A Wonderful Weekend

Having clawed my way to Friday last week, I felt certain that I was almost at deaths door. The illness that I reported last Tuesday had worsened throughout the week, despite my best efforts to fight it, including various types of Echinacea and the highly raved about ‘hot toddy’, which by the way I would not recommend as the combination of whiskey, hot water, sugar and lemon can only be described as foul!

So I gave up. I cancelled all of my Friday and Saturday clients and prepared to batten down the hatches with Louis.

By 4pm on Friday we were both in our pyjamas with a fire roaring and suitable rubbish on the television.

Saturday was made up mostly of watching trashy tv from my bed, with me sneaking in the occasional snooze whilst Louis played Lego. For the evening we set up in the lounge, with pizzas and duvets, ready for a fix of Strictly. All the glitter and glitz did wonders for my recuperation, but I think I should particularly thank Russell Grant... well they do say laughter is the best form of medicine, and boy did he make me laugh! Second to Jason Donovan, who still holds  a special place in my heart from the days when he married Charlene and sang Especially For You, Russell is who I most look forward to seeing dance. His pure delight at being a part of Strictly should be bottled and sold, and his face as he twirled around, Flavia in arms, to Dancing Queen was the best sort of tonic for feeling very sorry for myself in my poorly state!

Feeling much better with remnants of the joys of Strictly and a dose of Glee hanging around me from the previous night , Sunday was another lazy day for the two of us. Still in our pyjamas, we spent a lovely day doing a spot of colouring with Louis commenting,

                ‘Mummy, you are so clever for doing it so neatly. You never go over the lines or anything.’

Praise indeed, me thinks, this may elevate me to super star status as colouring is Louis’ new favourite thing to do!

Although there is really nothing exciting to report about our weekend, it has to be said it was just wonderful. Despite being ill, it was great to just hang out with my boy, lazing around between cuddles and colouring... I’d gladly suffer some more sniffles and sneezes for some more happy days like those!

Harvest Festival Shame

Have you had your Harvest Festival yet?

Today was the day that the Mummy’s had to bring in their offerings for our little ones to parade around the school hall at their Harvest Festival assembly this afternoon and I have to report that I experienced complete Harvest Festival shame, which is surely to be repeated later on today at said assembly.

This is the first year I have had to do a traditional Harvest Festival offering as last year we were instructed to take a shoe box and fill it with small toys and things that would be sent to children in Africa who would not receive Christmas gifts. This task was far easier than the one I was faced with this year. For a start, we were provided with the boxes therefore the space allowed for the gifts was predetermined. Plus, we had to return the box with the lid on and held in place with a large elastic band, therefore, no one could witness what had been placed within the boxes or know that I had in fact purchased most of the items from our local pound shop. I should mention at this point that I am all for charity and donating to those in need and whilst, I would not consider Louis and I to be on the bread line, money is not something that I tend to have a surplice of at any time, but in particular at this time of year with his birthday approaching and Christmas following quickly behind. Back to the point…

My first Harvest Festival proper; I hate to begin a sentence in this way as it reminds me of the fact that I am in fact a grown up, something I prefer not to be reminded of, but I remember as a child being supplied with a couple of tins of something from the back of my Mothers larder and placing them proudly at the front of the church. We had been asked by the school to bring in a box or small basket of goods which would later be donated to a local old people’s home. How hard could that be?

After a small melt down about the matter a couple of nights ago, I was comforted by one of my Mummy friends reply to my panic text;

Me: ‘What r u taking to schl for HF?’

Her: ‘Shoe box (childs) with some apples, oranges, baked beans and biscuits!’

Double checking the general thoughts about the subject on the bible, that is Mumsnet, for all these sorts of occasions, (I had a similar panic in the Summer about the sports day picnic!) I decided a shoe box was ample.

Last night I carefully wrapped one of Louis shoe boxes in pretty Harvest Festival type paper and filled lovingly with tissue paper, some tinned soup, pasta, pesto and a malt loaf and carefully wrapped the whole lot in cling film.

Alas, this morning my worst fear was realised as Louis and I entered his school, shoebox in one hand and book bag in the other, the fact that I could carry the box in one hand gives you an idea of the size, only to come face to face with a selection of baskets that would not have looked out of place in the John Lewis Christmas Hamper department. A vast array of beautifully decorated wicker baskets sat before us, one even having been carefully covered in a selection of autumnal leaves, all over flowing with combinations of everything from the Duchy Original range and home grown fresh produce.

Hiding our comparatively meagre parcel at the back and hoping that no one was watching, I dragged Louis along to his class room and disappeared as quickly as I could. Now just to sit through the embarrassment that will be the Harvest Festival procession… Do you think it is possible to pretend my child has picked up the wrong parcel?

Note to self: Pre order Harvest Festival Hamper from Harrods next year!

Attack Of The Spiders!

For the last week I have been at war! Not with my darling son but with a seemingly endless invasion of HUGE and probably killer, spiders.

I have refrained from writing about this so far for fear of sounding like the pathetic, spider fearing woman that I am. However, I can keep my silence no longer. Is anyone else out there under attack? Or am I the only target of this eight legged army?

There was nothing particularly unusual in the first sighting of my enemy. I was doing a spot of cleaning last Saturday afternoon and moved my bag of bags (we all have one right? The bag in which I keep all the millions of plastic bags collected with each food shop, that I fully intend to take with me next time I go to the supermarket in order to do my bit towards helping the planet, only I never remember and so my bag of bags is constantly over flowing!). Anyway, as I was saying, I moved my bag of bags to find a massive fat spider hiding on the side of the bag. Just to be clear, I am not talking about the spindly type that usually hang around in the corner of the rooms. They are no threat as they rarely move, and if they do it is usually very slowly, giving you plenty of time to make preparations. The type that I was face to face with is one of the big black kind, with the fat bodies and thick legs. The ones that run at you with no fear, that are completely unpredictable and if we’re honest, very mean looking. I managed to drag the bag very carefully into the garden and shake the beast loose and continued with my cleaning.

Later that day, having returned home with little Louis, I walked into the kitchen to find the (based on his size) older brother of the visitor I had evicted earlier on, sitting in my sink. Doing my best impression of someone not phased by spiders, Louis watch on while Mummy removed the imposter from the sink and out into the garden, using a glass and piece of card. Well done me, I am thinking. Who needs a man around the house!

Just getting myself ready to go up to bed that same night, I made my last visit to the toilet before bed, I happen to look up from the loo to find another monster staring down at me from the ceiling, right above my head. Trying not to panic, I finished my wee as quickly as possible, and removed myself from the possible drop zone. This one had me! Too high up to reach with a glass, I had no choice but to leave him there... but what if he followed me to bed to launch an attack while I was sleeping?

After a fitful nights sleep dreaming of, yep, you guessed it, my new found house guests, Louis finally managed to drag a bleary eyed Mummy out of bed. As we stumbled into the bathroom to do our teeth, I turned around to find another (or I suppose could be the same one from the night before) fiend, casually hanging out by my radiator.

                ‘Right, that is it!’ I said to Louis.

                ‘What? What Mummy? What are you going to do?’ His panicked little voice followed me as I marched out of the bathroom to the cupboard where the Hoover lives.

                ‘I am going to show it I mean business!’ Like a woman on a mission I pulled the Hoover loose. Now, it is worth mentioning at this point, that the reason I had not enlisted the help of my Hoover for the previous attackers is because if I am honest I do not like hoovering up big spiders. It is silly, I know, particularly considering my dislike of them. I have no issue with sucking up the spindly, corner hanging ones, previously mentioned, but the big ones.... well, they are big! You sort of feel them clunk up the Hoover, plus they look pretty robust. I have wondered on occasion if it is possible that they are all there inside, playing the long game and planning a counter attack when I least expect it. Just imagine, one after another, after another they would climb out of the bag and back down the length of the Hoover pipe thing and then when all gathered and ready... CHARGE!!

Anyway, seeing as how that is in reality probably not going to happen, I had decided enough was enough. I was going to make an example of this spider. Let it be a warning to him and his comrades.  So, Hoover plugged in and set to turbo suck I went for him. Attack!.... he ran to safety behind the radiator, and I swear, he actually looked at me and said ‘ha ha’ before he scurried off to a place he knew I couldn’t get him!

                ‘This is war.’ I told Louis, who was fearfully watching from outside the bathroom door.

Well, after that sighting, he or his many friends have been popping up all over the place. Not hidden away like respectful spiders would be, but literally everywhere. I have never known anything like it. I know it is spider season but they have literally taken over our house. I found one yesterday, bold as brass, sat on the floor outside my bedroom, then another waiting patiently for me to notice him on the back of my front door as we came in from school today. Some I have managed to get rid of with the trusty glass and paper method but I am afraid many of them have met their end with the only weapon available in this epic battle, my Hoover.

I would say the only positive to come from this unprecedented attack of my scurrying enemy is that Louis and I have got a lot braver with them, unfortunately though it seems that the same can be said of the spiders themselves. There is no fear when they see me come at them, be it with Hoover or glass, I am certain, they look me dead in the eye and smile, knowing that once I have them, one of their many friends will be back to finish what they started!

And so the battle continues...

A Poorly Girl

Having made a full recovery from yesterday’s illness, Louis went merrily back to school today.

I, however, have clearly had a visit from the Pixies of Poor Health during the night who seem to have shoved sand paper down my throat and played the drums in my head! To summarise; I feel ill!

I am certain that my feeling ill is largely responsible for the fact that I also feel very down in the dumps today.

I often measure my days and life in general by a feeling of winning or losing. Today is a losing day.

Not only do I feel unwell and therefore very sorry for myself but my mail this morning seems to have consisted only of (large) bills. Having checked my bank account, I seem to be haemorrhaging money so fast that if it were blood I would certainly need an emergency transfusion. Unfortunately there is no such solution when it comes to financial bleeding. I remind myself constantly that there are people far worse off than Louis and I, but today, it does little in making me feel better.

Today I am lonely.

Today I feel sad.

Today I want a cuddle.

What do you do when you want to get off the ever turning roundabout that is life? Nothing, I suppose!

Having felt like this many times before in my career as a single Mother, I do at least have the comfort that this feeling is just temporary and that with a good night’s sleep  probably aided by a large G and T, I will likely feel more positive about things tomorrow. It’s just that today, even the idea of feeling better tomorrow seems like it will require way more effort than I am willing to give.

Maybe I could take a sick day from life? Ha, if only!

Ps. If I sound like an alcoholic depressive, this is certainly not the case (at least, not every day!)

A Poorly Boy

Let me just tell you a little about my morning so far…

I was awoken just after 6am by a very whiny boy telling me that he didn’t want to go to school as he had a poorly tummy. Me being the unsympathetic Mother that I am, replied with, ‘You are going to school Louis because I have to go to work.’ Then promptly snoozed my alarm and fell back to sleep.

Waking for the second time with a jump panicking because I shouldn’t have actually been sleeping again, I suddenly realize that Louis is downstairs screaming for me from the toilet. Jump out of bed and run downstairs,

‘Coming Louis!’

‘Mummy, I’ve been calling you for ages!’

‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you.’ Missed out the ‘because, I am an irresponsible parent who fell back to sleep!’

Needless to say, he does indeed have a poorly tummy and in-between 3 changes of pyjama bottoms and at least 5 trips to the toilet, I have managed to cancel all my clients… again! (He was off school two weeks ago with a very nasty cough and temperature).

It goes without saying that my child’s health is number one priority but when you are the only person bringing in a wage and with the ‘you don’t work you don’t get paid’ problem of self employment, I do feel that it does mean I am slightly devoid of the sympathy factor.

Oh and then just one more, tiny thing…. On our last trip to the toilet just a short while ago, Louis was bent over waiting for me to check he’d done a good job wiping, and innocently asks;

‘Mummy, how do you make a baby?’

I think today may be, in technical parenting terms, ‘challenging’ or in other words, ‘in need of wine at the end of it!’

And it’s only Monday…

Manic Mummy with a Mower

‘Mummy, is that one of those old fashioned lawn mowers?’

                     ‘Yes, Louis, it is.’

My little boy watched with wide eyes as I manically attacked our half a foot long lawn, armed with a mower that would not look out of place in an episode of Noddy. You know, the non electric, rota blade sort, that on grass which I could easily lose my son amongst, is not much good.

I had decided that with the amazing weather we have been having, that I should take the opportunity to sort out our jungle, I mean garden! The problem with this decision is that I am in no way green fingered.

I want to tell you that I would like to be, that being an expert gardener is something I aspire to, but if I said that I would be lying. Don’t get me wrong, I long for the end result; beautifully cut grass, weed-less beds filled with an array of colourful flowers and a selection of fresh herbs for me to use in the kitchen. However, to me gardening is a little like cleaning, only worse, in that as soon as you have finished it, the whole thing needs doing over again. The problem is, it just keeps growing!

The fact that my friend commented recently that a burnt out car would have looked at home with my field like grass and jungle like flower beds, shamed me enough to attempt to fix the situation.

So, Louis and I set to work. Him on weed duty and me on the grass. Three hours and a bucket of sweat later and I am not entirely convinced that it looks much better. However, we did find all sorts of things as we mowed and pulled and cut like demons...

3 skittles (the bowling sort not the ones you eat)

2 footballs (one deflated as it seems to have gotten too friendly with a rose bush)

A golf ball (no idea where from as neither Louis or I play golf)

More spiders than you can imagine (which are all probably relocating to inside my house as I write)

A slug (who looked as though he was on steroids)

A snake (First time I’ve ever seen one out of a zoo, and wouldn’t be too sorry if we didn’t meet again!)

A baby frog (At about which time, Louis lost interest in the weeding and spent the rest of the time, unsuccessfully, trying to catch  him as a pet)

Now, I think overall I am pretty capable at doing the jobs of both parents, I don’t mind taking the bins out or pulling hair from the plug hole, I have even been known to get a bit handy with a power drill but today, with beads of sweat dripping from my brow and an aching back, I don’t think I would have said no if there had been a man around to mow the lawn! 

A Reality Check

Having thought about starting this blog for sometime now, I have pondered a lot over what the first thing I would write would be. Well, today I knew that this would be it...

I have no idea if anyone is reading, but just in case, I will explain a little more about me than what I have shared in my ‘About Me’ blurb. My son, Louis is nearly 6 years old (still coming to terms with that one, harder to swallow than turning 30 for some reason!). So, I have been a single mother proper for nearly 6 years. Although, I think of it as having been longer than that. Louis was, shall we say, a happy accident! His Father and I were together for a while but when I discovered I was pregnant, he was unfortunately not massively keen on the idea of the 2 of us becoming 3.

With some persuasion from me, he came round to the idea (or so he said) and we stayed together for a while but it was clear he was never really going to step up and play Dad. I suppose I got fed up with pretending that there was a second parent around and decided that rather than thinking there was someone else to share it all with but really being on my own, that it would be easier (ha ha) if I was actually on my own. So I asked him to leave when I was 4 months pregnant.

As I am sure you can imagine, I have told this story many times over the years. The usual reaction is comments on how brave I must have been, but I don’t really think I can take the credit for bravery. Stupidity, maybe. Naivety, definitely! Yes, I had thought it through to the point that I knew I didn’t want my unborn child to go through his parents breaking up and that it would be better for him to grow up having known no different, but other than that, I don’t think I had thought it through at all.

I was very young (although at the time, ever so grown up!). Just 23 when I fell pregnant, I really had no idea what I was letting myself in for. How hard could it be having a baby? I’d get a bit fat, pop it out and life would pretty much go back to normal, right? No, it wasn’t brave because at the time I had no reason to fear my decision or what followed. For a long time, I thought that his Dad and I would be friends and raise our child together... at one point, I even suggested that we live together but just weren’t together... I blame Friends for that one – it worked so well for Ross and Rachel!

Needless to say that things did not work out for us as they did for Ross and Rachel, and so by the time Louis was 1, 2 had become 3 had become 2 again.

I think any single mother will agree that it is difficult to fit anywhere. Single but not really single. A family but not really a family. I definitely feel those things as a constant but with the additional feeling that I don’t even fit into being a single mother. I didn’t plan to make a baby whilst in a loving relationship, which just didn’t work after the baby came a long and I didn’t get pregnant by accident and then get ditched by my low life boyfriend. I asked him to leave. I didn’t plan the situation but I suppose I chose to do it on my own. So where does that leave me? Well, right here I guess.

Single, with a gorgeous almost 6 year old boy, muddling through. Louis and I have a pretty good life, it could certainly be a lot worse. I think he is happy as am I most of the time, but as any Mother, single or not, it is not always easy and sometimes, things take you by surprise. Like today.

I work for myself as a mobile beauty therapist and today had a new client. I tend not to talk to much about myself at work as really, I am being paid to be interested in my clients, however, somehow we had got on to the subject of Louis. Out of nowhere my client, quite innocently asked,

                ‘Are you raising him on your own then?’

I have no idea why but the question floored me! I wanted to run from the room and cry. I am so used to telling people I am on my own with Louis, but I don’t think anyone has ever asked me before I have volunteered the information. For whatever reason, the fact that she asked took me completely by surprise but not only that it was the wording of the question.

                ‘Are you raising him on your own then?’

                ‘Yes,’ I replied having composed myself, ‘Yes, I am’.

And so reality bit hard today. It’s not just that I am ‘on my own with my son’ as I have put it so many times before.  I am ‘raising him on my own’!

So here I am, raising my Son alone.... now could someone just let me know exactly how I am supposed to do that please?