I’m not bothered that she told me, dammit I felt sorry for the girl by the sounds of it was hardly a gentle introduction into the monthly merry-go-round of PMS and stomach cramps but it did make me stop and think – I would have been mortified as an early teen if I’d have found out my Mom was walking down the street casually discussing what was going on in my pants with her friends – So what exactly compels us to share so much intimate information about our children with other parents?

As babies we’d discuss sleep patterns and the consistency and texture of poo, in mother and toddler classes it would be first words and and first steps. In nursery and then into school every milestone would be celebrated with clucking and cooing on the playground, the more competitive parents (mothers usually) exaggerating their children’s achievements, the quieter ones ducking the playground politics by discreetly bowing out of my child’s better than yours conversations and now here we are,me and my parent friends in the brink of those dreaded teenage years discussing puberty, periods and mood swings.

So why do we share so much? Are we telling each other all these things to gain reassurance from each other that were doing it right? To get an opinion on things we feel were doing wrong? Are we showing off? Living vicariously through out children, bragging about there progress and achievements, Or are we pre programmed as humans to share things and as parents our children are one of the biggest things in our lives so it’s only natural that these details get shared.

Or is it at as feel some of all of the above?

I am ill, I have had the beginnings of a cold since some time mid October and finally broke on December 27th leaving me a snotty wretched mess for most of the new year celebrations and is still dragging on.  I had no time to be ill. What with the new job and commute to get used to, the being a Mom and a cook and all round domestic goddess*  and then that Christmas thing right in the middle of it all.

Christmas the time of good will to all men. The time off to relax and just enjoy each others company. Christmas the time my brother chose to declare to the whole family I was a fat slut across the dinner table  (no really), the time my sister ends up with hypochondria an ear infection at the emergency doctors with me in tow , James gets manflu  after playing a  gig, the time for present shopping, food shopping, medicine shopping, gift wrapping, visiting relations, forced merriment and  no time to look after myself so just make myself steadily worse.

I returned to work to hear of glorious tales of Christmas afternoon beach walks, mad uncles playing charades and country get away’s. and all I had to share is a runny nose, annoying cough, slightly depressing tales of a half hearted family get together and a desperate need for more sleep.

I knew it was sleep I craved when I got off the train this morning I looked at the tracks and thought “I could use that pile of gravel as a pillow” while my inner monologue was telling me that the train on the platform 4b is heading straight back to Wolverhampton, so go on, get on it no one will miss you for just one day. But I didn’t I continued on my not so merry way convinced the walk into Digbeth would clear my head and I’d feel better after a hot Lemsip.

It didn’t and all the cup full of liquid paracetamol succeeded in was giving me something to cough into. Thankfully I have a pretty awesome boss and when he arrived this morning to find a sniffling mess choking at the desk  he said I could just go home – just like that – “You don’t need to be here” and I don’t know who was more relieved when he dropped me off at the train station, me as I could, you know, go home, or the him as he didn’t have to listen to my self pitying sighs and hacking cough all day.

So now here I am just before 7pm sitting in the arm chair I haven’t left since getting here shortly before 2, waiting for my dinner, central heating on as I just can’t get warm, tissues on one side, lemsip on the other smelling of Boots own brand vapour rub and feeling sorry for myself. Christmas a distant memory other than the rack full of wine we were too ill to drink, trying not to annoy James too much as he attempts to get some work done at the desk behind me, wanting to sleep but exploding in coughing fits every time I lie down, limping into 2012 in the most lacklustre style!

Happy New Year!

*I am only a part time cook and cleaner James does his fair share around the house too but for the purposes of this post and gaining the most amount of sympathy possible I do it all myself

My Grandad is really poorly again, I live in fear of the day he will no longer be around – he was is and always will be one of the main men in my life and I love him lots.

A Family Photo

This photo was taken before I was born, we think around 1978/79. It has all the most important men from my childhood included in it, It’s like a capsule containing my whole life history!

This man is Pete. He’s my Dad….

….He died suddenly in 1985, I was only 4. One day he was here, the next he was gone – I don’t miss him all the time – that sounds harsh but it’s true – I was too young to really appreciate what I had and then it was gone.  I never had the chance to get to know the man my dad was growing up and only really started questioning my roots as I got older. I missed having a Dad and the paternal side to my family more than I missed the man that was Peter Jennings – I just wasn’t given the opportunity to know him and I think I grieve for that more than I do for him at times.

This man is Tony, my maternal Grandad….

..My sister and I went with my Mom and lived with my grandparents for a short while after my Dad passed away.  My Mom needed the space and a chance to grieve and recover from the shock of becoming a widow and single parent overnight. We were only there for a couple of months but the effects lasted a lifetime.

While everyone else was pushing their luck and hearing “You just wait until you father gets home!!” This is the man I was I had to wait to get home, I adored him as a child, he was my Grandad, my stand in father figure and my friend, as a small girl I would often climb the tree by the bus stop and wait for him to get home from work when he’d scoop me up and carry me home on his shoulders, as a teen he had the best technique for help towel dry hair and as a young adult, pregnant and suffering from morning sickness he made the only thing I could stomache, the most divine poached egg on toast!

He was, and still is my rock and I know I could still go to him for anything! He’s been with me FOREVER!

Now this man is Dave, he was one of Dad’s very good friends before his death and now he is now my Stepdad!

My Mom and Dave got together when I was 14 and married in 2001 when I was 20. When he moved in we were going through my Dads vinyl record collection together and Dave pulled our a couple of records that had actually belonged to him.

I truly would not wish for her to be with anyone else! He is a fantastic Dad to me, my sister and brother and a devoted Grandad to Jordan.  He’s supported my Mom through thick and thin and cared for us all for years and I’m glad it was him my mom married!

For Sale, Historic Earthquake Site, River View, Portaloos coming. $1,000,000.

Taken cycling through Avonside one of the worst effected areas in the February 22nd quake, today’s picture isn’t about the image it’s about the message.

Today (June 13th) Christchurch was rocked by another series of large aftershocks, thankfully this time only a few were injured and there were no fatalities, but there has been yet more extensive damage to the infrastructure.

Houses fallen, businesses closed and roads, sewers, power lines and water mains “munted” – yet more uncertainty and testing times for the residents but this image shows that after the worst of experiences you can still see the bright side and maintain a sense of humour.

Stay strong Christchurch, or Kia Kaha as the locals would say, keep your heads up and you’ll come through this again!

Which actually should have been a challenge as New Zealand is land of beautiful scenery, but mainly comprising of the mountains and the sea, so not a lot of red…. until recently.

Post quake Christchurch is awash with red, but this is no good thing. If you’ve seen todays #NZpicoftheday you’ll know why but it meant my choice of image was already there for the taking.

I’ve been trying to avoid posting “the damage” pictures as much as possible, it felt really voyeuristic walking around the remains of people lives and snapping away. I was very aware that as a tourist I would escape the ruin but for the people who lived there, there can be no escape, this is now their new reality.  In fact taking pictures of the quake damage was one thing I didn’t do for the first 2 weeks we were there. It wasn’t until until I met “locals” with cameras, discussing where they were when the quake hit I felt confident enough to take my camera out it, seeing them made me feel less intrusive about walking around taking pictures but I still shyed away from shooting peoples homes.

Just like seeing those locals in Christchurch who changed my mind about taking the photos, Today’s picture and subsequent conversation with someone who still believed the earthquake damage was isolated to the city centre has made me rethink about posting images of the damage.

The CBD (city centre) is still cordoned off and inaccessible with buildings visibly leaning awaiting deconstruction, rubble is piled everywhere broken glass and detritus still littering every corner.

Every street in every suburb in the east of the city has damage, Houses, roads, businesses, felled trees, burst water mains munted sewerage pipes, collapsed river banks, subsidence and liquifaction is wide spread, and as you head further out into the port hills, to Sumner and Redcliffs, closer to Lyttleton and the epicentre you have to contend with all this and the added devastation rock falls and land slides.

As one New Zealander pointed out to me, this is history as it happens and someone has to record it before it all changes.

300km of sewerage pipes are in need of repairing or replacing, as a result waste is being pumped into the rivers and polluting the sea.

Sumner & Redcliffs RSA building, destroyed in a rock slide during the Feb quake, a boulder the size of my living room crashed through the rear of it.

This could be a photograph of any street corner in the city centre.

The CBD is still cordoned off, navigating the city centre is nightmare when every every second street is inaccessible and the cordons move based on risk analysis, work being undertaken and the constant threat of aftershocks.

Another street, another dead end.

3 months after the quake and glass still litters the streets, the human rescue and recovery tasks taking priority over clean up operations,

Every street is effected, this is Sumner, every household is in upheaval but from a distance it looks like nothing’s wrong, until you look closer and spot the remains of where a house once stood.

Even the footpaths in places are now impassable

When cracks appear in the road wider then your foot where do you start fixing them? – The answer – they didn’t they started with the ones big enough for someone to stand in

Whole sections of the road just shifted, this is right on the coast near Spencer Park easily and hour away from the CBD

The raw power of a quake, twisted and mangled foot bridge across the river Avon, thankfully this was damaged in the September quake which hit in the early hours of the morning so no one was on it.

Whole sections of ground have dropped by more than a metre – I wish I could say this was unique to the river banks but this subsidence is evident across the city and suburbs…

….Damage is everywhere,

I love my camera, I just always wish I was more proficient with it, so I’ve been reading lots and lots of articles to try and improve, The most recent one about shooting into the sun so I thought I’d give it a go.

Generally the rule is shoot with the sun over your shoulder, so it felt a little odd blinding myself through the viewfinder but I persevered took a couple and this one was my favourite.

I’m not 100% happy with it but I’m not sure what it is that I’m unhappy with maybe it’s just that I’m not used to deliberately creating glare or maybe it would have worked better had the blonde kid being looking towards the camera?  I don’t know but I  guess I’ll carry on reading and shoot some more, dragging my ever (un)willing test subject out again to try and find out.

Anyone who follows us on twitter would know a large part of our time has been taken up recently keeping up with events the other side of the world. More specifically the Christchurch earthquake. Not only do I have family in Christchurch we are also due to fly out to see them in just over 5 weeks time. We’ve discussed the earthquake with Jordan and what that means to our trip and our family out there but we wanted to see how much he had taken in. James wanted to set him the task of writing about it. After some discussion a compromise was reached and it was decided that TBK would, using his knowledge of the earthquake, write a fictional first person account from someone caught in the quake.

He’s only 11 – this is what he wrote:

The Christchurch Earthquake: My Experience

I was minding my own business walking through the park when all of a sudden the ground started shaking, buildings started collapsing and liquefaction started coming up out of the ground. Every where felt like jelly, I was being tossed and turned, I couldn’t move, I knew straight away we were having another earthquake.

It stopped….. Everything had been destroyed. Car alarms were going off, buildings were on fire, I didn’t know what to do! Of course, the first thing that crossed my mind was to run home but there was no one at home, my wife was at work, my children were at school and my mom and dad passed away three years ago.

I quickly ran to my children’s school and they were both luckily fine, I picked them up and ran with them to my wife’s work, it had been completely demolished.

My phone rang, I answered it, it was fuzzy and I couldn’t hear properly, it was MY WIFE I was filled with joy, she had left work for her lunch break thirty minutes ago, she was fine but then everything went silent and I could no longer hear my wife.

I walked with my children to my house, it had not been demolished, only a few tiles were cracked and several chimneys were on the floor in pieces. All the power had gone, I went into the garden to find my wife clearing up the liquefaction, we were all relived to see each other again. We set up our tents in the back garden, as all water supplies were disabled we had to use portaloos, a fire and all the water we could get to ration out between us.

Its been almost a week and we have now got electricity, phone signal and internet connection. The toilets and water supplies are back in business and things are slowly returning to normal, although due to the mess we have still got a lot of work to do.

I’ve been thinking a lot this last week about how hard some other parents have it,  hard because life jumped up and smacked them in the mouth at the same time as hitting their child over the head with a sledge hammer. I am a fairly prolific twitter user and stay in touch with friends (both real and virtual) via that medium and I’ve been quite humbled this week by the journeys some of the parents I follow are having to take.

I’ve only met one of these parents I’m going to outline below  in real life but if hasn’t stopped me from empathising with any of them, because as a parent I just don’t know how I’d be able to cope if I was faced with the same.

The one follower keeps her twitter stream private so I wont out her here but after having a daughter who was  born with Downs Syndrome, a subsequent diagnoses of Cerebral Palsy and in the last week a further diagnosis of severe arthritis all over her body she’s a lot going on but with 2 more children at home and a charity to run which she set up to support other parents in understanding Downs and going it alone as a single parent I just don’t know sometimes how she carries on.

There is @beast76uk (Phillip) whose son Harry recently lost an eye to Retinoblastoma, whose tweets “”Ok #cancer, this war is WON! Fuck you. Yes, you took his eye, small price to pay in the long run. but we’ve stopped you. You’re fuckin GONE!” and “Got Harry’s #histology results back 2day. No spread of the cancer. absolutely #chuffedtobits ! Left eye is in remission. #couldntbehappier” made me ridiculously happy for a man I’d never met and left me in awe of his resilience as a parent, I don’t know, and I hope I never have to find out how I would react  if faced with the same.

Now there is @junction10 (Jason) someone I have never met but started following a while back because his sense of humour and sarcastic updates made me laugh (and he’s  a bloody fine photographer to boot), Another twitter user who is currently going through hell as a parent. Just as I was reading that @beast76uk son was winning their battle with the dreaded C word,  Jason’s son Joel was just starting his own, a diagnosis of a brain tumour, subsequent surgery and the prospect of 12 months of radio and chemotherapy is a terrible way to start the year.

I don’t know why but Jason and Joel’s story seems to have affected me more than the others (and maybe more than it should for someone I don’t know), maybe it’s because the sarcastic, humorous tone of his stream as been overtaken with heart wrenching updates of his son’s progress where the others didn’t change in such a dramatic way, and that it has laid bare the fundamental fear as parent that when something is going on with your child that is completely out of your control and with the stakes so high just how hard it can be but whatever the reason it has upset me.

Last night I read Jason’s blog “A Sense of Tumour” documenting the journey of diagnosis and tests and surgery (and hospital parking) and then went to bed. At 1:30 I was woken by TBK and his 2 friends who were here for a sleepover. They were banging around and making such a racket I’m surprised the neighbours hadn’t been to knock the door,  I was just about to get out of bed to read them the riot act when an image from the blog came to mind and I remembered how lucky I was to be at home with my son safe, healthy and happy waking me up. A quiet word with the boys and peace resumed and returned to bed with the lasting impression of how lucky I really am!

For years the Christmas season starts for me in a flurry of decorating, the tree, the windows, the fire place….  but do I share a tender moment with my devoted son while we choose whether to have the angel or the star atop of the tree this year?

NO BECAUSE HE’D DO IT ALL WRONG!!

I have to decorate in certain way, in a certain order, lights, then ribbon (NOT TINSEL) the fir cones, then the baubles. If anything, in my mind, is out of place it drives me insane, It has in previous years taken me a a whole day just to put up a tree, but even better THEN and only then can the star or angel be put on top  – and this has to be chosen last of all and sometimes not until the day AFTER putting the tree and the rest of the decorations up because once chosen it has to stay there – no swapping and changing AT ALL so this is an important choice!

The colours have to be evenly spread and JUST SO and the fireplace swag has to match the tree and be decorated in the same order at the same  no compromise – as an example of how bad this is when we unpacked and erected the tree this year I couldn’t decorate it!! We’d managed to leave the swag in the loft and I just couldn’t put anything on the tree until this was down too!!  Luckily for me James is very understanding of the crazy and went back up to hunt for it as I could feel myself become quite silly about it!!

Last year was the first year I introduced colour to my tree in the form of bronze and red to go with the well established gold and ivory theme I’ve had going for years in an attempt for make myself loosen up a bit – I’m insane!

All this causes much mirth and derision particularly from my not so understanding sister and much exasperation and frustration from myself.

BUT IF You think that’s bad I used to be worse, much worse, for instance (and  I’ve worked hard at getting over this one because it was ridiculous as I would hunt for days to get this right), the gifts used to have to colour coordinated – the adult presents would be gold or ivory paper with red ribbon and the children’s red with gold or ivory ribbon and wrapped just so….

Notable insane moments:

• The year I unwrapped ALL the presents and started again because they didn’t look right (unwrapping one or two to start again isn’t a rare occurrence in my house BUT all of them is a stretch by even by standards)
• Taking down the tree and starting from scratch TWICE!
• Letting TBK and James hang baubles only to go ahead and move them when I thought they wouldn’t notice because they were in the “wrong” place.
• Point blank refusing to let James bring any of his decorations with him when he moved in with us as they wouldn’t match mine, and then buying him decorations that matched my colour scheme and still refusing to let him hang them on the tree because they’re just not right!
• Finally succumbing to my OCD and buying TBK a tree & decorations for in his room as I didn’t want him to miss out on decorating his own tree and he can have as much tinsel as he likes!

So with all this in mind imagine how I’m coping this year with two very mischievous cats who are spending their first Christmas with us!!

I took the decision early on not to put out my nativity scene and I’m glad I didn’t because they keep knocking things over and pulling things down. They keep climbing my tree and flattening the branches and knocking off baubles  and chewing my ribbon, and yesterday they discovered if they pull hard enough they can pull my fireplace swag clean off the surround thus clearing any obstacles for them to sit on there – somewhere THEY NEVER CHOOSE TO SIT AT ANY OTHER TIME OF THE YEAR.

This year it’s going to be kill or cure for my OCD as I’m either going to have to deal with it – or go not so quietly insane battling with those damn cats – I’m hoping for the first option but as I left for work nearly in tears this morning as I again found my beautiful fire place destroyed I think odds are I’m currently leaning towards the latter!

…So this December has been decreed Good Deed December, my own advent of good deeds.

Between now and Christmas day I plan on trying to complete a good deed each day and hopefully update here and my twitter feed (@essitam) using the tag #gooddeedfortheday, (when I get around to it, I suck at keeping blogs up to date maybe this is the impetus I need).

I’m sure some deeds will be more worthy than others but it’s important to remember the little things also count……

1st December Carried a ladies bags up a flight of stairs.

2nd December Dispatched James to an elderly neighbours to get her shopping list and went to the super market after work just for her (I needed nothing myself)

3rd December took the lovely lady in the post office a Lemsip, she was suffering when she dealt with my parcels and I thought she could do with it.

4th December held a door open for a lady with a pushchair, no other opportunities really presented themselves today, although James and TBK were more successful clearing and salting both our neighbours paths while I was at work – although does working on a Saturday count as a good deed

(bonus good deed for today, bought my boys an advent calendar, as they hadn’t got one…does that count?)

5th December double whammy today. Sorted out my wardrobe and donated all my old things the charity and while shopping we spotted someone getting into their car whose little boy dropped their gloves so TBK and I left the store to reunite gloves and owner.

6th December Went hunting for Epsom salts for fellow twitter user Jayne Howarth and found some, only to have the benefit of the good deed undone on the way home when browsing twitter I discovered she’d already found some should have checked twitter before I embarked on my search….

….but that’s ok because today I also said I’d help my friend promote the charity she works for, Liberty UK. She asked for the extra push from her friends as all donations made through the BIG GIVE website everyday after 10am between today and December 10th will be doubled (up to £20,000)! Check it out and donate if you can.

7th December Volunteered to walk across town to deliver a parcel so my colleagues didn’t have to go out in this cold weather.

8th December Think my sister might be taking advantage of me, I keep getting requests off her – Can you do XXXX for me….it could be your good deed for today! – But as I spent a lot of the day cooped up in the office and then rushing about I obliged her and as today’s good deed I have arranged printing, delivery and framing of my sister’s mother in law’s Christmas present – and if she gets her way tomorrow’s good deed will be another one for her too – maybe my good deed should  just be tolerance of her abuse of my good deed pledge!

•23:30 and a Bonus #gooddeedfortheday just spent 30 mins on the phone helping a friend fill in another application form. When I say help I mean dictating, she’d make a brilliant PA, we seem to have spent a lot of time recently with her taking down what I’m saying over the phone.

9th December fun one today,. It’s TBK’s birthday so I decided to spread a little happiness to everyone else too, myself, my sister and my friend went to the local town, took a tub of sweets to the shopping centre and offered them to anyone we encountered, fellow customers, shop staff or passers by. It raised a few suspicious looks, a couple of frowns but mostly smiles and laughs, with one guy politely declining our offer only to reappear a few minutes later with a laugh to take some of Haribos finest.

10th December Took the time to ask someone I barely know what was wrong when they looked a little down, spent the next hour offering advise and support as it turned out  they needed someone to lean on a whole lot more than you could tell -  sometimes peoples brave fronts crumble when someone cares enough to ask what’s wrong.

11th December Last night was TBK’s birthday “sleep over” we had six 10 & 11 year olds  in our house hence I use the term sleep very loosely, they were up all night so we haven’t actually left the house today, but I still did a good deed – or at least the last guest to leave thinks so.
One of TBK’s friends parents has had to work all day today and he should have gone to his Nan’s when leaving here but he really didn’t want to,  So despite being kept awake until late, woken early and eaten out of house and home, we volunteered to look after him here so he didn’t have to go.

12th December as she was unable to do it herself I spent a good proportion of today scanning in 400+ old family photos for a friend who wants to send a disk to her brother in America for Christmas.

13th December got home from work and noticed a large amount of broken glass in the street so went and fetched the broom dustpan and brush and swept it all up putting it into the bin – slicing my thumb open in the process – DOH!

14th December This good deed each day thing is harder than it sounds when you spend all day sat behind a desk at work, working through lunch and then rush home on public transport to complete Mom duties – Opportunities to help people out or to just do something nice don’t tend to just present themselves when you’re engrossed in WordPress or excel!

Anyway today’s good deed was part good deed, part self indulgence – I offered and subsequently bought a Big Issue seller a cup of tea – he wasn’t actually selling the Big Issue at the time but I recognised him from when I do buy the Big Issue from him – the self indulgent part was I also bought myself a Toffee Nut Latte from Starbucks to treat myself (and flirt with the man behind the counter) at the same time!

15th December Today’s good deed was used to help someone else fulfil a good deed.

I helped a man plot a surprise for a friend. He wanted to send her a card with a cinema ticket in for a film that she really wanted to see and she thought she’d missed on the big screen but  Light House are re running, but he didn’t want her to know it was from him, So I wrote out the card and envelope in an attempt to help him evade recognition and offered to deliver it on my way home.

16th December it appears when opportunity doesn’t present itself I always have the fall back option to complete one of the many things my sister has asked be to do as my good deed, today I went into town to fetch her secret santa gift… Not a gift for her, but a gift for her to give.

Bonus good deed, just been called upon to play nurse to my brother taking him sympathy and soup to his bed as he and his girlfriend both have the lurgy. I’m a good big sister to my siblings I am.

17th December I didn’t get out of work until late so no chance to do anything really…unless you count the working through every lunch break this week, and occasionally staying late to help cover for the various staff who are off work.

18 December messaged my grandparents to check they were ok and didn’t need to go out in the snow, dropped a note to the neighbour with our phone numbers on so she can get in touch with us if she needs anything so she doesn’t have to go out either, lots if weather based good deeds today.

19th December coordinated the clearing of our neighbours paths of snow and ice … The cold weather makes doing good deeds easy.

20th December went to work on the first day of my Christmas holiday and ended up criss crossing town with a pile of letters to find an open Post Office as the one I usually use was flooded  to ensure people Christmas cards were sent out on time – I’d already posted all mine but well i was asked nicely… evening spent the night selling merch at a bands ep launch despite it snowing heavily and not knowing if we’d get home (we did eventually after our train was cancelled and B’ham

……

……

19 January…It’s now mid January and as you can see the last post update I made was  20th December – so did I fail in my Good Deed for the Day mission, NOT AT ALL.

I completed the full 24 days I just absolutely suck at keep blogs up to date and as Christmas came closer I had less time to sit in front of the computer and blog, and even though I have WordPress for Android installed on my phone I just never got around to updating here. I did keep tweeting though through out the whole advent so if you were following me there you would have seen the last of my “Deeds”.

I thought I’d finish this post of with a “Thank You”, Thank you for the encouragement I received from people who read this, friends and strangers on Facebook and Twitter, Thank you to the people who smiled when I did something nice for them, But Thank You mostly for the couple of people who’ve been intouch to say as a result of this post they’d carried out good deeds of their own.

I may suck at keeping blog posts up to date but I can do nice things for others and you can too!!