Get a grip woman!

It's a double edged sword, parenting, motherhood, you want to keep them close and safe, yet know that the whole point of it all is to let them gently, step by step find their own way out there in th ebig old bad worl. To nurture, feed and clothe them, give them boundaries (I'm crap at that now they are older). Give them space and time, and I do honestly I try very hard not to smother. It's time to take  few more steps back.

This last year since my son and I have lived alone, apart from my husband and my daughter, I have accepted much and discarded what I can do absolutely nothing about, to hold onto it is toxic. I am no longer lost in a mist of an unhealthy relationship and a mist of unhappiness. The kids are seemingly accepting, each facing their own patches of darkness and coming out stronger, hopefully with lessons learned, and new expectations.

I like living as a single woman I find, exploring possibilities, no longer in fear of what lies ahead.

Next Friday at 4am, yes you read that right, no typo, 4 bloody am, I shall walk my son around to his school,to meet the coach that will take him on his latest school trip. Patrick is going away for a 6 day trip to Paris & Brussels with his school friends and the excitement has been growing here steadily since Christmas.

This overlaps coincidentally with my 5 days off on the work rota. So l will either be furiously washing and cleaning the house, or mopping about like a lost soul. Hopefully I will be somewhere in the middle of all that, by studying and perhaps even a bit of time spent drawing or painting. 

Lots of wandering around the flat semi nude, cos l am mostly a few degrees hotter than is comfortable, and just cos I can and it feels good. 

I can play my kinda music as loud as I want, (without overhead groans), listen to my 70's LP's all grainy and non digital on the old record player. 

I don't have to cook cos l need to, just cos I want to, all stuff my son doesn't like, asparagus and blue cheese risotto, creamed spinach, eat brussel sprouts raw yum, smoked haddock, Massaman curry, my own anchovies and olive pizza and spicy chicken casserole...

I'm not sure l'll have the time to miss him or worry. 

He'll be fine and l'll be fine.

Am so very jealous though, I mean belle Paris! I can never tire of that city. To walk and walk and walk, by day and night through the early morning, buying a fresh baguette or croissants at 4am and  relishing each hot mouthful! I think I might treat myself finances allowing, post divorce (please soon) to take my self off for a long weekend there, perhaps with a pal.

Now this sounds like a plan. I shall pick up some brochures tomorrow!

I could even use my french passeport for the first time, enfin!

Saz x

E-mail - Not Cool!

How often have we been told that humo(u)r and sarcasm don't always translate in e-mail. Do we, I mean I, ever learn? I mean, do we?

(True story - on my mother's life.)

Last night I received an e-mail from one of the 15 year old's teachers, inviting parents to some sort of exhibition of their work. (I forget the details. Don't they all merge into one?)  What caught my eye was the enormous font of the body of the e-mail, compared to the surrounding text in my e-mail folders. I kept making the font smaller, but it was still enormous.  And then it dawned on me.

The hilarious e-mail I could send as a reply. Here it is ver batim:

Thanks for the information Mr M.
By the way - we 9th grade parents may generally be in our late 40s and early 50s but we don't need the HUGE font quite yet.!!!!
Thanks,
Toni H (not yet 50 and almost 20/20).

Hilarious, don't you think?

The Man-Child (whose teacher it was) stood by me, loudly denouncing me as a loser and that he would be SO embarrassed he couldn't possibly show up for class, but I knew he didn't really mind otherwise he'd have either pulled the computer plug out of the wall or picked me up and deposited me at the far end of the room.

So I sent it.

The reply? I give up. I realise teachers have to tread warily with parents, but please. Could I really have been serious.

"Sorry about that...I attempted to copy the text from an email I had written on our grading server and there must have been an issue with the formatting.  My apologies on that one... "

Argh! No! You're supposed to think I'm one hilarious, hip-cool mama, not a Type A, politically correct a** hole.

In my own defence, I couldn't resist sending off this one last e-mail in the desperate hope that the teacher would realise I had been hilariously joking all along:

"No problem - it was worth the absolute humiliation that I seem to have put the Queenager and the Man-Child through! ;-)"

Unfortunately, I cannot disagree with the teens that this is just one more teacher who now harbours the suspicison that their mother is indeed, insane.

MMM Public Service announcement

I came across this article today and wanted to share it with everyone. It's common sense but we all lose sight of it sometimes.

Not that I have any experience of this.

At all.

Sigh.

Expat Mum

First Christmas

After years of  Bah humbug Christmases, I found myself this year, separated after 29 years of marriage from my husband (permanently) and from my daughter by her choice of home.

My son and l just cracked on in the usual way, waiting to hear what Christmas choices my daughter would make for herself. I assured her it was her choice, I made sure she knew she was welcome and wanted. But I told her that life moves on and we wouldn't die if she made other choices.

Christmas eve and I found myself in bed with antibiotics, coughing up my lungs, off work.

My daughter arrived in the evening, having told me early in the week that she was staying with us, and her Dad had 'plans'. Nuff said. (It actually transpired that he spent all Christmas and new year alone with man-flu. He is consistent each year, without fail.)

We watched tv, laughed and drank some....they went to bed before midnight, to keep it magical, so the teens of 19 and 16 yrs, still love the magic.

At  9am, my daughter landed on my bed with stockings and smiles and much excitement, my son followed minutes later. We all put on soft pjs and drank to each others health, opening gifts in a slightly calmer manner, taking turns, rather than the usual  'let's watch the kids' mode. We've all grown up a little more this past year.

I wept, she wept, at sweet generosity, thoughtfulness and kind words from friends and family. I made the dinner, in a less than an hour, as we are a smaller family now. I cut corners of course, not sure if my heart would be in it this year, no one noticed. Don't know why l hadn't saved my self a ton of angst years ago.

At 5pm I drove the kids to their father's and my daughters house. Our family home. My eyes leaked a little on my drive out of the street, but l sucked it up.

I popped into wish a friend happy Christmas and an hour later I was home.

And I was not alone for long.
For now that is all l can say about that.

Happy New Year!

Sara x