Let’s Look at Shiny Stuff

Better things.

Let’s have a better things post before I really slit my wrists.

I have finished reading Joe Queenan’s memoirs.  They were very long, very turgid and mostly very miserable. An excellent cure for insomnia.  I would drag the tome downstairs to read while the other’s watched television in the evenings and then fall asleep after ten pages.  Ten pages every time.  Brilliant.  Now I need to find a way to grind it down into pills and eat it.

I am going to learn to drive.  Now here’s the thing.  I’ve been learning to drive on and off (mostly off) it has to be said, since I was seventeen.  For those who are counting, that is twenty years.  I have never even sat a theory test.  I cannot tell left from right. I cannot judge distances. I am short sighted.  I fear cars.  I fear my own driving.  I have no natural aptitude at all.  One lesson a week is useless as I vomit with fear after every lesson, and with the vomit goes all the knowledge I gained during the lesson, which then has to be re-learned thereafter.  I have spent many years convinced that should I be allowed out alone without a professional I will end up killing myself, the children and everyone within a five mile radius of where I live.  To say that driving lessons have been stressful has been what you might call a woeful understatement.  It is no good people telling me how it changed their lives etc, and how I will not be able to believe how I lived without it.  I know that.  In theory.  In practice I run round in my head with my hands over my eyes screaming ‘We’re all going to die. We’re all going to die.  And it’s my fault because I’ve got my hands over my eyes.’

Now, I have been dealing with some of this fear in my sessions with my tappy lady therapist.  I feel more positive and less like a suicide bomber, more like a lady who might get to drive to Ikea and spend lots of money.  This is good.  Jason and my dad are currently looking for a car for me so that I can practice.  This means I will not have to spend several hundred pounds a week having enough lessons so that even I cannot vomit out all the information.  This is good.  Jason has put me on the insurance for our car.  Andrea is going to put me on the insurance for her car.  This means people will be able to take me out to practice every day if necessary.  This is also good.  My old driving instructor, who I last saw four years ago and who I liked but could not afford to keep going to see when we moved away, is still instructing and now lives only five minutes away.  He remembers me. He did not scream and cry. He is actually looking forward to teaching me and is going to ring me back to arrange some times.  This is good.

Tallulah has been very, very good today.  It is only Oscar who has prematurely aged me by six or seven years. This is not holiday behaviour.  This is two year old behaviour.  I can do that.

Tallulah’s dad is home unexpectedly.  He has swooped in, taken her out for the night and is currently hovering round cinema entrances trying to barter his way in to take her to see the new Harry Potter film.  She is delirious.  Particularly because Tilly is not doing this, and now Tallulah has something as good as her two night sleep over to bargain with when they return home.

Oscar is going to bed soon and this means a night, home, alone with my husband when we are both awake and we do not have to watch Hannah Montana or explain the plot of Top Gear or anything.  Ha ha!

Oscar is in nursery tomorrow morning and Tallulah and I are going to do sewing together when she gets back.  I am coding this as positive.  It may not be, but let’s look on the bright side eh?

Nobody in my family has decided to take up playing the banjo.

I do not have to iron anything.

There is a lot of cake left over from birthday proceedings.  I ate far too much flap jack in a rage earlier and gave myself indigestion, but once this has settled I will eat more cake.

Bingo

I feel better already.