My Children

Every other Thursday evening, Husband comes round to pick up the children's stuff for the weekend. He usually comes around 6pm, takes the bag, chats to the children and then goes again. I dread it. The whole event hangs over me for the few hours between coming home with Small Sprog and when husband arrives. I find myself getting agitated and wondering why, then I remember again that his visit is imminent.

It is usually civilised, no worry there, though so much hangs between us unsaid, I guess it is best that way. Yet I still feel uneasy. Perhaps the Thursday visit just brings the inevitable Friday departure of the children a little nearer?

This weekend he has the children. We do a weekend on and weekend off rotation. By luck, for him, he has managed to get all the bank holiday weekends this year. As it's the school holidays he's taking some holiday to be with them after the weekend.

I feel really close to Small Sprog right now, more so than ever, and don't want to loose him for the weekend. Tall Girl spends more time with her Dad than Small Sprog. She protects her father, and me too, but sometimes I find it hard. I feel sometimes I loose her. She used to be all mine. Now she is not. She comes home different. She bosses her brother around, takes my place. It takes time for us all to adjust to each other when she returns.

I will say goodbye to them tomorrow morning and then not see them again until Wednesday evening. Then we will have to re adjust to being together again.

Yet all the time I know it is the same for husband. And although I resent him having them for so much of their precious week off, I know that I have them for more of the time.

Doesn't stop me not wanting to let them go though.

Looking back, Looking forwards

Gosh, seems ages since I wrote anything here, I miss it, and am not sure how I ever really got the time to write every day?

It is Wednesday already and I am simultaneously looking forward to this coming weekend and looking fondly back at the last.

Last weekend I went to a Charity Ball. We had a fab time, it was a 'Start of Summer' Ball and so aptly named. The evening was warm and sultry on arrival. We ate, drank and danced, and as I lay down outside in my posh frock at around midnight and looked up to the stars (I did not end up lying down by' accident'!) I realise how far I'd come in this last year or so. Goodness me how strange life an be.

Two years ago I was living my suburban life, expecting nothing more, trying to accept the way life had become. It felt like hard work, with little rewards. Yet how can I say that, as if the children are not a reward in themselves? However I am blessed and cursed at the same time with a mind that both looks forwards, and looks back, too much thinking...

And when I looked forwards, those two years ago, I saw the children growing, leaving, leaving and then nothing. Nothing left. Empty days spent doing things, little things that were solitary and still, that were too old for me, made me old. I saw my old age, brought on by being married to someone so much older than myself. I felt that I was missing my 'middle age', and had slipped into a perceived retirement, easy but bereft of love and closeness.

If someone had told me then, that two years hence I would be lying down in a ball gown, head in the lap of my lover on a warm and sultry May evening I would have looked in astonishment. 'That is not my life' I would have said, 'No, you are wrong, that is not how it will be for me'...

So today I am looking back to last weekend, still enjoying it's pleasure and also forward to the next which looks full of pleasantly happy and comfortable things.

I am lucky, blessed and thankful.

Perhaps

As I drove along the tree lined road to work this morning, I realised how green and lush everything is looking now. I love the lime green colours of the fresh new leaves in the spring time and I realised how, living further into the city now, it was all passing me by this year, the loveliness of it. I am missing the green, I am missing picking spring flowers from my garden to bring indoors and smell, I am missing the sound of bird song.

Constantly I contemplate when and where I might be able to at last buy a house of my own. All I really want to do is be in the countryside, somewhere small and comfortable, where I can see the setting sun on a summer evening across open fields.

A dream may be. Impractical at the moment, very much so. Ever to be realised, who knows?

Yet, as I'm driving and thinking things through, I remembered a comment made on an earlier post of mine. Someone pointed out how I had once craved love and passion and to actually feel something and I have that now. I am lucky.

So maybe, if you want things badly enough, set your heart on them, push towards a goal, maybe, just maybe you can get there in the end. Time will tell, yet this time, it seems even more impossible.

Out to lunch!

I arrived at Mums a little late today. She met me at the front door with her coat on "Come on" she said, "We're going out for lunch!"( Not even a 'Hello'!)

It was 2pm, I dutifully jumped into her car, she didn't want to miss last orders!

Now it was very sweet and kind of her to take me for lunch, and also very fortuitous that I had not already eaten, because I do so like my food! However, I had spent so much time sorting out my car on the phone before leaving, that I hadn't managed to fit in lunch, nor even a second breakfast!

Anyway, off she drove me, into the very beautiful Cotswold's.

We went VERY quickly, in fact, if I had mistakenly eaten before hand, I'm sure I would have had an empty stomach again by the time we had reached the top of Cleeve Hill. She drives like the wind, steers like she's reliving a very tricky stage on Marrio Kart and breaks at the last possible minute. We arrived at the desired destination almost before we'd left! Phew, I needed a drink, never mind lunch. She however emerged from the car as cool as a cucumber and proceeded to usher me in to the Corner Cupboard, which is not as it sounds, but a very small and typical country pub.

We had a lovely meal, velvety Steak and Ale Pie with chips and peas, lots of French mustard and a good swig of vinegar on my chips, mmmm! However my enjoyment of the meal was slightly marred by the thought of whether I would manage to keep it in my stomach for the whole of the return journey back down the hill, but then she mentioned pud...

"You have to have a pud" She insisted "and they all come with ice cream, you have to try it"

"I'm not really bothered about the ice cream, and I'm very full" I replied, hoping not to sound ungrateful. "If I ask for the ice cream, do you want mine?"

She nodded in approval. Goodness, I thought!

While waiting for puds we started to chat about my stepfather;

"It's a shame he couldn't come" I say

"Oh, he could have" She replied

"Well, why didn't he?" I ask puzzled

"I told him you might want to talk" She hissed, as if someone would hear.

"Oh" I said, hoping I hadn't disappointed by not divulging any more woes to her, I had told her about the car accident on the phone, I mean as if that wasn't enough after everything else?!

"So will you have to cook for him later?"

"No, he's eaten"

"You've left him a sandwich?"

"No he ate out"

"Oh, that's nice, where did he go?"

"The Kings Arms"

"Lovely, who with?"

"Oh no, he was by himself"

"You made him go by himself?!"

"But I thought you might want to talk"

How could she?!

Anyway, the puds came and we waded through the gateaux. Both of us were rather full and wondered if we may just not quite manage it all. I looked at Mums plate. "I don't think I can manage the rest" She says defeated by the huge portion of White Chocolate and Blueberry Gateaux.

"You don't want my ice cream then?"

"Oh yes, I can manage that" She said delighted "It won't take up any room at all!"

You've got to love her!

Here but not, if you know what I mean?

I've not been about much recently, not read any blogs or written much myself. I have missed both. Partly I have not written because some of the stuff I would normally write about I'm just fed up with thinking about. Most of that is finance related.

Last week though, I found out that I am to loose hours at work. Only 3, but when you work part-time, that's a fair bit. So, forgive me for not writing much, or visiting much. Most of my spare time spent on the computer is used either looking for jobs or filling in applications.

I am not feeling positive, as you might have gathered. I am not doing the job I'd love, but then who is? I don't know how to go about changing things, though I have managed so much change over the last year or so, yet I don't seem to have the same clarity of thought to help change my working position.

Feeling a bit sorry for myself really! Indulge me for a while?

On top of all this, I received a letter in the post from the mediator suggesting that we wait 2 more years before a financial settlement take place to allow husband to keep the house and me to get a better paid job! I am tired of it all. I can't wait another 2 years. I will have to settle for less than the children and I are entitled to or wait and wait and then what? Why does he get the best deal? Even more fed up now! Sorry.

Sundays

Will I ever get used to the loneliness of Sundays? I am not adjusting well. It looms before me, I meet it with dread.

Sunday is a family day. Most of my friends have families, a 'proper' family. They do 'stuff' on weekends.

It's not weekends in their entirety that I dread, Saturdays are not a problem, children come to play on Saturdays, friends call round, the shops are open, there are jobs to do. But then Sunday happens...

Even the children feel it. Friends are busy doing family stuff. I know we are a family, but the rest of my family are not close by, I feel isolated and a little lost.

My first instinct is to run away, make arrangements, go to visit. But most people are busy. Then I persuade myself to sit it out. I can't run every time, we are three and we can have good times. We can, I know, we have today, but it took a long time to let go of the feeling of being alone, of being different, of trying too hard. It's over now, for a while. The week is full of work and school and children's clubs and classes. We come together at the end and we are happy, we are a family, it feels 'normal'. Why can't I do that on a Sunday?

So today I wandered, indecisively thinking of several things to do at once. Tall Girl wanted to go to Grannies, but I was determined not to run, not this time. We got it together in the end. You can see the fruits of our day in the photo(ignore the date on it, don't know how to change it!). We cooked and iced and got sticky and messy and felt a bit sick! We had fun. We were a family, just us three. I can do it, we can do it. I just need some more practice. I guess there will be plenty of that.

This was Small Sprogs cake. He was proud of his icing skills.

The picture on the cake is of our house, with my car outside.

He says he chose to ice this because it is a 'happy house'.

I cherished the words.

The futures bright, dinner is orange!

Tall Girl has been having cookery lessons at school this last term. She enjoys cooking and is quite good at it. Cookery lessons are on a Wednesday or a Friday, so sometimes I don't get to eat the fruits of her labours, because she stays with her Dad every other Wednesday or Friday night. However I am always interested in how well she's done, so when I know she's not coming home I text her and ask how it went...

A few weeks ago she was making curry. I texted her on the bus home; it was a very well travelled curry!

'How does it look?' I wrote

'Orange!' She replied

The following week she made sweet and sour chicken. We were going to eat it for our evening meal and we had a guest to dinner, so I texted her on the bus, just to see if I needed a hasty trip to the supermarket.

'How does it look?' I wrote

'Orange!' She replied.

It was!

Today she made pizza. I saw her get off the bus as I waited in the car at the traffic lights. She didn't see us. Once the lights were green we turned down the road she had disappeared down minutes before. We could see her in the distance...we wound down the windows of the car, slowed to a curb crawling speed and before she could turn around we shouted and sang her name out of the window whilst beeping the horn! She is 13. Anything I do embarrasses her, even breathing! Her face was a picture, her friend laughing.

When I arrived home, leaving her to walk with her friend, my phone chirruped. She'd texted me to say she was going to her friends house. Oh no! Maybe I had gone a step too far? I enquired via the normal method but she was fine.

'Don't forget you have dinner with you' I texted

She sent back a 'wink'

'By the way' I type 'What colour is it?'

'Orange, hee hee' came back the reply.

I love my Tall Girl