In the last year, I’ve had the four kidney infections, all diagnosed and prescribed for within 24 hours, 3 at the GP, one at an Urgent Care Centre. I’ve also used the Urgent Care Centre for my daughter, who fell and tore the ligaments in her wrist, and for my son, who decided to flare up in some revolting rash on a bank holiday.

My daughter has been treated for tendonitis in her foot, postnasal drip (in her nose :-p), a big allergic reaction, and her damaged wrist. She’s also seen the dentist for a chipped tooth, and for a routine check up. She’s been to the opticians, and had two pairs of glasses in the last year (and had them repaired more times than I can say ‘don’t put your glasses on the floor!’)

My son has had the impetigo seen, he’s had an ear infection treated, and a soreness in his nether regions. He’s also been to the dentist for two checkups.

I’ve had a mole on my leg checked out, my kidney infections treated, blood tests taken, smear tests done, dental work done. This is just what I can remember.

OK, so this is a fairly untypical year for us – we’re actually usually a lot healthier, but I think stress has got to me, and being children has got to them (which has then got to me). But the thing is, we’ve had all that for free.  I can ring up a doctor and say ‘my child is unwell’ and they will see them, sometimes two hours later, and treat them, and prescribe for them, and refer them elsewhere if needed, and I pay not a penny. I can be ill repeatedly (I’d rather not, but there you go) and they will treat me. I do pay for my prescriptions, although I have a low-income exclusion card doodad, but that’s because I’ve lost the card. But still, £7 to get well is OK by me

In my life, I’ve had my adenoids out, I’ve had referrals to consultants, I’ve been seen by obstetricians, I’ve had two midwives at each of my homebirths, I’ve had dental work, medication, been poked, prodded, and my every nook and cranny examined. On a more serious note, they may well have saved the life of my son at 9 weeks old. It’s still a memory I can’t think about without crying, but seeing your child wired up and oxygenated, and tube-fed, even if just for a short time, is scary. But knowing that there were a team of nurses responding to every alarm that went off, and who got him through it, is good.

All this, and I’ve paid not a penny (yes, obviously some of my taxes go towards it, but considering what I’ve used, my tax is pretty low).

No, no reason it's a stormtrooper, but why not!

I like the NHS, very very much. And right now, I also like antibiotics. Here’s to waking up tomorrow without a fever, able to eat, and preferably not feeling like I’ve had a cow kicking me in the kidneys for the last 12 hours. (And yes, I do worry that over-use of antibiotics will create resistant strains and antibiotics will be useless within decades. I do worry about it, to the point where I can’t sleep. But right now, I can’t sleep due to the cow-kicking-kidneys feeling, and cranberry juice just ain’t gonna fix me this time)

My job has been made permanent! My senior manager rang to say that the head of finance had said I was ‘affordable’. Yay! Double yay in fact. My job was a 6 year contract, which ended this July. It was extended until November, as the whole service is being restructured and if my post wasn’t still occupied, it would have been lost as a cost saving. But now, I don’t even have to go through the restructure.

I do feel guilty because everyone else funded in the same way, on the 6 year contract thing, has no job. Just me. Not for any grounds of being better, but because they need the post. So guilt, but also…

—

Random thing 2.

Houses are expensive. Now that I have a permanent job, I want to move. Our nearest secondary school is, quite frankly, cruddy, and while I agonise over being the kind of person who moves to get a better education… I still am. But the gulf between what I’d like in a house (even being realistic. I mean what I’d _like_ in a house is a Georgian manor house with grounds and Stables…), and what I can afford, is not so much a gulf as a yawning, and uncrossable chasm. Bum.

—

Random thing 3. Today, someone stopped me in the street to compliment me on speaking civilly to my children. (Thank god they didn’t hear my fishwife impression at home ) To be fair, where I live, the usual parent-child interaction goes something like:

Child: *scream, shout, swear, throw things*

Parent: Stop f’ing doing that and get ‘ere now.

Child: *ignores*

Parent: I said GET ‘ERE NOW

Child: *ignores some more*

Parent: you little f***er, get ‘ere.

Parent swipes child. Child cries.

Parent: Stop your noise or I’ll give you something to really cry about.

So, you know, maybe me talking to my children like sentient beings IS something to be remarked on. Did I mention that I was moving by the way…

Here’s why I’ve been down:

- Over-sensitivity. All it takes is one person to say one thing, or write it on Facebook, or anything, and I *know* that they hate me, and they think I’m a pathetic loser, and they’re laughing behind their backs with all their friends. Sometimes it probably is over-sensitivity, other times I’ve unfortunately known it to be true.

- Loneliness. I went on holiday with my parents (married 43 years now); my brother and sister-in-law and their new son; and my children. I love my family, absolutely love them, but it was hard being the one whose marriage failed, the one who slept in a single bed because there wasn’t anyone to be with. And, as it turned out, ended up sleeping on a mattress on the floor in the children’s room as they were both so scared of the dark (COMPLETE city kids – no street lights/traffic noise, and they freaked!), so I didn’t even feel like an adult. Well, right up until the maths hit home – my parents, 2 adults, responsibility for only themselves. My brother/sister-in-law, 2 adults, responsibility for 1 child, ration of 2:1. Me, single parent. Responsible for 2 children, ratio of 1:2. Everyone else had to sort only themselves out, or share the care of one child. I had to sort out/pack for/care for/get ready to go out/etc 2 children, and myself, by myself. I love my children but it’s always this weight around my neck that I don’t ever get to share their care, they’re either with me and I have no respite, or they’re gone, which I hate.

- Letting my parents down. I’m always the one who struggles, who they have to carry on supporting, even though I’m nearly 36 and they’re in their 60s. It’s just wrong, at this stage I should be in a relationship with someone else to lean on, not them.

- Coming back to… nothing. Got home, it was just me, sitting here, alone, again.

- The gradual realisation that I have completely given up on myself in the last 4 years. Financially, domestically, health-wise, everything, I have just given up on.

So, I’ve now been back a week. Despite all this, it was a nice holiday. My nephew learnt to walk while we were there, which was sweet, and I do love my family deeply. It was fun to be with people who have the same sense of humour, and for the banter to go back and forth so fast sometimes. It was a beautiful place. Since then, I’ve been back into work (massive stress on one project that I am trying to get help on and getting nothing, so it’s actually going to fall apart). Child 1 has damaged the ligaments in her wrist falling over, and is wearing a splint. It’s obviously pretty painful and I might have to take her to A&E on Tuesday. But she’s very brave and I do love her. Both of them. They’re the most precious things ever.

Today I went to meet up with a fair few people I know via the internet (that always sounds so odd). It was nice, the kids had a fab time racing around a playground and eating cake (to the point where child 1 wept on the way back to the train station with exhaustion and sadness that we had to leave. Child 1 wasn’t concerned as I had more cake!). The people are lovely but I just felt sick, because I am so odd looking and so bad at small talk, and so boring and stupid and fat and pathetic and unwanted.

See, just moaning and moaning and depression still here, for so many years now. I hate it.

I have more posts half written but I’m knackered too (even if I didn’t go on the playground), so I won’t post them today – a respite from the moaning – but instead, a couple of photos from our holiday.

Child 2 is less-than-fond of being made to walk, and not carried. Here is his protest.

Beautiful

Child 1 being fearless. There is a big drop, onto rocks/river, right beyond where she is.

This was apparently a pirate ship, it had a lookout point on top!

We meet up in a city mid-way between oop North and where I am, on Saturday to hand the children/luggage over.

Children and I go away for a week from Saturday, with parents, brother, sister in law, and nephew.

Military operation. Multiple train tickets now purchased, rendezvous arranged, just need to work out how to pack for three people, for more than a week, and still be able to lift the luggage for (on the way back) a 4 hour train journey with three changes. Weep for me.

But also, although the children are going tomorrow (which I hate), and I’m not going until Saturday, I won’t be updating until I come back anyway because I am feeling really wobbly and unhappy today and need to stay away from the world, because I am oversensitive and overanxious and just… wrong again. At least this gives me more time to decide quite how few clothes I can manage with, in order to reduce luggage. MUST learn to drive.

My daughter’s grinning face after she had 14 inches of hair cut off. She was slightly hysterical and keeps saying ‘I’ve got short hair!’ and stroking it. I think she’s absolutely beautiful.

(we shall gloss over the furious row this morning, and focus on the smily bits).

This video: . I don’t have any channels like this – I’m a free-channels only kinda girl – but I saw this on someone else’s blog (thank you!) and it just made me grin.

And if that link works and I’ve just embedded a video, I shall add that as a ‘something that made me grin’ too

Two posts in a day! I really am procrastinating!

(By the way Im deeply happy not being religious, and cannot stand it when people say ‘ah but if you just accepted Jesus/Allah/the Flying Spaghetti Monster, you’d be happy’). That said, I was listening to something on the radio on sins t’other day and thought  I’d see how I measure up

So, the seven deadly sins (I had to google these, as really my only knowledge of them is from the film Seven)

Gluttony. Yes, guilty of this. I comfort eat like it’s going out of fashion (well, it kind of is). I cannot be left alone with a packet of biscuits or crisps, although you can safely leave a packet of salad or mushrooms in my charge knowing they’ll be unmolested when you return. Funny that.

Lust. Yes, well, it’s been a long time since I had the chance to put  it into practice but I guess that I’d be confessing a lot of sinful thoughts if I was religious.

Greed. I do OK here actually! Apart from the gluttonous sort of greed, I’m not into material possessions much. I don’t have, or understand cars, I have no desire for an iPhone Go me!

Envy.  Ah yes, despite having grey eyes, I do have a touch of the green-eyed monster at times. A lot of times. I am envious of other people’s proper lives, and happiness, and even I accept that’s just a wrong way to feel.

Wrath. If you’d seen me yelling at child1 this morning, you’d definitely have been able to tick this one off. I have a… fiery temper, most of the time. I am actually quite slow to anger, and I hate confrontation, but when I do let it go, it’s volcanic. Oops.

Sloth. I sit here, surrounded by heaps of dirty washing, clean washing, undone ironing, next to an unmade bed… I have a pile of bills to sort and file, a qualification to write up and study for, and some mending to do. Yet I sit and write about sin instead. Draw your own conclusion on this one

Pride.  Difficult. My counsellor says I am arrogant in the strength of my own belief in my worthlessness, so do I suffer from an excess of pride due to my arrogant beliefs in my rightness, or a lack of pride due to my belief in my worthlessness? Ooh tricky one.

Not looking good for me so far, let’s go for the seven heavenly virtues (although there appear to be a range of options for these. Maybe I could pick my own? ‘Ability to consume a box of jaffa cakes without breathing’, ‘Procrastination’ and the like?)

Chastity. I rock at this one right now. Will have been chaste for 4 years by the end of this month. Not so chaste in thought though, damn. Better put that nun’s habit back in the cupboard.

Temperance. Self-control, moderation and abstinence? Well I barely drink any more, I’ve never done drugs or smoked… but damn, those biscuits get me again with the self-control and moderation.

Charity. Not too bad. In the literal sense, I give a lot to charity; in the more abstract sense, I’m pretty generous I think. Although maybe to admit to generosity is to indulge in pride? Lawks, they get you coming and going!

Diligence.  Hmm, I have a pretty good work ethic but a tendency to leave it all to the last minute. It’s a sort of ‘sloth, sloth, sloth… SHIIIT, DILIGENCE’ pattern of life.

Patience. I am not going to comment, but I’ve just ordered a fireproof suit and pitchfork, cos I know where I’m a-heading…

Kindness.  I try, I do try. My impatience and wrath get me sometimes, but I do believe in being nice, as a moral philosophy.

Humility. Yeah, I ROCK at being humble! I kick ass at modesty! Ahem. I don’t know, I’m always prepared to accept that others know better, or to try someone else’s way, so maybe.

All in all, not such a great score. Luckily, I don’t think hell exists. Or heaven. Or anything. I think when you die, you stop, and you rot. The end.

But I do have a pretty strong moral code, which I think most people would agree on, regardless of religion. I strive to do my best, to be kind and helpful, and put others before myself (except on the jaffa cake issue), and I have a strong sense of right and wrong, although I don’t often match up to my ideals. I’m not all bad though, so you know, maybe I’ll do OK

P.S. How odd, I write this, go read some other blogs, and find that MarketingToMilk has been thinking along the same religious lines! Something in the air perhaps!

But when the person causing you to be sad and hurting and lonely and angry IS your best friend, where the sod do you go then?  My ex-husband and I were best friends for more than a decade. I relied on him absolutely, he saw me through some hellish times (and some great ones) – and I did the same for him. There was never anything more comforting than being with him, and he knew all the deep dark secrets and bad bits about me, and still loved me. He always said I was his absolute best friend, and always would be, and it was true.

And that’s what I’m missing now. I’m missing that I haven’t had someone that close, who cared that much, for more than 4 years now. When I was upset, the only thing I wanted was to have a hug from him, because it was the only place that made things OK. When I wanted to talk things over, or cry a bit, or rant and rave, that was a safe place to do it from, literally and metaphorically.

Now I don’t have a best friend any more. My parents care, and there are other people who listen and want to help, but that one person, that best friend, that’s gone, and right now it hurts very much, because it’s just irreplaceable.

I’ve got a cold, and I’m hormonal, and I’m tired, and I guess that’s why I feel so sad at the moment, and keep on crying, but I don’t like it, and I want it to stop. And the only thing I can think of that makes that sort of sadness stop, is a hug from my best friend. Ironic, isn’t it.

Hypocrisy.

Hi, my name’s BurblingBee and I’m a hypocrite. And so’s my Mum and Dad.

I was brought up by two of the most left-leaning people you can get. Ex-communist, Marxist, paid up Socialist Worker Party member, Union rep, feminists, politicially active, you name it. I was taken on CND marches in my pushchair. I chanted ‘Maggie Maggie Maggie, Out Out Out’ before I was in Juniors.

My parents, and I, fully believe in comprehensive education. I was sent to our nearest inner-city comprehensive, because that was our catchment area, and to go elsewhere was to suggest that I was different and needed something else, that I couldn’t be expected to mix with, or thrive with, a certain group. The school was so dire it has since been pulled down, and the ground sown with salt, lest any memories of it ever reproduce (this is a slight exaggeration – it was pulled down, but rebuilt and renamed in an attempt to get away from the many negative associations with the dump).

I am less politically aware or politically active than either of my parents – how the dickens did they ever find the time?! But I come from the same strand of liberal yoghurt-knitting lefties. And on the education front, I hold the same beliefs. I don’t approve at ALL of private education or selective education. I think education is a state responsibility, and the state should take that responsibility to mean that everyone has access to a high standard of education, regardless of wealth, background, social status, or geography. I hate the idea of creating an ‘elite’ of privately educated people, with its associations with the old school tie, and (having gone to university with a lot of public school people) a sense of superiority (I’m sure they’re not all like that by the way). I don’t like the idea of selecting children on the grounds of academic ability, and creating a two tier system in children from a young age – I think it’s damaging to the child, and damaging to society. I think that separating children into different types of schools strengthens the class divide, separates society further.

I could go on, but instead I’ll confess. I am seriously – and I mean seriously to the point of googling, oh yes – considering moving house next year, purely because where I live is currently in the catchment area for one of the worst schools there is. I am considering moving into an area where the schools are much nicer, and have much better results. Told you I was a hypocrite.

I feel slightly appalled at myself. I feel like a sell-0ut. Partly I know that because my five years at secondary school were five years of hell, not far off Dante’s journey through the Inferno, and I don’t want that for my child, that’s my motivation, but it’s still hypocritical.

I confessed it to my Mum recently, thinking that she’d be horrified and disown me, perhaps beating me to death with the Little Red Book, before branding me as a traitor. But she didn’t. Instead she told me that if I’d been put into an even worse sink school, that was also in our catchment area, they’d have objected and sent me elsewhere, or moved.

So there go my childhood illusions. I always admired my parents for their utmost rigidity in standing by their principles. Yes I loathed my school and was made to suffer there for five long years, but I was proud that my parents believed in something so strongly, and felt that it mattered. Ha! Whatever next, they’ll be telling me Father Christmas never really did put those tangerines in my stockings…

I still feel like a hypocrite though.

(p.s. to prove my leftie credentials, my real name was chosen partly to reflect a Shakespearean heroine, and partly so that I was named after Rosa Luxemburg, a Marxist martyr executed for her cause. It’s OK, I had to google her too.)

Grr.

So, in the absence of what I was actually going to write (and believe me, it was just amazing), here’s some really random stuff.

- it’s the summer holidays. Hooray for not having to get up (except when I go to work), boo for entertaining tetchy children on a budget of zero. Off to the Library tomorrow to sign up for their summer reading scheme. I love libraries, but I wish they’d reopen our nearest one because 2 tired children plus a rucksack full of books, plus a 30 minute walk each way = no fun.  Two quiet children reading them on the sofa when we get home though, is well worth it.

- a tidy house clarifies the mind. Why? I tidied up on Saturday (because my Mum was coming. The teenage instinct is still kicking in, 16 years after I was last a teenager). And I feel a little more able to breathe and feel like life is OK, because I have a bedroom floor.

- I saw my counsellor again today. I am never completely honest with her, that’s not really good is it? I worry she’ll judge me a failure, or disapprove of me, because I suck at doing my counselling homework. You know you have paranoia problems when you think your therapist hates you.

- I submitted my story to The Virginity Project after seeing an article about it in the Observer last week. I don’t know why, you know when you do one of those random things and then think ‘oh cripes…’. It’s not up there at the moment – I promise, I’m not a 29 year old old Roman Catholic man – and will be anonymised anyway. I wonder if it would be obvious which was mine, if it ever appears? I hope not, although it was a bit cathartic, if still rather humiliating, to write it.

- I should be washing up. My cousin is coming tomorrow, and visitors send me into a panic of midnight mopping and 3am laundry. Am I becoming more relaxed, and willing to accept that a perfect house is not necessary when a relative is visiting, or will I actually get up extra early in order to iron my teatowels and dust the top of the bookshelves? Ask me tomorrow.

That’ll do. If anyone can remember what I was going to write about, answers on a postcard to the usual address…

All so good and amicable. All OK, apart from the anxieties about eating, of course, the nausea and fear, and the food smells and so much blah. But I just got really sad. There we were, sitting there. Anyone looking at us would have thought ‘oh look, Mummy, Daddy, and Child1 and Child2′. Which we are, of course, but Daddy goes home to another woman, the one he had the affair with while Mummy was pregnant with child 2. And Mummy goes home to her house, with the kids, and cries.

Life would be a lot easier if I could finally, once and for all, stop being in love with my ex-husband. I frequently dislike him, I sometimes hate him, I loathe the fact that he had an affair while I was pregnant. I despise that he broke up our family. But he’s the person I was in love with from the age of 21. I’ll be 36 in a few weeks, and despite the fact he left me 4 years ago, and broke my heart, and despite the fact I know it’s over, and he’s left, and despite the fact I don’t want him back, and couldn’t imagine ever being with him again, and know my family wouldn’t accept him, and despite the fact I don’t want that relationship any more… I do. I miss him still, and I know some of it is due to being lonely, and I hate the fact that I have to accept ‘that woman’ into the children’s lives with a welcoming smile and never a bad word said (although a few may be muttered). But I still love him, and I don’t think I’ll ever be OK until I can stop.

But you can’t stop loving someone, can you? I have found it easier to forgive him, and to stop hating him, but I don’t think I can ever stop loving him.

Tonight I’m going to sit on the sofa with a blanket, and a cup of tea, and watch some cruddy film and probably weep a bit. All so stereotypical but that’s all I feel capable of today.