Christmas Present. Christmas Past. A lesson in how to be really crap.

Every year I say the same, but this year is going to be different. While I do believe that John Lewis is probably the best place ever, even my love of epic proportions does not stretch to the Oxford Street Branch on the 23^rd of December – a visit that has happened the last two years running. Each will remain in my mind for all the wrong reasons for all eternity. Panic, queues, sweat, frenzied buying spending pointless pounds on throw away crap. So, I resolve: Not again. Oh no. not this year.

There will be a different approach this year. I pinky promise.

I’ve already done about 50% of Little Companion’s Xmas AND Birthday (in Jan). I know – check me. I sat at my desk, logged into Amazon and got worryingly excited about a whole lot of Quentin Blake books  that I’d never seen before. I bought about 5 of them. I threw in a David Walliams illustrated book called ‘Gangsta Granny’ – it’s got to be a classic, right? Some audio books to keep Little Companion entertained in the car, and more importantly to save my sanity because if I have to listen to the ‘Very Hungry Catapillar’ one more time I think I’ll build myself my very own little house called a cocoon and crawl inside for a hell of a lot longer than two weeks, I can tell you. So I have made head way and I am feeling happy about it.

But... "Too easy!" I hear you cry. Yes... Sadly, that’s what I was thinking too.

This year I will be Thoughtful. I will make effort. There will be some form of personal touch and definitely no Boots gift sets at all.

So I sit down to think about what I should do. I’m quite creative, but the crux of the problem is that I’m seriously lazy sometimes. I think of all these amazing things to do, I get the stuff, I make the things, but here is my guilty secret. The process of finding the address, writing it on the package, getting stamps and putting the packages in the post kills me EVERY time. Literally every time. I hate it. I hate that it is at least a 3 tiered process, I hate that every time I don’t have one of my friend’s addresses I have to ask for it, again, and they know they've given it to me before, so are probably mildly irritated by me asking them for it again, and now they know that i'm going to send them something. All this because the last time I asked for it, I forgot to write it in my address book. The process is one of those things in life that manages to help me spiral in to a pit of self-loathing that Britney Spears circa 2008 would have been proud of.

It is mildly better now I sit by the franking machine at work, but not hugely as I can’t take the piss. But again, I am resolved that this year will be different. I have already located my address book. Every friend that I ask (again) for their address (SORRY!) - its going straight in. Fact. I am going to brave the Post Office if it gives me a hernia.

So I move on to thinking again. What am I going to do. Make cards? Make Xmas tree decorations? Baking! Biscuits! Short Bread! Oh god.. you can take the girl out of Scotland… I’ll be giving everyone tartan scotty dogs in a minute. Shoot me now.

Let’s be realistic, it’s probably going to be more likely that I’ll go to lidl bash up their Lebkuchen & put them in a slightly battered “homemade” box, get Little Companion to put far too much glitter on them, and go with that. As my previous posts re: trying to live cheaply proves, I’m all for bending rules, cheating and lying – within reason of course.

Had dinner with a friend recently, actually at Naked Chef Husband’s restaurant, she told she’d made elder flower cordial & sloe gin. Genuinely wanted to punch her – but didn’t because she’s so bloody lovely and perfect.  

So aside from fake homemade biscuits, I do have an idea. It’s such a cop out I know, but I have it covered – relatively easy, stress free, and I can add a personal touch to it: All relatives will receive Photos. Wedding photos to be precise, from 2009. They’ve been dropping not so subtle, well actually quite frankly sarcastic comments about ‘needing’ them for about 18 months now. And rightly so. So I know that they will definitely like them. My life just one guilty lurch after another where I’m constantly reminded of what I haven’t done, what I need to do… All I need to do now is remember to take a memory stick home, load the pics up onto it, fire up Photoshop work a bit of wizardry on them and get it to a Boots somewhere near me. Then post them out, with a handmade card. Done. Easy peasy.

I’ll let you know once I’ve achieved all of the above. I hope you’re still reading in 2017, and I’ll let you know how John Lewis is looking circa December 24^th 2011.

how hard can it be? (part 2)

The answer to the above question is: nigh on impossible. I failed either miserably or triumphantly, I can’t quite make up my mind.

As I mentioned in my previous post, I figured that I would save on travel costs by cycling to work. My annual travel card costs £3.52 per day. If I didn’t cycle then I would have precisely £2.36 to spend for the entire week. By cycling not only would I be saving money on travel costs, but I would also be getting fit and negating any need to go to my proverbially diamond encrusted yoga classes. One major spanner: due to the season and the length of time it would take me to get to work on a bike I would most definitely need bike lights, and I had no idea where they were.

Sunday night I was being lazy and horizontal, glued to both my telly and twitter manically tweeting about (hashtag) Xfactor. Therefore, I did not do the necessary preparation to get on my bike on Monday morning as originally planned. Monday evening I returned from work and had a look around. No bike lights anywhere. I gingerly stepped into unchartered territory: the shed. This is a foreign place and I have no idea where anything in there lives. It felt a bit like snooping around in someone else’s house. It was no use. I’d just have to wait until Naked Chef Husband came home.

After putting little companion to bed I put on the ‘Life In Balance’ channel and did one of their work outs. It was free and I was feeling smug. I felt I knew that this week would be, if a little quiet, easy. Naked chef husband came home and I enquired about the bike lights. He scratched his head and denied knowledge of their location – he had looked for them though, he assured me... I was beginning to panic now, as the challenge of living off £20 for one week had, in a split second, moved on to trying to live off £2.36 for a week. This was a slightly more daunting prospect, but still in my weirdly positive mind that is clearly no stranger to denial, very much doable.

Tuesday came and went  – I had a number of chats with my friends at work about my frugal week. And it became clear that they really didn’t understand why I was doing it.

“Seriously, why?” They asked me.

“Well,” I said,” It’s a challenge, isn’t it?”

“But why?!” they asked again.

I didn’t really have an answer… I was beginning to ask myself the same thing.

Wednesday morning at work the stationary company that I use delivered our stationary order with a free massive tin of Quality Street. I instantly contemplated taking it home and using it as a Christmas present for someone. I found myself fantasising about walking into Sainsbury’s doing a supermarket sweep style dash and walking out without paying. Living cheaply was fast turning me into a wannabe criminal. In the end I shared the Quality Street with my colleagues, but only after having a sharp word with myself in the ladies and putting about 1/3^rd of the tin in my handbag.

About three people asked, “where have all the purple ones gone?!”

 I shrugged. HA! “No idea.”

Little did they know I had morphed, practically overnight, into a common thief.

During the day I remembered on Saturday I would be taking Little Companion to one of his friend's 3^rd birthday party. Thankfully Naked Chef Husband was off work so I asked him nicely to go to the shop and purchase necessary present and card.

One of the colleagues that I’d told about the challenge offered to take me out to lunch on Thursday, so I gratefully accepted and swap the tinned goods lunches for a Byron Burger and French fries. It was triumphant and I don’t know if it was because I’d been having such crappy lunches up to that point, but it tasted like one of the best burgers I’d ever had.

Thursday evening was the turning point in the week in terms of my spending. Sadly, as with most lapses in my will power, there was a lot of alcohol involved. As a company we were taken out by the one of our contractors. It was a free evening and I was still feeling confident that I could get through the rest of this week spending no more than £2.36. Somewhere between the 6^th cocktail and the karaoke I decided it was a great idea to go on with the others to an awful West End club which shall remain nameless, as the majority of my friendship group would disown me if they knew where I went.

 There were Jager Bombs, there was a bottle vodka at our table – I didn’t bother with the mixer. There was dancing to Rhianna. Well, I say dancing I really mean staggering with my hair over my face. Suddenly it was 3am and I had to get home. There were four of us left and we shared a cab. Somehow this journey took 1.5 hours, and so I got home at 4.30am. I paid around £15 for the cab, but If I’m honest, I can’t really remember the exact amount. Shambolic.

On Friday morning after two hours of sleep I woke up, still heavily pickled in desperate need of carbs and Starbucks. I had both – I think I spent about £7 in starbucks. One saving grace is that I have a starbucks card, which was fully loaded when the week started, so no actual cash was spent and I saved about £1 by using it. At lunch time I had a little lie down in the hidden meeting room at the back of our office whilst being fed Domino’s Pizza by my lovely and helpful colleague. There was a two for one offer on the Domino’s that day, so it only cost me £5 but that brought me to approximately £24.64 over spent. Unsurprisingly on Friday night I was in bed by 9.30pm. Cheap, if nothing else.

Saturday literally could not arrive soon enough. I figured that the challenge finished at around 7pm on Saturday. This is mainly because I had planned ages ago to go out on Saturday night, so in my head, all I had to do was live, for ‘free’ until 7pm on the 26^th November. It wasn’t in the rules, but I’d decided that that was how it was going to be, so that how it was.

On Saturday morning Little Companion and I bummed around the house, playing Jesse and Bullseye (Little Companion on my back saying “Giddy up Bullseye!” whilst kicking me in the kidneys). In the afternoon I took Little Companion to the birthday party with the “free” present. He was, unsurprisingly, the most ‘boisterous’ child there.

A list of questionable behaviours:

·         running away about 5 times

·         getting every cherry tomato on the ‘healthy snack plate’ and squashing them one by one so that he could watch the pips squirt out of them, then leaving them as he doesn’t like tomatoes

·         throwing a tantrum

·         pushing another child over looking up at me and grinning wildly

·         planting a wet kiss on his best male friend’s mouth (cute, but a little inappropriate)

·         Thumped the birthday mascot tiger on the head

But, all of this paled into insignificance because the whole thing was free! I felt distracted from Little Companion because I was compelled to shove as much free food down my neck – I didn’t really give a damn that I was essentially food blocking a bunch of bewildered 3 year olds. Thankfully the other parents were impressed with my food stealing ways and happily joined in. This diminished my guilt somewhat.

And then came 7pm. I’d made it, HOORAY and my falling off only really happened because I went out and got very very pissed, and no one really counts anything when they’re sozzled, right? So what did I do to celebrate? I went out for a feed, drink and a dance with my friends.

This week was a lesson in the following:

1.       Letting your morals go a little.

2.       Asking nicely for things.

3.       Being more open to a bit of help - why not let people take you out for lunch?

4.       Bending the rules.

5.       The fact that boozing it up will ALWAYS result in a failure of will power. Always.

Much to my relief, I read my fellow frugal living friends Rachel's and Helen's blogs, and they both had fairly similar experiences. All that being said, I think we did quite well really, and I am very happy to say that I won’t be having another tuna sandwich or tinned soup for a very long time.

how hard can it be? (part 1)

I recently suggested to two friends, one of whom lives in Edinburgh and the other in Prague, after reading this article by Stuart Jeffies that we should take a leaf out of his book and try frugal living for one week. Both ladies are talented bloggers, and so we decided we’d do it and write about it. Natch. We started on Sunday 20^th November.

As preparation for the week ahead I started to look at what I do with £20 on a regular basis. £20 covers 1 Bikram Yoga session with 1 bottle of water and a towel. It covers 2.5 hours of babysitting. It covers 4/5ths of my work lunch spend for the week. It covers 2 weeks’ worth of Starbucks coffee. It covers approx 1.25 bottles of wine in a bar. Before I quit smoking, £20 would cover about 5 days’ worth of death sticks. All in all, it doesn’t cover very much.

I recently had an in depth psychometric profile done at work. At one point in the feedback session it took an unexpected and alarming turn towards my personal life and he hazarded a very well educated guess about my spending habits. My spending habits, by the way, are something that I definitely don’t like to think about at all – I get stabs of fear/guilt when I try to catalogue what I have bought over the course of a month and do the classic: buy it, shove it into the back of the wardrobe, and pretend it never happened with worrying regularity.

The assessor said,

“I hate to think how much money you spend – most probably like water. You love nice things. The money in itself isn’t important, just the end goal of having lots and lots of beautiful things – clothes probably.”

(WOW.)

I laughed nervously. He was spot on. I love nice things – clothes, art, technology, books, restaurants, nights out with friends… the list goes on.

I have what I believe is a natural talent when, in a shop or looking at a beautiful spread of products in a magazine, of homing in on the most expensive possible item & fantasising about how exactly I NEED it, how it would be PERFECT in my house/wardrobe/life. This is only about a million times worse when browsing online, as the purchase, in my (completely incorrect and slightly mad) eyes is only theoretical. No actual money has gone (hate to say this, but yes it has). And don’t get me started on eBay: Internet + value + competition = obsession + poverty. This is the curse of good and insatiable taste, I say. But having said all that, back to the matter at hand: how hard can it really be? It is only one week after all.

The Rules:

£20 has to last one week to cover everything other than rent and bills. Anything that you can forage from your freezer/fridge/cupboards is free and other than that, you have to use your £20. That includes travel from Tooting to Holborn for five of the seven days but it’s OK, I have a master plan – cycle to work for three of the days.

My next post will catalogue Sunday – Saturday worth of no spending…. Unsurprisingly, it is harder than it looks from the start line, mainly because I couldn’t find my effing bike lights.

Stay tuned!

about turn!

Since my last post life has been ticking over – nothing much changing, Naked Chef Husband has been working hard at his new project, I have also been working pretty hard, and little companion has been growing up day by day. He talks so much more, he is funny and naughty, and is a delight to be around. He has also started French school which is helping his second language skills no end.

In my first post I talked about the two number twos that are most commonly talked about when you are mother to a toddler. I am... well, pleased isn’t exactly the most accurate word to use right now, but maybe relieved would work? Yes, let’s say that I am relieved to say that we have ventured into the scary world of potty training (one of the number twos) which I have to say is... well, not that scary actually.

Before we started, I read up in what we call ‘The Book’ which consists of anything from Internet articles to Gina Ford to Miriam Stoppard to a whole bunch of other people’s books – basically it is the resource pool that you refer to when you have no idea what you are doing. I refer to The Book regularly, in many different walks of life. I bought Little Companion a book called I want my Potty by Tony Ross which planted the seed of doubt about how great nappies are in his mind – as Little Princess (main character in said book) says, ‘nappies are YUCKK’ something that Little Companion now gets great satisfaction from repeating at high volume.

Just quickly - I feel like I've come into the genius that is Tony Ross a bit late in the game with Little Companion's developmental mile stones - there seems to be a brilliantly illustrated 'little princess' book for everything from potty training to eating solid food - how have I only just noticed these fantastic and funny books?

In the first week our saintly Nanny, went in the deep end, with pants and trousers at all times, and not a nappy in sight, which resulted in, on average, 6 accidents a day and precisely no bodily fluid ever going anywhere near the potty and our volume of washing doubling over night. Not successful – back to the drawing board i.e. back into nappies while we regroup and have a think about how to address this, now, problem.

Second week was a no go - mainly due to us all - as in me, Little Companion, Nanny, Naked Chef Husband and My Father, not being on the same page as one and other, nappies were well and truly donned in that week. Potty was nowhere to be seen.

Naked chef husband and I had one of only two memorable disagreements  we’ve had this year on the topic.  I’m pleased to report that he eventually conceded and told me that I was unequivocally right and apologised. HA! Talk about Breaking News... Not to delve too deeply into the nuances of the disagreement, I felt that both he and my father – another of Little Companion’s primary carers, couldn’t really be arsed with potty training.  The reason why I thought this is because they are both massive neat freaks and they hate the thought of any type of mess in their homes'. My beliefs were backed up with hard evidence - when I’d asked both of them, on separate occasions, in a fairly nonchalant manner how the potty training had gone, they had both said something along the lines of, 'Oh, he wee’d on the floor, so I put him back into a nappy'. Not exactly the report I’d been hoping to hear.


After Naked Chef Husband shouted at me, saying that 'living with me was like living in army barracks’ (fairly harsh, I think) and 24 hours of silent treatment, the aforementioned complete U turn and apology happened, and we were both, once again, singing from the same song sheet. Potty training will be messy – there will be rank bodily fluid involved, but everyone that looks after Little Companion has to be on board with that reality, and carry on with the plan anyway or it won’t work.

Week three seemed to be taking after week two, until my mum looked after Little Companion for a day. They stayed at home and pottered about, he was naked from the waist down and was verbally encouraged by my mum ever 30 seconds to sit on the potty. Is this where the phrase 'pottered about' comes from?? (side note - no this is where the phrase comes from...) This resulted in success – and praise was then showered on him, in the form of what I like to call rewards, but most others would call bribery: Chocolate Buttons! Following on from this casual break through whenever we are at home Little Companion is essentially naked on the bottom half, and voluntarily goes for a wee wee in the potty. Hurrah! Success! He is consistently rewarded with chocolate and it works! It was endorsed by my mother, and is therefore not morally corrupt.

We are yet to venture out into the great wide world without nappies (apart from the disastrous first week) but I have a feeling that the introduction of chocolate into the equation means that this step is not far off at all.

There are two things that I have learnt through this process – the first is that mum’s really do know best, and the second is that being calm and not too bothered by things really is the best way to keep your sanity whilst striving for success.

I reckon that by July we’ll be completely potty trained. She says with absolute confidence. Ahem.

Plain Sailing

I have been off line for a while. I wish I could say that I’ve
been involved in incredibly important or life changing events over the past
month or so, but I haven’t; I’ve just been living my day to day life.
Highlights include indulging in a little too much chocolate, actually scrap
that, far too much chocolate, drinking a bit less than I was last year (well
done me), not training for the now abandoned half marathon, trying to remember
to do more loads of washing, remembering to feed Leroy his incredibly expensive
food, being busy at work, basically I’ve been figuring out on an ongoing basis
how to be the best mother, wife, employee and friend that I can be.

Before I start the bulk of this next entry I should say it’s
quite a serious one, about marriage. Maybe I’ve lost my funny. Oh god, please
no. The thing is I have to get this entry out there. A preface to this entry is
the statement: I love my husband. The sentence doesn’t really do the emotion
justice, I could throw in a few hyperbolic statements, like I love my husband SO
MUCH or I love my husband more than anyone or anything on this earth, but I’m
not going to. What I am going to do is use some really really cheesy  symbolism. Our love story is like the ocean.(?HAHA ok, so I haven’t lost my funny, it’s just coming out in a really different way.
Christ. Our love story is like a ocean – that’s worthy of a Facebook status.)  It runs so deep (REALLY?!? I’m reading this back and laughing out loud for all the wrong reasons – this is meant to be
serious. Sorry.), sometimes its calm waters, like it is just now, and sometimes
it’s pretty stormy. Sorry about that. Now you’re done wiping the sick from the
corners of your mouth let me go on... This entry covers the stormy bit. The last
month of silence covers the calm bit.

Naked Chef is an absolutely fabulous man – warm, gentle, loving, funny, mildly annoying (in a way that makes me smile to myself when he’s not looking), but above all the kindest man i know. I would like to say thank you to him for all the help and support I have been on the receiving end of
over our three and a half years together.

Right, with that out of the way, I recently finished reading
‘Committed’ by Elizabeth Gilbert (Liz). That’s her of ‘Eat, Prey, Love’ fame – ‘Committed’
is the sequel to ‘Eat, Prey, Love’, and is both a conversational memoir about
Liz’s thoughts on marriage, while being a research piece on the same topic. I read
the first of Liz’s memoirs in about October or November of last year, and
bought ‘Committed’ straight after, but shelved it, and only recently picked it
up again.

Reading ‘Eat, Prey, Love’ was interesting – I read it for my
work book club. For me, Liz is a bit of a conundrum. So incredibly American,
and very self aware, while reading her works I lurch from being intensely
irritated by her U.S.A-ness (she would italicise the important words in her sentences
– and I could picture her saying EYE-talic not it-alic. To me this is annoying,
but perhaps not entirely her fault...), to being incredibly enlightened and
interested by her thoughts on life, love and the struggle all of us go through
trying to be the best person we can be with someone else by our side.

When I was reading ‘Eat, Prey, Love’ Naked Chef and I were
going through what can only be described as a disgusting patch in our marriage.
We were lost, we were drowning (in that vomit ocean!!), we were hurt, we were
lonely and confused, and I think it’s important to be frank about this, I was
obsessed with the thought of getting the fuck out of there. It was pretty much
all I could think about. In hind sight (always great) I think I was being a
foul human. I was being selfish, moody, nasty, remote and drinking far too much.
Don’t get me wrong, there was no vodka hidden under a bleach bottle in the sink
cupboard, but I was going out probably 4 times a week – not the best for
someone who really should have been at home, looking after her beautiful son,
trying with every ounce of effort she could muster to attempt to save her
marriage, whilst maintaining her newly purchased house. I was mainly going out
as much as I was because I was hiding from all of the above and the knock on
effect was that in my opinion I was being a crappy wife, and realistically, a
less than wonderful mother. It was a really, really sad, confusing time. I felt
like I was constantly lying to myself.

Reading ‘Eat, Prey, Love’ I felt like I was
actually in almost the exact same scenario as Liz found herself in at the
beginning of the book: miserable and lost because of her disintegrating marriage
with no real plan about how to make things better. That’s where the
similarities end really. Liz chooses to leave her marriage and embarks on a year
of travel to get over the break-up, where as I tentatively, thankfully and now happily
chose to stay in mine. But that’s not to say that her musings on the institution
of marriage itself aren’t insightful and interesting as well as incredibly helpful.
I strongly recommend you read ‘Committed’ if you are a married woman, wondering
what happened to you – how the hell did you end up here??

After I got married in August 2009 I found myself feeling
sporadically incredibly uncomfortable with my new found (previously yearned
for) status: ‘wife’. It’s a feeling that really stayed with me until Naked Chef
and I got to our make or break period, just before Christmas in 2010. From the
point I got married, up to Christmas just gone, I just couldn’t reconcile that I
was 27, a wife, a mother and living in a town house with the man that I was
going to be with for the rest of my life. I’ll repeat that last bit, as while
in theory you should consider it before you marry, the ‘for the rest of your
life’ bit, for me, only really hit the morning after, when I went, ‘Woah there,
Forever, you say? Well, that’s a fucking long time.’ Something I probably
should have considered beforehand you say? Well, in return I say I didn’t have
time, I was PLANNING A WEDDING.

Another thing that I would think about was, that I missed
flirting. I miss having a cheeky snog with a stranger who has PICKED ME for the
night. Never mind that someone had picked me forever (that incredibly daunting
word again), I seemed to be incapable of moving my focus away from what I now
call my other trouser leg of time: my ‘what if’ trouser leg. It’s not really
that helpful for your actually present, to be constantly focusing on the
possibility that if X or Y had/hadn’t happened, then you could be travelling/much
thinner/still able to go out whenever I please/a completely different person
right now, and sure as hell not yet married forever. It was this thinking that
brought me to behaving in the despicable way that I did before I decided to
clean up my act. I’m not proud of it, but I think and hope that there are
people out there who can see where I’m coming from, and not judge me as an
unforgivable character having read my above confession.

In the period when Naked Chef husband and I were flailing about,
not being very good at being married to one and other, I had some deep and much
appreciated conversations; much like Liz did when she was writing ‘Committed’,
with women about marriage and relationships. These conversations were hugely
informative and were integral to helping me make up my mind for my part of the
decision making process behind us choosing to keep trying to make our marriage
work.

From reading ‘Eat, Prey, Love’, ‘Committed’ and from the
conversations I have had over the past little while about the state of matrimony,
I have come to the below, probably not massively ground breaking
internationally but never the less, in my case, life changing conclusions.

Marriage and relationships are hard and everyone has their
doubts and gripes about or with their partner.

If you are going through the kinds of decisions that Naked
Chef husband and I were – like should we separate or not, if so who should
leave etc, talking about ‘it’ all the time is exhausting. It is also not always
the most useful thing to do. Try to talk about ‘it’ at designated times or
places, so that you have a bit of emotional relief from the constant worry.


Kindness, tolerance and honesty are the most important things
in any relationship and a lot of people in long term relationships forget about
them. We did.

In the union of two individuals each one will need to adapt
slightly to the other, and while mostly this is a smooth process that happens
over time, there are crunch points where you learn things about yourself and
the other person. It is rarely pleasant, but you are always a little wiser at
the end of it. I have to say, I am feeling a little wise at the moment. Can you
tell?

Hiding from a problem NEVER makes it go away – talking to
each other about it (and it HAS to be to each other, not anyone else – this is
important) is the first step to making things better.

When deciding to stay in a relationship or not, the
question, ‘is it really that bad?’ is an important one.

If you’re not having sex, worrying and not talking about it,
there is a deeper problem. The lack of sex can become like a third person in
your relationship if you are not careful.

Talk, talk, talk.

Padstow does something inexplicable and intoxicating for
relationships in a good way. This is a tried and tested fact.

If you go into couple’s counselling you have to really try
and not just go through the motions, because besides anything else it’s bloody
expensive.

Someone told me that their spouse and they spent nearly two
years living in what they described as ‘icy hatred’. The couple in question had
gone through two separate affairs, years on different continents, and the birth
of their two children, before they reached this patch of black ice. They had counselling
and have been together ever since – but, the counselling took a long time to
work. Two years. Icy hatred. If they did that and made it, then I can always
try harder to make my marriage work.

Sending seedy text messages, however alien it feels at first, works to rekindle dwindling sex life.

Having the love and support of your friends and family to buoy up your relationship is actually really important – much more so than I ever realised before we went through this.

If you have children, you have to make time for date night,
and you have to have some ‘just adults’ time. Otherwise, you go mental. Naked
Chef and I only realised this when we went away for a couple of days after the
crunch point of 2010 – it was magic, and was like we were getting to know each
other again. We now try to go out together, just in adult company, at least two
times a month.

Laughing with each other is good, but don’t use humour to
mask underlying issues.

If your parents, like mine did, see and comment on the fact that
you have ‘dark times and places’ as an individual, and ask your partner to be
forgiving of that fact, it may be time for you to face up to these daemons and
politely ask them to bugger off, so that they stop getting in the way of the
more important things in life.This leads me onto my last rather old hat nugget
of wisdom.

However difficult and however seemingly obvious , you have
to like yourself to be able to make your relationship better. I’ve heard it a
thousand times before, but honestly, never really understood how one does it. I
always greeted this phrase with a silent, rueful, sarcastic, ‘yeah, right.’ How
the hell can l like myself – as I said before, I was and still can be, at the
top of the list of self hated personality traits, quite selfish, amongst so
many other things. Then it occurred to me. How about trying to not be selfish for
a bit? How about cooking, not being a lazy oaf, telling Naked Chef husband that
I love him (out loud), telling him about all of those office based stories that
I once decided he wasn’t interested in or didn’t understand so stopped talking
about them. Tell him about really stupid, mundane things that I muse on, that
will most probably make him think I’m mental, but do it anyway! Talk to him
about everything. Also, I decided to stop beating myself up about the fact that
I’m fatter than a lot of people. Revelation: I’m also slimmer than a lot of
people. If I want to be slimmer than I am at the moment, I have to eat less and
exercise more. It’s not rocket science, and it’s also not a cardinal sin to
love biscuits. So, I did all of the above, and I can safely say, in the time
since the 21^st of December 2010 aka crunch point, I have been trying
to remember most of the above and the result is a much improved but still of course
imperfect, marriage. On top of this my sense of self worth is creeping upwards
one bit at a time. Also, I'm incredibly grateful that Naked Chef husband had the patience and faith to wait for me to get to this point. He sees something in me that I haven't seen in myself, or believed in for a long time and I appreciate him so much for it. It's probably important to say here that forever no longer seems like that long, its not daunting any more. I'm excited that we're growing old together. I got my first grey hair last week and it just made me smile.
I still have my doubts – of course! Its part of who i am to doubt and question, but the key thing is that I’m actively working on all of the above points to get better at being a good wife and a good mum. So as I said, I’ve been off line for a while, and while there haven’t been huge life changing events happening in my absence from blogging world, the fact that I’ve had three smooth and relatively happy, minimally doubtful months, means that I’m so incredibly proud of myself and my family.

http://www.elizabethgilbert.com/committed.htm

mundane domestic ststus

As I sit here writing this I am vaguely aware of a faint
stench of cat piss. This is my life. As I may have mentioned previously, our
cat sprays/wees in our house due to stress, induced by what I call ‘Tough Love’
given to him by Little Companion.

Little Companion adores Lee-Lee, as he calls him. The
problem is with how he demonstrates his love. Little Companion has been known
to shout ‘KICK LEROY’ and wildly swing his legs at Leroy in the past, swiftly
changing the expression on his face to deep concern, as he strokes Leroy saying
‘Be GENTLE (to) Leroy’. This is a phrase he has picked up form Naked Chef and me as any time we see
Little Companion hovering near Leroy we say in warning tones, ‘be nice to Leroy, stroke Leroy,
be gentle to Leroy’ ‘Awwwww’ as we
try desperately to protect Leroy from Little Companion’s crushing love. It’s a classic
abuser/abusee relationship, with Leroy seemingly needing to be close to Little
Companion most of the time, but instantly becoming completely terrified when
Little Companion actually turns his full attention onto him. Its awkward
writing about how your son tends to be violent towards your cat. Its awkward knowing
that the grand you had to spank over the Christmas period saving said cat’s
life is probably because your son has traumatised it to the point of no return.
It’s troubling knowing that  having
cried, worried and stressed out, now, when I smell the wiff of wreaking cat piss I
remain calm, and slightly detached and shrug – oh well...

So much so that last Saturday, 2 days after our boiler broke
(so 48 hours since I’d had a shower) the most perfect of the perfect NCT
friends came over for a coffee, with her perfect husband, two perfect sons - (she was one of the planning for Number Two mums), from their perfect SW London home, in their perfect family car, when Leroy weed on Little Companion’s chair at the exact moment that the door bell went off, I had
to brightly say,

‘not only is there no heating, and I am part of the Great Unwashed
as there has been no hot water for two days, but the windows are open in the now
sub-zero Lounge to try to clear the stench of cat piss.’

Great. Not exactly the Nigella-esque dom-goddess impression I’d
been planning to make...  (Mood Milliner
is branching out into wig making – think sumptuous dark locks rolling down my
heaving bosom)

They laughed, were very nice about it, but I know they were
thinking ‘if it’s not one thing with them, it’s another – it stinks in here,
and its bloody freezing.’ So, we got through the coffee morning - them with thier coats on and me sporadically spraying Fabreeze about the place, I then had a
shower (probably the best in living memory) as the boiler man was fixing the
heating while the cat pissing/coffee drinking was going on, cleaned up the
house and got on with life.

I’m an avid Facebook fan – it appeals to the massive stalker
lurking in my not-so-sub-conscious. I recently set my status about something to
do with getting a doctor’s appointment. My brother who is currently living in
South America (think almost complete polar opposite to me in that he is super fit,
super frugal, loves travelling, is brilliant at languages and studying, is
incredibly funny but seems to be perpetually single as far as I’m aware, maybe
because he is slightly socially awkward and a bit quiet) deemed it a mundane
domestic status, something he doesn’t want to read about in his news feed. His disdainful
attitude to the joy I felt at getting a same day appointment after work at my
new doctors surgery got me thinking. What is worthy of Facebook statuses? Funny
moments with friends? Things you see on the street. Things that make you happy?
Its a dangerous game putting your thoughts and feelings out into cyber space – I
am SO judgemental it’s not right. Below are my thoughts about but a few of my (current...
although probably not for long after reading this) status updating Facebook
buddies...

To the person who is constantly drunk/hungover – dude, do a
detox! (to be fair I am definitely not someone to be giving advice about
drinking less, but still, I can have my mildly judgemental thoughts, can’t I?)

To the person who is constantly having days out with other
people and enjoying themselves, which people? What do you do? You must be SO
busy, you are constantly seeing loads of different people, are you not
exhausted?!

To overly mysterious status person. Stop it. Say what you
mean! I can’t be bothered to ask you what you are talking about – are you
itching for someone to ask you, so that you can reveal the real meaning behind
what you are saying?

To über cool sporadic one word status person. I am jealous
of you. I want to be as cool as you, but I am not. Harrumph.

To traveller person. How do you do it – how do you afford it?
How do you get the time off work? I genuinely don’t understand.  I
want to take 35 holidays a year and have an AWESOME time doing it.

To dramatic/depressed person –I think sharing intimate
personal stuff is a bit too much for facebook. On the other hand, I worry about
you – I want to give you a hug.

To general life update friends, I salute you, I get you and
a laugh with you.

The statuses I am now too scared to leave for fear of
brotherly judgement:

Mood Milliner was given the gift of a lie-in by her Naked Chef husband. She slept until 12.20pm
and then ate a cheese and pickle sandwich- heavenly.

Mood Milliner My latest lust food: a cheese and pickle sandwich. Yum!

 

It’s not worthy of an Eastenders plot, it’s not hilarious, its not mysterious, its not a massive overshare, its not particularly interesting, but this is my life, these are the boring things that make up our existence, judge me in return if you will, but good god I’m going to share it with you – cat piss
and all.

a strange feeling

Yesterday i got up at the fairly respectable hour of 8.30am-ish. Those childless readers (hello? any body out there?) amongst you may recoil in horror at the thought of getting up at that time on a Sunday. I, however thanked both my lucky stars, and Little Companion, as it is down to him that i was allowed my lie in. To be fair, he had refused, point blank to go to sleep at his usual 8pm on Saturday night, interrupting my gleefully planned dinner of a wedge of Gorgonzola, rice cakes, and red wine. I did the sane parenting thing of ignoring the first noises i could hear emanating from his bedroom, but when he started to say, loudly, woefully, while in tears, 'Mummy - gone... Daddy - gone.... Didi [what he calls my dad, his grandpa] - gone... Granny - gone...' in rotation, i could ignore no more. He came down and we waited for Naked Chef Husband to return home at the fairly respectable, for a Saturday night, 9.30pm. i do not call Naked Chef husband that because he bares any resemblance to Jamie Oliver, but purely because he's a chef and he likes being naked.
Anyway, i digress. my point is, i had an albeit small,  but very appreciated lie in yesterday morning, before i headed over to my parents house, where i left Little Companion so that i could go for a run. In September I entered the Reading half marathon, which is on the 20th March. Back then I had Plenty Of Time, and I said that a lot, feeling absolutely sure that everything would be great, I had a couple of months to get my 'base mileage' (so they call it) up to 8-10 miles per week, as suggested by my beginners training schedule from Google. This was of course all before I THREW MYSELF DOWN THE STAIRS. Well, I say threw - that sounds like i wanted to top myself which i didn't and don't, i actually fell like a proper dramatic fall down a pretty steem, adn unfamiliar at that point, set of stairs.
I was bringing Articulate down stairs as one of my friends was visiting me in our new house (Little Companion, Naked Chef Husband and I had moved into our grown up house the day before). I was walking down the stairs and our big, stupid, gentle and nervously afflicted cat, Leroy, was lying across one of the very steep, newly carpeted, and therefore already perilous stairs. He was hidden from my view by the Articulate box, so i trod on him. He slipped from under my foot like silk, and I ended up rocketing down the stairs much to my friend's horror. The result of this minor drama was that my knee was completely buggered, and could well still be - but I'm currently choosing to ignore and conquer.  Instead of getting my base mileage up slowly over October, November and December i decided the best option, as i couldn't run with my knee problem was to drink as much alcohol, and eat as much carb/fat/sugar/dairy food as humanly possible. In light of that i have had a mildly panicked feeling in the low part of my stomach since January (must be all that booze- i hear you cry), as I'm not exactly the fittest or exercisy person in the world. In fact i would say that while i like a lot of exercise, i like it most when I'm sitting on my couch, watching telly, eating ice cream and thinking about it fleetingly every couple of days. i have never entered a race, and i have never run more than about 3 miles or so. Having said all that, training is going well, i have done a lot of runs over the last 2 weeks, i ran 5.39 kilometres on Saturday, something I'm hugely proud of, but am also acutely aware that its only a quarter of what I'm going to have to run in about 9 weeks. gulp. oh well - It Will Be Fine.
Once I'd finished my run Little Companion and I went home again, and i strangely still had a lot of energy, so i decided to clean the house. I put some music on, a mixture of Ministry of Sound Electro House, George Michael, Byonce and Erykah Baddu This all went well until i went into the living room, still humming along to the jumble of music, using my awesome new Black and Decker Dust Buster (a revelation gadget present form my clean/neat freak parents, trying to drop a not so subtle hint i think...) i start to hear something. it sounds something like 'mumble mumble' THUD 'COMPLAIN COMPLAIN' THUD! I stopped my dust busting, went into the kitchen to find that Little Companion, who had been happily playing outside, was now inside, and had emptied the mopping water all over the kitchen floor, and was now attempting to swim/dive into it. I sprang into action, stripped him on the spot and we went upstairs for an early bath. He still smelt vaguely of Flash this morning when we woke up, but all in all no tears, no terrible burns or rashes, so i think he's fine.
After finishing the cleaning while little companion slept, i chilled, spoke to my parents and invited them over for dinner later that night. I watched a bad film on telly and waited for and Naked Chef husband to get home. When Naked chef Husband did get home, (Little companion was awake again by this point, while waiting we'd watched the end of Beauty and the Beast together in that wonderful post afternoon sleepy hue that toddlers have, where they want to be wrapped up, warm and close to you, and for about half an hour aren't intent on launching them selves off or climbing up furniture, and he loved it) i had an amazing shower, actually blow dried my hair and i cooked some dahl - my current obsession, its just so yummy and good for you!
I went for a smoke while the dahl was cooking. I sat on a chair outside feeling this amazing feeling, a feeling that i haven't felt for a long time. I was clean, rested, i was surrounded by my family, waiting for my parents to arrive, so much  I'd done stuff this weekend- I'd seen one of my best friends for dinner on Friday night, been for my 5.39km run on Saturday, on Sunday I'd done exercise AND cleaning (almost unheard of on the same day), I'd successfully been in charge of my son all day, flying solo, had lots of fun, and managed not to kill him, and we only had to look in the direction of the naughty step once. This is what i call a rip roaring success of a weekend. It hit me. The emotion that i was feeling was happiness. Contented, warm, clean, fuzzy, happiness, and it feels much like the first time you put on a new, luscious, woolly winter bobble hat - the wool is fresh and smells of shop, the hat doesn't give you hat hair, because you're just trying it on for a bit. That's how i felt last night, like a brand new winter bobble hat, and it felt good.

Number Two.

In theworld of motherhood the phrase Number Two conjures up two main images I’m not sure which I prefer really...

The first is that wonderful delighted feeling you get when a whiff of faeces wafts your
way and you cry, in your most light, innocent voice, 'BABA, HAVE YOU DONE A
STINKY POO?'. Then, if like me, you are the mother of a tall for his age two
year old, after a few 'No’s, and laps round the living room which puff you out
and make you feel a slight twinge of guilt that you haven’t quite managed to kick your 4 delicious and cherished guilty pleasure smokes a day habit/been to the gym or yoga for a couple of months, you manage to heard Little Companion upstairs and the process of clearing up said number two commences.

At this point you may wonder if I aught really to be beginning to think about potty training - he is two after all, eating normal grown up food and therefore... Well, you get the point: it’s not exactly a pleasant thing, changing my beloved son's nappies. I remember when I was childless and my then, only mother friend would bring her son round who had a love for blueberries and would actually poo in blueberry (had a slightly purple tinge and tiny seeds throughout - fascinating), I would wrinkle my nose in a slightly disapproving manner, as she began the process of clearing up the soiled nappy. I would drop not so subtle hints and say things like 'should he still be in nappies??' and helpful things like, 'God, I don't know how you can do that...' if I could go back and slap my childless self I absolutely would -bitch that I was. I have since apologised for wearing my Judges Wig when I saw her all those times… She smiled wisely in that way that people who have older children than you do. (I’ve been practicing the smile on the two pregnants in my office. It's accompanied by my Knowing Hat, which looks rather like the wizard's hat from Fantasia’s The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.)


Blueberries!

In answer to the original question, Yes, I am thinking about potty training, and I have to say it fills me with dread, and completely exhausts me all at the same time. Having said that, it cheers me up that at some point Little Companion will most definitely go through the process of potty training - I mean we all learn at some point, don’t we?! And I will come out of the process with a few more of your wonderful English pounds in my pocket, with brilliant, really small and therefore cute, colourful and cartoon underpants to hang up, and a mood hat of smugness mixed in with relief and triumph. I believe this hat would look a little like the one that Napoleon used to wear. Joking aside (well, I say joking I really mean humorous truths aside) I will probably start potty training our little man in the spring and summer, so that he can run around naked - if he's anything like his dad this will bring joy unbounded, and we'll cross that bridge then. I will most probably talk more about this process when this bridge to the Napoleonic Smug Hat is in the processed of being trudged across...


Napoleonic Triumphant Smug Hat

The second Number Two I would like to address is the theoretical little person that is Baby Number Two. Baby Number Two is discussed almost from the point of the birth of your first child. People think it's funny/clever/a really good topic of conversation when two zombified parents of a 6 week old child, who can barely think past the next milk feed, who have perpetual bags under their eyes, manage to make it to the pub to see their friends. These friends have either made it through this phase already, or are yet to experience the prickly, fog inducing, low level exhaustion that only a new person in the world can bring its parents, and while stifling giggles, ask when exactly these new parents are planning to have the next one, nudge nudge, wink wink! The new parents tend to widen their eyes at the thought of it, smile weakly and mumble something about never again/not for a couple of years, while in your head, or at least in mine, anyway, you're really thinking, 'We're at it like rabbits bareback style already. Want to get pregnant again as quickly as possible. Think a 9 or 10 month age gap is perfect...'

In certain circles – one in particular that I had the pleasure of spending the intense 3 months before and 9 months after the birth of Little Companion with, where Mother Earth, natural birthing, (how bad it is to have) pain control during labour, breastfeeding, weaning, teat types, buggy types, baby massage, buggy fit, after pregnancy exercise, baby yoga, basically anything natural, expensive, guilt and paranoia inducing and baby orientatedis completely obsessed over and discussed to within an inch of its life, my experience is that these folks think they will accurately plan the age gap between Baby Number One and Baby Number two.  To be fair to them, most of them do, successfully. I however have a slightly different outlook. I tried for, and really wanted a natural birth, but Little Companion was breach, so the hospital decided for me - I was to have a C-section. I tried to breastfeed, managed and am proud of what I believe to be a whapping 11 weeks of almost exclusive  breastfeeding (with gallons of milk being expressed, eventually resulting in my milk supply depleting and causing me to have to do half breast, half powder, when I thought, what the hell kind of thing am I putting myself through here - You've had a very good run by lots of standards, so if you want to stop breastfeeding, give yourself a break, so I did) Little companion is healthy, happy and none the wiser that I didn’t make it to the (NCT members, look away now) 6 months breast feeding mark….

Little  Companion, while being an absolutely delightful, most loved, welcome and
awesome addition to our family, was not exactly a planned addition, which in
some ways makes him all the more wonderful in my eyes.


SURPRISE!

While I was trying to fit in with the group of Earth Mothers/Diamond Encrusted Women described above, who most definitely would never have a surprise baby like I did, I thought to
myself, I’ll have Baby Number Two when Little Companion is about two and a half
to three and a half. I am a (sort of chaotic, yet hugely control freaky) planner
– just ask my ‘It will be fine’ husband (argh!! How will it be fine?! SHOW
ME!!?), I like to know what’s going to happen, and to be able to control things.
But when it comes to Baby Number Two, my experiences seem to be, planning too
much only bring stress – things don’t seem to go to plan when conceiving and raising
children, and stress is most definitely not what you need when you have a
toddler, a newish full time job, have just moved house, had a pretty rocky
Christmas in terms of marriage, an ever red bank balance, lots of wonderful
friends and family members who you are desperate to see regularly, a husband
who you love deeply, but rarely get to see before eleven on week nights due to
his job.

So number two, faeces or intimate details about when you next plan to conceive... not
sure which I’d pick, so maybe I’ll be donning my 'sitting on a fence’ hat:
think white, with long dangly bits at the sides, like the Stuarts, or Mormons.