Category: Current Craziness

Working

a person using black and silver laptop

As older parents who had never expected to be fortunate enough to have children, we had settled into a life of work and holidays. We were lucky enough to have good jobs where we could buy what we wanted as well as what we needed. However, what we should have been doing instead of spending was saving!

David, despite the initial fertility treatment costs (which were obviously huge) isn’t really that expensive and if we could have left him at home with a bag of snacks, the telly on and a toddler walker coming to see him mid-morning, then we would have been fine but apparently you can only do that with pets.

With the cost of living rising, I wisely decided to leave my job as head of a primary school last August. It was a scary move but necessary both for my mental health and to not waste the time I can spend with David. In my former role, I would leave the house at 6:30am, pick up David from nursery at 5:30pm, eat and then put him to bed. I would then work until 9/10pm before collapsing into bed. I salute all those who continue to work in our education system, but I wanted and needed a job where I could leave work at work and have evenings and weekends with my family. I have fortunately gained a position in a completely different area which starts in September and which I am really excited about.

Meanwhile, I have been doing supply teaching to pad out our nearly vanished savings. The point I think I’m getting round to is that as older parents (who weren’t wise about saving), we are probably going to have to stay in the workplace for a lot longer than we intended. Someone informed me recently that the current average age for children leaving the family home is twenty-four. If that happens with David, I will be seventy-one and my husband seventy-six. Our long, laid-back retirement sipping gins in the south of France is looking a lot shorter and cheaper. However, when I pick up my little boy from school and he asks if we can run a café together in his bedroom until dinner, the easy retirement doesn’t matter a jot. (Also, perhaps the after-school café could become a new income stream!)

Sisters

I was going to do baby-led weaning this week, but I was distracted again. Sorry. Next week, I promise.

I have 3 siblings. Two older brothers and one younger sister and I am fortunate that we are all very different, (apart from the ability to use sarcasm in any situation) but in a way, we all complement each other. Aside from my husband, my sister is my closest friend and confidante.

In March 2020, she decided to move to New Zealand for a 6 month trial, living with her new partner who she had met whilst travelling. Of course, just after she entered New Zealand, they closed the borders for two years. Thankfully the relationship worked and the lords of technology invented WhatsApp so I could have my weekly sister fix.

Rather selfishly, the loss was all about me, but her absence started to become normality and I could save all our news for a Sunday morning catch up. However, the loss should, of course, have been all about her. Yes, it was exciting and she had met and was living with her perfect partner but she had left her career, her friends (she has millions of close friends!), her routines and her family.

I only realised how much she was missing after I became very drunk one evening and rang her telling her I would come and visit soon. When I say drunk, I mean more drunk than I have been in years. It turned out a great number of things were said but as there were three phone calls and I can only remember one, a lot of what passed between us is gone forever.

When I rang her to apologise about the alcohol, she asked me when I was coming. It was obvious that she was quite excited and I apologised that I had made false promises and could not afford to come to New Zealand. Her excitement and subsequent attempt to cover disappointment with humour made me realise how much she was desperate to share her new life with someone from home.

Soooo. I carefully prepared the best sales pitch of my life and told my husband that I thought it would be an amazing thing for my sister if I was to go to New Zealand. I explained that it would be a sort of holiday for him as he could take two weeks off work and look after David. By the end of the conversation it was agreed and at my husband’s suggestion, it was decided I should take three weeks to make it worth my while (the man is amazing!).

It was kept a secret and on Sunday night I left the UK for 24 hours of travel to Christchurch, New Zealand. I arrived at her house while she was out. Her partner had told me how to get in so I hid behind the microwave in her kitchen to leap out and cause her a coronary. I was hoping to get one of those TikTok videos where no one believes it was really a surprise because it looks so fake but I pressed record at the wrong time and you just hear loads of sobbing and a film of our legs. The surprise, the journey, the husband and child abandonment were worth it. She was so happy.

That is what siblings are for. To annoy you, to share childhood memories that no one else understands, to nag you, to surprise you and to make you sob with happiness.

Half-Term Horrors

(Don’t read whilst eating or if you have a low disgust threshold)

We have just had half term. Up until last August I was head of school at a primary school. Half term was craved, sought-after and desperately needed to recharge, catch up on piles of paperwork and occasionally see your family.

This year, it crept up and surprised me. I didn’t have to work through the holiday, we could do fun things and have quality family time. That was until the sewage explosion. We literally had a s**t half-term.

We moved in November to a lovely house (we headed further north to upsize and down price. There’s no heading back south now!!). What we didn’t know is that the previous tenants had cleverly been flushing wet wipes. We discovered this when the sewage finally backed up to our downstairs toilet. There were many complications regarding whether the blockage was on our land or common land but finally we had a chap in to clear them. Clear them he did with a huge pressure blast. However, it cleared the blockage down to past the next manhole and the force pushed the manhole cover and all the sewage up all over the path and lawn. A poo explosion! Suddenly, our beautiful new house and garden had become a cess pit.

Many years ago, my sister did some psychological research for a masters on disgust thresholds. I was an outlier in her statistics because my tolerance for disgusting things was ridiculously low. You can only imagine how well I coped with the whole sewage issue. The constant anxiety and nausea was not helped by the fact that we have an Otterhound. Otterhounds are absolutely gorgeous dogs but they do like to eat poo. After an incident with an open manhole cover, she was banished to her grandparents for three days to consider her actions.

It was Thursday before the smell subsided and it wasn’t until yesterday that I could bring myself to walk across the lawn even though I know the lovely men from Dyno-Rod (who should be paid vast quantities of money) had disinfected and cleaned everything.

On a positive note, we now have sparkling drains and I think my disgust threshold has risen a little.

Rufus 1, 2 and 3…..

I turned our photo calendar page today and there were David and Rufus. Actually, to be exact – there was Spare Rufus.

Rufus is David’s favourite. His best friend. He was kindly given to David by a very good friend of mine and I can only thank her that it is a fairly common model. Rufus has a tag on his bottom which is very important for the intricacies of thumb sucking.

Original Rufus has been lost and found at a number of soft play centres but on one occasion, despite personally crawling through all the tunnels and traps for people with larger hips, he was not found. David was devastated. Pippin the cat, purchased in the gift shop on the way out simply did not cut the mustard.

I was able to obtain a new Rufus on a well known online auction website but before he arrived, the soft play centre called. Rufus had emerged from the depths of the ball pool. We told David that daddy had taken Ella (our dog) to sniff him out and she had succeeded. The tears ended, thumb was back in and tag stroking recommenced.

Original Rufus’ tag fell off. The tears were ready, I could see how distraught David was about to become when miraculously the tag was repaired and Spare Rufus stepped up to the plate.

Spare Rufus’ tag didn’t last so long. Maybe the tag stroking had become more frenetic or it was a slightly poorer quality Rufus but I had become an expert Rufus handler. Rufus the third was already in place and ready to go.

David has all the Rufuses now and they carry their names with pride while Rufus 4th sits in my cupboard quietly awaiting his turn.

Lego solar system and trump noises

Yesterday evening was potentially a reflection of gender difference.

David came home from school and asked if I could make the solar system from Lego with him. Sounds like fun I said.

We were busy identifying potential Lego pieces to float in the Kuiper Belt when my husband came to join us and started to play some music on his phone. He then discovered that you could play trump noises on the phone and that was it. Solar system abandoned and both boys rolling on the floor laughing.

Husband noted my grumpy face and pointed out that David needed both experiences to become a rounded individual. Mmmmm.