Just a quick little update as I mosey along with my day like a giant mother octopus, multitasking like a ninja amongst several vicious enemies and delivering all of my tasks on point and to time like a fine jet pilot, even if I do touch down on the wrong airstrip sometimes! Well today is one of those hectic days where everything has to be done right this second, if not yesterday if it’s not too much bother. Well sorry, but it is!
I have a million and one things to do today and only one of me to do them, yet still I find time to reach for my MacBook for the purpose of this blog, how wonderful the world is! Now I don’t know who is in charge at the sleep-fairy-towers at the moment but I’m considering writing a formal complaint right now and revoking this years subscription fee. For the last two nights our beloved and simply scrumptious little Gabriele has slept like a true professional and only woken a couple of times during the night as opposed to several. And does this make me happy? Very much so, but do I now get to sleep all night and wake up in the morning like a spring lamb? Hell no! And why is that you ask? Because I’ve turned into a newborn baby myself and wake every couple of hours during the night to feed. It appears that dearest Gabriele has amended my body clock much like a regular working week, when despite it being the weekend and a glorious day off you still wake up at 8am for work without fail. And in the disgustingly early hours of the morning and throughout the night even, I am wide awake like a vampire awaiting the next feed as Luca and Gabriele sleep like babies, literally, beside me.
Our Not-So-Little-Anymore Baby Gabriele In His New Play Station
But how could I begrudge a flawless nights sleep to our little angel? If anyone should deserve sleep out of all of us it is the children who need it most and if that means that I sit goggle-eyed staring into the darkness each night trying to get back to sleep every couple of hours then so be it. Because that’s what makes me a Mummy, dark circles, under-eye bags and the constant need to yawn throughout the day! 🙂
I had a letter through from Inland Revenue the other week asking me to confirm proof of my Child Benefit for Gabriele and only just remembered to get back to it now. Baffled as to why they needed to know this I dug deep into the mountain of paperwork that was once a food cupboard in the kitchen, but several minutes later my search concluded nothing. I thought I may have thrown all knowledge of it away as I often like to with important original documents, simply to annoy/busy my future self I suspect, so I telephoned HMRC to check. Now I’m not great at knowing entitlements and benefits for a family, and even when I had Millie I didn’t realise I could receive tax credits until somebody told me years later; but I thought after Gabriele was born and the ridiculous amount of paperwork and various appointments undertaken that everything was done and dusted and I’d dotted the i’s and crossed all the t’s already; well I hadn’t. And my telephone conversation with the call centre staff went something online the lines of “Hi, I’ve received paperwork asking for my proof of child benefit for my son and I can’t seem to find a reference number, would you perhaps have it? Well I thought it would be with my paperwork but can’t seem to find it. It’s been so hectic having a baby and sorting everything out! When was he born? Well… April 30th…. Jesus Christ that’s almost six months ago! He’s not a baby at all! I never applied? Oh, well perhaps that’s why they’re asking me then? You’ll pop a form in the post to me? Excellent, my kitchen cupboard will be delighted. Have a nice day!” Shit!
How could I miss that? And what the heck is Child Benefit? It sounds like something nice I suspect, as anything beneficial is a bonus! I wonder if it could take the form of the ability to sleep? And I also wonder if Millie ever benefited from this same paperwork somehow? I should have asked the man that I just baffled on the telephone but I can’t face another arcade dance machine session of handset/finger-strutting on the keypad to “If you need this press 7, if you need that press 8, if you don’t know what you need please hold for an eternity.” So instead I shall await the forms in the post and hope that I remember to open and apply for whatever it may be.
I have so much work to do today it’s unbelievable, I’m hoping to make this week last twelve days instead of seven and a new set of eyes and hands wouldn’t go amiss from typing all day! Last night I boosted my way through another hour at the gym with the help of my trusty Semtex and Christian Grey from the naughty book Fifty Shades Of Grey that I’m reading. And I’m just a little bit hooked, as my second hour of reading whilst spinning at the gym has now led me to page 72 of 514. As I spin and read I suspect I travel off into my only little time warp occasionally pulling random expressions to myself to co-incide with the content of each page.
I completed another forty-five minutes on the bike whilst reading my Fifty Shades last night, walked over to the weights and couldn’t help but notice a man old enough to have been my extremely young teenage father in another life watching my every move and it became a little unnerving I have to say. So I tried my best not to acknowledge his obvious stares as I puffed and panted in my spandex in front of the floor to ceiling mirrors whilst lifting free-weights before walking over to the leg press. And despite moving around the room amidst the other gym goers he was still fixed on me each time I looked up! Like some strange life sized game of comical chess he sat in the middle of the room on the chest machine and looked as if he was about to start talking to me, as I, the pawn, walked straight past and took a seat on my machine instead, boxed in behind a screen and safe from his gaze, checkmate. But looking up at the mirror after each set of repetitions I could still see him watching me in the reflection from around the corner and instead of looking up and meeting his gaze to gauge what it was he wanted from me, for some reason I got up and walked briskly like a diarrhoea victim to the other end of the room to the water cooler, I guess it was my fight or flight response. And then he bloody followed me! Now am I paranoid, insane or at risk here? Surely if a silent older man had stalked a young lady in such a way down a dark alleyway at night there would be running, screaming and possibly a whistle or pepper spray involved; and everything about this situation made me so uncomfortable and desperate to avoid his confrontation purely for the fact of him oddly tracking me for god knows how long previously. I think if he’d have spoken to me he’d probably have asked me what the time was or how to find out your heart rate on the cross trainer even, something entirely normal and non-murderer-like but the stalking completely creeped me out. And before he got anywhere near me I rerouted down the back of the gym past the toilet and out the main door as I left for the safety of my car through the trees and darkness of the car park, my bum cheeks were clenched like rock cakes up until I got into the drivers seat of my car and locked the doors. Why do men have to be creepy late at night when you’re on your own? Even a nice smile or a nod of the head would have stopped me from running off. But no, he had to look at me probably exactly how I was looking at my naughty book as I worked out! Ha! When you put it that way it doesn’t seem half as weird I guess.
So now my love of the gym has increased ten fold for the fact that I get to work out, feel good about myself, shape up AND read the next episode of my Fifty Shades. I can’t wait for tonight so that I can go again, but for now I have a million and one things to do and dinner to burn so let’s try one thing at a time for now shall we! x
