About Me

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Single autistic mother of three awesome autistic kids. These are my anonymous ramblings about life, love, parenting and the rest – emptying my head of the weird, the wonderful and the mundane. Hope you enjoy.

Saturday 26 May 2012

Of the 18 month wake up call

The irony of writing a post about how I find the time to do stuff and then not finding time to write a blog for about two weeks is not lost on me. Things have been crazy busy recently, for reasons I'm about to explain, so I'm writing this while watching Eurovision - which would be nothing without the accompanying Twitter feed, thank you ladies and gentleman for keeping me amused!

So, as Germany's entry is bleating his way out of his beanie hat, let me explain what's going on for me. I am experiencing, what I'm now labelling 'The 18 month wake up call'. My hunch is that this happens for a lot of people, but certainly for me, at some point, soon after my kids hit about 18 months old - and always before they're two -  its like I wake up. I suddenly notice the world again, and not only do I realise there is more to life than just being Mum, I want a part of it. Is it hormones? Does anyone know? Whatever it is, it always has a major impact on my life.

Thursday 17 May 2012

Of how I find the time to do stuff

So, Recipe Junkie tagged me in my first ever meme, about how I find the time to do stuff. Ironically, it has taken me ages to find the time to join in, so clearly 'with great difficulty' is my overall answer! Anyway, here goes:

First (very important)

Here are the rules:

1. Please post the rules
2. When answering the questions, give as much information as possible. It’s all about the finer details people!!
3. Leave a comment on
Sex, drugs, rocker…and stroller,baby. (http://sexdrugsrockerandstroller.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/how-and-when-do-you-find-time-tomeme.html) This is so we can keep track of the Meme and take a polite nose into everyone else’s lives.
4. Tag 3 or more people and link to them on your blog.

Second... the main event: How and when do you find the time to….

Do the laundry:
Laundry is part of my evening routine every night. It goes like this:
Tea, tidy up, kids in bath, run downstairs, laundry on, run back upstairs feeling like a bad mother for having left kids in bath for 30 seconds, kids out of bath.
DS1 is under strict instructions to yell if there is a problem so I know they're fine, but even so, I have all those safety instructions from baby books firmly drilled into my head. Still, this is the only practical way of doing it -  I still use re-useable nappies so there's quite a lot of washing to get through. This way, the washing machine normally finishes once I've finished getting them to bed, so then I hang up what can't be tumble dried and put the dryer on for everything else. (I'm figuring the re-useable nappies means I can get away with the tumble dryer - that's my justification and I'm sticking with it)



Thursday 10 May 2012

Of Crush: the reality v. the fantasy

Ladies and Gentleman, I bring you, the latest Crush update! You're welcome, I know you've all been on the edge of your seats...

(or if you have no idea what I'm talking about, catch up here ....or just carry on, it's pretty self-explanatory)

So, Crush finally responded to my FB message (re the dates of his next gig - oh yes, it's all romance here) and asked if I was going to be at a festival he was playing at. Unfortunately, I had to say I was away (damn that booking-holidays-in-advance thing) but thought I'd chance my luck and see if he was going to the next Open Mic night.
No reply.
In fairness to him, I didn't really put it as a question, I just said something like: 'I'll be there, and if I don't see you there I'll see you at the gig'. In my head though, I then decided it would be a sign: 'If he turns up, he's interested, if he doesn't, he's not'. This was clearly bollocks, but my inner fourteen-year-old is alive and well and must be kept entertained.

So, last Thursday evening, there I was, at the pub, for the Open Mic, all prepped to play my designated three songs. These included the song I'd written about Crush, as I was confidently assuming that he wasn't interested and therefore wouldn't be there. This was a pretty safe assumption on other grounds too. After all, he had a gig the next night and a big festival at the weekend. (Not that I check his FB page/Twitter feed every day or anything.)

Happy in this assumption, I was gossiping away with my mates, and yes, you've guessed it, in he walked. I was so shocked I literally stopped speaking mid-sentence - I genuinely thought people only did that in films, but really, I did. My inner fourteen-year-old was going mental with excitement, while the more adult part of me attempted to restrain her.

The worst thing was that I couldn't actually say anything to my friends about why, because he was about two feet away from me - bloody small pubs! So, I made a lame attempt to cover myself and carry on the conversation. I waited until he had sat down, then disappeared to the loos to try to pull myself together.

I don't think he recognised me at first, but I do look quite like my FB picture (no, not the pegs, my RL FB - keep up!), and I was about to get up on stage. That being the case, I decided that he probably would recognise me eventually, and then it would be kind of weird if I hadn't said hello after the whole message thing.

I looked in the loo mirror and said to myself, "FFS ATOmum - it's just saying hello to a guy - how old are you??" Fourteen apparently.

Wednesday 2 May 2012

Of anonymity and split personalities

I've been thinking a lot about anonymity the last few of days, mainly thanks to becoming a bit of a Twitter addict. Twitter is so public, and if you're used to Facebook, then you can forget that literally anyone in the world can see who you are and who you follow. I was already blurring the lines between Real Life me and online me by following some old friends on there from way back, but I figured that was okay - they had lots of followers so no reason to suspect I wasn't just jumping on their particular bandwagon. What really kicked off my thinking was when I had to unfollow Crush, as I suddenly realised if he decided to investigate his new follower, he'd probably be able to work out who I was pretty easily. Obviously for the embarrassment factor this would not be great, but more importantly there is a good reason why I blog anonymously: as much as I love Crush, he is not worth ruining my kids lives over.

Sounds dramatic, but DS1's dad is not the most stable of human beings, and if he found out what I really thought of him I'm not sure his ego would take it and we could well end up back in court. Long story, that I will share at some point, but suffice to say, I'm not putting either of the boys through that again. Also, I need to work to keep a roof over our heads, and quite frankly, if my RL name was linked to this blog, I'm not sure I'd carry on getting the work I do. (And I don't think the ATOmum book deal is on its way to take up the slack any time soon!!)