Holy shit! Pass the gin.

Roller coaster.  The most stressful and traumatic 48 hours since the sale of the guest house fell through (bastards).  I am shell shocked and need booze but it's done!

After much chopping and changing Tom has accepted a place at Edge Hill University to study English and he is delighted, absolutely thrilled.  His didn't get his first choice and went through clearing and by his own admission has somehow ended up doing a much better course than the one he had originally applied for.

Had it not been for Twitter Tom would not being going to Edge Hill.  Yesterday morning when I was looking at his results (C English, E Sociology, E History) and his UCAS Track with "unsuccessful" all over it and was in despair Leanne from OCD tweeted in response to say not to panic and had I considered Edge Hill, she used to work there and "The Boy" (her partner!) still does.  Tom and I will be eternally grateful for that suggestion and if I ever get the chance, which is looking increasingly likely, I am going to buy her the biggest bloody drink!

I am off for a lie down and then on Monday we are all going to Sorrento (we have house sitters so piss off robbers) and I can not wait.  Bit of a blogging hiatus but I'll be back at the start of September with blog posts no doubt charting the intense emotions in the run up to 23rd September!!

Fingers crossed everyone!

It's A Level results day tomorrow.   

Tomorrow we find out if Tom is going to University or not.  He thinks not.  I, the world's biggest optimist, think maybe.  His Dad, who is never wrong, thinks that he might be fine but on the other hand he might not.  Emily thinks he needs to hurry the hell up and move out so she we can sort out our basement flat so she gets a much bigger bedroom.  

Tom walked when he was 10 months old, a good couple of months before most babies would expect to be up and on their feet.  That was the last time Tom did anything more quickly than might have been expected.  He was five and still insisting that he couldn't ride a bike without stabilisers - it took Steve running alongside pretending he was holding on to get him up and running.  Tom hates to fail.  When he was at primary school he had a spelling test every Monday morning so we started every Friday evening with a straight off 20 words spelling test.  Those he got right we ticked.  The rest he wrote out three times, then we did the test again.  Write out 3 times, test and so on until by Monday morning he was able to spell all 20 perfectly.  He once got 19 out of 20 and was so upset, bless him!   You are probably thinking he aced his GCSE's with a plethora of A's and A*'s.  Sadly you'd be wrong, somewhere along the line Toms fear of failure was overtaken by his abject terror of doing any sodding work at all.

We ended up having a crisis meeting after we got his mock GCSE results.  Tom, Steve and I in the kitchen. Tom in bits because he was staring failure in the face and Steve and I petrified that he was going to throw away a golden opportunity.  I will never forget watching him walk up from school in the pouring rain clutching his GCSE results envelope.  I was sat in the car waiting and he didn't look up until he was nearly at the car and when he did he looked straight into my eyes and smiled the broadest smile, I burst into tears there and then!  They weren't great but they were enough to get him into the very good local college to study his A Levels.

And then came the wilderness years.  For two years I have heard myself say "are you sure you aren't supposed to be working?"  "show me what work you have done" "seriously, are you shitting me? Is that it?".  I have gently coaxed "Sweetheart, why don't you get your History text book and come and sit with me whilst I work"  I have cajoled "History text book now" and I have castigated "Work you bastard, work"  all to no effect.  And tomorrow the results of Tom's torpid approach to learning will come home to roost.  I am bricking it.

He has an offer of 260 points to study Criminology at Lincoln.  Its a lovely University, great accommodation, right in the centre of Lincoln and its about an hour and half down the A1.  I am desperately hoping that he'll get 200 points, they'll want the £30,000 fees and they'll take him.

Which is great.  Or it will be, until we get to September 17th and I have to drive my only son to Lincoln, unload his world from my car to his accommodation, kiss him and drive home.  Without him.  Oh god.  I can't do it.  Part of me almost wants him to fail so I wont have to.  So I will have to remind myself that having kids is about giving them wings so they can fly away, even if it breaks you heart a little into a million tiny pieces. 

I'll update this post tomorrow with the results - if I am not frantically trying to get him sorted through Clearing before we go on holiday on Monday!

To the people I know in real life who only read my blog

If you do nothing else today please click on this link and read the post.  

Anyone else that reads beauty blogs will already be familiar with Mrs Hirons, skin care guru, second to none.  

Everyone who isn't should click on the above link and then run to Boots and buy her recommendation.
Have a lovely weekend.

So long old "friend"?

Yesterday I was unpacking after our weekend away and as I put the box of tampax back into my knicker drawer I thought this box of tampax is well travelled, its been to Cereals in June, Yorkshire show in July and here it is now returning from Cambridge at the start of August.  And then I did a double take.  Because this 3 month old box of tampax is still closed.  A quick check on my phone confirmed my thoughts - the last time I had a period was back in May!  Now this may be a temporary blip, or of course I may be pregnant as Emily very hilariously pointed out - I did reply that were that to be the case in a complete role reversal of Catholic families through the years I would be passing this baby off as hers!! - or this may be the real deal and my reproductive years are now behind me.

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that to be honest.  I remember the Wednesday evening when I was 14 and I went upstairs to wash my hair to discover that after 2 years of patiently waiting I had finally started my periods!! I remember blowing the dust off the pack of breeze block sized sanitary pads that girls used back then with great elation and finally feeling that I was a WOMAN!  I was deeply pissed off that no more than six months later my sister who was, and remains to this day, 18 months younger than me started her periods too, I didn't want to share this womanly right of passage with her dammit I wanted it to all be about me for once!  

My period was most at the forefront of my mind the 12 months I spent trying to get pregnant.  Using the power of my mind I managed to make it up to 3 weeks late some months, only for it to appear as I walked back from the chemist with yet another pregnancy test we could ill afford.   My sister and her husband, by then parents themselves, were staying one weekend in October 1991, my period was a week late and I was trying not to hope.  We had dinner and I suddenly felt very very sick, rushed upstairs and hurled for England.  I had never felt so ill.  My sister took this as a sure sign that I was with child and insisted that Steve went out first thing the following morning and purchased a pregnancy test, against his better judgement, convinced as he was that I was about to ruin a rare weekend with my sister.  How utterly and gloriously wrong he was!!!  When one night in April 1993 we had dinner and I was violently sick after an Easter weekend spent trying for number 2 we looked at one another with a knowing smile and Tom appeared in January 1994.  (Appeared - anyone who has squeezed a 9lb 2oz human out of their vagina will be enjoying a wry smile at that choice of word!)

Other than that my periods haven't really featured greatly in my life, they came, they went, they arrived unexpectedly when I was wearing white linen trousers, the usual really.  I hadn't really given any thought to how this next stage of my life would affect me, other than perhaps hoping that by the time it came both of my "babies" would have left home and Steve and I would have enough money and enough time to be enjoying life a little.  Ah well.

I am surprised at my lack of knowledge about all this though.  So my periods have stopped.  Am I now officially menopausal about to grow a beard, have terrific sweats and burst into tears at the slightest provocation?  If so, no biggy  the beard and the sweats have been around since last year at least.  Or is that it. Over. Gone. I'm barren, nothing to see here, please move along, menopause done and dusted.  Seriously how can I NOT know this stuff.  And where do I sign up for the HRT?  Do I need HRT?  Will it give me breast cancer?  I am here at, if not a major junction, at least a litter-strewn, pot hole filled layby in my life and I have no idea what lies ahead.  Luckily I like the unknown and prefer change to being stuck in a rut so lets I hope I can embrace "the" change and work with it.  And if not there's always the drugs, right? 

Unless of course I am pregnant and then I'm in deep shit.