Everydaystranger

It’s Autumn here.

No really. It really is.

The mornings start off like this:

and this:

I know it seems crazy – it’s only the first of September after all. But temperatures have dipped down in the late afternoons and evenings, hitting 6C/42F. We’ve put the winter duvet on the bed and even had to turn on the heating, something that galls Alastair no end (”It’s August!” he says, shaking his head in disbelief.) Jumpers, trousers, and Welly boots have been broken out.

And I’ve had to do some investigating.

I love Autumn. Love it, love it, love it. It’s my favorite time of year, I come to life from about mid-September to 5 January. After that I go into a bit of a slump, waiting for this time of year to come back again. I love Autumn. I love the beginning of winter. And I fucking adore Christmas and everything that goes with it.

What is clear, though, is that my body does not like this time of year.

I’ve been seeing a physiotherapist to try and save one of my ankle joints. At first visit she twisted me this way and that, declaring me to be the most flexible hypermobility patient she has ever seen, ever. I badly sprained my ankle while jogging some years back, and EDS ate away at the injury, as it is prone to do. A lengthy investigation proved what was suspected – the EDS has destroyed my ankle to an extent that the ligament is shagged and the ankle joint even more so. I will never be a jogger again. Further, she doesn’t think physio will prevent surgery, that it’s going to be a given in my case and that I should expect early onset osteoarthritis in that joint, too.

It’s going well, this. It’s strange – I have a condition that a few years back I’d never heard of. And it’s something that can to some extent take over you life. It makes you feel old before your time and like someone who needs mollycoddling, and I’ve never been good at that. I feel bad for my family sometimes – they didn’t sign up for this, and yet here they are holding my freezing fingers to warm them and carrying heavy bags because my wrist joints are shot. They don’t complain. I try not to, either.

My joints shriek in agony with the cold. Hips, shoulders, knees, hands. The Raynaud’s has already started in my fingertips, and I’ve invested in some heat bands and some re-usable hand warmers. I have multiple pairs of gloves, which I will double up with and wear inside of mittens. If anyone knows of any other good hand or foot warming suggestions, I’d love to hear them as at this point I’ll give anything a try.

And September is a busy old month, too – I have (perhaps unwisely) entered a few photo competitions. I think I may have lost my mind on that one, actually. I am terrified of being told I’m absolutely shit at things (ergo no attempts at an agent here!) I was worried that you would laugh at the curry post I just had, telling me that the recipe looked (and sounded) like regurgitated Puppy Chow on a plate. Maybe someone did think that, but luckily no one said it – a few people have even tried the recipe already and written me about it, thanks for that and I love hearing that some really are going to try it out. For the competitions I’ve chosen a few photos, some of them I’ve put on Flickr, some of them not. In two weeks I get to go with one of my best girls to The MADs award ceremony (we may lose, but she and I have vowed to have a laugh and relax for a night!) The twins’ nursery is undergoing a renovation. Much is going on at work.

There is a lot to look forward to.

I tell myself that every time another joint fails.

-S.

We’re both huge cooks in our house. We love to cook, we love to eat, and we both like to bake as well. I’ve been thinking about posting photos and recipes on a (possibly) once weekly basis, but not sure how well that would be received.

A few people have asked about our curries in the house. We have curry every Sunday night, almost without fail (although it’s a bank holiday today here in England, so we’re having curry tonight instead). We always make the curries ourselves and always make the breads ourselves, too. We’re skipping bread tonight in favor of pilau rice, but I thought I’d give it a go describing how to make a curry. I guess I’m hoping that someone will try to make one, too, and become a convert.

Apologies if this comes across as in any way patronising, I’m going to assume you are like I was the first time I made a curry – scared stiff by ingredients I had never heard of and certainly never used. My first foray into making curry was in Sweden, when I hosted a dinner party that had a number of English folk coming to it. Curry is almost the English national cuisine, I’ve yet to meet someone here who does not like curry, although I am certain there are a few around. In hindsight, I was mental – I chose a curry off the web that had fifty million ingredients, took me four hours to make, and was a bit like throwing a novice swimmer into the middle of the Atlantic. This is a hope that you don’t take that same swim.

We’ve used all kinds of recipes and have many curry cookbooks, but the single greatest curry chef we’ve found out there is Anjum Anand. If you’re going to buy a curry book and give it a try, start with this one. Her recipes are clear, easy to follow, and she really loves what she writes about and it shows. We have had many of her recipes and have yet to find one we don’t like (and we have all of her cookbooks!)

Tonight’s menu is one of hers from the aforementioned book – Chicken in creamy yoghurt (soy chicken for me, the real thing for him) accompanied by pilau rice made from another cook, one Delia Smith. You can find the pilau rice recipe here.

We followed the recipe as she states it, but don’t be freaked out by the pestle and mortar stuff. If – like me – you’d only ever seen one of those in a Victorian hospital drama, just buy the ground equivalents.

(Although it does indeed look cool, we don’t put the ingredients in poncy glass bowls before cooking. It creates far too much washing up. This was for the benefit of the photos.)

Anjum’s most fabulous chicken in creamy yoghurt recipe calls for the following ingredients:

Marinade:

Blend all of the ingredients together (we use 1 1/2 – 2 tsp of all of the spices, and about a thumbs’ length of the ginger and seven cloves of garlic) in a blender with the yogurt (I hope non-specific ingredients don’t stress you out…)

And then marinade the chicken/fake chicken for a few hours in a non-metal pan in the fridge, bringing it to room temperature before you cook it.

Next up – get some oil into a big skillet (I use rapeseed oil, vegetable oil works just as well). Throw in one whole chopped onion. If you like it spicy (and I don’t), then take a few green chilis and put a slit in the side of them. Heat the oil with the onion and green chili, adding a black cardamom pod if you want (you don’t eat those, but they do add some nice flavor).

Add the curry mixture into the pan, and cook for 20 minutes or until the chicken is done, making sure to stir it often so the yogurt doesn’t curdle, and add water if the sauce starts to dry up.

Serve over the pilau rice, with a handful of chopped fresh coriander (cilantro) on it if you’d like – and it’s grand with a glass of Greek white.

If you don’t try this recipe, check out some of the other recipes from Anjum Anand on the BBC website. They’re fabulous and a staple in this household (and the twins both adore curry and eat it much, much hotter than their mum does, too).

-S.

UPDATED-spelling error fixed (good catch Gareth) and if you love the sound of this recipe, leave me a comment and I’ll email you the full deal. Anjum’s book is pricey on Amazon.com, but her BBC recipes are free, and I can email you her recipe in case you feel like giving curry a try!

When I walk through the streets of London to get to the office, leaves blow around the pavement, collecting around resting pigeons and the odd end of a badly smoked cigarette. If you stand still long enough, you can see a plastic bag whist by you in a breeze, its blue stripes of the national chain still visible despite the sun’s bleaching, heading off to an unimaginable future that is far more heady than the past it seeks to escape. A chill will reach up around your ankle, caressing it. My fingers turn white, exposed to the air. Autumn is coming and it didn’t even have the patience to wait until September to arrive.

I look at my high heels and the steps they’ve taken. This morning I was in a business suit trying to chug down a cup of coffee and eat my slice of toast, while kneeling down beside a toddler potty promising rewards if they would do a wee wee. Hours later I was in a fast-paced business bid, presenting the hell out of my company, my product, my team, myself. My legs itch from the seats of trains and I get small flashes of my wrist, which remind me that there are two little people burned not only into my heart, but into my skin as well.

As if I needed reminding.

My life is a constant dichotomy. It’s one I no longer fight. The business suit and the nursery rhyme singing sessions exist in my world as parts of me, not parallels of me. It took me a while to get here, but I am comfortable with the evolution.

Around the house the trees are shaking and shifting. The edges of the maple leaves look like they’ve been dipped in dirty tea, and you know that they are reaching old age and are crippling under it. Another year is passing by.

When I was a kid years passed by so slowly that time seemed to hang frozen in time. The older I get, the more the seasons fly past in a frenzy of leaves, sneezes, bare arms to the sun and photos which record the lines showing up on my face like so much time delay photography. Look at my photos of years past and map the rings of my tree.

And I remember that the past tells me one thing, it tells me who I was and where I lived. The present is something entirely different. It’s not the art of re-inventing myself so much that I wonder about, but that I ever thought a person could be re-invented. Somewhere along the line I learnt that you can re-invent yourself, but the foundations of who you really are will someday break through the concrete. When that happens you have to put your tools down and break that person out, because they need to be heard. My past showed me one thing. My present shows another. My future is as unknown to me as anyone’s future can be, but there is something marvellously comforting in that, even under the mild fear of the unknown. I don’t know what’s ahead, but I know that I can look forward to how it shapes and changes me, and that I will be along for the ride as the twins grow and learn.

The way my life is, sometimes I am afraid to breathe. If I exhale too loudly someone – the gods, the fates, the neighbour – will hear me and notice me and take a look at my life. She’s got too much, they’ll say. She’s too happy. Can’t have too happy. And even though I will protest that my life is not perfect – and honestly there are flaws, of course there are – I will lose elements that I hold so dear, parts of my life that give me color, give me balance, give me wings. It’s a short old life that we get to lead. And living it before our edges turn brown and we start to loosen our grip on the branches is a priority that we don’t always remember we have.

Maybe I’m not really that different from the plastic bag I watched in the wind, the small white handles of it dancing like a Fantasia fairy. Maybe the past that I came from is what shaped me, but the rest of me is free to fly, to flee, to fuck up. Maybe it’s not escaping, it’s about being set free and loving every moment you have as long as you have it.

-S.

We watch “Mistresses” in this house, because while I publicly eschew reality and trash TV, I will gleefully and happily embrace trash-like TV if it has “BBC Series” written on the box. I love a good bit of dosh, particularly if said plot involves four women who drink, hang out, and generally may need to think about keeping their knees a little more firmly locked together.

(As an aside, I do wish I had more female friends who lived nearby that I could meet up with wearing strappy heels and sparkly dresses and enjoy fabulous bottles of wine over gossip. This does not happen, yet I continue to accumulate strappy heels. Someone help a girl out here?)

Alastair often goes right off of series when something factually incorrect occurs in them, usually to do with wiring, sockets, or lights. That happens and you’ll see the back of him as he leaves the room. Me, I hang in there and troop on because it may be an error, but it’s all about suspending belief.

Except for one area.

There’s one area where the belief, she is not suspended.

I can watch most anything – blue people who are alive in one place, normal human-being like in pods in another? Sure. Modern day Sherlock Holmes solving crimes in London? Niemus problemus. Four women posing as feminists who are slaves to fashion and have hunky rich men in their lives while swirling Cosmopolitans? Check.

Get this one wrong, though, and I get very cross.

In “Mistresses” last week one of the characters started IVF. I pay attention to these things because it’s maybe as much of something I know as wiring and lights are to Alastair. You become sensitive to IVF and all things around it, and you even (usually) know the celebrities going through it. If you’re out and about – particularly here in the South of England, where fertility-treatment induced multiple birth rates are the country’s highest – then you think about. See twins out and about and you think “IVF”. People probably think it of me, not unfairly. I think it of others, and it is common for people to think that way (as evidenced in May’s comments here.) Maybe it’s because we’re aware of it, maybe because we’re more in tune, but whatever the reason, IVF is something we think about.

So when the character in “Mistresses” picks up her bag of down-regulation drugs at her IVF clinic and, looking at the nurse, exclaims “There’s a baby in here!” I had to be physically restrained.

No dear. Your bag contains hormones – rumoured to be from nun or hamster or urine but likely grown in a lab – that will make you crazy. You will throw your body into menopause and give your physician the ability to control your uterus. You will have hot flashes, you will cry, and you will scream at random people who assume you have a rocking chair and two dozen cats.

You do not have a baby in there.

The writers of the series should maybe have done their homework.

We all have things that wind us up. My beloved hates when people mis-use “blogging” and “posting”. Alastair hates when you watch a period movie and you see a satellite dish on a house. Me, I can just about tolerate when someone pushes a “baby” out and the nurse presents them with a kid just about to hit their first birthday. What I can’t deal with is getting IVF so hideously wrong. IVF affects so many couples and changes our lives, one way or another. Do some homework. Write it correctly. But don’t refer to a bag of down-reg drugs as a baby in there. It’s a step of many.

-S.

PS-you lot and your food peculiarities are absolutely fabulous, and I mean that. I read every comment and laughed, agreed, or shuddered. Thanks for that!

I’m a bit of a foodie. This might come across as deeply ironic, seeing as I’ve long had an eating disorder, however some experts hypothesize that anorexics and bulemics are some of the more food-obsessed people out there. Somehow this computes, as while I’ve met a lot of anorexics, I’ve never met one that actually didn’t give a shit about food. Generally speaking, apart from the obvious control issues we have about food, we’re willing to give a kidney for our favorites.

While growing up we had a lot of ready meals, and that was my favorite kind of thing. Boxed macaroni and cheese? Brownies from a Betty Crocker mix? Vegetables you boil in a bag? I’m in. As an adult I simply followed suit – I was shit at cooking, didn’t want to do it, and as a consequence if it was complicated it sailed past me.

When I moved to Sweden I struggled. Not only because I was pretty raw at this whole cooking thing, but because you couldn’t buy ready made food, it had to be made from first principles. Add on top of that the complexity involved in trying to understand just what the translated food ingredients were, and it made for some spectacular cooking failures. But I persevered – it was that or eat my ex’s meatballs (yes the Swedes eat them, and in great quantities) all the time, or be subjected to his reindeer and pea concoction, which was 1/3 reindeer, 1/3 peas, 1/3 black pepper.

I’m not much of a black pepper fan.

So I learnt to cook. I learnt how to cook…really well. I’m not a bragger in most instances, but I can cook. And not only that, I love to cook. Mind you, I don’t want to do it every day and I’m fortunate in that aspect as Alastair is also a very keen (and very good) cook, but I do like to try new things out.

- Sanguinello is the greatest orange juice in the world

- bananas are evil and must be destroyed.

- whenever I open a yogurt I lick the lid

- quinoa is something that I often actually crave.

- same with chickpeas, which we boil, skin, and then I can eat my weight in them straight out of the pan.

- and I go through sheaths of edamame, which is bad as they can be bad for you in high quantities.

- actually let’s just say I love all legumes and pulses, apart from kidney beans, which are evil and must be destroyed.

- if you make a chocolate shake, it cannot be made from chocolate ice cream. That is weird and wrong. It should be made from vanilla flavored ice-milk with skim milk and chocolate sauce. There is reasoning behind it, I just don’t know what it is.

- my favorite fish is monkfish. I despair that it’s on the endangered list.

- I love salted movie popcorn so much that I sometimes debate going to a movie theatre just to buy some. I have yet to do this, although that’s only a matter of time (this is not the same for sweet popcorn, which is evil and must be destroyed).

- although I am a veggie (and I do eat fish, which actually makes me a pescatarian but I feel like a real twat saying that) I stopped eating meat both for fluffy bunny reasons and as a way to limit my food intake. That said, I honestly have never liked pork or beef anyway, and even if I reversed my decision to eat meat, I’d not go back to eating pork or beef as I never liked the taste (although ironically, I used to love a good bologna sandwich. Arguably that wasn’t meat.) I do miss turkey and the triptophan-snooze post Thanksgiving. I don’t think turkey misses me.

- avocados belong on everything

- if it’s a fairly disgusting looking or sounding seafood, chances are I love it. Squid, octopus, mackerel, oysters, all the way down to anchovies and whitebait – I love them all. Apart from eel, that is, which is evil and must be destroyed. I used to also classify hush puppies as seafood of the must be destroyed category, but then I learnt that they aren’t seafood at all. I’d blame Long John Silver’s for the confusion, but really it’s down to my own ineptitude.

- I cannot stand overly hot/spicy food. Blowing my tongue off puts me right off of food. The bad news is, even mildly hot things are too hot for me. The babies eat food spicier than I do, and Alastair always has some natural yogurt on hand to mild down the curries he makes me, which he always aims for “Super Wuss Mild” and still it’s often too hot for me.

- I am a new convert to mustard. It happened a few years back and now I actually (no exaggeration here) am known to plan meals around mustard. A condiment is dictating our palate here, people. And not just any mustard – while Dijon is brilliant in pastas and wholegrain rocks a salad or fish meal, it’s Colman’s English mustard which owns my heart. French’s mustard is sacrilege. Colman’s is my truly beloved. The irony to the Mustard Situation is that while I cannot take hot, spicy food, I can eat me some mustard and I can eat it far hotter than Alastair can.

- I adore curry. We have it (homemade) every Sunday.

- and often with our homemade curries, we have homemade naan, chapattis, or flat breads.

- and actually, I love baking breads. Last weekend I made lavender-honey bread (beautiful), English muffins (didn’t turn out well) and a large savory mushroom-courgette (zucchini) bread.

- I used to think maybe I was loving cooking and eating food enough to be posh, but then I learnt I hated truffles. My posh card has since been revoked.

- I love corn on the cob, only I can’t eat it off the cob. It’s a throw-back to my days with braces, I simply can’t do it. I cut the corn off the cob and eat it that way, while everyone else laughs at me.

- I hate milk, except in coffee, where it is a must. Speaking of coffee, I drink a lot of it. I also occasionally treat myself to a skinny latte with a shot of some sicky sweet syrup at Starbucks. I always feed bad doing it, as I feel it’s a poncy order. Anyone who orders poncy (”I’ll have a double decaf-caf skinny wet soy latte.”) is an asshole.

- speaking of liquids: Dr. Pepper, root beer and cream soda all are evil and must be destroyed.

- I love salads. I do not love dressing.

- I am not a dessert girl. I don’t like chocolate, cream, chocolate cream, whipped cream, cakes, biscuits, tiramisu, jelly (Jell-o), steamed puddings, Christmas cake, or anything like that (including banoffee pie, which is evil and must be destroyed) and yes, I think there’s a very good chance that I know they’re so bad for me that I talked myself out of them years ago. Still, what’s done is done. If those are your ideals, I’m not the girl for you. I will, however, race you to the cheeseboard and I will trip your ass to make sure I get there first.

- If it’s a weekend, and the breakfast does not include eggs, then there had better be a good god damn explanation as to why. I’m an egg girl. I’ll eat eggs in any shape or form (including the English runny scrambled eggs). I used to loathe runny eggs and now I adore them. I’ll even eat quail eggs, duck eggs, and once I had a scrambled goose egg. Tasted like chicken.

- I eat my baked potatoes with salsa on them. I picked that up in Texas and never put it down again.

- it’s almost physically impossible for me to eat a sandwich and crisps (chips) without putting the crisps in the sandwich. I give it a miss if I’m in a work meeting. Anyone else is subjected to my Allison like lunch behaviors. Crisps are best in salted form only, and salt and vinegar crisps? Evil and must be destroyed.

Go on then – any peculiarities in your food tastes?

-S.

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They say you shouldn’t be blogging on a weekend.

They say you should post first thing in the morning to boost traffic.

Whoever “they” are, I’m ignoring them.

Yesterday I went into London, this time for an entirely different meeting altogether. Courtesy of the wonderful British Mummy Bloggers site, an editor and I stumbled upon each other. We talked. We exchanged emails.

And that’s how I ended up with full hair and makeup posing in my lingerie for a professional photographer for an article that will shortly be printed in a national UK magazine.

(Let’s hear it for prepositional phrases!)

I went to a photo shoot for an article about scars. It became something rather bigger than that, and I won’t take away what I hope the article does by posting about it, but I will talk amongst the fringe. It was a special day for me in many ways, and a day that may change things ever so slightly.

In February this year, Alastair bought me my first ever bikini. I think he thought I wouldn’t wear it again, but I wound up wearing it through our entire honeymoon (apart from the scuba diving parts, because bikinis and scuba don’t mix without some flashing going on). Me wearing a bikini was remarkable for two reasons:

1) My C-section scar is very visible, divides me into thirds, and is responsible for my “stomach apron” not noticeable from frontal view

and above all:

2) I have spent the majority of my life plagued by eating disorders and self-hatred.

The second item slightly largely than the first in some ways. Although the story of the twins here on this site is well-known, the details of it are (hopefully) in the article – of the hope, the fear, the endless hospitalizations, the emergency C-section, them arriving to my utter and complete joy. But maybe less well known amongst the public are the other elements.

I remember all the years of hating myself. I remember all the tricks for anorexia and for purging – when you feel utterly famished, a head of lettuce or – if really pushed – a bowl of Special K without milk, as it’ll expand in your stomach and make you feel full. If you need to purge, take laxatives, but not just one, take them all, and give yourself six hours lapse time to be ready. Any time you’re hungry, brush your teeth – food doesn’t taste right after you brush.

Isn’t that pathetic? Isn’t that awful? Isn’t that something you wouldn’t wish on someone you loved?

Exactly.

I first learned about the real power of purging courtesy of another bulimic, who I still remember fervently nodding and telling me that: “It’s no good if you take one laxative in the pack. If you need to purge, you need to take them all.”

I remember it.

I became it.

I spent so much fucking time hating myself and punishing myself that it makes me want to crawl back in time and give myself a cuddle…and yet a part of me still struggles with food and always will. I eat because I love food, but I watch what I eat because I have spent my life doing so.

Yesterday I was privileged to spend the day with a gaggle of women. A make-up artist who made me look beautiful, and who did my hair, too. A photographer who praised me. Two editors who told me I was beautiful. And two extraordinary women with their own scars.

One of them I’ll keep private. The other one was someone I talked to a lot and really related to. She was wonderful and lovely and kind. She is also a survivor of cancer and bearer of a mastectomy scar. She now runs this website and is completely amazing. If you know a breast cancer and mastectomy survivor, I’d recommend her lingerie in a heartbeat (and she really is the heart and arms behind the website – it’s just her running it, not a massive company, and she loves what she does so much.)

Beauty comes in many forms.

Some of it has to come from ourselves.

I work on that, and in the meantime I am about to be outed in a national magazine to family, colleagues, and friends as a C-section bearer and survivor of eating disorders.

And I feel liberated.

Maybe it’s an ego-centric vanity piece. I did not survive breast cancer like my amazing new compadre. I know that people will see the photos and the article and may laugh at me or (more probably) my body, and wonder why someone like me would want to bear all. But if my imperfect body and imperfect story can stray one person off the path of self-hatred, of denial and punishment, of despair and guilt, then maybe I will have accomplished something good in this world, apart from two little people I love so very dearly. Two people whom may leave the nest someday, but whose presence is marked on me (most gratefully) forever.

-S.

PS-if you see the article (and no, I’m not mentioning the publication) then please keep my details private? I’d be really, really grateful.

Today I trooped into the office for several meetings and then left to attend my latest in my clutch of consultants (I didn’t know what the aggregate for “consultant” was. I was leaning towards “pack” but that sounded a bit ferocious. “Pride” made me want to hurl. I veered towards “clutch” at the end.) This new chap is my osteopathic surgeon that I have been referred to courtesy of a two year old ankle sprain while jogging that’s turned into a considerable pain in the ass.

I maybe hadn’t thought it through though, this visit. I parked and strolled in wearing my rebellious cling to summer. Summer has basically started packing its bags here in England, and to be perfectly frank – it isn’t warm here, and the geese flying in their “V” formations all day every day attests to that. But there I was in a summer top, skirt, and strappy heels. Four inch strappy heels to be exact. Yes, it might be frivolous, but at the tender age of 36 I have exploded into a deep and unbelievable love of shoes. I mostly love shoes from here, which I covet and adore (currently coveting these) and which other women stop me and admire my shoes for (like these – people seem to love these. I love those too, my problem is that they’re made by Irregular Choice, who don’t respect the fact that some women have feet so narrow they could be described as two by fours. In my instance, they’re also as long as two by fours…) I can’t believe it! People admire my shoes! And what’s more, I buy almost all of my shoes new off of ebay for a tenth of the price than if I bought them new, because I covet and adore new shoes but don’t have the finances to back this addiction up!

All done with the exclamation points now.

So I clipped into his office wearing a pair of four inch high Carvelas with red straps on them (god I love those shoes).

“Hello,” he said, shaking my hand and looking at my chart. “I see you’re in here for an ankle injury.” He looks down at my feet. “I can see why you’re in here for an ankle injury.”

“No, the ankle injury was because of jogging,”I say, setting my briefcase down and sitting down.

“Do you still run?” he asked.

“Only if being chased,” I responded. He looked at me. I cleared my throat. “Um, no. No more running.”

“Any sports at all?”

“No, I’m a lazy shite,” I replied cheerfully. I then went on to explain the EDS diagnosis and why I no longer do most exercises, rounding it up with “renovating ancient house”, “twin toddlers”, and “full-time job” to explain why I don’t get off my ass more.

He asked me to remove my shoes, which I did, and he then pivoted my ankles this way and that way. I heard the usual: “Wow, you really are flexible!” And: “Joints don’t usually extend that far.” He then asked me to twist this way and that, stand up straight and bend over without bending my knees to place my palms flat on the floor, which is a test for EDS. He had me do them all and I failed them all with flying colors, in which I mean proved to yet another M.D. that I do indeed have hypermobility.

All those years of yoga and I thought I was the bee’s knees. Turns out, my joints were just shagged. It had nothing to do with my inner zen at all.

In the end, I was under the fire of an X-ray and get to go back for an MRI. I start physiotherapy next week for my ankle, he explained, as he wrote out the form. If the physio works then I Get Out of Surgery Free. If it doesn’t work within 3 months then I am going under the knife. He’s keen to repair the damage to the ligaments before osteoarthritis sets in there, too, as it has started to linger in other previously injured joints. If I have surgery, then I will be in an osteo ankle boot for six weeks.

I’m fairly sure that Kurt Geiger does not make cute osteo boots.

I thanked him for his time and said I’d see him soon. I stood.

“So are you clumsy?” he asked as we walked towards the door.

“Very. I’m awful,” I replied. He pulled the physio slip from my hand and wrote “Spatial awareness – ankle” on the form, and handed it back.

I smiled.

Turned.

And ran straight into the wall.

Laurel and sodding Hardy couldn’t have been more slapstick and predictable than that.

He sighed, took the form out of my hands, and crossed out “ankle”, instead writing “Spatial awareness – body” on the form before placing it back in my hands. I thanked him and left, rubbing my nose from where it had made contact with said wall.

Awesome.

-S.

Yesterday I took the twins to see In the Night Garden Live at the O2 in London. Melissa took the train up with us to help transport, and once at the door of the event I went in with the twins on my own.

They were confined (rather unhappily) to their pram, because parading them around London (including one train journey and one tub journey) without some form of control did not appeal.

The event itself was amazing. After being greeted by giant HaHoos

you make your way inside a giant white inflatable arena (complete with flying Pinky Ponk).

The stage was gorgeous. They used a massive set and projectors inside the tent to make everything feel larger than life.

And all the characters were there, from Iggle Piggle

to Maka Paka

to the Tombliboos (with help from puppeteers, as the Tombliboos as supposed to be small people)

to the dancing carousel finale.

After buying tickets I parted with more cash for various goods for the twins, which they loved.

And which they insisted be covered up with them when the inevitable London rain started falling.

And here’s the thing: I’ve been struggling. I don’t know why I have, but I have. My temper’s short, my ability to deal with things currently dwindling. People are tiptoeing around me right now and I feel like each and every little activity is taking Herculean amounts of energy. I get it – I’m down about something. I don’t really know what it is, but I suspect it has to do with change, with hormones, with life moving on. I can deal with change, that’s ok. I suppose sometimes things are harder when you have a change and you can’t let it go.

People give you all kinds of advice when you have children, particularly if you don’t want any advice. It’s like they sense you coming and save it all up for you. I remember being told by a particular cow I used to have to deal with that “I’d learn, once I had kids, what it was like. Even your voice changes!” This nugget of wisdom was imparted to me while I was going through the rejection of a failed cycle at the time, so it was particularly stinging. I heard it constantly then, and I still hear it. Advice. People trying to tell me things they want me to know, like some kind of club, some kind of handshake.

But parenting is somewhat different to that. There are lots of things people don’t tell you about, and I don’t know that I would want them to even if they could. You hear about the common stuff – “you’ll never sleep again”, “wait till you start potty training”, or “it’s all different when they’re teens”, all of which falls under the “No shit, Sherlock” camp.

But parenthood is sometimes more raw and more bewildering (or maybe it’s just in my case). No one tells you that there are mornings in the early baby days when your breasts are leaking and you smell and your hair is greasy but there’s a small someone with shaking flailing limbs who has all of your attention as you stare at the whorls in their hair. The advice doesn’t include what to do when you’ve had eight straight hours of tantrum throwing and you slide down the kitchen cabinets and sit on the floor and cry because you just don’t know what to do anymore. When your child has a fever and is ill, no one tells you that you can hear them from across the house, that the sound of their breathing cuts through the night time and settles in around your heart like a balm. No one mentions that there are times as teens where you just want to get away from them, that they said something or made a choice that makes you disappointed in them to an extent that you need a moment away from them.

People tell you that every age is great and that them growing up is hard. What the advice fails to mention is that it can be something insignificant that makes you trip and fall when you realize that they are growing up so very fast indeed. It might not be their first step. It might be something as small as the white barred cot that your babies once shared, and which left the house in a white utility van. And every stage is fabulous, it really is, it’s just I find I’m suddenly in a corridor of change and the door’s slammed behind me and I don’t recall ever taking a step in any single direction.

I moved on a bit yesterday. While in a tent full of children screaming with delight, clapping their hands, singing along, trying to catch bubbles, I caught a bit of it. If you could bottle the joy in that room it would be enough to lift the world out of orbit twenty times over and still enough for a round of Singapore Slings. And two of those merrymakers were my two. Nora, who clapped her hands and was mesmerized by the stage, her eyes enormous, and singing her heart out with the characters. Nick, who in typical Nick fashion tracked the lights, looked for the Ninky Nonk (the train in the show) and enquired about what would happen next. And as the two little people who turn 3 in 6 weeks’ time laughed and sang and clapped, I cried.

They were good tears.

I was happy.

I am happy. In many ways, I have my definition of having it all – wonderful husband (who is being very patient with and supportive of me, even though I’m a handful right now). Fabulous children (all four of them). Lovely house. Good job. Dumb dog. My life isn’t perfect and never will be (i.e. miserly bank account and crap cars). But dwelling in sadness isn’t going to get us anywhere. So today – after snapping at Alastair and despairing at over-tired babies, I’m pulling myself together. A cot is just a cot. Two children who can sing all the words of The Tiny Turtle Song and have me singing it all day too is more than just a cot.

And parenthood can mean good tears at a Cbeebies show because when they’re happy, you’re happy, and you didn’t know just how deep that could go.

-S.

Yesterday a white van came and took away the babies’ beds. I included all their bedding and a few of their older cot toys that they no longer play with. The beds and linens and toys are all destined for a new nursery and it’s good and I get that it’s like Toy Fucking Story 3 but it still broke my fucking heart.

Today the twins kept asking where their “white beds” are.

It was like a paper cut with a side of lemon squeeze.

It’s stupid and I’m being ridiculous and I should get over myself and I will. I adore them and their interaction, I think I just mourn the past. I also mourn knowing that our relationship here is so much better, so much healthier, than it was back then, and it would have been like an explosion of fucking sunlight if I could’ve transplanted the now to the then. I would’ve been different back then, if I could do it all over again. That’s it, isn’t it? If I could have a do-over, I would do it all again and I would do it better.

It’ll get better. I know it will.

************************

Jeff has been having a hard time with his life. This translates to him acting out and being not very easy sometimes. I get that he’s testing us, he’s testing me, he’s trying (subconsciously) to see how much we love him. I not only see it, I understand it. I’ve never been very good at tests, and this latest round has me trying to peel my face off the floor. And Alastair’s being a fucking champ and he’s really holding things well and I’m trying too and we’re all working on being patient because we love the kid, but fuck if it isn’t a trying time.

It’ll get better. I know it will.

************************

I went to the gynecologist two days ago. He smiled at seeing me, shook my hand in the posh private hospital room, and asked me expectedly: “So, how’s the bleeding?”

“I’m still bleeding,” I replied.

He dropped his head to the table. Brilliant, a vagina doctor who thunks his head down. I explained that the periods are far, far better – no longer am I bleeding heavily enough to insert a small white lap dog to staunch the flow – but that yes, I am still spotting daily.

He suspects my fibroid is still the cause of the bleeding. He said I should come back in six months and if I’m still bleeding they’re remove the Mirena, do an ablation, and see what happens. He also said the type of ablation I would be having would obliterate my womb and mean that I could never carry children again, which was not a shock. That ship not only set sail some time ago, it broke it’s anchor, rotted, and sunk to the bottom of the deep blue sea.

Six months, during which time I can use my bodily fluids to keep the cast of the Twilight series alive. It’s worth a shot, seeing as their romantic love-scene acting is so wooden they might as well invest in some heavily progesteroned blood. Might help, couldn’t hurt.

Six months…which is about as long as it took me to see a new specialist, an orthopedic surgeon, as an old ankle injury has been struck badly by osteoarthritis courtesy of my old friend EDS. I see the new guy next week, which is just in time – the cold is coming and the ankle injury’s painful. I keep losing feeling in my fingers and toes, and though I delight in watching the Canadian geese as they’ve started their migrations south and fly into my favorite season, I know that stocking up on gloves is the only way to get through the season change that is coming.

And through it all, I keep crying about stupid things. I’d say I have PMS, but I never stop bleeding enough to know if that’s the case or not.

It’ll get better. I know it will.

Soon would be helpful. Getting better soon would be helpful.

-S.

* With lots and lots of swearing.

Now for something a little lighter.

I’m a complete cut-and-dried bookworm, always have been, always will be. As I once mentioned, I once entered a competition to see how much one could read in one month, and I blew the competition out of the water by reading 11,111 pages in one month. I was 12.

I’m still a voracious reader, although luckily far less competitive these days.

The fabulous Plan B recently posted about books she’s been reading. And I largely agree with her, apart from the Niffenegger aspect. That I’ll overlook.

Since I am being Far Too Serious lately, I’m jumping on that bookcart (as opposed to bandwagon. See what I did there?)

So here’s what has been devoured and what’s to come (you can also find me on Goodreads).

****************************************

I bought Jasper Fforde’s Shades of Grey and I really liked it. I was then introduced to the Thursday Next series by Fforde, and I throw my Shades of Grey into the bin and have fallen completely and utterly in love with the whole series. I cannot recommend The Eyre Affair enough if you like quirky, semi-realistic fiction with a sarcastic and stroppy heroine. It’s my kind of sci-fi. I cannot do Pratchett, he’s too science fiction for me (although I am a diehard Doctor Who fan and I love all of the movie adaptations of Pratchett’s books thus far. Square that circle.)

Speaking of sci-fi, I can’t recommend Patrick Ness’ series Chaos Walking, which starts with The Knife of Never Letting Go. Incredible writing. Here’s the thing – I have the third (and last) in the series, but haven’t read it yet because I can’t. Not only will the series then be over, but the books really take it out of you. They are draining and exhausting and you can’t stop reading. Stupid reasoning, I know.

I’m on a bit of a fantasy kick, I suspect – my next two are also fantasy/sci fi/surreal ones. I have The Boy With the Cuckoo Clock Heart ready, followed by The Girl With the Glass Feet. Maybe I’m into fake body parts, not sure. I have learnt that not all sci-fi like works are for me – I tried the Hollow Chocolate Bunnies of the Apocalypse and I hated it. Maybe my sci fi does not extend to a sweet tooth.

I don’t read just fiction, though – I am just finishing Globlish, and I have an in-depth view of North Korea called Nothing to Envy. If you like your non-fiction with less edge, then I cannot recommend Emma Kennedy’s The Tent, the Bucket, and Me enough. You will wet yourself laughing. Honestly. I have Khorsandi’s A Beginner’s Guide to Acting English here, too, which I am sure will make me scream with laughter.

I am big on fiction, though. I have read and adored Chris Cleave’s The Other Hand, which is the only book to date that made me cry. People either love it or hate it, but since I am still thinking it ages after I finished it, I’m thinking it is a Very Relevant Book (although I still think of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, which I absolutely loathed, so maybe that argument doesn’t wash). I also have the slightly lighter The Ice Cream Girls beckoning for me, too. I also have two Kazuo Ishiguro books lined up – his new one Nocturnes, and an older one called The Unconsoled.

I also suspect I am the only human being on the planet who cannot get into Steig Larsson.

I tried.

Honest.

Hit me. Tell me what you’re reading, and what I should be reading, too.

-S.

We went camping this weekend with all of Alastair’s extended family. Six adults, eight children, and one very happy doggy all in our family tents in New Forest, a campsite in the very southern tip of England. It was all about barbecues and fishing and admiring some of the many wild ponies that ambled through the campsite. It was filled with tents of laughing children and endless games of football and sleepy children too wired to go to sleep.

I thought about this last night, as I tucked in a completely passed out Nick and Nora – all fresh and clean and washed in their fresh and clean and washed beds which are littered with their favorite toys. I smoothed the hair back from their heads and thought about it all. Mostly, what I thought about was their happiness and safety, their security and their well-being.

I had just watched the news, and saw scenes of starving Afghani babies in hospitals, as they cried pitifully and slowly died. I saw children in Pakistan dying from something as easily solved as diarrhea, as the flood waters have destroyed most of the drinking water. I have recently pulled myself from watching the news at all really, a head in the sand gesture yes, but something I had to do. A mother in France murders eight of her newborn children. Another mother in Holland has just admitted killing six of her own children. A mother in Ireland walks into the local constabulary with her dead toddler in her arms. A dad in Hampshire – nearby here, in fact – kills his wife and two toddler children before killing himself.

And I just can’t deal with it.

I still get uncontrollably angry over Baby P. A little boy who wasn’t even someone I’d ever met. Our friend, who was fostering, had to give her back. We saw him at the wedding and he told me quietly, tearing up, that he thinks of her every single day and misses her like he missed his heart. These things cut far worse than I remember them cutting.

I should be clear – I’ve always been a bleeding heart. Children’s charities and animal charities are where any extra monies go and that has always been the case. But things feel a lot different now, and it’s because of the arrival of Nick and Nora. If I can draw a trivial comparison, it would be like saying I finally know what a flight is like now that I’ve been on an airplane. I read these stories of crimes against children and I recoil in horror, because there are two little people in my life who are so precious to me, that the idea of anything happening to them generates a reaction in me that’s almost feral. There’s that cheesy expression that when you have a child, it’s like a piece of your heart out walking around. I’d say it’s bigger than that – it’s a piece of your heart and suddenly you realize that something bad can happen to that heart, and if something happened you’d be dead forever inside. You feel like you should’ve been warned about it, this sudden seizing fear that something bad could occur, this new understanding that horrible things happen to lovely children, and now that you finally have a child yourself, there’s a new playing field of fear.

There is the argument that people who hurt children are themselves mentally ill, and that a degree of compassion ought to be shown purely because if you have this illness, it’s more than likely because there has been severe abuse to the abuser when they were a child, a demonstration of a vicious cycle. I imagine that is true, and logically I can see that there is a call for compassion. But something in that compassion was broken in me when the twins arrived. Yes, as someone who has been (and understands) struggling with her own psychological issues, I can see that there is something to try to reach out and address. But I joined the ranks of the vigilantes when children came into my life. I remember arguing with my father some years ago that if anything happened to anyone I loved, I would allow justice and the courts to decide the fates of those who perpetrated the crime. Now I take a different view – I’ll go along with the courts and their decisions, but hurt any member of my family and I’ll make it my mission in life to make that person pay, from testifying at every single parole opportunity hearing to seeing how many ways I can campaign to keep them away from absolutely anyone until they come out of the prison feet first.

Counter-productive maybe.

But the power of my emotions on this is shocking. And it’s not just over my children, it’s all children. I see a documentary on ragpicking children in India and I want to take them home. I am reading about children in North Korea and I want to bring them here. It doesn’t have to be far-flung, either – I read stories about children in care here in the UK, and how it sometimes takes the system over a year to remove a child from an abusive home and I want to set a nursery up and rescue them, too (although who the hell am I to have such a god complex?). In my mind I understand I am over-reacting, it’s like anything – overdo something and the quality of the care goes down. I could go into the local RSPCA and adopt every stray dog and cat in there, but would 100 dogs and cats in a house really be a quality, caring environment for them? And children are not dogs, I’m not naive, they need even greater care than a loving pet, but that’s the best parallel I can draw.

I’m an idiot in many ways, but I get that you can’t save everyone. I get that. It’s what drove me out of anthropology (that and the whole “can’t get a job” business. And for the ass who felt the need to comment yesterday that I am “snowing” my company by not having an engineering degree, here’s a hot tip – they know I am not a trained engineer. Many in the company aren’t.) In anthropology you are absolutely only there to observe, never to try to change or control. So when you have recounts of how female circumcision is done or of infanticide, those stories are done by people who must stoically watch, and cannot by training attempt to interfere. Interfering implies a cultural superiority, and that’s where cultures begin to bleed into each other and break down.

But how does one just stand by, sometimes?

I go into the twins’ rooms every night, multiple times a night. I make sure they are tucked in and I smooth their blond heads, because I absolutely must touch them, it’s not enough to stand by the door and look in. They are my last port of call before I head into our own bedroom.

When I tucked them in for the last time last night, I thought about how lucky they were. How lucky I am. And I thought of a tiny Afghani baby that has no doubt perished since that story was filmed, and I wondered who mourned him, I wondered what short straw that little guy drew.

And I wish I had an answer.

-S.

PS-sorry, this one got a little heavy.

I had two days away this week at an account meeting. It wasn’t fun but the job got done, I spent the night in a nameless faceless soulless hotel and my expense claim is yet to be entered.

The night I stayed over I met with some of my team for dinner and drinks. Hair was let down, beer flowed, and we were chatting as you do when you have a chance to get to know the person behind the suit and action point log. One of my technical guys was talking about age and his views since turning 40.

“I mean, you know what it’s like,” he said to me.

“Sorry?” I asked, mid-wine sipping. “What do you mean?”

“Well you’re over 40, right?” he asked.

“Cheers, mate,” I said frostily. “I’m 36.”

“Oh fuck.”

“Yeah, oh fuck. What made you think I was 40?”

“Well, I mean…sorry, you know, it’s just. Well you’re married!”

“You twigged the wedding ring, well done, but you don’t get carded when you show up at the altar, there is no ‘Under 40 need not apply!’ sign at the registry office. I’ve been married for one month, man. One month.”

One month, and clearly I need to bathe in some Oil of Olay at my first convenience. I know I looked was (and looked) tired, but I certainly didn’t think I look rode hard and put up wet.

“You’re also a director!” he proclaimed weakly.

I’m not a director, actually, but this brought me to something else.

I was talking to my brother-in-law the other day. My brother-in-law has the same job role as I have, although I have been doing this line of work for over a decade and he’s been doing it for about six seconds.

“I’m looking to be promoted,” he told me.

“Promoted!” I exclaimed. “You’ve only been doing this job for a short while! I’ve been doing it for ages and haven’t been promoted myself!”

“Yes, but I’m older.”

“Only by a few years.”

“I’m also a man.”

Dead silence descended. “And what, pray tell, are you trying to tell me that your penis entitles you to?”

“Well as the breadwinner I should make more money than you do.”

Wait just a fucking minute, Alonso. Laura Ingalls called, she wants her bucket back. “Hang on – I’m better qualified than you are in this area. By a long shot.”

“Yes but that’s not how it works, is it?”

And on that note, the man is right.

Something I’ve realized, looking around the office. Now it might be because I work in an engineering space. It might be because I work in an industry that is predominately male by quite a large percentage. But the truth is this: When I look around the office I see a lot of men with snow white hair who have corner offices and personal assistants (all of them female, of course). The seniority is for men who have rounded the half century mark and plow onwards.

When I look around the office, there is not a single woman over fifty in anything even resembling a position of authority. In fact, the only silver-haired ladies that I see are executive assistants. And I think back to all the engineering firms I have worked for and it rings true across the board – there are no older women in positions of authority. In fact, in most of the companies I worked for, there were no women in positions of authority at all.

I won’t flog that dead horse.

What I will get my stripped birch out for the equine is this: where are all the older women in the workforce?

Are we held in a mysterious holding pen, whereby we spend all our time knitting cozies for Kleenex? Are we the ones manning the stationary cupboard and making sure no one steals the whiteboard markers? Are women let free only at night, to tidy up the cables of people’s laptops?

Based on the fact that although I seem to have a dozen pension accounts all of them are worth about £6.50, I will be working until I die, even if I actually don’t want to work until I drop. Not only do I have to work, I (at this point in my career) want to work (and this is not where we get out the other dead horse of work versus stay-at-home. This is not that conversation.) But if I think I’m at or nearly at the pinnacle of my career now, what does that mean moving ahead? Why is it that older men are in positions of knowledge and authority and women – at least in my industry – seem to be placed in keeping the diaries of said trailblazers? Do we reach a point where we think “Eh, not fucking worth the stress and aggro anymore”, or is that decision made for us? Is it an issue that women are often married to men who are older than they, ergo it suits us to retire when they do? Or is it that life just burns us out that much sooner?

I know that other industries are probably a lot more embracing of older women in the workforce. It simply appears mine isn’t. Unless of course you’re me, and one of your team assume you’re five years older than you really are.

-S.

Their cots have been taken down, this time for good.

The twins moved into their big beds last week and although we put up their cots in the spare room “just in case”, the two love their beds and are doing just fine. The cots move on to their new homes shortly. All of this is not being handled so well by me.

I love who the twins are. You can have conversations, you can joke, you can spend hours with them singing their favorite nursery rhymes. They’re fabulous and funny and I love them to pieces. I guess sometimes I am just aware more than usual that they are the only two I will ever be a mum to. I wouldn’t trade a thing. I guess sometimes I just miss the days when they’re both small enough to fit within my arm span, when they doze sweetly on my shoulder while walking, and when tiny fingers reach up to pull at tiny invisible toys.

They’re brilliant kids.

And in my heart, they’ll always be babies.

Sometimes the physical reminders that they’re not just hurt a little bit.

-S.

Last week I had to trek up north (north, in my terms, is typically anything north of London. In this instance I had to take the M1, which means really, really north. I almost had a nosebleed.) I had to help out last minute with an account which isn’t mine but which needed a hand. So off I went, decked out in business suit and heels, briefcase and I actually put product in my hair. Product! This is me making an effort, my new pledge to be making an effort! Product!

When I arrived it was straight into the meeting, the forerunner to a larger meeting that is being held in some weeks’ time. The meeting went as meetings do then the account I was meeting with handed me off to see their meeting facilities. It was when I was introduced to the team that I realized what I was dealing with was…

Consultants.

I was dealing with consultants.

Don’t get me wrong, they can add great value if their remit is clear and they’re professional. However I have recently had to deal with consultants on a now-closed project that did my fucking head in. It was painful. I wound up not so much not liking one of the guys as much as flat-out hating absolutely every atom of his being with complete and utter abandon. It took every ounce of willpower I had to deal with him – when he returned from leave last week he sauntered in looking like the cat who caught the canary.

“Did you notice I’m back?” he asked.

“Well all my crops have failed and the calves last night were all born with two heads, so yes, I knew you were back,” I replied.

Actually I didn’t say that. What I did say was: “Governor Tarkin, I should’ve expected to find you holding Vader’s leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.”

No really, what I did say was: “Yes, you’re like herpes. You can never quite get rid of you and you always come back in times of extreme stress.”

(Truthfully, what I did was nod, smile, and then make a pretend phone call to the speaking clock phone line. I’m brave in my head but when I know I can’t follow through due to professionalism being called for I’m a total coward.)

So I knew within seconds of meeting these new people that they were consultants and sure enough they were. The account’s a very formal one, all suits and ties. These guys were in bright yellow shirts, jeans, big smiles and – wait for it – a yellow baseball cap so bright you could use it to land planes.

“Hi!” the consultant said chirpily. “Welcome to the Share Corner!”

“The…sorry?” I asked, confused.

“The Share Corner! This is where we hold meetings for the account to facilitate blue sky thinking!”

Oh my god. She was already into the management jargon five seconds into the introduction.

“Indeed,” I replied, dazed.

“Let me show you our facilities. I understand you’ll be hosting a meeting here in a few weeks’ time, we have some pre-requisites, like we need you to fill out a share calendar and have a pre-meeting at least ten days ahead of the meeting.”

“Ten days? Why is this, isn’t what you’re asking of me to have a meeting to have a meeting?”

“It’s imperative that all members of the meeting are encouraged to attend and provide the best input. For that, we ask you to fill out a Personality Planner that lists all attendees and how you plan on approaching them for their work.”

“I plan on sitting down, asking them what their deliverables are, and asking them to do their jobs,” I reply.

“Yes but we need to encourage positive outcomes,” she said, looking at me as though I were the naughty child. Then she said it. She said my top hated word when it comes to business lingo, the word I detest in conversation unless you’re talking about vegetables. “We want this work experience to be organic.”

God. Organic. She used the O word.

“Who do I report to?” I ask. “Is Elmo available, or is he on leave?”

“Who’s Elmo?”

“Nevermind, bad joke.” She continues showing us around the office.

“Why are there stuffed animals in the windowsills over there?” I ask, eyeballing a particularly gruesome looking blue bear in a corner.

“Those are Thinking Stories,” she chirps. “Those are to enable free thinking and to promote creativity! Isn’t it exciting?”

“Exciting, yes, that’s one word for it! Well, I look forward to attending your McMeeting in a few week’s time!” I say brightly, and stride out.

Consultants.

And me without a full can of Raid.

-S.

I’ve got a bit of an issue, and it’s with myself.

Hear me out here.

So I have a background in anthropology, which has sweet fuck-all to do with my current job. It does, however, mean I’m a Class A geek and like everything from the etymology of words (my current reading material) to the feminist and socio-economics of modern (or post-war, really) society, which means that I am officially That Person You Do Not Want To Be Stuck Talking To At a Party. I’m ok with that.

On top of all that, I’m an -ist. An -ist of many types, in fact – I’m a feminist, a pacifist, an eco-ist, and yes, I am a socialist and I don’t feel like a bad person for saying that. I’m not after stealing money, but I do support the idea (and the fact) behind paying higher taxes to provide health care for all. I like knowing that people can get treatment, and I’ll give up more salary to help out. I know a lot of people don’t concur with it, and that’s cool, we can’t all hold hands and sing Kumbaya, now, can we?

I’m a bleeding heart and always have been. We adopt rescue dogs and cats, I have a monthly bit of change that goes out each month to various charities (including the NSPCC and the World Wildlife Federation), and I’m trying to convince Alastair that re-homing a few battery chickens to our humble abode is what the world needs (Jeff is helping encourage. We’ll see.) I have a vegetable patch which seems to be growing in spite of my attempts, as opposed to because of (I find growing vegetables to be so stressful. I know this flies in the face of the activity, but I can’t help it.) I support renewable energy sources, and would be delighted to see a wind farm go up nearby.

And yet…

There was that Boden Camping Debacle of last weekend. Poshy poseur from a non-posh background elbow-rubbing with women named Miranda, their well-dressed husbands Henry and their three perfect children, Poppy, Olivier and Tad. And there we were, camping with the posh tent and the funky dog and the children (one of whom has, it turns out, a name that has become popular. When we named her, we were the only ones we knew with that name. Now, it’s everywhere. Were we trendsetting, or just naive I wonder…)

But it gets worse. I’ve long been an advocate of assisted housing. It was a system that worked well in Sweden – everyone who needed a home could have one. This was reassuring to me as I had grown up with the not-unfounded fear of being a paycheck away from homelessness (now we’re only two missed paychecks away from homelessness. Progress!) Knowing that there was a safety net – even one paid for by the tax payers – made me feel warm fuzzies.

And then a neighbor knocked on the door.

He had info. Info the council hadn’t revealed to everyone and to this date, none of us are sure how this is. But the info wasn’t brilliant.

In England, it’s incredibly hard to get a foot on a rung of the property ladder. If you’re a young couple then buying your first place is near impossible. We were lucky in that we rented, saved a chunk of money, and Alastair had his former marital home in Brighton that he sold (the Swunt, obviously, keeping their palatial former home in Stockholm). Many young couples have to live with their families to accumulate time and money to move out. It’s a sad situation – people need homes. There are homes. The homes cost too much money. People don’t get homes. Home prices continue to go up. I’m no economic expert, here, but even I can see this is untenable.

Said neighbor came by with a leaflet, see, which resulted (no kidding, here) in a number of our neighbors immediately listing their houses for sale. This leaflet showed the massive fields just off to the right of our homes, land that is marked as conservation and a small portion of it listed as farmland. The small farmland has been sold to a property developer, who is going to turn it into 9 low-cost houses (also called “affordable houses”, and in this instance we believe they would be part-owned by the property developer and part-owned by the buyer, however they could also be council-associated housing which is where the crime rates do come into play). The neighborhood is up in arms.

And I thought: My god, we’ve worked so hard on this house and now we have to do things like lock the doors.

Our neighborhood went straight to their House of Commons Representative, and almost overnight I became a NIMBY.

Then came the outcry in my head: Our house price took a nosedive during the crash and still hasn’t recovered, it’ll further go down! We’re going to not even recoup what we’ve put into the house, including the blood, sweat and tears! This is my dream home! There will be an increased crime rate! Our small, not busy neighborhood and our small, not busy country road will become a proper thoroughfare and the children could be at risk from traffic incidents!

Then came the shame: For fuck’s sake! You snobby pretentious shit! People need homes, people need homes they can plant flowers at and feel safe at, and you’re stirring up shit in your head for nothing! Who do you think you are, Princess Di? Stop making things other people’s problems! You care so much about causes, can’t you care about people, too?

Then came the rationale: I know it’s right. We’ve worked hard on our house, and I’m sure other owners will work hard on theirs. It’s what’s right for people.

Then came the finale: I’m troubled by my own reaction. I don’t know what it means, this affordable housing, but in the end maybe that’s not the relevant part. It won’t adjoin our property, it won’t really affect us. So how about supporting it and letting people come in?

And while I’m at it, accept that maybe not locking the doors wasn’t a brilliant scheme anyway.

-S.

We went camping.

As you know.

We bought a great big fuck-off tent, which we assembled in the back garden prior to going because we didn’t want to look like newbie assholes.

(That’s Jeff in the background. Jeff is fab. Jeff’s face is also not going to be shown here, which you probably also know.)

It’s a good thing we did erect the tent at home, because holy hell was it complicated.

I booked a ferry trip to the Isle of Wight (a little island off the southern coast of Hampshire), where we have been camping for the weekend. After an uneventful ferry ride, we arrived at the campsite – 2 adults, 1 teen, 2 toddlers, and one very excited dog, plus a car packed to the gills with all kinds of camping gear.

Luckily we had some supervisory help while Jeff, Alastair and I pitched the tent.

We chose the site because it sounded lovely – in the travelling scheme of things, we’re Rough Guide people, and the Rough Guide to Camping in Britain recommended this site. The site did not disappoint, which is why we chose a pitch with the best view ever.

And our tent had the best location (luckily that’s not a straight cliff edge just there. I have a paralyzing fear of losing all the members of my family, and as a result am not ok with cliff edges, as one who is both paranoid and – let’s be honest – practical – behaves.)

Inside, we had three “bedrooms”.

And inside, we made ourselves at home.

And two little people had their own “bed in a bag” – inflatable mattresses complete with sewn-in sleeping bags. Their excitement was indescribable.

And the time there was fabulous. We didn’t do much apart from what we wanted, including time in the sea.

For all of us, that is.

Sunsets.

Sleeping when we needed to (for the record, sleeping with a snoozing Nora is wonderful. Honestly.)

And driving the occasional tractor.

You know – as you do.

And I walked to the reception every day with my washing up bowl of dishes and my thoughts, and as I walked I realized something – we were on a campsite full of families. Families with children of all ages, families with dogs of all breeds, just lots of families. And as I walked to the dish-washing site, I would look at the people around me. I realized something pretty fundamental there, actually – I realized I had hit a new stage in my life.

There I was, camping with my gorgeous family and my gorgeous dog in our gorgeous tent. The tent was from eBay, in fact, it was rather horrifyingly to those in the know a 2009 model, but it was brand new, never used, and it was a great deal. And I bought it because it was a great deal and because it came with an additional groundsheet and – I’ll be honest here – an indoor carpet. That’s right. I bought a tent with a carpet. When we toured a showroom, we found the carpets to be miles more comfortable than tents without one. So I saved us a packet by buying a complete set online for a ridiculous price that made me wonder initially if it was a mistake, but I bought it.

There we were, with our three kids and a dog (mutt, adopted from the RSPCA). We came in our posh (eBay) tent. We went to the nice Isle of Wight. I watched the other mothers march to the kitchen washing up place, with their quirky Wellies and their Boden cardies and their make-up free faces with casual short hairstyles, and I realized that I was camping amongst the Sloanies, the type of women who had posh educations and now drive Chelsea Tractors, the women who have children named Sage and Oliver and Isabella, whose husbands have curly hair and rugby shirts and linen shorts that never seem creased that hold iPhones with speed dials to work and to the garage that houses their company 10 Reg BMW.

I thought about this, while I washed dishes.

I have a number of Boden clothes myself (their sales are fabulous as are their clothes, although I hate the fact that they run one size too small, it always makes me feel like starving myself again.) I have quirky Wellies. I don’t drive a Chelsea Tractor, we in fact have a company car and a 10 year old minivan, but still. There I was, doing the washing up in my Abercrombie sweatshirt (eBay again), with my Gap flip flops and my Calvin Klein shorts (yes, those were real, bought 12 years ago in NC when I was making money hand over fist. Those old shorts, sadly, didn’t make it back home again, they gave all the life that there was to give.) Here were women who typified Sloane – families, monies, posh camping (called “glamping”), sparkly children and immaculate lives, and here was I – a few levels down, that’s for sure, but swanning around in this same world. It troubled me, a bit, but then I took it for being what it was – I was simply camping. Camping is, perhaps, the new black.

So I relaxed and enjoyed it. I was not alone in enjoying it.

We pet goats, we went on trains, and one very excited little boy got his first trip on a double decker bus.

I decided not to dwell on what my decidedly red inclinations meant. I went with it. We have a tent. We have two little people who love the tent.

And we have all returned greatly knackered, with a small case of gastroenteritis, and the small wonderings of what a girl who grew up fairly poor with a military background and a life she doesn’t quite understand but she tells herself that sometimes, a tent is just a tent. That’s maybe for another day. The socio-economic angst-like navel gazing can wait. For now, I need a new pair of Wellies.

-S.

I’ve been quiet because of being crazy busy with some things I can talk about, and some I can’t. We have something going on that has taken a fair amount of my mental capacity lately, and I can’t write about it, not right now. It’s fine – I’m ok, Alastair’s ok, all are ok, there’s no domestic disharmony in this house – it’s just a little bit energy-consumptive.

Jeff is over for a few weeks. He arrived on Monday, a tall weedy teenager with an adult’s voice and the ability to consume great quantities of food that disappear into the ether. He’s brilliant fun, and last night he and Alastair and I set up our new arrival – we bought a tent to go camping with, and its first run is this weekend when all 5 of us (including two very wound up toddlers who have their own airbeds, one covered with dinosaurs and one covered with Disney Princesses, because we don’t do stereotypes or anything). It’s not just a tent, it is a great big fuck-off tent. It has bedrooms, skylights, and – I shit you not – an indoor carpet. It’s not camping so much as glamping.

We had some guests over the other night, old friends of Alastair’s. Someone asked the question of where we would want to spend the rest of our lives, and we went around the table listing our top choices. A discussion broke out before they got to my answers. The discussion veered left and went into other garrulous topics. It was set to go to a new round of questions, when Jeff piped up.

“Wait a minute,” he said. “We didn’t hear Shannon’s answers yet. We need to let her have a turn.”

I think my heart caught on a little hook inside, and I reached over and ruffled his hair. “Thanks, man, “I said. “I appreciate that.”

Moreover, I appreciate him.

-S.

First, they shared the same bassinette in the Labour and Delivery Unit (while swaddled in many blankets and wearing preemie baby clothes).

Then they shared the same cot.

Then they went into two separate cots four months after they arrived – this photo is the last day they shared a cot.

Almost two years ago we lowered their cots.

And now more changes. We tried it before. In January we removed one side of their cots, and gave it a shot.

They weren’t ready, though. Nick in particular was keen to have the cot back. There was something about the security of it, some kind of soothing effect it had on him. We turned their beds back into cots, and they – and I – were happy.

And then a change came. It came about due to a sale on beds we found, toddler ones that would be toddler sized and would be really loved. Toddler beds that had a toddler distance from the ground and have a guardrail just in case.

On Saturday, Alastair assembled the bed with Nick’s help (if by help you mean conveniently relocating various important bits for it).

Ahead of their room renovation (which is to come in the next few months), we put their beds up. It was time. Nora has finally cottoned on to the fact that one can actually climb out of the cots, and in addition noises are being made by them about potties. The cots had to go.

A part of me felt like crying for days.

A part of me rejoiced.

Mostly I feel like that scene in that cheesy movie Starman, where Jeff Bridges goes from a newborn to an adult in 5 minutes. That’s how fast it’s going. One minute (or maybe it was twenty years ago) they were born. The next minute (or maybe it was my entire life) they are walking and talking and laughing and real. I want to stop every moment and I want to advance them. I want them to be soft, comforting infants and I want to travel with our laughing children. I want to clap as they sit for the first time and I can’t wait to see their reactions this Christmas, when they know that Santa is coming and they know what presents are.

I want to celebrate and cry. I wish I could describe how this felt. I wish I could have been prepared for feeling this way.

The twins love their new beds. Of course they do. They were ready, it was me that wasn’t ready, it was me that was being selfish. The twins have slept brilliantly and perfectly and hopefully that continues. They love their “red beds” and will love their room renovation and I know they do, I’m glad they do, I really am.

They’re growing up and of course they should. I just sometimes wish it didn’t ache so much. It feels like something happened on my watch – I was watching them and it changed and what does it mean, this change? Someone once commented that every stage is the best stage ever, and I think I agree with that. I love that they talk and giggle and sing and “want to help Mama”. I guess I just feel like a spectator along for the ride, and the ride is so wonderful and exhausting and perfect and hard that I never want it to end.

-S.

In a little over two months, the Lemonheads will turn three.

Staggering, isn’t it? Three. Three. Years. Old. I can’t believe it. I think it was yesterday that they were born. Or, more likely, they’ve been here for eleven hundred years, since the dawn of time or invention of the rock. The bad news is they’re growing up. The good news is they’re growing up, and in that growing up comes a reduction in nursery fees (pause for a whoop).

They’re proper people now. Proper chatty, laughy, totally random people. They are so different it’s amazing and I love seeing these facets of their personality come out now.

Let’s go ladies first.

Nora has become something of a bossy stroppy cow. She’s miles ahead of Nick in language, and when she talks I swear she’s the poshest little girl this suck of Buckingham Palace. When she tells you she can’t do something, it comes out: “I cahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhn’t do it, Mummy.” She’s so posh she’s bypassed plum and gone straight to uber-Sloane. She also likes to boss Nick around, get him to be her personal slave, and is generally a slight primadonna.

She is also very loving and her smile can blind you.

Nora continues to be a ham. She’s extraordinarily interested in arty things like music and drawing. At nursery she’s prolific to the point that we’ve donated paper she’s such a fan of drawing. At home she loves to make noise on everything and does mess around with their toy piano (which, for reasons best known to Nick, was here in the naughty corner as Nick had declared “Music, time out! Musn’t bite Nick!”)

She turns everything into a musical instrument, including an inflatable England hand we bought them to play with during the World Cup (in those naive early days when England stood a chance, you know.)

She continues to love very girly things like dressing up, as seen here while drawing on their easel. She’s wearing a bandanna, a pair of pink fairy wings, and her “pretty dress”, which in this instance in an England flag.

Somewhere Winston Churchill is wincing.

What’s so amazing to me is that she is so imaginative – she was given a hand-me-down of a pink Disney princess castle and a sparkly necklace/tiara set (which, as you can see, went down like the Titanic with her).

I bought her a few dolls to play with inside of it, and at almost three she has them talking to each other inside of the castle, pretending to read books and walk around. This amazes me, this early foray into imagination. I absolutely love it.

They both are very imaginative. I had a box out from some things I’d ordered, and the two of them thought it was Christmas. Nick flipped the box over and decided to “drive.”

Of course, when the engine died he had the woman get out and push while he steered. Typical.

And this is the two of them inside their “falling cave”, aka the cheap tent I got them which more often than not winds up upside down, as the two of them giggle and use it as a virtual hamster wheel.

Nick has left the horrid tantrum stage (for the most part) and become a little heart. He doesn’t like to draw but he loves to sing. At any opportunity that boy will burst into song. I love it, though – it’s not self-conscious in the least, which is one of the reasons why I love it (also, because he says “Old MacDonald, how’s your farm?” What’s not to love about that?) This is him laying back singing “Baa Baa Black Sheep” (his favorite) wearing questionable fashion choices (aka toddler clothes).

He’s keen on things looking right, lining up just so, and is key to have patterns done. He’s still into lights in a very big way, as evidenced by him playing with two fairy wands which light up.

But his real love is transportation.

The boy loves his trains.

Last weekend Alastair suggested a day out, and we all went on the Watercress Line, which is a steam train line that is not far from us, and which runs on lines that were abandoned but are now maintained (as are the trains) by train enthusiasts (and Alastair is joining them as a volunteer. You may see where Nick gets his train love for here.)

To say it was a hit was an understatement.

Nick was mesmerized.

He was in his element, not even a bit frightened by the noise and commotion of a giant steam train (when he saw the train driver during a break, he even shouted “Hello, man!” to him. That’s our boy, the not shy type when it comes to trains.)

It was a brilliant day out.

His joy was infectious, and he was on full alert during the entire day, passing out almost instantly when he was strapped into his car seat.

And I’m always so amazed at the two little people that we share a house with. They’re still babies, I’ll always call them babies, but they’re people now. Cheesy little fuckers sometimes, but people.

Walking the dog this morning, I thought about my life. I thought about my job and my marriage and my family and my lot in life. And I say this only because it’s how I felt then and how I feel now, not as any kind of “nose rubbing” or anything like that – I am the luckiest woman in the world.

-S.

Sometimes it’s intriguing, this idea that you can lift the lid on the past and breathe in.

It’s easy to do when you’ve been blogging for over 7 years. You can lift the lid off the archives and see who you were at any given point in time, because at no point in time have you ever been the same person. Despite the (over) confidence people think you have, the truth is you have always been deeply confused about who you are. It’s not insecure, everyone is insecure to a point.

I’ve had an eating disorder for years because I hated myself and, in hating myself, I hated my body. I took things out on it, I loathed it, half the time I could hardly look in the mirror. I dress only in black at work, always have done.

But things have started to change.

I got my first bikini in February of this year. I felt it was a slight challenge, this little strip of lycra. I felt like I had to step up to this flashy bit of purple, I felt that it didn’t have to defeat me. I didn’t have to bury it in the drawer I could – believe it or not – wear it and feel good about it.

I wore it once in Australia.

Last week I wore it every day.

The amazing thing about being there among so many other women was this – there were many women with bodies with lumps like mine. There were many women who were skinnier than I am. But there they were, this parade of women who were larger than I am and who embraced their curves, who wore a two-piece swimsuit and seemed to love themselves and their exposure to the sun. They were amazing and I wanted to be like them. Then I realized that there, in my two-piece, I was one of them. My body’s not perfect…but no one ever said it had to be.

My face has lines. I am heading towards the downhill slope of “late 30’s”, of course I have lines. My face has always felt too round and fat. My eyes are slanted and have Epicanthic folds. I have never understood my face and in return, never really worn make-up because of it. Easier to not bother. Easier to not make an effort.

Only recently I have realized that my face isn’t beautiful…but no one ever said it had to be.

(This isn’t me pimping for praise here, either. This is me being straight. I know a second-hand car when I see one. Beep beep.)

I’ve always had long thick hair. My hair was the one triumph (apart from my rack, which is spectacular. I’m just calling a spade a spare here.) I have thick dark hair that I have always worn long because it is my security blanket. It hides my face, it hides my appearance, and I can’t have short hair because of my Asian chipmunk-like cheeks. Short hair brings your face out. People notice you with your short hair. Life is better with the long hair and the black clothes and virtually no makeup. It’s better than I hide, it’s better that I am not noticed.

Only, why is that?

Who was I really hiding from?

All these years of my life I’ve been whatever people wanted me to be for so long that I never figured out what I wanted me to be. I’ve got that now, though. The past year of my life has shown me things I am and things I am not.

There are many things to be afraid of, ranging from the more serious things like disease, job loss, and losing a loved all and moving all the way down the scale of fear to fear of Katie Price and the possible return of the shoulder pad. What I am not is afraid of not being perfect. Not anymore. I’m not perfect, I’m not beautiful, I’m not special…but no one said I had to be.

What I am is me. I think I’m beginning to like me, and I am fortunate enough to have a man who thinks I am beautiful and sexy, just as I am. I have faults and am still a bit screwed, that’s for sure, but there are things in there that are good. I have started wearing just a bit of makeup. I have given myself the solemn vow that the wardrobe, it shall have colors and it will be good. Turquoise, purples, oranges, yellow – I want to wear color. My figure isn’t a cover model’s but there’s a man I share a life with who tells me that I am sexy and have the perfect figure, and I like being that for him. I like it so much, I might as well like it for me.

And today I cut my hair off.

I love it.

It’s a crazy ride, this getting to know yourself. But if it’s just a bit of hair, a bit of slap on the face (and no, I won’t be wearing that red, red lipstick!) and the ability to say that I’ll put on the bikini, faulty body be damned, then I have to believe that I’m being true to myself, and I have to believe that in being true to who this person is that I am, that two little people in my life will follow and never have to know what it’s like to hide.

-S.

PS – if you’ve been around this blog for any period of time then you will know Teresa. Teresa has been commenting here for many years, she’s an absolutely incredible woman and someone I call a good friend. I trust her and I love her, too. Her brother and sister-in-law had twins on December 31, 2008. They were micro-preemies, and one of the little guys Dominic isn’t doing well and is in St. Louis awaiting a lung transplant. Teresa’s brother is in St. Louis with his son, while Teresa’s sister-in-law is at home in MI with the other twin and the family’s daughter. Her brother is struggling to find accommodation and the whole situation is so serious it hurts me to read it, let alone know someone I care about is going through it. Teresa’s set up a webpage to help defray the costs that her brother faces in trying to stay in St. Louis with their sick son, as well as requests for info for places to stay (he’s on the waiting list at both a local hostel and the Ronald McDonald House). I know times are hard, but if you have a spare bit of cash, there’s a Paypal page here, along with some of the story of what’s happened and photos of Dominic. Love you, Teresa. Hang in there, gorgeous.