Blogged off

Pride comes before a fall, so they say. I've clearly been far too self-congratulatory about all the gallavanting I've been up to of late; patting myself on the back for combining work, play AND children whilst managing to hold myself back from the edge of extreme exhaustion / insanity. The last week or so has really brought me down to earth with an ear-splitting crash. First, there was the lurgy last week. Bank holiday weekend seemed to have seen that off, but then last night, I had put Ava and Nathan to bed, read a bedtime story with Eden, and was about to say goodnight when she asked (as she often does) whether I could climb in to her bed and give her a cuddle before going downstairs. It was just before 8pm. I agreed. To be honest, the thought of lying down in her cosy little bed really appealed. We snuggled up together like spoons, and she burbled about her day for a while, slowly winding down like a little clockwork doll, until her voice trailed off and I could tell from her breathing that she had fallen asleep. I lay there for a while, thinking about my day.... and the next thing I knew, I was waking up and it was after 11pm. The evening had passed and I'd spent it asleep in my daughter's bed. I wandered downstairs feeling faintly cross that I'd wasted the evening and wondering whether there will ever be a time when life isn't quite this insanely tiring. Of course, when I asked Paul whether he hadn't wondered where I was all evening, he simply replied, "Oh, I assumed you were writing your blog!"
Right, I'm off for a radox bath. Oh, what a racy life I lead! ;-)

Save it for a rainy day

It's been an archetypal British bank holiday weekend: glorious sunshine for the week preceding it; torrential rain and freezing cold all weekend. My first reaction to this weekend's weather forecast was probably typical of mothers all over the country - disappointment, even horror: "How am I going to keep my kids entertained / happy / from killing each other whilst cooped up inside all weekend?" But the combination of recuperating from our respective lurgies, the rain and rather severe end-of-month-cashflow-crisis has conspired to keep us indoors for most of the weekend. And I have to say it really hasn't hurt us one little bit. The kids have been more than happy just 'hanging out'. There's been a lot of drawing, colouring (resulting in Nathan sporting an interesting purple and black spotty hairstyle), reading, lego-tower-building, dressing up, camp-building ... and a great deal of sitting around watching telly. Eden and I made a proper old-fashioned sherry trifle to take to friends for Sunday supper. Paul read the entirety of the weekend newspapers for the first time in years. I even read two book reviews! Sitting on the sofa with my feet up!! Sometimes it's good to take time out just 'to be' as a family. And may I just recommend dandling a baby on your knee as the best (and cheapest) therapy in the world.
It's not a very original observation, but I'll make it all the same: it seems to me that today's (middle-class, especially London-based) children are generally over-stimulated brats. I was talking to a Mum-friend the other morning about some friends of hers for whom a typical bank holiday weekend would involve at least two trips to kid-friendly play parks (the hugely overpriced Legoland and Thorpe Park were mentioned), outings to the swimming pool or cinema and generally much racing about according to child-oriented schedules. Result? Spoilt children who don't know how to amuse themselves or simply how to hang out and relax. It's all too easy to fall into this trap and it's actually quite difficult to slow down, stop and reappraise priorities sometimes. Taking some proper time out, releasing yourself from that sense of urgency to be 'doing', hanging schedules and 'to do' lists out to dry for a couple of days - that's what a bank holiday should be all about.

Cinderella's Bottom

Too ill to post much in an intelligent vein, so thought I'd rave about "Cinderella's Bum", a book to save you from the intense boredom of reading the usual bedtime story fare. This one is irreverent and wickedly funny as well as teaching girls just the right way to think about their bodies. I wish I could still have the perspective of my five year old, Eden, about the state of my sorry physique. Of my southwards-journeying boobs she simply commented the other day, "Why don't you just get the doctor to remove them, then? You don't need them anymore, anyway, do you?" Ahem. Slightly more cheeringly, after a rip-roaring telling of "Cinderella's Bottom" tonight, she murmured to me as she drifted off, "I think your bottom is as beautiful as a princess's, Mummy." Ah, thank goodness for my greatest fan.

Uuurrrrrrgh

And as if to prove my point (see previous post) I have fallen prey to the same dreaded lurgy Ava has. I'm coughing like an old smoker and have such a blocked head that I sound like that Janet Ellis who used to be on Blue Peter (she says, placing her formative years firmly in the eighties!) This week I've been up against a few deadlines, the most important of which was this morning, and yesterday I had to present our digital strategy to our main board. It's funny how the body just keeps going and going until these hurdles are overcome. Then, as the adrenalin packs up, the old bod collapses. I always used to get ill and take to my bed for a week at the end of term or after exams at university, which was the same thing, I suppose. Of course, in those days I'd simply refuse to get up until I felt better. Today, it's a bit different. I'm off to bed now, but you can bet your bottom dollar it won't be for long.....

Keep up the day job, love

I have been conducting an interesting experiment, and I can now confirm that it is not physically possible to remain entirely sane and healthy trying to run a day job (publisher) alongside a night job (nurse, provider of flexible sleeping arrangements and chief bottle washer). It is even less possible to do so if you try to run a social life alongside these things. So the last week or so, Paul and I have had an unusually sociable time of it, what with all the gig-going (Electrelane two weeks ago followed last night by the Fountains of Wayne at the Astoria) and dining out at fancy restaurants (luckily that's only a once-a-year phenomenon; boy, it was expensive). I seem to have been spending an unusual amount of time in bars and pubs, too (I'm sure you're all starting to think I'm an old lush - banish that thought!) Then Ava has come down with a nasty ear, nose and throat infection which means she coughs herself awake on a regular basis through each night, cries, comes into bed for a cuddle and drifts off to sleep on my chest while I sit semi-upright trying to aid her breathing and .... not sleeping myself.
Unfortunately it's the day job that pays the wages. I wisely therefore pour quite a bit of energy into 'keeping my end up' as we Brits so delightfully put it, when at work. Which, I'm afraid, sometimes leaves my poor family slightly wanting in terms of love, affection, time, even friendliness - from me. Did I ever mention the guilt? Oh, it comes by the bucketload.

Sugar and Spice

Yesterday was a quiet day, recovering from a night out with Danuta Kean, Peter Collingridge and Jon Reed. I can't tell you (because if I did I'd have to shoot you) but the four of us are up to something. All will become clear in due course if you are one of the publishing industry followers of this blog. For now just imagine that I am tapping my nose and winking....
Anyhooo, it wouldn't be a publishing luvvies' night out if it hadn't involved a top-heavy ratio of bottles of wine to people. So yours truly was suffering a little on Friday morning. I finally heaved myself into a vertical position at about 11.30am (very grateful to Paul for having removed all small people from the general area for a couple of hours to allow me some sleep).
The sun was shining on us yesterday, so I got the kids out in the garden and sat watching them play, allowing numerous cups of tea and the sun's warm rays to sort me out. After picking Eden up from school, a few Mum and Dad pals and their children joined us in the garden for more tea and conversation. The children were 'up to something' in the wendy house at the bottom of the garden, but we didn't pay too much attention. It wasn't until Eden and friend Thea served us all up a 'stew' of very gooey mud and leaves that we noticed the enormous hole they had dug in the middle of the lawn in order to get anough soil for their recipe. Thankfully, neither Paul nor I are fussy enough about lawn standards to really care (you'll never see stripes on ours; more likely dandelions), but it did make me laugh that the girls were definitely the project leaders and the more fastidious boys the followers. And they all ran a mile when Thea and Eden brought their pet worms over to show us....! What's all the nonsense about sugar and spice?....
There was spice aplenty at the very expensive but very superb Cinnamon Club last night, where we went with a big group to celebrate my sister-in-law's birthday. Needless to say I was off the alcohol for the evening. And I can now officially confirm, there really is nothing like a ruby murray to sort out a hangover.

Skinny dipping

I just wrote that title to get your attention. And to see whether it drives enormous amounts of new traffic to the blog. Sorry to disappoint, but I haven't indulged recently (I'm not letting anyone see the current state of my stomach, and anyway, it's bloody rainy as hell and freezing just now, are you mad??!)
No. It's my new term for the way I have to run my life. Dipping just slightly into a multitude of tasks, giving a skinny piece of me to everything and everyone, but never feeling like I give any of it the time or attention it really deserves. The last couple of days at work, ferinstance, I have 'skinny-dipped' into a number of electronic rights and agent negotiation discussions, tried to pull together our thinking on digital workflows, formats and storage options, worked on a three year budget for digital investments (anyone got a better idea than sticking a finger in the air?), produced a presentation on digital publishing strategy, kicked off a project to embed our eBook publishing programme into our current business processes, written a proposal for an online sequel to a rather well-known book, contributed to a corporate report on PR, and initiated a redesign of our corporate web site. I've raced to and from lunches with colleagues at which it feels like we quite literally 'downloaded' everything from our heads within the shortest time possible before dashing off in our separate directions. Alongside all this I've been taking part in a rather energetic debate on my boss's blog about the future of the book. Actually, listed out like that I feel quite proud of myself now, and I've really been buzzing with the adrenalin rush that all this activity generates. But the problem is that the time I seem to be able to commit to each and every one of these things is just SO limited. And that's before I even begin to think about what a thin slice of me each of the children gets. I race home as quickly as I can each evening, hug them all in turn, try to establish what kind of a day each of them has had, virtually barking questions at Paul about what they've eaten, when they napped, whether he took them out anywhere.... and ... What? Paul? Attention from me? Well, he might as well just forget it for the next, ooh, let me see, about 20 years?! Poor sod.
Maybe this sounds like I'm moaning ('So much to do, so little time!'), but the reality is that's not how I feel. The majority of the time I really do feel like LAUGHING about the sheer craziness of life, the comicality of the juggling, the absurd juxtaposition of the wildly different aspects of my life (from bottom-wiping, mush-feeding, dribble-catching, hurt-comforting, story-reading chauffeur to strategy-setting, meeting-running, opinion-forming, team-leading e-publisher and back on a day-to-day basis)... the absolute joy that my children and I seem to be surviving despite it all. And if you ever see me smiling to myself it's because I'm so delighted that somehow, just somehow, even though sometimes things are a bit frayed around the edges, I seem to be holding it all together.