The past few Saturdays we've been out. And I mean good out. With great company, lots of laughs and a sense of freedom - even though we've had to be back by midnight for the babysitter. Bloody babysitter. I'm still struggling with the fact that no matter what fun I'm having and I'm a grown-up now, I still have a curfew. A set time that means the end of fun and the beginning of real life. Around 11.30pm I get twitchy because I know the time is coming when we have to hit the road and any minute past 11.45pm sends me into a cold sweat, as if being late will get me told off. Reprimanded for having the fun and not dealing with the responsibilites, like the adult I am supposed to be now. And what makes matters worse is that the babysitter is usually a teenager. The roles are reversed for a few hours and I love it. Take that, Teenager!
These nights out are a gift because it's the one time I can truly let my hair down and be ME. I can flirt and be hilarious without a small child interrupting or clinging to my leg. I can dance like my kids aren't watching and have the Holy Grail of Parenthood - an uninterrupted conversation. Although there's the shitty morning after, a good night out can recharge batteries and make you remember the person that you actually are. Remind you that life isn't just about the school run, the homework and the day-to-day looking after children.
Last night I didn't go out. There wasn't much going down in da hood as our friends had family commitments and if I'm going to spend time alone with my husband, I might as well do it in front of the telly. But I'm suffering today far more than after a night tripping the light fantastic. I've got a hangover from hell - not from too much drink, but from too much adulthood. I've had far too many shots of housework and I never should have inhaled that last bed change. My shakes are due to immaturity withdrawal.
And I'll tell you why else I've got this hangover. Because instead of my batteries being recharged they've completely run flat. I feel old, boring, a slave to the three birthday parties I've taken my daughter to and eaten alive by the washing/ironing pile. In fact I feel like a proper Grown Up - and it's shit.
Remember when you were 12 and you wanted to be 13? Then 16? Then 21? 30 was great because it felt like the cusp between being young and being mature, like life suddenly takes you seriously. Hell, 40 was even okay because it was such a massive joke. But now, 43 is freaking me out because there's this crazy pressure to be responsible and it's not how I feel.
You'd think at age 43 I would be pretty used to being an adult, but I'm not. I can't get my head round the fact that I remember my mother when she was 43 and I don't think for a minute that she felt the way I do. She certainly didn't act it. Because I'm not 43 in my head. Heck, I'm not 43 in my personality. It's just MATHS, surely? Because it's not ME. Yeah I've got a husband, three kids, a dog and a house. But deep down, I still feel like a kid.
The other day I was wearing a pink hoody, woolly tights with tiny Uggs and my friend commented that it was like being with a 17 year old. I was surprised because, at first, I thought BUT I AM SEVENTEEN. But clearly I'm not, even though I seem to be suffering from a bizarre body dysmorphia every time I look in the mirror because I don't see a woman, I see A GIRL. I'm not sure how a woman would dress but, looking at the 'women' in the playground, I'm pretty sure it involves maxi skirts and high heel boots, sensible jackets and certainly not my collection of hats. If I wore clothes like that, not only would I look ridiculous but I'd spend the whole day feeling like I was attending some bizarre fancy dress party. "Come dressed as a grown-up" the invitation would read - and I'd damn well make sure I was washing my hair that night. Or putting it in pigtails.
I don't think I'm mutton dressed as lamb. I'm just a very lamby person. I feel bouncy and spritely when I'm out. At home, not so much, because I have children and, well, somebody has to be the grown-up around here. Being 43 and a parent, I have to take that responsibility on the chin, which I do, but not only do I not feel it, I'm actually not very good at it. I often find myself day-dreaming about what-I-want-to-be-when-I-grow-up. I check out what my friend's teenagers are wearing and make a mental note to buy the exact same outfit. I often realise with shock that if we are ever going to have clean clothes around here, I am going to have to, gasp, wash them.
Whereas my parents decorate their house on a rotating basis starting from the kitchen and going round each room until they're back at the kitchen again, I haven't decorated in five years. When my mum decides it's time for a new sofa, she'll go out and buy the exact same sofa from the exact same shop where she got the previous one. I can't even decide where to put the cushions on ours. Our dishwasher was broken for two years before we bought a new one and even then we bought it on interest free credit because we'd spent our 'dishwasher' money on that night out in London. All in all, I belong in the Common Room rather than my own home.
And yet there are mums my age who aren't afraid to look and act like responsible adults. They have set days to do specific jobs around the house. And they don't even spend most of that time dancing to One Direction and fannying around on Twitter. But I suppose by the weekend, they're all done with the housey jobs so it frees them up completely for fun family stuff, and I expect that's where I'm going wrong. I'm stressing and procrastinating so much about the grown-up stuff that I'm stretching it out for far longer than it needs to be.
Being grown-up does have its plus side though. If you want to eat Kit-Kat for breakfast, you can. Nobody forces you to wear a hat, coat and gloves. You can have dessert, even though you didn't finish your dinner. You can buy alcohol without fake ID. You can decide who is in your life and who is not. And, above all, you can boss little people around.
When I hear my son say that he feels like he's ready to be a grown-up, I laugh to myself. Why? For What? Stick with school, mucking about with mates, rocking to The Wanted, the Wii and your carefree days - you'll be a grown up soon enough, I want to tell him. Having choices and control ain't all that. Because, often, adulthood sucks. And you never get to crawl down a ladder to get out of bed.
Sunday, 10 February 2013
Thursday, 15 November 2012
Everyone's Okay by Carly Kimmel (Guest Blog)
This weekend after a particularly harrowing morning that included, amongst other disasters, my two-year-old "playfully" biting me so that I was compelled to drop him, which then led to him rolling into a table and cutting his eye, I decided I needed a self-imposed time-out.
"I'm going to get a coffee." I told my husband.
I didn’t have to say anything else. The coffee shop is nothing if not a sacred space where I go to check emails and stare blankly at white walls while sipping copious amounts of caffeine and trying to forget the horrors of my current day to day. My husband knows I only go when I desperately need to (at least once a day).
On the walk there, I dialed up my mother, returning a call that I had been putting off all morning. As the phone rang, I promised myself I would not report how chaotic things had been, but instead, channel an inner calm that is, at most times, all too foreign to me, and try to manifest that calmness into reality. Everything is great I would tell her. We're just enjoying a quiet weekend at home.
“Wesley split his eye open.”
The words were out of my mouth before she’d finished saying hello.
I heard her sigh on the other end of the line. “Again?” she asked.
I nodded, knowing she couldn’t see me, and gnawed on one of my fingernails.
“How’s Bea?” she asked.
My eight-month-old daughter is getting over pneumonia and requires breathing treatments 3x a day.
“Just fine,” I said. “Recovering, I think.”
I didn’t mention the explosive diarrhea that is an unfortunate side effect of the antibiotics she is taking or the hours of crying that I assume is a result of the double ear infection. Just fine. Everything is fine. Quiet weekend.
“Where are you?” she asked. “On your way to the coffee shop?”
And just like that, I was called out—right in the middle of my escape attempt.
“I just needed a quick break,” I said.
“You better get home,” she continued, “or something terrible is going to happen.”
Let me stop for a minute and fill you in on the fact that my mother is a notorious alarmist, and because she is the one that raised me, I tend to be a bit of the same. A couple of weeks ago a news story came out about a nanny in New York who had some sort of mental collapse and killed the children she was taking care of. It was one of those horrific nightmare stories that make you physically ill and then stays with you long after the media has moved on. I’d read something about it on facebook and promptly turned my computer off. I have enough anxiety as it is. My mother, however, called to tell me all about it as soon as she had heard.
“DO NOT leave the house while your sitter is there,” she said. “You can’t trust anyone else to watch your children!”
When I told her I didn’t want to hear the gory details, she cut me off with a lengthy description of the neighbor’s report that the mother’s screams could be heard throughout the building.
“Your children are only safe when your eyes are on them.”
And the thing is, she’s right (in my case, they are safer when my eyes are on them, whether they are ever really safe is up for debate, but I don’t want to get hung up on semantics). It’s just a matter of what level of risk I’m willing to take for a much needed breather. How terrible is terrible? What’s the worst that could happen while my husband is watching them and I’m staring at walls for an hour?
“I don’t care how hard it is,” my mother was saying, “they are at an age where you simply cannot check out.”
By this point, I had arrived at the coffee shop, ordered my latte to go, and was mournfully making my way back home. When I heard the screaming, I was still a couple of houses away. The voice was loud and easily identifiable.
“What did you do?” My husband was shrieking. “How much did you drink?”
Even before I made it into our kitchen, I knew what was happening. My son, the afore mentioned two-year-old who had earlier cut his eye on the coffee table, was standing there in his diaper, hysterically crying. My husband was shaking an almost empty bottle of Children’s Advil at him. Bea was sitting on the floor in the kitchen, watching, wide-eyed.
“It was for my booboo,” Wesley screamed. “Medicine for my eye!”
He pointed to his cut and grimaced, illustrating his point.
“We need to take him to the hospital,” I said, trying to stay calm.
“No!” Wesley screamed. “No hospital!”
We called Poison Control, and a very lovely lady there informed me that he could have finished the entire bottle and the worst that might happen would likely be a tummy ache. I guess the concentration is low for just this reason.
“He’s going to be okay,” she said, “at least for today.”
I laughed. For today. The truth is, I was too upset to cry.
Wes had used his potty stool to climb up on the counter and into the box of meds I had left out earlier in the day. He popped the cap off the bottle because I hadn’t screwed it on tightly enough the last time I’d given him some. So yes, essentially, this whole disaster was my fault.
And yet again, my alarmist mother was right. You don’t get breaks when you’re a mom, because, let’s face it, no matter how hard you try to do everything right, something terrible is always about to happen—whether it’s your fault or someone else’s, being a parent is living from one crisis to the next and every day you get to go to bed with all family members intact—or at least mostly intact—well it’s both a miracle and a victory.
Recently, I read an article that admonished parents to let their children fail. The author maintained that while watching said failures might be the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, it will also be the most valuable lesson you can give them—learning how to fail with grace. And even though I’m thirty-five years old, and already a parent myself, failing with grace is something I’m still trying to master. Thankfully, these days, I get plenty of practice, and so far—or at least for today—everyone’s okay.
CARLY KIMMEL is the managing editor at http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/
She holds an MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside and a BA in English from UC Santa Cruz. She lives in Los Angeles, California with her much funnier husband, Jonathan and their two small children, Wesley and Beatrix. You can find her on Twitter @carlykimmel
"I'm going to get a coffee." I told my husband.
I didn’t have to say anything else. The coffee shop is nothing if not a sacred space where I go to check emails and stare blankly at white walls while sipping copious amounts of caffeine and trying to forget the horrors of my current day to day. My husband knows I only go when I desperately need to (at least once a day).
On the walk there, I dialed up my mother, returning a call that I had been putting off all morning. As the phone rang, I promised myself I would not report how chaotic things had been, but instead, channel an inner calm that is, at most times, all too foreign to me, and try to manifest that calmness into reality. Everything is great I would tell her. We're just enjoying a quiet weekend at home.
“Wesley split his eye open.”
The words were out of my mouth before she’d finished saying hello.
I heard her sigh on the other end of the line. “Again?” she asked.
I nodded, knowing she couldn’t see me, and gnawed on one of my fingernails.
“How’s Bea?” she asked.
My eight-month-old daughter is getting over pneumonia and requires breathing treatments 3x a day.
“Just fine,” I said. “Recovering, I think.”
I didn’t mention the explosive diarrhea that is an unfortunate side effect of the antibiotics she is taking or the hours of crying that I assume is a result of the double ear infection. Just fine. Everything is fine. Quiet weekend.
“Where are you?” she asked. “On your way to the coffee shop?”
And just like that, I was called out—right in the middle of my escape attempt.
“I just needed a quick break,” I said.
“You better get home,” she continued, “or something terrible is going to happen.”
Let me stop for a minute and fill you in on the fact that my mother is a notorious alarmist, and because she is the one that raised me, I tend to be a bit of the same. A couple of weeks ago a news story came out about a nanny in New York who had some sort of mental collapse and killed the children she was taking care of. It was one of those horrific nightmare stories that make you physically ill and then stays with you long after the media has moved on. I’d read something about it on facebook and promptly turned my computer off. I have enough anxiety as it is. My mother, however, called to tell me all about it as soon as she had heard.
“DO NOT leave the house while your sitter is there,” she said. “You can’t trust anyone else to watch your children!”
When I told her I didn’t want to hear the gory details, she cut me off with a lengthy description of the neighbor’s report that the mother’s screams could be heard throughout the building.
“Your children are only safe when your eyes are on them.”
And the thing is, she’s right (in my case, they are safer when my eyes are on them, whether they are ever really safe is up for debate, but I don’t want to get hung up on semantics). It’s just a matter of what level of risk I’m willing to take for a much needed breather. How terrible is terrible? What’s the worst that could happen while my husband is watching them and I’m staring at walls for an hour?
“I don’t care how hard it is,” my mother was saying, “they are at an age where you simply cannot check out.”
By this point, I had arrived at the coffee shop, ordered my latte to go, and was mournfully making my way back home. When I heard the screaming, I was still a couple of houses away. The voice was loud and easily identifiable.
“What did you do?” My husband was shrieking. “How much did you drink?”
Even before I made it into our kitchen, I knew what was happening. My son, the afore mentioned two-year-old who had earlier cut his eye on the coffee table, was standing there in his diaper, hysterically crying. My husband was shaking an almost empty bottle of Children’s Advil at him. Bea was sitting on the floor in the kitchen, watching, wide-eyed.
“It was for my booboo,” Wesley screamed. “Medicine for my eye!”
He pointed to his cut and grimaced, illustrating his point.
“We need to take him to the hospital,” I said, trying to stay calm.
“No!” Wesley screamed. “No hospital!”
We called Poison Control, and a very lovely lady there informed me that he could have finished the entire bottle and the worst that might happen would likely be a tummy ache. I guess the concentration is low for just this reason.
“He’s going to be okay,” she said, “at least for today.”
I laughed. For today. The truth is, I was too upset to cry.
Wes had used his potty stool to climb up on the counter and into the box of meds I had left out earlier in the day. He popped the cap off the bottle because I hadn’t screwed it on tightly enough the last time I’d given him some. So yes, essentially, this whole disaster was my fault.
And yet again, my alarmist mother was right. You don’t get breaks when you’re a mom, because, let’s face it, no matter how hard you try to do everything right, something terrible is always about to happen—whether it’s your fault or someone else’s, being a parent is living from one crisis to the next and every day you get to go to bed with all family members intact—or at least mostly intact—well it’s both a miracle and a victory.
Recently, I read an article that admonished parents to let their children fail. The author maintained that while watching said failures might be the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do, it will also be the most valuable lesson you can give them—learning how to fail with grace. And even though I’m thirty-five years old, and already a parent myself, failing with grace is something I’m still trying to master. Thankfully, these days, I get plenty of practice, and so far—or at least for today—everyone’s okay.
CARLY KIMMEL is the managing editor at http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/
She holds an MFA in creative writing from UC Riverside and a BA in English from UC Santa Cruz. She lives in Los Angeles, California with her much funnier husband, Jonathan and their two small children, Wesley and Beatrix. You can find her on Twitter @carlykimmel
Wednesday, 31 October 2012
I'm Still Here!
http://www.thecomet.net/comet-life/columnists/if_you_sleep_like_a_baby_you_don_t_have_one_1_1671203
I am here, but have been busy watching TV and writing a weekly column for the local paper innit. You can see it via the link above and can probably go to the past few weeks as well.
I still love you. I'll be back as soon as I can get off this sofa.
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