Growing up my family wasn’t exactly well off; money was always tight and I was always ashamed and embarrassed by our status. I have never, ever been comfortable talking about it – both money & this particular aspect [...]]]>

Life. It can be complicated can’t it? Simple things can change you in ways you’d never expect.

Growing up my family wasn’t exactly well off; money was always tight and I was always ashamed and embarrassed by our status. I have never, ever been comfortable talking about it – both money & this particular aspect of my childhood. I’m now rediculously middle class but I’ve worked hard to try and escape the shame I felt as a child.

Last month something happened that changed how I feel about the angst and embarrassment I felt about growing up poor.

I came incredibly close to being homeless.

Home. Less. Two incredibly simple words on their own but combined they become a blackhole of fear and anxiety. Even now I feel slightly bemused by it, like I can’t quite understand how a “nice girl” like me could find herself stranded in a bad part of town. It’s strange because there was no one thing that created the situation, no over-riding force of evil behind it all, it was just life happening. Just day to day decisions that turned out differently than I had planned, expected, hoped.

When I arrived in London we stayed with friends whilst hunting for flats. I didn’t struggle to find somewhere nice to live – in fact I saw close to 20 places in 2 weeks – the problem turned out to be that nobody wanted a single mum and her child. “but wait…” I hear you cry “that’s discrimination. It’s illegal to refuse someone a home if they’re black or gay so how can you be refused if you have a child?” Turns out, shamefully, the UK is the only country in western Europe where it’s legal. So, I’m sure you can see why, after being rejected by more than 80% of the places I saw (one fell through because of damp & the others were dives) when I found a gorgeous house, who specifically wanted a family, I jumped at the chance despite it being a bit out of my price range. The original plan was that I would either use the extra room for an au pair when I went back to work (with one of the two jobs that later fell through) or that I would get a housemate. Turns out no one really wants to live with a toddler if they don’t have to and I could only justify the au pair if I was working which I’m not. After several months of paying the full rent without working I had bled my savings dry and it was obvious it was too much for me. Part of the problem is that the housing benefits available to me are NOT inline with real world London prices (despite what David Cameron seems to think!) so in almost all circumstances I would have had to top up my rent with what little money I don’t have, making it harder to do the little things. Like eat.

Just as I wrapped my head round the idea of having to move to a small, potentially dreary council flat I stumbled upon a thread on a popular mum’s site which essentially was single mums looking for housing shares. Within a week I had spoken to a single mum about moving into my place and we set up a meeting for the following Saturday. She never showed up. Devastated I prepared myself for the only available option – eviction and council tenancy.

Fate intervened that night with a message from another mum, R. She came over for lunch the next day, and a few days later I saw her house and two weeks after that Maisie and I moved in with her and her eight month old son.

We’ve done really well considering we’ve had to shoehorn all my earthly belongings into an already full house but we’ve done it – although there’s still some streamlining to be done – we’ve created a home for two sweet children and their mummy’s. The different to my life is quite dramatic – we share childcare so I can go out without it costing me an arm and a leg, I don’t feel as isolated because there’s someone to talk to at the end of the day, Maisie loves having a faux brother and most importantly I won’t be living beyond my means.

But even positive change isn’t easy – the other week I had to turn each and every one of my handbags inside out in order to scrounge together £0.60 to buy a pint of milk for Maisie. It doesn’t get much worse than worrying that you can’t provide something as simple as milk for your child.

But here’s the thing – that sense of shame has dissipated. Maybe it’s the fact that you can’t get blood from a stone or that I had someone else so important to me I couldn’t do anything but prioritize them but I stopped seeing the money, & my current financial state, as a representation of who I truly am. I am a good mother, daughter, sister, friend, housemate regardless of whether my bank balance is in credit or debit. These are difficult times we’re currently living in and I think that so many of the situations we’re facing today could be altered if we calculated wealth not by our bank balances but by our hearts.

It’s a lovely, shiny, happy new year and I for one am overwhelmed with a sense of possibility. Last night over dinner with some beloved friends we talked about how incredibly different Jan 2011 looked to today. There have been engagements and babies and separations and deaths and elopements and parties and [...]]]>

Well hello 2012!

It’s a lovely, shiny, happy new year and I for one am overwhelmed with a sense of possibility. Last night over dinner with some beloved friends we talked about how incredibly different Jan 2011 looked to today. There have been engagements and babies and separations and deaths and elopements and parties and sleepless night and oh so much change.

I for one am a very different person today than I was a year ago – in fact this time last year feels like five years ago if its a day. I’ve had a bit of the luxury of time this week to just think about things (usually whilst sat outside Maisie’s door holding it shut so she’ll get back into bed and go the f*%k to sleep) and I am incredibly proud of who I am right now.

For starters I’m entering this year 11 inches smaller than I was last year – and that’s with not being able to do any exercise due to injury – and I’ve given up my scales for a tape measure.

I’ve had several compliments on my parenting this week from people I really admire (and we all know how awesome that is!) and instead of playing it down and making a joke about it I said “thank you” and moved on.

I have enjoyed Maisie immensely this year. I’m not going to lie and say every minute has been a carnival of cotton candy and unicorns but every minute that counts has been lived fully and enjoyed. Last night Maisie awoke with a night terror and I ended up bringing her downstairs to our guests. We had music on in the background and all of a sudden she lifted her tear-stained face and said with a look of pure joy “Mama, our song!” And we all stopped and listened and sure enough it was ‘Dog Days Are Over’, the song we put on to dance together in our kitchen to cook or clean or just get happy. I’ve never called it ‘our song’ but the fact that she sees it that way brought tears to my eyes and reminded me how much our investment of time pays off.

I’m happy. This is genuinely the happiest New Years Day I’ve had in ages. I feel full of promise and a sense of rebirth, I imagine this is what a phoenix feels like if, you know, they actually existed and stuff. But I also feel full of optimism and anticipation, because if 2011 taught me anything at all it’s that I will survive, so I look forward to seeing what 2012 throws my way because I know, not matter how hard, I can make it through.

Last  year I gave up resolutions for a word of the year: Consistency, hilariously the only consistent thing last year was change so it wasn’t totally wrong, just slightly misconstrued. This year I’m doing nothing. No resolutions, no word, no new exercise regime, diet, lifestyle changes, diary, calendar, name, goals, declarations or bucket lists; this year I’m just going to live and enjoy the ride, without feeling like I should be working on something else. Cuz let’s face it – I’m a single mum, there’s ALWAYS laundry to be done!

How are you marking our shiny new slate of 2012?

My first Christmas on my own.

I thought, especially given how painfully lonely this month has been, that I would feel lonely but in the end I wasn’t. [...]]]>

And so it’s done. All the wrapping paper’s put away, stockings unstuffed, play tents errected, presents tidied, long distant phone calls made & love proclaimed.

My first Christmas on my own.

I thought, especially given how painfully lonely this month has been, that I would feel lonely but in the end I wasn’t. In fact I felt spectacularly loved. And I feel very blessed.

In the last 24 hours we’ve spent unexpected hours with friends, had the neighbours insist we have Christmas lunch with them & their families, been surprised by perfectly picked gifts for Maisie by people I never expected to give to her. A dear friend asked his girlfriend to marry him (she said yes), another friend and her husband have separated and the dear, wonderful father of a childhood friend passed away. At times like these it is hard to feel anything but connected to humankind.

This isn’t an easy time of year. Be gentle with yourselves & with each other. Be grateful for what little you do have and if you have more than a little help others who aren’t as well off as you. Life can change in an instant.

Merry Christmas – from my family to yours.

Xoxo

I am a BIG fan of Christmas music. Growing up we had a family tradition of buying one Christmas album a year and it couldn’t be the same type of music two years in a row. This meant the house was always full of a large variety of music but my favourites always shared [...]]]>

I am a BIG fan of Christmas music. Growing up we had a family tradition of buying one Christmas album a year and it couldn’t be the same type of music two years in a row. This meant the house was always full of a large variety of music but my favourites always shared a trait – I could sing along to them. Maisie’s really getting into singing and dancing now so when I heard Music For Baby were looking for bloggers to review their Baby Sing Christmas CD I jumped at the chance.

Music For Baby is a small independent record label, run by a husband and wife team. Their speciality is music designed to support development and different activities from pre-natal through to toddler (and beyond). The Christmas album is “born from a love of real music with the aim to create an album that is not overproduced with synthetic sounds but with real vocals and instruments enabling baby and the whole family to enjoy at this traditional time of year.”

I have to say I love the music. The compositions are simple, elegant and, very easy to sing along to. I’ve even caught Maisie singing along with specific phrases on certain songs. The variety of songs is great too – I love the jazzy All I Want For Christmas Is You and Most Wonderful Time of the Year while Maisie favours Frosty the Snowman.

The CD is available for sale on the Music for Baby on-line shop for £10 or, more usefully in my opinion, it’s also available for download from iTunes for £7.99 which I think is good value for money.

The only thing I had issue with was the CD packaging – I think it looks cheap and doesn’t give any real indication of the lovely treasure trove of music held within but you can easily avoid having to look at it by downloading the CD!

I think this is a great, classy and calming addition to any Christmas collection and we are definitely enjoying it in our home!

TOTAL DISASTER.

And I [...]]]>

So you know that party I was throwing? The really kick ass MadMen themed Christmas Party which I have spent AGES working on? The one I saved to buy food and drinks for, the one I  decorated my house for, bought a stunning dress for & found perfect themed cocktails for?

TOTAL DISASTER.

And I don’t say that lightly. Worst part was my intuition had been saying “call it off” for a couple of weeks but I didn’t listen, just ploughed on as though hard work and faith would be enough.

The first thing that happened was on Monday, when I started chasing RSVPs, I discovered half the invites weren’t received. Yes HALF, no I have no idea, a combination of postal invites and email/facebook ones. So I knew then that sending a Xmas party invite already a week into December was a crazy thing to do – I was Cinderella showing up at the ball at 11:59pm, and sure enough most people had plans.

But, I still had a small number of confirmed attendees – around 15 (I invited over 45) – which I thought would still be great fun, just on a smaller scale. I cancelled the cheeses for the cheese platter and took the Old Fashioned cocktail off the menu – saving me both money and fridge space.

Then the food order (which I put in several weeks ago) didn’t arrive. This was due to idiocy and miscommunication between head office (where the online orders are processed) and the actual store location itself. I was told that they couldn’t put me in for redelivery this week but I could pick the items up in store the next day.

So the next day, after an insane day with a friend and 3 kids under 30 months, I grab a cab to the store to pick my order up. But they can’t find it. In fact no one knows where it is or what happened to it. At this point the sinking feeling starts to amuse me and all I can do is laugh. I end up volunteering to (re)do my own shopping as I have to pick up some other bits anyway. Except that they’re out of stock of most of the food I originally ordered so I have to rejig my menu on the fly. The store are very apologetic (probably because at this point they are terrified of the overly smiley-laughy lady who keeps muttering under her breath that “everything just keeps going wrong”) and give me a £25 gift voucher as a thank you for not freaking out at them.

Whilst waiting, in the freezing cold for a cab, I received the first cancellation by text message. The first of soooooooooooooooooooooooo many.

Then my dear friend who was supposed to be staying till Monday with her two girls acknowledges that one of her girls is really sick and neither of them is sleeping so maybe she should head back to her parents (who can help with the girls during the night etc) early on Sunday.

As disappointed as I was (I’ve missed her so much since I moved away) I was also aware that I had to be a good friend and do whatever I could to make things better for her which was obvious as soon as I admitted it to myself – let her go Saturday night so that she can at least have a chance to catch up on sleep. She didn’t want to abandon me for the party but in acknowledging that she needed to leave in order to be okay I had to acknowledge that this party I was trying SO hard to make happen wasn’t going to.

I made phone calls to the remaining THREE attendees, all of which were going to be travelling for at least an hour to be with me, apologized but explained that the party was dead and it really wasn’t worth their time to drive 2 hours return, pay for sitters, etc for a few cocktails and nibbles.

I can’t tell you how absolutely shit I felt.

When I told my BFF (one of the three) she suggested that she come over anyway and help me drink some of the booze and I told the neighbours they were welcome too and so the four of us sat in my kitchen and wolfed down all the cute little bits of food I had bought that couldn’t be frozen.

I put my gorgeous (new to me but ebay steal) green dress on and prettied myself up with some (much practiced in the week) 50′s creme eyeliner and figured it was better to go down looking amazing than just hanging out in my pj’s which is how I felt.

So we drank my specialty cocktails: The Honey Badger and The Candy Cane Martini as well as my new seasonal fave, spiced mulled cider, ate tiny vol au vonts and cheeseburgers and pate and spinach dip until we couldn’t manage a miniature anything more.

Then the neighbours left and my BFF caught her train and I took a long look at myself in the mirror. Then I slipped out of my dress, into my bed (where Maisie slept because I promised her she could sleep there the night of the party as her room was going to be used for someone else), wrapped my arms around my gorgeous girl and fell asleep.

I’ve taken Maisie away for a few days to see the outlaws (what I’ve taken to calling my former in-laws). This is one of the difficult side effects of separation when you’re not both in the same country. Normally, and especially considering the things that were said and done after we announced the split, [...]]]>

I’ve taken Maisie away for a few days to see the outlaws (what I’ve taken to calling my former in-laws). This is one of the difficult side effects of separation when you’re not both in the same country. Normally, and especially considering the things that were said and done after we announced the split, I would only have to see them on a rare occurrence. Sadly this is not the case and I find myself (yet again) doing something simply because it is the right thing to do.

What I find hardest about the whole situation is how close I used to be to my former mother-in-law. (I brought the woman wedding dress shopping with me for god’s sake.)  We spent weekends away together, I spent the weeks J went mountaineering with them, bonding over lazy mornings reading the papers and our shared fear that he was going to plummet to an icy death.

Now I have to manage a strange balance of giving them time with Maisie, trying not to get myself into a situation where I feel I owe them anything and carefully guarding my true thoughts and feelings. It doesn’t help that they don’t speak to J often so within an hour of arriving the questions about him and what he’s up to start. I usually reply cautiously but generally tend to want to shout “He’s your sodding son why the hell don’t you ask him!!!” Ahem. I’m the grown up, I’m the grown up, I’m the grown up.

We had a bit of a tense moment last night where MOL put cow’s milk in the mashed potatoes and when I pointed it out she said “It’s only a little bit – she’ll be fine.” I was stunned (and livid). First off – we’ve put Maisie on a dairy free diet on a DOCTOR’S recommendation, not because the stars are aligned in Jupiter. Secondly – its called a dairy free diet because it is dairy FREE its not a Little Bit of Dairy Diet. But finally, regardless of all of those things I am her mother. I went to great lengths to explain the diet & what we needed to avoid and I get that some things are habitual and she probably didn’t think about putting the milk in there when she made it but in that case apologise and accept my suggestion that Maisie just doesn’t eat the mashed potatoes. Don’t undermine me in front of other people and repeatedly tell me that she’ll be all right. In the end I stood my ground and said quite firmly, “It won’t be alright. She can’t have dairy and she’ll be fine without the mashed potatoes.” (Which you would have thought would be the end of it but no, an hour or so later (a) the leftover potatoes were suggested as bubble & squeak for breakfast and (b) I was asked, again, who had suggested the dairy free diet!!!)

I’m not sure how long this current arrangement is going work. I know they hope to have her up here on her own, which is fine with me in theory (I mean my parents have had her and I’m trying to be the fair grown up here) but the statement “We look forward to being able to meet her at the station” had me in hysterics because it is going to be YEARS before I just plop Maisie on a train and hope she knows where to get off. (I can just imagine her with a tag like little Paddington Bear!) But I also don’t fancy having to take 3 days out of my month to come up here and facilitate fun for them all. I’ve had them down, which was ok – much easier for me of course plus a built in babysitter – but I need a break from her every now and then too. I think Js visit next month will give them all a chance to be together (and I get some time off!!!!!)  but after that we need some sort of a plan – I’m all ears if any of you have suggestions!

xoxo