excuses

so. we're going to my mum's tomorrow, and then she is very kindly having the children while i have a much needed weekend with my SO, and then we're going to stay with his family until my mum's birthday, after which school will start. yes, i've sewn on all the labels. i've also got to find time to decorate my kitchen. i don't know when. if i'm not around, this is why.

see you on the flipside, dynamite. x.





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update *strings/horns news music*

this just in- i'm going to take the pressure off and he's going to be nice to me. in other words, it's taken us three days to get back to normal.

in other news- i caved. i ate. chorizo tastes of paprika and DEATH, and apparently this combination is no longer palatable to me. this is a slight bummer as i was simply trying to wean myself off cheese. early indications suggest that i still love cheese.

and finally- i wish i was at v festival. i've just been jumping around to calvin harris having epic flashbacks involving ian brown, experimental eye makeup, semi-religious experiences in marquees, and the intense, almost unbearable happiness a big piece of knitwear can bring to the vulnerable and nippy reveller in the small hours. for various reasons i don't remember much of my early adulthood, the bit before kids, although i'm fairly sure i was both a. unaware of my relatively slinky dimensions and b. a total bitch.

actually, i just looked at the lineup and said "oh, meh." out loud. i blame the chorizo rush. i remember when all this were fields, etc.






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i can't haz cheezburger, or, a uncharacteristically self indulgent, moping post, with possibly tmi. i offer a link to lolcats as recompense.

i'm not quite sure what i'm supposed to think when my SO says we are having problems in our relationship, have been for months, that i am lying to myself if i splutter with disbelief at the suggestion. like i did.

i'm not sure what to think when he says he can't afford, or rather, resents the assumption that he would, take me out for dinner. (it's my birthday in three days, a meal out was all i asked for. we haven't been out since march.) equally, he resents the assumption that he would take me and the children on holiday, to provide us with this, with that... when i never even asked him to. never even hoped he would. wondered if he would come with us one day, yes. never once assumed he'd pay to go to bloody disney, despite his mentioning it mere weeks into our relationship.

should i have thought "ouch" when he told me that he'd taken his parents out for dinner last night? like i did?

he says he's sick of pressure regarding where the relationship is going, if we're getting married. this pressure does not come directly from me. i admit i do occasionally wonder aloud where this is going, if it has a future. it's been three and a half years. we have never really discussed it.

he says he lavishes his time on me, and that, because of me, he has no time to sort his own life out. he works full time, plays basketball, lives alone. on average, he spends 2 to 3 weekends a month with friends, family, or by himself. the other weekends he spends with me. we live 2.5 hours apart. he is angry that i passed up on an offer to get me driving lessons while he had the (then very small) children on alternate saturday mornings two years ago, but now i will be learning to drive this autumn when rudy starts school.

he says that i am not supportive of his plans, and because of me, he and a friend of his will not be going travelling together for a few of weeks this year as previously planned. this is news to me. i was demonstrably upset for him when he told me that he would not be going, and had previously encouraged him to get on with the organisation. apparently i made him feel guilty.

all these ambitions and aspirations he had when he met me are going out the window. apparently this is entirely my responsibility.

there is no time to discuss any of this. it's out there now, since thursday, but there hasn't been a good time to talk about it since, despite his continuing anger.

i have a feeling this might not be the funnest birthday ever.

added to which i undertook at the beginning of the week to do the frigging master cleanse (dairy allergies) and now only my tenacity is seeing me through. if i stop, i'll get judged by a man that stopped smoking, cold turkey, three weeks ago. with help from the alan carr book i bought him last year.

burger king would help.

sorry.





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oh. hang on a minute...

adhd?


is this a joke?




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for those about to enter reception class, we salute you

rudy is not being diagnosed with asperger's! just dcd/adhd! for now! under ongoing observation! unmedicated! for now! for ever if i have anything to do with it!

and rudy just 'graduated' from nursery with a certificate, a fairy cake, and a medal that says "winner" on it. we've said goodbye.

it's been emotional. now to sew a million name tags into his uniform.

*throws devil hand signal.*

*goes to make pot of tea.*

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other people's children

hmmm. i can't be the only person who has ever stumbled over a photograph of a child who is clearly my children's half brother on the internet (etsy, of all places) and thought, with all due respect to his mother, that my two were actually much better looking and actually in my honest, totally unbiased opinion my kids are like something out of a burberry campaign, and then felt really bad, but i'm damned if i can find an appropriate forum.

my brain thusly marinated in evil superficiality and shock, i toyed, fleetingly, with the idea of encouraging (read: masterminding) p n'r's careers as child models, with a view to raising their university tuition fees (fine art and engineering, respectively, probably, hopefully) and improving everyone's lives a hundredfold with their winsomeness. of course, i swiftly dismissed the idea. for a start, the pair of them are wont to swan about looking almost unbearably beautiful... and then a camera is produced... at which point they both adopt the squint/ expand-mouth-laterally-to-extremities-of-jawline school of smiling. but more importantly, neither of them would really stand for it. unless you happen to be the progeny of a rockstar, or a once-in-a-generation kate moss type, modelling can reduce one's sense of self to nothing but a set of scrawled features on a piece of acetate- rather specifically what i do not wish for my children. so it'll be down the mine like the rest of us, then.

later, as if to compound my instincts, i watched a documentary on bbc3 entitled baby beauty queens, or something, about the inaugural miss mini miss uk beauty pageant for the terminally over glittered tween (i might have misremembered the actual title here) and was pretty much disturbed to bits. there was a lovely, intelligent, pretty child who had had cosmetic surgery at 7, whose mother would get cross if she chose to wear her glasses rather than contact lenses. there was another lovely, intelligent, pretty child whose mother had made her a believe-board with pictures of naomi campbell, pound signs and a chihauhau called gucci on it. of course, there was an adorable, ethereal and gracious sweetheart from a council estate (cue lingering shots of smashed windows and copious litter) who genuinely didn't feel that winning was important, and had a likeable, bright mother desperate to give her preemie princess something to believe in.

a twelve year old, 5'6", natural (read: suspiciously unglittery) beauty in a £3k frock took the crown. hell's teeth. apart from our preemie princess, who quietly got on with carving out a career in modelling, and good for her, there were tears, tiaras and tantrums abound. and that was just the mums. i am ever more grateful for my daughter's ambition to open a patisserie, and my son's ambition to try "all of the jobs, except magician". ("just because.")

sometimes i think i might not actually, technically, be the worst mother in the world, and i wonder why that is not more uplifting a thought.





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home (extended edition)

hey. we're home. heartfelt apologies to anyone that thought we had fatally succumbed to swine flu- we haven't, but we have been away in order to fully recouperate, and i am that highly distractable person that forgets about the internet (if not those i encounter upon it) after a day's enforced absense. we are all well and hope that you are too.

what you can see above is not our home, but that of my father. actually that's a lie. it is the home of an iron-age person, as seen from the land my father and his wife own. if you crunch across the drive and wander down the top field at seven pm (invariably with glass of wine in hand) this is the view.

so that's where we've been. enjoying the unexpected sunshine, eating expansive meals cooked on the aga, striding about in the manure with dogs at our heels. the yearling won champion of champions at the show, rudy actually did a drawing (of the sun!), i made a lasagne that could enter an appropriate hall of fame; we had a good time.

*****terrifyingly long asd rant paragraph alert*****

my father's wife is essentially a top-tier senco. she makes decisions that impact upon every sen kid in the country (which, just to confuse you, is not the country i live in). she literally identified rudy's dyspraxia at 200 paces. but asperger's?... seeing him thrive in a different context, realising how far he has come in the last six months ,witnessing his extensive, gregarious social skills and his overall adaptability anew made me able to review the recent assessments in a different, less trusting way. he's an intelligent, flapping kid with a broad vocabulary. we live in a 'deprived' area... perhaps attempts are being made to find more serious (neurological?) explanations for an inherent geekiness than are actually appropriate. for example, it was noted by the occupational therapist recently that dyspraxia was not evident during her assessment, and that his coordination difficulties are more the product of sensory processing issues. while i accept that all the recommendations she made would be helpful to rudy in terms of developing his physical and sp capabilities, i am more wary, than i was, of her suggestion of an asd label. the label could get in the way more than what i perceive as the real issues. i don't know if rudy will end up in the nba, say, but to summarily dismiss it does him a disservice (rudy is tall, so i'm not being entirely delusional.) as the statementing and support funding process in england changes, rudy will receive whatever support he needs without that definitive label. other friends and family who happen to be teaching and support assistants are beyond alarmed by the suggestion that rudy could be autistic. the preliminary speech and language report references an inability to correctly describe what is going on in an illustration of a girl drying her hair with a towel. rudy laughs and says she has a rug on her head, which in our house is about as likely. an inabillity to identify that an elephant is talking on the telephone and has the cord wound around his trunk ("he has a spring on his nose") is fair enough, as far as i'm concerned... rudy was born in 2004 and as such has never met a corded 'phone. is this not, again, cultural/environmental... and actually okay? we recently encountered a bizarre munchhausen-ish/ competitive statementing situation very close to home, which, while i won't go into the details, delivered a timely dose of further objectivity.

the paediatrician might tell me otherwise on wednesday but as far as i am concerned, there is no issue that isn't covered by the dyspraxia dx. and that's that. i'm home.






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