Smashing Single Parenthood

Monday 1 April 2024

Gosh it’s been a while since I penned a blog!

So as the Easter weekend dawns and the sun breaks out from behind the rain clouds, I do have to face the garden for a good few hours of mowing, weeding ,pruning and …. I know, bring me a pipe and slipper and call me ‘grandad‘ … but thereafter, I fire up the lap top and sit down to muse bank on March and forward to April.

Quite frankly, what didn’t happen in March? As I look back, I can see exactly why my beloved blog had to take a backseat.

Prom-dress daughter first learned that she has a severe case of glandular fever (with some alarming complications). This was, and still is, a real worry on many fronts and has led to several weekends of pelting up and down the M6 and M74 to Edinburgh and, for me, wondering what is the best course of action for her health, her happiness, her degree course and my financial survival.

Small boy was, and still is, balancing a ramping up of A level workload with a grade 8 piano exam, tons of playing in Youth Orchestras and college productions plus … far too many 18th birthday parties. At times, he has been too exhausted to eat. So, as his ‘kick ass single -mum’, I am insisting that he hears the word ‘no’ more often than usual and this has led to conflict on more than one occasion!

My eldest, who is ever buried under a mammoth medical-student workload, received the exciting news that she had been accepted, via random ballot, for the Great North Run in September 2024, … alongside the bombshell that none of her friends had. In consequence, many lonely months of training for a half marathon looms…and is, understandably, in something of a panic.

And somewhere in he middle is me. The sponge expected to soak it all up and somehow solve it all and always say ‘yes ‘ and ‘where to‘ and ‘what time’ and always be on hand ‘for a chat‘.

Only I seem to be aware that I also have a full time job, worries of my own and the occasional dream… that no- one hears about. So, all in all, it has been a month when it has felt incredibly tough to be me! On Thursday, when I left for work, realised I’d left my laptop at home, drove back, located the machine, popped into the kitchen for a quick glass of water and them promptly set off without it again, I thought ‘Blimey I am tired…I may even ‘be done’?’

But that was Thursday, I have slept since then and April is a new month, so a new start. And come what may, I resolve to make sure I find time for a weekly pause to blog back and then look forward. It can only help …