And The Boy is skumbling (a heady mixture of skulking and stumbling) around the bedroom mumbling: Where’s the hairdryer?
You’re holding it, I reply testily. Then I go back to the phone conversation I am trying to have with my sister about finding a suitable nursing home for mum. It’s 8.15am and I’m trying to get dressed and talk on the phone at the same time.
Wipe my bum mummy! The Girl is perched on the edge of the loo, cat ears askew, her costume unzipped and pooled round her ankles. The Boy stops loudly drying his hair and mumbles something at her. She yelps with feline rage.
I’m not licking my own bum! I’m not a cat. Oh. I am. I’m still not licking my bum. Muuuum he said I should lick my bum! The Boy shrugs. She’s supposed to be a cat! Where’s the hair stuff? The Boy needs products, lots of them, to achieve that carelessly tousled, just got out of bed look. The products that are Right in Front of Him. He’s supposed to be attending a college interview today, while Husband and I are dropping off Cat Girl at school, (It's Alice in Wonderland day) then dropping him off. I wipe Cat Girl’s bum and zip up her costume while she chatters away. But soft! In comes husband, red with rage because The Boy is Not Ready.
We’re going in eight minutes he shouts. Why can’t you get up earlier? Because my body won’t let me counters The Boy. Where’s the blue hair stuff mum?
Is my phone invisible?
I point out that I’m on the phone having a serious conversation. Husband points loudly (I don't know how he does this but he does) at his watch. The Boy considers for a second.
Yeah but where’s the blue stuff?
Meanwhile there’s a wail from The Girl and she holds up the tail she has managed to pull off. I struggle to keep my voice level. You’ll have to be a Manx cat.
My sister and I agree to talk later.
Friday, 9 July 2010
Thursday, 8 July 2010
Mourning Mum
The Girl is at primary school and regularly brings home books along with a parental notebook which is supposed to be filled in, to keep track of her reading. Myself or Husband, or occasionally The Boy listen to her picking through Camping Adventure, or Birthday Adventure and then fill in the book with comments like: Brilliant Reading or Read Well or in the case of The Boy, Rubbish.
I looked through the book yesterday. My mother had looked after the children while Husband and I were in Singapore. I saw mum’s handwriting: Exemplary reading from my clever granddaughterr. The day after she wrote that, she travelled home, and while standing at the top of her stairs, had a cerebral hemorrhage, fell down the stairs and sustained serious brain damage. She won’t write a word like exemplary again, or say it. She won’t sit up or walk or look at us and have a conversation. She won’t cook or snap at dad or send me cuttings from the newspaper about osteoporosis, cancer, or other illnesses to brighten my day.
Mum is being sent to a nursing home because there is nothing more the hospital say they can do. For the last couple of months, myself, my dad and my sister have been ringing, arguing, asking for a second opinion and trying to fight our way through NHS bureaucracy to get her the best possible treatment. It’s like knitting fog. Speaking to the same person twice in a row is almost impossible, so I’m used to hearing phrases like: Sorry I don’t have the notes – I wasn’t at the meeting – I’ve only just been assigned to this case – I don’t know – I don’t know – I don’t know. I ring the hospital switchboard and it has this bizarre system of you speaking the name of the department or person you want to talk to. It goes something like this:
Hello – you are through to the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother switchboard. Which department or person would you like to speak to?
You say loudly and clearly,
Minster Ward
The machine replies,
Putting you through to Dr Klalid Abdullah
It’s funny the first time.
Mum isn’t technically dead but the woman who brought my sister and I up, fed us the home cooked food that has given us a lifetime of good health and stable weight, been a brilliant grandmother who sent parcels and letters to her grandchildren, and once asked: Is Freddie Mercury gay? (Is the Pope Catholic? replied dad) is gone for good.
I miss you mum.
I looked through the book yesterday. My mother had looked after the children while Husband and I were in Singapore. I saw mum’s handwriting: Exemplary reading from my clever granddaughterr. The day after she wrote that, she travelled home, and while standing at the top of her stairs, had a cerebral hemorrhage, fell down the stairs and sustained serious brain damage. She won’t write a word like exemplary again, or say it. She won’t sit up or walk or look at us and have a conversation. She won’t cook or snap at dad or send me cuttings from the newspaper about osteoporosis, cancer, or other illnesses to brighten my day.
Mum is being sent to a nursing home because there is nothing more the hospital say they can do. For the last couple of months, myself, my dad and my sister have been ringing, arguing, asking for a second opinion and trying to fight our way through NHS bureaucracy to get her the best possible treatment. It’s like knitting fog. Speaking to the same person twice in a row is almost impossible, so I’m used to hearing phrases like: Sorry I don’t have the notes – I wasn’t at the meeting – I’ve only just been assigned to this case – I don’t know – I don’t know – I don’t know. I ring the hospital switchboard and it has this bizarre system of you speaking the name of the department or person you want to talk to. It goes something like this:
Hello – you are through to the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother switchboard. Which department or person would you like to speak to?
You say loudly and clearly,
Minster Ward
The machine replies,
Putting you through to Dr Klalid Abdullah
It’s funny the first time.
Mum isn’t technically dead but the woman who brought my sister and I up, fed us the home cooked food that has given us a lifetime of good health and stable weight, been a brilliant grandmother who sent parcels and letters to her grandchildren, and once asked: Is Freddie Mercury gay? (Is the Pope Catholic? replied dad) is gone for good.
I miss you mum.
Monday, 28 June 2010
Kathryn Blundell
There are some things mothers are never supposed to say. That the idea of childbirth fills them with disgust and horror and they want to be either drugged off their tits or anaesthetised and c-sectioned. Odd because in every other area of medicine, the absence of pain is seen as a Good Thing. In childbirth though, it's generally seen as a cop out. My second labour was only eight hours long. I never felt in danger and the midwife was great. Unfortunately the epidural didn't work. I’d have taken a bullet the pain was so bad. No I didn’t feel empowered. You try splitting in half and feeling empowered about it.
Once the baby is born, the next taboo is mentioning that small babies are really really dull.
Anna Pasternak got it in the neck for saying just that. The debate ‘raged’ as women phoned radio stations to explain how rollercoasterly thrilling it was to have a small baby.
Kathryn Blundell deputy editor of Mother & Baby magazine is now in deep nappy doo after using the word ‘creepy’ in the context of breastfeeding. The deluge of rage in response centres entirely around the use of the word ‘creepy’. Oh and referring to her breasts as ‘funbags’ which is up there with Gok Wan’s ‘bangers’. But she says other things too – useful things like women should not be made to feel guilty if they can’t or don’t want to breastfeed. Her real crime was not prefacing her shameless formula feeding with lots of handwringing about how ‘guilty’ she felt, or that her nipples were cracked and bleeding after nights of desperate attempts to feed. If she had – then the comments would have been more of the saintly condescending variety. Oh what a shame. Poor thing. Maybe she should have tried just an itty bit harder? Needed more support etc etc. No, this rotten, evil mother decided she couldn’t be ‘fagged.’ The selfish, sociopathic, useless, vain monster. Yes, she’s been described as all those things.
The other comment that comes up again and again is the fear that ‘vulnerable’ new mothers might read her article and decide not to breastfeed! What a load of patronising crap. Like never using the word 'pain' in the context of childbirth in case it puts women off having babies. Oh hang on - the anti-drug birth bullies still do that. It's not pain - it's sensations. Or waves. Or an orgasm if you're Sheila Kitzinger.
It was probably ill advised to use the word ‘creepy’ about breastfeeding. But I don’t think one article is going to put new mothers off. And frankly, the utterly vitriolic, poisonous and self-righteous nastiness from the blogsphere is far far creepier.
There is a small section of militant mothers who seem more interested in policing other women's behaviour than trusting them to make the choice that's right for them and their child.
Once the baby is born, the next taboo is mentioning that small babies are really really dull.
Anna Pasternak got it in the neck for saying just that. The debate ‘raged’ as women phoned radio stations to explain how rollercoasterly thrilling it was to have a small baby.
Kathryn Blundell deputy editor of Mother & Baby magazine is now in deep nappy doo after using the word ‘creepy’ in the context of breastfeeding. The deluge of rage in response centres entirely around the use of the word ‘creepy’. Oh and referring to her breasts as ‘funbags’ which is up there with Gok Wan’s ‘bangers’. But she says other things too – useful things like women should not be made to feel guilty if they can’t or don’t want to breastfeed. Her real crime was not prefacing her shameless formula feeding with lots of handwringing about how ‘guilty’ she felt, or that her nipples were cracked and bleeding after nights of desperate attempts to feed. If she had – then the comments would have been more of the saintly condescending variety. Oh what a shame. Poor thing. Maybe she should have tried just an itty bit harder? Needed more support etc etc. No, this rotten, evil mother decided she couldn’t be ‘fagged.’ The selfish, sociopathic, useless, vain monster. Yes, she’s been described as all those things.
The other comment that comes up again and again is the fear that ‘vulnerable’ new mothers might read her article and decide not to breastfeed! What a load of patronising crap. Like never using the word 'pain' in the context of childbirth in case it puts women off having babies. Oh hang on - the anti-drug birth bullies still do that. It's not pain - it's sensations. Or waves. Or an orgasm if you're Sheila Kitzinger.
It was probably ill advised to use the word ‘creepy’ about breastfeeding. But I don’t think one article is going to put new mothers off. And frankly, the utterly vitriolic, poisonous and self-righteous nastiness from the blogsphere is far far creepier.
There is a small section of militant mothers who seem more interested in policing other women's behaviour than trusting them to make the choice that's right for them and their child.
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Suits You Sir
A shaft of light pierces my Blog of Gloom, or rather a shaft of irritation since it involves The Boy, but hey, I'll take irritation over blank misery any day. It's nearly the end of term, the end of exams, and time for the School Prom. Husband tells me that in his day, you had to have a date, a car, and an expensive outfit so anyone who didn't have a date, or enough money to hire a ridiculous dress and flash car could celebrate getting through their exams by feeling ugly and unwelcome.
Over here though there seems to be more emphasis on having fun. The Boy's class are hiring a boat and there have been several stern letters about it being a No Booze Cruise to which The Boy smirks. But firstly we have to get him a suit. You'd think it would be quite easy - just measure and hire. You can even hire online and they deliver! But The Boy is currently ensconced in online Troll World and every time I point out that he needs to be measured he rolls his eyes and waves me away as though I'm a mosquito. I'm tempted to hire him a Gold Lame Gayboy suit or the t-shirt. That'll learn him.
Thursday, 3 June 2010
Another catch-up
Since April my mum has been confined to hospital following a fall, suffering from firstly a bleed on the brain, and suspected broken neck, then a flurry of infections, then a really nasty e-coli one and another UTI. During all this she has been shunted from hospital to hospital, so forgive me for being very remiss with the blog.
I used to read about elderly people dying from dehydration or starvation in hospitals and not believe it. Imagine – an elderly person lying stupefied from drugs and the £3.50 an hour orderly wheels a food trolley past their room. ‘Want dinner?’ he or she says. There is no reply because the elderly person is either asleep or doesn’t want much. So the orderly moves on. The nurses are supposed to keep a record of what the patients eat and most of the time they do. But if the elderly person doesn’t have an interested family to say: ‘Hang on I was here and there’s no way dad had a whole plate of spaghetti and a banana’ then that person can so easily slip quietly into malnutrition and. . . . .
I ring the hospital to ask what kind of medication she’s on and the nurse has usually ‘just come on duty so can’t tell me anything’ but ‘she’s looking very cheerful today’. At first that made my sister, my father and I feel a little better but now it just seems like bullshit. We are going down to the hospital tomorrow to see if they are still considering her for the physiotherapy ward where she might get a stab at getting her life back – with intensive physio and speech therapy. But it all depends on beds, and the longer she stays mouldering in hospital, the less ‘suitable’ as a physio patient she’ll be. It’s all very well talking about age discrimination but behind the scenes, decisions have to be made about who is more suitable. What my sister and I are not going to allow is for her to be shunted off to a nursing home without a fight.
I’m sorry – my sense of humour has gone a bit AWOL recently.
On another note, yesterday I had a glimpse of The Girl as a teenager after I asked her to brush her teeth. ‘What – ev –er’ she snapped.
I used to read about elderly people dying from dehydration or starvation in hospitals and not believe it. Imagine – an elderly person lying stupefied from drugs and the £3.50 an hour orderly wheels a food trolley past their room. ‘Want dinner?’ he or she says. There is no reply because the elderly person is either asleep or doesn’t want much. So the orderly moves on. The nurses are supposed to keep a record of what the patients eat and most of the time they do. But if the elderly person doesn’t have an interested family to say: ‘Hang on I was here and there’s no way dad had a whole plate of spaghetti and a banana’ then that person can so easily slip quietly into malnutrition and. . . . .
I ring the hospital to ask what kind of medication she’s on and the nurse has usually ‘just come on duty so can’t tell me anything’ but ‘she’s looking very cheerful today’. At first that made my sister, my father and I feel a little better but now it just seems like bullshit. We are going down to the hospital tomorrow to see if they are still considering her for the physiotherapy ward where she might get a stab at getting her life back – with intensive physio and speech therapy. But it all depends on beds, and the longer she stays mouldering in hospital, the less ‘suitable’ as a physio patient she’ll be. It’s all very well talking about age discrimination but behind the scenes, decisions have to be made about who is more suitable. What my sister and I are not going to allow is for her to be shunted off to a nursing home without a fight.
I’m sorry – my sense of humour has gone a bit AWOL recently.
On another note, yesterday I had a glimpse of The Girl as a teenager after I asked her to brush her teeth. ‘What – ev –er’ she snapped.
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