Letting Go!!!!

I’m struggling this week. Chick is sick again and had to be picked up from school early but I’m not entirely sure what’s going on with her. This girl of mine that never sleeps slept for the whole afternoon and when she wasn’t sleeping she was crying because her head hurts (and as I started writing this she promptly threw up all over the couch....poor little thing). Another trip to the Doctors tomorrow...let’s hope it’s not more Swine Flu!!

I also injured myself this week in another parking incident with my car. No I don’t need glasses and I’m not a bad driver my parking just sucks. I wasn’t properly looking around me when I was reversing (rather too quickly) carefully in the dark and in a hurry as usual. I may have clipped a rather large kerb at some speed which has resulted in Whiplash. I don’t think I’ve ever heard it mentioned before what a Son of a Bitch whiplash actually is......man it hurts. So now I’m popping pain killers like there is no tomorrow and smell delightfully of deep heat but on the plus side the damn car is fine!!

The thing that I am struggling with the most though is Chick’s Dad (again!!!) He told me several weeks ago that his girlfriend is pregnant. (Just to clarify my taste in men sucks big time!) So this will be child number 3 by woman number 3 (I was the first and obviously the best!!) and I hate how badly this reflects on my choice in men but that’s a whole different blog waiting to written. Anyways, I think he knew by my reaction that I wasn’t overly impressed with his news. You see it’s a relatively new thing him being involved in Chick’s life and although I’m happy for her sake he’s involved I would be quite happy not to see him at all. I’m trying really hard to make it all as nice as possible but I have all this emotion that I don’t know what to do with and I need to find a way of letting it all go.

I believe that he thinks everything is fine and that he is good at his role as
Chick’s Dad but I’m all 30 minutes a week does not make you anywhere near a good Father. I deal with the other 10,080 minutes in the week as well as all the financial stuff (he doesn’t contribute at all) and the school stuff and all the everything else stuff that you deal with as a Parent. So when he told me about this (unplanned) pregnancy although I wasn’t shocked I was ? I don’t even know what I think. I came to the conclusion that it isn’t really any of my business and as long as he keeps seeing Chick and she’s happy then I should be fine. So I’d convinced myself that it would all be fine and it was until yesterday when they went public with the news.

Obviously in this day and age going public means they both had it as their Facebook status. Again this is fine and none of my business apart from the fact that he hasn’t yet explained any of this to Chick or Child number 2 or Woman number 2.....way to go big guy! Now I know that we have friends in common that will probably mention it next time I see them so what do I do now? Tell Chick? Leave it to chance and hope nobody says anything? See now it is my problem and I’m annoyed that it’s my problem! I’ve also discovered after having it all bouncing around my brain all night that my main emotion regarding the whole thing is jealousy!

Yep that’s right jealousy!

Horrible, horrible emotion but probably not for the reasons you think. I don’t want to be with him and I’m glad that he’s happy with his girlfriend. It’s not the fact that she’s pregnant because to be honest I can’t think of anything worse and I’m gonna stick with it being just Chick and I.

I guess I’m jealous that they are happily pregnant because I didn’t get that. No siree. Chick was a huge surprise for me and having a baby was a big deal. He was never interested and so I did EVERYTHING on my own or with the help of MY family and friends. My family helped me buy all the stuff that I needed, they took care of me when I was sick for the middle five months of being pregnant, my brother came to the hospital visits with me and I went to the scans on my own. When Chick was born it was only my family that put announcements in the paper and again helped take care of me and Chick.

When he had child number two his family helped with everything that I’ve described above and put announcements in the paper and that’s great except when I saw that in the paper my heart broke a little bit. Partly for Chick but mainly I just felt sorry for my own ass. So now here we are again going through exactly the same motions, like bringing a child into the world isn’t a big deal. Well I’m sorry but for me it’s a HUGE deal and I’m not going to get all that being nicely pregnant stuff EVER so excuse me if I don’t join in the Congratulations.

I do however feel like a weight’s been lifted just writing about it so maybe I can start to let it go and eventually maybe I’ll be able to join in with genuinely congratulating them. Now I’m gonna shut down the computer, have a last 5 minute pity party and then go snuggle with Chick and remind myself how damn lucky I am to have her. No matter what happens with him and his ever growing brood at least I am sound in the knowledge that if nothing else I provide her with unconditional love and stability.

Dressing up time!!!

So it’s that time of year again when we have to decide what to dress as for Halloween. I have no imagination and I’m not a huge fan of dressing up but have on occasion been forced into it. This is me and JoJo when we were extremely young:

This is us with Sarah at Halloween a few years (and a couple of children!!!) later:

I love this picture as I think we all look quite hot as well as happy!!!

The last few years Chick has had various costumes but somehow seems to only have a witch theme. This is her being a goofball last year:

And 4 years ago:

Awwwwwwww......soooooo cute!

This year I am being unreasonably tight and she has to make a costume out of things that she already has or that can be bought at the pound shop!!! I am picking up her theme and trying to be a Witch although actually I look just like I should be in the Rocky Horror Show minus the stockings!!!!!! Watch this space on Saturday to see just how ridiculous we actually look!!!!

This parenting gig is hard!!!!!

There are many things that I find hard about being a Single Parent. Making decisions all on my own is tough. The toughest decision for me so far was which School to send Chick too but I struggle with some of the smaller stuff as well. I’m very lucky that I have good friends and family to discuss my thoughts with but ultimately all the decisions lay in my hands....oh gosh the responsibility!!!!! Nobody tells you about the stuff like this before you become a Parent....that you will spend endless hours agonising over things that your kids are trying to deal with and trying to make good decisions on their behalf. I’m sure all Parents have issues dealing with this stuff but when Chick comes home from school upset I have no-one to balance my outrage or calm me down or make me see reason!!!

Back when Chick was in Reception she had a huge birthday party that she invited the whole class to so that no-one was left out. Later that year a girl in her class had a party and Chick was the only girl that was left out. I really struggled with my anger and trying to explain to Chick that sometimes life in unfair without completely losing the plot. I talked it through with her and finally she agreed that although she was very unhappy about it the world would not end. By the end of that day Chick was fine about it all but not me. See my dislike for the girl and her Mother has just grown and grown. This year the girls are in the same class again and although not particularly friendly are on ok terms. In two weeks Chick will be turning Seven and again having a party. So we spent the whole weekend writing invites and printing directions for the party. I was adamant that the girl who left Chick out would not be invited to the party so that (I) we could get our own back......grown up I know!!!

However, once all the invites were done and we’d invited almost everyone in the class I relented. You see rightly or wrongly I would hate another child to feel the way that Chick did when she was left out of the party. I’m not sure if I’m doing the right thing but me being petty and childish isn’t going to help Chick get along or set her any kind of example at all. When she gave out the invites in the playground this morning the other Mum barely acknowleged it....now I don’t condone violence but I surely would like to slap her just a little bit. I also asked the Teacher to keep an eye out to make sure that we hadn’t missed or upset anyone by omission. It was hardly much effort but will hopefully stop another child being left out.

Reading this post back to myself I understand that some of you may dismiss this as my being a ridiculous overprotective Mother and maybe I am. I know that life doesn’t finish if you are left off of the party list and that life isn’t always fair but I’d like to be able to protect Chick from it for a couple more years at least. So what do you think? Am I doing the right thing or being an overprotective Mother????

Reminiscing!!!

As previously mentioned here I have no pictures of my Brothers and I when we were young. After writing this post I asked around the whole family if they would dig out any old pictures of us and let me borrow them. Two of my Auntie’s have come up with the goods, so today I went to visit one of them and have a look at the old pictures. Jen is my Auntie on my Dad’s side and immediately that I got the first picture out of course I got all emotional because it’s of my Dad and Grandma, neither of whom are with us any longer:


I still miss my Grandma every day, bless her!! So we didn’t have any luck finding pictures of me and the boys together but Jen did have one of my school pictures from when I was a teenager (circa 1990):

Hot stuff huh?? Yeah not so much!!! I don’t think I’ve changed too much apart from the fact that I now have an extra chin and frizz control for my hair!!

Tomorrow Delia is coming to see me with all of her photo albums so maybe I’ll be able to find out some cute ones of me when I was small…..actually maybe I won’t get my hopes up!!!!

Autumn....

.....is definitely here. We've been for a walk in the woods today with Sarah, The Punk and Ruby in the lovely english rain. It was actually much more pleasant than it sounds and we were well dressed and prepared for it. The colours in the woods were amazing and I got a couple of really cute pictures:

I'm ready for a Saturday afternoon nap now although I'm sure Chick won't go for that!!!!

Friday Foto

Bit of a random picture today folks but I’ve been shopping and got my hands on a bargain that I need to share with y’all. In roughly nine weeks Chick and I will be flying off to Oz to spend a month with JoJo and Mike and to help celebrate their wedding. I’ve been trying to get organised and today spotted these:

That’s right…..Factor 30 for our lily white English skin. When we got to the Checkout they’d reduced it even further…..guess how much each bottle cost???????
£0.08 pence…….Yep 8p for each bottle that is normally over £8. Is it sad that I love me a bargain so much I had to share it!!!

Happy Friday Everyone xxx