then asked if he could skip training tomorrow because he wants to visit a fast-food chain with some of his mates. My automatic response was ‘no’ because I want him to honour his commitments and I don’t think he’s old enough to go hanging around who knows where in the afternoon. He’s a baby, maybe when he’s 17 or so. Beefcake says he is old enough and it doesn’t matter if he misses one training session as the year 8’s are barely getting a look-in at the moment (they don’t compete in regattas until next year).

What do you think, dear internets? It is a bit of a moot point really because I told him he couldn’t go after the TAAM was particularly rude to me this afternoon but still, I’d like to know. 13’s too little to be out on your own. right?

Well, I did it. I bought the handbag of my dreams. In my defense, the internets insisted that I do it. I had to purchase it from the designer in the end. I am waiting for it to arrive. Every time I think about it I feel a little glow of pleasure flush through me. I feel a little bit guilty and also, a little bit not. I usually  have an aversion to spending large amounts of money on myself. This handbag cost more than my wedding dress when I married Beefcake. We didn’t really do a traditional white meringue and matching bridesmaids number.This bag though, it is too beautiful. I was having dreams about it. It is so out of character for me to buy something like this and yet I am okay with it. It helps that Beefcake is okay with it, in fact, he actively encouraged me to splurge.

It is true, I have not been in the best of moods of late. I have been suffering a lot with my pelvis. Chronic pain is very hard. It makes me grumpy. It makes me grumpy that the children think that I am lazy and that they roll their eyes when they are asked to lift or carry something for me. That they moan when they are asked to help out. Then I feel guilty because they are children. They have a right to expect a normal functional mother. I don’t expect them to see that every step that I take hurts, that to stand and cook their meals and to bend to lift a basket full of their washing causes me to wince with the pain. They are just children, egocentric and grouchy little pixies, they are.

So Beefcake knows that I am buying myself a little bit of pain relief, a little bit of happy indulgence. He knows I will treasure it. I don’t feel that guilty about the bag but I do feel guilty about making him feel he has to keep me happy. I don’t want to be the sadsack that he is trying to keep on an even keel. He said to me today that he remembers this time from when Pudding was small. He tells me it was very bad, I was in lots of pain then too but I did get  better over time. I don’t remember being pain-free. My brain is not cooperative all of the time. He tells me I will get there again and in the meantime we can all manage. I wonder why he is so nice to me. It must be a bit of a bore to have a foul-tempered invalid for a wife.

I suppose he must love me a bit.

I have nothing pleasant to say.

~grumble, grumble~

Rhubarb just said “Oh, you’re such a….”

~grumble, grumble~

Poss said to me this afternoon “Why do you have t be such a…..”

~grumble, grumble~

Pudding said: “I don’t like you. Any. More.”

~grumble, grumble~

Grub was grumpy before she went to bed because I wouldn’t let her have the remote control. She sat up halfway through a breastfeed and said “Aaaaahhhhhhh”

~grumble, grumble~

Does anyone else have days where it feels as though there is no path of least resistence. Everything is hard. Everything is going to cause someone to whine or moan.

I started off today with about half of the energy and inclination required to deal with everyone in a pleasant and non-grumbly way. I got up this morning and made Pudding his “I slept in my bed all night without even a teddy, I’m such a big boy” pancakes, as promised. I packed lunches and saw people off to school. I endured non-morning peoples moods with saintlike grace.

It all fell apart at around 8.30am when Grub required a quick boob and I decided to lie down for a wee while to give it to her.

The pelvis has not been behaving itself for the last week or so. This hasn’t troubled me too much. I have accepted Beefcake’s ministrations. I have taken pain-relief and rested in bed for a couple of hours each day – a task made much more pleasant by the fact that we purchased a real working bedroom television last week. It has been tolerable.

This morning when I lay down to feed and was dosed with my morning pain-killers, my body just refused to continue. I passed out. Beefcake took Grub for a while and then brought her back when she needed more boob and a nap. I ended up staying in bed until noon.

Sleeping until lunchtime should have made me a happy camper but unfortunately it has just left me in a foul mood for the rest of the day. I feel wretched and I hate everyone. I have compounded this feeling by cooking the dinner and cleaning up after the barnyard animals devoured it. This act of martyrdom has led to much muttering under breath and short tempered comments to children.

Beefcake sought to sooth me with Rhubarb flavoured black tea and a pot of diet chocolate  mousse. It did not work, largely because he then retired to the dining room to have a phone conference for work. He has been in there for nearly an hour-and-a-half now. I am bored and getting shittier by the minute.

I am awful. I know I have nothing to be grumpy about but I just hate them all. Ungrateful bastards. I think it is made worse by an underlying feeling of unfairness that has been troubling me since Tuesday.

You see, Beefcake is a large and husky gentleman. He is majestic and well rounded. He is called Beefcake for a reason. He has been this way since shortly after I met him. It has never bothered him terribly much. He is of the firm belief that one should always be kind to oneself. His internal dialogue after eating three course meal and an entire block of chocolate  is something along the lines of “Ooh that was nice, wife says you are fat but it’s not your fault, it’s glandular, you could perhaps consider a stroll some time later in the week but you musn’t put too much pressure on yourself”. I must say I think this is good in most situations (my own internal dialogue is much more harsh and judgey) but I think that sometimes he needs to raise his standards a touch.

Anyhoo, lately he has been trying very hard to lose some of the excess baggage. He has been doing quite well with the eating thing. He has been keeping his snacking to a minimum and is losing small amounts of weight. On Tuesday he started having sessions with a personal trainer. He goes again tomorrow. It is revoultingly expensive but we’ve decided it’s a necessary motivator for him, at least for the time being. I’m quite jealous as I really miss going to the gym myself but Grub/pelvis/time/funds mean that I will have to put it off for a little while longer. I am quite sure that this is the core reason for the:

~grumble, grumble~

I think I have come up with a solution which, while far from cheap, will certainly put me in a cheery mood, if only temporarily.

I am just a touch obsessed with this at the moment, you can see more shots of it here, along with other Nancybird bags. I notice that this site is out of stock, luckily there happens to be a local boutique just around the corner that stocks many of the lovely Nancybird things.

Here are the problems:

• It is expensive, unjustifiably so, except for maybe a birthday or anniversary but June and December respectively are too long to wait.
• I have what some might call “a lot” of handbags. I’m not going into actual numbers but I will say I like handbags a fair bit.
• It is immature to want something just because Beefy is getting something.
• I know we really shouldn’t be spending money on this sort of thing.
• I am a bit of a spoilt brat.
• I shouldn’t be using shopping to fix my grump, really, it’s a bit wrong.

Still, I can’t help thinking it would make everything better. It would, wouldn’t it?

Katyboo, a blogger who I admire tremendously because she is clever and witty, and a person who is  a lovely friend, has given me this award:

This is the description:

“These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.”

Thank you Katyboo. It is very nice. It’s a lovely award to recieve.

Okay, so, I am supposed to give it to eight people.

First, Tinsenpup. She is a very talented writer and I love to read her blog. Quite apart from that, she always magically appears in the blogosphere, just when I think she might be gone forever (or maybe that she was a figment of my imagination) and never fails to lift my spirits or give me a laugh. I heart her.

Next, Magic Marker Mom. She and I are kindred spirits in many ways. We have so much in common and I am so enjoying getting to know her and forming a friendship. She is ace.

Badness and I also share many things in common. One of my first ever commenters, she is another one who always pops up in and makes me smile. She is so creative and talented, she inspires me to be more creative myself.

Fe. She is always ready with wise and supportive words when I need them. She is honest and open and I felt an instant affinity with her when I started reading her blog.

It is at this point that I will admit to being a bit spent in terms of gathering together bloggy friends to award. I have “met” lots of cool people this way but this post is turning into a gargantuan mega award post (see below) and I might have to stop there to avoid going potty.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Now, apparently I am an eejit. I was given an award by Tinsenpup um, quite some time ago. Which I appreciated, because it is a very nice award, and was very excited about and then promptly forgot. She hasn’t taken offence and still comes and comments here, which is a testament to what a good friend Tinsenpup is.

This award comes with the following rules:

THE RULES
1. You have to pass it on to 5 other fabulous blogs in a post..
2. You have to list 5 of your fabulous addictions in the post.
3. You must copy and paste the rules and the instructions below in the post.

Instructions: On your post of receiving this award, make sure you include the person that gave you the award and link it back to them. When you post your five winners, make sure you link them as well. To add the award to your post, simply right-click, save image, then “add image” it in your post as a picture so your winners can save it as well. To add it to your sidebar, add the “picture” widget. Also, don’t forget to let your winners know they won an award from you by emailing them or leaving a comment on their blog.

Five Fabulous Blogs

• This may seem a bit predictable of me but Katyboo’s is without a doubt one of my most favouritest blogs. She is hilarious and clever. Her blog is always a good read. Quite frankly she could write  a compare and contrast of  toothpick brands and it would be entertaining. I will admit that she is my blogging hero, just a little bit.
• More to Life Than Laundry. This blog is included simply because it is such an amazing thing to be doing – this woman is going off and following her dreams and I think it’s a pretty fabulous idea to do it and to blog it.

Five Fabulous Addictions

• I am currently hving a bit of an addiction to the American show ‘Big Love’. It is about Mormon polygamy. It is my television crack. I am making Beefcake download the episodes for me after each one airs in the U.S. (shhh).
• Dark chocolate. Darker than dark – 85% cocoa, divine. You only need to eat a tiny bit to get a huge chocolate hit.
• The Grub. She is nine-months-old today. She has been standing and cruising the furniture for the last few weeks. She claps her hands and says ‘yay’.  She dances when she hears music, even someone just singing. I have had two other children walk before ten months.  Realistically, I only have a few more weeks before she will be a toddler and not my baby any more. She is our last.  I am spending even more time than usual drinking in the baby deliciousness. It will be soon replaced with toddler yumminess.
• I have been a touch obsessed with The Cloth Nappy Hunt lately. I have been having to divide my internet time between my beloved blogs and that.  It is hard not to obsess about. I am determined to get all of the sites.
• Umm, blogging? Reading blogs, commenting on blogs. I love it.

Seriously, there are more bloggers and blogs that I should add to this post but I have been beavering away at it for days now and I am close to a breakdown if this post is not completed. I reserve the right to add people/blogs to this post as the mood strikes or when/if I am feeling less like it’s all too hard. (Yes, I know, poor me. My life is hard isn’t it?)

Me: What are you going to do, you can’t just keep living there, not moving forward?

Mum: I don’t know what I’ll do, I’m finding it very hard, Ali.

Me: I know you are, I can see that – there’s never going to be an ideal time, it’s never going to be easy, it’s going to suck, it’s going to be hard but you can’t just keep putting your life on hold.

Mum: Can’t we just have a nice conversation about nice things? I knew this would happen if I came to see you.

Me: No because I can’t pretend with you, I can’t lie, I can’t be false.

Mum: I know, I know. (I think she believes if she says she knows, just agrees with me, I will stop.)

Me: You have to do something, we have no relationship with you, you are isolated, you never see anyone.

Mum: It’s just because I’ve been working, I’ve been busy, that’s all.

Me: He hates you.

Mum: Well, he does and he doesn’t. He can’t even take care of himself when I am there, he’ll never manage.

Me: And? Who gives a shit?

Mum:He’ll just drink himself senseless and spend all of our money.

Me: We’ll start the ball rolling, we’ll make sure that can’t happen.

Me: I think you need to see a counsellor, who’s trained to help victims of abuse.

Mum: Oh, I already know all that stuff.

Me: Mum you just gave me the “he needs me, he’d be helpless without me” speech.

Mum: I know, I’ll go and see my counsellor again.

Me: You haven’t been going?

Mum: (outraged) I’ve been working.

And so we go. I have been holding on to the hope that she would leave. I have to try and accept that she never will. The last time I saw my father was nearly a year ago. I was heavily pregnant with Grub. We had just arrived home from the UK and were planning to move into this house the next day. He was drunk, he became enraged and violent. Thank goodness the big kids were with their Dad. He wouldn’t dare touch Beefcake. We managed to get almost all of our things so that we wouldn’t have to go back. A mattress strapped to the top of the car at three in the morning. We forced her to come with us. It wasn’t the first time.

Who knows how many times she has just tried to lock herself in her room and ride it out. Who knows how many more times she will be forced to flee in the middle of the night. Who knows what he might do to her.

The thing is, when she went back after that episode, she was walking on air. When she came to tell me she was taking her things and going back to live with him, she couldn’t keep the smile off of her face. She could go and look after him. She had been bereft of purpose without all of the drama that rages in her life.

Beefcake commented to me yesterday that in the last couple of years he has come to see her as soulless. It’s true. She is all facade. She is an empty and impenetrable shell. A veneer of happy life and happy marriage to most people. I feel sick to be in the room with her now, now that I have decided I won’t tow the line and pretend along with her.

I got another drunken 3am email from my father yesterday. Patchouli! called me in the morning to let me know so that Beefcake could get rid of it before I had to see it. Her partner had deleted hers. We don’t read them. Beefcake confirmed that it was much the same as usual, stuff about how horrible my mother is, about how he wants to tell his side of the story because she has clearly poisoned us against him.

This is old ground. I have been at this place with my mother before. Back and forth we go. Only now I can feel myself coming to the point where something will break. I don’t know how long it will be before I will have to just sever all ties to her. I don’t want to do that. To be all alone in the world without a parent, even one with no nurturing to give. Despite all that she has done in the last year I have kept the lines of communication open.

I don’t want to blame her for his misconduct. She is a victim too. I know.

Self preservation though, surely that matters?