38

Today is my birthday. I wasn’t planning on being awake at 4am but that’s the reality I suppose of being 456 months pregnant. I, in all honesty, keep forgetting that it’s my birthday and that’s an age thing. I’m looking forward to a nice day, a coffee and a piece of cake with my sister, the afternoon with my girls and a nice meal out with J but it’s nothing more than that, nothing more than potentially going back to bed in a bit for J to do breakfast for the girls which is a rare and wonderful luxury.

Anyway, I thought I might do 38 things about me. Very narcissistic I know. But indulge me, you only turn 38 once.

1. I have 5 A-Levels. In random subjects. I forget that I’m quite bright, it’s easy to forget as you raise kids, as your conversation becomes dominated by talk of poo and sleep!

2. I am passionate about politics. I’ve always dipped in and out but since being at home and the advent of Twitter, I’ve become engrossed.

3. Only British politics though. There is no room in my brain for Trump and his shenanigans.

4. I was and will always be a Remainer. This means nothing outside of the UK but I despair at the state of my country at the moment and the way we are hell bent on self destruction.

5. My body image is at its best when I’m pregnant. I may be huge but I always feel prettier than I ever do or have done when I’m not pregnant.

6. I have slept with 11 men. This seems fairly average I think.

7. Not sure I could name half of them. Not because they were nameless conquests but just because they have ceased to matter, and my memory has been taken over by beautiful memories of my girls.

8. I worry most of the time about other people. To the point where I have to do something else so that I don’t obsess.

9. I am a hypochondriac. Didn’t used to be but motherhood…. thank goodness for J and NHS Direct for allowing me not to take my girls to A&E a hundred times in their short lives.

10. I have always had a tongue tie. It doesn’t affect me in any way except I can’t stick my tongue out 😛

11. I had a breast lump removed when I was 23. Completely benign but scary.

12. I would like to do emergency foster care one day. Not long term fostering as I think I’d get too attached but I feel like we’d be good at taking kids that are in an emergency. When my girls are older obviously

13. I adore cricket. I’m listening to it now. Adore it. It’s my sporting passion and I love it all.

14. I visited Leeds for 4 days last year and I genuinely miss it. I think I may have found my home there. One day we’ll live there.

15. I am lonely

16. I love to walk. Not exercise particularly but I would and could walk miles. Before the girls were born, J and I went for a walk every evening, rain or shine and I miss that.

17. I hate rain. Unless it’s nighttime and I’m tucked up in bed.

18. I love to bake. I’m not very good at it but I love to do it. I’ve started baking with the girls and their love for it makes me so happy.

19. Before the girls were born, I had a flat tummy and really good boobs. Vainly, I miss these things more than is reasonable.

20. My last job pre babies was Store Manager of Ann Summers. Lingerie and sex toys. I loved it and the conversations I have had…..

21. I was very good at my job. Very good. I miss the feeling of accomplishment. And the praise. There isn’t nearly enough praise for being a mother.

22. I know the alphabet in BSL.

23. My hair is dark yet my eyebrows and eyelashes are so blonde they are largely invisible.

24. I love staying in hotels. I love it all, the tiny toiletries, the bright white bath, the huge bed, the hotel breakfast. All of it.

25. I would most like to go to New Zealand. Of all the places in the world. And I’d like to go to New York.

26. The ten minutes before J gets home every night is the happiest I am. I start to clock watch and then he’s home and everything is in the right place again.

27. Our third baby may finally have a name!

28. My very favourite name (which Jody hates) is Madeleine.

29. I like the dark if I’m not alone.

30. I really enjoy food shopping. But not putting it away when I get home.

31. Both my girls call elbows “arm bows”. If anyone ever corrects them, I’ll kill them.

32. I don’t believe in God but I increasingly believe that Heaven might exist. I hope so as my brother is there and we have many chats to have.

33. I think, if anyone asks, I’m going to say I’m 35.

34. My book is my proudest achievement but I wish I’d never written it.

35. I love Instagram more than I should

36. And I hate Facebook. Yet still have an account.

37. I would love to get married. J knows this. It isn’t weird.

38. I love sleep. Which is ironic. I really must try to get some now.

Goodnight xx

People

In my head, they are people in a room. My characters. The people that I have already written, they are definitely there and the people that I want to write about, complex people with lives and jobs and emotions. Some that are mine, of course, the way to work through an emotion, a feeling, is to superimpose it onto a fictional character and have them work it out.

There’s Emily, of course. She is my very favourite and always will be. If I could get it past J, then I’d give our baby Emily as a middle name. She is so important to me, she started this journey and may very well end it too. If I stop writing, and that seems to be a distinct possibility at this point, she will remain the very best person that I ever wrote. She stands there with her hair curled, slightly awkward, wondering if anyone is looking at her, wanting to talk to the others but wondering what she would say.

Charlie and Ryan are there, my men protagonists, the men that made Emily come alive. Ellie too, older now, entering her teenage years and baby Rosie as well.

Then there are the characters that are half written. There’s Maddie, she was the one I wrote first, I was probably sixteen or seventeen so we’re going back twenty years which is terrifying. I would love to tell her story but maybe she represents a time in my life that I don’t particularly want to revisit. I don’t know. We’ll see. There are others, there’s a mum whose husband leaves her for another woman then comes back with his tail between his legs, there’s a group of women who are in varying stages of having babies and lots more. There’s the characters that I haven’t written yet. The ones that I’d like to write. I’d really like to write a character who has lost a sibling. One who has tried and tried to have a baby and failed. Someone who has turned their life upside down and started something entirely new. There are so many.

But they are all standing still in the room. They are waiting for me to write them a story. And I’m entirely stuck. Entirely unable to write anything. There are four blog posts half written in my drafts folder, even here the words are struggling to come, even here I worry about the writing being crap, here where I wasn’t supposed to set myself any expectations. I just need to write. Need to write and write and not worry at all about who might be reading.

Maybe I need to write about the deep things, the things that scare me, the way that I feel when I am in a room with people I don’t know. The way that I feel when I compare myself to other people. Body image. The tough stuff.

Here’s to the people in my head.

I’ll make them move.

Stream of Consciousness

1. I have a complete inability to comprehend that I am having an actual baby in a little less than four weeks. We have prepared next to nothing, this is partly financial, partly due to lack of space but mostly due to the fact that I simply cannot get my head around there actually being a baby. We could have this baby any day now and she probably would require no special care as she’s cooked now, and I have visions of Jody running round buying things. Yet I still do nothing about buying anything.
2. She doesn’t have a name yet. We are so far off her having a name. This scares me. The girls want her to be called Katie. It’s tempting….
3. Isla suggested the name Henry this evening during story time.
4. The girls have started getting up really early. Like before 6am again. Which is not terrible until you take into account that the clocks go forward on Saturday in the UK.
5. I have complete writer’s block. No ideas. They don’t come to me at night anymore like they used to, I allocate the girls nursery time to write and I sit in front of the screen, and I have nothing. NOT A THING. It doesn’t matter if it’s a new story, an old one, an edit, a blog post, I have nothing to say. J says just write, it doesn’t matter what you write, just write what comes into your head. And that’s absolutely the right advice but it’s more of a confidence thing, I think.
6. But soon, there will be no time to write. Which panics me further.
7. I cannot wait for some warmer weather. We have had two little bouts of snow, which for this part of the world, is highly unusual. And in March. I wore a thick cardi and my big coat today. And a scarf. I’m over it. Also, over arguing with the girls about them wearing a coat. I want to just sling a cardi on them and we’re out the door.
8. I have started waking up in the early hours and reading. Either the internet or a book. Or playing Sims on J’s kindle. I don’t really know why. I think because it’s time on my terms. You know, time where no child is touching me or asking me a question. It’s lovely but making me tired. Combine this with the early start and I’m wanting to be in bed by about 9pm.
9. I have a horrible feeling that this baby will be born on the same day as Prince William’s baby. And that they’ll have a girl and call her Grace. A premonition. Maybe.
10. I have eaten meat three times this month. Never in the house, so I have had a meatless month at home but I got some baddish news on Friday so had a McDonalds cheeseburger. And then a bacon sandwich when J got food poisoning earlier this week. I’d had very little sleep and it was all I wanted to eat. It wasn’t even that good.

X Marks The Spot

It occurred to me the other day after writing the post on Mother’s Day, that in it I talked about my ex and that I have mentioned him more than once when I’ve talked about relationships. I don’t think about him at all in my day to day life, when I’m just living my life with my girls, but when I sit down to write here, especially when I want to write about relationships and all that comes along with that, it is inevitable that my thoughts will sometimes go to him and to the life that we shared for a time ten years ago.

I always find it odd when people whitewash a previous relationship and make it all bad, a terrible time that they regret wholeheartedly. I don’t do that, the relationship I had was good until it was bad and bad sometimes amongst the good. I can, hand on heart, say that it was the wrong relationship for me, and indeed he was the wrong man for me, but I want to look back, when I occasionally do, fondly. Because that’s surely better, isn’t it? J is is the same, I don’t mind at all if he mentions his ex, she was a vegetarian funnily enough, and as we begin to go meat free, he has mentioned her a lot, telling me what she found was good to eat, how she cooked certain things and it’s fine, she was a huge part of his life for a long time and she shaped him, in part, to who he is now. It would feel wholly wrong if he never mentioned her at all.

We met very young, just out of our teens, and we were friends for a long time. I used to go back to his flat after we went clubbing and I’d sleep there, platonically and we’d have dinner a couple of nights a week. Mates. I dated a friend of his for a while, that was , retrospectively, awkward but hey, we were young. We nearly became more than friends a couple of times and then he embarked on a long relationship with someone else and we drifted apart, naturally and with little animosity. Nothing was said even, it just happened.

Then one night, I met him out unexpectedly. He was single, as was I and that was largely that. The next day, a Sunday, he picked me up and we went to his auntie’s house for lunch, which was bizarre but strangely nice, I still remember their kitchen and their funny yappy dogs. We moved in together after a little while, and then four or so years later we split up.

He contacted me once, a few years ago, to tell me that I should have worked harder at the end of our relationship and that if I had, we might still be together. He was wrong. But it struck me then, that perhaps, I did mean more to him than I thought I did at the time. And maybe he regrets things. We don’t speak now, a friend of his watches my instastories sometimes and that amuses me, my little life maybe being relayed back but other than that, it’s done.

He was, though, the story of my twenties. And I don’t think that I should erase him from my brain and from my memories because nothing that he did hurts me anymore or even invokes any sort of reaction. It’s just history. Factual history.

J and I had a row last night, about things that I can’t go into here, but all was quickly well and I am so thankful for him. For this frustrating, kind, funny man who I spend my life with. Our relationship isn’t perfect, but I don’t find myself whispering to his sleeping back in the dark because I’m too scared to say it out loud, I don’t find myself second best to almost everyone, taken for granted at every turn.

So by talking about my ex, it doesn’t mean that I’m harbouring any feelings for him, hoping that he reads here and well, I don’t know really. I don’t. I hope that he’s happy, of course, and I hope that the person he’s with now fulfils him in a way that I didn’t and that they are both happy.

Cos I am.

Mother’s Day

Five years ago, I went out for a meal with J and his family. His sister-in-law bought her mum and grandma and I can remember almost all of it. Presents were given to all the Mum’s in the group and I can remember sitting there, Ruby (our then two year old niece) in my lap and feeling as miserable as I can remember ever feeling. Of course, a year later, I was about to have my girls, but I didn’t know that then, how could I, we were months off even trying, and the feeling of isolation was utterly devastating.

I always knew I wanted to be a mother. I was probably the most maternal of all of us three sisters, I did some child minding in my early twenties while I was (briefly) at University but then I discovered a career and that was that. I was resolutely single for a long time, worked stupidly hard, there was a lot going on as well during that time, and my thoughts about being a mother were pushed firmly to one side. Both my sisters had all of their children before I had mine and their children are the light of my life, particularly my oldest nephew as I lived with him and my sister for a while.

I know full well that I would not have children if I had stayed with my ex. I probably knew that then, but pretended that I didn’t. I can barely imagine how I’d feel if I was with him now, very nearly 38, and no children. No prospect of children. A career, yes but just the two of us. It chills me, if I’m honest.

Ironically, I could imagine having a life without kids with J. We have huge fun together, have lots of plans for after our girls are grown and I sometimes crave time with him, just the two of us. Having said that, I am so glad that I do have children with him. He’s a wonderful father, and he makes me a better mother. We’re very different in our parenting styles but on the same page where we need to be, in the way we are raising our girls morally, ethically, and to be the people we would love them to be.

So Mother’s Day. In the UK, it was today and I received a handmade card that each of my girls made me at nursery. Nothing else. No gift, no shop bought card. I had a lie-in until 8.20am (a serious luxury) and the girls went to their grandparents for a couple of hours so we could have some lunch. And it was the best day. I watched the girls play in the garden for a bit in just t-shirts, a sign that we might actually get some nice weather at some point and I made them laugh in the car by singing songs from Beauty and the Beast. No commercialisation. No money spent. The best.

I dislike Mother’s Day anyway. It strikes me as a holiday that makes people feel awful. People who want to be mothers and can’t, people who have lost children, people who have lost mothers. I hate the way that Instagram becomes one big ad in the week or so running up to the day itself and then the way that the vast majority of instagrammers spend the day showing us what they have been gifted. There is the odd beautiful post within all that, the lovely posts where people talk about their feelings about being a mother, a daughter, a niece or nephew, about being someone who doesn’t have children on this day of all days, they are poignant and heartfelt and not at all curated. I have enjoyed those very much, but I have not posted about it today. I didn’t post on Valentines Day. Or International Women’s Day. I have posted around these days, my girls as normal and my instastories are the usual mix of moaning about how little sleep I get and watching my girls say silly things in my messy house. And soft play. Lots and lots of soft play!

Tomorrow will be Monday. No different to today but for a huge number of people, it will come as a blessed relief, and I will leave this with that. I hope that you all had a wonderful Sunday, a Mother’s Day if you are in the UK, and that you snuggled with your babies.

 

Fiction Friday (5)

I cleaned the wet footprints before I found the note.

The front door had slammed while I was in the bath, I was halfway through a film on the ipad in front of me and the sudden noise had made me jump. I had paused for just a second, my cup of tea halfway to my mouth and then the baby started to cry. Not a baby, of course, but my baby and I had  padded across the landing to her bedroom, scooping her up before she woke her sister in her own bedroom opposite. She had  settled within a few minutes, snuffling against my chest as I leant my chin on top of her head, curled in the armchair under her window. I had forgotten about the door slamming, once I was with my daughters, whatever had happened during the day, the world started to fall away. It was only after I had put her back to bed, covering her with her duvet and kissing her lightly on the forehead, that it occurred to me that I didn’t know what had happened downstairs.

I had pulled my dressing gown cord tighter around me as I made my way down the stairs towards the front door. I had stared at it for a moment, but it had looked completely normal. I could see into the lounge, I could see the cushions organised haphazardly on the sofa, one squashed into the corner, a sight that never failed to rile me. I had sighed and turned at the bottom of the stairs towards the kitchen.

‘Tom?’

I had called his name softly, Bea only just asleep, and I had been met by silence. I had repeated the call as I walked into the kitchen that I already knew would be empty. There had been a little steam rising from the spout of the kettle and I had moved my hand towards the side of it, feeling the heat long before my fingers touched the metal.  I had drawn my hand back quickly and tucked it in my pocket, the feeling of dread starting to make its way into my stomach.

I had pulled a tea towel from the drawer and walked back upstairs, dropping to my hands and knees at the top, my bare knees cold against the cool wooden floor. I had swiped and swiped at the wet marks my feet had made as I had hurried across the landing a few minutes ago. I had swiped long after the marks had disappeared, long after I had started to cry, a little after I had stopped crying and started to feel the headache pull at my temples. I had stood up, stiff from the unfamiliar hands and knees position and stepped into my eldest daughter’s bedroom. She slept like a starfish and I had taken her bare foot and tucked it back underneath the duvet. I had smoothed her hair from her face then, I don’t know why, tucked my face into the curve of her neck. I had drawn strength from her tiny body, my five year old dynamo and I had been able to stand and make my way to my own bedroom.

The note was on my pillow.

Meatless March

Last week, when we were away, we decided that we wanted to try giving up meat. It’s something that I’ve wanted to do for a little while, and it’s something that J has done to an extent before due to a veggie ex, and the decision came about quickly after we ate bacon as part of the hotel breakfast. My metabolism has slowed down obviously and I can’t manage big meals, it’s very much little and often for the next few weeks and J just felt terrible after eating meat for breakfast. So we decided. And we have been vegetarian (temporarily?) since the 1st of March.

Initially, the plan was to just have no meat in the house, and if we fancied meat when we were out, then we would have it. But it seems we’ve gone the whole hog. No meat at all. The girls won’t eat meat when they’re at home but we’re comfortable with them eating it when they’re out or not with us. For now. I’m sure if we continue on after the month is over and it becomes something permanent, then we’ll come to a decision about them. It occurred to me today that, if this was a permanent thing, our baby wouldn’t ever eat meat.

These are my observations so far:

1. It’s really easy when you’re at home. Yes, it requires a little more preparation, it means you can’t put chicken in everything, it means that some meals require actual chopping and cooking, but the alternatives are excellent, Quorn is brilliant and we had veggie mince over beef mince before. And you try new things, and some things work and some are truly disgusting. Guess which category cauliflower rice fell into….

2. It’s much harder when you’re out. On Thursday, the first day, we went to M&S while the girls were at nursery and we had a gift card so thought we might get some food from the cafe. Well, I fancied a sandwich and the ONLY veggie option was mushroom and emmental. J doesn’t like mushrooms and I didn’t want it, so we bought a baguette and made rolls at home. On Saturday, we took the girls to McDonalds and they had chicken nuggets and we had one of the three veggie options available. The vegetable deluxe. Well, that should be in inverted commas, as it tasted of nothing. Fortunately we shared one, and didn’t waste money on one each.

3. You do feel better. I feel less sluggish and have a bit more energy which as someone who is eight months pregnant, I’ll take as a win. I’ve given up things I like whilst pregnant anyway, brie, cheesecake etc, so this is fine and doable and I think J feels better too.

4. I’ve felt strangely ethical about it as it’s continued. I’ve read stuff over the years about the meat industry and how it’s run and I’ve long held an intense dislike for handling raw meat. This led to feeling uneasy about eating something that I didn’t want to handle and I do feel much better morally for not eating meat.

5. I have no desire to go vegan. I don’t think that it’s financially viable for us anyway, as far as I can tell, all the vegan alternatives to staples are more expensive than the dairy/non vegan options. Milk for example and we drink a lot of milk, cereal, tea, coffee, in cooking. I can’t imagine how much it would cost us if we replaced all of that with non dairy milk. And would you need a different one for each thing? Does coconut milk taste good in tea? Or almond milk in coffee? And can you make a white sauce with any of them?

That’s it for now. It’s been good so far. J is struggling with lunches at work (see point 2) but the girls have been fine and it’s been OK. We’ll see how we get on as the month progresses….

 

First and Third

This time four years ago, I was on day three of my maternity leave with my girls. Their birth was seven ish weeks away but it was a twin pregnancy and the recommendation was to leave work a little earlier than you would with a singleton. I found maternity leave with no children both ridiculous and boring, luxurious and worrying. I read books, I napped, I watched box sets while eating biscuits, I sometimes waited until an hour before Jody was due home from work before I got dressed and put make up on. I tried to walk a little every day and I missed work a lot, the structure of a day, I wondered why I was doing this crazy thing when my life was settled and happy.

I can remember once just sitting in a chair in my bedroom for a whole hour and instagramming about it.

This makes me laugh so much now. Obviously, needless to say, there is no maternity leave this time. I’m at home with my kids anyway, but even if I wasn’t, I think that work would feel like a break. I am up early almost every day, the more after six it is, the more of a victory it feels. Both girls started sleeping until seven for a bit but this was clearly a phase. A nicer phase than the 5am phase…

There is food to be prepared, constant food preparation. Breakfast: Isla likes cereal, Grace doesn’t (unless it’s mine in which case she loves it), Grace eats toast, Isla asks for it then picks at it. They have fruit together and juice but now they drink from ‘grown up’ cups so supervision is needed. If it’s a nursery day, then there’s a lunch box to make, sandwiches (which neither are that enthusiastic about, but you need a sandwich in a lunchbox), fruit winders, fruit to peel and chop, a yogurt. If it isn’t a nursery day, then snack time is within what feels like minutes and there’s more fruit to peel, a biscuit, a plea for something that they shouldn’t have.

 

In between, there’s constant work, housework, washing, ironing, dressing them, constant potty training (the worst part of twins so far, hands down), playing, breaking up arguments, trips to the library, watching the rain.

I rarely even feel the baby move in the morning, certainly don’t have time for counting kicks, there’s never any down time, I sometimes wish that they were the type of kids who watched films all day, that would give me time to do something in less than three minutes. My make up is done in increments if I don’t have time before Jody leave for work, foundation quickly smeared on, check on them, concealer, then another check, then one is sitting on my bed begging me to put lip gloss on them.

You get the gist. And I wouldn’t change it. I’m looking forward to our landscape changing now, to incorporating the baby into our lives. Part of this is boredom at being pregnant, not sleeping well, heartburn all day long and worse if I even look at a cup of coffee. And part is just plain excitement. Then there’s the part that wants to be pregnant forever, to feel my littlest one squirming inside me for ever more. Because you can never quite remember the feeling until you feel it again. And it is the best part of pregnancy. For me, anyway.

And of course, just six more weeks of just me and my girls, I think about as I settle down to do story time, the baby responding to the words and to the voices of her sisters, I wonder how it will feel to read with the baby snuggled into my shoulder, my three girls on the outside where they belong.

I’d like to do this once more. Quickly, just have another quickly. Not because she won’t be enough, not that my girls were never enough, they were and always will be. But I feel very strongly in the deepest part of my soul that four is our number.

There are four weeks until the Easter holidays. Six weeks until her due date. I have so much to do, but so little too. She’ll be a tiny thing, they really don’t need much. We have clothes, a cot, we’ll get a car seat to bring her home. Some rest would be nice, but that might be pie in the sky. But I’ll try.

Disparate

It’s difficult, I think, to talk about people who you don’t have permission to talk about. You shouldn’t, of course you shouldn’t, but when their lives and their decisions impact on your own life, it’s difficult to not to. Maybe pseudonyms are the way forward, and maybe they are not. Maybe just not saying anything at all is the best way, but sometimes I feel like I could explode with all the emotions that are running around my brain at any given time.

J has no relationship with his brother B.

It is something that has deteriorated over time and as it stands now, there is nothing there. There is politeness if we meet as a family, if we are at their parents, we had a genuinely lovely night when their dad had a 70th birthday dinner last year. We are maintaining, willingly and happily, a relationship between our girls and their uncle and auntie but really it stops there.

It upsets me for the most part, I hate that when we are given such a tiny amount of close relatives, we can’t all get along. I hate it that as a parent to soon to be three children, there is a possibility that my girls would someday feel like this about each other. I hate that I have a brother who is no longer here and J feels like this about his brother.

But I do understand it.

This is when it gets tricky. The reasons that they have the relationship that they have cannot be published here, whether it was ever read by any of the parties or not. I think I see that there is desire to rebuild the relationship, mostly from B, but then nothing comes of it. J claims not to care that this has happened and his feelings are strong about most things. That’s the thing with him, he is kind and generous to a fault, he cares deeply about people and about people’s actions, he believes in the good in people and is very disappointed and upset when people let him down. And this, to him, I think, is a let down. Not even to him necessarily, but in general. This is frustratingly vague, I do know that, I’m frustrated just writing it, but it does have to be this way for now.

We have such a short time here, not to be morbid, but it’s true and some of us have even less time than others. We can’t guarantee that we will live to be eighty, no matter how hard we try with a healthy diet and exercise so we should maintain every relationship that we can. I am as guilty of this as anyone, I’m nowhere near perfect in this as with everything else, but I do try and I must try harder. We all must.

But it slightly breaks my heart to see these huge cracks emerge, emerge and deepen and remain. It saddens me that we don’t visit with him and his family any longer, that when we do see them, it is awkward and forced. And I worry most that this is the status quo, that our children, theirs and ours, won’t remember that we holidayed together, spent lots of time together, were close.

Families!

Away

We were away this weekend. We went to Windsor on Sunday for two nights to celebrate our sixth anniversary and it was a sort of baby moon, not that that is really a thing in this country. It was wonderful, absolutely freezing, there is a big freeze here at the moment but that sort of enhanced it all, it made it utterly memorable. Walking around Windsor Castle in the snow was almost magical. And cold. Magically cold.

It’s less magical at home with a wind chill of -12.

Anyway. Six years. This is nothing, I do get that, not when people have been married for years and years, or with someone since their teens. But for me, this is something quite significant. I never imagined, when I went on a blind date six years ago, that we would be where we are now. About to have our third child, two beautiful girls and we’re really good. Things are hard sometimes, boring grown up things but then we go away and we are just good. Happy to be together, having fun, he makes me laugh so much and we talk a lot about our future, it’s one of those truly lovely things to talk about the future with someone you love.

I thought about writing a lot while we were away. I read a whole book during the two nights (there were some issues with the pillows…) and it made me think about my own book and my own writing future. The book was good and the writing too, it was confident writing, the type of writing that shows someone totally at home with their own style. I don’t assume that I have a style, but it made me think about passages of my own writing. There are bits that I reread and I love, and I can see a writer that is confident and happy with what she is writing and there are bits that I read where the writing is tentative and nervous and I can just tell that I wrote it in a completely different head space.

Driving home, I wanted desperately to write. Wanted to sit in the chair where I wrote my book and edit the beginning to send it off again. To continue on with the second book that I’ve started. And then I actually got home, to the madness, to my girls and the urge just disappeared. No, the urge is there. It’s always there. But the confidence to do it. I am almost set now on finding a job in October, when the baby is six months old. The thought of this is truly awful to me. The girls have had me all of the time for almost four years and this baby will get six months. That doesn’t seem fair. To me. To her. I envy and respect all working mums, I’d love to be one, but it didn’t work for me, for us and for our family.

Anyway, this is a stream of consciousness. I didn’t sit down knowing what I’d write about and I’m sorry if that shows. I wanted to write about J and to talk about our six years, I wanted to talk about writing but further than that, I didn’t know.

Right, enough rambling.

See you all tomorrow.