Things to do before you die!

We were saying goodbye to a guy who had come to give us a quote to convert our loft, when I noticed this hot air balloon really close to our house. When you see them with a scenic backbround I think they just look so gorgeous! One day I will get myself up in one and look down over everything because I am sure that will be a site too. It is definately on my list of things to do before I die! Along with - taking a beginners art + beginners photography course; learning piano and saxophone; singing live with a band; learning to dance the tango; designing and executing a new and innovative programme of sexual health education for teenagers; doing the great north run; keeping tropical fish; owning a pair of high heeled shoes that lace up and round the legs with ribbons or ties; being able to wear those shoes with confidence; seeing Bruce Springsteen, BonJovi, Aerosmith and Tina Turner live in concert; and driving high speed on a rally course or something of that nature. With a little more effort and of course life experience I may just get my book completed one day soon too! Hopefally these are achieveable dreams too. Of course the list does not include all the places I want to travel to before I die. Top of the list is a carnival in Rio de Janiro, closely followed by Barcelona; Morroco; Mexico; China; New Zealand; Croatia; Canada and Sweden. Sweden mainly to find out how they manage to have such high standard maternity services! Canada for the scenery and as I have friends there. New Zealand for the scenery and as D has relatives there. And the others just out of interest. I am quite sure I will not get to see all of them so I will have to prioritise, and of course save up! Travelling is the only thing I regret not doing young and before I settled down, but I have promised myself I will later in life, and of course I can go with my family which will make it even more special and probably stressful! Or so Im told! No I am sure it will be when Ali and any others are older and can appreciate everything! I really must get myself to France to see my best friend though, I miss her loads! But of course there will be no holiday this year now as it would appear we will be paying out considerably for our loft conversion which is now booked, and deposit layed down for. Woopeee! I may just get that luxury bedroom Im dreaming of after all!

Cheap shoes!

As a woman I have discovered the world or shoes later on in life, especially as I have always had quite wide feet and never managed to find anything I wanted in my size. Of course now there is no end of choice. So many companies have jumped on the band wagon and are providing for 'big and beautiful' women, where shoes are concerned as well as clothes. However, my mother and Gran alike always re-enforced to me that one should never skimp on shoes. Cheap shoes would not last and would be made badly and hurt your feet. Well recently I have discovered the world of cheap shoes when I found a gorgeous red pair that fit me whioch I just fell in love with. I had to get a size bigger than I actually am to get them wide enough but they are hot and damn comfortable for 3-4 inch heels. The irony is that I have about four pairs of smart blacks shoes for which I paid a fair amount that are all falling to pieces, not long after buying them - but the cheap shoes are going and going like a duracell battery! All hail cheap shoes!

Bed

As a couple with a small child living in an out-grown one bedroomed house, the most infruriating aspect of this situation is that we are currently sleeping on a mattress on the floor of our lounge, as our daughter occupies the bedroom. Dont be stupid, you are yelling, just share the bedroom with her! Ah, but its not that simple. For the first 8 months of her life Ali did not sleep at all and we were at the end of our tether trying to cope with minimal or no sleep. I was reading ridiculous books which were stating that babies sleep an average of 8-10hours when totalled up throughout a 24hr period. Well quite frankly at the time I could have thrown the book at the authors and screamed in their faces because I can guarantee you that I was getting a quarter of that amount at most. So having tackled postnatal depression, weaning, and transfering to bottle feeding before Ali bit my nipples off, the only thing left to try was us moving out of the bedroom, especially as I was not happy with moving her out to the lower floor. Coupled with her starting to get around more she was suddenly sleeping through - and basically I have not dared to move back in ever since! Now I am the kind of person who really loves my bed, even getting onto the mattress on the floor at the end of the night is so unbelievably heavenly that I cant begin to describe how good it feels. So many highlights of life happen in bed. Sex, sleep, dreams, that moment in the morning when the kids get in with you, deep conversations with your partner to clear the air, snuggling up with a hot choclate and a good book....etc etc. Therefore I absolutely long for a proper bedroom complete with luxury kingsize bed, dimmed lighting and sumptuous bed linen. My eyes light up every time 'furniture world' have a sale and you can almost see me salavating at the leather and pine designs ! So we continue to lift the matress up and down at the beginning and end of each day, and I can only dream of feather down quilts and being further from the floor! The most hilarious element to having only one bedroom means that when the mother in law comes to stay we are all camped down in the lounge as she sleeps on the sofa! And as I am looking at the ceiling listening to her and D snoring I just cant quite believe what is happening! Somebody please buy my house!

Book

Before deciding to create a blog I had made an attempt at writing a book, however I found that I was collecting small excerpts which did not seem to be coming together, which is why something like a blog seemed more appropriate. Also I had started the whole thing backwards as I came up with a blurb before I did the rest of the book. This is blurb. Just wondered what people thought and whether they would be tempted to read it based on this summary. Incidently I have given my blog the same title as the book would have had!


Mother, Wife, Midwife.

What do you do when your whole life is upside-down, nothing is turning out the way you planned or expected, and you feel so claustrophobic that you want to stand in the middle of a open plain and scream and scream and scream, just to release the pent up pressure and tension? Write a book about it! Well that was my conclusion anyhow.

Realistically I cannot compare my life to the true disasters that devastate the world and its inhabitants on a regular basis, and I would like to briefly mention that I know how very lucky I am when considering the bigger picture; however this book is about the challenges I have experienced and things I have learned during my life so far, a life which at present can only be summed up as chaos!

So, if you feel like a giggle at how I managed to get my life in totally the wrong order (for those of you who are a bit like me and sometimes not quite on the ball – the title!) and the string of situations that developed into the bedlam that now ensues, then this book is for you. Of course I must mention a few details to entice you, as this is normal practice when writing a book. Therefore please simply enjoy how I somehow managed to get through my adolescence as part of a fairly strict but ‘mad-house’ of a single parent family home, only to begin a hugely challenging career as a midwife. To then interrupt this training with a relationship that has a 25 year age gap and an unplanned childbearing experience of my own; and on finally completing my training being unable to find employment and going crazy as a full time mum in a house we have totally out-grown. Yes you could easily mistake my life for a soap opera, except there’s no dodgy music as a prelude or famous names being overpaid for bad acting (unless of course anyone wants to turn my book into a on-screen adaptation in which case this can be negotiated), but there is plenty of drama, relationship blooming/frustration/disintegration, and family crisis, which I know you all secretly love even if you don’t admit it. And for those of you experiencing the childbearing process yourselves there are comedy moments I know you will relate to.

What’s left to mention, well, I suggest you find a moment, take a break, and spend some time getting lost in someone else’s disorder for a change!


For my mum and all other super-women, especially those who are juggling motherhood, relationships and careers (most women then!) And for my daughter who has all this to come!………….Mother, Wife, Midwife.

Wedding

Women dream about the perfect wedding from a very early age, but men just dont seem to be bothered by the whole idea at all to start with; add to this a list of financial priorities and a partner who has previously been married once, the likelyhood of ever getting a dream wedding becomes considerably lower. Of course the source of this conflict lies in that he has been married before, he has done it all once and look where it got him -divorced, so whats the point in wasting all that money. Love, commitment, passion, devotion, family, togetherness, dont seem to come into it. So despite telling me not to focus on the past when I worry that he has been married before, he bases his whole opinion on this matter soley on the past! It transpires while I am thinking family and close friends totally 70-80 people by a loch in Scotland or a romantic castle/ruin or hotel, he is thinking me, him and A eloping to a foreign country so we can have our honeymoon straight away too. Firstly I have to say I had not planned on having my daughter at my honeymoon, and secondly what is so bad about wanting to share what is supposed to be the happiest day of my life with family and friends? What do you do to compromise when both bride and groom have such different ideas of how they want to get married? Sometimes I wonder if he actually does want to get married of if the engagment was the extent of what he was offering. I will keep you posted. Any ideas would be gratefully received!

Mika

As I was starting to lose faith in the music industry and modern artists due to the multitude of samely records that have been created recently, along came a saviour in the form of Mika. Despite being a guy with a girly name, his essentially 'individual' style has provided him with hit after hit over recent weeks. I absolutely adore his music, and his most current entry 'Big Girls You Are Beautiful' has been a long time awaited. Frolicking in the street with a crowd of vuluptuous women, some of which are fairly scantily clad, was exactly what the media industry of size zero fascination needed. Alas he has even captured the heart of my two year old daughter who professes 'I like this man' when he appears on the music channel singing 'Love Today'.

Facebook

This photo appitimises why this website is so fabulous! I just love this photo. It happens to be one of my school mates who I have not seen in what seems like 'donkeys years' (do donkeys get really old?, where the hell does this saying come from?) and we just hooked up again through this site. Its like a more popular version of 'friends reunited' - same basic idea. I even managed to get in contact with the son of someone who used to childmind me and my brother. It just feels so amazing because your brain kinda erases these people from your memory temporarily because you dont see them on a daily basis, then you are like - Oh my god, its her, or its him, I had totally forgotten about them - then you can get in touch. K hun, I dont know how you managed to capture this photo but in my opinion it is art in its best form! Capturing exactly how I feel at the end of a 13 hour shift full of complicated cases, with no break and phyhsically exhausted, but just wanting to let go and dance like no one is watching! Even though every muscle in the body positively aches in protest, how exhilerating it would be to just push it to the max. (Now I sound like a Pepsi advert!) Music and dance were the career I should have taken. No the dream career that you never persue but always wish you had. No the career you would have loved to have persued and would have been good but not brilliant at!

How To Look Good Naked

I was thinking about the unfortunate female trait of self critisism while watching this tv series shown recently. I had awaited the show with great anticipation - the title alone suggesting it would allude to secrets which would make us all sex goddesses in the bedroom! As I sat down each week I couldnt help feeling a little cheated when I realised that covering lumps and bumps with silk sheets and dressing gowns, and a makeover team of enormous proportions was the key to how each woman featured looked a million times better than at the start of the show. Because we can all just nip down to the local 'make over' store whenever we need to be gorgeous in the bedroom! I also believe that it would take more than a new hair-do, fancy undies and exfoliation to make me look good in the boudoire! However in defense of the show, they could not have chosen a better presenter. Gok Wan managed to have me captivated throughout every episode with his innate charm and genuiness with the women who were being transformed. I concluded that the way to cease self critisism and begin to love oneself is for every woman to have there own personel Gok Wan. So bring on cloning! I do challenge the show and Mr Wan to transform this post-childbearing body striped with stretch marks, supported by masculine rugby player legs and still carrying a few extra 'tyres'!

Blogging

So I have finally gotten round to joining the world of blogging, something which I have been meaning to do for a while now, but was inhibited by my internet being down for almost a month, my fear of being unable to understand this world of technology, and of course by life itself! As you may have guessed from the title of my blog, I already have three spheres of life that dominate my time, however I have decided to make a little for myself and persue something which enjoy doing a lot - writing. I hope that you find something of interest on my blog and welcome any comments, good or bad!