CAPTAINS LOG:  14th April

THIS week I celebrated 10 years of the boys and I living in our house.  When I say celebrated, it wasn’t a party, more of a stand by the kitchen window smiling with a G & T in my hand and smiling like a loon. 

TEN years have literally flown by.  When we moved into the house the boys were only two and half years old.  I have no idea how I coped.  Firstly, the staircase, which starts in the sitting room, never had a stair-gate properly fitted as I have a funny banister thing going on.  It was more propped up than secured.  The stair-gate at the top of the stairs however, was only taken down last year.  If I’m honest, it staying in situ for so long was nothing to do with the boys.  For years it was my security system. My mind often runs all over the place but I always thought that if nothing else it would be a deterrent for getting to the upstairs should anyone break in overnight.  If you’re thinking  that my security system was a joke, you obviously don’t have first hand experience of the one of these contraptions.  I can’t tell you how many people said to me over the years ‘how do you open this bloody thing?’….they’re like the Krypton Factor for stupid people.  

WHEN I eventually took the gate down it was only so it could be replaced with a ‘dog version’ because if you think I was risking my bastard (sorry, Princess) dog, Dolly unwittingly fall to her death in the middle of the night, you can think again.  

SO back in the days when the boys were small and didn’t go upstairs without me, I used to carry them, together, at the same time and think nothing of it. When I think about it now it makes me break out in a sweat.  I could have dropped one or both, or fallen.  I do remember really early on trying to teach them how to call the police or Nanny & Popsie should anything happen to me in the night and they couldn’t wake me (no wonder we’re all such bad sleepers!) and they just didn’t get it.  Even now, if I ask Butthead to answer the phone he asks what to do.  This from the kid who set up the DVD player and two computers….I don’t get it either.

ON the day we moved in, my family helped.  I thought, because I’m special, that I wouldn’t need a moving truck…after all I didn’t have that much stuff.  Word to the wise people: always get a fucking moving van.  After 400 million car loads back and forth I was finally in.  Did it go smoothly?  Did it fuck.  I had bought two new sofas which I learned to loathe but when I saw them (online) and purchased them (online) I had measured the space they would be going into.  But do you know what I didn’t do?  I didn’t measure the door opening and if said furniture would fit through the door.  And do you know what happened? That’s right,  The bloody door opening was too small so whilst the delivery men (sorry, love, we can’t do that) stood outside lounging against my new sofas, I had to call my surrogate husband to come and take the bloody front door off.  NOBODY TELLS YOU THIS SHIT!

LATER than day, my (not so soon but eventually) ex-husband brought the boys to me and stayed so that we could put them to bed in their new room together. It was hard emotionally for lots of different reasons.  I was starting afresh and he was suddenly without his children. So whilst I read them their bedtime story, he went down the road and got us fish & chips.  He left and I looked around my new home feeling proud and a bit scared.  Could I do this?  I had no idea but I was going to give it a bloody good go. That was around 9pm.  By 2am I was on the bathroom floor, hugging the toilet bowl as my food poisoning hit me like a Hurricane.  I was chucking up and crying, the boys were both awake and screaming in their cots and I did the only thing I could think to do….I called my (no so soon but eventually) ex-husband.  I still can’t believe I actually did that but I didn’t want to bother anybody else.  Why the fuck I just didn’t call one of my girlfriends I have no idea.  So he turned up about half hour later, and calmed the boys whilst I continued to  lie on the bathroom floor and continued to throw up for the next hour .  Eventually I was just so knackered I fell asleep not the bathroom floor.   I vaguely remember him leaving around 5am with a look on his face that said  ‘you made your bed now lie in it’ and frankly, I don’t blame him. He stayed a damn sight longer than I would have!  

WHEN I first set the house up I wanted it to look s’mazing but it turns out I have the interior design ability of a gnat. I’m just clueless.  I can’t tell you how much shit I have bought in the last 10 years to make my home look show-room worthy.  I have reached the conclusion that some people have an innate ability to make their homes look incredible then there’s me.  

ONE of my best friends lives round the corner.   I shit you not, her house and style is incredible.  The irony is, whilst there are some ‘pieces’ in her home that cost her a few bob…there is shit loads of stuff from Ikea too.  The woman really could make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.  I really don’t understand why I like her….perhaps, I just stick around hoping that one day she will leave her home to me and I can just move in.  

SADLY for me, I just don’t have that kind of creativity.  I know how I want something in the house to look but when I try it’s just like meh.

IN ten years I have purchased so much crap.  My friend says  ‘you’re a marketers dream’ and she’s not wrong.  I do have a couple of tips to share and those I shall call Homeiverssary lessons.  There’s is only two but I bloody wish somebody had shared them with me.

• Don’t buy shit
• If you can’t visualise an actual place where you are going to put this thing you can’t live without….don’t buy it.  It’s shit and will end up out of sight for 7 years before you either chuck or donate it.

THE help I have been given over the last 10 years has been nothing short of amazing.  My parents have been phenomenal…not just in terms of being there for me but making it so much better than I could ever have afforded.  When I moved in there was nothing wrong with the front door/back door/windows per se other than they were a bit older than I would have liked.  Michael, because he’s my Dad and nothing is good enough for his kid, insisted on all the doors and windows being changed.  His rationale was simple; if you’re going to live here with my grandchildren then you’re going to be safe.  I have no idea how I managed to talk him out of getting bars up against the windows.

AS I write this, my driveway has literally just been completed.  For years, I have had to park on the street opposite my front door. I get that it’s not biggie, but when you have two toddlers, a road, always a bag or 10 plus a push-chair/scooters/a boot full of shit, it’s not easy.  I used to have to leave the kids in the car whilst I RAN the stuff from the car to the house so that I could then carry both boys out at the same time so that one wasn’t left in the car or the house on his own. It was like that riddle…A farmer is on his way back from the market, with him he has a fox, a chicken and some grain. When he reaches a river crossing he must use a small boat only big enough for him and one other item. Unfortunately if the fox is left alone with the chicken it will eat it, as will the chicken eat the grain. Explain how the farmer can cross the river.  Well I never could work that out and so come rain or shine, with one kid generally hanging precariously from my arm I would carry them both. On more than one occasion, I pulled up at my house, with two sleeping boys in the back and just sat there with tears dripping down my face because a) I knew I would wake them and I wanted some peace b) I just wanted another pair of hands to help me c) I was so bloody tired of doing everything on my own.

THE boys and I moving into our own place has not all been sunshine and rainbows but it’s ours and I bloody fucking love the freedom it has given me; given us.  I think it is one of only 3 decisions I have made in 25 years that I don’t regret.  

AND regardless of how difficult I have found it at various times, I wouldn’t change a thing.  You hear it all the time that you don’t know how strong you are until you need to be.  I didn’t feel strong but I did feel determined to make it work and to that end, I would go through it all over again just to have our house, our freedom and our little chaotic house full of mis-matched shit and love.  

OUR house is and probably always will be messy, chaotic and unintentionally eclectic (not in a ‘I’m like so eclectic, I just throw it all together’ kind of way but more of a ‘where the fuck do I dump all this crap?!)   My most favourite thing to do is to shut the door, pull We the curtains, grab the boys and the dog and just cuddle up on the sofa.  And even though I do everything (boys; am I right?) it’s our home.  A home for me is about recreating the home I grew up in; a sanctuary where you feel safe and loved. 

BIG SNOGS

Kitty XXX

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