More4 - No child of mine
Film Four - Girl, Interrupted
After viewing the safely vacant fluff that is Sex and the City, what the fuck possesses me to watch things that touch much closer to home?
I can't help but wonder...
when faced with happiness, do I covet the familiarity of my nightmares?
The day before I turned 9 - I realised the man my mother married wasn't the saviour he was made out to be.
The day before I turned 19 - I met the man I would marry and have three children with in order to escape the man that was a monster.
The day before I turned 29 - I met the man I would leave my marriage for and, from then on, was made out to be a monster.
The day before I turned 39 - I'd had twelve hours solid sleep, safe in the knowledge that, finally, I had found the man I could trust not to be a monster, nor to make me one whenever I express an opinion.
The day before I turned 39 - I was a truly happy little fat florist.
The day before I turn 49 - Who knows? In the near four decades I've been around I've at least learned that nothing is impossible given enough wish and and a bit of will.
Well, apart from quitting fags and booze.
Bing is taking me on holiday.
A million websites and discussions later we find somewhere that neither of us has been to*
A thousand review sites later we select a lovely 4 star, adults only hotel**
A hundred comparisons later we find a company that offers the combination of flight time/price/transfer we (or rather, I) want***
A minute later he declares an important meeting and leaves me his card to finalise the booking.
And I book the wrong date.
* No mean feat, he's done the bloody world thanks to the RAF.
** No kids, woot!
*** I know, he's paying to take me away and I'm being fussy. I didn't just dream this name up, ya know.
Thoughts and feelings fight through fingers to make sense and no-one wins. Non-sense is all there is...
How can those that I love most drive me so crazy with constant verbal input yet make me feel so desperately alone at the same time? Why can't everyone that I love just love each other and be nice?
39 is scarier than 40 because now it's approaching I realise I have to fit a shitload of stuff into a year in order to do/achieve/taste/find it before middle age becomes official.
Completing a 1.5 hour exam in 20 mins with a distinction means nothing when the woman that dropped out halfway through already has a job in the business and the one that's still there but already failed the course has three wedding bookings.
How dare a school make my children feel bad that I haven't sent in a "voluntary contribution" for the annual week of arts activities? One of those days is sports day for fucks sake! Even worse, they've disallowed Babyboy going on the trip to the theme park due to misbehaviour yet they still want £50 per child. They'll get a stiff letter containing thirty notes when I have it and every day they mention it to my kids that money goes down by a fiver.
Me at college and me at home are so different I'm really scared that my mind has finally split into two.
I miss karate. Not the obligations but the feelings and the physicality.
The thrill of shopping for holiday clothes is marred when you search eBay for tops that fit your bust size and find them advertised as suitable for TV's and cross-dressers.
Upstairs, right now, is a man and a dog that I love. They are both snoring enough to wake the dead. I'm looking out the window for zombies.
My dog attention seeks by stealing things that she knows she shouldn't have. Laundry, pens, electrical items, tea-towels, anything she can pick up with her teeth beneath your nose she gets, even though her sad eyes tell you she knows she'll be told off for it.
The humans around me attention seek by having ailments. Every day there is something else hurting, aching or sore and I have to hear about all of them. Fuck knows why, I'm the least sympathetic person in the world. I hear ailment and think weakness, the alarms go off and mentally I sprint far away from the wounded before I'm tainted with the germs of neediness. I already know it's contagious cos every fucker round me has it.
Those three little words...
Leave. Me. Alone.
Peach and the team have done it! You're not the only one is available now! Buy it!
(I'm in it but don't let that put you off cos so are a lot of really fabulous people like... well, just buy it will ya! Why are you still here anyway? Get thee to lulu bearing card details! Jeez!)
My children laugh when I attempt to pass on DIY skills. They tell me they'll earn enough money to pay someone else to it rather than get dirty themselves.
The past three days have been spent drowning in Solvite whilst trying not to disturb the male members of my family during important TV programmes. I've been re-decorating my living room (lounge-diner, in estate agent speak). Throughout this period of indulging my artistic side I have been in a cycle of prossie washing before donning the same scruffy, paste and paint stained clothes for 18 hours then collapsing into fitful sleep filled with dreams of steaming off 40 years of wallcovering (including my layer of emulsion that freshened everything quickly upon moving in), awkwardly sited radiator pipes and prepping woodwork.
More than half an hour after 2am tonight I matched the last pattern round yet another non-true corner and trimmed the last edges against the freshly whitened ceiling and newly glossed skirting board. Then, finally, I looked at it as a whole and actually stopped being anal about the few little imperfections; I even allowed myself some pride in the result before having the very best and most earned shower of my entire life. And I had to wonder whether my children are right.
Next on la-la lounges - building my own fire surround because I want one that no-one else has got.
