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?

• 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?

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.

A whirlwind of a weekend, we have had.

Friday evening Pudding got a new and very manly haircut. It is still kind of longish and wild actually but we like it like that. He was so very proud of himself for sitting still (on Beefcake’s lap) while his locks were chopped. He ran  out of the shop afterwards saying

“Did you see how still I satted Mummy??” &  “Did I do a  good job?”

Awwwww. Heart-melty. He well and truly earned his choccie frog.

There was a belated birthday celebration for Poss with her friends. This meant the her room had to be primped and prepared with new cushions and curtains and things. Of course we like to cram a lot in so we had new insulation installed throughout the ceiling Friday and we had shifted all the attic storage into her room. Cue long tedious cleaning and prepping. Still it looked lovely and she was very pleased with her new room.We made cupcakes and decorated them. It was sugar-laden and fantastic. The girls stayed up very, very, very late and Poss has spent the day today at less than her best, slightly snippy with us all.

I have firmly established that no glucose-based products may be stored in the house, whilst I am in this frame of mind. I am unable to restrain myself. It is not safe to be a cake or a lolly in the vicinity of Ali. It is particularly annoying as I had been doing a fantastic job of not eating anything sinful. Today I ate a cupcake and a handfu of m&ms for lunch. Perhaps I should go now to the kitchen and eradicate all sweet treats, that way I won’t be able to indulge tomorrow, I’ll be starting with a clean slate. Okay, I’m obviously deranged. I have asked Rhubarb to hide the from me. Far better idea.

This morning we went to the fabulous Adelaide Showground Farmers Market, which is seriously never disappointing. We have been members for about a year, which affords us a small discount, but even without it it is the most fabulous, fresh produce and it is not expensive. It has such a lovely buzzing energy to it and it always makes me feel really upbeat and filled with energy when we do our weekly fresh food shopping there. I lurve it.

Filled with markety type vigour, I mentioned to Beefcake that I would like him to build the washing machine/dryer cupboard that will allow us to demolish the snakehaveny laundry shed. Earlier in the week I drove past a local salvage yard that had put out some of their less desirable timber etc as “free firewood” on the curb. I sent Beefcake down today and he managed to pick up enough structural pine to build the frame for the cupboard and a door to use for one of the sides. I’m pretty impressed actually at our cheapskate ecostylee laundry cupboard. It cost us about $25 for dynabolts and screws but the rest was completely free. It needs a nice coat of paint (and a roof and a door) to prevent it from looking like a dodgy nightmare DIY monster on the back wall of the house but all in all I am very pleased. Tomorrow we will be able to finish it enough to move the appliances in and start the shed demolition. I heart demolishing stuff and will post a blow by blow. You’ll love it.

Mastitis.

Just to really stick it to me, my right breast is red and swollen and burning hot thanks to a bite I recieved as a parting gift from Grub at bedtime last night.

Because, you know, the universe was worried it hadn’t fucked with me enough.

I feel like death but actually surprisingly cheerful for someone whose right tit looks like exploding.

It’s the sunshine. I can’t stay mad at the universe when the sun is shining.

Also, the Grub, despite feeding like a rabid piranha, is soooooooo cute at the moment.

She came out with a new word today which illustrates just beautifully that she is a [insert surname here].

“Bum”. Clear as a bell, perfectly articulated, on demand.

She’s one of us. Only just 15  months old today and she’s saying “bum”. That’s my girl.

Also, operation sleep-in-own-bed is going well, really well.

So, despite the mastitis, and the pelvis and my thumb and other assorted maladies, fuck you right back universe!

I win.

Yesterday, I peeled a chunk of nail and flesh from my thumb with a vegetable peeler.

It hurt.

Rather a lot actually.

Also, and I should point out here that you are lucky that I am not providing a picture for your pleasure, there was a nice piece of my thumb sitting in the kitchen sink. We all had a good look at it. It was a bit yuck.

It bled and bled and bled.

Being without even one opposable thumb is actually a real pain in the bum.

This morning, as it was still bleeding and my blood soaked bandaid* needed changing, I yelled for my manservant** to attend me.

Whilst I was waiting for him to attend me, I removed the blood encrusted bandaid and this my friends, is where Pudding shared his wisdom:

Pudding: What happened to your thumb? (ah the temperamental memory of a four-year-old)

Me: I peeled it with a vegetable peeler.

Pudding: Well, I haded a bruise. It’s gone now.

Me: Yes, yes you did.

Pudding: Well, you should of goted a man to help you. (Accompanied by look of superior wisdom and paternal care)

Me: I beg your pardon?

Pudding: (shakes head and smiles condescendingly) A man! You needed a man to help you.

Me: (quite pissy by this stage) Ah, no. No darling, girls can do anything that boys can do.

Pudding: (laughs in my face) No! Boys are best at using tools and fixing Mummy. You should have gotted a MAN to help you!

Grrrr. The manservant insists he has not said anything that would have given rise to that sort of thought. He then went on to spout some insolent nonsense about Pudding observing the natural order of things, which earned him a sound beating stern talking to.

I can’t quite believe that came out of Pudding’s mouth. The child knows that I built most of the kitchen cupboards for frag’s sake. He obviously is too young to know what’s good for him!

* Sticking plaster. Beefcake kept heading into Boots in the UK and asking for bandaids only to be met with blank stares. He never did learn.

**Beefcake is a most slovenly, objectionable and quite frankly next to useless man-servant. He is not efficient or organised in any way but beggars with sore pelvises can’t be choosers.