Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Ho hum......

Well, I've done it, and am half way through being accepted for the initial part of my Masters degree.

This bit will be my Post Graduate Certificate in Social, Emotional and Behavioural Difficulties. Oh yes!  It will take a year, is financed by the County, and will help me to understand my children better, and to send that information out to help others help their children better in my school.  I am already the "go to" person for a lot of minor SEN work, and that's nice (although lots of work lol!) and as the Mental Health Lead for the school I have a lot to do with the emotional children, so it's all cool.  Mandy says it is basically legitimising what I already know and adding to it, which is excellent news!

AC and T-Boy are playing upstairs.  T-Boys mother has decided (without telling J or T-boy) that she is moving T-boy to another part of the country.  It's only a couple of hours away, which is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but seriously, after everything that Rich and I went though to keep the AC near his father, and then there are mothers who just don't care about the needs of the child, or the safety of the child, or the emotional stability of the child, and just transport them anywhere that the selfish desires of the mother say so.  I'm sick of it to be frank, and we are going to fight this in a way that we never fought the She-Ex because she was vindictive enough not to send photos when she was annoyed with Rich, and to make sure BG was "out" at phonecall time. Heaven only knows what she would have done if she thought we were trying to argue the toss to actually see the poor child.  She denied Rich that so many times.  Now BG will never see her father again, and that's her mothers fault.

Thankfully this is only a couple of hours away though, and so life is easier, but more expensive on fuel and so on.  We'll manage - just cut back in a few areas.  I offered not to do the course, because there will be expensive parts to that, but J has insisted that this is for all our good, not just his and T-boy's, and so I'm doing it. (And Very Excited about it too!)

Anyway,  the parents are due here soon and the kitchen needs doing before we go out, so I'd better snap to it lol!

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

I can smell bread.

I can.

It might only be 0551 (and what does the O stand for...............) but I can.  The breadmaker timer is fabulous.

Yesterday was hard work but pretty good.  We ended up (I say we, I mean me!) cleaning the AC's room from where he and T-boy had played, doing the dishwasher, cleaning all the limescale from the toilet (a job only sporadically done in the last 12 months!) making chocolate lollies, making chilli and bolognaise, stripping out the middle room to find the source of the smell (found it, mouse, cheers Kevin and Jo!) and removing said mouse, which has calmed the snakes down already.  Obviously being able to smell food and not get to it, as they would have seen things, is just frustrating, so explains their attitudes in the last couple of weeks.  It was behind a bookcase. *sigh*  We also went to an organ concert in the church with my parents and had lunch out with them and did some Poundland shopping which is just the way things are at the moment, and that's ok.  Payday is Thursday, we have plenty of food in the house,  and life is good.

I still need to sort out the AC's school uniform, but we don't go back for another 2 weeks, so that's ok.

As last time I blogged was Wednesday last week, I shall bring you lovely people up to date on our lives.

Thursday and Friday followed pretty much the same pattern.  We got up, T-boy and I had a discussion about his breakfast - Thursday he didn't eat it, and indeed had nothing until lunch, and then lunch wasn't what he wanted, so that was an issue, (although it was food that he eats) and so the pattern continued.

Saturday was a long day.

0830 we picked up the new car.  Black.  Gorgeous.  pictures to follow (I say that a lot recently, but I will be doing a photopost.)
0930 we left for J's parents.
1130ish we arrived at J's parents, having had to phone the garage on the way as the electronic handbrake wasn't working properly.  I say properly.  I mean.... at all.  We are told to switch it off and on again and all will be well.  We decide to wait and do this at J's parents house.  Handbrake goes on nicely.
1230  Handbrake does not come off.  Phonecalls to garage result in RAC man who discovers that not only is the handbrake switch not working properly (he thinks, based on previous experience, but can't test it without the VAG computer) but the fuel filter has not been seated properly when serviced and has shed diesel over the engine, engine bay, undertray, bonnet, and of course, that most unimportant of things - the wheels and the road.  Phonecall to garage to book car in (at their expense) and slightly explode about the fuel filter - any monkey knows you have to grease a seal when you put it in.

Laters.  AC is up!

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

In the quiet.......

.... of the morning, I just want to spend a few moments writing.  Not about anything in particular, just writing.  It's  just gone 6.30.  Yesterday I took the boys to a violin concert (a 30 minute one!) and we went to the park afterwards.  Not an amazingly special kind of day, but actually, in parts, it was incredibly hard work.

We watched the beginning of a film in the morning - Braveheart, with Mel Gibson.  Part way through, a girl gets her throat cut.  The AC was hysterical about this.  I had to go upstairs to him.  He sat on my lap like an infant and cried and cried and cried.  We went over what if *I* died.  We went over how other people are affected by death.  We went over a lot of old ground that was not as sorted suddenly as it had been.  When I came down, J was confused - after all, the AC watches Doctor Who on a regular basis and sometimes people die in that.  No, I said, that's a story.  This is history.  Death means something different to the AC than it does to most children.  The fact that he and J had talked about it being history and based on a true set of events meant that for the AC, that woman had really existed, had had parents who loved her and would be hurt by her death, had a husband who loved her and would be crying like Mummy had cried, and so she wasn't a story book character any more for him.  J got it.  AC and J talked about it for a long time whilst T-boy was in the bath.

T-boy was also Very Hard Work today.  I will have good manners, and I will have children who help in the house, and I will have a child who is rude and insolent.  We spent a lot of time today just talking about why he thinks it's ok to be rude to me (it's not, says he!) why he thinks he doesn't have to do as people say (no-one ever does what he says) what it feels like when someone is rude to him and how that translates to other people, and so on.  Will it make a difference? I don't know.  Something has to, because as I said to him, if it keeps up, I'll just say I'm not having him here without his father here.  It's my house, my rules.

Speaking of the house, which is getting there slowly, sooooooooooo slooooooowly, lol, I was thinking about how this will all translate one day.  How eventually we will move from here to a place that is bigger and so on, and I was thinking this because we finally watched Sundays "World's Squarest Teenagers" which is about the Amish community and 4 of their teens on rumspringa being over here, staying with different people.  It's a really good programme and aside from opening my eyes to how the Amish live, seeing their ideas about the things that we do has made me think about looking at my life/house/activities from the outside.  This week the subject of submission came up, and it was good to have a lead into that discussion with J about it.  He's still finding his feet in the house, and I don't think things will settle down until we are all back at school and there is some kind of routine going on again, but he understands where I am coming from on it, and clearly finds it desirable in a woman.  It's not in a black leather sexual kind of way, which it is so often portrayed as (that kind of thing has it's place in a trusting relationship and may never find it's way back to my evenings again as, lets face it, leather looks good when the body is all in the right place, but when things are on the sag, it's not such a hot look........) but as a way of thinking and being.

I like it.

And now I need to go and live it lol!  Lunches for all today, I think we'll picnic at the park for the children and I, and J needs lunch, then we'll all have something chickeny for tea from the leftover chicken - cheese and chicken pasta bake perhaps.

Laters peoples!

Monday, August 9, 2010

Exhausted - and getting worse lol!

That's about what I am up to at the moment.  I am exhausted and getting worse.  Physically and mentally I ache all over, if that makes sense.  My joints all itch in the inside of them and I am jibbering like a fool at the moment.  To the point where I don't have hot drinks in the evening because I or J will end up wearing them.

Aside from that though, it's all good. And lets face it, the above is only moaning on about pain.  There's lots more that are worse off than me.

There is good news though - we are getting a new car! Whooop!  J is trading in his Golf, the love of his life, and we are getting a 3 year old Volkswagen Passat, 2litre, 170bhp, and fit as a butchers dog. 

It comes after a long week though, with Thursday being emotional, distressing, and then just plain ludicrous.

There are pictures to follow once I get onto it, but in short......

Fudge the guinea pig died.
Ellie the Landrover was taken off to the Excalibur Unit. (Sam and I get a plaque on it saying how great Rich was and what happened and so on!)
The He-Ex sent me a solicitors letter to say he wasn't paying maintenance anymore.
We went swimming and had a fabulous time!

But now I have to go and get dressed, ready for the return of the gorgeous child.

Laters.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Chillin' week!

This week the boy and I are on our own.

T-Boy is with his mother after we'd had him here for a week.  It's been..... interesting.

Yesterday the boy and I did Not A Fat Lot.  We tidied, sorted through Rich's kit from the bedroom, bagged up his clothes for the charity shop, and put the shoes in the blanket box where all his uniform has been stored until now.  I remembered him wearing so many of those things, I could see him, but they are no good to him now, and they are cluttering up the way that the AC and I *have* to move on.  We cannot be stuck in the past.  Apparently this is a Very Healthy Attitude.

On Sunday Ray from the Excalibur Unit came to look at Ellie.  She is officially off to them at some point in the next couple of weeks.  He's going to phone tonight.  Yes, it'll be an almighty wrench, but she will be shown in Rich's memory, complete with donation plaque saying who he was and his dates and things like that.  She will raise money for Help for Heroes.  Rich was and is, our hero.

Today though, today is a year since we cremated him, and that's tricky. In a good way. Kinda.  Today is when all the nastiness really kicked off from I-t-B.  Do I think it was done from selfishness to hurt the AC and I? No.  But I do think it was done to prove who had the power over Rich's remains in an attempt to prove that he and Lori were closer to Rich than AC and I were.  A year on, they are still as deluded as ever if that's what they think lol!

Today the child and I have chilled on the sofa, eaten an entire packet of party rings, hit the sugar high together and then the sugar crash on the sofa dozing together, played Reversi (it's like Othello.  Heavens, it is Othello, but repackaged.)  Mum is on her way over with more board games to play and life is good.

Life is always as good as we make it.  I am, despite appearances lol, a very lucky girl.