growing pains

One day last month I woke up and it was "that time of the month".

(please insert whatever nicety you wish, my favourite is when my best friend told me she'd "got her monkey!")

I was a bit sensitive, a bit weepy and needed a bit of love. I am 43
The night before I had put my eldest daughter to bed and she was still my beautiful Disney princess. She is nearly 11.
 In the night someone stole that version of her away and replaced it with a pre-teen, hormone raging, venom spitting monster. She was up and out of bed for less than five minutes before returning to her room with "I HATE YOU ALL!!!!" and a door slam.
He father and I looked at each other in horror, cups of tea / coffee hovering. The downstairs was a wreckage of her temper, I think one of her younger sisters was weeping, the other was hiding.
"Wwwwhat just happened?" I spluttered.
He gave me a wise nod - a man who has weathered my monthly mood changes for 21 years. "Hormones" he stated and swigged his beverage emphatically.
A moment to register this. My baby! Growing up! Growing pains! What should I do? Should I go to talk to her? Or just open the door and throw chocolate at her?

How could he be so calm and ...smug ! Oh yes, I know he thinks this is purely my territory and my responsibility doesn't he? Well he needed a jolt, obviously. I wrecked my brain for facts about "women stuff".

"Umm..." I said, " Aren't women supposed to synchronise their cycles? Y'know when I was at college we all had periods at the same time in our shared house" ( True story)

Behind the cup his face rearranged his expression as he took into account he lives with four women, even if three of them are still ten and under. I saw him mentally move himself, the cat ( male) and his guitar down to the shed.

An hour later, I fell into a chair in the office at work and announced "my eldest has hit puberty"
We held a minute's silence.
We drank more tea.
We had run out of chocolate.

birthday celebrations

Now I only have myself to blame. I have three children , you think I’d have more sense, but we do tend to throw each child a party for  their birthday. The middle child gets short changed having a birthday in August,  we are often at the seaside. To make up for it last year, she invited a group of girls for an afternoon tea in September.

My youngest had her fifth birthday at a wacky warehouse but previous birthdays  saw me shaking off the January blues and  breaking out in a sweat, cleaning the entire house two weeks after Christmas and decking out the downstairs in a theme of her choosing (pirates and princesses aged 3 and Under the sea aged 4)  We ransacked the costume and set cupboards at school and I begged an art teacher to draw me a pirate for pin- the- parrot- on-the-pirate and a pirate ship, which the children decided to colour in before I got around to pinning the jolly roger on it.

My eldest daughter was told last year , that she was too old for parties. Then I secretly invited five of her friends and a cousin to the bowling alley and pizza place the Saturday before her birthday. A couple of hours before, I bathed all three kids, painted their nails with glitter and put their party dresses and shoes on with a “it’s just nice to dress up sometimes isn’t it?” I actually couldn’t believe they fell for it, it was only daddy who nearly blew it, he was so excited we nearly got there too early and had to side track to Aldi to get a bottle of wine. I am at this point texting everyone to make sure they are there. They were.

We walked through the doors and her friends shouted “surprise!” My beautiful daughter, turned around in panic to see who she was supposed to be shouting “ surprise” at! One of her friends had to explain to her that it was her own party. She loved it, once she got over the shock and I have been smug about it right up until about a week a go when she requested doing the same thing but knowing about it this time. I suddenly thought that she had missed looking forward to her treat. That realisation finally took the shine off my success.

My husband is 50 next week, we are going for a family meal. I didn’t attempt a surprise party. I couldn’t even keep his present a surprise, blurting it out when I thought we had decided on something else, only to find that it would have been a perfectly lovely surprise after all. I do want him to have a really good day, as my memory of his 40^th is that it was over taken by a week old baby, mastitis and baby blues. The hi-light was him taking our screaming infant for a walk while his hormonally deranged wife wept herself to sleep. His birthday tea was interrupted by a trip to the walk in clinic. That’s not the plan this time.

austerity cuts

There are a number of things my children have done since they were tiny and I suppose like everything when its free (or at least very reasonable) you take it for granted, until it is no longer there. Then you value it, then you miss it like hell and resent whoever it is that has taken it away.

One of the things we do is go to a local library. We spend an hour there, I am complimented on my animated reading aloud skills (my drama training wasn’t wasted.) The librarians are helpful and cheerful, they know stuff about books too which is a plus. When the children were little, my child minder used to take them to storytelling on Thursday afternoons.

This all started to change 18 months ago, the librarians’ smiles started to disappear and then so did the librarians. They are being replaced by a card system, I’m not sure how that will help some of the senior citizens fathom the internet. The next to go, is the lady who produces the monthly quiz. March is the last one. I think she had decided to stop when she knew her time was up, after all she had done in it her own time, under her own volition. An elderly gentleman expressed disappointment and she gave in. The last quiz now lies on the desk.

Since taking the children, I have started to read library books again. I have read history books, biographies, romances, mythology and I discovered Phillippa Gregory just before the BBC did.

Last month we were asked to fill out a questionnaire about opening hours. One solution was to close it on a Saturday. A Saturday! Are you kidding? Do you not want children to read? There is a popular dance school taking place in the church directly in front of the library, on Saturdays the library is full of tots in tutus.

On a recent trip to the library on a rainy Saturday afternoon, I parked the car in one of the few spaces by the library (look, we had a lot of heavy books ok, we do usually walk) and talked to the children about the changes happening to the library and a few other services we use. I tried to explain to them that the council had to save 123 million pounds. They didn’t understand.

Every third Sunday of the month, there is a nature club. My niece and my middle child are the same age, they love to go bird watching and bug hunting and canal boating. Last Sunday was the last session, although there are activities in the Easter holidays. My girls came home in a militant mood. They wanted to protest, they wanted to raise money, even if it meant me baking lots and lots of cakes for a bake sale.

I once again tried to explain the reasons behind the cuts, but my middle child wailed in most righteous indignation, “But why are they cutting all the joy?”

Anyone?

builders

My builders aren’t happy. The sun has gone in. “How are we expected to work in these conditions!” they demand in mock indignation. The weather in the midlands has been good for the last month and so my extension has had a rapid start. The builders are great, two family men with growing children and an anecdote for every occasion. They have built the street I live in, well not quite but almost. Nearly every extension has been done by them, all my neighbours know them and take it in turns to keep them serviced with tea and in some cases biscuits when I am not there or if they think I have been tardy with my tea making duties. Last week I sallied forth in order to replenish their mugs once I had finished my planning to find them slurping out of the man from no 16’s chunky, earthenware mugs. They looked a bit uncomfortable, I picked up my empty mis-matching mugs and flashed them a smile. Man from no 16 smiled back, I made a comment about the weather , we all relaxed. I came in and made myself a cup of tea.

The builders have worked for us before, they knocked through our two living rooms to make a large living space downstairs. They knocked our wall down. A few months later we walked passed them as they were rebuilding no 30’s garage and my eldest daughter, exclaimed “what are they doing now?”

“They are building Lizbeth a new bedroom,” I explained

“What? They BUILD things too!”

I ran off to tell them that my precious child thought they just knocked stuff down. The main builder nodded seriously at her.

“ Yes we build things to, “ he said , “ and sometimes they stay up too.”

She is now looking forward to the two new bedrooms that they are building. I am looking forward to a bathroom with a full sized bath, not that I will get any “me- time “ to soak in it! I am not looking forward to next week when they finally break though and the building work becomes a reality inside the house. I remember when we had the downstairs extended 8 years ago. I am not house proud, but the dust drove me to the brink. Everything was dusty; me, husband, toddler and cat. Once more onto the breach…

As I returned form the school run this morning, the builders were sipping from their flasks, cogitating today’s work.

“You ok for tea then?” I hazarded.

“Oh we will ALWAYS have a cup of tea.” They said

“Never say no to a cuppa” they beamed.

The thing is, they aren’t using my downstairs loo  and they have no port a loo. I was thinking that maybe only one of the massive flasks they bring each day holds tea and the other is for when its…decanted back(?) But today they were drinking from both of them, so this left me wondering…just how large is a builder’s bladder?