So it's been about a year since I've posted here and I'm sorry about that.
But it's been a heck of a year.
I'm in full swing as a Pilates instructor, alongside my freelance work as a proof reader and copy editor. I've had some cool freelance jobs come in, and I've really enjoyed doing them. I've got another iron in the fire as a project manager for an online product, and I'm enjoying the people I'm working with. Thus far, it's all good and clearly this decision was the correct one for me to make.
I'm also still adjusting to the way things are around hearth and home. Things are a little less tidy, and I've learned that that's OK. Things are also a little bit more chaotic, but that I think goes with the kind of schedule that I've got, now that I'm no longer a 9-5 kind of gal, and that's OK, too.
The kids are fine, and growing up fast, and that's really the main reason that I've decided to do what I'm doing now. I see them a lot now every day, to the point where now they're saying things like 'Mummy I really liked it better when you had your other job'.
Out of the mouths of babes, eh?
Still, I suspect that it's just that familiarity breeds contempt. I'm always here (well, except for the nights I teach, but even then, I'm still around between when school gets out and bedtime), and so I'm the face they see all the time. And sometimes I'm the most horrible person/mother in the world.
But tonight I wasn't. Tonight I spent time with my eldest, who is soon to be nine. She blew off both the choir show she was supposed to sing in at the local beer festival, as well as her ballet class. She's been saying all week that she's just tired, she doesn't want to go to her after-school club, she doesn't want to go to Brownies...so today, instead of participating in all her stuff, she just put her jammies on and mooched around the house all day. But while the husband and the youngest child took themselves off to the event, I had strict instructions from the husband to not let eldest child use the iPad, have fun, have a friend round, etc., because if she was 'too ill' to sing or go to ballet, then she was 'too ill' to have any fun. Fair enough.
But tonight she and I made stuff. I've recently completed the crocheted blanket I've been working on for 18 months (gift for sister-in-law), and now I'm working on a quilt. But I, of course, have to have an interstitial project to go to when I don't have time to concentrate on the quilt, but I've got a few moments to spare. So I've started plaiting fabric scraps to make a rag rug. And eldest came to hang out with me. And after a while of her watching me and some chit chat, she said she wanted to make something. And tonight I taught her to sew.
She cut out some bits of fabric and said she was going to make an apple. I taught her how to pin the wrong sides of the fabric together, and sew a seam with a sewing machine, and then turn the right sides out, and she stuffed it full of sheep's wool that she'd collected on a walk a few weeks ago, and hand sewed the top closed, and put a green ribbon on the top. And it's great.
And then after that was complete, she just hung out and we talked.
(Incidentally, we've already had the chat about where babies come from, and how they get in there in the first place, and what happens to your bod when you get closer to being a teenager.)
So she asked me how old I was when I first decided I 'liked' a boy. I said 'about nine or so', and she said 'OK'. And then she told me about how a friend of hers (male, also almost nine years old) kissed her the other day, and then we talked about when that's OK, and when it isn't. And then she said, 'I know that when I'm a teenager I'm not going to like you or Daddy very much, right?' -- and I said yes, that that was probably right. And then she said, 'But I like you quite a bit right now.'
And then she got up and went to get ready to go to bed. And as she left the room, I said 'I love you', and she was silent. So I 'ahem-ahem-ed' at her, and she just looked at me and rolled her eyes, and the door closed behind her as she went out.
She likes me 'quite a bit right now'.
For this moment, that's lovely.
