Week Two
Family Check:-
Eldest – no crisis – excellent, if busy week at work contributing to major work event.
Middle – mini crisis – first trip was a success, learning to live out of a suitcase and adjusting to new lifestyle as cabin crew. Arrange to meet her for cinema trip when off duty.
Youngest – Major crisis. Locked himself out of room at Uni – only limited contact, all about money. His lack of it, not mine.
Other Half – usual mini crisis – too much work – not enough time and wanting to join mates for golf but being asked (?) by me to fix car.
Me – no crisis – attended excellent cinema evening learning much about fraud in the wine industry.
I must confess to feeling odd. Not sad-and-crying odd like a friend who keeps looking at her daughter’s empty bedroom, nor a-nothing-to-do odd like another friend who has lost her purpose now her son has gone to Uni. I have more than enough to keep me occupied. Day to day I work running our construction company with Other Half; for the other moments my latest manuscript is calling me after completing the Curtis Brown Writing for Children’s course and all the usual boring, house stuff is still following me around to which I’ve added decorating rooms and cleaning out cupboards just for the hell of it. The dog still needs to be walked daily, tennis played and attempts at getting fitter tried.
Discombobulated. That’s how I feel. A wonderful word and favourite of my late father’s.
I’ve been feeling menopausally odd for a while now. To quote a dear friend who invented the term, I often have my bobble head on. It feels like my brain is filled with a fluffy cloud. Sparks of electricity, like a lightning storm, are trying to make contact and get through but there are vast pockets of…nothingness. Ask me a question and I try and retrieve the answer but can’t quite bring up the right file from the backroom in my brain. Last time I felt like this was when I was pregnant so it must be hormonal. I am at that age. Usually my bobble head results in nothing too harmful. I’ve put strategies in place. I check the bank payments three times to make sure I’ve not added an extra 0 to someone’s bacs payment and recheck any orders I make to prevent the guys on site who wanted a tonne of sand ending up with a skip instead.
But for all my efforts the odd faux pas does sneak in. My latest involved suitcases. I went out to buy this:-
and came home with this:-
In the context of world problems it is minuscule but I have no explanation for it. The assistant asked me what colour I wanted and I pointed to the lime one, paid for it and came home proudly announcing I’d done the deed only for OH to question my choice of colour when the blue one I wanted to match it with was sitting upstairs.
Maybe I’ll solve my confusion by focusing on redefining my role. After 26 years hands on bottom wiping and knee plastering, I now see it more as part- time life tour guide; there to point out interesting possibilities, listen to the after-adventure tales and smooth over any problems. That’s all very well but as I’m realising we usually get one of two offspring having a crisis but (thankfully) not too often or all three at the same time. So, it’s now my time. But what does my time mean exactly? What do I want to achieve in these coming years? First on the list is finding a way to tame this bobble head. The energy is there it just needs connecting properly to make the sparks fly.
Teresahamiltonwriter
TeresaHamiltonWriter 