Dying, with an E

I have a little announcement to make…  No wait!  Close your mouth — I’m not pregnant.  In fact, I could make this announcement even more shocking than that if I followed the lead of a friend of mine who made my announcement in an email to her friends with the opening words, “Strawberry is dying!”

I’m not.  She’d misspelled it.

The thing is, you all know that ever since I left my job to become a stay-at-home mum, I’ve been trying to figure out what I want to do when I eventually go back to work.  Knowing I didn’t want to go back to what I did previously, I’ve spent several years casting about for what might be the right career to go into.   Well, this is not it, but it is an itty-bitty baby step toward doing something I love.  A tiny step, and a huge step all at the same time.  And I am immensely excited about it.

I have been dyeing lately, quite a lot — that’s dyeing with an ‘e’  — and at some friends’ very enthusiastic encouragement, I have opened a shop on Etsy, called SpaceCadet Creations, where I sell my hand-dyed yarns and fiber.  Take a look:

I can honestly say I haven’t been this excited in a long time.  Mixing the colours myself (from the three primaries and black), seeing the results come out of the dyepot, putting the yarns and fiber up on Etsy, getting the email to say that someone has bought my stuff…  It feels fantastic.  When I grow up, I want to do a job that I love doing, and this — opening this shop, taking one bold baby-step towards that goal — has made me feel that that might actually be possible, for the first time in a long time.

Come, have a look at my shop and dance a little excited-dance with me!  And if you know anyone — anyone at all — who knits, spins, felts, or crochets, please, please send them my way.

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Dirty Like This

When we first moved into this house, we debated about ripping the carpets up and finishing the hardwood floors.  I knew they were diamonds in the rough.  I wanted to do it — really, really wanted to do it — but everyone else was against it.  M thought we didn’t have the money to spend (and, to be fair, he was right).  My dad couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to “just move into the house and enjoy it, as he would.  And my mum was adamant that hardwood floors are so much harder to keep clean than carpet (but the truth is she just doesn’t much like hardwood).

In the end, I listened to none of them, and I have never regretted it for a minute.  Not only because they are gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.  And not only because I realised with hindsight that, with her allergies and asthma, E2 probably would have suffered a lot more with carpet in her room than she is with that nice clean hardwood.  And not only because there were quite notable decreases in M’s migraine and sinus problems first when we moved to the States and changed to forced air heat, and then yet again when we moved to this house with its hardwood throughout.

No… no… not just for all those reasons.  No, I was so glad that I had decided to go ahead and rip out the carpets, to listen to my gut and get the hardwood finished all though the house…  I was so glad today, as I followed a little trail from one room of the house to another…  A little trail of neat little brown plops of poo — one every few feet — which led me through three rooms and finally ended at a pair sagging, straining training pants, filled way beyond their capacity, employed far beyond their remit, by a little girl who had completely forgotten that she wasn’t wearing a nappy and is now supposed to use the toilet instead.

I lifted her in one swift motion and deposited her — clothes, socks, training pants, and all — straight into the bathtub, and ran downstairs to quickly collect the plops before someone else unknowingly squished them underfoot.  And, as I gathered them up easily with a damp cloth and some disinfectant — to the panicked howls of  “But Mummy I am still wearing my clothes!!!” — I thought back to my mum’s argument…

When she said carpet was easier to keep clean, she was never imagining this.

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Falling Off the Face of the Earth

Just lately, several people have written to me or left comments on the blog, wondering where I am, whether I’m ok.  The happy-spin answer is that I’ve been taking some time off, basking in the glow of the love of my family.  The truth is, it’s felt a lot more like hanging on by the skin of my teeth, and so I’ve found myself  cutting out anything that’s not about what needs to be done now.  With the emphasis firmly on needs and now.

Things began ramping up round about the time we ended up in the Emergency Room three times in five weeks.  That’s going to be a rough time by any standard but, more than that, it was the fear and unsettling of it that exhausted me.   Would it always be like this?  Is this a spate of bad luck, or is this the beginning?  And I wanted to go to bed and curl up for a while.

But there was no going to bed, and no curling up.  There was work, work, and extra work to be done: holding and loving and comforting and night-feeds and breath-watching and breathing treatments and lots of cleaning up.   All mess and the putting away and tidying up seemed to multiply exponentially, and I don’t know why.  But it did and it called my name and I had to answer, because I am the only one who hears it.

And then there was the book-balancing.  For every trip to ER, there was a follow up appointment with the paediatrician (or sometimes two) and then maybe one with the allergist as well (or two),  and a prescription (or… many), and maybe even a vaccine just for good measure.  And so for every one of those, there is also a co-pay.  In a matter of weeks, we racked up hundreds — hundreds — in co-pays.  And this at the same time that M’s hours were going through (yet another) stage of fluctuating wildly.  One week he’d barely get 40 hours, the next he’s scramble to clock up 30… and then would come a week of 60-plus hours, which provided the blessed relief that almost brought us into the black but also tore the stuffing out of M in the process.  And then start over: short week, short week, work-to-death week; short week, short week, work-to-death week.  M was shattered, I was trying to ride this financial roller coaster, and the copays cut right through whatever cushion we might have had.

And the pressure on M to workandworkandwork was immense.  Every day that he came home early felt like storm clouds gathering.  Every day that he worked late was… oh so good as I looked at the clock and watched the hours mount up, but his work is back-breaking and those extra hours exhausted him, and then the girls went to bed before he got home again.  And then the on-call rota changed: instead of being on call every four weeks, it would now be every three — which sounds more benign than it is.  Because they line up the jobs for the on-call days, what this effectively means is that he works a normal week, then twelve days in a row, and then a normal week, and then twelve days in a row…  Combined with the fluctuating paycheques and the feeling that work had become everything and everything was work, the pressure on M cranked up another notch.

M has never been one to handle stress in a particularly healthy way.  He internalises everything, expresses nothing, pushes everyone else away, and allows his mind to run away with worries.  And then the worry increases his stress, and he falls into a vicious spiral, and he can’t break free.  And as I watch him go down and down and down like this, I feel that I must do something — I must do something — to lift the pressure from him.   And then I am heaping the pressure on myself:  I must get a job,  I must start a business,  I must clean the house more… or maybe better.  I must keep the children quiet, I must give him more room, I must try to talk more, I must draw him out, I must leave him alone.  et répéter: I must make some money, I must get a job…  or work from home… start a business.  And he asks me when I’m going to start a business, when I’m going to pull in some money.  And my mother asks me why I don’t just start a business, or find a job working from home…  And a quiet voice in my head tries to point out that if starting a business were easy or work-from-home jobs weren’t like hens’ teeth… but I feel the criticism so keenly that it never gets much further than that.

The truth is, I don’t know how I’d do it.  The balance between us is off-balance: he works (so hard!), and does the grocery run, he takes the trash out, and cooks about half the time; and I do everything else.  By that I mean everything else that keeps our lives running: not just all the housework and the childcare 24/7, but the taxes, the banking, the bill-paying, the letter opening, the form-filling, all the problem solving, the bureaucracy navigation, the appointment making, the car maintaining…  Every decision that impacts our lives rests squarely on my shoulders.   And the more stressed he is, the more I try to take on to lighten his load.  His pressure spills over to become my pressure too.  I want to take as much of his burden as I can, but thought of adding a job to that — or starting a business - just stops me frozen in my tracks.   And so there I stood, frozen, right next to him, frozen.

So it makes sense that, one day a few months ago, something inside him finally snapped — quite literally.  He came home from work and showed me a protrusion in his lower abdomen, an area about the size of his palm where the muscle wall had torn and his intestine was pushing through under his skin.  It’s not the first time he’d had a hernia — he’d had an umbilical hernia all his life that he’d finally had corrected about eight years ago — but that was nothing like this.  This was big and, with his kind of work, it was only going to get worse.  So a specialist was consulted (co-pay!) and a surgery date was scheduled.  And I asked… how long is the recovery?  How long? Because he gets no paid sickdays.

And here was a bright spark of good news!  The hernia was caused by work, so the surgery and recovery would be paid by Workers’ Compensation.  Oh, thank goodness for that.  And though Workers’ Comp pays reduced wages in order to encourage you back to work as soon as possible, it would be enough.  It would be enough.

Ten days before his surgery, I felt a tickle in the back of my throat.  M could not get sick — a delay would put the surgery to the other side of Christmas and mess everything up.   I got worse, he stayed away.  I felt rotten — rotten — and then E1 fell ill too, and he couldn’t take care of either of us.   So I did everything — all the childcare, all the comforting, all the while just wanting to crawl into bed — and waited for E2 to come down and the inevitable trip to ER.  It would surely end in the trip to ER…

And here was another bright spark, shining through the dark: E2 not only didn’t end up in ER, she actually never even got sick.  This child who has not been able to come within ten feet of a single germ without coming to the brink of not breathing, without scaring us all half to death…  this child kissed us, she cuddled us, she shared a drink with her sister (aughhhh!!!) and yet she never even so much as coughed.  Saints be praised!  Steroids, how wrong I was to distrust you!

And then, one last bright, shining spark.  The surgery is  done, the patient recovering and, by coincidental timing, he is enjoying what is truly  Christmas for him: days on end away from work.  Days and days and days to just rest and relax, in a way that I haven’t seen him do since we arrived in the States.  And as the days have passed, the worry has fallen away, the vicious spiral has stopped swirling around him and…  he has changed.  Today, I caught him looking at E2 in wonder — the kind of wonder that parents should have when they contemplate the miracle of their own children…  but which I haven’t seen on his face in months…  or even years?  I had forgotten what that looks like.   And yesterday, as I as dashing out to the shop, he floored me by suddenly looking up and suggesting to the girls that they make the gingerbread house that had been overlooked in the run up to Christmas.  He offered to make the gingerbread house! I left the house in shock.  Dear reader, I say this in all honesty: I had forgotten what it was to have a partner who wanted to be a part of the family.  I had spent so long watching him want to escape us — really wanting to escape us and the bother and the chaos — and suddenly here he was,  sitting the girls at the table and breaking out the icing sugar…  Volunteering to do something with them.  I left the house hardly recognising my own husband.

And as I drove to the shops, I felt like I was floating on air. Floating on air! The way I felt inside, in that space right behind my ribs — so light, so warm — I can hardly describe.  Like… like maybe we weren’t falling apart.  And suddenly I realised that, with a little more of that behind me — just a little more — I could do anything.  I could do everything!  I could keep this house running, I could make some money, I can put our world on track.  I can get us home.  I just need the love in the house, I just need the strength it gives.

I worry that when he goes back to work, the spell will be broken.  I worry that life will overcome us both again and we will slide down again.  But at least we have seen it, seen how it might be if we can make things change.  …If we can make things change, and keep ourselves up here, up here with our heads above the surface.

Here’s to a fresh start and God’s blessings in 2010.  Happy New Year, everyone.

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I’m So Glad I am a Stay-at-Home Mother

Three times in the last five weeks…  Three times!  And that’s a lot really — I’m exhausted.  Am I talking about sex? No.  Dates with my husband? No.  Attempts to start weight lifting again? Nope.  Trips to the Emergency Room, that’s what I’m talking about.  And those were just the (dubious) highlights — in between all that fun and excitement were days and days and days of dragging everyone from doctor appointment to doctor appointment, seeing the pharmacist so often that he now greets us like old friends, and spending hours on end stuck on the couch comforting one miserable, clingy child or the other.  Absolutely everything else has had to fall by the wayside — the house is an utter tip and we’re probably overdrawn.  I’ve been so snowed under, I never even got the chance to write about the second trip to ER…  I started, but never got finished.  For now, I’ll just tell you that it involved a really frightening amount of blood.  E2′s blood — who else?

And there we are, the source of all the commotion — always the source of all the commotion.  I really don’t want to be this way, but I am now completely glass-half-empty about my younger daughter — she’s been training me in it since the day that was born.  If there’s something she can catch, some food that can set her off, some way something can go terribly wrong, it will happen for her.  Even the allergist said, she was just destined for this, all this medical hassle…  Some kids are.

But if that’s true, then I am so glad I could be her mother.  Because that kid — the kid with all the allergies, the horribly restricted diet, the terrifying undernourishment, the (now almost confirmed) asthma, the utterly out-of-control immune system — that kid needs a really support system; that kid needs someone always watching over her; that kid needs an advocate.  And I am lucky enough to be able to be just that for my daughter.

Sometimes I really regret becoming a stay-at-home mum.  I’ve been out of the workforce for nearly five years now, and I know my career prospects are pretty much shot.  When M starts on about me bringing in some money, I think of applying to Starbucks or something… and then I get nervous that they wouldn’t have me.  And other mothers I know are starting to go back to their careers — or, indeed, have never really left — and they have kept continuity and are going back to jobs they are excited about and feel empowered by.  I look at them and can’t help but feel a pang of jealousy…  and a bit of guilt for having thrown so much a way.

But the other day, I looked at my daughter’s smiling face — she now finally truly well for the first time in nearly two months — and I realised that all this time, I’ve been free to be fully there for her.  Day after day, I’d been able to wake up (or indeed, not sleep all night) and just be able to do whatever was needed of me that day.  I never once had to make a choice between my daughter’s needs and some other obligation, never once felt that conflict that so many other parents have to deal with.   I had some very hard judgment calls to make in those two months – is she breathing well? do I risk waking her to check? do we go to hospital now or wait…? — but I never had to look down at her and choose between risking my job to stay home again or sending her to childcare while she was still sick.

If I have sacrificed all — and I believe I have — then it has been worth it, because she has needed that level of dedication…  not just to thrive, but simply to survive.  It took love to get through those first fourteen months — nothing less than real love would have sustained someone through the days of nonstop screaming and the endless nights of no sleep until dawn.  If she’d been in daycare, I honestly believe there would have come a point where the hired help would have lost patience, or lost faith, and just put her in a corner to cry through her pain alone.  Because I nearly did.  I did leave her to cry, for a while, now and again, and I love her.  If I couldn’t handle it, how could anyone else have?

So, when I hear about my contemporaries going back to work, or talk to my friends who have flourishing careers, I can’t help the jealousy that immediately flares up, or stop the self-doubt that creeps along afterward.  And when M asks about the money, I can’t help but feel guilty that we are always so skint.  But, when I look at my daughter, I realise that being a stay-at-home mother — for all that sometimes feels so wrong about it — is absolutely right for us, for her.  And I know how very privileged I am that I’ve been able to do it, and I am deeply, deeply grateful.

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Doing the Maths

Two

“This house!” M muttered under his breath as he kicked a tangled pile of laundry out of his way. “This bloody house!”  And then he turned and stormed back upstairs without even looking at me.

I sighed.  But I understand why he’s frustrated — this house, indeed.  It’s always on the edge of mess, always verging into chaos.  I feel as though I fight all day just to maintain it, just to ensure that the mess is no worse at the end of the day than it was at the beginning.  But it never gets any better than it was.

The worst of it is the laundry.  We are perpetually buried in the piles of clean laundry — washed and dried quickly enough, but rarely folded and almost never put away.  Folding laundry with the girls is an exercise in pure crazy-making.  I have not made sorting piles — I have made fall-breakers!  I have built obstacle courses!  I have amassed fascinating collections of dressing-up clothes!  When I do manage to fold a couple of baskets’ full, I am so exhausted at the end that I can’t be bothered to haul those baskets upstairs and put them away.  Not right now… maybe later… maybe tomorrow.   But instead, we raid those same baskets daily, still sitting in the corner of the family room, for knickers and socks and today’s outfit, until the whole thing is such a mess that it couldn’t possibly be put away without being dumped out and refolded.  And that does not happen.

And there are always dishes clogging the kitchen — from breakfast, or the snack, or lunch, or the snack, or dinner…  And a pile of papers that needs filing over there, and stacks of magazines half-read.  There are still boxes to be unpacked from the move.  And certainly, oh certainly, this place does not yet feel like a home — it still feels like we just moved in… or are just about to move out.

“What was that?!?” I prodded angrily at M, as he disappeared up the stairs.  I couldn’t help myself — I just can’t let a muttering go.

He paused and turned, casting an eye across the chaos, and said hotly, “Well, I just think this place should be… tidier.  It should be getting tidier!”

I was defensive now.  “You could help, you know.  I only have two hands!  You could pick things up when you see them instead of stepping over them!”  It’s true — he’s as likely to step over a mess the girls have made as clean it up.  He’ll clear dishes but leave the mess all over the table.  And he opens his mail, and then drops it back on the table for me discover,  and deal with, later.

“You’re home all day!” He countered.  “You should be dealing with this place!  It should be…”  he glanced around the room, his eyes lighting on any number sins, “It should be getting better.”  Ah, of course, I’m home all day.  I should be spending all that time getting the place sorted.

Plus two

As every weekend approaches, we have conflicting expectations that cause… well… regular conflicts.  I see the weekends as a chance for me to get a break from the intensity of full-time care for a four-year-old and a two-year-old.  I’d like to wake peacefully, rather than be yelled from my bed at whatever hour the girls awaken, to take a shower alone without interruption, and then to slow everything down a bit and spend time as a family.  M sees the weekends as his chance to catch up on the myriad projects that need doing about the house and to quietly recover from a tough week at work.  In both cases, the three of us just get in the way of his plans — hinder rather than help — and, understandably, he spends most of his weekends trying to escape us.

I was on my own in the kitchen, drinking a cup of tea and contemplating the pile of dishes in the sink, when I heard it all begin to fall apart in the other room.  The girls’ voices rose and quickly became shrill, both of them screeching over some great injustice.  M’s voice started quiet and weary, but soon followed their lead and, within moments, he was bellowing at them.  And then for me.  When I walked in the room, I found him standing by the front door, holding a cordless drill in one hand and with two little girls practically hanging off his other arm.  A mess of his tools and their toys were strewn in equal measure at his feet.

“I can’t get anything done with them here!” he roared. “You have to take them.”  And then with a little less volume, “If I’m supposed to make any progress with this,” — he waved the drill in the general direction of the door he’d been working on — “then you can’t expect me to be looking after them as well!”  I ushered the girls and their screeching away into the kitchen, and smiled to myself.

He’s quite right — it’s impossible for him to get his projects done with them underfoot.  I know that.  They are wonderful little girls, but it is the nature of their ages to create mischief and mayhem where-ever they go.  And keeping that under control brings everything else to a complete halt.

Unless, of course, that everything is folding laundry, and filing the paperwork, and unpacking boxes.  And you are home all day.

Equals three

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The Stuff of Never-Ending

“I want another mummy,” E1 said, while shoveling another spoonful of oatmeal in her mouth.  I looked over at her, and waited — she would surely expand on this.  Mouth still full, she continued regardless, “I want another mummy so she can do all the stuff, and I want yoooou…” — she stretched the word out for emphasis — “to just be with me.”  I stopped doing the dishes and turned to her, smiling a little despite myself.  “I want another mummy and another daddy, and I want you two to just be with me all the time!”

I was grinning now.  This was lovely.  This was one of the moments that a mother waits for, that she treasures.  And yet,  it was a message too — do I spend too much time doing “all the stuff”?  Perhaps I do.  Perhaps I  need to spend more time just…

But at that moment,  she reached for her orange juice and caught her elbow on her bowl, which flew off the edge of the table and smashed to the ground, throwing jagged pieces of white china and the remaining half of her oatmeal all across the dining room floor.  Hmmmm…  More stuff for Mummy.

I started with paper towels (four), then moved onto a wet washcloth, and finally just broke out the mop and did the whole floor.  Then I turned to the table which, despite having suffered no similar disaster, was just as messy as the floor had been — my children don’t eat out of their bowls so much as around them.

The living room floor was crying out to be done as well, now that the dining room was suddenly showing it up.  And then I was on a roll.  Living room led to stairs, which led to landing, which led to E1′s room and our room, and onto the stairs leading up to E2′s penthouse bedroom.  It was hot up at the top of the house and I was getting tired, but I’d got a bee in my bonnet now and so soldiered on and finished E2′s room as well.  That was it, all the hardwood done.  I congratulated myself and headed back downstairs for a much needed rest and a well-deserved cup of tea.

But I stopped at the bathroom…  Really, it ought to be done too, oughtn’t it?  Yes… and I grabbed the bleach and did the job properly too.  And the things I brought out from lurking in the corners…!  Yesssss, the bathroom floor had needed to be done.  And… well… now that I’d got bleach on the mop, I might as well do the powder room too.   And the kitchen.  There, that was all the hard floors mopped and clean.  I rinsed the mop in the kitchen sink and then, remembering what had been on it moments ago, bleached the sink out too.  Then the countertops…  then the cooker-top.

Exhausted now, I went back into the dining room — the room that had so innocently started the whole frenzy off — and sank into a chair.  Sometimes motherhood feels like one huge clean-up operation from morning to night.  It’s never enough… there’s always more to be done and I never seem to get on top of it.  Sometimes I catch the wind in my sails and get a whole bunch done quickly, like those floors.  But sometimes I don’t, or it just keeps coming, and then I am defeated.  And sometimes all I want to do is hand the whole thing — kids, house, mess, husband — over to someone else and bury myself under the duvet.  The kettle began to whistle and I dragged myself out of the chair to pour the tea, and then put two of my mother’s egg-free corn muffins on plates.  I’d worked hard, I ‘d earned the chance to sit with my daughters and drink a nice cup of tea while they had their snack.  We could talk and eat — civilised, social… the extra time that E1 had been asking me for.

“Girls! Come and have your cornmuffins!” I yelled, and E1′s thunderous footsteps were the immediate reply.  She scooted into her chair and, even before her bum hit the seat, bit greedily into the corn muffin, which sent a million yellow crumbs skidding across the spotless floor.  Inevitable.

E2 hadn’t appeared, so I went into the family room to fetch her.  She was grinning at me from her place inside the empty toybox.  “Have you come to ride the roller coaster with me?” she asked excitedly, hugging a teddy bear to her belly.

“No, it’s time for your snack,” I replied.  “Come on.”   We would have our time together, but I knew it would shorter than I had hoped.  I lifted her up into my arms and walked back into the dining room.   And I turned my back on the family room, where the contents of that toybox — the entire contents of the toybox — had been dumped out and strewn in a sea of mess across the floor while I had been busy upstairs.

It was more stuff… more stuff…  There is always more.  And never enough time for me.  And never ever enough time for them.

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Late Shift

Out tonight with my mothers’ group, I came home at 10pm and opened the door slowly… slowly… in the hopes that perhaps the girls would be sleeping — and knowing full well that M would be asleep on the couch, either way.

He was, but they weren’t.  As soon as I stepped through the door, I heard E2′s little voice half whispering, half singing, “It’s Mummy!  Mummy’s home!”  And then quieter, with a calm conviction, ” It’s my mummy.”  She peered around the corner, so full of delight that her face fairly glowed and, if I’d been feeling any disappointment that my shift had not yet ended, she melted it away in an instant.  It would have been nice to come home to a quiet house and nothing to be done but drink a relaxing cup of tea, but surely it is better to come home to love, and a beaming grin, and needed-ness.

E1 yelled out from her room — she was not to be forgotten, there in her dark isolation.  I went in to kiss hert, and immediately got that same huge grin.  They hadn’t wanted me to leave, and now I was home again and all was right in the world.  A kiss, a hunt for her lost bear…  I extracted myself from her arms, from her endless questions designed to keep me near, and shut the door.  I was glad she’d still been awake …better than a quiet house.

M was grumpy, as he always is at this time of night and woken from his slouched couch-slumber.  But I held E2 out to kiss him goodnight and he complied, and then I leaned in for my own.  He can’t help the grumpiness — he had needed to be in bed an hour ago.  He needed me home too, and it made me smile a bit.

But there was no time to pause.  E2 wanted her milk and she was impatient now.  She smacked her hands on my cheeks, turned my face to hers so she could look in my eyes, and said, “Milk, Mummy!”  And so I carried her upstairs to do my late shift — to feed her down and make the house quiet at last –  happy to be so needed, so loved, and home.

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All Good Things Come to an End

As much as I don’t want to think about this — and I don’t, I don’t, I don’t — it is time to look for a job.  Costs are rising, M’s hours are fluctuating, and the bills…  oh, the bills, they positively sneer at me.  I have done everything I know how to do to reduce outgoings, and yet…

I have cut down on water usage as much as I think I can — well, no, I do still take a shower every day and bathe my daughters…  perhaps that ought to be rethought.  I have taken to recording on the calendar every time we use the washer, dryer, dishwasher, and shower, just so I can can be more conscious of it.  And still, we have managed to use 100 gallons more than last month, and our bill is again five times the size of my parents’.  And I have ruthlessly slashed the weekly grocery budget …and then slashed it again.  It now sits in the mid double-digits — not so much to feed a family of four on, and harder still when allergies prevent us from buying most of the cheaper food options, and harder again when that figure covers all the non-food supplies as well.  We keep the thermostat set religiously to 65F and sit wrapped in blankets all the time — and I know the furnace needs replacing but…  but…  how could we have had a gas bill like our last one?  How? It was colossal, breathtaking, utterly devastating.  It was three-and-a-half times what my parents’ bill is — and they in a bigger house — and more on its own than I had budgeted for all our utilities for the month put together.  When it arrived, I sat in shock at the dining room table, holding it limply in my hand and waiting to cry but feeling too numb.

And so it is time to look for me to look for a job to fill this gap.  It will have to be an afternoon job, so that the girls are mostly napping at the time and less hassle for my mother to sit — and I am very, very grateful that she will take care of them for me.  It doesn’t have to pull in much, just a few hundred a month would ease the pain a bit.  The mark is set sufficiently low.  It should be no big deal.

And yet, I feel so sick at the thought.  Paralysed.  And I think no one will understand why.  Anyone in this position would know what to do — to pull up their bootstraps and get out there.  Anyone who’d balk at that is…  just plain lazy, maybe self-pitying to boot.

So I am simultaneously trying to put this into words and kicking myself in the backside.  The plain truth is that I don’t want to go out and find a job because I do believe I have a job — a critically important job — and I don’t want to give up on that (or perhaps…  I don’t want that to end).  The second plain truth is that we moved here partly so that I could continue to stay home and do that job, and that’s a hell of  a lot of effort to have all come to nothing in the end.  And the third truth is that…  I am afraid.

And that’s it — I am just afraid.  After four years out of the work force, I don’t know what work to do.  There is no logical or obvious next step.  I never ended up working in the area I got my degree in and it’s been so long since I graduated, I’d not be qualified anymore.  And though I forged a career of sorts, it was never a good fit for me nor I for it — we are neither of us clamoring to come back together again.  But most of all — most of all — my confidence is shot.  I ran screaming from my last job, overjoyed to rid of it, hiring a solicitor to fight for my right to redundancy when the project (and my role) ended while I was maternity leave and HR tried to force me into a job two levels lower.  That last role had made all my insufficiencies shine and my abilities fade to black, and I worked for a micro-managing director who ruled by intimidation and humiliation, and then threw in a good dose of sexism just for fun.  Every morning, I dreaded the day ahead and every evening I dreamed of the day I would drive away for good.  By the time I did, my professional confidence was ripped to shreds, and I’ve never sat down since and stitched it back up.  I have buried my head (and my heart) into motherhood and ignored the fact that this safe world would, inevitably, come to an end.

And so, here it is — the time has come for it to end.  And here I am, needing to find a job, but hating it — and so, so afraid.  I don’t want to look for a ‘career’ job because I don’t want this to be permanent — career jobs call for enthusiasm and commitment, and I don’t know where I’d pull that from.   And I don’t want to just go out and get a job a Starbucks because…  well, I ought to be thinking about my career, shouldn’t I?  I’ve got a degree!  I’ve got all this bloody potential!

And all I want to do is crawl into bed.  No…  under the bed.  I feel paralysed.  But those bills… still they sneer.  And they don’t relent.  This world that I wanted for my girls while they were small (or was it for me?) has come to an end.  As much as I hate the thought — and I do hate it — it’s time to bite the bullet.

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In In In, Out Out Out

Just sat down to pay bills and balance the books and have scared myself to death.  Money is so tight that I am gasping for breathe just a wee bit at the moment.

We always knew it would be tight, we always knew it would be tight, we always knew.  I just have to keep reminding myself that.  I mean, the economy has taken everyone by surprise but, even beyond that, we did know it was going to tight being a family of four on one income.  Still, gotta be thankful that the numbers are black instead of red — even when they drop down to the very low double-digits, they are black.

I’ll just focus on breathing.  And soothe myself with a cup of tea.  …maybe minus the teabag.

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A Long Day in the Life…

Today I:

1. Started it off by not getting to bed until 2.30am, because M was on call and didn’t get home until 1.30am…  and I couldn’t sleep until he was home and safe, off the frozen and slippery roads… and then we talked while he got something to eat and got ready for bed
2. Got up at 3.30am when E2 began crying and fed her
3. Got up and fed her again when she began crying at 8.30am and, by the time she was done, E1 had woken up and would not go back to bed.  I was knackered and slightly pissed off because of it, but up for the day.
4. Stopped E1 from descending into hysterical wailing when she discovered M had forgotten to put a sippee cup of milk in the fridge for her, and quickly poured her a cup.
5. Showered in a rush while she drank her milk
6. Got E2 up — she’d had a messy poo that had come through to her bedsheets.  When I took her nappy off in the bathroom, it tipped up and spilled all over the bathmat
7. Bathed both girls, got them dried, dressed, and combed hair
8. Stripped E2′s soiled bed — and E1′s bed and ours while I was at it — and got a load of washing going
9. Cooked their breakfasts and served them, and then helped them eat it when it all started to go wrong
10. Cleaned the mess of breakfast off the table
11. Got on my hands and knees and cleaned the mess of breakfast off the floor
12. Got a loaf of bread started in the bread machine
13. Took a deep breath and swept up the dirt from the plant the girls knocked over
14. Switched the washing into the dryer and got a second load of washing going
15. Folded a basket of laundry and put it away
16. Took a deep breath and re-hung half the contents of E1′s closet which the girls had gleefully pulled down and spread all over the room
17. Made lunch for the girls
18. Wiped the mess from lunch off the table
19. Got on my hands and knees and clean the mess from lunch off the floor
20. Realised I hadn’t yet eaten anything and quickly stuffed a bowl of Weetabix down my neck
21. Discovered where the girls had crayoned all over the hardwood floor and scrubbed it all off
22. Took a deep breath
23. Discovered where E1 had crayoned all over her bedroom walls and then discovered it would not come off
24. Started to lose my temper with her, but reined it in when she was so clearly sorry and began to cry.  Gave her a big cuddle instead
25. Removed yellow crayon bits from E2′s mouth, digging it out from between her teeth with a tissue
26. Made the girls’ beds and went to start ours but…
27. Helped a panicking E1 rush to the toilet — too late!
28. Removed her wet knickers, wiped her tears and gave her a reassuring and forgiving cuddle, and found clean knickers for her
29. Changed E2′s nappy
30. Got E1 down for her nap
31. Fed E2 down for her nap
32. Went to start making our bed but…
33. Rushed to E1′s room to stop her screaming before she woke her sister, and discovered the cause of the trauma was a toy stuck under the bed.  Rescued the toy.
34. Went downstairs and made a sandwich and finally sat down and ate in peace
35. Sent two emails
36. Laid down for a nap
37. Woke up twenty minutes later when E2 started crying and could not get herself back to sleep
38. Gave up on the nap and instead stuck my head under the tap, and did my hair and make up for the first time today
39. Brushed my teeth for the first time today as well
40. Started the girls’ dinner
41. Got both girls up from their naps, calmed E1 down (as she wasn’t ready to wake and began crying that she couldn’t stay in bed), while M took his post-work shower
42. Cleaned E1′s bedroom floor of toys so that it can be hoovered tomorrow
43. Went downstairs and sliced myself a piece of hot bread for my dinner
44. Rushed out of the house to go to the theatre with my mum, who wondered (as ever) why I looked so harried and wound up, and worried (as ever) that it was some problem between her and me
45. Thoroughly enjoyed the show, reassured my mother
46. Came home at 11pm to find M half-asleep on the couch and complaining of headache, E2 still up and dressed for bed but wearing a boot on one foot and a pair of training pants on her head, the dining table and floor covered in dried-on mess from dinner, the dirty dishes spread where they had been left all over the kitchen countertop, the family room strewn with every toy that should have been in the toy-box, and half the clothes I had hung up earlier in the day pulled down again and spread all over the upstairs hallway
47. Restrained the urge to scream in anger
48. Stepped over the clothes and went into E1′s room to check on her, and found her wide awake because her closet door had been left fully open (instead of only cracked open) with the bright light shining in her face, her bed strewn with more of the same clothes as in the hallway, every book off her shelf spread across the floor, and she wearing a skirt and t-shirt that she had had put on over her PJs, and sleeping on a tennis racket
49. Barely restrained myself from flying into a complete rage
50. Put away all the clothes from the hallway and E1′s bed
51. Put all her books away
52. Chucked the racket down the stairs in anger
53. Stopped, pulled myself together, and sat down on her bed to give her a big cuddle and her goodnight kisses
54. Discovered our bed was still unmade, took a deep breath and counted to ten, and then made it
55. Took E2 off of M so he could go to bed, and told him that the state of the house was really taking the piss
56. Fed E2 down to sleep
57. Scrubbed the dried-on remains of dinner off the dining room floor and dining table
58. Washed all the dishes
59. Swept the kitchen floor
60. Put the toys away
61. Spotted the huge gas bill that arrived yesterday and began immediately to panic about it again, and then forceably looked away and pushed it from my mind
62. Made some toast
63. Thought about the fact that one day, when I go back to work, someone will look at this gap on my CV and think I’ve ‘done nothing’ these past four years
64. Wrote this blog post

And now, I am going to bed.

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