Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Sorry I never managed to get back here yesterday

The heat made every little thing take so much longer than it should have done, that by the time Mark got home last night I was ready to just crash and go to sleep even though I had so much I was supposed to have got done. Poor Lukas had really trouble getting off to sleep last night because it was just so unbearably hot. It’s still hot today but there is a little bit of wind today which helps a lot and makes things slightly easier to deal with. I promised to come back and tell you about my hospital appointment yesterday. Mark never got around to sorting the problem of him working yesterday, but luckily the appointment was an early morning one for a change. I had thought it was an afternoon one but turns out that is the next one which was a bit of a relief. Nan arranged for Lisa to drop us up there, the only problem with this was that we had to meet her at school so I had to get up and get ready to go to school with Lukas (something you know I never do) and then we had to sit around at the hospital for a bit, but it’s definitely a better choice than buses that time of the morning or paying for a taxi and getting stuck in the traffic. Every time we have tried to get a taxi that early I have just ended up going into the hospital mad because they have gone such a long way round or we have gotten stuck in traffic and ended up paying at least double what it should have cost. When we went upstairs to level 6 we were surprised to see there was hardly anyone waiting. They use the one waiting area for the various different clinics and appointments in that area so it’s usually always quite busy. We handed in my notes and sat down to wait, expecting to be waiting a fairly long time because of how early we were. They came over and asked for a urine sample as usual and for the first time I can ever remember I couldn’t do one. Annoying baby because I really felt like I was desperate to go and couldn’t do any at all. They were nice enough to give me another bottle and asked me to just do one when I was able. Then she did blood pressure and weight and handed me my notes back and a few other things and told me to go for my Doppler scan. This is where it gets slightly embarrassing, she asked if I have had one of these before and I replied that I had, only I forgot that the other appointment was on a Friday morning because we had to change it when Lukas had chicken pox. She told me to go down the corridor to the room on the right. Well there are slightly more rooms than I thought so we got a bit lost lol. We ended up having to ask for directions from someone else and it took us a while to find where we needed to be. They were really nice about it and after a short wait we were able to have the scan done. It was a bit strange having a scan done with the room to the door wide open but it was just too hot for it to be closed. It’s not like I mind the door being open or anything, it’s just they are usually really funny about privacy and insist on closing and locking the door. After that we sat around in the waiting room for a bit longer, before another midwife called us. She wanted to listen to the babies heartbeat and take some measurements, usually they don’t bother to do that I suppose because they have gotten everything they need from the ultrasounds. Apparently he is head down which is very unusual for us, we have never had one do that before and he’s positioned very low down. She took us back to the reception area while she went to have a chat with the consultant about when I needed to come back again. She came back and said that I have to be seen again next week in the Doppler clinic. By the time she was done I still hadn’t managed to do a urine sample, Mark asked if we could take the bottle home with us and he would drop it in at work they thought that was a great idea and I was very relieved that I didn’t have to sit around up there any longer. All that was left to do was go and have the usual blood tests done. The woman who took my blood is usually really quick but she had a lot of trouble getting any out, she had to fiddle with the needle a lot before she eventually got it to drip into the containers. Then we walked over to the main hospital to pick up the cake Nan wanted from their cafe type thing (it’s called League Of Friends and is run entirely by volunteers, they sell a wide variety of homemade cakes, rolls etc as well as drinks and snacks the prices are a lot more reasonable than anywhere else in the hospital unless you happen to have staff discount like we do lol). We got her 2 bits of the Cherry Cake which is her favourite and I had a piece of chocolate cake because I was feeling really weird and light headed. We also saw a lady was selling clothes near the League Of Friends and we were lucky enough to find a brand new pair of Ben 10 pyjamas in Lukas’s size for just £5 (those are the ones I put on him when he got in from school). While we were up there Mark had to sort out a new ID badge for work so he went off to do that while I sat down and ate my cake and then we got a taxi home because I was feeling too ill to get the bus to the city centre and then another one home. When we got home I was feeling even worse and ended up laying down and falling asleep until Lukas came home from school and Mark went to work. I have been feeling like this a lot lately, it’s one of the things I am hoping will work itself out once the baby is born. I would be happy to just have one day without those moments where it’s a choice between sit down or fall down. I really have to run now because I have a lot of little things I want to get done this evening. Lukas is currently busy laying on my bed watching How It’s Made on the Discovery channel, it’s not really something most kids would be interested in but he loves it.

Monday, June 29, 2009

A Mixed Weekend

Saturday was a bit of a mixed day, Mark was at work all day and I was feeling ill and fed up that we were missing the Fete at the hospital. Nan got the tent out for Lukas to play in garden and he had a great time sitting in there with the building bricks until it started to look like it was going to rain. He was lucky that he came in when he did because not only did it rain, it ended up being a huge storm complete with thunder and I think lightning too. I tried really hard for there not to be an atmosphere when Mark came home from work, but I couldn’t help being disappointed that we weren’t on our way to the hotel for the night. Long story short, the tension eventually turned into a huge row and both of us ended up in tears, but he finally seemed to grasp what I have been trying to explain to him for so long. He decided to go out on his bike for a while to clear his head, and since the rain had stopped I just let him go. He came back with a gift for me lol. He had suddenly decided that while he was out he was hungry, so he cycled down to the kebab shop and bought a donor kebab for him and a chicken kebab for me lol. He is well aware that I hate sauces of almost any description and he remembered I don’t like tomatoes so I was quite impressed. I have never had a kebab before let alone a chicken one so it was definitely an unusual thing for us to do at almost 2am in the morning lol. It ended up being really nice the only thing he forgot was that I don’t eat raw onion, I picked it all out and dumped it on his lol. Strangely the place he went uses Naan bread instead of pittas unless you make a special request and he doesn’t usually touch them but we both really enjoyed it. On Sunday morning when I woke up I was feeling really ill, nothing to do with the food though. I asked Mark if he would consider taking Lukas to Jamboray without me as I was feeling so rough. After he did a quick trip to Tesco the pair of them set off with the laptop to play at Jamboray. I had a lay down and eventually started to feel a little bit better, until I tried to tidy up and came over feeling worse than I had before. I ended up spending the day doing bits and pieces on the computer until Mark and Lukas got back. Luckily by the time they got back I was feeling a lot better, and happier than I have done in a while. I don’t know whether it was getting a break from Lukas, Mark and Nan (since I stayed up here on my own the whole time) or whether it was something else but it was nice to feel a bit better for a while. We decided to get takeaway for dinner because  no-one could be bothered to cook. After debating for a while we decided on egg fried rice, soft fried noodles, chicken balls and an omelette from the Chinese. It was really nice and Mark bought extra that I might warm up in a little while. Yesterday evening ended up being really nice, we all had baths and then I scrapped, Lukas played the playstation and Mark watched sport and played the laptop. When Lukas went to bed we chatted for a while and it was just a really nice atmosphere that hasn’t been here for a while. Mark watched some Rugby while I finished off a layout before we both settled down to watch the WWE pay per view The Bash. It ended up being a really good one, what we saw anyway lol. Mark fell asleep about half way through and I fell asleep before the end of the last match.  It was really hot in here last night so sleeping wasn’t exactly easy. I better go for now, I will be back a bit later once Lukas is asleep to tell you about my hospital appointment today. Right now he is playing with some megablocks and watching Basil The Great Mouse Detective on dvd. I gave him a bath and put his new Ben 10 pyjamas on him when he got in from school.

Friday, June 26, 2009

I can’t wait until this week is finally over

I know I seem to be endlessly moaning this week don’t I, sorry. I just don’t feel like I have anywhere else to turn right now. Today kind of made all of the other bad days this week pale in comparison. I was so sad and unsettled last night the whole time I was writing my blog I was sobbing uncontrollably. I could barely read the screen and when I did finally go to bed there was a spider crawling around on the ceiling. I couldn’t even muster the energy to do anything more than keep an eye on where it was going. When I finally managed to fall asleep I slept badly. Then Mark woke me up to tell me he was going shopping to buy clothes and I took ages getting back to sleep. The one thing I had asked him to do today was make sure that when he took Lukas to school he rung the hotel to book the room. When he woke me up to show me his new clothes, I asked him if he had booked the hotel and he hadn’t. It caused another argument, then he called the hotel and we were told that they didn’t have any of  the rooms we need available. That caused another row that made the first one look like a friendly discussion. I told him to pack his bags and get out. I’m not going to go into details because well I don’t really feel like crying anymore will solve anything. Before he left for work he was acting like nothing had happened, he even told me to buy the digital scrapbook things I had been looking at, he seems to think that makes up for everything. He doesn’t apologise, nothing changes and I am just supposed to act like everything is ok. I am just worn out by it all lately, nothing ever changes and I am only human I can only take it for so long before it gets on top of me and we end up fighting. The fighting just makes me feel worse and achieves nothing since he doesn’t even act like we have had a fight. I have sobbed today until the tears ran dry. Actually it wasn’t even the tears running dry that stopped the fight, it was something that happened that I am not quite sure how to describe. I just don’t know what to do anymore, I can’t live with all the fighting, but I can’t just sit back and let things carry on the way they are going either. All this stress is so bad for me and the baby, not to mention that it means Lukas is seeing me so exhausted and worn out by it all. I feel so ill lately, and then there’s the pregnancy issues and the emotional issues as well. If it was just Mark, or just the problems with Nan, or just the problems I am having with Lukas I would find a way to manage but it’s just everything and right now I feel like there is no way out. I needed that night away from everything so badly, just a chance to feel human again if only for a little while but now there isn’t even that to look forward to. I feel as if there’s nothing to get up for every morning except pain of some kind, whether it’s emotional or physical or mental it’s all pain and I can’t cope anymore. I told Mark he had to explain to Lukas that the trip had been cancelled, Lukas cried all the way home from school and then I got a lecture from Nan about how that wasn’t fair on him. It wasn’t my fault we couldn’t go and I already had to deal with the fallout of him crying I didn’t think I should have to be the one to tell him too. Mark wanted me to tell him we could just go to Chessington on Sunday without the hotel stay, I would have been willing to do that even though I would have felt like crap afterwards, and at the very most he would have ended up having a few hours in the park and I would have had to deal with the huge tantrum I get every time we leave and don’t stay in the hotel. The only other solutions I had to offer were waiting until next weekend to go (not exactly something I was thrilled about I already feel like I am pushing my luck going away when I am this pregnant without adding another week to the issue) or offering to take him to Jamboray for the day on Sunday. He said he wants to go to Jamboray but I still had to put up with a tantrum because he wants to go tomorrow and we can’t because of Mark working. I may have managed to pacify Lukas but spending the day cooped up inside with a bunch of screaming kids and the inevitable miserable husband (he always manages to make my life a misery when we go there with his complaining and moaning) isn’t really doing to help me out at all. I just can’t win because I can’t take Lukas on my own I am not exactly in the condition to climb around and play with him normally let alone at the moment so Mark has to come too if I take Lukas for a few hours I will have to listen to him whining and complaining he wants to stay longer, if I take him for the whole day I will end up leaving in tears because I just can’t take listening to Mark anymore and then when we get home I will have to listen to Nan, believe me I go through it every time we go there, that’s why it’s 5 minutes away yet we have only been a few times since it opened.  I just need a break from everything so badly at the moment I really feel like I am clinging on to everything by my fingertips at the moment and every day I am slipping a little more and it’s harder to just hold on and find a way to get through it all. All I keep thinking is how things are going to get even harder once the baby is born, it’s more than likely we will be throwing SCBU into the mix, and then there’s when he comes home and we have to look after him all of the time. Or should I say I will have to look after him all of the time because that’s the way it usually works out as far as our kids are concerned.

Same stuff different night

Tonight I am awake again, I have been laying in the bed trying to sleep and failing miserably. The problem may be the same but tonight the reason is different. I am not being tormented by a spider, I am not trying to finish a layout or organise a few more files in a bid to be tired enough to sleep. I was tired and ready to sleep hours ago, but I can’t seem to fall off to sleep. My mind is occupied with thoughts of Leo and my eyes are filled with tears. As I was laying there and my hands wondered to idly stroke the baby my mind wandered to him and hasn’t left. I wonder what he would have thought about me being pregnant, wonder if he would have been excited about being a big brother like Lukas was with him and is again. I have always had a pretty vague view of heaven, never really stopped to consider the details or decide if people still feel anything once they get there. I wonder whether he feels like he is being replaced and whether he wishes that things had worked out differently, I wonder if he’s jealous that this baby gets to be here when he doesn’t or if he feels relieved that he no longer has to feel pain here on earth. The wondering drives me insane because it’s not like I can just ask him or anyone else for that matter for the answers to the questions I have. I just have to debate with myself about the answers and try and convince myself that whatever answers are the least painful for me to believe are the truth. I choose to believe that he’s at peace, that he’s happy, that’s he’s safe and that he feels how much we love him even if he isn’t here. I believe that he was as loving and caring as Lukas is and that he would want me to love this baby as much as I love him. I believe that he wants this baby to help heal all of our broken hearts. But more than anything I believe that at the end of the day he was an innocent, sweet little angel and he never did and never will know just how much pain he has caused. It physically hurts in my heart when I sit here and think about him, I hate myself with a vicious passion because I find myself wishing that he was going to be the baby I was getting to hold soon. I am trying so very hard to accept that this baby will soon be a part of my life and despite what everyone tells me I am struggling to believe that I will ever be able to look at him and not wish he was Leo. I’m trying to love him for being him, but I am struggling. I am trying to not feel this overwhelming pain I still feel whenever thoughts of Leo pop into my head because on top of everything else it’s too hard, but I am failing. My head is buzzing with thoughts of everything that I still have to do before the baby is born, but I feel as though I am putting on a show for other people. Doing all of the things that normal expectant mothers do to prepare for their new arrivals, while I hide in this mixture of crazy emotions and desperately trying not to let anyone else know how messed up my head is. I’m confused and I am sad and I just feel so overwhelmed by everything. I’m nervous about the baby being born, anxious and impatient for it to just hurry up and be over with, scared that I won’t like him once he is here. It’s not just the baby and Leo either, I am tired of arguing with Mark and I am exhausted from listening to Nan constantly. I feel like I am in a very dark and dangerous place mentally lately and I don’t know how to get out of it. I seem to spend all of my time trying to convince myself of things I don’t really believe. I tell myself that things will get better, and that everything will work out somehow. I try and tell myself that I will love the baby and once he’s born I won’t be able to ever imagine my life without him being in it, just like I feel with Lukas. The problem is I can imagine what it would be like because I know what it feels like not to have Leo in my life. My nightmares aren’t just about giant spiders and other stuff like that, when I sleep I have to watch things all over again. I see Leo all blue and floppy in my arms, I hear myself screaming for Nan to call an ambulance. I see the paramedics working on him and I hear myself saying those words to him that I hate myself so much for. I begged him to give up as he was laid in my arms that last time. It hurt me so much to see him suffer that I begged him to just let go, to stop trying and to stop fighting to stay here with me. There’s a part of me that is selfish and would sacrifice anything to be able to do that all over again, to change my mind and beg for just a few more precious seconds with him. But in my heart I know that if I had to choose between my pain and his I would rather I was the one hurting everytime. Someone asked me recently if I had the chance to make the decision again would I still turn the machine off and I answered without hesitation that I would, because it wasn’t fair to let him suffer. I believe that every single second of every single day, except at night. When I am laying here and I am missing him I am overcome by the desire to put my own happiness before his, to turn back time and make the doctors do everything in their power to save him so he could be here with me. I long for one more cuddle or chance to just touch his skin and tell him that I love him and that I am sorry I let him go. More than anything I wish I could find the comfort I am so desperately seeking in this baby. I wish I could stroke him and feel him move and just feel confident that everything is going to be ok because I have him. I have moments where he makes me laugh with a movement he makes. I can sense that he has a personality already and that he’s going to be special in his own way. When I feel sad and I am crying he seems to be worried. I reach out and touch him almost as if to reassure him that everything will be alright and he does the same to me. I have moments where I love him so much it hurts in my chest, then I remember that I felt that way about Leo and I hurt even more. What I long for right at this second is just the ability to sleep and not dream or think for a little while, just to have a little bit of peace from my own thoughts and emotions.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Mixed day today

It would have been kind of nice if today could have passed without drama but as usual nothing is ever that simple around here. When I finally gave in and went to bed this morning, and had finally drifted off to sleep Mark got the bright (yep that’s sarcasm) idea that he should wake me up. I jumped up because I thought it had to be something really important for him to wake me when he knew I had been up all night. But apparently I underestimate my husbands intelligence and his desire to live because he woke me up to tell me he was going to mow the grass in the back garden. It’s not as if I need to know that or I could care less. While when I got up I managed to pull a muscle in my back and hurt my stomach so I wasn’t best impressed. I slept really badly because of the pain and things didn’t improve when I did wake up and I have the really bad pain in my ear again. So now I was tired, grumpy, hot and in a lot of pain. That was when Mark decided that it was a good time to tell me that the builders hadn’t turned up today. Apparently they had phoned and said they wouldn’t be back until Tuesday to grout the tiles and remove the rubbish, that was what they were supposed to be doing today. So obviously I had to listen to Nan moaning about that and various other things. Mark hasn’t done a damn thing he was asked to do again all day even though he promised he was going to get the mess sorted out today. Lukas’s room hasn’t been touched at all, but I am supposed to be pleased because he’s done stuff for Nan like mow the grass in the back garden. He doesn’t seem to grasp that I am not impressed because he’s only done half the job. I am just waiting for Nan to notice that he hasn’t used the strimmer on the edges and then having to listen to her complaining and saying how Gary does it like this and blah, blah, blah. I couldn’t tell you what comes next in that moaning because I have always stopped listening long before then. Mark is in a whiny annoying mood and keeps biting mine and Lukas’s head off every time we say anything at all to him. It’s getting old fast. The one thing I have to be happy about today is that Mark gets paid tomorrow, and I have managed to talk him into another Chessington trip. We will leave here Saturday night after he gets home from work and take the train and stay in the onsite hotel at Chessington overnight. Then get up Sunday morning probably have breakfast and go for a swim in the hotel pool and then spend the day in the theme park before catching the train home. I am so excited about getting away from this house and Nan even if it is only for one night. I am intending on taking the laptop with me so that if I want to I can go and sit somewhere while Lukas and Mark go off on the rides they want to go on. Sometimes I end up sitting around waiting ages for them and usually I don’t mind because I am taking photos but since I am just too tired to do that I thought I may as well organise some of my files while I am waiting, so at least I am doing something useful. I’m not entirely sure what is going to happen about my hospital appointment on Monday because Mark hasn’t bothered to resolve that he is now working, he promised he would do that today but didn’t. He also said he would ask if he could leave early or have Saturday off because they only have a few patients and he says he doesn’t really need to be there. Anyway I suppose I better go Mark and Lukas are bickering with each other and I really should go and see what it’s over this time.

Incy Wincy needs to go away!

I am sitting here blogging because I can’t sleep, and why you may ask can’t I sleep, that would be because there’s a spider in my room. I hate spiders with a passion and the only one that hates them more than me is Lukas. Last night when I was sitting at my desk I saw a fairly large one taking a leisurely stroll across the front of my printer. I will admit I was a complete wimp and started shaking and begging Mark to kill it. By the time he bothered to listen to me I was in a bit of a state and the beastie was long gone. I tried going to bed but I couldn’t help myself from looking all around the room for the damn thing every 5 minutes. Since all the fidgeting was making me hot and bothered I got up again and sat on the end of the bed to use the computer. Eventually that was too uncomfortable so I got all the way up and came and sat in the desk chair. I tried to work on a layout to calm down so I could get some sleep. It kind of went slowly because of the move something on the page, look around for spider, move something else on the page, look around again for spider routine I had going. I was finally starting to relax when I spotted the damn thing on the ceiling above my desk. In the time it took for me to stand up with the intention of waking Mark and begging him to please kill it, the little pest had disappeared again. Every time I have started to feel a bit more calm and sane, I have spotted it again and got scared all over again. First it was on the wall, then on the shelf. I thought I spotted it on the desk but that turned out to just be a trick of my imagination and a piece of fluff. So now I am tired and irritated at myself for being such a wimp. I hate being scared of anything and I am having a hard time believing that something as stupid as a spider can have this effect on me. I feel like such an irrational crazy person right now, yet I know if I get up and I lay in my bed I won’t be able to sleep because I will be looking all around the room for it again, the thing that scares me most is the idea of it crawling across my skin. Just the thought of it makes me shudder and start shaking. I also know that if I do manage to fall asleep I will end up being woken up with the nightmares I have had before numerous times about giant spiders, the nightmares that make me wake up shaking and keep me awake for the rest of the night. I never had nightmares about spiders until I was pregnant, the nightmares I did have should have been much more scary yet somehow I could always drift back off to sleep after those. I suppose it’s some kind of a hormone thing making them seem more real or something. I don’t really care what the reason is to be honest I just want them to go away so I can get some sleep. But more than anything else I want to see that spider squished and out of my bedroom!

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Today is a much better day

After I posted yesterday things got even worse around here, the next door neighbour annoyed Nan by mowing our front garden. Now before everyone looks confused and says but that’s a nice thing to do you have to understand a few things, first our grass didn’t need mowing Gary did it last Sunday for Nan. The reason he did it then is because we were out for the day, both me and Lukas have issues with grass. I don’t exactly know what the problem is since it only seems to be really bad when people mow it. It makes Lukas cough and makes both of us itchy and miserable and we both end up with runny eyes and noses and it’s worse when I am pregnant. When other people mow their grass we have to shut the windows. Well we couldn’t shut the window yesterday thanks to having the bedroom door shut all day because of the builders the room was already unbearably hot. Lukas ended up having to have medicine just so he could get to sleep and I just had to put up with it since I can’t take my allergy tablets thanks to the baby. The second reason she was mad has to do with the way it looks. As I mentioned yesterday the builders had already annoyed Nan by leaving all of the bathroom rubbish on our front garden. So when the man next door mowed, he just mowed around the mess. So we have parts of our grass that look like a mixture of straw and dirt because they are far too short and when the builders move the rubbish we will have parts that are much longer than the rest. The third reason she was mad was the mess, he left the cut grass absolutely everywhere and she had to go outside and rake it all up and sweep the path, even if she wasn’t slightly obsessive compulsive when it comes to cleaning ( it would have drove her insane knowing it was “messy” outside") we would have had to do it this time, because of the builders coming in and out and not wanting cut grass walked through the whole house. So she was not exactly pleased and I wasn’t exactly thrilled about having to listen to her moaning about something else either! She did get Gary to close the bathroom window when he came to pick up Ella unfortunately he also closed the small window and I ended up having to get a stool from downstairs and lean over to reopen it. I didn’t tell her but I hurt my stomach doing it. Nan decided she was going to give Lukas a wash in the kitchen and he had a great time annoying her by doing everything she told him not to do. Don’t touch that when your wet, so he touched it, don’t put your feet on the floor until I have dried them so he put his feet on the floor. I had to walk out of the room and have a snigger to myself because she just doesn’t realise that if you tell him not to do something and you don’t tell him why he can’t do it he will do it just to see why he wasn’t allowed to do it. I had a massive argument with Mark when he came home from work last night and when I eventually fell asleep I was pretty miserable. He went to his Dad’s today to do washing and I never woke up until 2pm when he got back, so we haven’t seen very much of each other today. When I did see him he appeared to be sorry for last night though which makes a change. If you are wondering this argument started over work again, I was already mad because when I looked at the calendar I saw that this Saturday is the fete at the hospital. All of the money raised goes to help the Special Care Baby Unit and we have taken Lukas every year. I had already mentioned it to him and we were intending to go before he went to work on Saturday. Then he forgot all about it and agreed to change shifts with someone else. His job causes a lot of fights lately. I am sick of him always changing his shifts and when he is working to help other people out yet when I need him to have a day off for my appointments he ends up taking it out of his annual leave because no-one will trade with him. Even when we have booked the day off weeks in advance it still ends up getting changed at the last minute because he refuses to stand up to his boss. I get sick of it especially when I have to change or cancel plans. I always check with him when he’s working before I suggest anything. So I get really upset when even after checking with him and knowing it’s a day he has off I get told we can’t do it because he’s changed shifts with someone or he’s been told he has to work because they are short. Then when he came home and told me that he was now working Monday ( a day he had booked off because I have a hospital appointment). I am so fed up with being one of the lowest priorities on his list. Me and Lukas come way down after his Playstation 2, sport on the television, his online games and his job and it makes me sad. I feel like we deserve better than that, the appointment for Monday is at the Doppler clinic at the hospital, so they can check on the blood flow to the baby so it’s not exactly an appointment we can just not go to. But anyway I am fed up of talking about him for now, I want to talk about the bathroom. Today was Nan’s day off and as I have already said I spent the day asleep. She’s annoyed because the builders only ended up being here a few hours but however long they were here, they managed to get the bath finished being fitted, the sink fitted, the toilet fitted and the tiles onto the wall. The tiling isn’t finished they are supposed to be grouting tomorrow but I was able to give Lukas a bath this evening, we had to be a little bit careful because of the dust and it not all being finished though and we are thrilled to have a toilet and running water up here again. The taps are great and seem to have resolved the water pressure issue we have always had upstairs since we moved in, I only added a splash of bubble bath and the whole bath was filled with bubbles lol. It will be hard to remember for a while that we can no longer turn on the bath and wonder back in here to check emails or whatever while it runs because the bath fills super fast now lol. Lukas is in love with the new push button flush and had a great time pressing it while he was using the toilet, he laughed and told me that he bum had gotten wet when he did it silly boy. We had a little talk about wasting water and how the flush is not a toy and he has reluctantly left it alone ever since. But he has decided that whenever anyone uses the toilet he has to be the one to do the flush, luckily for him I am pregnant and need to pee every 5 minutes at the moment lol. It’s Mark’s day off tomorrow and I am hoping that after the builders leave I can have a bath. I was a bit hesitant to try it with no-one here since it’s really low down and I am not sure I can get back up at the moment without a little help. I am hoping that when Mark gets home tonight we will be able to spend some time together without arguing. It would make a real change to go to bed without tears for a change. Anyway I suppose I better go for now it’s almost 10:15 and Lukas is still sitting playing the laptop lol. He is supposed to be going to sleep but since he was being so quiet and good I left him to it, but he really should go to bed now since he has school and Sports Day practice tomorrow and I have a layout to do. 

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

It got worse!

The builders arrived back about 10 minutes after I finished the last post and then sat in their van for about 30 minutes. I got Mark to ring the school and cancel the appointment for today because I just felt too ill to do anything. After we had something to eat I decided to try and lay down for a while, noise doesn’t really keep me awake I can sleep through pretty much anything, but I thought even if I couldn’t sleep just resting for a while might help. Mark then decided he was going to Tesco. While he was gone I had to get up 3 times to answer the house phone and once to answer my mobile phone to my stupid husband. Somehow despite the noise and whatever mistake the builders made that caused them to both to swear I did manage to fall asleep. When I woke up I found that while I had been asleep my new laptop adapter had arrived and Mark had done absolutely nothing he had been asked to do, what a surprise. He was warned before he went to school, not to talk to Lukas’s teacher since he can’t be trusted to keep his mouth shut about anything. Yet even though he was warned and he hadn’t bothered to tell work about the meeting we were supposed to have because he’s an idiot, he didn’t get back here with Lukas until nearly 3:45. I could barely believe it myself when he walked in and said he had been talking to Lukas’s teacher, even I didn’t credit him to be that stupid. Then he went to work leaving me fuming. At 4:10 the builders announced they were done for the day, and oh by the way we are leaving all of the rubbish in the front garden which set Nan off. After they went we got to see that even though it’s a new firm who have the building contract they are just as incompetent as the old ones. They have replaced the floor in the bathroom, except for under the bath where the problem was in the first place. They have started fitting the bath but they haven’t sealed the wooden floor they have put down. They obviously have no intention of redecorating the bathroom and I have no clue about what they are doing with the floor, we had tiles on the floor over the wood. The wall is cracked badly and I am not entirely sure whether that was there from before or if they cracked it when they took all of the tiles off, but I very much doubt they will fix that before they retile. They have bought the toilet in the house but it’s still packaged up. There is no sink in the bathroom at all so we have no water upstairs at all and they have left the window in the bathroom wide open, we never even open that because Nan is always paranoid that someone could climb in through it. So you can imagine my life is a lot of fun right now, Nan is whining endlessly about everything and I am almost ready to pour myself a very large vodka and coke because I can’t stand the headache anymore, which she is obviously not helping. I am resisting because I don’t believe in drinking while pregnant. Just for added fun the hot water tap in the kitchen doesn’t seem to be running water right at the moment, it was fine until they turned the water off earlier though. Conor was here when I went downstairs, he decided to act like an idiot on the trampoline which I have told him a million times not to do and managed to fall and smack his head. I told her a while ago that the covering had weather damage and the bar was partially exposed, I also added “don’t let Conor mess around on it”. Now Nan is saying that we have to get rid of the trampoline altogether, which I am not exactly happy about because Lukas loves it and he’s perfectly safe on it because he follows the rules. While Conor was here he also managed to break a garden toy of Lukas’s by doing something with it he shouldn’t have been doing and as usual I am the one in the wrong for pointing out that if he wasn’t doing it then it wouldn’t have gotten broken. I should be happy that Lisa had just come and got Conor, but I'm not exactly thrilled because she’s now left Ella here. That means I get to spend the evening with Lukas whinging, complaining and being annoying like he always is after he plays with her. I really don’t know how much more I can take at the moment, I feel so stressed out and overwhelmed by everything. I just wish I could get some sleep or just have a break even for a little while. Usually I have a bath to feel better and I am sad I can’t even do that!

Bloody builders

As you can probably guess things aren’t exactly going so great here at the moment. After being unable to sleep last night for various reasons, I finally managed to find a fairly comfortable position about 5 or 6am this morning. Lukas gets up at 8am for school and he was still asleep so I know it was before then when we had banging at the door. Me and Lukas flew out of bed to go and use the toilet before they started, only for Mark to come back up and inform us that the guy knocking on the door wasn’t actually here to start working because he was still waiting on the other builder. It wasn’t until Lukas was ready to leave for school (so you are looking at about 8:45am ish) that the other guy finally arrived. They are very noisy, drilling, banging etc and I have a rotten headache and for added fun feel really sick today. When Nan got home she instantly started complaining because they had only put dust sheets on the upstairs landing, she seemed to be off the opinion they should have put dust sheets down all of the stairs as well. I’m not getting into an argument with her over it, I just can’t be bothered. Then they announced they were leaving and someone else would be here in about an hour. I’m sure I don’t need to tell you how that went down with Nan do I? So currently there is a bath, a toilet, a sink and about half a floor dumped on our front garden, there is a huge gaping hole in the bathroom floor, there is no upstairs toilet or bath and according to Nan no running water in the house at all. I’m not entirely sure if that’s right since I haven’t tried the downstairs taps and well there aren’t any up here anymore lol. Mark is driving me insane and the baby is driving me insane (he objects to being woken up at all regardless of the time, so you know he’s more than thrilled to be woken up with that racket). I am feeling really ill today mostly my back and bad pains across my stomach, but the headache and migraine are kind of annoying to. The only bright spot is that for now it’s quiet because not only are the builders not currently here but neither is Nan because she’s gone to an appointment lol, Mark’s out as well he’s gone to get lunch (well and it will end up being my dinner since he’s at work lol) from KFC to try and cheer the baby up a little bit. I can only hope that the builders are back before Nan is because I would much rather listen to their noise than hers and it really is too hot today to stay in my room all day. I think the weirdest thing is while they are gone I have the perfect opportunity to go and take pictures of the mess so I can scrap them, but I just can’t drag up enough energy to make the effort. But then I mean what do you expect I never even bothered to take photos of our trip to Chessington or Lukas’s chicken pox to scrap either, maybe that says how miserable and depressed I have been  feeling lately, I can’t even be bothered to take photographs. Sounds like Mark is back so I suppose I better run, I will probably be back later.

Monday, June 22, 2009

It’s going to be a long week

I can’t remember if I mentioned it before, but we have been waiting on the builders to come in and repair the bathroom. Remember a while back when the toilet leaked and flooded the downstairs toilet, well the leaking toilet turned out to be not a leaking toilet at all, it was a cracked pipe under the bath. Long story short they took a long time to fix it and as a result the floor got damaged, for the last few months there has been a really nasty damp smell in the bathroom and the bath and sink have sunk. Now the whole bathroom needs to be ripped out, the floor needs to be replaced and they need to fit a new bath, sink and toilet. It’s going to mean that we basically have no bathroom for about a week minimum. Tomorrow they are coming to finally make a start on it. To say I am not exactly thrilled would be an understatement. Nan arranged everything with when they were coming yet she’s going to be out tomorrow. So I have to be up and dressed in the morning to let the builders in. I will have to listen to her whinging and moaning about the mess (trust me I know because it’s already been going on for weeks and they haven’t even started!). If I hear her saying one more time “I don’t know how I am going to cope with it all” I might just smack her. She has a toilet downstairs that we can’t actually use because she fitted a stupid plastic toilet seat, and she doesn’t use the bath at all because she can’t get down into it. Apart from the general mess of builders being in the house it won’t affect her at all. I hate people being in the house especially when I feel like this, so a house full of dust and noise when I am already not sleeping so great should make for lots of fun. I also have a meeting tomorrow at Lukas’s school because of his attendance. Right now I am running on a fairly short fuse, it’s not exactly the best time for anyone to try and tell me what they think I should be doing with my son. I can almost guarantee they will say something to piss me off and I will lose my temper with them and get myself in trouble. I just wish they could get it into their heads, because it’s really simple. If my kid is sick, he doesn’t go to school. Maybe of more parents kept their kids home when they were sick mine wouldn’t come home with so many different things and would be at school more! I certainly wasn’t going to send him to school with chicken pox, anymore than I was going to send him to school when he was screaming with earache, throwing up, running a fever or after he’s been up all night coughing continually. He wouldn’t learn anything anyway and would make not only his teachers life but every other kid in the classes life an absolute misery. He’s not exactly a good patient, he whines and complains a lot like his daddy, and when he’s ill he spends almost all of his time hanging off of me. It makes absolutely no difference to me if the school sends me letters, calls me, threatens to involve the social worker or even if they were to go as far as fining me for not sending him to school, if he’s well enough for school he is at school, if he’s not he’s home with me. What really gets me though is that I don’t ever book time off for holidays, it’s not like he’s off having fun when he should be learning. He has time off for 4 reasons, illness, anniversaries (Leo’s, Gaiebraille’s and Ambrose’s it’s not exactly his fault that we have 3 angel babies is it), my hospital appointments (because there’s no-one to pick him up from school) and family emergencies like people dying or being rushed to hospital. Does anyone of those really sound like a fun day off school to you? Anyway I have really rambled enough for today I am sorry that I haven’t bothered to share any layouts for a while, I just can’t seem to get motivated to do it, but you are always welcome to go and look at them all here I organise them by month. Lukas has just gone to sleep so I am kind of hoping that I can join him.

Friday, June 19, 2009

Hmm now where to start

Should I write about Lukas having the chicken pox, or maybe the trip to the hospital because we thought my waters had broken, or I could write about having to call an ambulance for Nan because she was choking, or there’s always the fall I took in the bedroom and twisted my ankle or the trip I took down the stairs and the sprained wrist I got from that or I guess I could start with the last minute trip to Chessington we took for Fathers Day a week early. I could even just share some of the layouts that I have scrapped and haven’t gotten around to sharing. I have lots of things I could be blogging about but I don’t seem to be able to find the words to start. Its feels like there is always stuff going on here lately and while I used to enjoy sharing all the details and remembering them lately I just want each day to hurry up and be over. *sigh* I am just so tired lately and depressed I can’t seem to find the motivation to do much at all. I just keep hoping that I will feel a bit better once the baby is finally born and then all of a sudden I will feel like living my life again, instead of just sleepwalking my way through each hour like a zombie.