Tuesdays suck gophers* normally. I don’t know why that should be, but in my experience, it’s invariably so. Today is no exception. It’s a grey, bleugh sort of day and, although it’s not actually raining, the skies would like to assure you that it’s definitely on their To Do List, although they can’t be entirely sure when they might get round to it. I have been applying for jobs. In the gloom. And even though it’s not cold outside, it’s chilly in the house. Or perhaps it’s just that I’ve been sitting down for so long, staring at page after page of job listings, most of which are completely unsuitable for yours truly. I’m turning this house into a Den of Slack today.

But then I thought I might clean out the boiler. ‘If it’s going to be a grey skies and ash day,’ I thought to myself, ‘let’s go the whole hog and get filthy dirty to boot.’ Except that I don’t trust that when I switch it off it will have the manners to start back up again when I press the ‘ON’ button. (Frankly, I don’t feel like being cold if I can avoid it.) So the boiler is half cleaned and that will be a step in the right direction for now.

Favourite Engineer called out of the blue this morning. He was on his way to Cavan and fancied a natter. Always happy to oblige there. Made me feel quite homesick for the lunacy of my last job, but only for the people not the bullshit and arrogance of the management which, allegedly, remain unchanged. You know when hearing someone’s voice gives you that warm, fuzzy feeling? Well that. It’s about a month since I last spoke to him and I am no longer at the point when I miss him every day. It’s nicer like this.

And that’s it really.

*Through a garden hose. I can’t recall where I first came upon the phrase but it endures as an accurate indication of extreme suckage. Due thanks, I am sure, should go to one of our American cousins for their fine imagery.

I have spent lots of this morning reworking my CV. They’re difficult things CV’s or, at least, I think they are. I thought they were meant to explain who you are and what you’re about and, more importantly yet, what you’ve done with your time to date, work-wise. This seems relevant. ‘Personal statements’ seem cringe-worthy and horrid and irrelevant. (I’m not in HR thankfully so I could be wrong about this.) Anyway, I’ve faffed about with it and have put things in bullet points – which apparently I needed to do – and tried, in short, to make it look cleaner and more efficient. The challenge of it all is that, predictably, I’m a bit crap at all this. When I’ve been reviewing CVs over the years, they’ve belonged (predominantly) to engineers and, trust me, in that instance, you’re just happy if you can make out the overall gist of the thing. (I know they know that spell checkers have been invented but does that mean they use them? Does it buggery.) The main thing I wanted to achieve was to cut out any extraneous waffle because I’m rather better at that than I am at writing what I really need to write. And really, I think the whole thing is a bit preposterous anyway. You can have the world’s shiniest and prettiest CV but it doesn’t mean that you can do the job, now does it? No. No it does not. But at least mine is now a little tidier, a bit less cluttered,  and will hopefully garner a bit more interest that it has to date.

Aside from that, there is little of note. Days amble past and I find that I am ambling with them rather than doing anything productive. This worries me slightly but then, to a certain extent, I feel that I’m never going to get these days again, and definitely not in this manner, so perhaps it would be better to flow with them in the long run. The truth is that, honestly, I’m not champing at the bit to get back into an office again. Part of me is revolted at the thought of it and the cessation of my morning walks with the dog and long baths with a book. I know that, in this as in many other cases, I will be fine once I get going but, presently, the getting going is sadly lacking. It’s confirmation of what I’ve always known: when left to my own devices, I tend to float in a comfortable sort of limbo; peaceful and absorbed in whatever has currently caught my fancy. At the moment, my fancy extends to walking my dog and feeding my family; throw in a few books and copious mugs of tea and all is well. However, Dave is talking about family holidays later this year and such things require funding. Given that we’ve never had a family holiday, I find I’m quite ambivalent about the whole thing but I’m prepared to give it a go if it turns out to be something he wants to do. It would certainly be nice to see somewhere different for a little while but, now that I am so settled in my house with my animals and children, the urge to wander has almost completely vanished. Well, except for the idea of leaving Ireland completely which has, I’m afraid to say, been rearing its head in recent weeks. Perhaps this is the sort of thing that occurs to a person when she has to much time on her hands? Or perhaps it’s just the incessant bad news on the radio these days? Or the raging incompetence of the Irish government and its ability to screw everyone over?

Still. For now we are here. And it’s nice.

“don’t underestimate the value of doing nothing, of just going along listening to all the things you can’t hear and not bothering”
- winnie the pooh

Oh Monday, how quickly you find us again! Evie woke us up at three minutes to eight this morning. Dave’s supposed to be in work at eight thirty. Neither of our alarms went off at seven as they were supposed to and it seems we are blissfully able to snooze all morning if left to our own devices. Aside from the smallest one who didn’t fall asleep until gone ten last night. Sigh. Still, he made it to work for eight thirty-five. We made it to school for eight fifty. So it wasn’t so bad after all.

I never expected it but I’m so enjoying the whole ‘being with my family’ thing. I love cooking dinner for them in the evenings, I love the fact that D and I are able to work so well together. I dragged them all, including Honey, off to the Bog Meadow in Enniskerry yesterday after lunch amid cries of “Muuum, I don’t want to go out; I want a go on the computer…” but, once packed up in wellies and coats, the children ran all round the field and headed off down to the river with the dog. Obviously, being organised, I didn’t have my camera with me but I will have to see if I can take some of the photos from D’s phone because there were some nice ones. J managed to cross the river over a fallen tree. Evie just waded across, naturally. Honey was allowed to run round without her lead because there was no one much about and she loves splashing about in rivers. It’s so good to see her racing about. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a dog grin so much, even through a muzzle! There’s an ease and a sense of sharing, even when the children are being awkward or bratty, that makes this all feel good, like exhaling after holding your breath for longer than you thought you could.

When Evie was given the all clear by her consultant mid-way through December, it meant that she could return to normal and do all of the things that she loves doing: running, climbing, finding the myriad Most Likely Ways To Injure Oneself; all these are her natural fortes. Prior to this carte blanche being reinstated by the hospital, her school had said that, while they were happy to have her back in attendance as soon as she felt ready, they wanted me to supervise her at break times because the staff couldn’t be expected to do so. (A stance, by the way, that I have a complete understanding of and harbour no grudge about.) However, as a result of my eight trips  – to and from school in the morning, at little break, at lunch and at home time – it made job hunting a little precarious. For one thing, I couldn’t take anything on, even if I were offered it, when my days were so fractured. Interviews with recruitment companies had to be carefully scheduled. None of it was terribly conducive to finding actual, real, paid employment. It was a  bit of a bummer but it was also necessary and, thus, there was, and is, no point in griping.

Now, however, when my current account is over its overdraft limit and my credit card is maxed out and my savings account can just about manage with its last breath, to bring them both back into their respective boundaries before being utterly demolished, I have to focus on finding something that will pay the bills. (Literally.) At the moment, the children and I are being fed by the money that D gives me each month.*

When I finished up with my last employers, I really had no intention of being off work this long. At this point, it rather makes my brain ache to think I’ve been off for three and a half months. Had Evie’s surgery not arisen, it’s probable that I would have started something new in November and none of this would be an issue, or at least not to quite the same degree. At the moment, though, I’m fretful. I try not to be. I have always agreed with my dad whose one useful lesson to me was always that worrying is pointless. He always says that if you can do something to fix or alter a situation, you should go ahead and do it. If not, there’s bugger all point in moping about feeling awful because it neither changes things nor puts you in the right frame of mind to effect change for yourself. And this is from a man who has found himself in all manner of horrendous financial situations which would make mine look utterly insignificant. (Of course, this may be because  of the above advice, rather than prompting it!)

Anyway, I suppose the thing is that I wanted to put it down and admit it as a reality before I go back to being chirpy and positive and believing – and this part is also true – that something will show up and that we will be better than fine in the very near future.

So, having done that, I’m going to go and put some washing on and sweep the kitchen and hall floors. And I might, tomorrow, go and make an appointment with the bank to discuss the current troubles in paradise. That would, I think, be the grown up thing to do. Hmm.

*As an aside, I feel much less guilty about this than I did given his almost permanent residence here. After all, it’s feeding him too!

Sometimes, it’s hard to write simply because I haven’t for so long. The words build up but they don’t flow easily enough to give a sense of satisfaction or of a story well told. But occasionally, I decide that I will put up a time limit and see what I can get down in that stretch of minutes.

2012 is already promising to be an unusual year. It finds me in the odd situation of being in a relationship with my husband for starters. Which is noteworthy because we separated in 2005. Sometimes, the more we struggle and tie ourselves into knots over things, the further we end up from what we want in life. Sometimes, when we can stop and be open to what’s there in front of us, good things can happen. I am not going to stand here and say that everything’s great and that all my bumpy roads are behind me, but I will definitely and happily say that when one stops making assumptions about other people, even if only for a few minutes, it opens up perspectives that are surprising to say the least.

It took five years for he and I to get enough space from one another to allow the issues between us to heal. When both parents are actively involved in raising their children and when that means that, as a separated woman you still see your ex most days, there is a feeling that you might never get free. When we started to leave one another alone and got our own lives, it was a huge relief. We developed boundaries for one thing. We accepted that there were parts of our lives that didn’t involve the other person and we were both (reasonably) okay with that. Then, before Evie went into hospital, an odd thing happened. I started to sort of like him again. Not like him like him but to see that, as a person, he was a pretty good bloke. We started to complement each other again. We filled in the gaps, often without realising it. With the arrival of The Hound, Honey, he became a more frequent visitor because he loves her almost as much as he loves his kids. Strangely, and possibly because I wasn’t really aware of it as a problem, I didn’t put up walls or start to fight. On the evenings he wasn’t there, I felt a bit odd, as if some necessary part of the household was missing. Over Christmas, when he usually ends up moving in for a week or so, we really felt like a family. And I didn’t mind it. I didn’t feel offended or overwhelmed or like someone was intruding upon my territory. Instead, life felt really good. 

Between Christmas and New Year’s, we realised that things were a bit different between us and that we needed to look at what was happening. So we talked about it. Sounds like such a little thing, doesn’t it, unless you know our history… So, in as slowly as is possible for two people who already have two children and have been, technically at least, married ten years this year, we are seeing what we can build together out of the fact that we like each other again. Like like. Maybe a bit more than that, even…! And for me, this time, it’s a conscious choice. I know what I’m doing and I’ve looked at why I’m doing it. I can see a future and I can see a past, but where once the latter was still a source of immense anger and pain, the space we gained from one another allowed for healing and, for the last three or four months, I find I’m no longer looking backwards.

In 2004, just before Christmas, someone broke into our house and stole all my jewellery: every piece that was worth anything went, taken by some tosser in a hoody who wandered into my bedroom and went through my side table looking for loot. I never got any of it back and it has irked me more and more as the years have gone by, although at the time, I really couldn’t have cared less. (Everything had fallen to bits and I wasn’t wearing my wedding ring anyway.) On Friday, D replaced my wedding ring and he put his back on. We have agreed that we’re not going to discuss any of this with our families yet; they don’t need to know. We’re simply going to go onwards and do the best we can with all that we have learned in the intervening years, leaving the bad stuff behind for once and for all to see what will happen next. Most importantly, we’re going to try and have some of the fun that we missed out on the first time round and enjoy each others company now that it seems that we genuinely can.