Day 8 in the half term house and the housemates have had an end of week treat. The house was evacuated in favor of going swimming with friends. Good plan that. Brilliant day, although project whine-until-mummys-head-spins is looking right on track (i type this blog from my phone while lying on the floor holding mini midget’s hand and telling midget that she can sleep without her misplaced penguin). Cue the pea soup and crucifix….

Day 6 in the half term house: The inmates are getting twitchy. Mr t has locked himself in his room while be attends a training course online. Aware that she must round up the savages alone, H suggests a trip to the swimming pool knowing that midget could attend a fun splash session with other half term savages. So the bag was packed and the swimming costumes were on…. and the midgets ran into the garden to collect snails as their new pets. They’re called Rosie and Jack and they’re now living in a shoebox in a pile of grass and leaves in the midgets’ shed. Eventually they conceded that swimming sounded like a good plan and the car was finally seen leaving the half term house at 10am (meant to be 9.15am).

H and the midgets arrived at the unnamed sports facility with H already feeling a bit ropey, now knowing she was about to tackle two distracted small people in a swimming pool with no splash class backup….  Midget realises splash class is nearly over and cops a strop (H biting her lip while screaming mentally I told you that!!!) Micro midget just wants to get in the water…

The housemates are in the water. It’s great – the kids are like fish splashing and jumping about, diving under the water. Ok, there were a couple of moments of fear (like when they both jumped into the big pool together…. panicking over which to catch first, then realising it was fine as mini midget swam off on her own?!??!).  But all is quiet in the half term house.

Lunch over, the housemates head back to the half term house to discover that G has been attacking the front garden in preparation for the builders arriving this week – the tree has gone and he’s about to start on the hedges. The house is changing daily in front of our eyes. It’s all exciting, frightening and a bit sad at the same time (only sad because the house I knew as a child is dissapearing).

Afternoon in the half term house. Mr T continues his virtual classroom work while G continues to remove a rainforest of hedge (if he’d started to sing I’m a Lumberjack, I wouldn’t have been shocked…. although that’s more my style). H and the midgets start on a massive car cleaning excercise: the hoover is out, the midgets stand sponges at the ready with instructions to clean the inside of the doors while H removed all the seats and hoovers every square inch of carpet and upholstery imaginable. Every item is removed from the car and either thrown away, cleaned and replaced or filed in the house. The midgets get bored and decide to set up house in the boot of the car. They even find a ‘secret door’ (the middle seat that lowers as a table). The the cat decides to join them. Somehow it takes the housemates three full hours to get the car clean – something to do with evicting toys, animals and small humans from anywhere H is trying to clean. Her parting words of this section: “You are never eating smarties in the car again!!!”.

The shortest people in the half term house are tired after their challenges. It’s not quite time for bed. Midget appears to deal with requests by sulking and being generally stroppy, while mini midget suddenly develops an ability to tantrum. Properly tantrum. Not just a few screams but actual throw yourself on the floor, flail, scream, kick and yell. Wow. (If it wasn’t hurting my ears I’d almost be impressed)  The housemates have decided to treat this behaviour with a lack of response – just ignore her. They hope it’s going to work soon. Terrible fours? Really??!

All was quiet in the half term house. H found a nut and the nut suggested going to the gym (to which H agreed).

Time wise it’s great, instead of thinking about my blog in the bath then not bothering once I’m out, hey, just write it while you enjoy the bubbles! For someone who needs to write when they think about it, not when it’s convenient this is great.

So for now I shall return to my emails knowing that my geek is embraced and enjoying the technology and I continue to feel peaceful if just a little distant.

He makes a good point. One of the many roles I have in my jobs aside from teaching is interviewing people who are unemployed to offer them training. Considering I’m offering them paid for help, you’d think this would be a really positive role. But it’s draining. The cycle that job hunting creates, develops this void of hoplessness that seems to increase over time and what should be something that inspires motivation, often just appears to be another hoop to jump through. Most thursdays I wake up cursing the 12 hour day ahead of me (not including any coding to be done when I get home). But the alternative is far worse. Better a long, but emotionally draining day than no day at all.

On a more positive note I got the callback for an interview for more teaching hours. Yay!

Apart from getting all intellectual and latin on you, I want to start this evening with my quote of choice today, again from Sylvia Plath, who recently seems to be the spokesperson for my psyche recently:  ”I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”

It’s very me. I keep busy to stay happy. Idle hands and all that. I stand still and my head melts. While I know that releasing the yuk from my head in the form of a blog is a good thing, it does allow for introspection which on the bad days becomes increasingly dangerous. However, I will concede that the pills are working and the jumping from one to the other extreme is far shorter than it has been in many months. I’ve had several moments recently where I felt properly content. Like that proper cat laying in the sun thing (actually I was in fact laying in the sun in the bay window on our bed just with my eyes closed being totally still and not hearing any screaming in my head). Cats do content very well – makes you wonder if they have some secret supply of feline prosac somewhere, either that or I seriously question what’s in catnip.

This weekend has been total proof that the happy pills have taken full control of my mind (in a good way). It was meant to be a wonderful few days with midget birthday parties and all sorts of festivities planned. Unfortunately, like so many of my own childhood moments of joy overload my parents had an almighty falling out (for the regulars, you’ll know that we do the big extended living with family thing). Like most kids I remember them having screaming matches while I hid in my room. With Mr T, we have a pact to never ever do that. Especially because I just cower when people raise their voices (unless I’m at work weirdly when it’s water off a duck’s back). Of course we fall out. No two people can live together without driving each other insane occasionally. But we don’t shout. We have a deal to talk and accept when the other tells us we’re being irrational and probably need chocolate. We’ve developed these weird code words that invariably make us giggle – I generally tell him he’s acting like his sister and he calls my moments of stroppiness ’blob strops’, I know it’s vulgar, but it makes me laugh. Anyway, with my parents this one is different. It’s become a 48 hour silence pitted with the occasional outburst. Neither will communicate and to be honest, I fear the worst. They need space to talk, so we’re going to vacate for a few days. And even if the silence continues, it means the midgets don’t have to witness it as right now they’re unaware as we’ve kept them busy all day.

So why does this mean the pills are working? Well, apart from me having a minor breakdown after getting yelled at this morning (tbh, I think that was more just me having hoped it would have blown over by the morning and being disappointed that they’d let it interfere with midget’s birthday. That combined with it being important to me that today was perfect because I missed her birthday last year as I was in hospital), I’ve carried on. I’ve not flown into a panic. I’ve not fallen into some horrible depressed state. I’ve looked at the practical side of things. Instead of trying to talk to them both and smooth things over, I’ve told mum at least that it’s their problem and I will not be their marriage counsellor. I did enough of that as a teenager. They can do whatever they need to do, I have my own marriage and children to look after now. I don’t know how I actually feel. I do know that I don’t want to be sitting here in the middle of it feeling very awkward and gooseberry-like though.

Last night I actually thought to myself as we walked back to the car why am I taking these pills? I feel great. I was a bit tired, but that’s because our dear mini midget hasn’t let us get a full night’s sleep since the weekend and we’d been out for the evening.

This morning I was mildly zombiefied. My brain stayed in bed and I’ve had more blonde moments than a barbie working as a bunny girl. But this evening a familiar low has crept back in. I’m really tired and work sucked. Properly sucked (there are days when I wonder why working with people seemed like a good idea because some of the people I’m meeting in my job interviewing are infuriating beyond belief. That combined with the fact that some days I just want to hermit and people just piss me off by using up too much oxygen near me). So as soon as I walk through the door I was confronted by the kids being overjoyed at our arrival and my dad grumbling that I’d forgotten to tell him some of today’s schedule. I’d fogotten. I can’t keep track of what day it is, let alone the social arrangements of my kids that seem to get more complex daily. There is a calendar with everything written down.

So just generally I’m feeling harassed and got at. Which means that for tonight I’m back sitting down my well watching everyone else walk around on the surface while I hide in the dark bit where I feel safe away from people. Ok, the well is a metaphor for me retreating inside my head, but it’s the idea that I’m still watching people carrying on with life, it’s just that while I’m down here they can’t see or reach me until I decide to float back up again. At least now it’s float rather than ping into the sky. It might be dark and unpleasant down here but it’s familiar ground where I can hide out until I’m ready to face the normal people again. And seeing as today the normal people decided to behave like fucktards, they can keep their normality for now, I’m off back down where I they can’t get to me.

Today I’ve not been paying that much attention. Mini midget has a weird non-fever, where one minute she’s hot then she’s fine. What this means is she’s not sleeping, and therefore neither am I. Not so great for the fuzzy head moments. Especially as Mondays are my college evenings where I have to go out until 9pm and assume the disguise of an intelligent person. I caught myself sat in class by 8pm shaking physically and just feeling tired enough to sleep on the desk. Suffice to say not a great deal of active learning took place.

This is mildly concerning as my official teaching assessment is next lesson. And while everyone is blowing it off with ‘you’ll be fine’, it’s pretty much the be all and end all of the course. I know so far everything I’ve put my mind to in the past 10 years I’ve nailed, but that’s because I slog my guts out when I do decide to do something. It’s not because it’s easy people, it’s because I will not accept anything from myself that isn’t 100% perfect. To be anything below that A grade or distinction or whatever is essentially a fail. I’m my own hashest critic, but without the fear I wouldn’t have the motivation to keep going.

And yet I felt a bit flat. I don’t know why. We even came home and I got the kids stuck into some sticking and making. There was something on the TV about Romans so out came the paper and glue and we started making mosaics. We even did our blind faith bit – a guy arrived at the door selling pictures, he had no id, but handed us a hand written letter explaining he was deaf and would we buy one of his pictures or donate money to his school. Now the sceptic in me would have insisted on ID, but I’ve been reading Join Me by Danny Wallace and his random acts of kindness worked out, so we handed the guy some money. We had no way to tell if he was genuine, but it felt good to trust that he was. Blind faith has it’s up sides sometimes.  After sticking, the kids were knackered so we retired to our room and the girls watched Up (soooo good) while Mr T did some bits on his PC and I laid on the bed to ‘rest my eyes’….. and was then woken at 5.30 to tell me dinner was ready :s  

Dinner over, both midgets are snoring happily in bed, and I still can’t quite put my finger on how I feel. It’s sort of flat or lethargic. I’m not really being a people person today. I think maybe I’ve been missing that wonderful warm comfortable in my pyjamas feeling I had first thing. If I’m honest, with the weather being so rubbish I’ve taken to wearing the termal top and trousers I bought for Iceland as pjs and they’re so warm and comfy it’s a bit like being a child. I know that’s a bit odd, but the last week I really have got the most pleasure out of getting into pjs and climbing into my bed.

So down today, but tomorrow may bring a bit more energy?