Wednesday 22 May 2013

Working girl.

I must sincerely apologise. I have been neglectful of my ramblings of late - so much so that the end of my 'halfway to seventy' year (and the entire reason for me writing this) has been and gone. There is a good reason for this, which does partly excuse my slacking...I have a job! I must admit, lots of things have gone to the dogs since I started work; the childers are now latchkey kids who rummage through bins to find something for their school lunches, and the garden is now an overgrown cesspit with the neighbourhood cats drinking stagnant water out of a broken and abandoned washing machine on our front lawn. I jest of course, things aren't quite that bad. My obsessive cleaning has taken a back seat, with the house seeing a cursory vacuum if I get chance. In fact, I have been toying with the idea of just hoovering the cats with a dustbuster of a morning to save even more time.

It's not often in life you find something that a) you enjoy and b) you're quite good at. And I've found it, being a support worker in the local community. Lots of people have said to me "I don't know how you do it" and the like. And to be honest, if you'd told me seven or eight years ago that this is what I'd be doing, then I'd have said you were mad. But having kids does a lot to change your opinion on caring and all that it entails. When you regularly have to go excavating in the bogeymines of a three year old boy, when you've been up and down the stairs all night changing the bedding of a child that's covered their bedroom in sick, well - everything else is a walk in the park. Caring is probably the worst paid, but most noble of professions. The Daughter is especially proud of what Mummy does. I wear a uniform, therefore I'm a nurse. And when I do sleeping-in shifts she says "Are you having a sleepover tonight Mummy?", as though my 75 year old service user and I will be sitting in a den we've made from a sheet and two dining chairs enjoying a midnight feast of Haribo and cheese-strings. Which, of course, we do but Sssh - keep it to yourselves.

As much as I love having some responsibility outside of the family, it's not all been plain sailing. Understandably the kids have missed Mummy being there at bedtimes and to take them to school, and we've had some 'issues' with The Daughter acting up for attention. Thanks to a fantastic rota this week I've been able to do the school run, and on the way home today The Daughter ran out into the road outside school, resulting in Mummy having a cardiac arrest and screeching like a fishwife in the street. Now though, with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder if she was so desperate for some attention that she calculated the risk of throwing herself in front of a Honda Civic. Doubtful, but who knows what goes on in the mind of a six year old? And anyway, I keep dangling the promise of a holiday to Disneyland in front of her, now Mummy is earning. That should placate her for at least another 6 months.

I hope you will accept this as a genuine reason for my lack of blogging, and offer some understanding if my childlets turn up to school looking like street urchins with Dairylea Dunkers and a handful of cat biscuits for their lunch. I've joined the ranks of the working mums; permanently knackered but smiling with a sense of purpose. On that note I must leave you - I have to be up early to hoover the cats. Na-night!x