I’ve written a few posts this week but when it came time to take the big leap and press the publish button I just, well, couldn’t.

It feels as though I should have something monumental to say.

This was the week that saw me finally tell my mother that I would not be around for her anymore. I just reached the end of my tether.

It should have been a big drama. It should have created big emotional turmoil for me. Or something.

I do feel a quiet kind of sadness that comes from knowing what our relationship has come to but I know. I know that it is what needs to be right now. Maybe not forever but for now.

So I haven’t been able to blog anything this week. Just because.

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Yesterday was blood test/x-ray day. They took two bajillion viles of blood (they were fasting bloods I might add so I was already dizzy prior to the event) and tried to peer under my skin from all sorts of angles. The x-rays were just of my hands and wrists for the moment. They hurt very badly these days – meaning I literally can’t scratch myself. My hands being as they are was the deciding factor in getting a doctor to pay attention, I think. There are days when it is extremely painful to type.

It is great knowing that we might finally get some answers to what the heck is actually going on with my stupid bod. On the other hand I am terrified that they will not find anything. If they don’t find anything I don’t know what I will do.

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We were waiting in the car today, Grub, Pudding and I. Beefcake had to just whiz into the bank for a minute. Pudding spied a shaft of light  refracted through some glass. The rainbow it created on my car seat excited him, as rainbows always do.

Pudding: “It’s a rainbow Mummy, look, look!”

Me: “Ooh yes that’s lovely”

Pudding: “Muuuum, you’re not looking at it, look at it now, it’s changing, look, LOOOOOk!!!”

Me: “Yes Pudding, it’s a lovely rainbow.”

Pudding: “Mummy, is there a unicorn buried in your chair?”

Me: “????, ummmm, is there a unicorn buried in my chair?”

Pudding: “Yes, they bury gold in there, is he in there burying the gold under the rainbow in your chair?”

Beefcake now back: “You mean a leprachaun?”

Pudding: “Yeeeess (much eye rolling), a lepacon. Mummy is he IN YOUR CHAIR??!”

Me: “Ah yes, there’s a leprachaun buried in my chair, Pudding.”

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Both kids have had a slight temp again the last couple of days. Grub’s temp was 40 degrees when I got her out of bed after her nap.

I’m really hoping that’s all over tomorrow.

Now it’s time for a glass of wine. Oh yes indeed.

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Ooh perhaps you can help- female 40th birthday presents. I have a friend’s party to go to on Saturday and I am a terrible gift buyer. Any suggestions?

I don’t know if you can tell that from reading what I write here, can you? I suppose I just sometimes talk before I think. Also, I am not a natural liar. That is, I am a terrible liar but it goes further than that. Even the unsaid feels like a lie to me. If there is anything of weight (actually often things that are of no consequence at all) that remains unsaid I feel I can’t allow people to be mislead. It means I am painfully honest, which is not a bad thing. It makes for good open relation ships mostly, my husband and friends know that they can trust me, trust what I say, because even if I try to lie, it doesn’t really work.

Take for example my encounter yesterday with the former owners of our house.

Just as we had pulled out of our street I saw them drive past us and turn into our street. Thinking that they were perhaps trying to contact us we decided to turn around and drive home to check.

We met them on the road and both stopped our cars to have a chat. We talked about things that we had done to the house. They were full of questions and wanted to hear all about it. They seem to have a very strong emotional connection to the house and I think they are a bit sad that they no longer live here.

It is here that I must add that, the day we took ownership of the house, they came around to collect some final property and have a chat. The owner went on and on about how she loved the great big old hills hoist. She said she would take it with her if she could. I knew then that we had plans to remove it but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings by saying that we didn’t like it*.

We had talked about contacting her to ask if she would like it when we got around to taking it out. We definitely intended to. We did. The thing is, when we  actually came to pulling it out we just kinda forgot. We had the scrap metal guy coming to collect things the next day and we wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to be hanging around the yard for weeks at some point so we ripped it out a bit earlier than planned.

Fast forward to the car yesterday. There I am sitting in the car thinking “Don’t say anything about the clothesline, don’t say anything about the clothesline, don’t say anything about the clothesline, don’t say anything about the clothesline, don’t say anything about the clothesline”.

The conversation finished and I was so pleased. I managed not to say anything. I knew she would have been upset.

It wasn’t until a good five minutes later that I realised I had told her. I talked all about where we would put the “new clothesline”. She had looked upset, I just didn’t really follow what was happening because I am actually a social moron.

I was kicking myself. I felt so silly but then I thought, you know what? It’s MY house. Being worried about this is going to extremes in thinking about the feelings of others. It’s my clothesline.

Now I don’t feel guilty at all. Hardly. At. All.

But next time we see her – I’m hiding.

*Exception: I can omit things and bend the truth if it protects someone’s feelings and there is no need to be truthful that overrides this. Geez, I am not a total social moron.

• Grub has had a fever for the past 24 hours. It was over 39 degrees last night. She hasn’t been as hot today but she is still quite warm and out of sorts, no particular symptoms just off colour and hot. Poor little possum. I have been convinced that we picked up something deadly during our recent outing to the ER. Probably not though.
• We had a scrap metal dealer come this morning and take away the sheets of corrugated iron from the laundry/shed. I decided it would be a wasted opportunity to have someone come and not get rid of the old Hills Hoist. It’s probably been in the backyard for about fifty years and I believe that it didn’t want to relinquish it’s position in the garden without a fight. There was concrete a metre deep around the pole. It was installed properly, that’s for sure! We have removed one of these from each of the houses we have owned. It’s a bit sad because it has been part of the house for so long but they take up soooooooo much room and they are always slap bang in the middle of the yard. Next week we will get one that goes up against the fence. The yard looks much more open and large.
• I have been teary and stressed for the last few days. A cousin of mine (who is a very close friend) is over from London. I won’t go into the boring details but it hasn’t been very fun. Despite making plans a few times she seems unable to make the time to spend with me. There have also been a number of other extended family events that I have been excluded from. It always hurts a bit to be excluded from things but what makes this worse is that my abusive, alcoholic father has been invited to these events. My cousin cancelled dinner with me tonight to have dinner with my parents. Despite claiming that they are separated (for more than 18 months, but living in the same house) my mother is parading him around to all these events thereby ensuring that I am excluded. I would never have thought that my extended family would behave this way, that they would choose to have him around over me. In my self-pitying wallow I feel  very insignificant. I am trying not to be hurt but I just am. I am angry and I am hurt. Why would my mother do this? She is blind to the needs of everyone except her husband. She won’t attend my children’s birthdays or spend time at my house for fear of “hurting his feelings”. I am ashamed to say that I have tolerated this behaviour a fair bit so that I had her in my life in some way. I know I have said this before but I am really done.
• Beefcake is looking for a new job. It has been so wonderful to have him working at home with us for – ooh, nearly two years now but it can’t go on forever. He is paid in pounds which means we are at the mercy of the exchange rate. Up until now this hasn’t been a problem but at the moment the Aussie dollar is very strong and it is just killing us. Things are very tight and we just have to do something about it. Here’s hoping he finds something soon.
• The pelvis is not too bad. I still have not had all of my xrays etc done (see re exchange rate above) but everything is going ok. I even managed to walk the Poss to school this morning, which I was quite pleased with.
• Eeegads, having just read through this it’s a good thing that nobody comes here to be entertained. That is one boring post. I shall do better tomorrow but since this is written I’m going to press publish, ok?

Right. I didn’t post yesterday, which means we are now even further behind in the blogging schedule than before. I had a fantastic excuse though. Really. We were in the ER until around 10:30 with Pudding. Severe teeth to lip/chin/general face area. It turns out he is fine and nothing was needed but it looked pretty extreme to begin with. Suffice it to say I was totally shattered after that little jaunt and did not feel in the mood for blogging. I know, shame on me.

On saturday we got to do an exciting bit of demolition in the back yard. The laundry/shed that had lately become a snake haven was destroyed.

It was some of the best fun I’ve had in a while actually, if a little bit disgusting. A colony of ants had infested the structure, every nook and cranny was crammed with them and, as it turned out, their eggs. Just a tad revoulting I must say. So, without further ado. Here are the pictures, I know you’ve been hanging on the edge of your seats to see them.

The laundry/shed before demolition.

This is what happens when you are married to someone who is actually nine years old. Why bother actually emptying the laundry before demolishing it, simply begin kicking (yes I said kicking) the walls out as soon as you get outside because you can’t contain your boyish glee at being able to wreck something. Moron.

We pulled off some of the corrugated iron wall sheets and then it was time to tackle the jasmine, which I estimate had been growing on the roof for some decades. Apart from the large amounts of living plant matter, there was a layer of dead, then a layer of general detritus (bones, snail shells etc) that was infested with slaters, then a kind of mat of root matter and soil. Lovely. When I finally got down to the roof sheets and managed to lift them I was greeted by thousands of ant eggs laid between the sheets. I didn’t take a photo. You should thank me.  As you can see, while I was up a ladder Pudding was doing important work with secateurs and pliers. Not dangerous at all.

Beefcake about to attack the frame. It was at this point that we became most relieved that neither of us had tried to climb on the roof. You see, the roof timbers were each held to the uprights with a single nail. When you add to that the fact that the upright posts were rotten and simply fell over with a slight push when freed from the structure you have one very unsound structure. It was actually the sheets of corrugated iron that were providing the structural integrity. Without them it began to fall down of it’s own accord straight away. Made us rather glad we had decided to bash it apart.

In honour of Katyboo, here I am “ittin’ it wiv an’ ‘ammer”.

And finally. The tongue and groove wall will be painted, we will attach the new clothesline to it. I have planted herbs in the old laundry trough. It has opened up the whole yard but you know what? Even if it hadn’t looked good once we were finished – I still would have happily done the days work. The satisfaction you get from knocking something like that down is second to none! My pelvis doesn’t think so  but I’ve given up caring.

I have been so bloody tired all weekend.

I am still tired. I am here and awake only by virtue of strategically placed matchsticks under my eyelids.

I have many a bloggable topic. I am saddened that I have missed great blogging opportunities as I even have photos to enhance your blog-reading experience.

So, here’s what we’ll do. I shall blog today about Pudding’s first day of Kindy and then tomorrow we will pretend that is Saturday and we’ll do Saturday’s post and then on Wednesday I shall blog about today’s other adventures and we shall pretend that it is Monday again. Yes??

Good.

Well, despite my fears about Pudding’s lielyhood of freaking out at  being left at Kindy and yesterday’s self haircutting disaster (just don’t ask, don’t ask). All went spectacularly well. He spent the morning asking us every 16 seconds if it was time to go, which I thought was a good sign. He then peed his pants because he was watching television and didn’t want to get up. I took that as a very bad sign. Never mind, after he was cleaned up we had some lunch and then it really was time to leave. When we walked into the yard his teacher was there to greet him and introduce herself. We put away his bag and marked his name off on the attendance poster. He was calm and happy. Then the teacher asked if he would like to do a painting. Why yes, yes he would. And then it happened.

Two little words.

“Bye bye”

We looked at each other.

Did he just tell us to leave?

We told the teacher that, as we’d been given our marching orders, we thought it best to scuttle off.

We left.

When we picked him up this afternoon the teacher said he had been fine.

Talk about getting all worked up over nothing.

It was so stress free I didn’t even have a chance to get emotional.

It was a bit different for Beefcake. He and Pudding are extraordinarily close and there may have been  something caught in Beefy’s eye when I said that Pudding would be okay.

So, all was well. Kindy is great. I’ll just leave you with this shot of Pudding at group time just before kindy finished.

P.S. He’s actually a trendsetter. The photo I took immediately after this one shows a girl in front of him standing up with her finger up her nose but ther was no way to crop it to make her less identifiable so I couldn’t post it. Oh well, use your imaginations.

P.P.S. If you look closely you can see that one section on the side of his head is very closely cropped in a rather jagged way. Bloody kid.

Despite two excruciating and rather humiliating (shirt off/mummy tummy) visits to the physio this week the neck is still not fabulous.

The physio yesterday said that the muscles were being very resistant to relaxing and stopping their pesky spasming. Bastard muscles.

I can turn my head today though so I am taking that as a sign that things are on the up and up. This is good as the doctor does not want to begin blood tests and things until my neck is better. The sooner we can get the ball rolling on that the better.

On the upside, my bowels had completely ceased to function due to the side-effects of the pain killers, which have been a necessity all week this week. You know what fixes that?? A LARGE portion of dried apricots. LARGE. Thank goodness for that.

It is good that the clog is being sorted. It is good. You see I am having inner turmoil of another sort. Pudding begins kindy on Monday. Monday afternoon, 12:30.

I am beginning to freak out completely. I am not sure that he will cope. He was all for the new dinosaur backpack, drink bottle and lunchbox we bought him today but I’m not convinced actually leaving him at kindy is going to fly. Rhubarb and Poss were both fine when they started kindy. They both turned their backs on me and walked away with barely a backwards glance. The thing is, they had both been in childcare. Rhubarb only occasionally and Poss every week while I was at Uni.

Pudding has never really been away from us. There has been no need for him to be. I am now terrified that Pudding will be that kid. The kid lying on the floor holding onto the leg of my jeans screaming “Muuuuuuuummmmmyyyyyy!!!”.

He can be a bit of an anxious kid. Despite the fact that he LOVES swimming lessons he asks us each morning, as soon as he wakes, if today is swimming day. Not in a lookingforardsoexcited kind of way but more of a tremblyvoicedfearfulandanxious way. He is just a touch obsessive and gets panicy. He even freaks out most weeks if he knows we are driving to swimming. Screaming hysterics kind of freaking out. We’ve taken to lying. We tell him we are going to the shops right up until we step on the ramp that leads to the pool door. At that point he happily goes in (pretty much) and has a fantastic time swimming his little heart out. I do not relish the idea of having to create a new little ritual of lies each time I have to get him ready for kindy.

It is made worse by the fact that I am going through one of my little phases of insomnia. I lie awake running through the traumatic kindy drop off in my mind. In my sleep-starved imaginings it will be awful. I can only hope there are some kick-arse activities to distract him that first day.

I am looking forward to it. For him it will be fantastic. He is ready, he really is. He is ready to broaden his circle of friends and to try new things and to learn and grow. He is ready for the things that kindy can give him. I know this. I am also looking forward to some time alone with Grub, she needs this as well. It will be wonderful to be able to devote some jealousy-free time to her.

It’s going to be wonderful in the long run………..

But if someone could just do Monday for me, I’d really appreciate it.

One day,  I was reading a forum about a topic that was of interest to me at the time but now is not.

One of the other members of the forum happened to advertise their personal blog in a forum post.

I clicked over for a look.

It only took that one personal blog for me to become hooked. It was fantastic!

I have always been a bit of a people watcher. I’m the person who loves all of those dreadful reality shows that people complain about. Reading people’s personal musings amounted to the ultimate in voyeurism.

Pretty soon I was cruising for more blogs to read. It was actually quite difficult to find blogs at first, I didn’t know where to look. Eventually I stumbled across a blog that I liked to read and OHMYGOD they had this thing called a “blogroll”. How convenient! A list of other blogs to lurk around and to read. More blogs than one girl could ever need!

At first I was just remembering the names of the blogs I liked and checking back on a regular basis for new posts. Sometimes I would check several times in one day. Googling the blog names so that I could find them. Pretty soon  I had bookmarked several of my favourite blogs and I’ll admit, it was only a small step from there to a feedreader bulging with subscriptions. I was completely dominated by my addiction. Spending hours each day reading blogs.

It was about this time that I found I sometimes had something I wanted to say to the writer of the blog I was reading. One of those days, my need to make a comment won out against my shyness and need for anonymity. I could interact with people in this “blogosphere”. It only deepened my addiction.

Finally matters came to a head. Beefcake had noticed the obsession that had seized me. He knew he had to do something to help me. I think he considered holding an intervention but instead he chose to tease me. To goad me.

“You should start your own blog” he said, “It’d be fun”

“Naaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh, I’d be too embarassed” I would cry, “Anyway, who would want to read anything I have to say, it would be boring as shit.”

We went on like this for some time before I finally realised that I didn’t care if anybody read it. I realised that nobody would find it unless I wanted them to anyway.

So, on this day, one year ago, I wrote my first blog post.

I have been subjecting the world to my poorly thought out, incoherent ramblings ever since.

My blog really is as boring as shit and I am quite embarrassed by much of it.

BUT

My little blog has given me so much. I have made friends all over the world and close to home that I never would have made without it. It has become such a valuable support for me.

I know I am  lucky to have my blog and all of my wonderful bloggy friends.

Happy blogaversary to me!