Category: Uncategorized

Morning all!

Phew, seems I have nominated for a Blog award, thanks to my Mom, my Dad…  Just kidding, thanks Adele!  Clearly writing about our crazy family is entertaining :-).  If you agree, please go ahead and click on my brand new badge!!

Book club last night was really amazing, now I know why I missed it so much!  I only managed to spill my red wine once thank goodness.  Oh, and the books were good too.

Will pop in again later when I am officially single parent for the first of 4 nights, hope everyone has a great day!

I am about to become a proud participant and member of a Book club for the first time since before having twins!   Deblet and Tertia kindly invited me to join their new book club and our first meeting is tonight.

If you visit here often you’ll know that I don’t like reading, I LOVE reading.  I’ll read almost anything, so I’m very happy to be joining the ranks of the Liberated Moms That Go To Bookclub.  It all sounds very grown-up, doesn’t it?  Snort.

I’m quite nervous.  Will the other girls like me?  Should I wear heels or ugg boots?  Which book should I take to this new venture so I am viewed as a serious reader?  Do I WANT to be viewed as a serious reader or a wine guzzling, fun-loving Mom? 

Earlier I was thinking back at the various book clubs I have been a member of, and if memory serves there were about 3:

Book club 1:  What books?  Where’s the wine?  (I was single at the time)

Book club 2:  Oh look, there’s 30 of us, lets’ drink wine! (just before and just after I got married) shudder.

Book club 3: My favourite (so far of course!).  A while before we had Daniel and up to when Daniel was a few months old.  I loved, loved, loved this book club.  Some very special friends and that is where I got Mignon’s name from.  We were quite organised (thanks to that Mignon!) and we actually discussed the books we read. 

Wish me well, hope everyone has a lovely evening!

ps: Have I mentioned hubby is going away on some boys thing for 4 days tomorrow?  gulp.

Lately we have been worried about money.  We aren’t destitute, but things have been rather tight.  And we know that change is on the horizon, but when you need to pay the bills this month and start worrying about where the money will come from next month it gets a bit tough on the nerves.

To my husband’s credit he has not once become ratty or moody or snappy about it.  He just always asks how much, we look between our bank accounts and somehow come up with it.

But I have been losing sleep.  A lot of sleep.  For the first time in my life I suffer from insomnia, something I could never understand in other people.  I lie in bed and read for hours and then, when I switch the light off and close my eyes I start thinking.  And then I’m wide awake and pissed off.  A very, very dis-empowering and useless emotion to have at 02h00 in the morning, let me tell you.

I have been taking some homeopathic stuff that has been helping thank goodness and trying to take care of what needs to be done.  But I have been feeling unmotivated and disorganised.  And a little desperate.  Which translated to a lot of comfort food.

I decided to break the cycle and have addressed some of the stuff, but I didn’t realise that my Dad was picking up on so much of my angst until he asked if he could pop around today.  And proceeded to sit me down and talk me through it and ask where he can help.  And that he cannot bear seeing me look so stressed out.  Of course there were many, many tears and high drama.

Because you grow up and you think you have to be grown up and have it all together and that your parents are no longer responsible for you or your well being.  And I’ve always been the ‘low maintenance’ child, so I never want to burden my folks with my crap.

But I am so very grateful he came and I am so lucky to have him as my Dad.  I needed to have a little meltdown in order to move forward I think.

So, here’s to better days!

We finally found a live-in domestic that was meant to move in today, but didn’t pitch this morning.  I think she fired us after her first few trial days.  So, back to square one and we are literally up shit creek. Weirdly enough I am quite calm about it, having my house to myself is quite nice.  Messy, but nice.

I do suspect the novelty will wear off quite quickly though, especially as hubby goes away on Thursday for 4 days and I am looking after our 3 precious children.  All by myself.  24/7. 

In my travels through the house this morning I came across a small fish tank we bought Daniel for his birthday that briefly had some fish in and decided to re-arrange his room, get new fish and put the tank in his room.

Well.  I went to collect him a little earlier from school so we could buy him some fish, thinking it would be such a nice little outing for us.  And made the mistake of telling him.  Because clearly the pet shop in Tygervalley no longer sells fish.  And there was no time to drive to another pet shop.  So I tried to convince him that we could collect the ‘sussies’ and then I would take him, but he was inconsoleable.  After much begging he eventually calmed down and off we went. (after witnessing quite a hectic road rage scene in the parking lot)

We dropped the girls off with Dad and off we went and he chose a black, a yellow and a orange/white goldfish.  And of course it was chaos when we got home.  It almost ended in tears when I heard hubby yelling like mad for me to come help and there was Daniel, sopping wet.  He had tried to lift the container off the kitchen counter and spilled a whole lot of water all over himself.  His little face!  Mixture of shock and horror, poor boy.

The tank is now installed in his room after much discussion about what the fish were saying and whether they have eaten enough and how well they will sleep tonight.

What was I thinking?

Before I get into my little ‘blergh’ I just want to say THANK YOU to Cams that convinced me to go to an Inspirational Women’s event yesterday. it was a wonderful day out just with a bunch a gals, just what I needed!

I had quite a crappy day on Friday, without going into too much detail it started off with me ending up in front of the mirror at Pilates. I hate being in front of a mirror and really cannot bear to look at myself these days at the best of times, much less whilst being red-faced in the Pilates Plank position.  With all my chins and a wonderful side view of my fat stomach almost dragging on the floor.  (are you getting the undertone of self loathing yet?)

I have not lost the baby weight.  In fact I keep losing some of the baby weight and then gaining that and more back.  And not on crash diets either.  I just comfort eat for various reasons and logically I know what the problem is and what I need to change.  But that is just so much like hard work.  And it would mean that I would need to face up to some other unpleasant realities such as not prioritising my life properly and generally feeling stretched and stressed and needing my life to stabilise just a little. 

As a first step in sorting my life out I have been meaning to buy a bathroom scale for months and finally bought one today.  So I get home and skirted around it for a while, moving it from room to room.  Eventually I decide to take it out the box and set it up on the bathroom floor.  So I thought I would climb on to see if it works.  And leopard crawled into the bathroom, stealthily approaching it, hoping it would treat me kindly.   

Boy, does it work.  Pardon my French, but feck, does it work.  I staggered, pale-faced and shocked into the kitchen and told hubby (without mentioning the actual large number of course).  Far enough it was the middle of the day etc etc etc, but it was BAAAAD.  And I can’t exactly say that muscle (from Pilates) weighs THAT much more than fat..

So, my 10 year wedding anniversary is at the end of September and my 20 year school reunion is mid-October.  I had better get my ass into gear.  I certainly can not look the way I do now in 2 months’ time!

Someone was tweeting about Polish movie posters this morning and I clicked on the link.  And so many memories from my London days back in the 90’s (I could say the previous Century hey?) came flooding back.

There was a guy at the Camden market that used to sell these posters and below is one that I bought that left my hands (Fiddler on the roof).  I used to love lying in bed looking at it.  I thought that maybe getting older would make me less sentimental, but clearly, my taste hasn’t changed at all, I still love it and my heart was broken when I lost it.

Here is a link to the website, go and look and let me know what you think!

Another one of my favoutire pictures is this one by Gustav Caillebotte, also from London days.  An old friend dragged me off to an exhibition of his works and I fell in love with this one.  I still have a poster of this.

I am by no means an art boffin, but good art is like good music, you never get tired of it!

What are your favourite pictures?

I went to a cheese and wine (without the ‘h’) last night and it was the first time in ages I

1.  went out by myself

2.  didn’t feel pressurised to go home at 8h30 pm

3.  had a fantastic time

It was lovely to be sitting in a group of women just talking and sharing our life stories and laughing and joking.

Inevitably the topic turned to blogging and the question I am always asked is why I blog, and my standard answer is that I wanted to create a record of my family life, warts and all. 

But, in talking about this last night I also realised that, somewhere along the line, it has evolved into a bit of an addiction and a de-stressing mechanism.  I realised that I need to have my daily ‘fix’ (which I missed yesterday!)

But most importantly, I realised that this blogging community has helped me immensely in the almost 2 years I have been here and that I cannot imagine my life without it.  I have met some of the most amazing people here and I am very grateful and blessed!

Being here is like sitting in a group of women and talking and sharing and laughing and joking when it hasn’t been possible to leave my house because my children needed me.

And this is very, very special.  Thanks to each and every one of you that read and/or comment and/or keep coming back.  It makes it even more special to me!

And just as a final reminder, here a pic of our 3 hooligans this morning:  (yes, I know, the dummies have to go, no they don’t leave their beds with them normally)

I was interviewing someone today that used to work at a company that was a fond client of mine for many years.  We ended up talking about people that are still there and how they are doing.  And as it turns out, 2 women I know quite well are currently going through chemotherapy as they have breast-cancer.

We have all been touched by cancer in some way, my own Mom had cancer and some of our fellow blogger friends here are breast cancer survivors, but this was just uncomfortably close to home for me.

On the way home I took some time to work through my feelings about this and about my own breasts.  I’m forever saying how terrible they look after breastfeeding 3 children and how much I want a boob job.  Most mornings I stand in front of the mirror and lift my arms so I can see them restored to their former perky self for just a few seconds.  Whenever my dear, dear husband comments on how great they are I put them down and cringe a little inside at the thought of what they look like now.

But then, I thought, I should be proud of what they look like.  Because I still have them. And they supplied milk for my 3 babies.  And my husband still likes them.  Stretchmarks and all.

So, tonight I commit to be gentler with myself as we are, after all, our own worst critics. 

I took the girls off to the homeopath today to sort out the snots.  Granted, it was just before their afternoon nap so I should have known better.  But still.

For very sick children they appeared very, well, un-sick.  We arrived and had to wait a few minutes.  They completely destroyed the waiting room and managed to unpack several puzzles, books and a box of blocks.  And they were loud, so very very loud. 

We then venture down the passage with much fanfare, past other offices, and into her office.  Of course we had to talk in shorthand as the following then happened:

Isabel pushed a chair up to the examining table and she and Mignon proceeded to climb on.  So, whilst I’m trying to explain how closed up Isabel’s chest and how terribly sick she is, she and her sister is jumping up and down performing a psyched up rendition of some unidentifiable nursery song.  They then sat still for 30 seconds each to be examined and very politely opened up their mouths.

Then came the loo run.  (Taking into consideration that I was still trying to have a conversation with the doctor).  Isabel pushed the chair up to the door, opened it and proclaimed that she needs to wee.  With Mignon hot on her heels and me in pursuit we go in search of a toilet.  With a continued rah-rah and me sshhhing.

With empty bladders and pee wiped off the toilet seat after negotiation about who gets to roll down the toilet paper, we return to the office to continue the consultation.  Mignon then decides that she needs to climb on this wonky little chair she promptly fell off.  I barely managed to catch her as Isabel was doing her best limpet impersonation at the time.

And THEN Mignon decides ‘Poefie Mamme, poefie!!” AND off we went again, action replay of fanfare and all and loud discussion about smelly poo and panties and much disagreement about who gets to roll down the toilet paper.  And inspection of Mignon’s bum.

Back we went into the office.  We collected the medicine and I couldn’t wait to leave, but eventually had to drag them out of there as they each wanted to carry a glass bottle, which Mignon promptly dropped on the floor.  So, I took the bottles, marched down the passage with my head held high, sunglasses firmly in place, followed by two little ladies yelling “Mamma, hou, Mamma hou!!’

Luckily we know our doctor quite well as I think any one else would not have let us back in.  I think they have a special note up that we can only go there at lunchtime or after hours after today.

God help us, the terrible twos are upon us.

Snot snot and more snot.  Oh, and fever.  And coughing.  I can’t remember how long it has been since I worked a full week, including having survived the SWC.

Right, little whinge out the way.

I don’t know how many of you watch Idols, but tonight, in the 30 seconds I managed to watch, they had a contestant with a Blond wig.  Daniel sees her and yells ‘Mamma, dis Hannah Montana!’  He’s never even watched the programme, don’t know where he gets it from!

Herewith some pics of the kids this morning.  I’m posting the first one because I love the way Isabel is sitting with her legs crossed, like a real little lady. 

First pic of the 3 of them together in ages, and of course they are all looking away.  I still like it though.  Mignon on the right, her top is pink and Isabel’s is white.