Overheard

Devon, 14: So, if I can create my own reality, then when there is a zombie apocalypse all the food in the store cupboard will turn into AK47’s. Plus, at my cadet sqaudron we have gas masks and loads of number 8 rifles and I’m going to buy lots of tomato soup, even though I don’t like it, because that stuff lasts forever.

Me- Devon, please could you stop telling your sister who is prone to nightmares and sleepless nights all about zombie apocalypses?

Devon: Oh. (looks at his 11yr old sister) Maybe they’ll be NICE zombies?

——————————————————————————–

Devon,14: (in the kitchen making his lunch) If your name is Devon, clap your hands
“clap, clap”
If you’re makin’ some beans, clap your hands
“clap, clap”
If you’re trying to get some brown sugar for the beans out of the jar while making beans and clapping your hands, clap your hands.
*silence*
If you’re really cool, clap your hands
“clap, clap”

—————————————————————-

Olivia, 11- Stop it, Devon.
Stop it, Devon.
Stop it, Devon.
Stop it, Devon.
Stop it, Devon.
Stop it, DEVON.
Stop it, Devon.
Stop it, Devon.
Stop it, Devon.
Stop it, Devon

Overheard

While the eldest children are making pumpkin pie in the kitchen…

Devon (14)- “WHAT! WHY are you biting my sleeve?”

Olivia (11)- *laughs hysterically* “I don’t know!”

Devon- “You can’t just go around biting other peoples sleeves!”

Olivia- “Well, you can’t just go around biting other peoples wrists!”

Devon- “I don’t.”

Slightly maniacal laughter from both follows

Mom- (from the other room) “Have you two been drinking?”

Adjusting (or not)

I find it difficult to get used to this place. The next door neighbor is a single mum with three young kids, and from my point of view the kids are out of control, the whole family constantly screaming at each other (and worse on occasion). Though her youngest and mine rarely play together- the pervasiveness of their life is starting to affect my kids. Rafe, who is normally incredibly good natured, has started screaming at me. I have long learned how to handle that type of behaviour and can nip it in the bud with a stern word of warning, but it disturbs me just the same. My daughter,11, occasionally plays with the other girls on the street, and afterwards she is belligerent, demanding and snotty. Trying to manage these new behaviours is demanding as they are not part of my kids normal makeup, and are the result of influence. I find that I have to be even more strict than usual and can’t let them get away with it for a second. My eldest is son is thankfully not yet affected, he is not allowed to hang out with the few boys his age on the street as I know they smoke and drink. He’d like to go to the skatepark but the kids there are nasty little cretins and Dev finds that instead of just being able to play, he has to spend his whole time arguing or standing up for himself. Never mind that he is bigger than the kids and could easily lay them out if he decided to let them have it, that’s not in his genetic makeup and I think they see that.

The nights are difficult. Though we are fairly tucked away, our road is some sort of bus through-fare and they come and go at all hours. People come and go all night as well, usually loud and drunkenly. The dogs of the neighbourhood wake me up early every morning with collective howling and barking. During the day the street is full of kids, normally just playing, but when the neighbor kids are about you can be sure their mother will turn up soon and they will all start screaming again, usually just outside our windows. The little one, only 6, will inevitably start crying and there will be more screaming and I end up pacing the floor, wondering what I can do and usually just taking my kids to the park so they don’t have to listen to it anymore. Once I could hear her sobbing through the walls with occasional screaming at the kids and I gathered up all my courage and went over to ask if I could help, maybe by taking her kids to the park or something, she pretended not to be there, and when I pressed said she was fine, thank you.

Her behaviour disturbs me, especially as I worry about her kids, and the effect on mine, and initially I was very judgemental about her. I softened though when I remembered being a single mother for 8 years with two kids, one of which would later be diagnosed with a “social communication disorder”, which just means he screamed a lot as a kid, and occasionally jumped out of moving cars on busy roads because he couldn’t control his anger. It took me a few years to get the hang of this parenting stuff, and I remember being so hard on my son for silly things. I want to help my new neighbour, but she clearly does not want my help. She struts around the neighbourhood, wine class in hand, screaming at her kids or sobbing about some transgression to the adolescent girls that make up her entourage. I find myself less sympathetic and understanding and more irritated and disgusted. When the screaming starts I twitch the curtains, worried she will strike one of the children and knowing that if, when, it happens I will not be able to stay out of it anymore. My family knows this, and while I don’t think they would truly want me to stand back if she were beating them, I know they want me to be quiet, mind my own business, not get involved. I feel embarrassed that they feel this way, that I am some big mouth always getting involved in things that they don’t think concern me. I feel ashamed of them, too. We once came across a man and a woman fighting in the back of the van at a red light. We could see him punching her, could see the blood on her face and clothes. Instinctively I got out of the car, started to shout at them but was dragged back in by the sounds of my family shouting at me. I knew it could end up with me being hurt and didn’t want my kids to see that, so I got back in, and called the police instead. I thought perhaps I had taught my kids an important lesson that night, but now I wonder. Could it be that I am raising kids, and am married to a man, who can stand back and do nothing while others are hurt or treated badly and worse, believe that is better somehow than getting involved?

I long for our detached house in the tiny little cul-de-sac, where the cats could sleep all day on the road outside without ever being disturbed, where the nights were mostly silent and the only noise on a Sunday morning are the church bells in town, which I opened my windows wide to, so that we could hear them better, especially in the winter, when they chime Christmas carols.

trapped

I feel… trapped. Imprisoned. My chains? No, not the children. Not even the husband. Religion? Nope. Gender? Not in the west in 2011. So, why? How can I feel trapped? I have a roof over my head, food in my ample belly. Opportunities that women in other countries can only dream of. How can I feel trapped?

I think to myself that I am limited by my bank account, that I want to get on a boat or a train and see the world, I want my only limits to what I can do, to what my family can do, to be our imaginations. I think I want to grab life by the horns and live it to the absolute fullest and if only I had a few million in the bank, I could.

Other days I don’t want that at all, I want nothing more than a big house in the country, surrounded by fields and to spend my days pottering around my large kitchen, or lounging in my library, reading or writing. Having huge holiday celebrations and family reunions and just…living a good, content, full life.

Alas, both options require money. I am not sure why my life in its current state cannot content me. My children are healthy, intelligent, beautiful. My husband is caring and loyal. Even on the days when the cupboard and the fridge is full, there is plenty of money in the bank account, the bills are paid and my hair is clean and shiny, I still feel…unfulfilled. As if something is missing and I can’t work out what it is. A sense of purpose? Perhaps. Security? Independence? Perhaps.

I feel as if I am living constantly in the house of cards my teenage son constructed this summer, stuck at home with a broken leg and a pack of cards I had just handed him. He had never built one before and even the slightest hint of a breath would send it tumbling to the floor. I can’t get that feeling out of my head. Every day I become more certain that I never will. No matter how successful I might ever become, or how much money amasses in my bank account, no matter what great things my children persue in their lives, I fear that I will never escape that feeling of everything tumbling down around me at the slightest hint of a breath. That no matter how many pills I take or counseling I have, I will never feel happy with myself or my life.

I wonder why this is? Is it because I was unhappy as a child? Bullied incessantly at school and disliked at home? Have I become conditioned to feel this way? Certain that any feeling of happiness or pleasure is a sign of a great wind bearing down on my house of cards. Is it because there is some fundamental glitch in my programming?

I don’t know the answers to these questions, only that as I get older (Hello, 30! See you soon!) they become more pressing, more relevant. I wonder if it is perhaps a part of growing up, and that perhaps I will grow out of it, as indeed I grew out of my “I know everything, nobody can tell me what to do, it’s MY life so fuck off” teenage years.

On the bad days, the ones where for whatever reason I have found myself lying in bed at 11am, sobbing uncontrollably, the black hole in my chest absorbing light and life and threatening to consume every ounce of me, I find myself wanting nothing more then to go home.

“I want to go home.” I sob in to my husband’s chest hair, helpless and small and wishing I could melt into him, not understanding why I’m saying it, why my heart is feeling it. There is nothing left for me there. I think if I were to die suddenly I would not want to be returned there, to travel 6000 miles in a box and be buried so far from the people that love me the most, so why do I long to be back there in my darkest days? Perhaps what is calling to me is the desert which I love so much, the free and open spaces where I could never feel trapped or confined, where I could climb a mountain and watch the sunrise over the peaks and cactus. Even standing on the shores of Great Britain, gazing into the Atlantic Ocean, where there is nothing but sea and sky before me, I feel trapped. An island full of unfamiliar people behind me, a vast inhospitable sea before me.

I wonder if I will ever leave this country again, if I will ever leave behind the feeling of being imprisoned and lost within myself.

Seriously, my kitchen is a disaster area.

“I can’t.”

Oh, I can’t even tell you the amount of times I have uttered those two little words in my mind over the last six months or so. I can’t. is what makes me retreat to my bed and curl up under my big fluffy duvet and close my eyes, sometimes sleeping, sometimes crying, sometimes just… laying. Not studying, not writing the assignments that are majorily overdue, not sorting out my kitchen which is still in post move chaos.

I suppose things are not so bleak as previously. I smile and laugh with my children, and enjoy our evening strolls.  I get up early, much as I did before…all this… and the baby and I water the flowers and make breakfast and it is nice. But when the children have gone to school or out to play and the husband is busy and I am faced with the neccessity of working, I freeze up. I can’t. I just can’t.     I make halfhearted efforts to whip the kitchen into shape and congratulate myself when I have cleared some counter space, only to feel dejected when just 12 hours later, it is a mess again. I get out the textbooks and do some reading, but after about 5 pages, realize I have no idea what is being discussed and no understanding of the concepts being explained. I start work on a research report, now 2 months overdue, and freeze 10 words in. I just don’t know what to write, or how to write it.

My doctor told me I had severe depression (what does that even mean?) and that my brain wasn’t working right and I needed to take a break from my studies. I couldn’t bear to do that, so I kept on, and now I’m in a gigantic hole that I can’t seem to climb out of.

This degree means so much to me and I am so dearly afraid it is slipping out of my grasp. At some point after my husband hung my whiteboard over my desk, my kids and my husband wrote messages on it. They say “You can do it!”  “You know you can do it, silly!” “PASS!” and lots of smiley faces.   When I saw that for the first time, my heart leapt. I am so so lucky to have them. They believe in me, and they love me and I don’t want to let them down. Yet, that seems to be the only thing I feel I actually can do at the moment.

I am here. I feel a bit like I’m glued to the seat of the roundabout in my kids favorite park. Just endlessly spinning round and round, dizzy and unable to focus on anything. But, I am here.

And, I have chocolate.

 

 

"If just one person believes in you, deep enough and strong enough..."

I can’t.

If there were ever two words to describe what depression feels like.

– Dooce.com

Oh, the things they say.

Rafe, 5, in the bath-
“Who let the dogs out? Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoo!

Olivia, 11, on a screaming match with her 14 year old brother-
“Well, APPARRANTLY, I am a freak, a cirque de freak ANNNNND a JERK!”

Devon, 14, on why he should not have to help with the dishes-
“WHAT? My leg hurts!!”
Me- “That didn’t stop you going to your best friends house for two hours.”
Devon- “Yeh, but it hurts now”
Me- “Tough Bananas, GO.”
Devon- drags himself on his stomach into the kitchen, moaning theatrically the whole way.

Rafe, 5, on birthday presents
“Mommy, I will get you a big trophy! That says “Happy Birthday AND I love you! FROM- TESCO’S!!!”

I’m not sure if he meant it would actually say from Tesco or that it would be purchased from Tesco. You can’t tell with that kid, he has an evil sense of humour.

What it means to be a mother:

It means that

A) When your five year old is joyfully riding his scooter along in the lovely weather after having had a nice long walk with mommy and suddenly hits something unexpected and upends- throwing himself and the scooter full bodied to the ground- you walk, you don’t run. Even though visions of busted teeth and bloodied noses and awkwardly hanging limbs are running through your mind. You gently pull him up and hug him close and whisper “it’s ok” and kiss his scrapes, make silly jokes and carry him and the scooter the rest of the way down the hill. So that five minutes later he asks to go the long way home so he can ride his scooter and 15 minutes later, it is long forgotten as he races inside the house to find an ice pop.

B) When it is 10:00pm and you’ve been up since sometime around 6 and you haven’t stopped all day and you feel like crap and all you want to do is go to bed and your damn bladder is screaming at you- you make hot water bottles because the kids legs hurt, you give the teenager 3 Ibuprofen and two night nurse tablets because his broken leg is aching and he feels awful, then you get halfway up the stairs and kick yourself and go back down to get him the flashlight, leave more pills and a glass of water within easy reach in case he wakes up in pain during the night, then hug and kiss him, say good night and ask three times if he’ll be ok.

C) Then find the liquid ibuprofen for the pre-teen girl who hates taking swallowing pills and dose her up because her not broken leg aches and also her side hurts (no, she doesn’t know what she did to it) even though she took a hot bath and has a hot water bottle. Finally you pee, brush your teeth and then go back down to check on the teenager, back up to check the little one is still asleep, breathing and hasn’t fallen out the window or something then back to the girls room because she needs something or because you spent more time saying good night to another child then you did to her, at which point you make a huge song and dance (literally, people) out of saying good night to her to make her smile, before finally collapsing into bed.

D) Get up five minutes later because there is a cat somewhere that desperately needs to be relocated somewhere else or a child somewhere desperately needs a drink of water or because you desperately need to make sure you checked all the doors for the third time so an axe murderer can’t get in while you sleep.

Idsworth

About seven years ago a friend of mine that I knew online introduced me through MSN messenger to a friend of his that he knew online. I knew my friend through a photography website/forum and he knew his friend through a forum for people with an unhealthy interest in airplanes. (Occasionally known as “anoraks” in this part of the world.) We hit it off and started chatting and emailing. Five months later, we were married and four months after that, my two kids and I got on a plane bound for England with a one-way ticket.

It has not been rainbows and butterflies, in fact it has been a rough road and last year we separated and remained that way for over a year. My husband moved back in a few months ago and a few weeks ago I slipped my wedding ring back on and didn’t take it off. Now we are in a difficult period of readjustment. I could fill a large room with all the reasons why we separated and all the reasons why we got back together, they are many and varied and sometimes even conflicting. What I wanted to share was an image.

Last night I was searching through some old emails and came across hundreds he had sent me in 2005. Every day, all different. They were pictures. Pictures he had taken. He chose the most beautiful, the most interesting, his best. The ones he wanted to share with me.

They are all beautiful images, but my favorite- the one that made me long for England, the one that excited my kids about our move, the one that convinced me that this move was the right thing to do was this one:

Church

Oh, how I fell in love with this church. We talked about getting married there, and it became synonymous with England, with our new life. I’ve been to that church a few times since living here, it is local, but not close enough to walk to. It is as beautiful and quaint and picture perfect as in the image. This is such a beautiful country and if the day ever comes for me to leave, it will be with a sadness in my heart.

Burn Out

A few months ago something started to happen that I wasn’t expecting. I stopped caring about my psychology degree. It was like I had been racing along my degree track, working at furious pace to get my degree next year, really enjoying my two current courses and suddenly ran headlong into a brick wall. I just didn’t care anymore at all. I’d sit and stare at the computer for hours, meaning to write an essay, or do some research and I’d open up a document or log into the search facility only to realize suddenly that at some point I’d switched to facebook and had been staring at that for 20 minutes. I stopped going to the library cold, it’s been two months at least since I’ve been, and I used to go five days a week and spend three hours there studying. I’ve had extensions for my last four assignments and only completed them by staying up and working through the night before and the entire day they were due.

My son had broken his leg and there was the eviction and money worries and of course all the other stuff going on in a family of five and I was finding this feeling of not caring was becoming usual. Poor attitudes or behaviour from my children which I would never normally put up with, I’d shrug my shoulders at. I couldn’t muster up any interest in anything, my kitchen whiteboard had the same information on it for three weeks at one point. And then I started crying. I’d be completely unmoved by anything for days, and then I’d wake up morning feeling like the whole world was crashing down on me and I just wanted to go home and crawl into my own bed 6000 miles away and sob and sob. (Which is funny because my mom sold that bed, which I loved, ages ago) I’d be walking through the grocery store, robotically picking up every piece of junk food there, not even realizing it and occasionally turning to my husband and standing in the middle of the aisle crying as he held me.

I could see that something was wrong, really very wrong so I finally went to my doctor who, obviously, diagnosed me with depression and gave me the British or generic or whatever version of Prozac and told me to take a 2 month extension on all my course work and come back in two weeks. I promised I would. But, you can’t take two month extensions on OU course work, that would put me two months behind on my next two assignments as well, not to mention putting me smack dab in the middle exam revision time. I was afraid that telling the OU would be disastrous- would they insist I drop my courses? Take a sabbatical? Would it delay getting my degree? So, I kept quite. And I didn’t go back to my doctor, because she would ask about the extensions and what would I say?

I took the pills, and after the third week stopped taking them, I don’t know why, it started with just forgetting and I kept on forgetting. Now I feel like I’m back where I was a month ago. Staring at the computer, knowing I have a huge project due, but not able to do anything. Not caring. Knowing I have another assignment due for my other course, but I haven’t even cracked the new books on that one yet. The whiteboard in my kitchen has the same stuff on it that it did last week. I wander through the grocery store, blindly picking up crap, only to be humiliated when I get to the checkout and discover I have tarts, cakes, cookies, makings for chocolate cream pie, and ice cream piled up on the belt.

I’m not sure what this is, perhaps the equivalent of the runners wall. I know I was better after I’d been on the pills for a couple of weeks, so they must have been helping, and I know I need to get back to the doctor and sort it out. But, I’m worried. Am I sabotaging my degree? How will I break through this? Why is it happening? Is it just a temporary wall? Am I truly burned out? Is it just biological- depression, fucked up neurotransmitters in my brain?

I feel awful, and I tear myself down. I’m lazy, not dedicated, irresponsible, not cut out for it. Then I cry, then I just stay away from it. Avoid the computer, the books completely. Then it all starts again. I wish I knew who to talk to about it, I wish I knew someone who had been through a similar time and could hold my hand through it. I feel like I’m throwing my degree away and I can’t stop myself.

Introducing…..

Sasha!

I'm ready to come in, now!

Sasha is our newest kitty, but we’ve actually had her for almost a year. We adopted Sasha, a young brown, white and black domestic short hair, last August after her family moved back to the states but couldn’t take her with them. She is our 4th kitty and I thought she would settle in quickly with the other three, who are all rescues. Our third kitty, Nutmeg, came about a year or even two after we got our first two and she was happily prowling about annoying the two boy kitties in no time.

In the run up to Sashas arrival I read a lot about introducing new cats to a home, but found a lot of the methods to be over the top, and had no intention of confining any of my cats to a room by themselves for days, especially as we hadn’t done this for Nutmeg and had noticed no problems. I had planned to confine Sasha to the living room for the first day or so and then introduce the other kitties, but when her family dropped her off I could see they were apprehensive about leaving her, so I thought I should introduce the other kitties while they were so they could meet them and see that Sasha would be ok. This was probably a mistake. She freaked, and spent two days hiding behind the couches. Then she spent two weeks alternating between hiding underneath beds, and under the cupboards in the kitchen. Eventually she graduated to hiding on top of the kitchen cupboards, and she spent months there. Which, turned out to be helpful as she dispatched an entire colony of mice who moved in behind the cupboards during that time. She was far from affectionate and would only let me touch her, hissing and growling at everyone else who went near her. She would not use the litter trays, and also does not care for a drinking bowl, so needed to have taps left on for her to drink from. She would not go near the other cats, and alternated between hissing at or running away from our other female.

I have to admit that although she was eating and drinking and had made some progress, I was a bit worried. So, when we took her along to the vet for a normal checkup and mentioned that she didn’t seem to be acclimatising well. The vet told us her behaviour was completely normal and said to give her six more months.

We took her home and well, she settled into a routine. Spending most of her time on top of the kitchen cupboards,keeping an eye on things. Occasionally she’d appear upstairs and eventually there’d be times when I’d look up and see her lounging in my closet, or she’d hop up on the bed and nuzzle me! She still did not want to be picked up, or really even petted, but I could see she was getting there.

Eventually she’d hop down from the cupboards and tentatively step out into the backyard if the door was open. I tried to encourage her, but also keeping close to her, in case she decided to bolt. I could see she wanted to be outside, but was very much afraid and often she’d only spend a minute or two outside before rushing back in. The top of the cupboards was her space, but she never ventured into the living room, ever. If we brought her in, she’d bolt for the kitchen. She was much happier upstairs though and if she wasn’t on top of the cupboards, you could find her in my room, and eventually in one of the other rooms, sunning herself on a windowsill. She finally and thankfully began to use the litter trays with reliability.

One day, a few months ago, Sasha appeared on the living room coffee table, just like that. We stared in amazement, as there was another cat on the table at the time and she didn’t even like being in the same room with another one of the cats! She wasn’t bothered in the slightest. She began to go outside all the time, and loves nothing more than sunning herself in the tall grass in the yard, occasionally batting it with her paws, or stalking various insects. She comes and goes through the windows and doors quite happily. I no longer had to coax her into the kitchen to have a treat with the others, she dashed in when called. She began to happily share a food bowl with the other cats, even the female. It seemed that overnight Sasha had finally decided to accept us as her new family.

Nowadays she can be found happily stalking hover flies in the garden, napping in the flower bed or lounging next to me on the computer desk, occasionally dipping her paw into a small mug of milk and then licking it clean. She loves milk. She can even be found sleeping snuggled up next to my oldest son, whom she hated more than even the other cats in the first 9 months, he happily returned the venom but I preached patience and so he tried not to be to annoyed with her when she took a swipe at him. The other day she spent the night with him, happily rolling over and going back to sleep each time he needed to pick her up and move her over to accommodate his poor broken leg.

She is a changed kitty and I happily thanked the vet for giving me that 6 month window to work in when we saw him a few weeks ago. A stark difference to the visit many months ago, she made no attempt to bite him, did not once hiss, and was happy to let me pull her out of carrier for the quick shot he needed to give her.

We loved her from the beginning of course, and are so happy she has apparently decided to love us as well. Welcome to our family, Sasha.

Sasha-Washa!