Category Archives: Humour

Parent like someone is watching

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Divorce, Humour, Parenting, Uncategorized

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Sometimes I like to parent like someone is watching.

Oh, not in the Instagram-ready, photo-story, Facebook Life way.

I haven’t posted pictures of my kids on my personal FB account for years. (I haven’t been on it for years, to be fair). I don’t even TAKE that many pictures. I stopped in silent protest when I realised my now ex was living a life on FB I didn’t recognise – our life – but he was a person, husband and father in pictures and pithy sentences that I didn’t know – that he couldn’t be in reality.

There’s a lot that’s been said about the social media fakery, the presentation of the perfect life, perfect family, or perfect body. About how disingenuous that is – how dangerous. And about how refreshing an antidote warts-and-all is, the cellulite bikini shot, the tantrum; the exposure of the art of posing and posturing.

But the truth of the matter is that we all repackage what’s happening to us all of the time to make sense of it – to make it more palatable. To ourselves or to others. And the warts-and-all stuff is as much a virtue-repackaging as the perfect picture is.

We all choose how to tell our stories. How to present ourselves. In many ways that’s what this blog is… processing. Repackaging on the way.

And sometimes it’s a good thing.

One of the ways it works for me is by DELIBERATELY repackaging my parenting in the moment – especially in the difficult moment – by the act of PRETENDING someone is watching it. Thinking forward about how I want to report it, to present it. How I want to have behaved. How I want to feel about myself afterwards. How I want my kids to feel about me…

So I pretend that it’s all being recorded, that someone is watching – that it IS going on Facebook – that I will have to watch it back and feel okay about it. I find it helps me keep my cool when the smalls are pressing my EVERY SINGLE DAMN BUTTON.

Someone IS always watching, of course. They are. And I am often conscious of the Small Gaze, what they’re learning, how I might be inadvertently finding new and subtle ways of messing them up, as all parents do. But the Small Gaze isn’t the one that helps me keep my temper. It’s that Imagined Gaze.

Dance like no one is watching – parent like someone is…

Of course sometimes other people ARE watching. The gaze is REAL. And that throws me off my gaze-game because I find I’m also reacting to THEM, to their approval or disapproval.

Like all socially awkward people, I have always been aware of eyes on me, and while it is a good thing on occasion, it mostly trips me up and over myself. Sometimes I perform for gaze; some MORE times I crumble under it…

Sometimes, I wonder who I am when I’m NOT being the person I want people to see, or myself to be. When gaze, real or imaginary, doesn’t define me or shape my actions. Is true authenticity even possible with other people? With myself when I want to like myself? AM I STILL ME IF THERE’S NO ONE IN THE WOODS TO WATCH ME FALL OVER????

This of course is all on my mind because the person who has most recently had the dubious felicity of watching my parenting is Boynotquiteonthenetheredge, who escorted me and the Smalls on holiday to the little village in Devon I’ve been to every year since I was a kid.

This is a person who’s gaze I’m particularly keen to keep admiring, in a place with lots of echoes, spending an unprecedented amount of time in confined, close, rainy quarters with me and my Smalls… and my parenting. And my sister.

I would like to be able to repackage this experience as an unprecedented success, but life is rarely that neat.

Blending different people together, and the different MEs I am under their different gazes, is HARD. And the Smalls are watching too, reacting to the changes, gazing themselves, gauging.

There was some challenging behaviour – mostly from the children and not me, I’m pleased to say. The Boy was sanguine and supportive, which is not the Male Gaze I have been under in the past, and weirded me out in it’s own way. Possibly being under a disapproving gaze for so long has changed me in ways I haven’t noticed until this time, this same place, with different eyes on me… Meanwhile, the Big Small was discombobulated, territorial (‘Do you love BNQOTNE more than you love me?’), and unwilling to share our family, all to a backdrop of the Small Small’s never-ending and entirely self-serving monologue (centered around the enduring paradox of ‘this is the best/worst day of my life’).

There were some lovely moments, and some memorable ones, but a lot of it was sheer hard bloody work – the navigation of expectations, and of gazes.

Since getting back, I have had several long, long naps.

Sometimes the only way to escape from eyes, including my own, is just to shut them.

[TOP TIP for rainy day holidays: bring googly eyes and the hot glue gun].

The cat the boy and the leg

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Divorce, Humour, Motherhood, Parenting

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It has not been a good week for Catonthenetherege.

It’s not been a good week for Boynotquiteonthenetheredge either, come to that.

These two unfortunates met at the top of the stairs in semi darkness. The former never having lived with the latter’s kind, at least not for a long time, lacks the instincts of cat-owners everywhere – which include a firm grip on the handrail and a slight pause for the thunder of paws, going past in either direction on an errand made suddenly urgent by the presence of a person.

Their meeting was not an auspicious one.

He hurt his knee.

And landed heavily.

On the cat.

Breaking her leg in three places.

Pandemonium – and some very expensive vet bills – ensued.

The children were hysterical, difficult to console, and not terribly happy with The Boy.

Well, Big Small is more philosophical, but Small Small shows distinct signs of harbouring A Grudge. (This is something she does well, and definitely gets from me). [Top tip for blended family interlopers: don’t break the kids’ pet’s leg. You’re welcome].

The poor Boy has clearly not been unaffected either, suffering not only the Small Small’s disapprobation, but also sleepless nights remembering the crunch. He has since admitted he now sees cats in the street several hundred yards away and gets palpitations lest he unwittingly damages them.

The cat herself made a sound I’ve literally never heard an animal make in my life, and hope never to again.

She has, however, since found solace in savaging every veterinary professional trying to help her, and I’ve had several conversations with people asking me whether Catonthenetheredge is usually a ‘challenging’ animal, and requesting my permission to sedate her in the interests of preserving HUMAN life and limb.

Having chosen, with the blessed assistance of insurance, to keep the limb most in question, Catonthenetheredge is now officially BionicCatonthenetheredge, and will likely set metal detectors off in the airport next time she goes on her holidays. Hence the Frankenstein scar.

Not content with this meagre suffering, I myself then proceeded to make a further attempt on her life (thank God she’s got 9) by being functionally innumerate and somewhat overtired, and massively overdosing her on the opiates she was sent home on – my first clue being how unusually compliant she was. It was not a fun wait for the vet to open and check her over…

Poor, poor, poor kitty. (She is fine. Stuck in a cage for 10 weeks for her leg to recover, and not happy about it, but otherwise fine).

The whole thing, all in all, has been something of an Adventure. The sort I could have really done without – and the Boy is not the only one it’s left with palpitations.

The thing about the Anxious, though, is that it turns out we’re actually pretty good in a crisis, you know.

I calmed children. I caught the damaged cat. I soothed the Boy. I got to the emergency vet. I got the insurance sorted.

Having something on which to focus our worry for a while – particularly where there is positive corrective action to take – is far easier and more rewarding than dealing with the generalised and universal worry we normally live with, and which we are powerless to mitigate.

I’ve found that to be true for the whole of the last four months, as well as for this specific domestic disaster.

The whole pandemic, really, has played into my hands. I’m not just anxious, I’m OCD, so I LIKE washing them. I LIKE knowing what mysterious forces are out to get me and mine and how to combat them with face coverings, distance and disinfectant.

The trouble is, of course, that crisis mode can’t last. Once the ‘crisis’ is over, the anxiety is still high, and it throws long shadows. Oh, they might not be reasonable shadows, and you might well know it, but they LOOM.

Right now in the dark mine whisper about the fragility of life, of bodies, of bones, whisper the what ifs, what if it wasn’t just a leg, what if a stupid accident happened to one of the kids, the crunch of THEIR bones in my mind’s ear, and the lack of control over all of it, how we are all just hostages to capricious fortune…

It’s made worse right now of course by the fact the Smalls aren’t even here to squeeze and defy anxiety with reality.

They’re on their first ever 7 day holiday with their Dad, and I feel like I’M the one who has lost a limb…

It physically hurts. And if I can’t keep them safe when they’re here, I sure as hell can’t keep them safe there. So here I am all wound up and dressed up in protective tiger-mum gear, with nowhere to go.

When I have spoken to them, they are obviously having the most wonderful of wonderful times. Which is of course what I want for them… but which also hurts in its own way. All the times I don’t get to see, or be part of. All the times I am not missed. All the times I am irrelevant.

If there’s a silver lining at all, I suppose it’s that at least there’s someone to look after and soak up the surfeit of directionless love. Even if it does scratch me every time I dare reach in to change its litter tray.

I may not be able to squeeze it, but at least I have the scars to prove it is alive, healthy, and reassuringly unhappy.

Catonthenetheredge, you are a mean, rubbish cat, but I love you.

Not least because that wobbly pink swelling I thought was the gross part of your wounds turns out to be your naked tummy, and proves we ARE kindreds, after all.

xxx

Home schooling highs and LOWS

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Humour, Parenting, School

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Sound the bells! Raise the glasses! Wave the flags! Beep the horns! Praise the GODS of Miseducation!

IT’S NEARLY FREAKING OVER!!!!!!!!

There is one more week of homeschooling to go, and then we can down pens, paper, random apps, videos with annoying presenters, zoom/google hangouts, confusing reams of downloads and links, exhausted printers, and any pretence that we any longer give a flying fook about any of it.

Plus in good news, they never do any bloody work in the last week before summer holidays so you can really just watch films, play out and bring in games next week, anyway! Yay!

Far from being a long terrifying stretch of childcare-juggling and scary amounts of quality-family-time, the next six weeks suddenly look like a beautiful, manageable, and blessedly finite oasis before the ultimate relief of school, school, wonderous SCHOOL in September.

I thought it apt, at this amazing milestone/juncture, to take a look back at some of my home schooling highs and lows. Mostly lows.

1. The beginning bit where I thought it might be fun, and I might actually be quite good at it. BWAAAAHAAAAHAAAAAAA!!!!!! Past-Me is CUTE. And ridiculous. And fell VERY HARD into the black chasm between expectation and reality that I DUG FOR MYSELF. Again.

2. All the hate mail from Big Small, critiquing my teaching abilities. MISSPELLED, and thus proving her point. Highlights include: “Your’ not my mother anymor” and “I hat you.”

3. When I realised I would have to either give up on their, there and they’re or give up on sanity. Also that Big Small will spell with ‘whith’ and thing ‘fing’ into adulthood – and there’s not a fing I can do about it. Never has detheat thelt so threeing.

4. Every time someone told me they couldn’t do something, before actually knowing what it was or, you know, trying it first.

5. Discovering the Small Small can only practice reading while upside down and occasionally kicking me in the face. This is ongoing.

6. Trying to persuade her that leaving 3 minutes between saying each letter makes it kinda harder to blend the sounds together… Consistently losing this argument.

7. Big Small’s insistence that all small numbers should just be taken off all big numbers in column subtraction sums, and that screaming at them will somehow make them behave differently.

8. Being told that ***Jessica*** (their Dad’s girlfriend) does all the teaching there, and that she’s far better at it than me, never shouts, and why can’t we do it like that? WHEN WE DID IT LIKE THAT AND HAD TO STOP BECAUSE YOU TWO WERE LITTLE FORKWITS.

9. The time I tried to instil comprehension and moral fibre by looking at fables and stories with lessons. When asked what she learned from The Boy Who Cried Wolf, the Small Small said: “Don’t call for a Wolf in case one comes.” Boom. Parenting win.

10. Following the school’s suggestions to do phonic breakdowns as a robot, and somehow ending up being required to do a Dalek voice for hours on end and faint whenever I’m kissed, shouting “Does not compute, does not compute” – which is apparently very funny, but equally apparently not very effective in teaching phonics.

11. Somehow ending up in a situation where I pay both kids a pound a day to do less than 20 minutes of learning, surely earning higher than minimum wage for not showing up on time, being surly, and doing a completely half-arsed job. LIFE LESSONS FOLKS.

12. The epic 5 times table tantrum of 2020. I may have to make it it’s own plaque in remembrance because it was a proper humdinger performance.

13. All the times I set up something super fun and innovative and they refused to do it, including giant snakes and ladders on the patio, nerf gun sums, a shop, and assault course spelling. UNDERAPPRECIATION. Spell that, kids.

14. The realisation that despite painfully PAINFULLY slow progress, the Small Small started this period struggling to read short words, and can now actually read short books. And sometimes even wants to do it.

15. The wonderful feeling when a piece of work DOES capture Big Small’s fancy, and I get a genuinely funny and beautifully observed story about school dinners, or cartoon strip with farting dinosaur gags.

So there have been some redeeming moments, I suppose. But boy have they felt few and far between…

We none of us really know what school will look like in September, if they’ll be in and out with shutdowns, how they’ll catch up on the half-year they missed.

But I DO know that while in some ways the extra time with the Smalls has been special, for our wee family it’s HIGH TIME.

Oh, and that teachers are freaking heroes.

xxx

Mummy – a poem

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Humour, Motherhood, Poetry

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There is a magical stage of literacy, unique to the 21st Century, that takes place in the mysterious place just before the full formation of the written word, where small children can form coherent sentences and complex ideas, and – most importantly – can use the voice record function on a technological device.

The Smallest Small is at this stage right now, possibly not for a great deal longer, as her education is thankfully soon to be safely back in the hands of the professionals.

I still dread the weekends when my kids go away, and I still miss them terribly. But every now and again I receive one of these recorded-to-text philosophical missives that make it seem almost – ALMOST – worth it.

Followers of this page will note that I dabble in the odd bit of poetry. I am not afraid to say that I am completely outclassed by the post-modern, stream-of-consciousness musings of the Small Small – pictured here in a slowly deflating paddling pool, presumably contemplating it as a metaphor for life, and composing her next masterpiece of deep thought and emotion.

So here, for your edification, is her only very slightly edited contribution to the literary world (I’ve added line breaks, punctuation and title, and removed the complaints her sister is a meanie).

It covers the pain of love; the meaning of existence; the nature of obsession; death and reincarnation; identity; the human condition – and for some reason my behaviour. (In my defence I am actually very nice to people most of the time – honest).

Please imagine her dressed all in black on a small stage, possibly in a turtleneck, doing a full-on spoken word performance. It makes it even better.

The Estranged Greeting 
(mostly) by the Small Small (and possibly Siri)
Age 5  

Yay Mummmy,
I love you so much for different days.
Do you like it when I’m away?
Do you remember, that day, 
when I got killed?
And it was so frightened -
I didn’t want to leave you,
always. 

I get mixed up, 
because it’s all -
I just like everything.
It’s just really fun being like this, 
so I am.

I love you so much -
you’ve been a great Mummy,
I hope I have more of you next time.
I just love you too much -  I can’t stop thinking about you
so I decided to do it.
And I’m to go to you tomorrow -
but is it safer to you to move? 

I’m just doing a normal hello hello.
That’s what I need.
Hello, it’s my turn to say hello to you!
I hope you have a good time.
You still got the virus? 
Hope you’re being really nice to people. 
I wish you so much - love you so much -
I just never want anybody.
It’s not me making you, and me loving you - 
it’s not because you’re NOT
it’s just because I love you. 

And that’s how people -
people people people -
people are just people 
I just like being me - 
and you might like being you - 
and it all just depends if you are you.

I just love you so much Mummy
I wanna kiss I love you,
I love you, that’s what I do.
Wanna hear this, 
but don’t wanna hear anything.

I love you Mummy,
and I can just see you and your little face - 
I want to see you forever.
You are the best.

Part of the reason I wanted to share this is to remind myself that I’m loved, because I forget it really easily.

I haven’t got a continuous monologue with love – I can’t rest in it. It’s like a conversation I have to start over every time, like everything that went before it didn’t happen or didn’t count.

I’m always back at square one, striving to earn more of it, worrying it will disappear if I don’t, pouring so much out I feel empty of it – like I love everyone I love more than they love me – no matter what I do or how hard I try to win more of it.

I’m afraid that people will stop loving me, replace me, prefer someone else, realise I’m a bit rubbish – because all of those are things that have really happened and I’m afraid they will happen again.

I’m still learning that love isn’t always conditional, or transactional, or reliant on my earning it – on my effort or my sacrifice. That it can just be. And stay. But at low moments, it’s hard…

And this week there have been a lot of low moments with the smalls, who have basically yelled at me, whined at me, moaned, hit each other, and generally not appreciated a single thing I’ve done for them – including shaving foam craft activities, burning myself hot glueing Barbie furniture, inventive homeschooling with the Darlek spelling voice (don’t ask), garden playdates, making a cheese sauce from scratch 6 times because the bloody roux wouldn’t work and it’s all the Big Small wanted to eat, a sleepover in the lounge because it was so hot, and filling that blinking paddling pool up with buckets of warm water so they could play in it for a sum total of five bloody minutes.

So if you’ve forgotten that you’re loved, if you’re feeling underappreciated, overwhelmed, emptied out and tired out this Sunday morning – this beautiful voice recorded text message poem is for you, too.

It is a reminder to all mums, that THIS is how your kids really feel about you.

I don’t know if you wanna hear this today, or need to, but they want to see you and your little face forever. They love you for your different days, or in spite of them. It’s not because you’re NOT, it’s just because they love you. Because you are the best. Yay Mummies.

xxxx

Lockdown love

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Aging, Humour, Love and sex

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So today I’m going to see Boynotquiteonthenetheredge for the first time in 2 months.

And I’m a bit nervous.

A lot of people seem to have been very interested in how BNQOTNE and I have been doing in lockdown, when not locked down together. HOW HAVE WE BEEN KEEPING THE MAGIC ALIVE, I’ve been asked. Well, we have followed a simple 5 step plan.

And no, none of them are about Zanking. (Zoom Wanking). Sorry.

1. Realism

First and foremost, we haven’t been.

Keeping the magic alive, that is, obvs. (I can’t comment on the other thing, clearly, as I’m a model of discretion and patron saint of personal boundaries).

The thing is that this is not a particularly magical time, is it? Anyone feeling super magical? No? We’ve both been trying to do our jobs, entertain and home school (haahahahahhaaaaaa) small children, on our own, without any of our normal anchors or support mechanisms, including each other.

It’s boring and exhausting. It’s also weird and worrying. And LONELY. And HARD. That’s not particularly… magical.

2. Shared hobbies

When we have managed to escape reality for a bit and aren’t too bloody busy or depressed, we’ve been throwing ourselves into new hobbies.

Have you seen that brilliant Museum Challenge thing where people are recreating fine art paintings with props from home? Please look it up, you won’t be disappointed! BNQOTNE and I have been doing this, but with nudes.

I’ve never been much into sending nude photographs because I’m old, it’s never been on my radar – and frankly I wasn’t born with the natural knack of the selfie.

Despite this, so far I have managed to recreate Boticelli’s Birth of Venus standing in a suitcase rather than a giant clam shell, Eve with a supporting cast of stuffed toys including sequined snake – and several reclining nudes from Degas to Schiele.

In return The Boy has sent me an image of him as David wrestling a lion (a giant bouncy unicorn) and Franz Von Stuck’s Mermaid (with a Barbie). My favourite has probably been a self portrait by Egon Schiele again, of the artist in an orange towel – only the Boy used a Sainsbury’s bag. I literally laughed until I cried.

We have both become competitive over attention to detail, lighting and prop absurdity.

Getting the right shot takes time and considerable dedication. You need to balance your phone on something the right height at the right angle. You get a better image with the front facing camera, which gives you the maximum of 10 seconds on timer to get yourself in front of it and in the right pose.

Sadly in my rush to mount the rocking horse for my John Collier Lady Godiva parody, I stubbed my little toe on my makeshift washing basket tripod, and I think I actually broke it.

Still got the damn shot, though.

They do say love hurts. So does taking nudes, the way I do it. Anyway, I defy this not to be the most middle class thing you hear today. KEEP ME POSTED.

3. Theme Zoom dates

Why wouldn’t you?

We’ve done Buffy fancy dress and binged watched series 6, and a slightly different kind of art date, where we both did various self portraits in different mediums, with wine.

Mostly clothed.

4. Bad puns

There’s been a great deal of exchanging memes, or general word play and punning.

I still think I got too little credit for my recent cheese/sex puns, which somehow came up in conversation, and included cum-embert and mask’n’boneme. (It is possible the lack of physical intimacy is taking its toll).

5. Sharing the small stuff

We’re still sharing the cute stuff the various smalls say, the less cute stuff when they’re whinging, fighting, refusing to do any bloody work or generally being ungrateful little eejits, what’s for tea, what we’ve done at work that day, political thoughts, bad dreams, daily highs and lows.

That’s really what life boils down to, after all. And if you’ve not got the small stuff you can’t have the big stuff.

But now.

Now we’re going to see each other in person for the first time in 8 weeks, and I’m NERVOUS.

It sort of feels like a much higher-stakes first date.

I’m nervous because I haven’t driven the car more than to the shops and back once a week, and he’s a 40 minute drive away, and I’m rusty. And a terrible driver at the best of times.

I’m nervous because when I get there (presuming I do) 2 metres is still so damn FAR.

I’m nervous becuase I’m supposed to be going for a long walk on my stupid broken toe, which is still sore.

I’m nervous about all the garlic I ate yesterday and that he’ll be close enough to smell it on my breath. I’m nervous he won’t be.

I’m nervous because I’m touch starved and haven’t touched another adult – or indeed been touched by anyone not launching a killer-bee-wasp attack, demanding a strictly lift, handing me something nasty, or requiring an injury to be tended to – for a really, really long time.

I’m nervous because I could really, really use a damn hug.

I’m nervous in case I don’t have anything to say because we’ve said it all on text and everyday is exactly the same anyway, and even if the small stuff is what matters in the end it’s ALSO true that there’s nothing new or interesting, and we’re basically living in the film groundhog day.

I’m nervous because I’m different on text, and that’s a large part of how we’ve been keeping in touch – I’m funnier, I’m quicker, I’m more honest.

Given the last few weeks, I’m also a lot bloody thinner too…

I’m nervous because I can’t disguise the lockdown weight gain by controlling my lighting or angles. Or props.

I’m nervous because we’ve both been having good days and bad days and they haven’t always coincided.

I’m nervous because everywhere people are so fed up and so confused by the patently stupid new rules that they’re making up their own, and that worries me, and I don’t want to give him anything, or get anything and bring it home.

I’m nervous that I’ve been looking forward to seeing him so much, and what if he’s not as pleased to see me as I am to see him.

I’m nervous that I’ve pinned a lot on being able to see him, and it making my life so much better, but what if it doesn’t: what if everything still feels awful, what if it makes it WORSE? What if it’s snatched away again in another lockdown?

I’m nervous, because I want him like me, still. And life is hard and confusing and I’M not sure I like me much at the moment, and everything about being locked away is setting off all my abandonment issues, but on acid.

I’m nervous about everything, because everything is scary right now.

The one thing I’m NOT nervous about is him dumping me and sharing my nude photographs – partly because I doubt he’s that much of a Zanker, and partly because if he does I look great and they’re bloody hilarious.

Wish me luck.

Lockdown meltdowns

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Humour, mental health, Motherhood, Parenting, Uncategorized

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It has been a week of tantrums at casaonthenetheredge.

Some of them have been from me.

Several of them have been from the Big Small, now 8, who greets every suggestion I make for her education or entertainment with disinterest, scorn, or downright fury.

She does not understand why her 5 year old sister has to do less work than her, or indeed why she should be doing any learning at all. When coaxed to make an attempt at it she cannot be left unsupervised, as she apparently suffers from random attacks of amnesia, illiteracy, or violent interest in blank walls.

When her attention is recalled to her task it mostly results in screaming.

She has screamed about division. She has screamed about spellings. She has had a full-scale meltdown over a five times table worksheet. She has even screamed about being asked to draw a character from a book or shoot nerf gun pellets at maths answers.

I think the last one resulted in one of my growing collection of ‘hate mail’ letters from her. She wrote it to Mummy, crossed that out and put my full name, as – and I quote – “you’re not my Mummy any more.” Shade.

I chose to count it as the day’s English task, and resisted correcting the spelling or asking her to redo it in her best handwriting.

I also went to bed and cried.

Fortunately not all of her ire is directed at me. She and the Small Small have also screamed at each other, and competed over everything from who gets to sit on which side of the sofa to who’s imaginary horse is the fastest, who gets to go upstairs first to who twatted the other one the hardest.

Possibly my favourite of the week’s tantrums, however, has come from the Smallest Small.

In the run up to The Tantrum, she was engaged with the Big Small in what I thought was an innovative and enriching activity. (If I learn anything from lockdown it should be that this is a clear warning signal that it a) isn’t, b) someone is going to end up crying, and c) that’s most likely me).

In this particular instance, I had got the smalls to lie down on the floor with their arms out, drawn round them, and got them to colour themselves in. The idea was to cut these out, and send them to the Grandsonthenetheredge in the post as a life sized ‘hug’ (credit to random internetter, not my own idea).

This took some time to set up, and resulted in a full seven minutes of peaceful art – which is above average in the current concentration stakes – until the kids buggered off and I finished off all the colouring. Don’t worry, they came back every now and then to complain I wasn’t doing it to their specific instructions.

Despite this arms-length creative process, the Small Small became violently and incomprehensibly attached to her avatar, and proceded to have a full-on existential crisis at the thought of sending it off to Granny.

“I feel like I don’t exist any more mummy!”

“It’s like I’m not here!”

“I miss myself so much already!”

Having become irrevocably bogged down in the philosophical matters of reality, self determination and the true meaning of life, I did manage to get the damn picture in an envelope, although obviously I then had to colour in a second version, mostly alone, for the sake of ongoing harmony and peace.

Since then the Small Small has abandoned these pretensions to intellectualism and civility, and has basically gone feral.

It won’t wear clothes. Especially shoes and pants. It went to the toilet during dinner the other day, and came back announcing “just to let you know, I am definitely wearing knickers.” Big Small and I both expressed the opinion that people ACTUALLY wearing knickers seldom feel the desire to assert this to a general audience, a suspicion which proved on inspection to be well founded.

One day last week we managed to compromise on a swimming costume, but a lot of the time it’s just been naked.

It’s also reverted back to eating with fingers and is receding daily into illiteracy, clearly following its sister’s lead. (On the plus side I feel pretty sure if I continue to leave her to her own devices she may start spontaneously fashioning rudiementry tools next week, so I’m going to count that as a developmental win).

The thing is, when I come down to it, I feel a lot for both Smalls.

Because I feel moochy and not much like doing anything. MY concentration is shot. I am angry for no reason. There are moments when I want to tear all my clothes off and howl at the moon. (So far I’ve settled for pyjamas and crying into the cat. She cares for this even less than she cares for Cat Buckaroo).

I’m questioning the meaning of my existence, too. So many of the anchors I need to feel real and grounded aren’t there anymore – touch, social connection, routine, planning, looking forward to things. I’m flat without them – adrift. And I miss myself – or the version of me that had all those things.

I feel scribbled in and scrunched up, a paper version of myself stretched thin trying to be a teacher, a referee, a counsellor, an employee, a housewife, an entertainer, a social organiser – and I’m not doing any of it right.

I feel like I’m the one that really needs my tantrum script – the one I have whispered into the tangled hair of a melted down Small A LOT over the last few days. It’s okay. Let it out. It’s okay to feel this way. It’s okay.

So I’ll say it to you, in case you need it too.

It’s okay.

It’s okay to be a crap teacher.

It’s okay to feel stretched thin.

It’s okay to feel unreal.

It’s okay to feel like you’re failing – we all are.

It’s okay to cry.

It’s okay to shout.

It’s okay to throw a tantrum every now and then.

It’s okay to start over, and show your kids how to start over. It’s okay to be overwhelmed.

It’s okay to be afraid.

When it all gets too much, all any of us can do is to go back to basics – as the Small Small has demonstrated. And that means looking for the little things under the roar of the big ones.

With that in mind, I’ve kept the hate mail from Big Small, and I plan to tease her with it in the future. Possibly on her 18th birthday.

The phrase “just to let you know, I’m definitely wearing pants” is now a family joke.

This week also saw Small Small rename hay as ‘horse noodles,’ which is frankly brilliant, and will also become part of our family language.

Meanwhile, Big Small invented the game ‘Killer Bee Wasp’ which has had us all screaming with laughter in the garden after tea.

It’s these moments I’m trying to let in to fill me back up, fill me back out, anchor me down, make me feel real and rounded and normal again. Or as close as is possible right now.

I hope it is enough for me to weather the tantrums of next week, too.

Wish me luck. I’m sending it to you.

xxx

WILL NO ONE THINK OF THE ANIMALS???

12 Thursday Nov 2020

Posted by in Humour, Motherhood, Parenting

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They are the hidden victims of coronavirus, after all.

Here is Catonthenetheredge ‘enjoying’ a game of Cat Buckaroo with the Smalls, as evidence.

Clearly I don’t think cats are victims… (Apart from all that stuff about being carriers and having to be kept indoors, or not, as it turns out the case may be).

But if I think too much about the victims, the families, the people going out on a limb to help them all, I’ll start crying again.

And sometimes smiling at the little things, like the palpable suffering of Catonthenetheredge in quarantine with the kids, is a bit of a relief.

If you’d like to keep cheering me up I’d love to see more pics of animals spending unprecedented amounts of time with their people.

Xx

The Mix Tape

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Humour, Love and sex

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Back in the late 80s to early 90s, I was young, and I dreamt of being allowed pierced ears, a Dynasty perm, and Blossom’s wardrobe.

I dreamt of being swept off my feet by either Philip Schofield (then in his gopher days), The Undertaker (a bit of early kink coming through), or possibly Kevin Costner from Robin Hood and/or WesTly from The Princess Bride.

(I also had a bit of a thing for Noel Edmonds, then hosting his House Party, which it’s best we don’t talk about. Or think about. Although I’m still very partial to a beard…)

Back then, True Love in its Real Life form was expressed in one way, and one way only – a way that perhaps remains to this day it’s very truest and purest manifestation:

The Mix Tape.

Being presented with a Mix Tape was a declaration of adoration akin to to a Knight presenting his Lady with a handkerchief. Or a head. Or something. Look, I’m not that hot on medieval; just know it was pretty damn hallowed.

It was a labour of love.

The maker of the Mix Tape would have to listen to the radio, ghetto blaster poised, ready to click record as their chosen song was played in the charts. It was a matter of pride and exquisite timing to be able to get the very beginning notes without them being sullied by the DJ’s voice.

Masters of the Mix Tape Art would slave over a playlist designed not only to the taste of the object of their love, but to weave a secret narrative through the words of pop, rock and early indie bands that would speak to them, only them, and bind them together forever.

Next they would practice their penmanship, another lost art, in the creation of the cassette tape case, listing the songs and artists. Possibly there was LETTERING.

I never received a Mix Tape. Lettered or otherwise.

This might have had something to do with the fact I was a speccy, spotty, swotty type, with social and coordination skills constantly vying for the bottom place of any list, pack, or anything with a bottom. Or slightly below that.

It may also have had to do with the fact that through some odd quirk of statistical fate, or just that open-minded (or in my case entirely oblivious) people tend to be spun together by pre-teen/teen social centrafugal forces, I was friends with the entire quota of lesbian, gay and bisexual persons from the GCSE class of 95.

As a heterosexual, romance just wasn’t on my radar. I was far too busy with tin-pot philosophy, ordinary pot, and quaffing Diamond White in the park to be very much bothered with any Noel Edmunds stirrings. I really didn’t miss it.

I did miss Mix Tapes though.

And then, I got my very first Mix Tape…

…a couple of weeks ago.

OK, so it was in the modern form of a Spotify playlist, but still. I’ll take what I can get.

It is called ‘My wardrobe is sill from the 90s’, and it was gifted to my by Boynotquiteonthenetheredge, so-called because the git is still basking in his mid thirties and we’re not rushing into anything.

This is not just a Mix Tape title but a commonly voiced opinion from the Boy, countered by me on the double grounds that a) I’m 40 and therefore dressing weird is no longer weird but ADORABLY ECCENTRIC, and b) combat trousers and crop tops ARE STILL COOL, DAMMIT.

Anyway, it is the soundtrack to my youth, and it’s basically the best thing anyone’s ever given me.

(Although he’s also got me at various points my favourite kind of pillow to keep at his house, a digital watch because I can’t tell the time, a book of clever word-play type poetry, a pile of stones from Scottish beaches and a voicemail pretending to be some sort of Russian contractor, just to cheer me up).

The point is that it’s a seriously brilliant present. Because it’s not grand or expensive, or a gesture that somehow says more about him than me, or boringly practical, or dutiful, or transactional, or 3 seconds to order off Amazon, or really actually for the children or house but justified as a large expenditure for my birthday- or in fact any of the gifts I’ve ever received before.

It’s something I’d always wanted but didn’t even know I’d always wanted.

It’s the fact he sat down and thought about what he knows about me and what music I like and how old I am and what was in the charts when I was young (and he was in nappies), and the mood and the FLOW of it.

It’s the fact it wasn’t even for an occasion – he just randomly did it.

It’s that he probably doesn’t even know why it means a lot to me and would be slightly perturbed I think it’s such a big deal. (No one tell him).

It’s that it’s quiet, and thoughtful, and teasing, and considerate, and KIND. And I’m still getting used to kind.

It’s the realisation, in physical (or at least audio) form, of something I’ve always known but haven’t always experienced – that real true love isn’t actually Things.

It isn’t words.
It isn’t even music.

Love is Actions… and not necessarily very big ones.

So this Valentine’s Day I hope you DON’T get diamonds.

I hope you don’t get roses (gold gilded or otherwise), or truffles, or God forbid some knobhead doing a dance routine marriage proposal – less in the hope you’ll marry them and more in the expectation of viral fame.

I hope you don’t get a last minute bunch of wilting flowers from the 24 hour garage, either.

I hope you get daffodils because they were all over your garden when you were a kid and you were just talking about it the other day.

I hope you get chocolate hobnobs because you’d really much rather eat them than the fancy posh stuff anyway – and I hope they come lavishly wrapped, with LETTERING.

I hope you get a Mix Tape.

I hope you give one.

In very Mixed Up times, perhaps it’s only little actions of thought and affection that can make sense of things. Perhaps they’re the only things that can really change the world for the better.

Although Alanis Morrisette, Ocean Colour Scene and The Goo Goo Dolls can probably help.

xxx

The Coil

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Aging, Humour, Love and sex

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I feel like I spent most of my 20s trying not to get pregnant.

Then I feel like I spent most of my 30s trying TO get pregnant. With varying degrees of success.

Now I’m entering my 40s I’m back on NOT, again, other than the odd womb pang when I see a small baby asleep – which usually disappears pretty fast when it wakes up.

The trouble with not wanting to be pregnant in your 40s is that there really aren’t any brilliant options.

First of all, my vagina is old. And grumpy. Possibly, you might say, CROTCH-ety.

To be fair, it’s been through some crap… Like children, which I suppose technically have been through it. Not in my case, obviously, because of the c-sections – but still.

All of this has left it with very little sympathy for womb pangs, and some Very Fixed Ideas.

Far from being loosened by the two pregnancies/children, for instance, it has now adopted a very strict shut-door policy to any lumps of dry cotton shoved up it from a cold standing start. Nope. Nopity nope nope nope.

This makes swimming on my period rather inconvenient, and I’ve tried explaining it nicely, but it doesn’t care. It feels much the same way about moon cups.

Another of its new and Very Fixed Ideas is that condoms are evil, and it will stage an unholy Thrush Protest if faced with one. This is also somewhat inconvenient to the mid-life dater.

It is also Over the pill. Nothing but break-through bleeding, cramps, and mood swings FROM MERRY RED HELL.

See? Definitely crotchety.

Not that the pill is now much of an option anyway….I’ve spent at least 25 years on the combination pill, on and off, but apparently when you hit your fourth decade it’s pretty much out of bounds – I think on the grounds of thrombosis/cancer/misc other horrifying side effects.

Your GP will of course offer you the MINI-pill.
This is in no way the same thing.

For a start, some of them come with a 3 hour window of pill-taking-opportunity, and if you miss it, you’re not covered. Now I got used to the 12 hour window of the combination pill, and the 7 day rule because I kept missing it, but 3 hours is TIGHT. Tighter than my lady bits faced with a tampon. Even now I’m old and boring and don’t actually go out partying, and even now there are mobile phones with alarms on, I still honestly couldn’t guarantee I’d take this reliably. And then if you have a dicky stomach or put on a few pounds, IT MIGHT NOT WORK ANYWAY.

Of course after that there’s then patches and implants and injections – but it’s all more hormones, isn’t it? Pretty much like the ones in the pill that aren’t good for me and my vag is throwing tantrums over.

The fact is I’ve had a LOT of artificial hormones in my life. Decades worth. And when I’m staring sweating and anxious down the barrel of pre-menopausal hormonal doo-lallyness, do I really want to carry on? Does my vagina? Don’t we deserve a… break? A bit of au naturale? All it really wants in life, after all, is nice comfortable cotton underwear, no harsh detergents, and regular orgasms. It doesn’t really seem like a lot to ask.

So next up on the list is the coil, the middle-aged woman’s contraception of choice. Well it was my choice, anyway.

You can rest assured that my vagina was really NOT happy about having a coil put in, although it relented on the second attempt. After being probed with a camera. And then a ruler. Don’t ask.

A very nice if rather blunt doctor explained to me that in this version there was still local hormones involved (as opposed to national ones), and that I could still expect significant cramping, weight gain, acne breakouts, and break-through bleeding for up to six months. Oh, and while he was in there he might perforate my womb and would I just sign this waver thingy?

I hand on heart honestly can’t imagine there being any health situation other than Women’s Things where this level of risk plus HALF A YEAR’S worth of side effects were considered normal and acceptable. It’s madness. But it didn’t really feel like there were any other good options that didn’t involve absitenance, which me, my vagina AND my womb all voted against in practically unprecedented unity.

Then I was told I had to periodically check it was in right, by feeling for the strings.

Now while it does seem to be a demonstrable fact that the length of arm between someone’s wrist and elbow is the exact same size as their foot, I can, after a brief survey of friends, inform you that there is not the same universal correlation between middle fingers and cervexis. Cervi? Who knows? Anyway, unless I am making friends with particularly digitally stunted people, it’s not possible to feel the bloody thing. So the coil is very much an act of faith as much as contraception. As indeed is all contraception…

I feel like I could now go on a very long feminist rant about women’s rights over their reproductive organs and how limited or rubbish the options are and why better options with less side effects aren’t a priority in modern medicine and why our pain and long term symptoms hormonal and otherwise are ignored or miniminsed – and don’t get me started on the menopause – or abortion – and the impact all that has not just on women’s physical health but mental health, on their families and on thier careers, and on workplaces and the whole bloody GDP – and this is in a first world country and just think about what women go through around the world – but time is short and January is depressing enough.

At the end of my appointment, Dr Blunt gave me a nice wee card, and cheerfully told me to come back in 5 years.

“We’ll whip this one out, pop another one in, and then that’s you done love.”

THAT’S YOU DONE, LOVE.

So I am now one coil away from the end of my child-bearing years.

I swear even my vagina thought that was a bit harsh.

Certainly it’s been crying blood ever since, trying to get used to the idea. Or to the coil. One or the other.

Be More Sid

08 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by in Humour, mental health, Motherhood

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This is Sid.

Sid is not my cat.

Sid likes to sleep on my landing.
And my sofa.
And my bed.
And the Big Small’s Bed.
And the Small Small’s Bed.
And Catonthenetheredge’s bed.

Mostly, Sid likes to eat Catonthenetheredge’s cat food.
It is apparently delicious and to be coveted above all things, and sought after at every opportunity.
It is from Aldi.

Sid’s name is in all probability NOT Sid.

We named him after the children’s classic ‘Six Dinner Sid’, a book about a cat which goes round the neighbourhood hanging out with different families to get his requisite six dinners.

I have tried to discourage Sid from illegally breaking and entering my house, largely out of respect for Catonthenetheredge.

I have thrown water on Sid.
I have banged pans at Sid.
I have hissed at Sid.
I have shouted at Sid.
I have set the Smallest Small on Sid to smother him in pent-up four-year-old affection, which cannot be unleashed on Catonthenetheredge for fear of losing an eye, or possibly a finger. (Let’s be generous and say she’s not much of a cuddler. If we were being less generous we’d say she’s a vicious little cow).

Sid just comes back.

In fact, most of the time he doesn’t even leave.

He sits just outside the catflap for about 30 seconds until he’s convinced himself we’ve either forgotten or forgiven him, and pops back in with good-natured cheer, like nothing’s happened.

He patiently endures the Small Small’s maulings, with an air of palpable and long-suffering indulgence, and goes straight back to the cat food when she’s finished with him. If Catonthenetheredge attacks he just hunkers down with his ears back and tries to look unassuming, whilst not moving one inch away from the aforementioned cat food.
Catonthenetheredge is so used to people screaming and fleeing her in abject terror she has absolutely no idea what to do with him. In the end I think she’s come to the same conclusion that we all have: Nothing.

You see, there’s just no real help for it but to LIKE Sid.
He now has his own bowl, and we got him his own catnip mouse for Christmas.

The only fault I’ve found in him is that he is definitely a Free Range Pussy Cat. On the two occasions he has been accidentally locked in the house he’s turned into some sort of freak Hulk Cat and battered his way out through a locked catflap. (And then come right back in again for a snack).

Hell, it’s got to the point where I don’t just like Sid, I ADMIRE him.

And as I head into 2020 with a spare cat, I can’t help but feel like he’s got a lot to teach us all (although possibly not the bit about going uninvited into strange houses).

Because JUST IMAGINE living your life like Sid.

Just imagine.

The audacity.
The tenacity.
The single minded focus on a goal.
The willingness to fail, again and again, and to try, again and again, undaunted.
The unfailing good humour in the face of adversity.
The sheer CONFIDENCE.

I wish I was more Sid, in lots of ways.
And the thing I admire in him most is his absolute, rock-solid, unshakeable conviction that people are going to like him. You know, eventually.

God, I wish I had that.
I have always worried, you see, if people like me.
I worry about what they think of me. How to make them accept me. What they want from me – what they need me to be in order to like me, and how I can change myself to give it to them.

And I do this with everyone. EVERYONE. From the damn postman to random shop assistants, work colleagues to school mums, even my long standing friends – even my own bloody kids. Even to the point where I lose my sense of myself when not defined by other people and what they think of me. And I question it constantly.

Do they like me?
Am I good enough?
Am I enough as I am?
What do I need to change?
What did I say wrong?
How do I fix it?
What if they find out the truth?
How do I keep them from finding it?
How do I make them like me MORE?
How do I make them like me over and over again every time I see them?

A month or so ago, something of this was caught by the Big Small.

We’d had a humdinger argument where she’d basically been a BRAT, and told me she hated me, that I was embarrassing, and the worst mother EVER (a recurring theme). And I was out of all energy to empathise, distract, appease, ignore or rise above anything. So I told her that you know what? Sometimes I don’t like myself very much either. Sometimes I don’t always say the right thing. Sometimes I don’t always DO the right things. Sometimes I don’t have any of the answers. But I always love her, and I’m trying my very best to be my very best for her and her sister.

The argument blew over, but I hadn’t realised that what I said had hit home quite so hard until I got The Christmas Card.

It is the best and the worst present I have ever received.

In it, she told me that I was the BEST mother ever, that she loved me, and that she knew it was hard doing everything on my own and that she thought I was very brave. And then she said, ‘I know you say you don’t like you. But I like you. I like you because you are lovely and kind and play with me and [Small Small]. I asked my friends to write down why they like you too.’

And four little girls aged between 7 and 8, with clearly far more emotional intelligence than I’ve gathered in 40 bloody years, wrote a sentence about what they liked about me.

They like that I’m funny.
They like that I’m kind.
They like that I love to play with slime.
They like that I make them laugh.

And I cried like a baby.

Because people don’t really say nice things about me. And when they do I find it so easy to dismiss them or not to believe them. Have you ever noticed that? That the good stuff, the compliments just slide off you like water? But the bad stuff sticks? And if someone says the bad stuff to you often enough it becomes truer than true just by being consistent. And it’s so easy to believe… That I’m too intense. That I’m lazy. That I’m too much and doing too little and over emotional and being over sensitive and slightly stupid and not wired up right and never follow through, and I’m all talk and all of it, all of it, all of it. It’s all still there, not even buried deep.

But then four little girls in Year 3 sat down in their Christmas jumpers on Christmas party day at school and made me the most beautiful card I’ve ever had, and I feel like they pierced through all the bad stuff for the first time. Because for some reason they’re easy to believe. And I have never been more horrified or more grateful for anything.

I can’t work out whether it is a massive parenting fail that I’ve allowed my daughter to think I don’t like myself and set that example for her, or a massive parenting win that she’s just turned 8 and she’s done something so thoughtful and mature and kind.

What I do know is that she deserves for me to find my inner Sid this year.
She deserves to see someone who doesn’t need to be validated by anyone else, including her.
She deserves to see someone happy in their own skin.
She deserves to see someone who doesn’t constantly worry if people like her, if she’s said the wrong thing, made the wrong choice, who doesn’t second guess herself and who isn’t afraid to be who she is, always, in all ways, no matter what. No matter who’s looking.

And do you know what? I deserve that too, this year. In 2020 I deserve to see myself in 2020 vision – or at least how 7 and 8 year-olds see me. Because sometimes they see a lot of things a lot more clearly than we do.

I deserve to like myself.

And so do you.

So my New Year’s Resolution isn’t a complicated one. I’m just going to look at everything and think, What Would Sid Do?

Because Sid wouldn’t give up.
Sid wouldn’t care if people liked him – he’d know they would when they got to know him.
Sid wouldn’t be diminished by cold water, or derailed by loud pans, or depressed by failure.
Sid wouldn’t be hemmed in by other people’s rules or boundaries – he’d just break his way out.
Sid would just be Sid.
And then have a nap.

And that – that sounds like a resolution I can really get behind.

I highly recommend you do the same.

#BemoreSid
#WhatWouldSidDo?

By the way, if anyone lives in the Woodseats area of Sheffield and actually KNOWS Sid, I’d love to find out where he lives. And his real name. He’s literally an inspiration.