Taking Charge ~ May!

...and it looks like the May flowers will go down by hail tonight. Sigh.

Good heavens, friends! It's MAY!

May be I'll get caught up on the laundry
May be I'll get the floors mopped this week (month? )
May be I'll reconnect with my old meal planning habit
May be I'll remember to thaw something for dinner more than once a week
May be
May be
Maybe!

Maybe I'll just have a glass of wine and think about all this tomorrow!

Miss you girls!

Love to all!
Lenora

April seems to have been full of visitors and house-buying awfulness (and that's no way over yet . . .). Actually the visitors aren't over yet, and won't be until after the (holiday) weekend.

May be I'll finally make our room more habitable
May be I'll reclaim the routine
May be I'll sort out DD's room after the influx of 3rd (!) birthday presents
. . . .

I have a current excitement in my life, DMIL has come up for 2 months to be here for the birth of DSIL's first baby. Until the babe arrives she's going to have DD for one day a week, so I have A DAY OFF! What will I do with myself?

Zillah

A day off?? The problem with those is that they're so rare that you can't decide which of the million things you really want to do should come first, and you end up doing grocery shopping, cleaning the fridge out and buying socks. List all the things and start crossing them off, and if anything starts to look like work instead of fun, scratch it out at the beginning.

Lenora... I think Honey and I can both empathise. I think we never knew we had it so good when we were 'merely' SAHMs. I wanna go hoooooommmmmmeeeee..... Well, okay, maybe I'm the only one of the three of us that feels that way because my move to the working world wasn't entirely a matter of choice or planning. I can only hope that professional satisfaction has both of you feeling that it's worth some changes and discomfort along the way before you really get things sorted.

I'm procrastinating... I'm supposed to have written an email to Harrods about staffing and I'm not looking forward to it. I also just got an obscene phone call so I'm not exactly my chirpiest at the moment. I'll pop back in when I'm feeling ready to spread the joy. May be it'll be before June!

Kerri.

I spent years unable to go anywhere or do anything, and now that DS has a life of his own and is nearly grown up and I am almost free.....I still don't do anything because I have no one to do it with!

As for enjoying being back at work....Humph. The money comes in handy, but all I ever wanted to be was a SAHM........but now my boy is nearly grown up I had to move on, financially and personally. Given the choice I would have a nice husband, a little country cottage, chickens and a couple more babies Happy with my little life though, it's not what I hoped for, but whose life is?

Honey

So DH is in Chicago this week...he called right in the middle of our Girl Scout meeting, which is held here, since there are currently only 7 girls in the troop. DD16.5 answered the phone and when she said, "Mom, it's Dad" I told her,"Tell daddy I can't get the phone right now because I'm mixing cement on the dining room table."

*snort*

He called back just a bit ago...
He: Is everything o-kay?
Me: Oh, yes...Why do you ask?
Pause
He: Were you really mixing cement on the dining room table?
Me; Yep!

*double snort*

...I did eventually remind him that we had the scouts here and that the girls were making mosaic stepping stones tonight...

...but it was fun while it lasted!

Stones are made, mess is cleaned up, Scouts are gone!

I'm tired!

Love to all!
Lenora

Well, we're all exhausted here. We had DH's best friend and finacee staying for the weekend and stayed up too late talking and playing mah jong. Also days full of tourist-y stuff take it out of me.

My day off was pretty fabulous. Met DSIL for coffee, then had wedding anniversary lunch with DH in a v. swanky local restaurant (one of the nice things about living on top of the financial district is that we have some rather nice restaurants to hand if we need them ), then had a jolly good nap in the afternoon. Bliss indeed

Kerri and Honey, sorry you're feeling down about your working states. Who knows what the future will bring? Kind of ironic that I started out on this site working and studying full time, then went to cramming in the study to every DD-free moment, and now, just as I become an utter full-time mum, you guys all go out to work. (insert rolling eyes guy here!)

Lenora, you're very naughty, your poor DH

I've decided I must have a plan for sorting our bedroom out. I'm too tired now, but will update with one asap.

Zillah

you can't plan that kind of stuff Zillah - you just have ot be in a vile-enough mood to want to throw it all away! I'm about there at the moment, but it's nearly 11pm and I'm too pooped now to bother. But I rearranged DD's bookshelves for the umpteenth time - it's really quite simple... she has one Enid Blyton shelf, two other fiction shelves and one large book, mostly non-fiction shelf. Then I try to keep other authors together within the same shelf - hardly rocket science you'd think but somehow neither of my kids can manage to only take out one book at a time, so there are often up to a dozen books off DD's shelf at any one time. She got her room pretty nearly immaculate (if you don't look inside her (old-fashioned style school) desk or her chest of drawers. Now it looks dreadful again. DS has floor space, which in his room is probably miracle enough (it's only 8ft square! I put up pictures for them that I bought on Saturday - both National Geographic prints in cheap frames. I spotted the one for DD first - 3 pictures of zebras, like the one in IKEA (which costs about 10 times the price). DS started to get upset so I said he could have one if he wanted any one of the three faces depicted which was the only remaining choice - he picked one of a man in traditional dress in Niger, swathed mostly in whitish cloth with just the eyes showing. No accounting for taste.

I find that work makes me even less tolerant of my kids than just being a full-time SAHM ever did. Now I rarely have time for fun outings on my own, even though I finally have them in school for the same 6hrs in the middle of the day. I see my mother less than in the first 6mths we were here, and my shopping is either confined to a rush job on Friday in the middle of judo, or takes up a chunk of my weekend. I find it hard to believe people really choose this, but maybe they love what they're doing at work, or they work in an office with other human beings, or... I dunno. All I know is that I've never been as exhausted or as miserable as I have been in the last 8mths or so, and it seems to be getting worse instead of better. I'm grouchy at DH, and the moment he mentions work I feel like bashing his brains out. I no longer feel ike I have any hope of making it change either, which is probably the worst part. A few months ago I had this idea that I'd work towards getitng myself out of it, but I don't know how or where to get staff, or how to afford them and still afford my own salary so we can afford to move next year. We can't even afford decent wage to attract good sales staff - DH is currently working almost entirely on his own in one shop, with our manager in the other shop getting no breaks recently because we don't have anyone who can take over. So how can I afford office taff just because I hate what I'm doing? And the bloody jobcentre is hopeless for finding staff, so I just don't know how without spending a small fortune on a recruitment agency. It seems like the more I learn the less I know, if you see what I mean. There's always more and more and more around the next corner, before I've even got a handle on the last lot of crap to come my way, then DH starts in on me not doing this, that and the other and I really feel like swinging for him. I can't even get the satisfaction of a good scream at him, because he's hundreds of miles away doing the job of about 10 people, and assuming I can do the same.

I don't ever remember feeling this helpless before. I got very down in the last couple of years before we left Singapore, but then I made a damn decision, saw it through and dragged my family back here. Somehow I can't see what decision to make and I'm all out of leaps of faith. I know, this to shall pass... I just wish I could see a wa to make it pass quicker. I can't grumble ot my parents because I'd be letting DH down and my father's expressed pinion of my husband isn't very high. I can't grumble to DH more than I currently do because it's not as if he's having it easy either. And my closest friends are you guys... Which probably explains why I'm sitting here bawling my eyes out while I type. But hey, it's better to let it out once in a while. I was getting more and more unpleasant this weekend, increasingly bad-termpered, so it might be better for me to let it all out and start fresh.

Right now I'm going to change for bed, dig out some well-hidden Easter eggs and get some sleep before having to face it all over again. Thanks for being at the end of my keyboard so I can get it all off my chest once in a while. Hope I haven't depressed anyone else too much. I just have to be able to figure out what decision needs making and then get on and do it. I'm not completely stuck... I just haven't figured out how to be not stuck exactly.

Kerri.

Kerri-
I know you will figure this out somehow - you are one smart lady! I'm sorry you are in such a tough spot right now. I wish I had some excellent advice for you now, but I don't. Keep your chin up Kerri and we hope to hear back from you soon -
Andrea

Kerri - sorry you're having such a hard time with this. Singapore to the UK was kind of out of the frying pan into the fire, wasn't it? Have you thought about contracting out some of your domestic responsibilities whilst you can't get rid of your business ones? Pay someone to clean, iron, do laundry, shop, or shop online. I know it's not what you want, but it might ease your burden and give you more time for the important things - the kids, head space for yourself, time for DH when you're not frantic. Can you get a student to help you out with admin stuff for the summer?

Can't think of anything else useful at the moment, but I'm thinking of you.

Zillah

the very next morning after my meltdown here I had a phone call from one of our drivers (we outsource to a couple of small companies for our heavy items) and while we were discussing deliveries he also asked me if I was still looking for someone for the office... She'll be starting sometime in early June - her notice was about 3wks. She's the SIL of the people who own the van company. I'm so far beyond chuffed that I was bouncing off the walls the last couple of days, although I'm still trying to damp it down a bit in case things change. You never know, and our staffing problems have been so unfunny recently. I'm not booking my flights to SG just yet but I'm hoping we can make it back there in the holidays.

serendipity!

and DH is planning to come home tonight, though probably not for more than 36hrs, and again on Friday because it's his birthday. Don't tell him but I bought him an iPod nano (4GB) in blue. Unlike Lynn he doesn't have a pacemaker for me to be worried about! Then I had a text message from my SIL this morning begging me to buy him something. The shops nearby were mostly shut so I came back and did it online. I went through Cambridge stuff, cufflinks, business card holder, cappuccino/latte maker and ended up back where I started with a speak cum docking station for the iPod. Except that my SIL is such a blabbermouth that I can't tell her what she's bought him until I've given him my present! I got it engraved too - the iPod, not the speakers. For me it's a HUGELY expensive gift but as usual I have so many failures behind me on his gifts that it seems like a good one. Plus he's away from home so much that I wanted something he could take with him to make life more bearable. But he can have the speakers at home if he likes.

so I'm now feeling SOOOOO much better than I was the other day. Not sure I could do the housekeeper thing - I'd be the type to clean up before they came to avoid the embarrassment! I'd rather live with my squalor, knowing that precious few people outside this household have to see it, except the kids' friends, and they prefer it that way because it makes me more easygoing than most of their parents. Plus I cook better so they care very little.

thanks for all the goo thoughts everyone - I think they must have helped a great deal!

Kerri.

Kerri, that's brilliant news Fingers crossed it all comes off smoothly. IKWYM about the housekeeper business, I remember the injustice as a teenage of having to tidy for the cleaner, although suspect that was more about teenage intransigence than anything else. Do you have to do shirt laundering and ironing for your DH? That's something that you might easily able to send out, rather than having someone come to your house.

We've had good news here too. We've had an offer accepted on a flat It's in Dunfermline, about 20 miles north of Edinburgh. A two bedroom attic flat with its own postage stamp of garden. It needs the decorating doing and a bath putting in, but the kitchen is newly and very nicely done. The survey is being done today, so keep all available fingers crossed. As we have to vacate this flat in a month and a half and we REALLY didn't want to have to rent another, this is a big relief.

I'm ashamed to tell you I've made absolutely no progress whatsoever on our room. Hmmmmm. Not too much in the way of taking charge here at the momement

Zillah

At least I can look at this week and feel like some of it has been productive. I know my office lady is aiming to start June 8th. I got my new car on Wednesday (and sorted out the insurance already) - I love it, but it's so smooth and quiet it hardly feels like driving. It's a bit weird but I'm looking forward to taking out a bit further so I can put my foot down. Assuming DH doesn't disappear down south with it on Sunday. Both gifts for DH have arrived in good time, along with a shirt from my parents which they dropped off on Tuesday, hoping to see the new car! I completely rearranged our entire office to better suit the staffing situation - that always gives me a buzz when I rearrange furniture!! And DH is home for about another 36hrs from the small hours of tomorrow morning - just for his birthday! Thanks to the office blitz I've also started some new files and sorted out some papers.

Kids on the way... gotta go...

Kerri.

Well, we almost have a flat of our own The sale is going ahead, the mortgage is in progress, the legal stuff is on its way and we should (keeping all fingers crossed) move into our very first OWN place at the beginning of July.

So all Taking Charge must be now directed at moving. (Yeah, I don't have to sort out our bedroom now, just pack it ).

Contact removal firms for quotes
Phone nursery schools for DD
Start looking for a bath, and probably a loo too, the one in there is pretty dire.
Source some fleece insulation material
Think exciting thoughts about storage, decoration and generally KNOCKING THINGS DOWN AND DRILLING HOLES IN THE WALLS. Not that we've lived in rented places for all our time together or anything!

Oh, and I have my PhD viva in 10 days. Gulp.

Zillah