For the first time in, sigh, can’t believe it, forever, I’m caught up on writing this blog. The stuff I’ve stored up as a box of exploding thoughts in my head is out, written down and therefore gone! Ha ha! Celebration nachos for tea. There are still lots of other things I’d like to say.. just that’s extra for now.

I don’t read my blogs. Maybe I should.. I just can’t trust that I won’t hate them and start re-editing. It feels right to move on. So I’m moving. Thank u, next. Sorry Mac Miller. Not you. You should definitely still be here.

So what is next? I know that I write about my kids a lot. Jack less so. He’s features no less in my life than the girls but I don’t write about him so much. I’m not a fan of PDA so the written form of it? Hmm. I could always go down the moaning route. But who the hell wants to read that? Ours is that thin, muddling line.

The next layer of the onion… I’ve tried to be more honest, to go to the parts where you have to swallow a lot. I’ve grieved for my old life in relation to being a parent with a disabled child. I’ve written about my frustrations with school and Lucia. Tomorrow she has the secondary school interview by the way. I can’t wait to visit the school so I can scowl like a hapless teenager. ‘Why would you like to send your child here?’ I hear them saying in the meeting. ‘Because,’ I’ll say, ‘I’ve always wanted to send my child to a failing school. Instagram is behind this whole thing if you must know.’ Hopefully they’ll kick ALL of us out.

Where was I? I was enjoying that image too much. Oh yeah, me. Doh.

Life hasn’t exactly turned out the way I planned it. Is that frustrating? Yeah, sometimes. I can’t lie. When I was a kid, we had this picture up in the bathroom. It was the first thing I learned to read, with the unending help of Sesame Street. The picture said, ‘Ambition knows no bounds’. It had a hippo wearing wings and flying with a gaggle of geese, looking very happy for itself. I still have it; it hangs over Lulu’s bed. In the meantime, I love walking around in my mum’s old clothes and putting my own ambitions under our dusty, unused bedding. Ambition is a state of mind though, isn’t it? I mean, if I move the pieces around… well then ambition for my family isn’t doing too badly. If all I’d ever wanted was my family’s collective happiness, you could even say that I was a workaholic. Phew, here I was thinking I was a waster. See? It’s all a state of mind.

It does seem unfashionable to admit that you’re living for your family. After all, it’s not so cool if you don’t have highlights in your hair when you start turning a little grey-fox, or if you’re missing those spa days with your hard-earned salary. What do you mean you’re not posting pics of your nights out with the girls, or your half-marathon exhausted expression? If I post the pile of washing-up instead in the kitchen right now, or the stains that I have to wash out of everyone’s clothes.. which pics would people prefer to see? Neither, right? I’m glad. For now, the collective is my place and whether I like it or not 🙂 it’s my inspiration.