I tell you what.....

Oh I am so tired. Really, really tired.

I have often been tired in my life.

Working long shifts as a nurse tired, pregnant tired, young mother tired, young mother pregnant again tired ( ooh that's a good one that is) older mother having babies at the same time as parenting teenagers ( 4) tired ( I want to think of a great word to describe that one, 'shit' is the only word that springs to mind) THEN how about old ( 40+) mother of new baby at the same time as parenting teenagers and being pregnant AGAIN tired, huh? How about that one then? I defy you to beat that one, you won't. Not until you get to the old mother, who has young boys ( 3) and a 21 year old teenager still at home and is also a grandmother tired.

I am the winner.

The reason this tired wins over the other tireds ( yes, it is a word, I just wrote it, there is your proof) is because your body tell syou are tried in such undeniable ways.

It is, after a certain age, impossible to pick anything up off the floor without 'Oofing' darn that sock - 'oof ' Quick toddler is coming, move those little toys off the floor in case he eats them - ' oof '

It becomes increasingly difficult to get up from squishy sofas as you get older, the mind is willing but the knees just won't do it.

It takes longer to recover from bursts of impulsive activity, still keen to do such things the body will comply and the nearly 50 yr old mind will thrill as it realises that 'look at you! You are keeping up and doing all these fun things with all these whippersnappers! Why, you're naught but a spring chicken' oh it's lovely, then you get home and sit down and oh, oh dear me, things start to seize up. I am, it has to be said, a grand form of entertainment 'round about 8pm on a day when I have been busy and active. I get up and darn it if my heels don't like to touch the floor and my hips feel all out of place and I do an almost dance like walk along the hallway, accompanied by a veritable aria of " ooooh , oof, ow, oh my' s" I remember how we would laugh at my mum when we had knelt to say family prayers, when we said 'Amen' we would all sit quietly and wait for my mum to get up and then howl with laughter at the way her toes would stay curled up and she would hobble back to her chair 'ooing' all the way. I laugh on the other side of my face now because at least she was able to get up off the floor without crawling to a chair and hoisting herself. That'll teach me.

I was in the car today for an hour and a half while Mel and Jordan went to have a scan ( yes I am going to be a gramma again in June, HOORAH!) I had Isaac, Eli and Joshua with me and that is why, this evening, I feel my age and some.

What is it about 2 year olds that hurts so much, their shoes seem to find every tender part of a person's body, shins, toes, thighs. Those sharp little elbows dig in to old and tender bosoms as they help a little person crawl over your head to reach something intriguing. Little fingernails are so sharp as the pinch and scrape on the way past to exciting treasures. Shall we talk about the headbutting? "Sit on gramma's lap and look at this boo"....CRUNCH....'Sowwy Mam-mar!" Off he goes again.

2 year old people are so fascinated by everything "Mam-mar, dot new sarsses?" "Yes, I have got new glasses, no touchi....." POKE. " Sowwy Mam-mar" off he goes.

My mum has told me often that of all the people in the world to have lots of children, I am the least likely because I can't cope with noise. Noise, to me is painful. I love quiet. I crave quiet and as much as I like busy, as much as I adore people, sometimes the noise nearly kills me.

As well as my not dealing with noise well, the Lord ( because He has the most incredible sense of humour) gave me the loudest children, no, really they are VERY, VERY LOUD. The older they get, the louder they become. They all have BOOMING voices, voices that carry, even when they whisper ( which isn't often) I grudgingly believe they get that from me because many is the time I have had people say to me " I heard you in town the other day" Where most people will get " I *saw* you in town"
For the most part, I love having all my eggs in one basket, all my children in one place. I try to stand back and watch how they all interact and never am I disappointed. I especially love to watch Dan and Jordan with the little boys. They are totally different with Seth, Isaac and Eli than with any other child. Jordan is most definitely a father to Joshua, he is big brother to the boys. He lets go of the teacher, disciplinarian, consequences matter part of being older and he absolutely gives into his inner child with his brothers. I love the way both he and Daniel treat them so boisterously, my heart is in my mouth half the time as I watch these skinny little boys being picked up and thrown, tripped up, bundled and shoved in a testosterone fuelled melee of chaos and noise. I sometimes gasp at the seemingly careless way they 'play' with them and only manage to stop myself interfering when I realise that the overriding sound is one of undiluted belly laughing, are boys freaks or what? What can be fun about being flung all over the place and shoved across the room onto your face? I don't get it but I do get that they love it.
Dan said he was coming down this weekend, I wish he wouldn't say until he was on his way because Seth counts the minutes, he asks repeatedly when Dan is coming, what time, is he coming for real and now, now he has his own Ipod touch, one that can make calls ( Don't ask me, how can something that isn't a phone make phone calls? HOW?) and today I found him out in the porch calling Dan to make sure he is really coming, for real ...what time? We still don't know if he is coming, gah.....little boys being disappointed is horrible.
What am I trying to say here? I've been at this for HOURS, actual HOURS I tell you and yet, I tell you nothing. Zilch.
I'm tired though, I can tell you that.

Which would be quite cool, if it were so.

So, here's the deal.
I think.
Well it's the deal for today, tomorrow? Who knows.
I went to my Dr yesterday, I have been putting that off for weeks, if not months, it is certainly a long time since I last went because, as I told her when she asked why I have not been to see her " Oh, well, because what can you do?"
Because what can she do? I suppose that she can possibly find some drugs to alleviate the symptoms of whatever ails me, the indigestion for instance. I say indigestion as though it is some mildly troublesome belching after a meal, when in fact it is a 24 hour horrendous pain that renders me incapable of doing much but complain. I drink gaviscon as if it is water and I chomp on tums as if I have an addiction. When I wake up I can feel my stomach is so full of acid I can only stumble downstairs huddled over with a vice like grip on my stomach. Many nights I wake up gasping as I breathe in only to inhale the acid that has travelled up my gullet...that is most probably almost amusing to witness as I shoot out of bed trying to catch my breath.
That was the main reason for going to see my Dr yesterday, it is ridiculous to try and pretend that this is perfectly OK to live with. I know, though it makes no difference, that this is my bodies reaction to 'eating my worries' in the destructive habit of eating myself calm I have, as well as made myself fatter than at any other time in my life, actually damaged the inside as well as the outside of my body. I have to stop.
She suggested increasing my anti depressants, which I refused because medicating me isn't any more helpful than eating myself calm, all it does is mask what I am avoiding. I wish I knew what I was avoiding, if We could discover that then maybe it would be easier to heal myself.
She suggested counselling again and although I admit that it was incredibly helpful last time I'm not convinced it can help me now.....my last councillor was great and I felt that she really knew me, could see who I really way inside and still listened to me, still showed me I was worth knowing, even though she knew what my darkest secrets were. Until I saw her outside, in the street, twice and she ignored me, she looked right at me, both times and then she turned away. I wasn't expecting her to hug me or shout Hallelujah to my name but she could have said "Hello" or even, you know, smiled. She didn't and in turning away, both times ( the first time I convinced myself that she hadn't seen me, the second time, I knew she had seen me and she had chosen not to acknowledge me) and so I never went to see her again. I told the Dr I was better and didn't need counselling anymore.
I just wrote that as if I was aware of what I did all along and for heavens sake, until I started writing this blog today I had absolutely NO IDEA that this is what I had felt or done. I knew that when she didn't acknowledge me I was cut to the quick, I knew that it mattered but I thought I had convinced myself that it was some kind of 'therapist' thing to keep relationships somehow professional and 'in the office' but really, how could a simple Hello have hurt? ( did she think that I would throw myself at her feet and tell her what was worrying me right then outside the Ivor Dewdney pasty shop? Perhaps she did, who knows.) All I know is that when she did that, when she looked at me and then looked away, twice, in my mind she proved the first one right when he told me that should anyone ever know the real me, they would walk away, they would never be able to stay anywhere near me because I am so rotten inside that it would be impossible to have anything to do with me when the real me shows it's ugly face.
If I were a psychiatrist I would tell me that my whole eating myself ugly thing is a defence mechanism, I would explain that by doing this, by eating until I cannot even look at myself in a mirror I am making myself inapproachable to start with. 'Look at me, ugly huh? don't even try to like me because I AM BAD! Turn away right now and save yourself ( And me) Some heartache '
I sat next to the first one at Jordan's wedding, I spoke to him and I found myself trying really hard to remember ever being close to him. I looked at his face with his squinty eyes and I tried to remember ever loving him. I marvelled at how calm I was on the outside, how sociable and polite, how easily I hugged him and spoke to him about our children ( mine, MY children) and how simply I deflected talking to him about Sophie when he asked, how I smiled and said how busy she is and how she never has her phone turned on and how it isn't anything personal that she doesn't call him. I did that because he is so stupid, he is not worth wasting good conversation on, he doesn't deserve explanations or any chance to right his wrongs. What I wanted to do was laugh in his stupid face and tell him she doesn't hate him she doesn't even think about him, she feels nothing but contempt and she calls him only when she wants something because that's all he's good for, maybe £20 when it's her birthday, the rest she gets from me...but it's OK, I won't ever let her see the real me in case she can't stand to be near me because what then? Then she'd have NOWHERE to turn would she?
Arsehalf, it'd take two of him to make an arse(w)hole. HALF! ( made myself cry through the tears then, I told Jenn and Julie the arsehalf thing when they were here and we laughed saying we would simply shout HALF at anyone that was getting on our nerves and no-one would ever know why we were saying it. I've let the cat out of the bag on that one, sorry about that, if I've ever yelled HALF at you, you probably deserved it and why are you reading my blog? Go away immediately.So, the chances are the whole burning acid in the stomach thing is my body eating away at itself, which really, wouldn't that be cool if it didn't hurt? How fabulous would it be if you hated yourself so much that your body ate itself away until you were a skinny little lovable thing?
Am I saying that if I were thin I would be more lovable? *gasp* yes, I think I am.
I am definitely saying that about only myself, me, Helen. I love myself much more when I am thin, I hate myself to the point of loathing when I am fat, I feel I am just as I deserve to be when I am fat. I'm not saying that's how it should be, just that it is how it is.
I am back at the point where enough is enough and I am ready to try again to be kind to myself. I have made myself physically ill this time and the older I get the more worrying that is.
Here's to liking myself again and being kind to myself, here we again.

To every thing there is a season....

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

I've been a bit teary lately, with the premature ( in my mind) shrivelling of my womb, my splendid womb that has served me so well over the years, never causing much trouble at all until all my babies had been born, when it started to be a bit show offy every month instead of being politely disappointed in not having another embryo to grow and quietly discarding it's lining in an unobtrusive and unproblematic way it began to be ANGRY and twisted and be most impolite in it's natural expulsion of unwanted womb linings, making sure I KNEW it's displeasure at being let down again. My womb is very proud of the way it grasped hold of tiny little fertilised eggs and held onto them for longer than necessary, apart from Jordan all my children had to be forcefully evicted so happy was my womb to have them. I lost 2 babies and even that happened in the kindest way, if there is a kind way to lose a baby. I conceived immediately after both losses and so it was impossible to dwell on those babies that never were. If I ever got weepy about it I would then remind myself that had I had those babies, well I wouldn't have these babies and the tears stopped.
When I had Elijah I knew that he was my last baby, without any doubt I knew that there were no more spirit babies floating around longing for me to be their mother, I was done.
I have always been sure about that and as the years passed I became more and more shuddery at the very idea of having another baby of my own.
Until lately, really lately, like the last 3 or 4 months where I have found myself gazing at heavily pregnant women and feeling so achingly sad that I will never experience that again. I can hardly bear the thought that my body is closed for productive business. It is ageing at a terrifying rate, all of a sudden, it seems every time I look at myself in the mirror I see another sign that I am not young, that choices I took for granted are no longer there.
I see so many advantages to being older and I am embracing them, with great joy actually, all apart from this one, this irrefutable evidence that I can no longer choose to have babies.
I am so good at making babies, so very good, I don't care if it's blowing my own trumpet, I will hold my hands up to being incredibly vain about how beautiful my children are. They are and it's not just me that says it, they are lovely, lovely people.
When I knew I was making the choice to have no more babies I felt powerful and good about it and now, well now I am sad and feel a bit useless and old.
This very week I stared into the distance and thought about how sad this was that my littlest person is 7 and all teeth and lanky legs, no more lavender smelling little faces, just grimy knees and stinky breath.
I was wallowing, truth be told until yesterday when Jordan called and told me that Mel is having another baby...oh be still my heart! If being a gramma isn't better all round, none of the miserable bits and all the joy. When my front door crashes open and the tornado that is Joshua comes thundering in yelling "MAM-MAR! MAMMAR! Are you?" my heart skips a beat and we all quickly move anything breakable out of reach, like a natural instinct, he crashes in and laughs at himself, kisses everyone and pushes every button, flicks every switch, shuts every lid, swigs every drink and then yells "BYE! SEESOOON!" and then we all breathe a sigh of relief and thank heaven that there is a time when wombs stop making beautiful babies. I am too old for babies that live in my house, when I hear of the 5am wakings and the mornings they have Josh in bed with them and he fidgets and pokes them and hits them in the head with books until they give in when he gets downstairs and then promptly falls asleep on the sofa ....I appreciate that I won't be doing that again. I am ready for grand-babies, many of them I say.
There is, indeed a time for everything and for every thing there is a season.
It is my time to stop having babies and sit back while my children have them and let me love them and send them home. Oh the sending them home part if glorious because you know that it won't be long until the next visit.
Good old womb, you knew what was good for me before I did. Carry on with not carrying on. I'm ready.

Not sorry at all.

I have been so hopeless with my blog and recently I have regretted that, it's so good to be able to look back and see how things were in the past, I love to see how we have changed and grown, learned from mistakes and see where I need to work and concentrate more. Not writing here means I can't do those things and that annoys me!

So here I am, with a jumbly old pile of stuff to say, who knows if I will make any sense at all...ooh I should say that I have only just discovered that some comments were in a hidey hole awaiting my approval! Who knew that was a new thing? I love comments and so finding them was a treat indeed, also love that blogger seems to be filtering out spam and putting that in a separate cesspit, thankyou blogger, I appreciate that.

So, we have been homeschooling Elijah for a while and I should probably update on that, he has made huge leaps in many ways, he is asking questions ( and what questions he is asking! "what does light mean?" and " is that what this tastes like?" Fun answering some of his queries I can tell you!)

We now know he CAN sit still and concentrate, what works for him is to work for 15 minutes and then he gets to run around and be a dog, or a lion for 10 minutes. We are slowly getting him to concentrate for longer periods but he definitely learns best when he is on the go, when we are out and about and ask him questions he thinks and answers sensibly, if we have him work out money and find things in the shops he can do it easily, if we try to get him to do the same thing, sitting down in a lesson environment, it's like pulling teeth and we're not sure who it hurts the most.

I can't tell if he really has special needs or if he is 'normal' he certainly isn't like my other children but at his age THEY all had special needs, I have never had a 7 year old that is average. I do see that he isn't a shining scholar and he doesn't grasp things easily. He is learning about safety and my goodness that is such a relief. When we go out, if he is the only child he stays close by, he doesn't run away, he thinks and for the most part we can trust him . If anyone else is with us, all bets are off and he reverts to being the a liability. Slowly does it is our motto.

H is doing the majority of the school work with him, he is patience personified and between teaching Eli and tutoring Seth and his friend Harry every evening, ready for the 11+ I think he is in his element. I need to make sure that Eli's lessons are recorded so we have something to show the woman of doom when she comes back to see how we are doing. I can see that for Eli, the relaxed and suited to him way of learning is spot on. I still worry about the future for him but am learning to take things more on a day to day basis, for now this is working, who knows what the future holds, I know that right now, the thought of sending him to school is unbearable, I can't bear to think of him trying to be friends with kids who don't want him near them, I shudder when I think of his little face still smiling when those kids told him to go away and turned their backs on him. I love that a couple of the children at school are thrilled to see him and he has been to play with Alfie, he doesn't miss school and I ask him sometimes if he would like to go back to school one day, he always says "No, I don't" for now, that is enough for me.

Isaac has just been away for 5 days with the school, he stayed with the school and we didn't get a phone call to say he was having a rough time. He was obsessed with his packing and almost drove himself into a frenzy with the checking and rechecking, on the morning of camp day he stayed in the car and wouldn't get out until I told him his friend Jamie A was ready and in the playground, he grabbed his bags and left, we didn't follow him and let him get on the bus etc with his friends.

The second night of camp I was sick with worry, I couldn't settle and I just wanted to go and get him. I have sent my children away on various camps and such and I always worry before they go, once they have left I am fine, I think of them and hope they are happy, this time I just hated it, I was fretful and driving myself crazy with all the ' I feel like this because he is miserable and they are jollying him along and not allowing him to come with us' I argued with myself and eventually made myself believe that he was fine, even if he was unhappy he wouldn't be damaged for life etc etc.

I went to collect him from school, waited by the bus and didn't see him get off, I walked around the bus and still didn't see him, then I saw him out of the corner of my eye, standing right next to the minibus. He saw me and immediately put up his hands in a very definite ' don't come near me' way and then he turned his back. He walked into the playground and I followed him to help with his bags, he still wouldn't look at me but eventually answered a couple of questions and whispered that he had won ' tidiest room' and 'Best boy' awards.

His teacher was near the bags and heard me ask Isaac if he had done body boarding ( he had been insistent that he would not try it, not do it, would not be swayed at all, body boarding was a NO) she said " Do it? Did he ever do body boarding, in fact we could hardly STOP him body boarding" she then went on to say he had indeed won award for the 'Best boy' and he had got that because he was so well behaved and listened well etc.

He was obviously tired and so I didn't ask too many questions, he came home and he ate and ate and ate some more. Then he got a blanket, wrapped his stinky, dirty self in it and he wouldn't move. Then he cried for a long time, how I hate that silent cry, it is so pitiful, so overwhelming and I always feel so helpless because he can't tell me why he is crying, just perfectly silent as tears stream down his face. I picked him up and put him on the sofa next to me and let him cry. He held my hand for 3 hours, if I went to let go he would grab my hand again and put it back on his leg or hold one of my fingers and he whispered over and over again " I missed you " he went on to tell me "I liked Wednesday because we watched 'up' and I liked doing the stuff but I didn't like sleeping there and I wanted to sleep with you and dad at the caravan but I didn't tell them. I was hungry" He has told me the food they have to eat and it is certainly sufficient and all the things kids like, Isaac has an incredibly mature taste in food, he will choose Lamb biryani over chicken nugget and chips, he will ask for Sea Bass or trout and ask to cook it himself. He loves nothing better than left overs for breakfast and has an ever increasing interest in where his food comes from and how it is cooked. It was hard for him to eat regular kid food for 5 days! He didn't get his 7pm dessert either " the had brownies and cake but they gave it to us RIGHT AFTER DINNER! ( the very idea!!) As time goes by he is telling us more of what he did, he is proud of himself for going and for trying all the activities, I think it was tough for him to deal with 5 days of total break in his routine, he didn't shower at all while he was away and nobody cares about that, he is intensely private and won't have a bath here if Sophie has a friend over, he is just starting to be more modest when I am around, a quandary for him because he hates to wash his own hair, the water on his face is tough for him, I am sure it won't be long before he decides that washing his own hair is preferable to having his mum see his bum!



Seth and Eli are not buddies, at all, they seem unable to be in the same room, car, building, town as each other without fighting, oh it's so tiring to pull them apart, let them at it, pull them apart, warn them it'll end in tears, warn them again, sigh and say " See? SEE? Did I tell you? You can't listen can you, it always has to end with someone crying and....."

Not a day goes by without both H and I saying " don't look at him, touch him, reply to him, ignore him, pretend he isn't there" many times. In vain. They are compelled to scrap, what can I do?

I'm getting old, what that has to do with anything is neither here nor there but good heavens I feel it lately, the weather has changed and I feel it in my bones, there's no denying it, so I won't. I am in fact embracing some parts of it, I like to think I am playing it a bit, I have noticed that my big children are becoming my carers, how bizarre! I see more and more that they treat me like a precious dimwit and I am somewhat ashamed to say that I let them! The boys especially are treating me as if I am sure to break or get lost ( which I do, let's face it, if you put me in a paper bag and shook it twice I'd get lost trying to find my way out. We followed the mini bus to Cornwall, 68 miles. We made our won way home 112 miles....every time the scenic route, for the love of petrol it gets old BUT and yes, there is a BUT....I always find my way in the end!) I bite my tongue when I am tempted to point out that they are only where they are and who they are because I looked after them and got them where they are.

When Jenn and Julie were here we were going out for the day and we were following Dan, Jordan, Mel and her mum in Dan's car. The plan was that we go to my mums house first and pick up the post box she had made for them, she made it to go on the table at the reception to collect the cards, anyway off we went and I followed Daniel and he went through traffic lights and they turned red before I got through. Dan noticed and he pulled over in a lay by and waited for me! When we got to mum's I asked him if he had actually done that because he didn't believe I could find the way to my MOTHER'S house on my own! Jordan laughed and said " patronising twat isn't he?" Yes, but a glorious one.

Sophie is changing, it is quite the most touching and breath holding thing for me to see, I am on the sidelines and waiting to see her fly...and she will, if prayers and hoping, willing and longing have anything to do with it she will.

On the day Jordan and Mel got married, Sophie was astounding, a new person and she excelled, she was sophisticated and thoughtful, she outdid herself in her duties as a bridesmaid and at 5 o'clock she asked me what time I was going home and said she wanted to come home with me, she said she was tired and poorly and she would just come home. That isn't Sophie AT ALL, she is a party girl and she will be first there, last to leave and the loudest one in the room.
When she came home with me as I dropped H and the boys home, she was quiet ( BELLS! Ringing of the alarm bells!) so she said " I won't ever have that" I knew immediately what she meant, I said before and I will probably say it again, Jordan and Mel's wedding was one of a kind, the emotion and the absolute rightness was tangible, it was moving to everyone there and I suspect many people wondered if they would ever have 'that'.
I let her be quiet for moment and then I saw the tears and she said again " I know I will never have that"
I told her that she could and she will, if she is willing to do what it takes to get 'that' Right now she is a party girl, she is over loud, she is in your face she is outrageous and she doesn't like herself enough to treat herself nicely, let alone expect anyone else to treat her well.
I told her that while she is doing what she is doing, she will keep getting what she is getting. I asked her who she thought would want to share a whole lifetime with someone who gets drunk several times a week, who flashes her body and makes lewd comments at every opportunity. I asked her if maybe men thought she was great fun..for the night but maybe when or if they thought of loving someone forever they would be looking for someone that offered more, someone who thought more of herself? I told her also that she should change what she is doing, that she should try new things, go to new places, let people see who she REALLY is, not who she wants them to think she is.
I encouraged her to try and let people see the person I had been watching that day. I promised her that if she did that, if she got to like herself more it would be easier for someone to love her more. Sometimes, when I speak to my children I can tell that they have heard me. I Am sure she heard me.
She has applied to do a college course from home, she will have to work as well as study ( which is great, less time for partying!) I will do anything I can to help her do it, she wants to work with children and she is great with other peoples' children, she drives me insane with the boys but I am impressed with her when she is looking after other peoples' kids! I can't see her as a nanny because she isn't patient enough, I can see her in a nursery where there are several adults and lots of not baby children, she has a rough time with babies and the whole ' can't say what the problem is' thing. I shall be crossing my fingers and toes for her. She needs for some real changes and to feel useful and worthy of good things.

Tomorrow I am going to start on getting better, I have felt so poorly for so long, so low and pathetic, I can't imagine feeling better, physically the way I have been treating my body has caught up with me, I have always been such a healthy fat person but I can't say that anymore, good grief if I don't ache now the weather has changed, really limpy ache, oof and ouch and bloody hell ache.
I can't do this anymore.
I was shopping yesterday and a man walked past and as he passed me he made a violent kind of gagging 'Ugh' sound. Now, common sense tells me that he wasn't making that noise because I am so hideous he was unable to hold it in but that's exactly what I thought as he did it, I immediately tried to smell myself to see if I was rank and festering and then I tried to hold my head up and get the shopping done as quickly as I could.
It would seem ( steady on, some information about to be imparted that might not be strictly necessary) that the menopause is here, for real, I would say out of the blue but it isn't, not really, I have been a raging hormone filled unpredictable blob for so long I can't remember when it all started, I blame the sweating and unbearable heat waves on my medicines but let's be frank ( oh if only I could be Frank, he never has to deal with this crap does he? No, indeed not.) every time I sit and flap a piece of folded paper in front of my face and huff and puff IKNOW the world can see I am a woman of a certain age, hells teeth I hate it. The fact that my periods ( Aunt Flo as it is so quaintly referred to in polite circles) have been every 28 days for as long as I have had them, after babies 28 days, after major surgery 28 days, come hell and high water, every 28 days there it is, how terribly convenient.
I have had late periods 10 times in my life, 8 pregnancies, 2 miscarriages and 2 late periods with no apparent reason, 4-5 days late.
I am now over 2 weeks late, good heavens. I have even taken 2 pregnancy tests which were negative and let me tell you, there wasn't even a threat of a tear of disappointment when I saw the absence of a second line.
So, it looks like the menopause it is then, for real, with it's delightful promises of aching limbs and brittle bones. Life's just a barrel of laughs isn't it?
I know that I am now fighting against the odds here now, if I don't help myself I am destined to a life of limping misery and I am not ready to give in to all that age threatens. I can't when I have these 3 boys here and still so reliant on us to take care of them.
I have always been quite proud of the fact that even though I am considerably overweight it never slowed me down and now it does, by the end of the day my legs and back are screaming for mercy. I can't help but imagine how happy my legs would be if they had 100lbs less to carry around. I suspect my legs might do the fandango and I would jolly well let them, in public if I ever were to able to achieve such a glorious feat.
I know I have to move more and eat less and I have to eat the right foods when I am eating.
How many times have I been here? Oh shut up, I know, but look, it's when I stop coming back here that I have to worry, when I give up entirely and stop losing the weight before I put it all back on.
I am very worried about how baggy I will be as I lose weight, my poor face, never mind the bits that no-one else sees. I might have to invest in some seriously elastic knickers and some extra long and stretchy socks and tuck everything in in a military operation every day, I shall start wearing polo neck jumpers to hide the droopy neck and face skin...oh dear, the very idea. I stand by my idea that eating cakes has kept the wrinkles at bay, every time I see an advert for 'plumping' face cream I tell the TV...EAT A CAKE! I shall rue the day I know it.
It's taken me 2 days to write this drivel, I'd apologise but I'm not sorry at all.