Ahhh....

A stress-free Saturday at last. No Morrisons with mum (cherished daughter took over as a birthday treat) and a reassuring phone call from BS who is now safely ensonced in a shared house, away from crazy g/f. Caught up with CD and mum for a good-humoured lunch then back home before going to Whitby with CD, husband and five friends for a catch up with friends over there and, of course, a superlative fish and chip supper! I'm going to try to relax today too, having spent the last few Sundays faffing about with housework to keep busy and take my mind of all the dramas. With a bit of luck I'll get a good night's sleep tonight and for once turn up for work on a Monday with more than half a brain!

The fates have got it in for me

They're sitting up there on that cloud, bored stiff, and picking on me for amusement. Evidence: Monday - a pheasant threw itself under my wheels and my mother had another sortie on the 'I shouldn't be living alone' guilt trip. Tuesday - I got lost on the way to a meeting in Leeds and arrived nearly an hour after it had finished and my mother all but accused me of stealing her building society papers for nefarious reasons because she'd forgotten where she'd put them. Wednesday - well, ok, Wednesday wasn't that bad. Thursday - more heavy hints about moving in with us from mum and an old schoolfriend of beloved son's came to visit with new tales of the crazy girlfriend and the welcome but not altogether guaranteed news that BS had a man with a van lined up to do a flit on Friday. Friday - should be going out with friends and family to see a band tonight but too stressed by the latest news that crazy g/f is threatening to set an equally crazy ex-boyfriend onto BS if he doesn't give her back the money she borrowed from him and recently repaid. God only knows how she'll react when she finds out BS has flown the coop. It's my birthday tomorrow. Ha.

I spoke too soon ...

...on 22 April - 'no dramas, no excitements' indeed. Since then daughter's ex has threatened suicide, I have had a mini-meltdown and semi-squished an infant, son's hopefully soon-to-be-ex has had him arrested over trumped up charges then dropped them and yesterday daughter discovered a large gash in beloved dog's chest that must have happened during a woodland walk the day before. Off to the vet's we went and BD was examined, sedated, stitched, un-sedated and provided with a course of antibiotics, all for the paltry sum of £96.96. Not bad for half an hour's work. Grrr. Good job we love BD! Is there some cosmic catastrophy spotlight focussed on me and mine at the moment? Perhaps if on the 22 April I'd written 'hope I don't wake up tomorrow a stone lighter after a night of mindblowing passion' or 'really enjoying going round to mum's five days a week, hope she doesn't tire of my company', I would be a happier woman today, instead of a miserable git sitting at home on a Saturday with just BD for company while husband and daughter are off partying with friends. (I never feel very sociable on Saturday evenings due to postshoppinginMorrisonswithmumitis.) Ah well, time for another cuppa.

Things that are stressing me out at the moment...

1. My son's bunny boiler girlfriend and her potential for catastrophic harm
2. My mother
3. My general knackerdness which means I'm not getting as much done at work as I'd like
4. Stress induced itchiness that wakes me up in the middle of the night (see post time!)
5. Being at least a stone and a half more than I'd like to weigh
6. The state of the hall, landing and stairs - the next mammoth redecorating task
7. Turning 57 in three weeks' time - a cruel joke, surely there's been a miscalculation?

cleanliness is next to godliness....

...because the more housework you do, the more exhausted you get, the less energy you have for anything vaguely sinful and the faster life will pass you by! Ironic, innit, that now having three rather nice looking recently decorated rooms, I find myself impelled to clean up every few minutes. When the house was more tatty, I reasoned that no amount of dusting and hoovering would improve the look of the place, ergo - hardly ever did any. I am turning into a bit of monster though, husband will be regretting the days when he moaned about my sluttishness - now his ephemera gets shifted into cupboards or neat piles out of site as soon as he turns his back. That'll teach him hehehe.

The triumph of hope over experience

Redecorating - the practise of spreading the entire contents of one room among the rooms adjoining, thus making three rooms absolute tips and practically unusable for three times as long as you thought it would take to finish the decorating, not to mention the enormous task of deciding what to replace and what to chuck/store once the job is done. I still can't see my kitchen table for piles of paper and assorted rubbish.
Emptying the attic - filling i) one skip with assorted junk from said attic and other parts of the house ii) one van with a) the cardboard boxes from every item every bought over the last twenty two years, saved just in case we needed to take something back and b) all the electrical appliances that conked out but might come in useful one day then moving boxes and boxes of unread books, ugly ornaments, family keepsakes and other homeless stuff up into the empty space left by the skip and van filling.
Family get-togethers - where one parent is fast losing patience due to above on top of the usual elderly-mother-aggravation, t'otheran is stubbornly attempting tasks beyond the capability of his knackered back then moaning to everyone about it, son comes up to help and brings girlfriend and we all tip-toe politely around the minefield that is their relationship at present and daughter, bless her, is a tower of strength to all.
Last straw - where the sight of two shelves made from i) grubby white mdf and ii) dirty cream painted mdf adorning the newly painted alcove in my beautifully redecorated sitting room is enough to induce pacing, sitting, more pacing, increasingly tearful (and higher pitched) explanations of how far short this effort fell of my expectations (ship/ha'peth of tar sort of thing) and finally total sobbing meltdown. Got me new wooden shelves sharpish though :-)
And if you thought that was bad - on Sunday I stood on a baby. Daughter and I were walking through a restaurant door at 8 o'clock at night and as I crossed the threshold I stood on something lumpy, took another step, looked back and it was a baby that some idiot mother sitting on the far side of the room had let crawl about on the floor! Still don't know which bit I stood on but I don't think s/he was badly hurt. Imagine if I'd been a 17 stone rugby player or a waiter with a sizzling dish?!

Matchsticks please

It's been an exhausting week full of late nights and sleep interruptions via the dog's daft o'clock perambulations and an unnerving daughter's drama (the drama, not the daughter). Next week should be better - I'm off work and cuddly son is coming up to stay, yippee! The house will be in chaos as we're planning to turf out accumulated rubbish and start redecorating but it will be lovely (hopefully) when done. Then I'll need a proper holiday!