Stretch

Hot weather and an awareness that inactivity will soon cease to be an option, have combined to make me super-lazy. Hence lack of posts.

But I just thought I might mention I've got less than a week of under-40-ness to go. It's my birthday on Friday. I'll be celebrating all (next) weekend with somewhere in the region of 50 close friends and family. Rah me.

And Another Thing

And the whole stupid mess turns me into a blubbering self-pitying tedious one-track wreck, which is fucking annoying to say the least, for me as well as you.

Poor bloody me.

Argh.

Let Life Begin

[apologies for wonkiness - and copiedness-from-comments-boxness-ness - i have a baby on my lap. will attempt to come back later and tidy up a bit]

Lucy's talking about a list of things to do before she's 40. I'm going to be four decades long in only three weeks, and the very thought of such a list makes me want to jump back under the duvet and not emerge for at least another month.

But I have a good excuse: I (possibly rather sillily with hindsight, but there you go, I had little control over the timing) went and had a baby when I was 39, and that rules out most pre-40 excitement.

I was thinking last night, though, that although I disapprove of age-related moaning, a lot of my recent miserablism has been exacerbated by pre-40 jitters. I feel as though I'm about to be Officially Old and haven't achieved a whole load of stuff that's only going to get harder - if not impossible - with age.

I'm having running battles with myself these days about a giant banner I've erected above my psyche. It reads Failed Writer. My second book is only available in Russian. My first book is barely available at all. Neither of them are much good. And crucially I'm about to stop writing altogether, before I manage to finish my third.

It's all bollocks, for many reasons: I'll return to writing in the future, the Russians are perfectly capable of being discerning readers, and crucially writing is something that tends to mature with age, not get harder. There are few skimpy bikinis involved in the life of your typical writer. But still. I'm not where I wanted to be, where I thought I'd be.

But still but still. It's basically bollocks. So I gave me a good stern talking to and reminded myself that life begins at 40 and there's a load more excitement ahead. So that's all right then. And fuck lists.

Here's my list of things I'll do before I'm 40.

1. Whinge.
2. Cry.
3. Whinge a bit more.
4. Sob.
5. Eat cake.
6. Nurse a crying baby.
7. Eat chocolate.
8. Make a massive To Do list containing items like "sort out broadband" and "hem trousers" and "make a squillion doctors' appointments for every member of the family".
9. Eat chocolate cake.
10. Fail to do any of the items on the To Do list.
11. Fail to do any of the items on this list, and then get swallowed up in a giant existential feedback loop.
12. Cry.

Globe and Jerusalem

Oh artichokes, the baby's ill again. It's so utterly mundane and yet it takes me by surprise every time. And every time I despair at how utterly wretched it is to spend a significant chunk of time in the presence of a baby - my baby - who won't stop crying. It can destroy my psyche within hours.

I think the problem is I'm just not very good at giving all of myself. I can give bits of myself, that's fine. But I need to keep some back. I'm just not martyrly enough. It must be that rogue testosterone (the finger thing, you know). But that's not really fair. There are men who can give all of themselves. I'm just not one of them. Hmm, that came out wrong.

I look forward to Tuesday mornings, because I get glorious delicious time to myself, just me, the house my oyster, after three whole days of Full Time Mum. So it's doubly frustrating when maladies wait until then to manifest themselves.

If only I could get used to it, but I guess evolution has relied on that not happening. Ho hum. Oh well. Could be worse. I'm not properly depressed. Not yet, anyway.

The Mind Murders

My mind's been at it again.

You know, now I think of it I often dream about having dead bodies to dispose of. Just the other night I dreamt that I was visiting my grandmother and accidentally killed some bloke who was hassling her. I bunged his body in a clothes chest and hoped for the best, then days later realised it would smell. I started to panic, but couldn't decide whether removing it would make things better or worse.

Well, anyway. Last night I dreamt that a close relative - let's say my brother, cos I don't have one of those so I won't upset anyone - died. It gets hazy at this point, in the way dreams do. I don't know whether I or my father was responsible for the death, but for some reason we felt we had to hide the body. So we dumped it in a pond in my parents' back garden. The pond froze over. All fine. Until the pond thawed, and the body - still frozen - floated to the surface. So we dragged it out and defrosted it, in the faint hope that... oh my God, there was my brother, in front of my eyes, coming back to life. I can still see it. He sat up, opened his eyes, hugged his knees and looked a bit bewildered. And for a moment, for my father and me... there was such delight: The person we loved, who we thought was dead, had come back to life... and then there was guilt and horror. We slung him in a pond when he wasn't even dead. But my brother went grey and rigid again, and it was all just a horrible reflex, awakened by the thaw.

Then a friend called round wanting to do something suitably incongruous like visit an art gallery. I hurried them upstairs to my bedroom so they wouldn't see my father with the corpse. Meanwhile my father had been listening, and had rushed upstairs with the cadaver... leaving us to walk in on him, bending over the stiff and looking decidedly dodgy.

And if that weren't enough, I then dreamt I was given a pampering spa day as a present by a friend... only to find that colonic irrigation was part of the package, and when I protested they got all sinister and started showing me the slimy worm-like products of other people's bowels. Apparently the process involved taking a pill and then suffering from extreme vomiting and diarrhoea for a couple of hours... but feeling marvellous afterwards. And being me and not liking to complain, I tried to convince myself this was a good thing and maybe I didn't mind so much.

So, psychoanalysis: I think I've done something terrible and am desperate to hide the evidence, even if it means shitting it out on some health spa bog. Which will be good for me in the long run. Yeah. That'll be it.

Good Stuff

The baby, bless his little being-looked-after-by-someone-else toes, has gone to nursery today. I think yesterday was all about the teething. I don't know though. You never really do.

So today I'm all on my own in my delightfully-quiet house and I'm preparing for something Very Important I have coming up, something which will probably determine whether I can do my new career or not. And joy of joys, I'm so enjoying myself. It's using skills I haven't used properly for years, and I'd forgotten how much I like this stuff. To have a job which involves doing it all day every day feels like bliss at the moment. I know it won't be that simple - nothing ever is - but for today I'm feeling positive, which is a brilliant thing.

And it's all very well talking in riddles but it does get a bit wearing after a while, so I'm thinking I might start a new Totally Anonymous blog where I can write properly about the new career. Sadly it really does need to be anonymous. Properly anonymous, rather than this place, which is only halfly anonymous. Speaking of which, given that many of you know who I am anyway and the original reason for talking nonsense about nuts has now disappeared... I should probably stop talking in squirrel riddles too. Except that... I'm getting rather fond of the squirrel thing, ludicrous though it is. And I'm worried that there may be some other reason, which I haven't thought of yet, for being a bit circumspect. I have a terrible history of opening my gob (wielding my pen / keyboard) at inappropriate moments and letting all the wrong stuff fly out. So, hum. Dunno.

So Fucking Hard

It's just so fucking hard. I got less than four hours sleep last night. Because I stayed up late reading this guy's book (and it's a great book, and you should all read it, and some time when I'm not sleep-deprived and at the beck and call of a screaming baby I'll write a proper review), and then my baby kept waking up, kept waking me up, wouldn't settle. And then when we finally got up at 6.30am this morning, less than four hours after I went to bed, he wouldn't stop crying.

He keeps getting ill, and God it's just the worst thing. Not just because I love him to bits and it breaks my heart to see him in distress. Not just because I have a cold and a headache and every time he screams it pierces my brain. But also because of planning, and feeling like I have even the tiniest modicum of control over my life. In the last three weeks I've had to cancel two trips away, one visit to a friend, several trips to my yoga class and the swimming pool, and several days which were supposed to be spent deisgning nuts. Any of the things I might do to keep me sane - getting out of the house, getting exercise, seeing other people, being creative - might be snatched away from me at a moment's notice, and suddenly here I am again, screaming baby in my arms, unable to even go to the toilet or get myself something to eat without making him scream even more or have to have a baby - crying or otherwise - on one arm.

Somebody once told me that depression and anxiety are all about lack of control. That's how torturers work. Flashing lights on and off, refusing to allow prisoners access to basic facilities or choice over what happens next or sleep... it fucks people up.

It seems like everyone else manages to cope with these things. There's something wrong with me, I'm not wired right to be a mother. But then apparently that's a classic symptom of post-natal depression. The belief that everyone else is coping better than you. Nobody finds this stuff easy.

Ah well. He's asleep in his cot for now, but it won't last, and in the meantime I have a Really Important Interview for my new career next week and the preparation time available is dwindling fast, so I better go do some swotting. Just thought I'd have a moan here first.

Pah.

Dipping

Depression is a strange thing. Sometimes it involves conscious "oh woe is me" type thoughts, but most of the time it's a weird chemical sludge. I can feel my brain chemistry changing. I feel drugged, even though I'm not on any medication and would rather stay that way. Some of the time it feels like PMT. I get clumsy and grumpy. I can't think straight. Tiny things like my baby son wriggling so much I can't get his dungarees on, or my other son jumping up and down and shouting "bibbidy bobbidy doo" repeatedly, make me snap - the result being an apparently interchangeable growl or sob.

There's a slight buzzing in my head, hidden behind a wall of treacle which makes me wander around in a permanent fog. Of, er, treacle. OK, so I'm mixing my metaphors, but anyway...

I can see that the sun is shining and my sons are super-cute, I can see that objectively I have nearly everything I ever wanted, but all that does is make me feel inadequate, for not being able to enjoy these things.

It's not constant. I have good days, good weeks, but the sludge can return in an instant, and I forget it ever left.

I think I should just pull myself together. Sometimes I even can. I know I should think positive thoughts. But I never know whether I should be trying to control it and fight it, or just give myself a break, cut myself some slack, accept that sometimes I feel sad these days, and that's just the way it is.

I could summarise my whole life like that: It's been a constant tension between chilling out and fighting. I'm never sure which one I'm supposed to be doing. This is what you get for being a lazy control freak.

It's always afterwards that it hits me. I once suffered from acute anxiety. For a while I stopped functioning altogether. I had an anxiety attack that lasted a week. I was ill, on and off, for about a year. And it kicked in, as anxiety often does, just after a prolonged period of stress in my life. I fought the fires, and once they were out I fell in the hole they'd left behind.

This time it's depression instead of anxiety, but it's a similar situation. Over the last two years I've faced miscarriage, redundancy, debilitating illness, childbirth. More recently there have been smaller things: a baby with a high temperature that wouldn't respond to mdeicine. A car that died and needed to be replaced. A professional whose services were vital to my career, but who let me down when I needed them most - and had to be sacked. And now here I am, everything is calm again, the house is in some sort of order, I have my lovely baby who I went through so much to get*... and I feel rubbish. As long as I was still aiming for that new-baby goal, I had to hold things together. Now that it's all over, I can fall apart.

I knew it was a risk, having another baby, particularly so soon after a miscarriage. I knew it would be hard. I worried about what effect it might have on my mental health, but I went ahead it with it anyway. Maybe I shouldn't have done it. Maybe I should have left more of a gap. Maybe I shouldn't have tried to go self-employed after the redundancy - particularly when I knew there was no immediate prospect of any significant income, and home-based isolation is the last thing you need when you've just had a baby. But regrets are pointless, and sometimes you just have to go for what you want and hope for the best. Maybe if I'd held myself back I would just have got depressed sooner, rather than later.

Maybe I need to let the misery happen, get it out of the way and then move on. Or maybe that's tantamount to wallowing, and will just make it worse.

That's another symptom: A pathological inability to make decisions and then stick to them.

At least I've got September sorted. I'm not changing my mind about that.


*"get" seems like the wrong word for another human being. I got my baby. But I did. I wanted him, and then I got him. It always makes me laugh when people throw the accusation of selfishness around in respect to parenthood. It's selfish to have lots of kids. It's selfish to have none. Both things are true. We have, or don't have, children... entirely for our own benefit. But that's fine. It's how the human race survives. Although it's ironic that both having and not having children can also destroy someone.

Sad Squirrel

I'm not a happy squirrel. If I'm honest I've been sad, on and off, for a few months now. The good news is that I'm not sad all the time. The not-so-good news is that one of the main things which pushes the sadness aside is overwhelmedness. Life keeps hitting me over the head, and then I get so busy defending myself from the blows that I forget all about happy or sad and just do hectic instead. Or maybe that's not a bad thing. Maybe it's better to be busy. I dunno. I just know that whenever things slow down again, I find myself on top of a giant pile of crap. And it needs sorting out, but it's really hard to organise a mound of chaos when you're sitting on it. And I'm a control freak, and I have a small baby, and I keep forgetting that people with small babies are supposed to take it easy and not keep trying to sort everything out.

Today I am having my first Spare Day for about three weeks, after various tedious fires (ill children, broken cars, weddings to attend, yadda yadda) needed fighting. It's not spare at all, of course. I'm sitting up high on this heap, and I'd like to be down on that floor with no mess in sight.

It overwhelms me. It depresses me. It tires me out.

The future looks both better and worse. On the one hand it contains a sort-of cure to one problem and a total cure to another one, but it also promises a whole new pile of crap.

The sort-of cure is for the problem of My Career. I feel like a failed nut designer. I know the Russians are launching one of my nuts next month... but they're in Russia, speaking Russian, and now that they have their very own Russian nut-polisher who has converted English to Russian, they're not very interested in me. I'm not even sure they'll give me news on how it's doing. It all feels very remote. I've been paid, and my part is over. My latest nut won't be ready before September, I have no deals in the offing and no advocate to find any new deals, and I'm about to embark on a brand-new career which will completely fill the next two years of my life... so there'll be no more nut-designing for a long time, and I'm waving goodbye to that part of my life for a significant chunk of time. But it's a sort-of cure because this new career is something I know I can do, and do well. So it will (hopefully) bring success back into my life... but via a different door.

The problem it totally cures is the one of What Happens in the Future. I was facing nothing but failure, bankruptcy and uncertainty. Now I have an income and Something Rewarding To Do to look forward to, so that's very good.

The whole new pile of crap will be caused by the new career, which will be time-consuming and exhausting and will leave me with even less spare time to sort out the daily detritus that life and babies create.

I'm assuming that I'll pick up in September. It's exciting and I am looking forward to it, and I'm hoping that being busy with something I like will create a much better daily mindset than being busy with domestic crap whilst watching my erstwhile career dribble away through my fingers and down a large smelly drain.

People who like my nuts don't like it when I get all defeatist about the nut-designing. They try and tell me that success may be just over the horizon, that the Russian nut may lead to bigger and better things. They tell me off when I talk of failure. They hate it when I suggest that I may be done with nuts for a lot longer than two years. Maybe forever. Maybe I'm just not cut out to be nut designer, I say. Rubbish, they say.

They're probably right. I probably can't stop even if I want to. But I look back at my nuts... and I think they're a bit crap. And I wonder if I have the time, the commitment, the energy... or the ability required to improve my craft and make better nuts. I'm depressed, so of course I think this way. But the practicalities mean that I have to put it aside for a while. Maybe when the kids are older it'll get easier. Maybe I can save up some money from my new career, then take some time off and design a beautiful new nut. Or maybe I won't even want to. Maybe I won't miss it, will be happier without it and all its tedious ups and downs.

But as for the Russian nut suddenly taking off... this is what all nut designers live on. As well as fruit designers, tree designers... everyone who creates something new and hopes that someone somewhere might notice it and go wow. They live on hope. They have to. But for most, the hope is misplaced. Most nuts die in relative obscurity, most designers are never noticed, were mediocre to start with and even if they weren't don't have enough luck or spark to get anywhere much. I know I'm not supposed to talk this way... but that doesn't mean it's not true.

I just know that I feel tired and grey, and currently want nothing to do with any of it. I'm gradually reducing my commitments, as well as contact with the nut designing community, which if I'm honest just depresses me even more (sorry), in preparation for September.

I have an appointment with a doctor next week. Maybe they can help.

The Lucky Penny

My 7-yr-old son and I spent the day at Blue Planet, which is an aquarium near Warrington (or somewhere like that; God knows - it's one of those junction-10-on-the-M53 jobbies). They have proper real sharks, with teeth and everything, and an ever-so-clever perspex underwater tunnel in which you can stand and watch giant fishes wiggle their teeth inches above your head.

But never mind all that. They also have a Penny Press machine, which allows you to turn a big wheel which itself turns several cogs and a steel mangle-like affair, taking your penny and squeeeezing it out into a warm elongated flattened thing with the design of your choice imprinted on it.

I squatted down and peered at the workings while my son turned the wheel. I tried to see where the switch took place: A kind of person-free magician's act. But you could still see the queen's head faintly on one side, and it was warm, and I know I've been told before that it's all fake, and it's not even a very convincing-looking output, but still... the magic worked for me.

As we got into the car, my son was holding tightly onto his "Lucky Penny" - which was the design he chose. A little while later as I drove along the motorway, I was aware of my son footling about with something at my elbow. I looked down to see a plastic fruit drink container in the drinks holder at my side. My son's fingers were groping about somewhere nearby. "It's definitely lucky," he said. "Because when I've got it in my hand, I can reach the Fruit Shoot bottle, but when I haven't, I can't. Don't you think that must be luck? Or I suppose there could be some other explanation..." which led to a serious discussion of what other factors might impact on his ability to reach between the front seats.

Then he dropped it and couldn't find it for a while, which made him wonder whether it was so lucky after all. But then he found it, and started tossing it. The imprinted side was the "lucky" one, and the faint queen's head was the blank. He declared that if the coin was truly lucky, it would land on its lucky side more often. After a few throws he was slightly disappointed that the odds were behaving mathematically rather than mystically.

For the rest of the afternoon he took very good care of it and found many reasons to believe it was lucky, as well as the opposite.

As he was going to bed he said to me, "Do you believe in luck?"

"Not exactly," I said. "But it sometimes feels good to believe in something, even if you know it's not true."

Icky Strangeness

I had this dream last night.

I know other people's dreams are generally the most tedious thing in the whole history of tedious things (which let's face it, is long), but... It was one of those dreams that was so weird, you feel the need to talk about it. But it was also pretty disturbing. And I'm worried I might scare you all off.

One of the most disturbing things was not the content, but my reaction to it within the dream.

Um...

OK, so there was this guinea pig. A small cute tortoiseshell thing...

And I was eating it. Alive. Munching away quite happily as though it was one of those snacks-on-the-go, while I was in the midst of doing other stuff. Going to a pub with a girlfriend, in fact. But after a while I got fed up. I was full up, I wasn't enjoying it, and I was slightly worried about the fact that I was eating a live animal. I thought I should make sure it was dead before abandoning it, because it would be rather cruel to leave a half-dead half-eaten animal alone to its fate. So, you know. I wasn't totally evil. But I wasn't as upset as I ought to have been.

I thought it must surely be dead, seeing as I'd eaten a good half of it. From the bottom up, all the way to its middle. I'll spare you the details, but it was a graphic dream.

I tried to get rid of it, even though it didn't appear to be dead. But I was hoping the apparent non-deadness was due to death throes, like headless chickens or chopped-in-half worms (they don't really split in two, you know) (I saw it on QI).

I then embarked on the kind of thing that happens when you have something embarrassing and inconvenient about your person and are not very principled about ditching things in inappropriate places, as long as nobody sees. I wrapped it in a bag, then a box, then just... um... dropped it on the floor, in the corner of a nightclub (which was in itself an exceptionally weird place - was more like a gay booze-fuelled Indiana Jones adventure playground, with tunnels and ladders and obstacle courses - but there's a limit to how much dream-relaying I can get away with here).

The guinea pig kept seeming to be dead, then turning out not to be. That was my dream-creating consciousness playing with me, as though I were the audience in a full-of-false-endings film. You know the kind. Is there a technical term for it? I don't know. Like this: "Eek, massive climax! Big stuff happening! And... there you go. Phew. All resolved. ... But hang on, you haven't had your money's worth yet. There's still time to fill. Let's bring the monster back to life! Watch out beind you! Argh... eek... aaah. Phew. ... But no, you deserve more than that... this film ain't over yet, come on now, we were only just getting started, we're not done yet... etc" ... as though my dream-creating self wasn't ready to wake up yet and was finding simple resolutions too boring.

I'm all ashamed of myself, embarrassed to admit that I wrapped a half-dead half-eaten (by me) guinea pig in a bag and a box and dropped it in the corner of a night club... as though you might think that if I could dream it, I could do it. Whereas in reality the worst thing I'm likely to drop in the corner of a nightclub is a half-eaten sweet, and even then I'd feel guilty about it and go back later to find it and pick it up. I'm the kind of person who unblocks toilets in public places, because I worry about them spoiling someone else's day. Even though they weren't blocked by me in the first place. That in itself is a slightly embarrassing admission... but I do wash my hands. Thoroughly. Because I'm a stickler for hygiene.

Particularly when it's guinea pigs for tea.

The Age of Imminence

I've been thinking about age, after reading Little Red Boat. I'm going to be 40 this year, and it's made me all age-aware.

It's such a weird thing, time. Mostly you don't notice it. It's just there in the background, ticking away, quite straightforward. There's stuff that was, stuff that is, and stuff that will be. All very neat. But throw age into the equation and it's very confusing indeed.

Am I young or old? Was I young last week? Last year? Last decade? If not, when did it stop? Or when will the youngness stop? Anyone who's got more than a few birthdays under their belt knows: You can easily be both old and young, but it still confuses the hell out of me.

I'm young because I can remember being five and I laugh at silly stuff and damn it, I just know what it's like to feel young. But I'm old because those other people over there, those ones who are officially* young? They're so damned young! And they do really stupid stuff like have their trousers fall down on purpose, and they run about all full of energy and don't even notice me and damn it I just don't get them. But I'm young cos see those old people over there? They're slow and wrinkly and grey and parochial and a bit paunchy and laughable and I'm much younger than them. But I'm old because... see those folk over there? The slow-parochial-laughable ones? They were born the same time as me. But I'm young because I'm less than halfway through my life and I have effing ages to go yet, and I'm damned if I'll be old for the rest of my days. But I'm old cos I use words like "damned". But I'm young cos I have young children. But I'm old cos I have young children. I'm a mum. I'm in the next generation up. And I'm knackered.

I'm old because the stuff I did when I was young, the stuff which still makes me feel young... it's so old it's been right out and come back in again. When I was officially young, stuff from the 50s and 60s was making a comeback. And then it was the 70s' turn, which was my own childhood, but that was fine cos it all happened when I was a baby which was ages ago. But anyway, that 50s and 60s stuff? It was dead old. But cool. And now... there are new young folk, thinking and feeling the same way... about the 80s! My time! Which was surely never cool?

I went to a 40th birthday party a couple of years ago. It was in an Irish club. You know the kind of place. A glorified village hall with a tiny bar, beers on tap, boxes of crisps. A bouncy dance floor and flashing disco lights. People took small quantities of ecstasy and danced to Leftfield, just like they did in the olden days. I got a sudden flashback to when I was a teenager and got taken to a Grownup Party, where the grownups were paunchy and did Dad Dancing, and thought they were cool but weren't. And here I was now... one of them.

I was watching Coronation St the other day. Steve McDonald was getting married to Becky. Which all seemed perfectly reasonable. Single bloke falls in love with cute woman, gets married. And then I realised... Steve McD is the same age as me, more or less. Slightly younger? Slightly older? That's the first problem: I don't know. And Becky. She's quite young, I think? In her 20s? Not sure about that either. Apparently people past a certain age are particularly bad at recognising people the same age as themselves. But anyway. What does this look like to other people? Does Steve McD seem really old? Are we supposed to be amused and slightly disgusted? Sometimes it feels as though the whole world has aged with me, and where once the "main characters" in soap operas were the 20-somethings, they're now the 30-somethings and 40-somethings... but that's how soaps work. They provide a range of characters and you focus on the ones you can relate to the most. In Eastenders, Billy is 50. 50's quite old, isn't it? Does that mean there are viewers out there who think of Billy as essentially an old man? But he isn't! He seems about my age, and that's not... oh.

When you're in your teens and early twenties it's all very simple: You are young, your parents are middle-aged, and your grandparents are old. But from then on, the goalposts leap about so much they're more like Magical Jumping Goalposts from some bastardised version of Quidditch. My parents are in their mid 60s and have recently become pensioners. But they're only middle-aged, surely? And my grandparents, who are still alive... they're old. Occasionally people have suggested that I might be middle-aged. Me? Middle-aged? But... but...

I could go on and on, but I'm sure you get the point. It's confusing, that's all. It's just so bloody confusing.


*Somewhere there should be a government agency whose job it is to assign official ages. You would get a letter in the post: "Congratulations, you are now officially middle-aged. We have enclosed your complimentary packet of Werther's Originals."