The Bottom Line

This blog post may refer, however tastefully, (if that is possible), to the inner workings of my gut.  Male friends of mine, or those of a more sensitive disposition, may choose at this point to skip this particular post and with my complete blessing and encouragement.  ;-)

I feel better today than I have done since the beginning of November and have possibly just got through a couple of the most stressful days of my life.  The 'piles' issue I referred to in a previous post did not end up being piles but instead is some form of inflammatory bowel disease called proctitis.  For goodness sake don't Google it, as Google then accuses you of being a serial bum shagger with an STD.  (No, that is not true.)

Anyway, it is all treatable and controllable; happy days.  If only I didn't have such an active imagination, which unfortunately I have.  The problem with all forms of IBD is that it completely mimics the symptoms of bowel cancer.  My rational head is fully aware that bowel cancer is pretty much unheard of in people under the age of 40 (yes, Martin Russel, I am).  However, when Googling on your phone at 3am in the morning it is totally possible to convince yourself otherwise.  I have been a complete mess and hiding it well, apart from to my nearest and dearest who have greatly suffered along with me.

It is incredible how an intelligent, relatively sane, human being can overnight become a victim of their own Googling, pathetic self-diagnoses.  I am pretty convincing though, even to myself.  Sam told me on the phone tonight that she has been coming off the phone to me each time telling me to pull myself together and that I'm fine and then crying on her husband over the fact I might be dying.  It's catching.  I am bloody convincing.

Zoe and I have done some black humour counselling sessions in our office.  Kyl is the only man in our department and we have stopped talking on a number of occasions when he has entered the office.  We fed him the absolute bare minimum information about the situation so that he didn't get paranoid about our secret squirrel conversations and the poor man ran scared as soon as he possibly could.  I texted him tonight: 'All good, not dying' and got the reply: 'Ah, that's nice'.  It's as deep as the two of us ever need to go into that kind of discussion.

But this week, I had this procedure today, proceeded by my first ever Head of Department interview yesterday.  To say I look like shit is an understatement and I am inhaling a bottle of wine ready to have passed out by 9pm tonight.  I think I may actually sleep properly for the first time in two months.  I celebrated last night in style when I got the job but all the time with the cloud hanging over me that it was such a shame I was a professional success when I knew really I would have to phone the Head tomorrow and tell him that I couldn't accept the job after all due to my speedily-declining ill-health.  For such an optimist I do a good line in scary black clouds.  Maybe I tempted fate through through all this doom and gloom imagination?  Maybe I just need to get a little more statistical awareness?  Or maybe, as Shelley suggested today, after the week I've had, I should really go and buy a lottery ticket.

All's well that ends well.  High on gas and air this afternoon I do remember telling the consultant that I didn't want a copy of the picture of the inside of my bowel for the family album.  He looked at me as if I was a complete cock.  He was right.  However, I'm a completely alive cock, with a fabulous new job and a rejuvenated attitude towards the insignificant trials and tribulations of everyday, happy, mundane life.  Cheers.  :-) xx

When they were very young...

Stu and I had a discussion this weekend about whether we think we will miss these days with the kids when they are teenagers.  My mother is convinced that we will, but on the days when you are in the park at -1 degrees just because you can't bear to be in the house any longer with them laying into each other, it is hard to imagine.

I don't miss them being babies.  I was just looking back nostalgically at some photos thinking how delicious they were, but that doesn't make me want to go back to those days. Buggies, nappies and not being able to leave the house between 12 and 2.30pm made life a little more restrictive than it is these days.

The only thing I am worried about losing is the physical affection.  How long much longer is Sebi going to grab my face ten times a day and kiss me square on the lips.  I would like to think we have a few more years of that but at the same time he may start getting the shit ripped out of him if it goes on too long.  Zak went off kissing about the time he came out of nappies...

Sunday morning swimming is something I long to give up on and will not miss AT ALL.  At least after 18 months, Sebi has started actually moving forward, all be it with a woggle, and has finally released his orang-utan grip from his poor instructor.  We still have the rite-of-passage tears before he gets in each week but even he doesn't look convinced by them any longer - it is purely for my benefit.

Will the things that they say stop being hilarious as they get older?  I think not.  I think we just then fall into the seriously embarrassing-parents-category when they are teenagers and we will simultaneously lose all sense of fashion and humour and decorum.

We've had a hint of Zak's teenage self this week as he has had a week's ban from the ipad for the first time.  With good reason.  He learnt Stu's password over his shoulder, one letter at a time, (the kid has determination and staying power - I'll give him that), and then bought a whole load of new characters for 'Crossy Road'.  Over £60 in total.  Luckily, Stu was in London on a night out when the emails started coming through as I hate to think of the confrontation if him and Zak had been in the same room!  Apple refunded all of the charges after one phone call with no argument, as they said it was 'unusual account activity', which I thought was pretty incredible and above and beyond customer service requirements really.  It is killing Zak not having any screen time and I am revelling in the control-freak potential of it (shock).  Sebi is still getting to play on the computer or the ipad and if Zak can't control himself and leans over to touch it, he loses another day.  At this rate, he may get it back somewhere during the summer of 2017.

Poor old Zak.  The whole world conspires against him.  He has been trying to convince me that his very lovely class teacher was 21 last week.  This lady is fabulous and attractive but most definitely about my age.  I have tried to convince Zak that she is more likely in her late 30s but he is having none of it as 'she wouldn't lie'.  The fact it could have been a joke instead did not wash with him.  Unfortunately for Zak the teacher and I happened to bump into each other after a few glasses of wine had been consumed on Friday night in the pub and I shared this with her.  I think I howled with laughter just a millisecond longer than she did about the fact that she could possibly, actually, be 21 years old.  Oops.

I love them.  They're gorgeous; but they're getting older and I love that too.  I reckon Sebi will fit into his size 4-5 trousers soon.  Zak takes great pleasure in winding me up by telling me that he is going to go to Sandringham instead of Beaumont when he is 11 as 'then he will get an ipad'.  I reckon he has this rose-coloured vision of secondary school where there are lines and lines of Demon-Headmaster-style pupils playing Crossy Road for six and a half hours every day.  He may have a rude shock to his system in a few years, wherever he ends up going.  If only I could be so decisive about my own next secondary move for such solid reasons... ;-)

Je Suis Charlie

I am rather drunk, probably insufficiently-educated and overly-opinionated but the joy of blogging is that you are only your own filter.

I have been pretty addicted to the news over the last few days and today I have been obsessed.  My 101 year old Nana is convinced that bad things didn't happen as much in the olden days and I don't want to disillusion her by just telling her that these days we have immediate access to everything that is going on, always.  I did feel at some points today as if I was watching a Hollywood Blockbuster rather than BBC News - surely this couldn't be actually happening, right now?

There is no sense, no meaning and no rationale behind this obsessive fundamentalism. After Wednesday's horrific events I found myself hoping that the perpetrators would be found (and killed) as soon as possible so that they wouldn't be able to inflict any more damage on the further population.  How wrong is that though?  That I'm actually hoping that some human beings will hunt down other human beings and kill them and that that would be a success.  Am I a product of the recent media coverage or is this just the world we live in now?

I firmly believe that no human life is worth more than any other human life but still I begin to question how any God can let this happen over and over again.  My thoughts tonight lie with the victims, the families of the victims but also with every peace-loving Muslim in France and in the rest of the World.  Within hours, there were reports that Mosques in France had been vandalised by racist graffiti.  Unsurprising, but depressing, nevertheless.

It just feels as is these kind of attacks are happening more and more frequently and there is no way to stop them.  There is no way to combat radicalised individuals who have access to weapons and there is no way of knowing where they will indiscriminately strike next.

Zak thinks I'm crazy when I overreact to his monologues over breakfast about joining the army and it's 'OK Mum as they have the right sort of guns'.  I don't want a 7 year old to have any idea that any sort of guns are OK.  As far as I can see at the moment, guns are generally a key to people losing their lives. Without access to guns today, those terrorists would have struggled more to take the lives of innocent people.

The absolutely worst part of my soul is that I think tonight, at least three more people who want to kill and maim innocent people are dead.  Surely there can't be that many people in the world that want to do harm to other people?  I think there are though.  I didn't even realise this was a major whole world problem until 9/11, along with the majority of the rest of the world I think.

I worry for our future.  I worry for my children and their future.  I feel ultimately more sorry for every non-radicalised Muslim citizen of the western world however, who will be increasingly more segregated, more scrutinised and more ostracised from the countries in which they have chosen to make their home in this new, terrifying and unpredictable world we live in.

The Best Laid Plans

Well, I am officially 'wife of the year'.  Not.  I planned a fabulous birthday surprise holiday trip to Dubai for my husband, shouted about it to anyone who would listen and then got a stomach bug on the day we were due to go and had to cancel the whole thing.  Well done me.

Unfortunately during the traumatic realisation of not going and the dreadful cancellation episode, POOR STU's (and I mean it this time) feelings were slightly overshadowed by our oh-most-self-centred youngest son.

'I WANT TO GO TO DUBAI!'

Various platitudes from Daddy, Granny and Grandad, muffled puking platitudes from Mummy and instructions to 'shut up' from his big brother did absolutely nothing.  Sebi-Woo wanted to go to Dubai and Sebi-Woo made sure we all fucking knew about it.

Once I removed my head from the toilet bowl at some ungodly the hour this morning; we started work on Plan B.  There were various unexciting options in the UK, and some more interesting options abroad.  No further Dubai options however.  We have settled on a week in a smart hotel in Lanzarote where we will definitely have a lovely time, and get some sun, good food and treats, if not quite the luxurious travel options my dear husband was promised.

Zak is happy that (a) there is a plane with food on (b) there is a plane with the ipad on and (c) there is still the promise of ice cream once a day.  Sebi sat and thought about it for a while, whilst we all waited with baited breath and then declared: 'Lanzarote is toes (yep really) better than Dubai anyway.'  He may get some weird looks at Gatwick tomorrow with that rhetoric.

Anyway, we are are packed, unpacked, repacked and ready to go again.  I'm sure my dear parents who couldn't change their flights will have a lovely time during their stopover at the most family-orientated hotel in Dubai without us.  As my Dad so eloquently put as he was lending me the money pre-travel-insurance-claim to book this next trip: 'What more could he want from three days apart from children he didn't know and NYE fireworks.'  :-/

These things happen.  Time to count our blessings and realise really what a win-win situation we do eventually find ourselves in.  We are luckier than most.

Now then, to google if they take United Arab Dirhams anywhere on the island of Lanzarote! x

An Epitaph for the Living

My 100 year old Nana was given two weeks to live two weeks ago as she was diagnosed with pneumonia and is currently getting decidedly better day by day.  Incredible.  She is now saying that this is probably the last year that she will bother writing Christmas cards. Oh the optimism.  We had a few hairy conversations over the last couple of weeks as the doctor decided to speak to Nana about her predicament but as she didn't feel well enough to have her hearing aids in then she couldn't really hear what he was saying.  'It is only a matter of time...' was taken the wrong way and she thought that it was only a matter of time until she got better, whereas that was not what he was insinuating to her at all. Although, having said all that, she is the one who is now decidedly on the mend so maybe it was us that got the wrong end of the stick after all.

It boggles my mind that she was born in 1914.  That when you talk to her about the war she says, 'which one?'  That she could have been a child in Downton Abbey, (which is basically a historical documentary as far as I'm concerned... ;-)). but now, we are more convinced than ever that she will outlive us all.

I very gently broached the subject with my boys last week when she was pretty unwell. There is no skirting around the subject when you have two small boys however.  All my pussy-footing around was a little pointless when Zak summarised it with: 'so she might die then'.  Yep.  That's pretty much it my love.  I know Sebi is one of a kind (to put it diplomatically) but even I was surprised with his response of: 'Lucky Nana'.  I enquired why, in particular, he thought that potentially dying of pneumonia made one lucky and he shot me a scathing glance and said: 'Because then Nana can play with Toby...' (dead cat - whole other story - see blog post from about a year ago) '...and WE still don't have another cat'.  There is no arguing with that logic and I skulked off into another room trying to congratulate myself that I had passed on the news without upsetting anybody but actually rather grateful that no other members of my family had been around to hear it.

So Nana lives to fight another day/week/month/year/decade.  Good for her.  Living under this critical cloud on a daily basis does have then tendency to make even the most sunny of us rather morbid.  I convinced myself I definitely had incurable bowel cancer in the middle of the other night.  In the cold light of day I realised the actual diagnosis was piles which I had contracted via karma for laughing at my dear friend, (who absolutely on the pain of death I apparently cannot name), for the same complaint the week previously.  Oh happy haemorrhoid!  I sent my silly husband off to his 48 hour long Christmas party yesterday with the cheerful cheerio of, 'Have a lovely time and don't die', which he objected to slightly, but I thought was pretty sound advice.  I am soon going to open a bottle of champagne to celebrate (a) all of us being healthy and living, (b) it being Friday and (c) Stuart being somewhere with a free bar and therefore not trying to drink any of my bubbles.  Happy weekend lovely people and cheers to looking on the bright side of life!

Agebook

I got in a bit of a mood with Facebook this week.  It wasn't serious, it didn't last long and we've made it up now but I guess this is normal when you spend so much time together. I'm a big fan of only saying something if you have something worth saying, preferably something that will either amuse other people or have some kind of important relevance to somebody else.  Luckily the majority of my virtual friends are the same, or else they are hidden.  The thing that annoyed me particularly this week was regurgitated photos. Pictures that have already been posted 1/3/5 years ago do not need to be posted again - that is serious self-indulgence.  If somebody wants to re-look at something you have posted then they can have another poke through your photo albums, otherwise, bore off.

Hiding people on Facebook comes with its own perils however.  I was having a conversation with a colleague the other day about their ever-increasing minor health issues.  I was making the appropriate noises and asking the right questions and wondering why they were looking at me curiously.  'But of course you must have picked most of this up from Facebook', they said.  Oh.  Not so much.  I was friends with you for about two days before I hid your boring arse.  Cue serious backtracking and more convincing affirmative noises.

I always think it is time to un-hide somebody and delete them when you cross the road before they see you to avoid speaking to them.  This happened to me last week as I decided that Lady X was probably somebody I could do without in my virtual environment if I couldn't bear to exchange a few pleasantries in the flesh.

I wonder what the future holds for Facebook.  It is definitely the social media of choice for our age group.  I have a few friends who have their teenage children on Facebook which must be a comfort for them.  It is a shame that the aforementioned teenage children never actually post anything on there and use every other social media site to actually communicate with their peers instead!  I rejected a friend request from my father a few years ago on Facebook as I thought I swore too much to be friends with him.  He popped up again the other day though and as I seem slightly less controversial these days I felt sorry for his friendlessness and requested him.  Only to be completely rejected and darked out by his 74 year old self.  Who does he think he is?!

If Facebook continues to be rejected by the generations following ourselves, it does not promise to get any more interesting.  Selfies over the next few decades may start being taken over afternoon tea and at the opera; check-ins could eventually be in a stream of retirement properties and one day we will be flooded with millions of regurgitated pictures of grandchildren.  Damn it.  Here's hoping that some people decide to grow old disgracefully and share it with the virtual masses.  I am sure I will be at the front of that particular queue...

Forget, Forget the 5th and Regret

We have seriously fucked up fireworks night for our kids this year.  I couldn't have managed it worse if I had put all my efforts into making it awful for them.

I had the bright idea a couple of weeks ago to take the boys to Nana's nursing home's fireworks display.  She always wants to see the boys but we don't tend to last more than 10 minutes when we visit her, every couple of months or so, as there is very little for them to do and quite a lot of havoc they can cause in a small-old-person's-bedroom.  I therefore had a rose-coloured vision of her in her wheelchair, great-grandson clasped in each hand, romantically watching the fireworks.  Error.  Sorry to spoil the end of the story but... big, fat, fucking error.

First up, having arranged all this with Nana, she then forgot.  We'll forgive her, she's 100, but the next time I asked her she said that she 'might possibly come down, if we were there, if she felt like it'.  No Nana.  If I'm haring across St. Albans, with children, after work, to watch fireworks at your Nursing Home - you can bloody come down and watch them. She then, pretty quickly, got it.

There was then a seriously complicated arrangement where my Mum had to meet me at my house so that I could leave my drama club as near to 5pm as possible, then leg it to my house, pick up my mother, leg it to childcare, pick up the boys and furthermore leg it across St. Albans in rush hour to make the 5-7pm party at Verulam House.  My mistake I'm sure, but when I arrived at 5.20pm I did not expect the fireworks to have finished.  Arse. Unfortunately I had bigged up the event to the kids quite a lot so that they seemed enthusiastic to Nana.  Cue two small boys welling up with tears standing around Nana's wheelchair.  Fortunately there were enough sausages hanging about for me to plug Zak's mouth shut with food.  Sebi sweetly gave Nana a cuddle and said 'perhaps it is just time you just died'.  Ahhhh - as my Mum caustically mentioned on the way home, 'she obviously hasn't come around to that idea however'!

On the long, tedious, rush-hour, car journey, across St. A again, I spent my time praising the boys for not being little fuckers and telling them it didn't matter as it was all about Saturday at Jersey Farm.  That was the proper fireworks night.

Come Saturday, the weather forecast for early evening was horrendous.  Stu and I had already agreed fireworks in the pouring rain were a no-go so we managed to bribe the children with a take-away curry instead (it's all about the food).  Having sat and watched the rain not appearing all afternoon I was delighted to see the torrential downpours start at about 5pm, only to fricking stop again as I brought the curry home.  The poor unfortunate kids watched the fireworks from a distance from Zak's bedroom, post-curry, only complaining that the neighbours had a tree that got in the way a bit.  I would love to think that Sebi was being sardonic as he thanked me for a lovely fireworks day as I put him to bed tonight; but for once, I think he wasn't...

It's all about next year kiddies.  I may even have to take up Halloween for once, to compensate. ;-)