It’s been a good few months since I last overshared about my personal life so I thought it was about time for another round. Or, I haven’t written much at all recently and I’m a bit desperate to flex my writing muscles, but nothing has inspired me so this is the best I could do.
I’ve been in my rented house in Reading for four months now.
My new desk is already a mess and I’ve realise my kids’ high sleepers were a TERRIBLE mistake. They love them, but there really is nothing worse than going upstairs to do bedtime and only then remembering that one of them was sick/had a nosebleed and the bed has been stripped and is waiting for me to climb up and make it.
Actually there is; realising one of them has been sick/had a nose bleed and they didn’t think to mention it until now.
The kids are almost at the end of a mega three-week Easter holiday.
They’re finally starting their new local school on Monday (hurrah!) and their previous school in Kent broke up a week earlier than the new one. Fortunately they seem more excited than nervous about the whole thing; they spent a short morning in their classes and came out talking about the friends they’d made. (Not by name, obviously. Kids don’t ask unimportant things like names when they’re making friends).
That’s what being a kids is like, isn’t it? It’s totally socially acceptable to just ask ‘will you be my friend?’ and then bam, you’re basically best friends. It doesn’t quite work like that for grown-ups (which is what my kids call me. Weird).
Moving to a new area was always going to be harder as an adult in that respect. I’m lucky that I have a few friends locally which makes it all a lot easier, although you never want to be that person who turns up on someone’s doorstep after living 60 miles away for your entire, largely internet-based, friendship and demand they entertain you, because you don’t have anyone else to play with.
I thought that a solution to this would be to expand my social circle by getting a local job.
Yep, an actual being-employed-by-someone-else job.
It isn’t just the social aspect of it; without the children here I’ve suffered from a lack of routine, and although blogging and freelancing has kept me afloat for over six years, it’s neither stable nor reliable and I could do without the eternal anxiety about whether I can pay my rent each month, not to mention the fucking energy bills. What a time to start living alone, huh. I’ve joined the bloody gym partly because it’s cheaper than using the shower and drying my hair at home. Probably.
Anyway, jobs.
A decent and fairly relevant opportunity came up in a public sector body less than 15 minutes away and, somehow, I managed to make it through the selection process. I then blagged my way through the interview and only got offered the bloody job, which was quite frankly amazing given how long it’s been since I was last employed.
Sadly though, it was a full time role and with the school place having just come up here, the timing couldn’t have been worse.
Everyone is keen to shout about flexibility and home working, which is great, but if you have to do two school runs a day and fit in 7.5 hours work around that and then show your face in the office occasionally, it’s going to be a struggle. It would likely have meant giving up the blog/freelancing work and my income from that, and after breakfast clubs and wraparound care I would almost certainly have ended up worse off.
It felt really shit having to turn it down, but it was the right decision. So I’m afraid you’re not shot of me yet.
Even with three weeks to fill, the Easter holidays have gone by in a flash.
We’ve had a whole load of playdates and adventures, but of course now I’ve got 562 unread emails taunting me in my inbox so they’ve gone to Nanny and Grandad’s for a few days. They can enjoy the seaside and talk at someone else for a change while I sift through the pisstakers and nonsense press releases, hoping someone wants to pay me for something.
I do miss them; they’re at the golden age where we can go out and do fun stuff easily and they’re not yet too embarrassed to be seen with me, but the house is quiet and relatively tidy and no one has demanded a snack off me since Monday.
The sun has even come out this past week and that’s made a lot of things better.
Laundry for one; I finally got my lawn spike hammered in (not a euphemism) and now I can hang washing outside to dry. If you don’t understand how exciting that is then I suggest that perhaps you need to re-evaluate your priorities because I’m cool and young and hip or whatever, and it’s made me more excited than Nadine Dorries looking at Boris.
Talking of Boris…
What a total cake-eating Teflon shitcunt clown. I know it’s unlike me to leave politics out of it but I don’t want to think about him to be honest. I very much hope that shortly after I press publish on this, the inquiry into whether he “accidentally” broke his own lockdown rules (he did) will be over and the arsehole will have done the noble (ha) thing and resigned, but I won’t hold my breath.
Anyway, have a LOVELY sunny weekend (yea I know it’s only Thursday, what of it) and wish me luck with the school runs on Monday because I am definitely not looking forward to it.
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