Dress like a pterodactyl day

Once a term, the school unleash two weeks of hell on me. Once a term my children will dance home with a homework sheets that starts with, ‘We thought it would be fun if the children come to school dressed like a pterodactyl on a pirate ship time-travelling from the 19th century! It’s a really good way for them to engage with this term’s topic on asphalt! Your child can wear the costume to school on that special day when they all get to compare their costumes to work out who has the shitest parent or carer!’

Then they stick it in the child’s bookbag and run.

I hate this homework. I hate it for a number of reasons, and it’s taken me seven years of making costumes for various topics, and costumes for book week, and one fun year, a costume for maths’ week, which, in total, equals 44 costumes, to work out why I hate this particular homework.

It’s because the children don’t have to bloody do it.

I am not a supporter of homework in primary school. I've read (heard about) reports that show that homework in primary school serves no academic purpose. I don’t buy the idea that it prepares the child for when they have to do homework at senior school because they’ll learn that when they’re at senior school. I do respect the fact that homework does encourage a parent or carer to engage with what their child is learning at school. However, for that to work, the child has to be in the same bloody room as the homework in question.

There are some homework tasks where my sole input is to hand them a piece of coloured card and let them get on with it. Occasionally, my input is to sit beside them to explain the bits that they don’t understand. Usually, my input is to stand by the table yelling, ‘Just do the sodding homework! If you’d started it before you started this whining session, the homework would already be done! We all have to do things we don’t want to do, and do you hear me whinging about it? Well, Yes! Obviously you do, but it’s not the same because Reasons!’

But then the dress like a pterodactyl homework comes around and I get my comeuppance because this is a piece of homework I have to do or my child will be all left out and will look at me with wide, sorrowful eyes full of tears while I bribe them out of their misery with cake and ice-cream.

Sometimes there is input from the child, in that they come home and say, as they did for the current topic, ‘You have to make a, Egyptian costume, and I want you to make me into a pharaoh!’ So the first part of your homework is trying to sell, ‘Wouldn't a slave be more fun? We could make a wonderful slave costume… I know pharaohs are more important, but slaves are great too! I thought I could put you in one of Daddy’s t-shirts and put a belt around the middle… No! We haven’t done t-shirt-and-belt for every costume! Sometimes we do the cut-arm-and-head-holes-in-a-pillowcase costume! Sometimes we even stick things to the pillow-case with glue!’

Child's vision

Then the child will wander off in a fug of unfairness that they’re going to be a slave and not a pharaoh.

My ability

Then the real fun starts. Herewith the Mulgrue process of completing the dress like a pterodactyl homework:

1. find a man’s XXL t-shirt that is no longer needed without starting the row that it was the only possible t-shirt that he could ever wear, and then you have to buy another t-shirt which will sit in the back of the wardrobe unloved and forgotten until the next costume homework whereupon it will suddenly turn into the best t-shirt that he’s ever owned. 
2. find a belt that will go around the child without needing to be looped around three times. Prepare yourself for the inevitable crying about how uncomfortable the belt is, and understand that they will shed it in the first 5 minutes meaning that your child’s costume is now, ‘A t-shirt’.
3. be crippled with guilt that your child will be deeply disappointed when they see all of their friends in sparkly pharaoh costumes while she’s the only slave in the classroom.

Meanwhile, the child engages with their homework by lounging in the living room watching Stampy videos where, if you’re really lucky, he might be building a pyramid.

So I get to work with the homework.

I think it should be abundantly clear by now that I cannot do this homework.

All through my school life I was a good student. I worked hard, got my homework in on time, worked through a beautifully formatted study timetable for exams, and never missed a morning lecture because I’d been out the night before. Yes; I was that kind of smug student.

I cannot do this homework. I will never get to feel smug again. When the picture of the costumes appears in the newsletter, my child will be the one with the sad-face at the back of the group, mostly hidden by someone else’s flung out arms as they bask in their brilliant pharaoh costume.

All my child will learn is that Mum knows an awful lot of swear words. And, because I'm regularly driving them somewhere, they already know that.

I do recognise that there are ways to engage your child in this activity. As well as teaching them the valuable lesson that life is full of disappointments, it is the opportunity to demonstrate that you can do an awful lot with Wonderweb.

You could even, as I tried one time, teach them to sew.

Quick tip for parents out there; don’t teach your child to sew.

Our sewing lesson went like this; ‘It’s a sewing machine! … Yes, I know it’s a bit dusty… Now this is called a bobbin… Yes, just like in the song… Yes, I know the song… Yes, it’s a good song… Yes, I remember the actions… Mostly because of that time when you sang the song for over two hours before I knocked you out with Piriton… OK, I'm just reading the instructions … Yes, I do know how to use it… OK, let’s go… Shit, shit… Shit… No, I don’t know why it’s crumpled… Right… Shit… Do you really need armholes? … Yes, it’s fine for you to go and watch StampyCat, but could you try to find a video with a pyramid?... OK, yes, death-race is just fine…’

I have, over the years and with long practice, become a little bit better at the dress like a pterodactyl homework. This term, my input was to yell into the dining room, ‘Honey, your daughter wants to dress like a pharaoh for the Egyptian costume day! You’d better get on that!’ before scurrying out the door.

She’ll be dressed as a slave in one of his t-shirts with a belt around the middle eating chocolate cake and ice cream while she walks sorrowfully to school.

Bipolar

I see that I haven’t updated my blog since mid-May. This is because I’ve been off having adventures in the dark recesses of my brain.

Where I’d left the long story of my mental health, is that I’d seen a psychiatrist, and he’d prescribed me a new antidepressant, Mirtazapine. For a good few weeks, Mirtazapine was a wonder drug. It saved my life. I stopped actively looking for ways to die and started settling down.

Unfortunately, that only lasted about 8 weeks, before the recovery started tailing off. I was completely unable to feel joy, but was more or less content with this. Who needs joy anyway?

The psychiatrist thought that ‘happy’ really ought to be on the agenda, so he increased my dose. It was not the miracle cure it had been before.

A couple of weeks after that, I started moving backwards again. Making plans, new plans, because I’d told people my old ones and I needed to work in secret. I started quietly saying goodbye and not committing to anything beyond the next few weeks. I started trying to work out how the practicalities would work after I was gone.

I stopped being able to love my children. I’d like to say that this frightened or upset me, but I didn’t have any reaction to it at all. I felt like an empty glass. Occasionally, some emotions would break through, but they’d usually be the tricky ones; rage and fear and hatred. I knew, on an abstract level, that all of this was a bit not good, but it had just become part and parcel of who I was.

I went back to the psychiatrist to explain this to him, and we decided to try a new combination of antidepressants, so he added Venlofaxine to the Mirtazapine.

I’m not sure I can adequately express the hell that was Venlofaxine.

The physical side effects were difficult. My nerves became super-sensitive and I’d have hours and hours of tingling and buzzing skin which drove me up the wall. Water started feeling hard and rough. My digestive system ground to a complete standstill, regardless of overdosing on several things to free it up again. My pupils were permanently dilated making me really light sensitive. I felt drugged and exhausted constantly.

All of this might have been worth working through if it weren’t for the effect that it had on my brain.

My GP has recently shared with me the fact that I’d said a couple of things back in March which crossed the fuzzy, grey line from neurosis to psychosis. She wasn’t sure, but this was why she wanted me to see a psychiatrist. I have no idea what these things might have been – at the time, I thought I was being perfectly logical. Up until August, I was quite prepared to say that I’d never experienced a psychotic thought.

In August, while on the Venlofaxine, the thoughts that were coming at me were so out and out mental that I’m pretty darn certain that at least some of them were psychotic.

One of the peculiarities of that time was the incongruity between what I was feeling and how I was thinking and acting. I described it to a friend as if I were at a great party, all dressed up and bouncing around the dance floor, grin on my face, pulling everyone in to dance, while tears were coursing down my face and shouting ‘I hate myself! I am totally evil! Hahahaha! Guess what, guys? I want to die! Isn’t that a hoot!’

I would spend hours silently curled up, trying desperately not to accidentally let this lunatic out.

I had to pay attention to every single thought and word in case it was not a normal one.

One evening I was hot and feeling claustrophobic, so I thought ‘I know, I’ll pop out for a walk up the road in the rain! That’ll work! There’s no point getting dressed for it or putting my shoes on. If anyone asks me, I’ll just pretend I can’t see them.’

And the sane side of me wearily going; ‘No, Pip, you can’t do that.’ That sane side put up one hell of a fight, and I stayed in.

I stopped being able to tell what was real and what was not. I was pretty convinced that everything that came out of my mouth was a lie. I had the strange sensation that I had actually already died, and that this reality was just hanging onto me for some reason. I was convinced that everyone else either couldn’t see me, or was disgusted by me hanging around. I deleted a number of my friends from Facebook, convinced that they hated me. As yet, I haven’t been courageous enough to ask for them back. How do you word that? ‘Hi, a couple of months ago I assumed I didn’t exist, and that you hated me because I was an angry ghost. Any chance you’ll be my friend again?’

I called the psychiatrist and asked if I could stop taking the Venlofaxine. I begged him while talking at 500 words a minute, and he eventually cut in and said it was a good idea.

A couple of days later, I made a tiny, but stupid mistake with something.

I went mad. Literally mad.

Those thoughts started flying at me. I was, of course, stupid and evil, or I wouldn’t have made such a mistake. I should go away. Just get in the car and keep driving until there was nothing, and then walk into the sea.

No, Pip, you must not do that.

Fine, then I’ll just stay in the graveyard behind the house. That’s where I’ll live now. I can at least stay here until my husband gets home, and then he can fix it and perhaps send the tent out to me.

No, Pip, you must not do that.

Fine, I’ll go home. I will. But I won’t talk to anyone. Oh hell, there’s Tom. Scream at Tom. Run away. Hope Claudia doesn’t see me. Upstairs, hide here. Be here. Hide, jump from the window, hide in the bed. Stupid, stupid, stupid…

And then there was a pair of scissors in my hand and I was using them to whip my arm. It wasn’t deep or dangerous (I’m very clever at hurting myself so it won’t show for too long), but it cut and it bled and eventually it the pain worked its way into my brain.

And then I was looking down at my bloody arm, and was I furious that I’d lost concentration and let the crazy out. I still can’t say precisely what happened. Only that I was tired beyond everything, and I lost concentration for just a minute but that minute was all that was needed.

When I went back to the psychiatrist the week after that, I started telling him about the visions and voices for the first time. The voices are a part of me. I mean that literally; I’m aware that the TV and the radio aren’t talking to me. I can’t stop them – the constant, draining ‘you’re rubbish, you’re pathetic, you should just go ahead and die…’ these are a constant soundtrack to my life, but I know that they’re me. Sometimes I can overrule them. I’ve had some, limited success with mindfulness and meditation. Other times not so much, and if I try to clear my head, it just fills instantly with louder, more vicious voices, grinding me down and down, making me more exhausted, and then I can’t fight them at all.

There have been a couple of occasions when the voices have sounded external, but on those occasions, they were soothing. I heard God talking from the corner cupboard once, telling me things were going to be OK. On another occasion, I was in a top bunk and became aware that my dead grandfather was on the bottom one, telling me it would all be fine. Obviously I lay as still as a rock on the top bunk, terrified to move just in case he was really there.

More often, the audio hallucinations are bangs, screams and crashes. The worst ones sound like a bookshelf has snapped and everything has fallen from it. Though I could live without the screams too. Generally speaking with these, I can wander round, establish that nobody is screaming and that nothing has fallen, and I put it down to being very tired and stressed. And I don’t report them to anyone.

The visions are also quite rare. They’re usually nasty images; me lying in a bath full of blood, opened up and drained. Me lying dead on the kitchen floor. Blood pulsing from my wrists to the floor. That sort of thing. Again, I’m usually quite able to tell that these things originate from inside me. I know they aren’t a prediction of the future or a set of instructions. I’m able to force myself to look and prove that they’re not really there (apart from one occasion when I was just too tired, so thought ‘fuck it, if that’s what my brain wants to see, that’s what I’m going to see…’)

The more usual visions are little aftershock things – just something I glimpse that make me jump and my heart race and my mouth dry. Little, everyday things that make me uncertain of what’s really there and leave me off-balance. I’m pretty sure everyone gets these from time to time, so I didn’t report them. It didn’t occur to me that I was getting rather a lot of them.

It simply didn’t occur to me that these were symptomatic of something other than chronic and severe depression, and that I needed to perhaps share them. When I finally did so, the psychiatrist calmly pointed out that just because I know they’re all coming from my brain, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they should be there.

There are other things too that point towards a bipolar diagnosis. I can’t take SSRIs and I now know people with bipolar regularly react to SSRIs. The writing that I do – some of that was great and lovely, but other parts of it were wildly out of control. I should not have been able to write two novels in 18 months while working full time and raising two children, while also writing hundreds and thousands of words of fanfic. That’s a few steps beyond ‘driven’.

All of this time, I was also sedated. I should have been calm and quiet. I still managed to not sleep for weeks on end, just waiting until I literally passed out.

So, we're tentatively stepping towards bipolar, and the end result is that I'm now on an anti-psychotic and mood stabilizer.

It is amazing. I did not realise how noisy my head was until that noise was suddenly stopped. I can now step outside and do some mindfulness, and I relax, as I’m meant to. I’m no longer fighting through this wall of nonsense to get anything done, or trying to physically keep a pace with the speed that my thoughts are hitting me, so I’m no longer as crushingly tired.

There’s still a way to go. This is the longest amount of writing I’ve done for a couple of months. I’m also aware that it’s turned wordy and epic. I can’t tell whether that’s a sign of the mania, or a sign that some of the creative side of me is coming back. These things are no longer straight forward to identify.

I love my children. I utterly love my children, and the relief there is overwhelming too.

I’ve had false dawns before with this thing (and I’m very aware of the rate of bipolar relapses), so I’m slightly wary of dancing about and declaring that I’m better. But right now, I’m happy to breathe deeply and feel that fresh air, and to listen to the nice, quiet sounds of the world. 

Pip xxx

The beach.

I am doing so much better than I have been in the past couple of months. It’s been tough, and I’m not at the top of the mountain yet, but I’m at least half way up.

Part of what I’m trying to do to help me feel better is to take regular walks outside. Unfortunately, my inherent laziness is getting in the way, and I’m finding it easy to excuse myself because of the rain, or the fact that there’s something really good on the telly. (Did you see the sport on Saturday? What a marvellous, marvellous night!) I am trying though, to walk briskly enough to feel the muscles in my legs working, and to feel the blood pumping around. I pay attention to my breathing and concentrate on my breath rushing through my nose, cooling the back of my throat and filling my lungs. These walks don’t always bring a perfect stillness, but it does make the noise in my head a bit quieter for a while. 

This week, I’m at home with the children. I was a bit worried about this, as they tend to add to the head-noise. I was also a bit concerned that I wouldn’t be able to leave to find these moments of stillness, or if I did, it would be on their schedule and not on mine. I pondered and fretted about this, until I came up with a subtle and cunning plan: I’d just take them with me.

I’d walk a little slower, but the breathing could still happen. I could point out the soothing things I found on the way; those bricks, that garden, these leaves, and they could look or not. Yesterday I took them to the park to do some running about, so I got my exercise, and by a clever use of the ‘run all the way to the big rock!’ command, I got my alone time too.

Today, I was happy and confident enough to take them in the car to the beach. And you know what? It ended up being better for having them with me.

Look at my tall strong boy here; all limbs and muscle. He wants to be an Olympic runner, and he has the tenacity to get somewhere with this wish.

Here they are together, about ten minutes before they were both soaked to the skin. Claudia's usually the more courageous of the two, but she had a feeling she didn't want to go far without him just yet.

I wish I had some pictures of them digging in the dark, wet sand, and looking for crabs. Or the moment that Claudia thought she’d try to get back to me walking across the stones, going; ‘Ow… ow… ow…’ with every footstep, but it not occurring to her to go the short way or to cut across the sand.

I hope that these memories stay in my head for a while. Good times, small smiles, salt in our noses; these moments are often too few and too far between. I’m beginning to realise though, that one or two tiny moments of joy in the course of the day is just about enough.

It’s put me in mind of this poem by E.E. Cummings;

5

maggie and milly and molly and may

went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang

so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star

whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing

which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone

as small as a world and as large as alone.

for whatever we lose(like a you or a me)

it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

Pip xxx

The Haircut

I enjoy cutting people’s hair. I mean, I really enjoy cutting people’s hair. I think if I could live my life again, I’d ditch university and learn how to cut people’s hair well enough to charge money for it. Well, probably not, and if I did I’m sure I’d learn to hate it, but occasionally, the urge strikes me, and I march into the living room wielding a pair of scissors, and I brightly ask; “who wants a haircut?”

My husband used to let me hack away at his hair a number of years ago. I think I did four really good haircuts for him over the course of a year. Unfortunately, I then did a really bad haircut for him, and he hasn’t let me near him since.

The children, however, are too young to understand the danger of answering me gleefully with; “Yes please! Can I have a Mohican?”

Claudia’s never been to a real hairdresser. I was determined for her to have gloriously long, princess hair when she started school, so the few trims she’s had while it’s been growing have been an inch off the bottom to neaten it up. A few weeks ago I noticed it was looking a bit ratty and tangled, so I asked if I could cut the bottom bit off. She agreed with gusto, and told me she wanted it short like Harry’s. When I suggested just a bit off the bottom, she put her hand close to her crown and said; ‘This short!’ We compromised on a bob.

Being four, I didn’t think layers or anything fancy were necessary, so I just cut it in a straight line to the top of her neck, and I have to admit, it looks really cute.

She spent two, gratifying days saying; “I love my short hair!”

I was briefly sated.

A few weeks later I walked into the living room with a gleam in my eye, and my husband instantly ran away to don every hat in the house while muttering; “it’s fine! There’s months’ worth of growth in it yet! Years even.”

Then my eyes fell upon my son.

Now my daughter has perfectly lovely, normal hair with a slight wave at the back and curls at the front. If I screw up while cutting it, it springs back to wherever it wants to be, covering my epic failure. My son’s hair is a whole different kettle of fish. Tom’s hair is thick. Not just slightly thick, but really, really thick. He has around three times as much hair as is strictly necessary on a human head. Each individual hair is quite fine; it’s not like it’s wiry. There’s just an awful lot of it. And after that bit, there’s an awful lot more.

It’s also straight. Absolutely, completely, utterly straight. It’s straighter than a Roman road. It’s straighter than the route that the crow flies. In the sixties, people ironed their hair for hours on end to get what my son naturally has.

The problem with this is that if it gets just a little bit long, it hangs on his head, covering his eyes, and given time, probably blotting out the sun. It needs to be kept short for the good of humanity. He doesn’t have wispy, fair waves that he can toss freely with a slight lilt of the head. If Tom shakes his head too quickly, lives could be lost. The other problem with this, is that it refuses to nicely cover up any accidental scissor lines or slightly longer bits.

So I’ve been saying for a few weeks; “Tom needs a haircut.” My husband has been happily ignoring these comments, but when his muttering turned from; ‘it’s fine!’ to; ‘it’s not that bad,’ I decided to take matters into my own hands. Literally my own hands. We’re a touch strapped for cash at the moment, so a barber’s out of the question, and an extensive search for the hair-clippers came up with nothing. It was going to be down to me, and my trusty pair of scissors.

I sat him down on a chair, put a video game on to render him virtually comatose, and I went to work.

As always with these things, I started with joy in my heart and a; ‘tra-li-la, hum-diddly-um…’ in my mind.

After the first five snips I realised that we were officially past the point of no return, and I really didn’t have the first idea what I was doing.

There was nothing for it, but to persevere.

I cut a bit more.

I started hoping I’d work out what I was doing before long.

At about half an hour into the experience, Tom asked if we were nearly finished. At this point, the hair at the top of his head looked slightly like the pudding-bowl look as is often seen in medieval period dramas. The back hadn’t been started, and that part was still quite long and flowing. It was… what’s the word I’m looking for here? Oh yes, mullet. Mullet central. There was absolutely no way I could stop now.

At about forty-five minutes, we reached Tom’s sitting still limit. I was roughly at the point at which I needed to snip neatly around his ears. I decided to sacrifice neatness in exchange for not accidently drawing blood.

We mutually decided to just stop when we reached the one hour mark when my trusty method of; ‘just cut it shorter and shorter until it vaguely looks right’ failed me slightly. I went to run him a bath muttering things like; “he’s six! Nobody care’s what a boy of six’s hair looks like!” and “it’s better than it was, at least. Sort of. Maybe if you squint at it a bit.”

Oddly, he actually quite likes it. I suspect I’m going to finish the job at another point over the weekend, but a lesson has been learned. I’m not exactly sure what that lesson is. I suspect Tom’s lesson is; ‘Never say yes!’, and my husband’s is; ‘Hide the ruddy scissors before leaving the house!’ Unfortunately for them, my lesson appears to be along the lines of; ‘if at first you don’t succeed, just keep cutting and cutting until eventually it’s at least short, even if it’s still not even.’

At least I’m not cruel enough to post pictures of it.

Well, apart from this one.

Pip xxx

(I have had another go, and it looks substantially better now!)

About that thing...

So, the place-holder post that mentioned a slightly annoying virus? Yeah, turns out I really was ill.  The first week I was diagnosed with a bronchial infection, so I dutifully took the antibiotics prescribed.  I continued to shiver, shake, turn blue, collapse and generally feel like death, so I staggered back to the doctor to tell her that I thought I needed more time of work, and I was very, very sorry.  She checked me again, and uttered the word 'Pneumonia'.  I was prescribed a new set of antibiotics and instructed to take things very, very easy. I had to go back home to get my purse to pay for the prescription because it had not occurred to me that I might need more drugs.

Turns out, having pneumonia is quite dibilitating. Who knew? I have learned recently, that I'm not very good at taking things easy. Fortunately for me, for most of that week, I was unable to do much but lie on the sofa and pray for a swift death, but the fact that I wanted to do other things had me in tears most days.

The doctor had said that if I was in any way concerned, to come back and see another doctor the following week (she was on leave), and feeling like the biggest wuss in the history of wussy-wuss-pants, I staggered back to the doctors again on the Friday to see someone new.  I babbled for a while, saying I just didn't know whether I should go back to work or not. I argued that I don't do manual work, and that technically I could sit in an office chair and cough at a computer at work, but I didn't want to make myself worse so wouldn't go if he thought it was a bad idea.  He considered all my arguments, then listened to my chest and said 'you still have pneumonia, you're not going anywhere.'

So another week of antibiotics. And remember that mistake I made with the purse on week two because I'm sometimes exceptionally thick? I did the same thing on week three.

The good thing was that at this point, most of the fever had gone, and my breathing was just free enough for me to be able to walk to the kitchen to make some tea.  I was also able to sit up and write!  Hurrah!

I saw the doctor again on Friday, and she listened again, and agreed that I was pretty much there as far as the pneumonia went, and I was fine to try to work the next week (this week) as long as I didn't push myself hard at all.

I took 'don't push yourself' to mean 'yes, you can take the children to the part for a couple of hours as long as you don't run after them, jump up and down or anything of that ilk' so that's what we did on Saturday.

Sunday I needed to spend the entire day in bed to recover.

I think it's possible I'm still underestimating this thing.

This week, I have Tom for three days, then I'm going to try to work on Thursday.  I suspect it will go well, though I've been instructed by my team, my boss, and my doctor not to push it if I don't think I can manage a full ten-hour day.

Who here thinks I'm going to take that on board and not overdo it?

Yeah.  Me neither.

Pip xxx