Bit Of a Rant in Scottish Meanderings

What a hellish week it’s been. I wanted to come on here on Monday to rant about it purely to try and purge some of the stress but I didn’t have the energy which you will be glad about because things are much better today thank goodness!

Still need to get it out though so unfortunately you're still sitting there with the short straw in your hand :)

Nikki and I both got a sickness and diaorrhea bug at the same time. And that apparently was enough to start World War III. Because I’m not allowed to be ill. I’m supposed to drop everything no matter what’s going on in my life and hare out to hers even if I’m exploding out of both ends. Which, in itself, makes no sense. If you’re exploding out of both ends the last person you want taking care of you is someone else who is also exploding out of both ends!

Anyway I picked up that she was really struggling on Friday and not eating or drinking, far less being able to take care of a 6 year old and a 3 year old. A mother’s natural instinct is to take care of her child/grandchildren so, despite feeling dizzy and really ill, I attempted to get out there. I thought I could maybe incorporate another task at the same time which was picking something up from a garden centre in a little village called Mintlaw about 15 miles further on from Pitmedden (where Nikki lives) so I decided to go there first then pop in to them on the way back.

Perfectly doable if I was healthy but 5 minutes into the journey it was clear I was anything but and I eventually had to turn tail and head back (with several stops en route) only just making it home in time. However I had made the mistake of telling Nikki my plan so she had taken that to mean getting to Mintlaw was more important than getting out to them and I therefore didn’t care about them!

And the reason I was going to Mintlaw in the first place was because it was Janice’s 60th birthday on Monday and I was supposed to be babysitting the girls that day while Nikki went for a scan so therefore wouldn’t be able to get her present to her. We'd gone to the garden centre in August and she'd seen a large blue ceramic wellies planter she wanted but they were a bit expensive so I'd earmarked them for her birthday, thinking I would have plenty of time to take a trip out before October! Ha! So because I clearly wasn't well and there was a good chance it was going to get worse over the weekend, I wanted to at least get the present so that I could tell her I had something but just couldn't get it to her. She's been so good to me since I've been ill and has also had plans changed, cancelled, postponed etc numerous times this year because of Nikki so I really wanted to try and get this right at least.

At the stops en route home, I tried to rustle up Nikki's friend, Tracey, to go round to the house instead but she was at a funeral. However she said she would pop in past afterwards. I texted Nikki to tell her but the damage had apparently been done - I got a horrible text saying I'd hurt her and a snippy text from Tracey later that night asking me to try and get out the following day because ‘Nikki needed a lot of support right now’.

No shit Sherlock.

So of course that added a good dollop of stress and guilt to my misery but I was worse over the weekend so desperately rounded up another friend, Jenna, to go round on Sunday as Tracey was away in Glasgow for the day. However Nikki said she just wanted to sleep and wouldn't get up to unlock the front door (Jenna didn’t have a key). As well as that she dropped a bombshell that Tracey had phoned the hospital on Saturday night and they said she would have to go up there if she carried on not drinking because she’d be so dehydrated.

That totally scared the shit out of me because there was no way I could look after the girls and their other Granny, Jane, was on holiday in Spain. It also didn’t help that it was supposed to be Joel’s weekend for taking the girls that weekend but he’d had to go offshore for 3 weeks so was going to miss having them twice. Normally I tend to defend him when Nikki rants on about him not putting his kids first because I always think well yes but he also has to find £700 from somewhere to give to you every month so you can’t blame him for grabbing the chance of working offshore when it comes up! This time however ......

I spent all of Sunday in a state of high stress (not helped by being sleep deprived through worry) and she finally, at 8 p.m., got in touch. She'd managed to drink a glass of water and eat a couple of breadsticks so hospital was averted for the time being thank God. I asked her if she felt she’d make the scan next day and she said she wanted to try, mainly to check on the baby (it was primarily to check on her kidneys which had previously been giving her pain). However she was too weak to drive so would have to find someone to give her a lift but she would sort it out next morning. And that's how we left it.

On Monday at 11, I struggled up feeling like death and was ready for them at noon.

No-one arrived.

Beside myself with worry in case it meant she’d been taken into hospital, I texted at 12.30 and an hour later she replied saying she’d been to the scan and the baby was fine. When I asked where the girls were she said she had to take them with her ‘because I had a bug so couldn’t look after them’. Funny how that wasn’t mentioned the night before!

Clearly I was being punished for ‘not caring’. The stress of that and feeling so shit anyway nearly broke me but the next day there was more to come. She sent me a text to say that she was furious that I had contacted Jane (Joel's mum whom I'd texted to see when she was back from Spain) and could I please not contact any of her other friends because they didn’t need that stress and neither did she! I had told her I'd planned to try getting out there again that afternoon but she said there was no point because 'the girls might catch it'. These would be the same girls who had been exposed to it 24/7 for 5 days straight at that point! And I notice there was no worry about them catching it when I was supposed to struggle out there somehow on Friday!

So I left her to lie in her puddle of martyrdom and realised she probably did me a favour in the end because it meant I could take it easy and recover properly - I had my first tea for 5 days that night and actually had an appetite for it then went for a short walk later and boy did that feel good! Just the contrast I think.

By Wednesday I was feeling much better which was handy because I had the second meeting with my counselling supervisor at the agency where I did my voluntary counselling previously. I had the first one with her in August in a nearby café and something weird happened in the middle which I think I’ll write about separately because I can’t really make any sense of it. On Wednesday we met in the building itself because I realised there’s a bit of post-traumatic stress stuff to get over as I took ill there on two separate occasions, one of them very badly.

I’m glad to say it went great! Carol, my supervisor, is completely on board to do whatever it takes to get me back on that horse again and is taking my lead as to what I want to happen. So for next time, I’ve asked her to see if she can get someone to act as a pseudo client for an hour long pseudo counselling session where I will be able to stop if I feel unwell or my body starts revving up alarmingly. She says that’s no problem and will get the wheels in motion for sometime in December as she’s on holiday in November. So that's cool.

To celebrate, I decided to pay the big library in town a visit afterwards. I’ve had to curtail my acquisitions from the library this year because I’m only managing to get through a few pages of a book at bedtime just now before I’m out like a light. I was getting sick of never making it to the end of a book before I had renewed it 3 times (our limit) and had to take it back! So I had decided to stop going for a while and read some of my own books instead. I was initially going to the big one just to write but the lure of all these books was too much!

Have you any idea how hard it is to be in a huge 2 storey building full of free books and limit yourself to one?? Couldn’t do it. I had 4 in my bag within 10 minutes so luckily, as I also had my iPad with me, I forced myself to step away from the books and sit down and write you this drivel instead. Aren’t you pleased!!

And of course - Sod's Law - the 3 books I've had on request as reservations for weeks have all come through at once this morning and are ready to be picked up!

Anyway things have once more righted themselves and it looks like Nikki’s speaking to me again. I texted her in the library to ask how she was and she sent a perfectly normal flurry of texts back and fore basically saying she’s a lot better and had been out in the car for half an hour that afternoon. And we arranged to go to the panto yesterday but had to cancel as she had another bout of diaorrhea in the morning so I went out to the house in the afternoon and drew pictures, played Beetle, Bingo, Pairs, created dances and read stories. Poor kids - they've had a rotten week of it - they hardly drew breath for the first 20 minutes, desperate to tell Granny All The Things.

Lily is getting really good at reading - she took over reading Goldilocks and The Three Bears and hardly made any mistakes then I suggested we make up our own story and write it down and we'd great fun with that! I really miss having time with them in my own house or separately (Nikki refuses to take them in and leave them with me and I haven't enough energy to drive out there, transfer the car seats, take them in, look after them and take them back out again then drive home). For instance when we started doing the story, it completely absorbed Lily but Lilah got bored quickly and did everything she could to distract us! Nikki could easily have helped out in that respect - she was sitting on the chair in her dressing gown mucking about on her phone completely ignoring us.

There's one good thing about small grandchildren though - it doesn't take much to impress them. In an effort to keep both amused, I suggested we drew some pictures so while they scribbled, I quickly sketched out Lily's ladybug which was sitting on the table minding its own business. She was entranced when she saw it and offered to colour it in for me - now I've got to do another one so's he has a 'friend'!


But actually as I was doing it, I realised just how relaxing it was. I've never been tempted to do any adult colouring but I would love to learn how to draw properly just for fun. It's one of these things I've 'always meant to get round to doing' - along with the piano lessons and the Italian lessons! I'm not sure I would have the discipline to follow stuff on the Internet myself - I think I would need the impetus of a class and some kind of constructive criticism to keep me going. Maybe next year I'll get that little project off the ground.

And you see the little people to the left of 'O' (ladybug's name)? That's Lilah drawing her family. You can't see it in its entirety as her hand is covering it but she's already including the baby in her pictures! So sweet. Although as she was pointing everyone out to me she realised someone was missing and said very emphatically "And I'm just about to add YOU Granny!!" in a very cheery voice :) Diplomatic at 3 years old!

Nikki managed to get cheap tickets for the panto this morning so they're away to that and I think bowling this afternoon with Tracey and her wee girl so hopefully they can still salvage some of what's left of the October holiday.

And so I will therefore lick my wounds and battle on.