Bad Mother Moments #1

Everybody does it.

I mean everybody has done something like it.

No?

Really?

Are you sure?

Is it just me then?

OH! COME! ON!

Everyone has Bad Mother Moments.

Maybe not as bad as this one but pretty bad I am sure.

Mine happened because I got distracted. I was having a lovely chat and a catch-up aided by a rather superior bottle glass of Shiraz with my mate J.

We were putting the world to rights, talking aesthetics and whether or not puce and heliotrope would go in the drawing room.

The boys were settled quietly in front of Deadly 60 and hadn’t been in to bother us for ages. No demands for food or crisps or the fact that they were hungry.

So it is hardly surprising that it happened. In fact you could say it wasn’t my fault at all.

However, J suddenly realised the time, way past 7 o’clock and I realised that the boys had to go to bed. Tout de Suite!

“Right Boys! Off you go now up to bed…”

“But Mum…”

Typical always trying to watch more TV, always trying to push the boundaries, always wanting to stay up longer…

“No arguing, just do as you’re told”

“But M…

“I said NO ARGUING!”

Honestly they try the patience of a saint they really do.

I hassled them like a demented sheepdog, hushing their protestations before the words were out of their mouths.

I got them undressed and teeth washed and into bed.

They were unusually fractious and I must admit I got really rather cross.

I do believe I snarled.

Anyway I finally got them off to bed. Lights out and all quiet.

And then as I came downstairs to say goodbye to J I noticed that the table was laid up.

I was just about to thank him for laying for breakfast when the horrible truth dawned.

It was still laid up for supper.

My poor boys had been hassled to bed without anything to eat.

Needless to say I shot back up the stairs grabbed my boys and gave them supper much to their relief.

J of course found this highly amusing and has been regaling all and sundry with my Bad Mother Moment. I have quite a reputation to live down in the village…there again HE has quite a reputation to live down regarding my cats and the fact that HE has been in charge when BOTH of them died… now one maybe an accident but two looks like a conspiracy!

City Men: Country Wives - Drowning not waving!

The Money Pit!

Today I sat on the stairs and bawled my eyes out in front of my best mate. J said  little but just looked at me as I rambled on between hiccoughing sobs careless of my eye-makeup, careless of the snot dripping from my nose.

He’s the type of guy you feel safe to do this in front of, it’s why we chose him, to be Godfather to Bog Boy after all. There needed to be someone here that could act as a buffer for me and the children when it all gets on top of me.

And today I felt like I was drowning not waving…

I remarked it doesn’t take much anymore to have me off in hysterics. But honestly I haven’t cried like this for years. Some say it’s cathartic to have a jolly good cry perhaps they are right. My eyes ache now and I feel like it must be at least midnight but there again the utter exhaustion may help me sleep better and tomorrow will be brighter.

It certainly felt anything but bright at 2pm this afternoon as I sat there snot dripping.

“I hate this place, I loathe it. I’m selling it!” I howled and punctuated my statement by stamping me feet on the stairs until they rattled.

The house was unmoved.

It’s heard it all before, especially from me.

“I can’t take it anymore, I can’t do it anymore.” I wailed.

I looked at J and I could see he was about to say that I could and I have done and I will so I forestalled him.

“I don’t want to do it anymore,” I heaved out between sobs, “I don’t want to cope. I want to make it stop!”

“I hate Suffolk. I hate this place. I never wanted to come here!” I continued to wail. “And the fact that I don’t have the Internet is just too much…”

We have the honour, nay privilege, of living in an Internet black spot and I have to get my connection with the big bad outside world via a convoluted and complicated network of routers and satellite dishes as BT  ain't that interested. It works, usually but every now and then, especially when I am on a deadline, it doesn't.

Then I have to get in touch with Ra. Ra is godlike but like most ancient gods one isn't actually too sure they exist. I have evidence that people round here believe he exists but I haven't actually seen him in so long that I fear he is now mere legend. He NEVER answers his phone and he NEVER tells you what is going on. So I tend to leave increasingly and frequently more and more bizarre messages in my efforts to contact him and more importantly getting him to contact me to say that he has heard what I am saying and that he know and is dealing with t4he problem. NOW!

You get the God like drift here. Basically you have to put your trust in Ra and he will deliver.

Sometime though I actually need to hear that on the telephone. And after four hours of futile calls. texts and general frustration it was all too much.

J gave me a great big hug and I sobbed some more leaving a nice snotty trail down the front of his jumper.

He held onto my shoulders and looked me in the eye: “It’s not just about the fact that you don’t have the Internet again is it,” he said.

That man knows me too well.

Of course it wasn’t about the Internet though as I said it was the last straw.

Suffolk is a funny place. You actually have to want to go there as it’s not on the way to anywhere in particular. It’s sort of a dead end. A bucolic, slightly dirty and otherworldly, dead end with a Nuclear reactor on its coast.

I am sure there are plenty of people who love Suffolk but having been dragged here by my husband seemingly on a whim because he said so with no  real thought having gone into it a decade before I am still kind of immune to its charms.

I know I should have got over myself but when things like the Internet goes down for four days and I cannot do my work let alone blog or tweet or indeed even email it just reinforces how terribly isolated the place is.

I did SO love London and I had SUCH a great job, one I enjoyed and was actually good at and having to give that all up to take on a 500 year old decrepit house (even if I was one half of the idiot pair that fell head over heels in love with it and bought it willy nilly) spend ten years doing it up, squandering oodles, and I mean oodles, of thousands of pounds on it foregoing holidays, new clothes, new cars and god know what else – it sometimes just doesn’t feel worth it.

Not when I still have oodles and oodles STILL needing spent on the damn place because I got diddled by the original builders we employed (but that’s another story).

So sitting in those stairs eye makeup smeared down my face, snot dripping and hiccoughing I admitted it.

“Charlie is going to London!” I broke down into hysterical sobs again. “It wasn’t part of the deal!”

No the deal stated that if I did HAVE to go and live in the back of beyond HE was going to be coming home every night – because after all I HAD given up and AWFUL lot.

But times change and sometimes you get new jobs and sometimes there is an economic downturn and your house has eaten up every last cent so your husband has to work harder than ever before and you’ll just have to accept that you need to be a tad more flexible about life.

But it doesn’t mean you have to like it.

And I don’t.

I don’t want Charlie to be renting out someone’s spare room during the week in London, I want him home not because of the deal but because I am going to miss him.

Terribly.

PS. It still pisses me something chronic though that the Internet is so unreliable…blooming backward county!

What;'s the worst that can happen?

Imagine the worst thing that can happen when you are asked to look after a friend’s pets while they go away on holiday, and then double it.
My best mate J has had the most terrible time recently. You see we went away for two weeks and left him in charge of the house, the dogs, the chickens and the cats.
Now J has done this loads of times, and in the past has had some near misses. Like the time when I phoned him up to say Hi and check up on the builders who were busy converting the attic and putting on a new roof. At the end of the conversation I casually asked how he was doing with the cats.
“Oh they’re fine,” he said cheerfully before asking after my holiday and when we were coming home etc.
Little did I realise that as I was speaking to him on the phone, he and the builders were desperately trying to locate my Siamese cats from between the floor joists where they had managed to get stuck. Everyone could hear them but just could not locate them. The hunt involved taking up the newly laid carpet and ripping up floorboards in several rooms. Needless to say when we got home there was no evidence that anything untoward had ever happened at all and it wasn’t until a few years later that J confessed over a particularly boozy supper.
Over the years poor J has dealt with the would be kamikaze cats, the toothbrush eating whippet, the subterranean Jack Russell and builders en-masse: 15 of them to be exact and never once did he forget their individual tea and coffee orders. By the way he also had to run his own workshop to make a living.
However, this time I think he took the biscuit.
For as well as agreeing to keep an eye on the EBJ (the wickedest whippet it the world) and be of assistance when she was to be mated, (I know, I ask a lot, but there is only a small window of opportunity on this and as luck would have it the whole thing sort of landed up on J’s plate, he said he didn’t mind as long as he didn’t have to get hands on or anything!) he also had to look after my elderly Siamese cats, Agatha and Alice aka Fat Cat.
Having acted as Dog Pimp and got through that ordeal J was on the last few hours of his watch and nothing untoward had happened. It should have been a coast all the way home so to speak.
He knew we would be back after lunch and then he could finally go home and relax.
So that morning he bounces down the stairs, lets the dogs out, puts the food out for the cats, does he chickens comes in for a cup of tea, lifts the small cat, Agatha, onto the table so she can eat in peace away from teh dogs, notices the Fat Cat has not moved, goes over to lift her onto the table for breakfast and then realizes that something is very, very, wrong.
The Fat Cat is always the first to demand food, the Fat Cat is called Fat Cat because that is what she is and to be a Fat Cat means you are particularly food orientated. Missing breakfast is NOT an option, not when you have a reputation at stake.
As soon as J touched Fat Cat there was not a shadow of a doubt what had happened. She had died peacefully in her sleep curled up on a chair.
For J the event must have been the worst nightmare ever.
I mean only a few hours…
Now what would you do?
Option 1) ‘Fess up and as well as having Dog Pimp on your CV add Cat Killer
Option 2) Pretend you hadn’t noticed and leave said cat to be “discovered”
Well J is my friend and I would not have blamed him for going for Option 2 but he didn’t and although I was very sad about FAt Cat, and I will post about her later, I couldn’t help but see the funny side. Poor J. I think that really is the worst thing that can happen on your watch!

How to explain the unexplainable...

How do you tell your child you have depression? How can you tell them that when you are wishing the whole world away - it’s nothing personal?
Yesterday morning I did my usual – I shouted at them both because I was tired and coming down with a cold and I wasn’t organised enough and I just wanted to delete the day before it had already started. And as soon as I uttered the words I immediately wanted to turn back time. Every day I wake up and I plead with God to help me be nice to my children.
“Give me strength not to shout at them, not to be mean. God help me get through the day and still let them love me.”
Once the shouting starts it is very difficult to stop although it rarely lasts very long before I put into action all the safety measures I use to protect them. I am furious with myself for doing it and then I strike out figuratively at those I love – but these ones are so vulnerable because they don’t understand. All they know is this is how Mummy behaves. The Boy at 5 I can tell not to talk to me, not to ask questions and to just get on with his breakfast in silence while I try to bring myself under control. The Littlest just watches, no smile playing at his lips. I ignore them both or else leave them to it. As soon as breakfast is over I will put them in front of the telly while I finish my breakfast in peace, calming myself down trying not to let the guilt overwhelm me.
It doesn’t happen everyday but certainly every week sometimes more especially if I am tired. I know everyone shouts at their children from time to time, but I feel I do it more than most and I find it terribly difficult to stop. I roar in my frustration, which must be terribly frightening.
Sometimes I have to escape before I explode but it never seems to go away not truly because all the while where it is safe to explode I can’t because they are there in the house on their own and I worry for their safety.
Well yesterday after I shouted and after I had calmed down. I apologised as I do every time. I explained Mummy was tired and that she found it difficult to be nice and that her behaviour was not good. I told them, as I hugged them both at the top of the stairs, how much I loved them and said that they must not ever behave like Mummy.
“Mummy is a bad person to do this and you should look to Daddy. Daddy doesn’t shout and rave like Mummy.”
I am terrified that my behaviour will colour theirs and so I warn that people don’t like people who shout and are nasty like Mummy and that nasty people don’t have many friends and are not loved.
In despair, I hang my head and aloud I wish that I were gone from here. What damage am I doing to them? Wouldn’t it be better if I left them? It sometimes feels the only way to protect them.
“I love you Mummy,” says the Boy “and The Littlest loves you and Daddy loves you. We all love you.” And he wraps his arms around me. And I feel so sad. He shouldn’t have to be doing this; he should never have to face this. I know he is worried that I will go away and never return, I’ve obviously said it far too much in fact once I just had to leave him in the house and hide as the enormity of everything descended upon me and for a time I could not cope.
It was terrifying enough for me. For him I cannot imagine. Luckily he was able to find J and J looked after him and stayed with him until I was able to return. I remember watching The Boy come out of the house looking for me and I stood silently by the moat hidden by the horse chestnuts. Thinking to myself that he was safe as long as I could see him. But I did not go to him even though he was crying hard. I could not trust myself. J heard and calmed him saying I had just gone out for a walk and would be back. I thought such faith! For I felt as if I could never go back. I stayed out for a couple of hours and I have a feeling that J knew where I was and he had enough belief in me that I would return. For I love my boys.
So back to how do you explain? Well I tell him that when the Black Dog is near Mummy gets sad, tired and then angry and that the Black Dog is difficult to see.
I tell him it’s the Black Dog that makes Mummy shout and that it’s not him or his brother. I tell them over and over again and I pray they believe me.
The Boy says he’ll kill the Black Dog. I say maybe when he’s grown up.
For any of you that read this - I hasten to say that when I feel it getting bad I call in the cavalry usually in the form of J, Dear Charlie and my Mum – mostly J deals with the immediate problems as he’s on the farm. I advise everyone with Black Dog to install a J. He is one very special person.
(This was first published in the Private Forums at Purplecoo - the folks there were incredibly supportive and continue to be so. I decided to put it up on the blog as it is part of my life - a big part and I wanted to come out as I hear too many stories of others who get in a mess with Black Dog. I did try to start a separate blog but it never really works. You can't pigeon hole your life! Today has been a good day as there has been no shouting and all is calm. I don't know what tomorrow will bring...)