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. ;-)

With a little help from my friends

I have had a great day today visiting my pal from Uni, Charlotte.  I got to thinking on the way home about friends and what keeps you linked with people over the years, even though you don't see each other that often?  I have no doubt, that if she lived down the road then we would be in and out of each other's kitchens drinking tea all the time, but she doesn't, so it could easily be a year before I see her again.  At one point in my life, this would have made me really sad but nowadays it makes me happy as I don't think we will ever lose touch.  So what is it that binds you to some people and not others?  Shared values I have realised the older I get.  I cannot hang around with people (and their kids) if we do not hit parenting from the same-ish angle.  The number of times Zak has been told off for stuff he hasn't really been doing, to make a point to some vacant looking mother whose child is running riot.  That is a whole other blog post however, and one I am sure I have already done!  Charlotte and I used to live together at Uni too and there is something about having lived with somebody (if you got on that is!) that gives you a bond as you were the person who was there every single day, warts and all.  It makes me laugh that when I see my other Uni friends that I lived with, (Clare and Lyns), we always end up getting into bed together in our pyjamas to chat in the mornings as we used to do when we were 20. When you are in the midst of a consuming friendship you can't imagine not telling that person every last thing you are doing but as you move on you realise that you can actually live your day-to-day life without them.

Shelley has always laughed at the fact that I have a new bezzie every five minutes and also that I feel the need to classify my friends in my head.  She finds it hilarious that if questioned, (by her - always - who else gives a fuck?!), I can come up immediately with a current Top 3, Top 10, Top 20 list.  Not quite sure why it's so surprising; I had a colour-coded list of boyfriends as I went through them as a teenager classified into 'I dumped him', 'he dumped me', 'mutual amicable split'.  Don't even get me started on the point allocated spreadsheet I had to decide about our #seriouslynevergoingtohappennow third child.  There was a positive and a negative column with a range of 1 - 3 points given for each consideration.  E.g. a big negative three pointer was 'having to put sun cream on three children'.  Serious stuff.  I'm laughing on the other side of my face since Shelley got her new best-baby-mummy-mate, and just in case you ever meet her, we really don't like her by the way. ;-)

Then you have your nearest and dearest mates that decide to up and head off to sunnier climes.  They are mainly both called Jenny.  Again, it seemed like the end of the world  at the time, but you adjust and it is then ridiculously exciting when they come back to visit.

You do end up sharing your day-to-day tribulations with work colleagues.  Although I have made some lifelong friends through work, it always surprises me when you can end up not speaking to people quite easily ever again when for such a long time previously you knew every intimate intricacy of their lives.  It proves we are all fickle creatures at heart really.

Stu gets cross when I get back from Sam's house and she phones me for an hour later on that evening.  (I'm still not a big phone user but she knows that I just won't answer if I'm not in the mood - i.e. drunk.)  I was saying to her the other day that there are some people who don't seem to need the relationship that she and I have where we know pretty much every little mundane detail of each other's dull lives.  'Ah', said she with wisdom in her voice, 'those are women who have husbands that want to sit down and talk to them'.  Perish the thought.

Outnumbered

I announced to my husband this week that if I didn't find a job by Christmas-time-ish, I wanted to have a third baby.  I've never seen anyone's beard go pale before, but it was quite an interesting phenomenon.  Poor Stu.  The worst thing is, that for me it was quite a flippant comment.  It is early days for job-hunting for September in the teaching profession and I have plenty of time as yet to get a job for next academic year.  Also, surely I need to make a few important decisions first with regard to whether I want to be a full-time HOD or HOY or a part-time teacher?  Stu began googling incessantly however and was grilling me as to how I should sign up to teacher recruitment agencies.

If I don't end up getting a job then the house is going to be pretty busy with both of us in it full-time.  It's taken us 18 months to shake down to Stu working from home without us killing each other.  He has had to conduct webinars to a background of hoovering and howling children and I have had to invent interesting school-holiday days out for kids, for free, in the pouring rain.  No easy feat for either of us.

There are benefits.  One of us takes the kids to school every day even though we both work.  It's lucky really as Sebi would miss Breakfast Club before school as most days I'm dragging him begrudgingly from his bed by his big toe at nearly 7.45am.  Zak is quite keen on the sound of Breakfast Club but only because he thinks he would have his breakfast at home and then top up with another one at club half an hour later.  This is the child that isn't tending to have any time playing out at lunchtimes now that he has hit the Juniors and is allowed to go back for school-dinner-seconds...

My husband also has now learnt to use the toilet downstairs if I've just cleaned upstairs and vice-versa.  The poor man does try everything in his power not to get under my feet and irritate me but unfortunately for him I seem to have the patience and the tolerance of a wasp in a jam jar.  I now know on my days off that if I open the fridge at lunchtime and let out a little sigh, he tends to take me up to Molens for a sarnie.  What a great chap - I definitely don't deserve him.

So, chucking a baby into the equation is probably not the best idea.  Our weekday house is busy enough as it is.  I was offered £100 this week to do a champagne tasting; with me doing as much 'tasting' as the potential customer.  Dream.  Job.  I need to be very, very nice to the lady concerned in the run up to next summer as one or two of those a week could be all I need to keep me interested.  Definitely what a Masters in Drama in Education should lead into I think...

On the Weekly Wagon

I've given up boozing in the week and I'm rather proud of myself.  I know that for many of you this is a lifestyle change that you will have made a long, long time before the age of 37 but for me it is a new found trick so bear with me.

Let's clarify 'week' here too.  Obviously I'm a massive boozer so five days off just wouldn't work for me.  I do not see how you can't count either Friday or Sunday as not being the weekend as it really wouldn't be fair to either of them.  So, by 'week', I actually mean four days,  I don't want to sell myself short however so I must also elucidate by saying that it is four days and FOUR NIGHTS.  On the trot.  Over 100 consecutive hours each week, (well two so far), of no drinking.  Hooray for me.

I feel pretty great.  I know it's not rocket science but my brain seems more engaged at work, my body feels healthier and I am sleeping fantastically well.  I've spent years telling people that I always have to get up in the middle of the night for a wee since I had the kids.  Over the last fortnight I have discovered that it is actually wine in my bladder that has got me up at night rather than ancient childbirth sagging.  Incredible.

I have been sitting at home all this time though, I haven't, as yet, been out anywhere during the week.  I'm not completely convinced that this non-alcoholic zeal will last through a night at the theatre next week, or in fact any time that I actually talk to people other than my husband, but that's OK.  I think I've probably already added about another ten years onto my life over the last couple of weeks, and so we are heading, finally, in the correct direction.

In other news, Stuart had to go on a speed awareness course this week and I was interested to see how his attitude changed on his return.  I have spoken to a lot of people who have done these courses and have come back completely converted to the belief in speed limits.  Surely not my husband?  I don't have a problem with speed limits but he tends to be a bit of a boy racer.  Probably because when all of his peers were boy racing back in the day, he was on the bus.  Anyway, although it may have slowed him down slightly I'm pleased to say he is not evangelising about the danger of our roads to anyone who will listen.  One newly converted smug bastard in our house is more than enough at the moment.