This and that.

So, thursday. That's it really, just thursday which isn't bad as it happens and my thursday was a pretty good one, I have felt better each day this week, which is an enormous relief, you all know I had my funeral planned and was bracing myself for being brave and an example to all as I battled against all manner of terrible illness and imagined horrors.
Whatever that was, or is, or might be, well that was or or definitely was just awful and what the hell WAS IT / IS IT COULD IT BE?
My tummy or abdomen, to be precise, is still very tender, I am still very weary ...although I am going to tell you that I stayed awake and almost moving, in a useful kind of way, for 6 hours in a row today, a record I say. I shall have the ultrasound on tuesday and go from there. I am not overly excited about the 'inside' ultrasound, with that intimidating 'wand' but I do know that it is more exact and will show more than the one on the outside, especially on me, with my padding and layers of blubber.
I have though long and hard about being so overweight, being so hopeless again and probably gaining back everything I may have lost, again, and it's times like this that I really get mad at myself because it's not just what it looks like. Being so overweight makes being examined so much more difficult, how is a doctor supposed to feel anything through all that fat? I realise just how stupid it is to be this weight, just how badly I am treating myself and yet, still, it's so hard.If I need surgery of any kind I am sure to have complications with healing because there is way too much fat to cut through, too much to expect a speedy recovery and how hard for the poor surgeon that would have to perform the operation.
Thankfully the pain has lessened and I can walk without weeping again. I am baffled by the contraction like cramps and am interested to see what that is all about and the enormous feeling of weight inside as though I have a substantial lead weight just clanging about in there is bizarre but I am so grateful that the pain has all but gone.
The exhaustion is annoying, I am so glad to have H and be able to just go to bed when I need to. The house needs some serious loving, it is sort of tidy-ish, it is not sparkling and shiny. The laundry is more or less done but it's all right there in the kitchen, in baskets, in varying stages of readiness. Not ironed but folded, ironed but not put away, waiting to be sorted, who knows what THAT pile is? Sophie has a magical talent, it would seem that there is some kind of alarm next to the washing machine, when I have managed to clear the mountain and breathe a gentle sigh of relief, the puff of relief sends a signal to Sophie's room and all her stinking clothes come creeping out while have my back turned and throw themselves in a festering heap in front of the machine, never IN the machine, that is sitting empty, with door open, detergent to the right and instructions on the front. Just there, in a heap just big enough to prevent the door being closed so that as soon as I walk into the kitchen THERE IT ALL IS!
I have a choice, I can be a good mother and I can talk to Sophie and explain how she is TWENTY YEARS OLD ...wash your damned clothes for heavens sake! Or I can just wash it.
I always just wash it because it is SO painful when she does it, how is it hard to do laundry? I don't get it, I love laundry, it is satisfying and constructive, so simple, it's not like we have to stand at a wooden barrel and bash it about having boiled copper pans of water over a meager fire is it? open the door, shove it in, add detergent and softener, shut the door, turn the dial and WALK AWAY! Not when Sophie does it, somehow everything I have washed already gets dumped somewhere else, she puts a pathetic few items in the huge capacity front loader, heaven forbid she ever put any of OUR washing in with hers, when it's time to dry her clothes, if I haven't come along and rescued the chaos already, she will pull out any clothes from the drier and just dump that somewhere in the middle of the kitchen. I never ever dump clothes, I fold as they come out of the drier because when you drag it out and dump it it gets even more creased and that's MORE WORK and I am very particular about my laundry ( and other things that sometimes I realise and think I should blog about, for instance I love my bed to be made, properly and I will never, not EVER get into a bed that isn't tightly tucked in and smooth, not even if I wake up in the middle of the night for a wee, before I get back into bed I straighten it, tuck it in, smooth my pillows and sometimes even fluff them up and turn them over and H sleeps through all that, if HE did that when I was sleeping.....I wouldn't like him very much, I just cannot get into a rumpled bed. I think of how blessed I am that I am able to cling to that eccentricity. Can you imagine me camping? No nor can I. Shudder.)
I also always delete all my emails or save them but I never leave emails in my inbox because that is so UNTIDY.
I am sitting here with toys all over the floor though because if that isn't just a thankless task these days, the boys are really playing well lately, real games with their animals and a new found love of micro machines ( which delights me, I love to see little boys playing with cars, love it) Isaac found a great Micro machine tanker at a car boot sale and all 3 fell in love with it, it's about 2ft long and when you open it up it transforms into roads and buildings, tiny weeny ( micro even!) cars are inside. I found 3 more on Ebay for £1 each and when I went to collect them the lady told me that these particular ones belong to her autistic son, who is 25! She said he has loved them since he was a little boy and has only just decided that he is too old for them and now he wants to be a D.J. so he said she could sell them...so the ones we have are original and so solid, not flimsy plastic, but tough and robust. I also have one to collect from freecycle. I love to watch all 3 boys play together because there has rarely ever been anything that all 3 enjoy doing. Perhaps that's why I can sit here and not feel anxious at the sight of those tiny vehicles spread out in a haphazard but deliberate way.
I have been aware of just how quickly the boys are growing up, I never tire of sharing my bath with polar bears and prehistoric water creatures, sharks and killer whales.
I remember once, when Dan, Jordan and Sophie were very little, a lovely man asked to use the bathroom and when he came back down he was weeping, I asked him whatever was the matter and he said " I would give everything I own, every foreign holiday, my beautiful house, my flash car, my wallet that is never empty to see toys in my bathroom, when will it ever be my turn?"
Since that day ( and 20 years on he still has no children and somehow I imagine not having grandchildren as all his friends do, is even sadder somehow, it's not something you can ask is it really? ) I have never minded toys in the bathroom, Seth has started to bathe himself now, he doesn't jump in with the other two and I have encouraged him to wash his own hair and take care of his personal cleanliness. How quickly all these things stop, all the things that we think will drive us insane forever, don't. They really don't.
I am more and more aware of just how incredible it is to have been given this second chance at motherhood. I cannot imagine not doing this all over again. I am so relieved that I am finding it easier to let go of all the worry of it all, it's still there and if I were to let it would still be overwhelming but I don't allow myself t o dwell on what could happen or what would be 'awful if ' because right here and right now it is as it is, and it's good.
Hooray and thanks be, for that.