Work-Stuff

There's lots going on at the moment. I'm applying for a part-time teaching jobs (three days a week - heaven help our already more than crazy mornings!) I'm also hoping to do some private English tuition in the evenings - hence spending most of yesterday applying to a tutor agency. Very helpfully I've managed to lose my BA, MA and teacher training certificates so I'm having to re-apply for them to different universities which is quite a torturous process in itself.

And - listen to this. I think I'm going to start an online business. Scary? yes! I'm hoping to sell ethically traded lovely stuff. So - with a very tentative but excited mood upon me, I'm going to start building the steps I need to get this thing up and running. I'll let you know how it goes, in fact I might even blog a little about my experiences - and will put a link on here to my shiny new website when (ahem....) I actually have a shiny new website.

Needs must regarding all this energy being poured work-wise. I don't want to work full-time in teaching at the moment. Hattie is not yet at school, or even nursery. I'm only just two years in remission and teaching secondary school English to hordes of teenagers certainly isn't easy. I want to at least wait until all the kids are in school - Hattie will start in September 2012, which isn't so long away. And if I can develop a few more strings to my bow in terms of earning possibility, maybe we will be able to at the very least continue to pay the mortgage and put food on the table which is proving difficult at the moment.

This morning I've spent the whole time in the hospital with Ed who had banged his head hard at school yesterday. As you know Ed has haemophilia so a knock on the head can be very serious. I gave him treatment last night but this morning he was still complaining of having a headache. So off we went with Hattie in tow. He had another dose and a check-up and then arrived back to school in time for lunch. And I'm still feeling grotty - in fact a bit worse than that now. And it's bloody difficult coping with the kids feeling like this. Ho Hum.

Tuesday

I'm having a frustrating day today. I've got dreadful sinisitis which makes me feel as if my head is in a wooly vice (if such a thing should exist) and that is just to start with.

I've waited in all morning with a cooped up toddler for a boiler maintenance person to come and give our boiler a service.

From 8am till 1pm.

Did he (am assuming it would be a 'he') turn up? No. When I rang they said that they had no record of an appointment. When I explained that I had written the appointment on the calendar in December while speaking on the phone to their company, the woman confessed that mine was the third call today complaining about appointments not being kept. Hmmmm.

I can't write.

This is a boring post.

Hattie didn't want her afternoon sleep on account of having done nothing all morning but wait for the gas man. So now she's driving me mad too.

And I have a headache. And a face ache. And I have my check-up at the hospital tomorrow - for which I'd like to be feeling fighting fit. Pyschologically that helps with walking past the wig stand and smelling THAT hospital smell which makes me want to run for the hills.

Ok - shouldn't have posted. Am going to make some tea.

Hello 2011

Today the kids are back at school and Rog is back at work. Hattie is asleep and the house is peaceful. I've just finished taking down the Christmas decorations and wrapping them up for another year. And this year I'm not putting them away with dread in my heart as to whether I'll be around to unwrap them again next year.

I'm not out of the woods yet as far as my cancer returning is concerned. I'm only two years in remission and I've got to get to five. But somehow, for some reason that doesn't feel as scary as it did. I guess that time does heal, and that the dreadful truly harrowing year following Harriet's birth is fading from the foremost of my memory. I'm living with some distressing, and what I'm scared to think might be permanent, long-term side effect of the chemotherapy - but I'm alive.

I've a hospital check-up appointment next week: always anxiety provoking at the best of times, but I'm looking and feeling well (apart from that pesky sinusitis which often hovers around) and it was gratifying to hear at the New Year party how many people genuinely complimented me as to how healthy I was looking. In fact I have a suspicion that dancing until 3am might have been what sparked off the sinusitis. A far cry from the way I said goodbye to 2008, thank heavens.

And new year's resolutions? Pilates. And writing. Quite a good mix actually, I think.

Happy Christmas....of course

A belated Happy Christmas to everyone and lots of good good wishes for the new year. I've been woefully inadequate in my posting and my reading of my favourite blogs. But full action will be resumed in the new year. It's just been a lovely - but full on - Christmas. Hattie has chicken pox - the first spots appeared on Christmas Day(!) and the others have variations of a sick/flu bug which is going around. But, still lovely despite all of this: the right combination of being at home and seeing all the family. And there's still the new year knees-up to come! Exhausting.

This Christmas

It'll be turkey on Christmas Day - I'm making chestnut and sausage stuffing, my lovely roast potatoes (I hope they'll be lovely!), lots of other bits and pieces and chocolate prune and armangnac pudding with rum butter. It's my first Christmas Day in my own home with just us and the kids. My first Christmas day where I'm in charge instead of my mother. And I'm excited. I want it to be perfect.

We're off to stay with my mum, my brother and sister, their partners and my four small nephews on Boxing Day - and that'll be lovely too. The kids all adore each other; seven cousins aged between 7 and 6 months, with another coming in March, will certainly make for chaos. Proper family chaos that's for sure!

Due to my German heritage, Christmas Eve is important to us too. We exchange our presents entirely on Christmas Eve around a tree festooned with lit candles (try buying the tree candle holders anywhere in this country..... I've had to resort to ebay!), and we eat bockwurst and potato salad with rollmops. I'm not making the Stollen though - that's still the domain of my mum who makes perfect batches - I hope enough to take one home for us. We have a magical Christmas angel who comes to light the candles on the tree when it gets dark while the kids outside the room press their ears to the door to see if they can hear her speak or catch a glimpse of her out of a window as she flies away. When I was a child, Father Christmas didn't figure at all in our Christmas, he was always a mystery to me really; but for my kids I've had to build him into the story -without Father Christmas things are too complicated at school and with their friends, so now he comes and leaves the stockings later on Christmas Eve. In that way we can leave a mince pie and a glass of whisky for Santa and a carrot for the reindeer.... and attempt to amalgamate the two traditions. I'm always confused though and have to remind myself who does what - when I was a child the Angel came back to leave the stocking!

I'm coming up to two years in remission. This year I'm going to a New Year's Eve party. I haven't felt able to since the diagnosis. Two years ago at Christmas I was going through radiotherapy -and due to my poor prognosis I had very little confidence that I would be around for the next Christmas. Last Christmas I was still hounded by profound anxiety and ill health. This Christmas I think I believe I might just be here for the next. That's progress for me. I think I can face this New Year with new optimism. Life's a scary business that's for sure.

Weekend Bliss

My mother is having the kids this weekend. I'm picking them up from school and driving them up the snowy - but thawing - A1 into Northumberland. And then I'm driving home without them. The joy! Two mornings without being woken at the crack of dawn, two evenings when we can act like relaxed, sane people - the world will be our oyster!

I don't think we have plans to do much really, and we're too skint for anything too glamorous. But, we can read the papers from cover to cover without interruption. We can watch more than one episode of our beloved Mad Men box-set without falling asleep because it's so late. We can please ourselves. A little light lunch in town? Yes please. An afternoon trip to the cinema? Quite possibly.

We've all been on top of each other during these past couple of weeks - and I've been getting quite stressed and more shouty than I've wanted to be. This weekend is coming at just the right time. Thanks, Mum.

Fed Up!

It's so cold! It was -11 when we set off on the school run this morning. It took me the best part of half an hour to de-ice the car and get it vaguely driveable.

Because our backyard - where we usually park the car - and the back lane too, is like a snow-covered ice-rink, the car was parked about a ten minute walk away from the house on the main road. So the de-icing happened with the kids and Hattie in tow. Suffice to say Hattie did not enjoy the experience - and lets face it, neither did I.

And then we got stuck pulling away onto the road. Cue lots of wheel spinning and snow flying. We have a big heavy car which is not 4-wheel drive. And don't I know it? We're not equipped here in England for this kind of thing. Even up here in the north.

So - even the most everyday tasks become major deals. I suppose there is a sense of achievement which goes along with getting the kids in through the school doors. Hmmmm.

I've got lots to do - it's Christmas soon - hurry up and melt, snow. Enough already.