Black Dog Stalking...a real horror story.

I am being stalked by a black dog; sometimes his breath is hot on my neck at other times just a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye but whatever, he is definitely here - haunting me.

How do I know?

Well my thinking is screwy…

My eldest says I am the meanest Mom on earth and as I stare at him nonplussed by his response to my request that he tidies his room and makes his bed, a part of my brain agrees.

I am mean.

I am stupid.

It were better that I was dead. I have nothing to offer my children that cannot be bettered by them being looked after by my parents or indeed anybody else.

I shake the thought off but in my confusion I respond to his obdurance by getting angry at his comment – it’s like I have no control whatsoever over my poisonous tongue and in my hurt I land up shouting and  raging at him and that bit in my brain goes: “See, look at you. Raging and screaming. That cannot be good for your children. Call yourself a mother – dream on.”

I know it is bad.

I know why it is bad and why I am being stalked.

It has been a difficult few months my relationship with my husband has been rocky, my fears that we are drifting apart, and my loneliness without him coming home every night, problems with my eldest at school, money worries, guilt. So much guilt.

When it gets like this I am fair game to the Black Dog and I have to get myself back under control.

It’s hard, so very hard.

I am eating wrong. I get guilty.

I am sleeping and not sleeping all at the wrong times. I get guilty.

I cannot be bothered with anything. I get guilty.

I want it all to stop but there is no let up.

I feel like I am going to explode.

I have to trust that I will get out of this even though I am not trusting.

I have to hope even though I don’t feel hopeful.

And all while this is going on I pray my friends will still be OK with me for I can say nothing because they won’t understand. Life is difficult for them too.

I hate depression.

I hate it with all my heart.

I hate it that it is so disabling.

And there are times that I wish to god that people could see the scars it makes and see that I am a good person underneath that I am deserving of their admiration that I am worth something because in spite of my depression I do manage most times to have a life – one that they frequently take for granted.

Please note: I am going through this now but I promise I am not going to kill myself. I made a promise that I would never, ever, leave my children. The thoughts about killing myself are just thoughts - things I have to mentally fight each and every day at present because I cannot afford for my screwy thinking to get the better of me.

I have promised.

If I said I am confident that I won't do anything silly that doesn't mean that it is a walk in the park and that I can just pull myself together; it takes a HUGE amount of will to get my brain to go blank, to distarct myself from those pernicious thoughts, the nagging that I am not good enough nor ever will be. 

I cant help but look at those who do not have this evil embodiment and I am jealous. But I know that i have to get thought this for there is no way out but thougth my own endeavour.

And sometimes I just don't feel like a hero in a movie, sometiems it feel like I haven't the strength. Sometimes I dont want to have to do it any more.

But in the end I have to fight it.

It's not pretty.

Its blood and gore.

And it is exhausting.

I ony hope that when I get thorough this that there are people I love waiting for me and that they don't think too badly of me and all the shit I put them through.

The last time….

I come into a room and the scent sends me back in time, tumbling into childhood and and for a fleeting moment I am there and everything is safe. 

Scent does that to you - it is evocative. 

I pretend that it is my grandparents visiting me, reassuring me in my own home a place they never visited, a place they never saw let alone knew existed.

I shouldn't be surprised that I can smell them or at least the scent that reminds me so strongly of their house for I have inherited much of their furniture and bits and pieces. A trigger when I am scared taking me back to a time when I was unconditionally loved and knew it if only on a sub-conscious level.

But the thing that gets me most is not a scent but a touch, a touch of fingers pushing my hair back behind me ear.

My youngest son does it and I am immediately transported back to the bitter sweet time when I remember her last doing that to me.

 ...and I see her watching me as she lies in her bed. Looking at me as if for the first time in her life and I see the wonderment on her face. She looks at me as if I am a rare gift, something beautiful and precious. Her hand is cool. I do not look at her as such, I watch the television at the end of her bed, embarrassed at her scrutiny.
We do not talk.
Her hand drops to the bed and I pick it up and hold it and don’t let go. And as the night progresses into morning I rearrange the covers, she grows hot and cold and tosses them off one moment and demands in a child’s voice to have them back the next.
I calm her when she gets agitated and hold her hand again. She says she needs to do: " Tuppence" then says plaintively that she is thirsty.
Something I don't-know-what in the tone of her voice makes me anxious and I swiftly pad to where my parents lie sleeping - all awaiting the inevitable yet hoping that it will never happen.
I wake my mother and she is given a drink. She takes first one sip like a child having to be supported then another and lets out a sigh and I know immediately that I have to run.
I have to get Daddy. I have to get her son.
I’ve had my precious moments with her and it is his turn now. I fear I maybe too late, I fear I haven't been quick enough.
He enters her room and watching from the doorway I see his step falter and his shoulders sag and I realise I am looking at a motherless boy.
So every time someone does that to me I remember that day and that night and the long wait, which I greedily kept to myself, but most of all I remember the love that linked us all.

So you want to work for me….?

Let’s get this straight when you work for me I want to see work done.

Your place of work is for work it is not an internet café nor is it a social media site

I don’t want to see you texting when you should be working nor looking at the damn things either. I don’t want to be party to your love affairs or break ups because you are yelling into your phone to be heard. Nor do I want to hear you arranging your night out in fact I don’t want to hear you on your mobile full stop!

Ditch the phone and get on with the job at hand.

When you come to work for god’s sake come prepared. Unless otherwise stated I do not have specialist tools at hand because you have left them at your girlfriend/boyfriend’s house. I am not a hardware store. Nor am I chemists when you come to work with a hangover. Don’t try to pull the wool over my eyes or think I have forgotten that you told me you were going out the night before to get bladdered.

I don’t care!

I am paying for the job to be done and you have a responsibility to be in a fit state to do it.

Whatever you do don’t lie to me about being ill because of a hangover or because it is Friday/Monday and you just don’t feel like going to work; invariably I have been there and done that, so excuses won’t wash. If you are ill you’re ill. You don’t miraculously get better from flu after 24 hours and if you have a sick bug I don’t want to see you for two days.

Be on time for work and turn up when you say you will it is called being be reliable. I don’t care that the trains were late or the bus cancelled build in some bugger it time so that you are always where you should be at the time you should be and if that means you have to get up half an hour earlier then so be it!

Don’t let me down at the last minute. Remember the world does not revolve round you, I may have had to organise my whole day to fit you in, I may even have had to take a precious day off from my own job to do so.

Take pride in your appearance. Unshaven dirty looking people are not welcome. If you have no pride in yourself it is hardly likely you will have pride in your work. I am relaxed about tattoos and body piercings but I can’t cope with body odour, bad breath, dirty smelly clothes, stubble and lank greasy hair. Would you like someone like that serving you at Tesco’s?

If I call you or text you about work I expect you to answer promptly not the next day. It may be that I have an emergency and you’d look a complete nit turning up for work to find there was no one about to let you in.

Don’t be rude or surly or you’ll find you won’t have a job at all.

A reliable, polite, well turned out employee who gets on with the job is like gold dust and is far more likely to be recommended for future jobs, and promotion etc. than one who is not.

So what are you going to do about it?

Do you think you could work for me…?

Older, wiser, more mature...

Life should be like a melting ice cream

Older wiser, more mature, glamorous, sophisticated, totally in control...come off it who do you think you are kidding!?
A whole year older and I am no more of anything than I have ever been.
I keep thinking that when I am grown up, I am going to emerge overnight into this coolly efficient glamorous but very approachable with a great sense of humour, totally in control able-to-turn-her-hand-to-anything-practical but still ethereal and intriguing zen-like earth mother goddess.
But I am 46
I fear I am running out of time to be all that and perhaps I am not so dumb as to think it could ever happen - I'm just not that type of girl.
I'm more of your heck-that's-a-good-idea-well-why-not-give-it-a-go-perhaps-that-wasn't-such-a-good-idea -bugger-it's-gone-tits-up-let-me-have-a-cry-in-my-pillow-how-do-I-get-myself-out-of-this-mess-I'll-wing-it-and-if-I-pretend-it-didn't-happen-it-then-perhaps-no-one-else-will-notice-and-I-didn't-really-do-it-anyway-sort-of-person...
It works for me, its a tried and tested method of getting through life lightly - not tidily mind.
A tidy life would be like an ice cream that didn't melt in the sunshine, while eminently practical and indeed often wished for, not nearly so much fun and hardly memorable at all!
So here I sit at newly 46 and all I can come up with is that my life is like a melting ice cream - that's really going to go down in family folk lore isn't it!

Having a healthy respect for chickens......

Butter wouldn't melt ...

I am rapidly revising my ideas about chickens mostly I think of them as dumb clucks, sometimes a feather short of a full wing but in no way do I think of them as cunning, vicious killers.
However, today my blood ran cold. Today I realised that though the velociraptor is extinct its legacy lives on in its feathered descendants far more than may commonly be realised.
I went to open up the Chicken shed. I call to the tree chickens first; they roost in the trees at night and are more bantam like than their Chicken Shed cousins. I think that being smaller they need to get a look in before the bigger birds are let out. Then I usually open up the small chick cage to let out the babies and when I think they’ve had a good old go, I nip round the back and open the hatch.
Out they pour, clucking and cackling, a blur of black, brown speckled, white and grey blue feathers. Clacking yellow, pink and black long toed feet on the ramp a few jump and a few fly and whoosh they are round the corner and tucking in – only today something else happened.
There was the most god awful strangulated squawk from behind me and I swivelled on my feet to witness one of the younger cockerels chasing down what I thought was a chick – just as I started to burst into action and chase the bugger away, Blue – my Old English Game hen - joined in from the opposite direction. The “Chick” jinxed and got passed Blue who had made a lunge at it missing it by inches.
Having survived that it seemed to falter and I realised that it was a juvenile Moorhen. I must have been slow because I could have grabbed it and rescued it but it dodged round me with both Blue and the young cockerel quite literally on its tail only to run straight into a few other hens. I thought it would be OK and relaxed a bit only to find that all the others turned on it as well.The bird was trapped and then all the hens all started to peck and jump up and down pulverising the unfortunate creature to death. It was all over within seconds and then my blood ran truly cold for with it dead the chickens started to feast. And those who has not taken part started to flock over and it was like out of some horror film – chickens grabbing at bits of gore, fighting, squawking and then it was all over and they were back to normal pecking away in the sunshine at the left over corn or wandering off to check out the garden, drink by the moat or else dust bathe in the sunshine.
Just another normal autumn morning…and I am left standing looking about for evidence of this extraordinary goings on. Just a pair of yellow feet and some dusty grey black wing feathers…I am not so sure I will dismiss my chickens in quite the same way as before.
RESPECT your chickens.

Bringing Up Boys - Being put in your place..

I have been well and truly put in my place.
I thought Bog Boy liked having a bath with me and mucking about in the water, but this morning I was told that he'd prefer it if he had a bath on his own.
I was taken aback.
I hadn't asked him to have a bath with me last night, he had decided to join me and I had acquiesced. We often have baths and showers en famile; I thought no worries.
Obviously, I was wrong.
"OK," I said.
"You're not upset are you?" He asked, looking at me worriedly.
"No not at all," I lied trying to keep my voice light and happy.
He heard the edge in it.
"Look Mum, " he said with all the earnestness that a six year old can muster as he cocked his head on one side. "It's not personal, just I think its wrong to bath with a girl."
I briefly fast forwarded a few years and thought you'll be changing your tune in a decade or so my  little man..
He carried on in a very grown up way. "Boys should be with boys that's all."
And he proceeded to spoon the jam onto his toast.
"So you're quite happy to have a shower with Daddy then?" Said I, rubbing salt into my own wounds. My little boy was growing up before my eyes and I was being left out as the only girl in the family.
"Oh yes!" he answered blithely.
"Little toad!" I thought slitting my eyes and biting firmly into my own toast only to land up catching the edge of my tongue between my teeth and making my eyes water.
"You're not crying Mum are you?!" He squawked in alarm.
"No Darling! Really I'm not!"
"You mustn't worry you know! You still make the bestest Mum in the world..."
"You're ONLY mum!" I answered as I always do when either of the boys says that.
He carried on quickly, "And you make the bestest jam too!"
Good to know I am still appreciated...

Easily distracted…

That’s the problem as soon as I set myself a task; I am easily distracted and land up doing other things instead. It gets so bad, that if I am not careful, I forget what it was that I was originally meant to be doing.

There have been plenty of times when I have had to ask other people in the household just what it was I was doing. And it got worse after I had the boys.

The only reasons why a woman is good at multitasking is that she doesn’t have any choice and although it looks like she is able to juggle - it is judicious juggling.

I can make sure the laundry gets done and the sheets get changed, I can put away clothes and never miss a work deadline. I can get the children to school with the correct things in their school bags and even with the requisite sports/music gear for each day and I can do the shopping, and balance the bank account.

Most of the time the dogs get walked, the chickens fed and watered, vegetables picked, bread made, house cleaned top to toe; you name it I look like I am in control but I can’t do all these things at once and just sometimes there is a hiccup.

Like I only got 3 hours sleep last night and the fact that I have been up and awake since 12.35am.

So today I have done very little indeed and have allowed myself to get blissfully distracted by a blooming good book for to be quite honest I am NOT superwoman and knew I needed to relax because tonight I had Bog Boy all to myself.

We popped to Tesco for a Carpet Picnic – I am far too sleepy to be left in charge of any electrical items including my cooker. We unpacked it in front of the telly and watched MI High and Cop School and my favourite Shaun the Sheep.

We had a bath together and washed each other’s hair then scrambled into bed to read all about dinosaurs.

Sometimes you do need to distract yourself and tomorrow is another day for me to get a grip…

31 Days To Get A Grip

I’ve got 31 days to get a grip, sort everything out get organised once and for all, because if, after these 31 days are up, I am not organised I might as well just give up and admit it: I will NEVER be organised.

Why only 31 days? Well we’ve all got to have deadlines and because October is my birth month it seemed like a good idea at the time. This October I will be 46.

There I have said it.

FORTY SIX.

No longer in the first bloom of youth.

I can’t deny it I am a grown up and probably closer to death than I will ever be again to my birth. It is time to get things organised and if I can get my 46 year old life sorted at the same time then that will be no bad thing.

I need to get my head round a few problems

So I will sort out the easiest one first - all that paperwork.

Oh God there is SO much of it.

Bills and invoices, advice notices and iddy biddy bits of paper all over the place. Stuffed in draws hastily packed in boxes, ‘filed’ or not as the case maybe and the majority I bet not even important but I won’t know that until I have sorted it all out.

I have a fear of losing important things and so rarely throw anything out and because I put things back in random places I lose bits of things then panic when I find the other bit that I must keep it because I don’t know if I chucked the other bit out.

I suspect there are bits of things awaiting their other bits in disparate places all over my home and as you know it is rather large.

How did I get into this mess? Well I first joined it with someone else’s mess and they left it to me to sort out, only thing is I don’t know, without their help, what I should or should not keep. We are talking about bits of paper that go back 25 years! The countless bits of paper guarantees for all those electrical items which you may or may not still own that’s if they are not broke beyond all repair,

Do we really need to keep them all ?

I know there are the bits and pieces one keeps for sentimental reasons like the dossier you have on the buying of your first flat, car, garden shed but for some people sentiment is a load of tosh for others it is social history in the making.

Somehow I need to strike a balance between interesting and important. There’s no point diving through another's paperwork without at least finding some secrets or insights…

Do you think I’ll make it or am I doomed to a disorganised life?