In recent months they’ve ceased being a cushion between the busy working week and Sunday’s laze around and have instead become a nothing but a blur of changing rooms, clothing changes, swimming trunks and football boots. I’m often up by 7am, out of the door by 8.45am, and then rarely back in again until late afternoon. And while yes, obviously, this is preferable than going to work, you’d better believe me when I tell you that this is harder than work. I rarely have to undress people and rub them down with towels in the office.

Unfortunately. Or fortunately – guess it depends on who it’d have to be.

So first up is swimming. S goes because it’s important and I make him, but bless him – I don’t think that there’s a dry-and-won’t-go-under-the-water-for-love-nor-money hair on his head that enjoys it. I’d like to think that it’s because he has, like, ridiculously sensitive eyes, but whilst that’s true I suspect he’d dislike it just as much even if he were immune to chlorine. The only time he seems to enjoy swimming is when he doesn’t have to go. Or when the pool is drained.

It’s not helped by the fact that despite starting off with his bezzie friend A in tow, A is progressing much faster than my little lad. Within within six weeks A got promoted up to the next stage whereas poor S had to tread water (HA! See what I did there?) in the beginner’s class for an additional term. This is further compounded by the fact that despite being only six, he’s currently the height of the average eight-year-old (actually, eight-and-a-half going by Next’s kids’ height chart). This is not a good thing when you already feel self-conscious standing on the side of the pool.

He’s getting better, though. We found out last week that he’s finally moved up a stage, and you can just imagine how proud we were, and how chuffed he was with himself. From us he got an extra £5 pocket money, and from the teacher he got a certificate, a lollipop – for reasons that escape me – a sticker (seriously: who’d put a sticker on in the water? And affix it to what exactly – his nipple? OUCH). Between you and I, I have no idea how it’s possible to progress a kid who essentially refuses to get his hair wet – IT’S A POOL, SAM! WET HAIR IS PAR FOR THE COURSE! – but apparently he met all the criteria, so next week we commence Stage 2.

I’ll wait here for a second whilst you give my son a well-deserved W00T!. It’s okay – I won’t say anything until you’re done.

Finished?

Incidentally, and before I get a barrage of complaints about forcing him to swim … look, I only force him because I care. This is not a bad thing I’m making him do. Not only might it save his life one day, but I started high school unable to swim and nothing he can experience now will match the agony of being a beginner at eleven years old in a mixed swimming class. In front of a boy you liked. Who laughed his ass off at your doggy-paddle.

I essentially blame most of my disastrous high school career on this.

Anyway, next up is football. S goes to a great little club that has 5-12 year olds running about, learning about fitness and training and healthy living alongside soccer skills. Despite initial wobbles (apparently, S isn’t great at hiding his feelings or concealing his dismay when fellow teammates arse something up – I have no idea where he gets it from … :p) he’s settled in great, and despite the odd flare up here and there, he’s learning how to be part of a team. It’s here where A and S invert themselves; S would play football naked and in a blizzard if that was the only option available, whereas A would prefer standing on the sideline with his hands in his pockets chatting to the sideline judge about the weather. Apparently. I can say this with confidence because that really did happen (the weather chat, not the blizzard. That really would be shady parenting, even by my standards).

The sessions lasts an impressive two hours, which means that we – the parents, carers and guardian types – have to leave them. Therefore, his first session back in March was the first time I’d ever left him with another adult I didn’t know and explicitly trust (friends, family and school excepted, obviously). It sounds like something that should be celebrated – WE’RE FREE! WOOHOO! PASS ME THE PINOT! – but it’s actually – surprisingly – not. It’s simply another illustration of how he doesn’t need me as much as he used to, yet it only reinforces how badly I need him. Rather pathetically, I pine the whole time we’re apart and the only reason I don’t feel embarrassed is because D – A’s mother and my BFF #4 – is much, much worse than me. Hah!

So football lasts two hours. At first D and I would retreat to one or other’s house for a cuppa and a catch up, but increasingly we’re spending this time doing crappy chores and errands – think tester pots, car cleaning, clothing returns and birthday card selection and you’ll have an idea of what we usually end up doing – but that essentially means we’re more frazzled when we pick the kids up then when we dropped them off. Surely that isn’t right? Surely we should be getting facials?

Anyway, by now it’s midday and the boys have been active for almost three hours. We’ve fallen into the habit of going for lunch, which as a default is at Pizza Hut, but sometimes we go all out and make it to a Beefeater. I know. I’m living THE DREAM, right? Never thought of myself as a champion of middle-class suburbia, but alas, here I am. My only saving graze is that I am neither a soccer mom nor a over-compensatory parent, and I drive neither a VW Beetle or a pointless city-bound Range Rover. Gotta have some standards, right?

At this point sometimes we split up for the day. Most often we don’t, unless we’re forced to because M is off-shift and therefore able to take S to see City play.

(An aside: D and I have fallen into a friendship that is more sisterhood than anything else, which is weird because I’ve never experienced this before despite having three other best friends whom I love with every fibre of my being and for whom I’d gladly take a bullet. Maybe it’s because we live, literally, across the street from each other, or maybe it’s because the closeness of our kids have forced us into it. Whatever it is, it’s amazing and it’s only now – thirty-three years later – that I realise what I might have missed out on growing up without a sister.)

So. Yeah. Saturdays? Told you they were frantic.

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I’ve opened this up – this WordPress admin panel, I mean – about seven GAZILLION times over recent months. I start hammering out an entry only to find – a few hundred words in – that I’m boring myself. That, my friends, is not a good sign. A bored WRITER is not an indicator of an awesomely immersive and enthralling blogging experience.

Today, I’ve promised myself that come hell or high-water, this one’s gonna make it. Even if you pass out from boredom midway through. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Thing is, I don’t have much to say. The older I get, the more reclusive I seem to be. I used to use this place as a cheap alternative to therapy, somewhere to vomit out all the snarling angry parts of me. And while I’m still very much a black bubble of hostility, apparently I’m a sly black bubble, because I internalise the shit out of everything and share fuck all. Right now I can’t decide if this is simply maturity or the on-set of personality-altering brain tumour – or possibly even a little of both.

So, let’s see … what’s new with me. Well, work is still work – crap but tolerable. Family life is as it’s always been – occasionally problematic but essentially worth the effort. M and I recently celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary, which is crazy and mad and ridiculous because surely I’m not old enough to have been married that long? I mean, I know that we were young – too young, actually, given hindsight – but still … madness, right? As for S … guys, he’s my everything. I just – I consider myself to be pretty verbose, but even I struggle to properly convey just how bright a light this little kid is in my otherwise dark and snarly world. No, it’s not all sunshine and smiles (only this morning I could’ve happily throttled him over his cornflakes) but as a rule he just … he completes me. Generally so full of love and thoughtfulness and fun, it’s kind of hard when I see glimpses of the teenager I know he’s going to grow up to be: arsey and morose and monosyllabic. I know it’s gonna come – as a mother, you have to know – and I have to acknowledge that he’s already over half-way through to reaching his stint as a teenager. I just hope he will read these words when he’s older and realise that even when I’m screaming at him for not putting the video games back in the right cases (OMG THAT PISSES ME OFF) or ranting because he hasn’t picked up his room … even if he thinks that I hate him, I still adore him with every fibre of my being. Heh.

Whilst on the topic of awesome kids, I’ve started my first 1:1 placement with Barnardo’s. As I hope you would expect, I can tell you nothing about it really, other than the fact that I see my placementee for a little over an hour once a week, and we spend that time hanging out and trying to help her buffer her confidence. We’ve met three times now and whilst I was suffering a crisis of faith the other day, wondering just what kind of help I can be seeing her for such a teeny amount of time each week, the look on her face when I picked her up a few days ago was just … precious. It’s time-consuming – just as I’d expected it to be – but it’s incredibly rewarding, too. It’s a great gig – if you have an hour or two to spare a week, I cannot stress enough how much good you can do by doing the same. You really should look into it.

Otherwise, things are much the same. We bought a new fridge-freezer, as our existing one is twice as old as our son and threatening to explode. We have a new car on order, which is hella exciting but only made possible by the fact that my awesome brother works for awesome Renault and they have this awesome family loan scheme thing whereby I get a brand new car every nine months (did I mention that it was awesome?) On the weekend we’re off to London for a night out at the O2 and to see, ahem, Lady Gaga in concert. Although I certainly don’t mind her stuff, this is neither my idea nor to my tastes but as BFF #4 is desperate to go and I’m a fabulous kind-hearted friend, I’m going along to keep her company. Our men are also coming despite being ticketless, a weird turn of events which has transpired either because a) scared we’re going to have too much fun without them; b) scared that we’ll have too much fun with other men; or c) they simply want to get shitfaced in the various outlets around the arena whilst we’re inside. I’m opting for c), but pft, who knows.

Finally, I joined that rollllllling bangwagon and signed up at formspring. I held off for ages because I figured no-one would ask me anything and instead I’d plunge into a deep, spiral of self-doubt and depression. But seeings as I’m ME and I’m probably going to do that anyway, I thought fuck it and signed up. Ask away if you wanna keep me off those anti-depressants …

I <3 you, guys. Thanks for sticking around. :)

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I’m been struggling with my sleep, though. It’s not something I’ve traditionally had issues with, so having to lay awake, tossing and turning, huffing and puffing … well, it hasn’t been helpful. I’ve never been able to run on little sleep, not even when S. was small and sleep deprivation was part of the job description. Even then, even when I figured I was all prepped and ready for it, M. had to step in and take more than the lion’s share as we established – pretty early on, as it happened – that our household was going to be a happier one if I scrapped at least six hours a night. That should’ve been the first clue, right? The first indicator that motherhood and I were barely going to be on nodding terms, let alone having coffee mornings together.

Anyway.

So, yeah … I’m losing sleep. And I think too much. Even as I lay there, listening to M. snore and staring up at the spiderweb cracks in the ceiling, I’m trying to figure out what it is that’s keeping me awake. ‘Cos it’s a sign of stress, right? Loss of sleep? Only, I don’t feel stressed. I feel perfectly fine. Yes, I’m busy, but I’m busy with things I enjoy, you know? Work’s great, and my book – though a little reluctant sometimes – is coming along okay (85k words in, my friends – Eighty-five thousand fucking words. Chapter 11 was kicking my ass for a bit, but now I think I have it head-locked and ready to give me back my lunch money). I don’t do the online thing quite so much anymore, and what I do is cool and great and perfectly manageable. I don’t get to play games as much as I’d like but pft, what’s new? We already knew that. And so I lie there, these thoughts tumbling about, and I’m starting to wonder if it’s simply the complete lack of stress that’s stressing me out. That it’s my feverish scouting for a reason, an excuse, that’s doing me more harm than fucking good. That maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy when there’s no real reason to keep you up at night, meaning I’ll just keep on searching for an excuse and never find one until it winds me up so badly it finally does stress me out and I’m in a worse mess than when I started.

See? Told you I think too fucking much.

I need to stop taking my laptop to bed with me, though. And my phone. And I need to fall back in love with reading¹. And, between you and me (‘cos, you know, the internet and my globally published blog is such a private forum), I suppose I have been grappling a little with the Big Questions, recently – the big OMG-I’m-Nearing-My-Mid-Thirties-How-Did-That-Happen? conundrum, and the Wait-A-Minute-Is-This-My-Life? stumper. I had my heart broken by people whom I had thought were my friends, and I once again regressed to spiral-permed, buck-toothed, unilaterally unpopular 14-year-old me (the me I was shortly before I had my braces removed and I realised that my breasts were weapons). Only this time, I’m all bitter and black and cynical and mean and thoroughly unpleasant and I can’t even redeem myself with the excuse that I’m just a kid. The older I get, the harder I get. One strike and you’re out, dude. I’ve got no time for second chances. Move along and take your sorry with you. Or bend over and I’ll shove it up your ass.

I try to be a better person and rise above it. But it’s like my core, the very essence of me, is just a bucket of dark, bubbling hostility. I read about people like Becca and think – holy Christ. She is such a good person. Me? I like to think that I’m a good person. That I’m a thoughtful friend, and a kind mother with a good soul and a warm heart. But the truth is I’m just me – confused and confusing, clusterfuck me – fumbling around in the darkness that is my life and trying to get to the other side without smashing my shins on the fucking coffee table.

Edit 19:15: it’s just occurred to me that I’ve written a long, rambling entry on Valentine’s Day without even mentioning it. If that, my friends, doesn’t properly exemplify how I feel about VD day then I don’t know what the hell will. Whilst I’m not totally without sentiment (I can get quite emotional and attached to the strangest things, and I have a steel box full of small, silly little mementos that someone, somewhere, touched me with), I’ve never liked Valentine’s Day. Having been in a safe, secure relationship for sixteen years with the love of my life, I can be confident that it’s nothing to do with being snide and single, either. I just find it crass and stupid and infantile and utterly without consequence.

See? I AM A DARK BUBBLING BUCKET OF HOSTILITY.

1 The last two or three books I’ve read have been shite. And since I won’t ever – EVER – quit a book, even if it sucks donkey balls, it means that for a moment or two there reading became really laborious. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to understanding M.’s POV when it comes to recreational reading).

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I think I recall crowing last year that I managed to miss most of the flu/coldy things floating about. My Fate God heard me, laughed outrageously, and has been making me pay ever since. Bastard. It feels like I’ve spent the last three months coughing and spluttering. I wouldn’t mind, but the cough is this disgusting, phlegmy gross mess that makes people cross the street to avoid me and my voice wouldn’t be out of place in a porn movie. Whispering in low, husky tones is amusing for about a week, but after that it just becomes tedious.

Anyway.

Thankfully though, I was phlegm-free for Christmas. Which was lovely by the way. S’s holiday started early thanks to three millimetres of snow we had the Monday and Tuesday before Christmas which somehow justified a school closure, and although that meant I didn’t get my leisurely rest on the first day of my own holiday, it meant that we got two extra days together – yay. Father Christmas brought everything S wanted (which was a fucking miracle, by all accounts – he was not easy to buy for this year) and his extended family got him everything else. This year he’s obsessed with football, mainly Tottenham Hotspur and Cardiff City, so his bedroom now looks like a teenage boy’s thanks to the football bed linen, trading cards, football shirts, balls and Tottenham Hotspur-logoed alarm clock. I don’t mind admitting that I get a little pang of regret when I look in there now; although it’s wonderful that he’s growing up, forging his own personality and likes and dislikes, but it feels like it’s all too fast.

As for me, I was very lucky this year. I received many books (including Stephen King’s new one, and the Ant and Dec biography), DVDs (Michael McIntyre, Russell Brand, George Michael, Grey’s Anatomy, 24, Steve Coogan) and games (Assassin’s Creed II, SingStar Take That and with Christmas money I bought the Batman AA Collectors’ Edition, Lips #1s and pre-ordered Bayonetta). M also bought me some ‘fancy’ walking boots and a decent all-weather coat, now that I’m at one with nature and am forced to – sigh – go walking with D, neither of which I have to send back ‘cos I think they’re gross. Score! One brother got me Zelda: Spirit Tracks and the other cash towards my Paul McCartney ticket (mental note: write that up soon) and two Guitar Hero figurines which are totally awesome. Heh. And the gifts we bought for our loved oones seemed to go down well, too. Which is always the best part. :)

Best of all? We managed to get through all of Christmas without putting anything on a (groaning) credit card. That is definitely a first!

Christmas Day itself was low-key but lovely; M cooked, S and I ate, and my in-laws joined us for lunch. Not for a second doubtful about Santa or his origins, Sam spent the entire day in raptures over his gifts and playing with everything – which meant I spent most of the day opening brightly-coloured boxes and untwisting those INSANE wire thingies that seem to hang on to every child’s gift in the universe. Between Christmas and New Year we visited friends and family and generally dossed about, and then for New Year we had our BFFs up from Brighton to stay, which was – as it always is – incredibly awesome. We christened one of M’s Christmas gift – a top-of-the-range slushy maker! – by making fruit slushies and loading them with vodka, washing down platefuls of antipasta and tortillas. A perfect way to chime in the new year, and no mistake.

As for 2010? I don’t really do resolutions, but I am hopeful. I’m proud that I’m significantly smaller than this time last year, and I would like to keep that up, but I’m trying not to obsess. I’ve, inevitably, gained a bit of weight of Christmas but a) who hasn’t and b) who cares?! Like I’ve said previously, I joined a gym in mid-December and – chest infection pending – I hope to get back into some semblance of regular exercise soon. Otherwise, I don’t have any particular promises I wish to make/break. All I hope for is a happy, healthier, financially-stable year, and to keep on loving my boys more with each passing day.

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Ours was last night. We had a team outing last week, which was all very civilised and lovely, but last night signaled the official end of the year for the entire organisation so – as is the tradition – all hell broke loose. It looked like a scene out of Saving Private Ryan, only with blazers and ties and inappropriately low-cut tops.

People drank too much, ate too much and gossiped too much. Glasses were smashed and people fell over. As I understand it there were more than a couple of inappropriate propositions, made worse by the fact that the propositioned was sober and the propositionee was oh-so-not. There was an argument, (although that was me, yelling at my Work BFF when he left me waiting around outside like a lameass) and when one of the guys hugged me goodnight he grabbed my left breast when he pulled away. (You’d be reasonable to assume that it was an accident but there was CUPPAGE, people). I also ended up having to take a colleague home. It was miles out of my way, but should give an indication to the kind of state she must’ve been in to have warranted such a lengthy detour.

Yes, I was driving which and yes, that is boring, but as I don’t particularly need alcohol to have fun and always struggle to get home, it’s often just easier to have the car. Plus I’ve witnessed that many people commit career-suicide at Christmas functions over the years that I’ve just learned that it pays to be restrained. (Well, sometimes). I’ve been struggling a bit in work this year – a whole messy, stupid saga that I’ll bore you with one day, I’m sure – so I spent most of the evening in the company of the scant few guys who work at my place, safe in a booze-fueled haze and conversations about video games, films and lewd jokes. (Aside: It’s only recently that I’ve utterly accepted that I struggle to make and retain girlfriends, a fact emphasised further when I realised that the few good female friends that I do have tend to have the same issue. I’m so much more comfortable in the company of guys; they talk about stuff I understand, and there’s rarely snide glances or catty comments. I’m definitely better off sticking to what I know. Yeah, people raise their eyebrows and exchange looks when I’m the only female in a crowd of lads, but at least I know where I stand, you know?)

Well, as long as they’re not accidentally-deliberately grabbing my tits.

Anyway!

In other news, I aced the first assignment of my Masters degree, coming home – bizarrely – with a distinction for a topic I had never even HEARD of prior to my class, let alone studied. I think everyone else on my course thinks I’m a suck-up and hates me now. Heh. And thanks to all for the kind comments about Fluffy Sam. He seems to be okay, but the vet doesn’t really understand what happened, nor can offer anything to help. I think we’ve concluded that it must’ve been some kind of seizure, but right now it seems like we’ll never know for sure. Very odd.

Right. TMI stuff is coming up, so look away now if you can’t read the word PERIOD without wanting to hurl:

Had an appointment with my consultant last week who flatly refused my request for a hysterectomy. I think he thinks that I made the decision on the hop, like I just thought of it randomly as I was walking across the car park or something, but seriously – I cannot go on like this. My family cannot go on like this. We know that we can’t have any more children and I’ve made my peace with this as best I can. Every single time I have a period my insides are getting worse, and every time I have a period it’s heavier and heavier and lasting longer and longer (it lasted THREE weeks last time). I have to have a spare change of clothes with me, and I can’t go anywhere or do much of anything because I’m completely fucking stoned on painkillers. So honestly – what’s the point? Take the whole lot out. It’s all well and good him telling me that I’m ‘very young’ and that this operation has a ‘high regret rate’ but it’s not like I don’t know these things. What’s the point of putting off the inevitable?

Anyway. We compromised on me having second course of Zoladex, the subcutaneous injections that did nothing for me in early 2007. This time, bizarrely, it’s brought bring on a period and a whole mess of mood swings and insane crying fits. Gee, thanks. If the treatment works, woohoo, and if it doesn’t work – and I’m convinced that it won’t – then we’ll talk seriously about the surgery. Until then I’m stuck with omnipresent menopausal symptoms and a monthly shot. Awesome.

Otherwise, we’re all ticking along nicely. I’ve been working on a secret little web project for the last couple of weeks, which I hope to launch soon – I’m dead excited and hope (some of) you will love it as much as I think I’m going to. If it KILLS me I’d like to finish off the changes to CodeGrrl, which have been in the pipeline for years but – due to my crapness – I haven’t done. Yeah, I’m being cryptic on both counts but watch this space . . .

Offline, my weight loss has gone tits-up thanks to two weeks of consecutive partying, but I have (re-)joined a gym and played badminton this week in an effort to buffer all the cake-eating by pretending to exercise. (Aside #2: I still much prefer my EA Active to actually going to a gym – is that weird? But my friend was desperate to join and, as we’re quite good at bullying each other when one of us is being crap, we hope that our over-competitiveness will spur us on). I’m actually incredibly down about it, which is pathetic and stupid but true nonetheless. I’ve put on 3lbs in two weeks and whilst mentally I realise that this is not the end of the world, I just feel like a massively self-control-less LOSER, not helped by the fact that I my hormones are all over the place thanks to these shots. Happy Days.

Christmas presents have (mostly) been bought, albeit not wrapped, but as today rings my last day in work for 2009 (THANK FUCK), it’s my intention to get going on it all on Monday. Last year I distinctly remember getting the boxes down from the attic only to find a heap of painfully unwrapped gifts. I ended up tearing around like a whirling-dervish on Christmas Eve trying to get it all done – not how I’d envisaged spending the evening and certainly not what I plan on doing next Friday!

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