Rantie auntie

I fear this may become a regular feature as I hurtle towards grumpy old womanhood. I worry that I'm only a brooch and a Per Una cardigan away.

This is really a post about all the things that are currently making me cross. I fully accept that a great deal of the blame for this can be fully apportioned to me as I appear to be cursed with the Unholy Trinity of Passivity, Indecisiveness and Martyrdom. This is not good. I spend my life making things easier for other people. This is the big one, I suppose I feel very unappreciated at the moment. I read Working Mum's post on how she is doing it all too.

I am currently very fed up with friends who only contact me when they want something. Friendship should be a 2 way street, we should phone, text, mail, meet up on a regular basis. You should not just contact me when you want to have a moan about your husband, your boyfriends gone away with work for 2 weeks and you're bored or you remember I exist and wonder where I've gone. This is not fair, I understand everyone has a busy life (you should try mine sometimes) but if I love you enough to be your friend then you can spend 2 minutes sending me a text. Then the next time you want to moan about your husband I will be much more sympathetic. Do I ever tell you that you've pissed me off? That would be a no.

I am really pissed off that although I live with 3 other people, who are, on the whole nearly functioning humans, I am the only person who does any chores on a regular basis. I do all the laundry and ironing. I do all the shopping and cooking(all right, heating up) The dusting and hoovering, also me, mopping and wiping of surfaces, again me. Any kind of cleaning is me. The fingers that can work computer consoles, text and facebook appear not to be able to spray polish and remove with a soft cloth and no one could find the Dyson without a map. It enrages me when the first thing people say to me as I return home after a 10 hour day is "What's for tea?" I usually still have my coat on at this point. I do ask and they will do stuff on an ad hoc basis but it's not thorough and it usually needs redoing so I do it myself and save the "quit nagging me's" Most of this paragraph is aimed at the work shy article I call my son. Eldest Beautiful Daughter is the best but is studying and doing voluntary work and has a part time job so I know she is busy.

I don't want to live in auntiegwen town. We moved here because my ex husband got a job here and when he left I stayed so the children would have the stability and routine of same house, school and friends. He now lives in a nice place too far away to help with the school runs or activity runs and has 2 of the 3 children for less than 60 hours a month. 2 overnight Saturday lunch to Sunday teatimes. He doesn't have to worry about who'll look after them when they're too ill for school or having to try and fit in a life of his own around guitar lessons, Girls Brigade, rugby practice etc etc etc. I'm not even slightly sorry if this sounds resentful, I did not choose to leave Scotland and bring 3 children up alone. I am resentful that he earns 5 times as much as I do and can afford to treat the children when they're with him and have great fun and just enjoy them. I love them and I hope you all know how much but I still have to be the parent who says eat your broccoli, tidy your room and do your homework. I want to be the fun parent and I would be the best and most fun parent ever if I only had to do it twice a month.

So by the time my Beautiful Baby Daughter leaves home I will have spent 15 years living somewhere I don't like for the benefit of other people. And to my growing dismay I will most probably have to stay here as I don't know where else to go.

FML

Today my sister had her scan. They couldn't find a heartbeat.

Romance Central

Love is most definitely in the air around me. There must have been an army of Cupids all with bow and arrow trained upon chez auntiegwen. The atmosphere around us is cloud soft and sweet. Love has found us and we are being pursued and wooed with an ardour than is surprising. I would tell you more but you'd feel queasy.

Everyone has an admirer. Some of us have two, this is not good, we are not decisive by nature, this is why 2 of us are vegetarian, less choice on the menu, how do regular humans cope with 20 or 30 things to choose from?

One of us has a choice of both genders. One of us has received 2 bouquets of flowers. Mush is in abundance.

We are living an episode of Hollyoaks, there are twists and turns and updates every day.

Can I enjoy this mushfest?, can I feck, one of us has a big feck off, counts for masses of your A level Sociology exam on Tuesday.

And one of us is a Mummy who will never stop worrying about her Eldest Beautiful Daughter, who is spookily and scarily just like me, can't make decisions and is being torn between the old and the new and who really doesn't need the distraction before her A levels. I would like her to ignore both and engage with her revision and then when they are over she can enjoy the high dramas and decisions and excitement and wooing to her hearts content.

AFTER THE FECKIN EXAMS, we are on the home stretch, don't distract her now.

So words you never thought auntiegwen mush junkie would ever say

Please make the mush go away.

Except mine, I can cope with my portion.

Stories and Songs Meme

I have been tagged by the lovely Brighton Mum for a musical themed meme.

Apologies to the readers who've been with me for the last 3 years since this blog started and know my story.

In the summer of 2006 my marriage was ending. Scary stuff but I was changing and little by little I could feel the old pre mummy pre wife me coming back. I didn't listen to music very much during my marriage, I seemed to have got out of the habit, in my car I had children's stories and songs and when in my husbands car I listened to his choice of music so it wasn't especially significant to me.

I was given "Hot Fuss" as a 40th birthday gift and enjoyed it so when "Sam's Town" came out in October of 2006 I was bought a copy. I loved it, I was beginning to listen to music much more and the track that seemed to express how I was changing and evolving into the me I am now. This song has become my own personal anthem for my new life.

In August 2008, 2 years post split I went to see The Killers at Marlay Park in Dublin, see picture above for a very happy auntie at the gig. The wifey me would never have spent that kind of money on herself but auntiegwen me felt it was worth every penny. This band and song re-ignited in me the passion I had for music and gigs. It was probably the best gig of my life.

And the first song they played was "For Reasons Unknown".

Please feel free to play along.

On a scale of 1 to 10...

How likely is it that I can build Beautiful Baby Daughters new bed before it's bedtime?
Without injuring myself?
Without getting stressed, cross and shouty?
Without any kind of DIY equipment? (excepting the mini screwdriver set I got in my Christmas cracker)

I haven't really thought this through, have I? Please pop round, bring gin and maybe a tool box.

PS - When I answered the door this morning, the delivery man said "John Lewis, Where do you want it?" and do you know HOW MUCH it killed me not to quip...
"autiegwen, anywhere you give me it"
or
In a faintly puzzled and quizzical voice "Oh I don't know, maybe the kitchen?"

Cosmic Ordering

On Hogmanay I posted a review of the decade and in it I mentioned my sister and how she very much wanted a 3rd child. She is now pregnant, please keep everything crossed that she gets to have this baby. Please, please, pretty please send all manner of positive vibes their way, after 2 miscarriages and an op to remove a brain tumour, I so wish for them to have their dream realised.

And in my own inimitable "I have to go for the funny every single feckin time" style. I am not overestimating the power of my blog but...

My last post was about getting a wedding ring and a Chanel handbag.

I have bored you to death with the wanting to shag David Tennant (and if one more person tells me he's gay or friends I have had for a looooong time remind me of my former crush on Alan Cumming and my refusal to believe he was gay, I will not be responsible for my actions)

You may be wondering how the fruit and nut toblerone diet was going to make me lose 2 stone and eradicate my wrinkles.

I'll keep you all posted

Product Placement

I love blogs, I spend far too much of my time reading them, tis a fantastic hobby. The beautiful children would have preferred my hobby to be cookery or baking but thems the breaks.

Over the last year I've noticed on lots of the blogs I read that some lucky bloggers have been given free stuff (including shoes and holidays!!!!!) to review. Now I'm not going to moan about the fact that I mention Tiffany, Starbucks, Fruit and Nut Toblerones, Chanel handbags and LK Bennett shoes with boring regularity. All by my own choice, no freebies have come your aunties way, these are things I have and love or would love to have in the case of the Chanel handbag. However, should any company wish the wise words of auntie on their fine, fine products, please feel free to email me. My readers are all intelligent and lovely people with oodles of spare cash.

Ahem, moving swiftly on.

Would you like to know what I have been offered freebies of in exchange for reviews?

A peeloop penis extender

and

wait for it...

A titanium wedding ring. Yeah, throw back your head and laugh like a muskateer at the irony of that as you go through a divorce. Like I always say my life is very feckin funny when you're not living it.

I actually emailed the jewellery people back and told them if they could find me the husband I would link to their jewellery site on every post I ever wrote. I never heard from them again.