Life Is Like A Pile of Laundry

A white polar bear is boring

I spent New Year’s Day conquering the worst of my feral laundry mountain. The five loads of muddy clothes and pyjamas and the three-foot high ironing basket. It wasn’t so bad. I watched the Cinderella DVD my gorgeous daughter asked Father Christmas to bring for me (unbeknownst to me). I had an excuse not to fall asleep on the sofa or play yet another board game or strain my thumbs mining for diamonds.

We had a mooching home-based Christmas this year, full of TV, Minecraft, and colouring. Trapped in by the endless rain, it’s been unexciting, but restful.

I jokingly put on Facebook today that I was starting the year as it would go on – fighting an endless losing battle with dirty clothes. A relative said, ‘oh no,’ I should be curled on the sofa with a Bailies and a mince pie.

There have been plenty of both this holiday – I’m quite proud of my mince-pie belly. I hosted Christmas Day and made a dozen mince pies, forgetting (or not) that I’m the only one who likes them. And we won’t even mention the giant Christmas Cake I’m eating single-handed, accompanied by endless slices of apple and cheese.

Christmas colouring

It occurred to me, as I contemplated my remaining one-foot high ironing basket and the two feet of folded clothes on the tumble-dryer this evening, that laundry is a good analogy for life. I live for the day I’ll reach the bottom of the washing hamper or the ironing basket, but the only way it would happen would be if I was alone. My perfect laundry-life can’t ever exist, unless we all live naked or not at all.

We spend so much time in life waiting for the perfect – perfect job, perfect house (or even vaguely tidy kitchen table), perfect car, husband, kids. The day the kids listen or put their shoes on at first time of asking. The book deal, best seller, movie rights (that might just be me!), the perfect night’s sleep or skinny body.

This January we’ll beat ourselves up with resolutions to become the perfect us. Because then, just maybe, we’ll find perfect happiness.

But it’s a con.

We’ll never find – and keep – the perfect, just as I’ll never ever finish the laundry. Because life isn’t static. Perfection is for a moment only. To aim for anything else is to invite a life of disappointment. If we strive for the thing to make us happy, we’ll miss happy in the striving.

Still in Christmas PJs

It isn’t reaching the perfect empty laundry basket that made me happy today – I didn’t get close. What made me happy was the doing. Watching a lovely movie with my kids while bringing order to chaos. Achieving something. Working hard. Getting stuck in.

It’s a cliché that life is the journey not the destination, but clichés are born in truth. Running will make you happy; striving for the perfect body probably won’t. Writing and creating will bring satisfaction;, longing to be the next J K Rowling will not.

So this year my resolution, as I approach my Zero Fs Forties, is to remember happiness is there for me to grab every day, not to strive for in a futile quest for perfection.

And there will always be ironing, but that’s okay, because it means life is moving on.

Approaching the Fearless Forties

Balancing Fun at Belton House

Last week I had my last birthday beginning with a 3. This time next year it will start with a 4.

Already the comments have started – the ‘things to do before you’re 40’ list, the ‘are you dreading it?’ messages.

And, do you know what? I can’t wait.

I only ticked a quarter of things off the list I was sent, but I don’t feel an urgent need to add any more. I don’t feel like I’ve had a boring life.

My list includes swim with dolphins, climb a glacier, publish a book, wake above the clouds, enter a sandcastle competition, sell a painting, make money from my own creative endeavours, party all night in Manchester, visit the Taj Mahal, ride an elephant, have kids, quit a job I hated, write a blog.

Looking back, my twenties and thirties weren’t a breeze. My twenties were about searching for love and the perfect job. My thirties were a decade of hard work and a search for self. I’m looking forward to giving zero fcks what the world thinks from now on.

Of course I’m still me. I still worry all the time what people think of me, my parenting, my body, my life choices. But thanks to a supportive husband and a bucket of self analysis I’m learning to love who and what I am.

I celebrated my birthday at Belton House with a gourmet picnic arranged by my fab hubbie (sushi and ciabatta and italian meats). I was outside in the sunshine with people I love and nothing required of me. Perfect. A decade ago I would have apologised for not living it up or getting smashed, as seems to be the expectation.

A while ago I started a blog called ‘Mummy Fit by Forty’. But I let it lapse. Who needs that kind of pressure? I eat well and walk lots. I’m unlikely to run a marathon but I don’t really care all that much. My knees are grateful.

So I’m happily approaching my Fearless Forties. Whatever I’m doing in life, I’m doing my best. It’s time to stop apologising for it and start giving zero fcks (I love that phrase, can you tell?)

Summer Holidays Week 4: I Love My Meds

Holidays are for ice cream

Day 27 of the summer holidays: I love my meds!

I know that makes me sound like some kind of drug addict, but it isn’t like that at all. This time last year I was climbing the walls.

This is a quote from my August 17th blog post: “Three weeks and I’m ready to do pretty much anything other than listen to twelve hours of squabbling for another three weeks.”

I am still as exhausted as I was last year, but it’s a different type of tired. It’s ‘I swam quarter of a mile at the pool yesterday’ tired. It’s ‘we did four day trips this week and I didn’t cry once, but I walked about twenty miles’ tired.

It isn’t just the meds of course. My children are a year older. They can be left alone more often, so I can read, or shower, or mow the lawn. They still squabble but I can move out of earshot, so I’m not ‘switched on’ all the time.

I also planned this holiday to within an inch of its life. I didn’t have one day where I woke up not having a plan for the day, even if the plan was, ‘Go away and play, Mummy is reading this morning!’

Son gave up his dummies for a skateboard

I always wanted the children to have the summers I did – unsupervised, unscheduled, running in a pack of kids and climbing trees. But they can’t. There is no pack here – just a busy road. There are no trees – only a climbing frame they use every day. So I take them places where they can pretend – where there are trees to climb and open spaces to fly a kite.

The biggest difference, though, aside from the meds (or actually probably as a direct result of taking them and making the dark dog of self-loathing and self-doubt shut up) is that I opted to put my own mask on before helping others. I made time for me. I booked a holiday camp for my daughter, left my son in nursery for a few days. I fought the guilt.

I thought, as a stay at home parent, I had to be there 100% for the children, putting them before myself. That’s what reading too much Mumsnet and media does for you.

It’s rubbish. ‘Happy Mummy, Happy Baby,’ that’s what I said when I had a sneaky of glass of wine when I was pregnant. Before PND ate away my sanity. Last summer I gave up writing, reading, being me. Silly girl. All it did was destroy me.

Becoming a knight at Warwick Castle

This year I took a few days to write. I’ve read dozens of books – treating myself to the kindle versions so I can read on my phone or tablet in the odd quiet moment. Yes I’m that parent at the park reading on her phone. Judge me if you like. Bovvered?

I paid someone to do my ironing, because it’s been too hot and I’m tired. I didn’t get four A Levels and two degrees to spend my life ironing. If I ever sell a book to a publisher, I’ll never iron again. Does that make me a terrible housewife? Probably. Not bovvered.

I stay in bed reading in the morning, while the kids watch a movie and eat dry cereal. I don’t think we’ve managed two of our five a day this holidays, and that’s only raisins and fruit juice. Bovvered? (A little bit – but I’m feeding their brains with trips to museums and castles. Summers are for ice cream and easy dinners.)

It isn’t all perfect. Nothing ever is. We’re all a bit snappy, and I’m whining as much as the kids. I’ve let them have too many toys and now they want to buy stuff all the time. We could all benefit from some healthy food and a bit more sleep. The dog is as eager for September as anyone, because we’re either out all day or the kids are super-huggy.

Bad parent, you think? Bovvered?

But we’re coping.

My son gave up his dummies and is dealing with it brilliantly, and so am I. Last year you would have had to prise those plastic tantruming-ending wonder-soothers out of my cold dead hands.

Two and a half weeks to go until school starts and I’m doing fine. It’s all scheduled, we know what’s what. There’s a bit of food in the fridge and a smidgeon of energy in my tank.

Summer holidays? Past me the sertraline and Bring It On.

Playing Away From Home

I don’t know how to admit this, but it’s been playing on my conscience. I have neglected you, my family, for another.

The is someone else. What can I say? It was new, exciting, secret.

I thought I could keep you both happy, that no one would know. But then I saw the truth – I was keeping part of myself from you.

There it is, the truth is out. There is another. Another Blog.

Mummy Fit By Forty.

My new place to ramble and try to work out life. An attempt to galvanise myself into getting fit enough to keep up with my kids.

It’s not going so well. The initial excitement is waning. It’s hard. It’s lonely.

So if I’m ever missing from here, I might be there. But you will always be my first, my family. 🙂

How I Survived Half Term

The Holiday Lists

It’s no secret that, while I love my children ‘in all my heart’ as my daughter would say, I struggle when they’re home together for long periods of time.

To be fair, half term is only a week, and this one had a bank holiday weekend as well. Even so, I feel it went surprisingly well considering.

My strategy, developed in desperation on the first Saturday morning, was to kill the pestering.

For weeks I’ve been answering the children’s random activity requests with, ‘We’ll do it at half term’. So, of course, Saturday started with, ‘Mummy, when can we paint our nails, go swimming, learn to plait/knit, go to the park….’

My brain exploded.

In exasperation I said, ‘write a list and we’ll schedule it all in.’

And they did!

Well, my daughter wrote the lists for her and her brother, which might explain why ‘learn to knit’ crept into his top ten. Then I numbered them, made a chart of Monday to Friday, and pencilled everything in.

I forgot my son was still at nursery for two days, and we had an unexpected bonus play date, but other than that we more or less stuck to the plan.

The best part was feeling in control. When the kids whined, ‘When are we going swimming at Grandma’s?’ I could look at my scrap of paper and say, ‘Friday’.

I’m sure this scheduled parenting is the norm for many, but it’s new to me. I’ve always wanted my kids to be as free range as possible when they’re not at school. I fill the playroom with toys and craft, the garden with climbing frames and sand, and let them just get on with it.

And sometimes they do.

But, weirdly, they like doing stuff with me. Even though I whine and moan more than they do, especially when I’m tired, they still like doing stuff with Mummy. And, this week, I even enjoyed some of it too, even if it was being able to say, ‘tick!’

So, we survived half term. We didn’t do a couple of things (no knitting lesson, phew!), but we had a bonus trip to ToysRUs to spend the money they raised selling off old toys. We got a grown up bed for our son. (The end of the toddler bed era!) And I even managed a bit of work.

The tablets helped. I could feel the medication tightening protectively as I got increasingly tired and tetchy. It’s weird to feel you want to sit in a corner and sob but your body won’t let you, but if definitely makes parenting easier. And I’m sure my family appreciate the lack of drama.

I’m not quite saying, ‘Roll on Summer Holidays’ but at least I’m not gibbering at the thought of it. It’s a start.

The Hardest Part About Becoming An Author Is Patience

My children’s book

I chose the title for this blog post carefully. Author not writer. Becoming not being. I already consider myself a writer. What I want to be, though, is a published author. Not self-published, great as that is. I want to be able to answer the question ‘can I find your books in the library?’ with a resounding YES.

Maybe that’s silly. It should probably be enough that I’ve self published four novels, they’ve each sold a few copies (some over a hundred, which some say is the benchmark for a new author). They’ve all had good (and bad) reviews.

But it isn’t enough. I want validation. I want an agent to say, ‘you’re just what I’m looking for.’ I want to have a poster in the library and give talks to schools about my journey as a writer. I want my family to be proud. I want my daughter to know I did something other than raise babies for a decade. Not because raising babies isn’t a worthwhile job, but because I want her to know there’s a choice.

I want to write the books my daughter wants to read but can’t find in the library. I want to write books for my son that aren’t about animals and fairies, because – quite frankly – there’s a massive hole in our library where books for early-reader boys should be.

I want all that, and I want it NOW.

I tell my children that you get nothing without practice and patience. When my son is frustrated at learning to read or my daughter can’t draw as well as the YouTube video she’s watching, my response is always “you just need to practice.”

But we’re all hypocrites right? I’ve written one children’s book and I’m already looking for agents accepting submissions. Even though I know it isn’t going to pass muster.

Actually, it’s the second children’s book I’ve written. The other one has been (almost) wiped from my memory after I (arrogantly? Naively?) sent an early draft to an editor and was hurt and surprised when she told me (nicely) that it was awful.

Children’s books are hard to write. I knew that before I began the writing course I’m doing. I know it even more now. (Plus it’s really hard to find beta readers – any ideas?)

I also recognise that, more than any other genre, it’s all about the market. It’s a business. Books have to sell. Which is possibly why there is a gap in the boys’ market, although I’d say that was a catch 22. You can’t buy what isn’t available.

So I’m writing this as a public declaration of my intention to be patient. I will write at least a dozen children’s books before I approach an agent. I will practice my craft, I will continue to read a book a day. And I will try not to be hurt when my target audience (my daughter) thinks Mummy’s book is rubbish and she could write it better.

After all, practice makes perfect, right? Or at least better…

P.S. If you’re in the UK, Happy Mothering Sunday and I hope, like me, you’re in bed with your ipad writing blogs because Daddy has told the children Mother’s Day doesn’t start until 8am

Deliciously Ella: Or How I Accidentally Jumped on a Bandwagon

The new cookbook

I don’t do healthy eating. I try, but I’m a lazy cook and a chocoholic, and I was brought up in an age when crispy pancakes and deep fried chips were a perfectly acceptable meal to give a child.

My sister is the foodie in the family. Her children eat humus through choice and would take veg over chocolate any day. She makes healthy muffins and stews and slow-cooked curries. She bakes her own bread. And she works all day in an office.

I want to be like that, I do. But I find it hard to lead by example. Even though I’ve started baking a bit more, I make white bread and scones, banana loaf and chocolate cake. Watching the half-a-bag of white sugar and half-a-slab of butter go into the bowl ready to make cookies doesn’t prevent me from eating them all, although I do try and limit how many I give to the children.

Since my first child was born (six years ago already – how did that happen?!) I’ve tried to move away from white bread and crisps to a healthier diet, but with limited success.

I do make my own bolognaise sauce from scratch (most of the time), especially as it’s the only thing both my fussy children will eat. I buy fruit and vegetables, and the children sometimes even eat them. I scour labels for sugar content, and try to make sure the children have a break from their sugary breakfast cereal at least one day a week by making them eat Weetabix. They mostly only drink water and milk (although fruit juice is allowed.)

Despite my half-hearted efforts I realise, some days, that my son has only eaten wheat: for breakfast, lunch and dinner (cereal, toast and pasta), with a bit of cheese and a bottle of milk thrown in for good measure. Thank goodness he isn’t dairy or gluten intolerant. My daughter does better, as she loves berries, but it’s tough keeping up with that habit in the winter without taking out a second mortgage.

Recently I realised, even by my poor standards, things have taken a nose-dive. The children are having chocolate biscuits and crisps for their snacks instead of rice cakes and muesli bars (the low sugar type, not the ones that claim to be healthy and yet have 40% sugar content). The problem is they’re getting more vocal, and fussier, and – with hubby out of work last year when I was watching the food budget more – I realised crap food is so much cheaper.

But it’s February and I’m still shattered. The doctors don’t know why I’m tired all the time. I know Christmas and then my daughter’s birthday month always take their toll, but I’m in the middle of a stinking cold, and my children are on their second each of 2015. Something has to give.

Then I heard an interview, by accident, on Radio 2 a couple of weeks ago, with a woman called Ella who suffered from an illness that left her sleeping sixteen hours a day and unable to walk. She cured herself by switching to a whole-food, sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free diet.

Ella’s Blog

Normally I try and ignore such interviews.

When it came out a few years ago that sugar was the new smoking, the new thing we all have to quit, I hid under the covers. I can’t vaguely imagine giving up sugar. I might just be able to give up refined sugar, although breakfast would be hard as I’m a cornflakes girl, but giving up fruit? Bananas and fruit smoothies are the only healthy things I enjoy. I might as well give up breathing. Giving up smoking when I found out I was pregnant was a doddle in comparison. (Besides, I did that for someone else, not for me.)

But the more I listened to Ella talk, the more I liked what I was hearing. Still being able to eat pizza and chocolate brownies? Surely too good to be true? Was there a way I could feel better and still stuff my face with chocolate cake on that fourth week of the month when my hormones demand their human sacrifice? Better still, was there a way I could sneak vegetables into my now-much-too-savvy children’s diet?

After the interview was over, I ordered the cook book. Me and thousands of others apparently. That was when I realised I had inadvertently jumped on a bandwagon. Apparently Ella is the daughter of Mrs Sainsbury and a former Cabinet Minister and her blog has had 17 million hits. Ho hum. I never have been that much up on the zeitgeist.

When the book finally arrived last week it was more like a study book than a cook book. Not that I would know – I only have a couple of cook books and I don’t think either of them have ever been used. My few recipes come from the Co-op free magazine or online. But when I opened random pages in Ella’s book, I didn’t find easy-to-make healthy recipes, I discovered essays on the wonders of quinoa and chickpeas. So I stuck it on the shelf next to Jamie Oliver and the Woman’s Own tome and ignored it.

Fast forward a week, past my daughter’s craft party (which went really well, thankfully), past three days of feeling so awful it took all my energy to take the children to school, and I had a change of heart. I needed something to make me feel better and coffee and chocolate just weren’t doing it.

Baby steps towards a healthier diet…

I started out searching for smoothie deals online. I keep seeing them in Groupon emails – you know, for the bargain price of £59.99 (reduced from £249.99) you can have a dozen tiny bottles of fruit juice, guaranteed to make you feel better.

I didn’t have sixty quid for three days’ worth of juice. So I went to the supermarket and bought some instead, including lettuce and beetroot juice.

And then I started having porridge for lunch. And that reminded me of where I came in to Ella’s interview on Radio 2. How she was such a sugar-monster that she had to hide fruit in her porridge when she first started out on her quest for healthy eating. It sounded familiar.

And it made me pick up the book. And read the first chapter. And write a shopping list of things I’ve never heard of, like buckwheat flour and tahini. That’s as far as I’ve got, well apart from making my porridge today with coconut oil and honey instead of sugar and treacle. I won’t be going dairy or gluten free any time soon, but if I can manage one meal a week (a month!) from Ella’s book, it will be a good start.

I think that’s what is different with Deliciously Ella. She was a self-confessed sugar-monster student, and she managed to make the change. If she can then so can I. Maybe not all at once, but bit by bit. She isn’t preaching, she isn’t being holier-than-thou (or she certainly doesn’t come across that way in the book’s introduction) and that’s very encouraging.

When I started out self-publishing, there were those who said ‘you can do it’ and those who said, ‘you must have an editor and a proofreader and spend thousands or you’re ruining it for all of us.’ Thankfully I listened more to the former (although the latter left scars) and I followed my own path.

Hopefully I can apply the same logic to eating. It doesn’t matter if it’s one thing, one meal, one ingredient. It’s better than nothing. And if it allows me to get through the school holidays without being asleep all the time, then it will be worth the effort.

I’ll keep you posted!

Five Hundred Followers

Thank you!

I have reached a big milestone for me this week: five hundred followers.

I am always amazed when people want to subscribe to my random and sporadic blog and I am always so very very grateful.

A while ago I said I would run a giveaway when I reached this point. Unfortunately January is a crazy month for me, so for now I’m giving my books away instead!

Baby Blues & Wedding Shoes isn’t eligible for a giveaway, but the price will be reduced through a countdown deal from 30th January through to 6th February.

Class Act and Dragon Wraiths will both be free from 29th January to 31st January. (Links Below)

Chase away those January Blues and curl up with a romance or fly with dragons on me this weekend!

Baby Blues & Wedding Shoes Link

Class Act Book Link

Dragon Wraiths Link

How Critcal Reviews Are Making Me a Better Writer

Knitted Christmas Baubles

When I released Class Act back in the summer I think I knew it was rushed. As a self-published author, the only way I see that you can make success (rather than it coming through luck or good fortune) is by writing more books. So I took an old manuscript, gave it a few months’ polish, paid for a light edit, and released it, happy that my Beta Reader loved it.

It bombed.

Okay, one or two people have enjoyed it, but the critics have been harsh and eloquent. And fair. Much as I would have preferred not to have the debate about my book in public, through Goodreads (and thank you to the critics for not writing their reviews on Amazon), it has been like having extra Beta Readers who don’t know me and are therefore not afraid to tell it as they see it.

Some of the criticisms I can answer – they’re a matter of personal taste – but others are completely valid. For example there is a general view that Rebecca is a cow, or at least unlikeable. I have been trying to work out why that is the case, when Helen (Baby Blues) garners sympathy. While walking the dog last night the answer came to me: I didn’t live with Rebecca long enough for her to become fully herself rather than a version of me.

Finished Rainbow Fairy

All my characters start out from an element of my life and my experience. With Helen it was having postnatal depression, with Claire (Two-Hundred Steps Home) it was disillusionment with the corporate world and finding myself through travelling. Rebecca started out from a few instances in my childhood when I felt belittled by people who acted like they had privilege (someone saying to me at school ‘you’re my grandmother’s secretary’s daughter’ as if that made me scum).

The difference is I lived with Claire and Helen for a long time. Baby Blues took two or three years from start to finish, Claire racked up 280,000 words. They became people in their own right. Rebecca, not so much. I wasn’t even happy with the name Rebecca, changing it several times before deciding it was as good as any. Alex I loved, Alex was real, but Rebecca remained a character.

So I have learned not to rush Finding Lucy. It isn’t just the characters who need to find her – I do too. I think that’s why I find the male protagonists easier to relate to (and therefore probably they’re more likeable to the readers) – they might start out with a trait or two from people I know, but they quickly become three-dimensional in my mind. Despite it being six years since I started drafting Finding Lucy, I still don’t have her clear as a real person in my head.

The other, more specific, piece of feedback I’m following is the review that complained about Class Act opening with Rebecca’s father dying.

“I found that when our heroine, Rebecca, is introduced, the scene is not the best way to warm up to a character. Yes, her father had just died, so she is entitled to be upset. But perhaps this is not the best way to introduce a main character, one who is completely vulnerable and who is constantly sobbing in the scene, it unfortunately had me rolling my eyes and wanting to skip ahead. Not a great start for the character. Sorry. “

Don’t apologise! This is great feedback. Finding Lucy also opens with a death. It’s where the story starts. But I see now that it’s hard to feel sympathy for a character you don’t know. So I’ve had a shuffle and now it comes a few chapters in. I’m also working hard on making Lucy more likeable. It’s hard. I’ve decided to think about Pixie Lott. Watching her on Strictly Come Dancing this year I realised she is one of the few people I can look at and say they’re genuinely adorable.

Christmas Cookies for teachers

The problem with writing for me is balancing the character’s flaws which make for conflict with the traits that make people love them. It’s not hard to see why – I’ve never managed it with myself. I’ll always feel like a bad mother, a bad person, no matter the evidence to the contrary. To quote Pretty Woman, “The bad stuff is easier to believe”.

I haven’t managed much writing this month – Farmville, knitting and Christmas have derailed me completely. But I have invited the characters from Finding Lucy to live in my head. Edan and Andrew are there, making themselves at home and squabbling over the remote. Lucy is still dithering at the door. “Are you sure you want me?” she says. Yes, come in! Let me get to know you. This novel could be my best yet, if only I take the time for it to mature.

In the meantime, have a great Christmas/Hanukah/Festive Season and here’s to a creative 2015.

Half Term and Halloween

The closest I’ll ever get to space

I feel guilty that I’m not managing to blog regularly at the moment. With all the various things going on in my life, I don’t have many words. I have been pouring my creativity into other endeavours – knitting, playing the piano, photo editing and rearranging the furniture.

It’s also half term here in the UK and while ten days has been easier to manage than six weeks, I still find it drains me so that I just want to sleep. That’s been exacerbated by the clocks going back last weekend – our normally early rising kids have taken it to new extremes by getting up at 5 a.m. every day, and still not getting sleepy until 8 p.m. I wish I knew where they got their energy from. At least we have been blessed with some unseasonal gorgeous autumn weather.

So, in lieu of interesting words, here are some random family snaps to bore you instead! 🙂 Hopefully life will right itself sometime soon and normal service will resume.