Last week was half term and I was looking forward to spending some time with the kids. Liddy was flying in from Germany to spend some time with us and Hubby had the Thursday and Friday off work as we were going to Liverpool to visit his brother.
Monday wasn't the greatest start to the week. I woke up feeling very rough, which isn't an unusual occurrence I know but this felt different. And within minutes of being awake I was rushing for the loo where I started throwing up. Before long it was pouring out the other end (worse than it normally does) and I was left feeling shaky and jittery.
Because I had an appointment at St Marks that day I had already arranged for friends to have the kids so at least I didn't have them to look after. But being ill like that meant that there was no way I was going to be able to attend my appointment. Even if I had been able to survive the journey there it wouldn't have been right to go into a hospital with a bug. That's 2 appointments I have had to cancel in the last month because I've been too unwell to go. The problem is though that you then get sent the next available appointment, which in the case of Dr8's clinic is in February next year! Goodness knows when I will be rescheduled to see the surgeon.
So I spent Monday in bed, feeling worse than normal and feeling sorry for myself. Luckily the sickness stopped by lunchtime but I wasn't so lucky with the other outpouring; that went on until bedtime. Nice. I had planned to have friends round on Tuesday with their kids so I sent out a message when I woke up saying that I had been ill, that they were still welcome to come and that it was up to them, I wouldn't be offended if they chose to stay away. Nobody did, either because there was takeaway pizza on offer for dinner or because they know my immune system is so much weaker than most other peoples so even if I had suffered with a bug they were likely to only have a very mild upset stomach compared with the verociousness of the symptoms that I had enjoyed.
So I played host to 6 of my closest friends and their 13 children (plus a baby) You're probably thinking that I must be mad, especially after being so ill the day before. And you're probably right but I had promised the kids and the earache I would face from them if I cancelled would be much worse than the tummy ache I had!! Plus it was brilliant to catch up with everybody and to have the house full. To me a full house equals a happy home. Believe it or not, the house didn't look too bad after they all left because they had all played outside for an hour before coming in and rotating between playing the FIFA 15 on the xbox, minecraft on the iPads or traditional games like twister, bukeroo and memory.
We had pizza as promised and this is what it took to feed everyone.
Luckily it was '2 for Tuesday' where it's buy one get one free on pizzas and the rest was made up with a groupon voucher that I had bought a few weeks ago where I paid £10 and got a £25 voucher. I figured that for the £20 it cost me it wouldn't have been much cheaper to go to the supermarket and buy pizzas or any other kind of dinner plus it meant no cooking and hardly any washing up!
After pizzas and fruit they tucked into dessert.
It was really hard to be around so much yummy food, especially as take away pizza is one of my favourite foods, but I stuck to my rice and custard. I had learnt my lesson after the Nutella!
The kids loved having their friends round to play and it was nice to see all my Mummy friends especially as one of them is moving to Devon in just over a week. It will be very strange for her not to be local as we've been friend for nearly 10 years and our children have grown up together.
When I woke up Wednesday morning I was feeling absolutely exhausted. As much fun as the day before was there is always a price to pay and so I stayed in with the kids and we packed our bags ready to go to Liverpool on Thursday. I think kids are like dogs (bear with me and I will explain!) they smell fear and can sense weakness. My kids are not angels and my mother in law calls my daughter 'spirited' which is basically a nice way of saying that she can be a pain in the bum sometimes! And like animals, they have short memories. Because they seemed to have forgotten that less than 24 hours earlier the house was teeming with their friends and now were moaning that they were bored. I think they were also unhappy because I had given them an iPad ban as they had played on it so much the day before and I knew that they would be on it for hours in the car on the way to Liverpool. By the time Hubby came home I was drained from play referee all afternoon, although I had managed to pack our bags. Because I felt so rough I stayed at home while the three of them went to collect Liddy from the airport.
Thursday we met Lois and the kids for breakfast at Wetherspoons so that Liddy could meet the baby for the first time. Plus it meant that the kids we fed well before setting off on the journey to Liverpool and wouldn't need to eat loads of snacks on the way up there. That theory did work but by about 2pm they were starving so I suggested that we pull into a service station. I needed to go to the loo and I planned on grabbing them the McDonalds that I had promised they could have for lunch.
I think we managed to stop at the only service station in the whole of England that didn't have either a McDonalds or a Burger King. It had a costa which was great for me, but I knew straight away that the kids wouldn't eat anything from the noodle bar, the healthy eating food place that I can't remember the name of or the little chef type place. I asked Hubby if we could go to the next service station but that was a big mistake. I think he was fed up from driving and he didn't want to stop at another services. He just wanted to drive and get there ASAP. Plus he decided that this was the right moment to tackle the kids fussy eating, that they needed to eat better and there would be no junk food for lunch.
So what ensued was a 30 minute battle of him trying to persuade the kids to eat something, anything while they refused point blank because I had promised them McDonalds. In the end I had had enough. I was knackerex from the drive and couldn't listen to the moaning and whining any longer so I just took them into WH Smiths and let them choose whatever they wanted in there. Crisps, chocolate, fizzy drinks and a pepperami ended up constituting as lunch and left me £20 poorer. Plus it was no healthier and infact probably worse nutritionally than if they had gone to a fast food place. And I made sure that Hubby knew about it.
The rest of the drive was made in silence as the kids played on their iPads, hubby and I refused to speak and poor Liddy got caught up in it all. But she did live with us for 6 months so she was used to our little tiffs! By the time we arrived we were all desperate to get out of the car, stretch our legs and use the loo. I had underestimated the length of the journey and was totally wrecked. Travelling never used to bother me but now if I'm in the car for any more than 30 minutes then I really suffer and find it exhausting. I'm a dreadful passenger and miss being able to drive so much.
We were pleased to see Hubby's brother and wife and their bump. I think they were a bit shocked by the amount of stuff we had brought with us though. My medication, fluids and all the paraphernalia for that plus two kids means there's no such thing as travelling light for me anymore. The kids had brought enough teddies and soft toys to open their own shop! Because they've not got kids yet they're used to being able to go away with just a weekend bag but all that will change in a few months when the baby comes. I think they're excited and terrified in equal measures right now and it took me back to when Hubby and I were expecting Big Girl all those years ago.
Sometimes I feel sad that we won't be able to have any more babies (not that we could cope with any more- we struggle with the two that we have!) especially as the kids are so good with little ones and I know they would love to have another little brother or sister. Because of all the ops my insides are so messed up that having another baby is not an option for us anymore; probably natures way of protecting me from a pregnancy. Could you imagine how I would cope if I did fall pregnant? I can't get out of bed most days now, let alone with a bump or with a newborn.
Anyway, I've gone off at a tangent. We decided that on Friday we would go into Liverpool City centre as it would be less busy than on Saturday. The plan was that the girls would go and have girly shopping time buying clothes, shoes, accessories and all things sparkly while the boys would go and get football boots and other man stuff.
Overall it was a really great day and I got Big Girl some lovely clothes, including a gorgeous jumpsuit for Christmas Day but it also had a really low point off me. Although we had split up to shop we got back together to have lunch. We ended up going to Pizza Hut for the buffet which always used to be one of my favourite things in the whole wide world when I could eat. But now, on my rice and custard diet it was like hell on earth. Watching them tuck into pizza, garlic bread, pasta, coleslaw and all the other yummy things I couldn't help but feel sorry for myself and a bit pissed off that I couldn't enjoy eating anymore. The bloody place didn't even have decaff coffee so there was literally nothing I could have.
I ate the pot of custard I had brought out with me but in the end I had to leave. I was sitting there surrounded by them enjoying their lunch (which they are entitled to do, I'm not saying that they shouldn't have been) but it was so hard. This was a real low moment for me and instead of sitting crying, which I was on the verge of doing, I made an excuse of going to get a coffee from Starbucks and left.
I did go to get a coffee and sat drinking my it feeling very sorry for myself and totally fed up with life. There's so little left for me to enjoy sometimes it feels more of an existence than a life. I can't eat anything other than rice and custard. I can't drink anything other than water and decaff coffee. I can't drive. I could go on and on listing all the things I can no longer do but it does me no good to dwell on it. I've been quite down recently and I have to make a conscious effort to think of the good things that I have. Like to just be grateful that I was well enough to go to Liverpool and take my daughter shopping because last year I couldn't have done it. It's just that progress is soooo slow it's hard not to crave the lives you see so many other people enjoying.
Once I was sure that they would have finished eating pizza I headed back only to find them squeezing ice cream in. I have no idea where they put all this food because if I ate that much now I would be sick. I used to do it, especially when I was on steroids and had an attack of the munchies but that's why I'm now 4 stone lighter than I was 18 months ago.
After lunch the girls headed back out to finish shopping but I think the boys had had enough of the shops. In one of the shops we found this brilliant T-shirt. Unfortunately it was in the kids section and there was no way I could squeeze into it.
When we came back to the car a few hours later we found them playing football in the car park! Goodness knows how long they had been there. After all that shopping I was of course totally worn out and went for a lie down while the kids got dressed up in their Halloween costumes and carved a pumpkin with their uncle.
We didn't go out trick of treating but did decorate the house so got quite a few kids knocking at the door. They loved opening it up and giving out the sweets (although I think they are most of them along with their Aunty who needed them 'for the baby'!) I was feeling quite dehydrated so I hooked up to my IV fluids and put my pjs on.
But then I heard my brother-in-law talking about a problem he had with the fridge. Apparently it ices up and he has to either turn it off for a little while or turn the temperature up to warm it up and stop everything freezing. The problem was that he had forgotten to switch it back on after turning it off on Thursday night and my IV fluids were in the fridge. They have to be stored at the correct temperature and they may have been ok if the door had remained shut. But because the door had been opened and closed all morning I don't know how many times when they all grabbed breakfast I had no way of knowing if the fluids were still ok for me to use. So they ended up being put down the sink.
This meant that I now had only a 1 litre bag of saline (which doesn't need refrigerating) to last me all weekend. I didn't want to have to leave and spoil the weekend, especially after the horrendous journey we had to get there and the fact that we had been there a little over 24 hours. But I was worried about how I would manage having only 1 litre of fluids instead of 6 over the weekend.
I know that my brother-in-law was upset that all this was as a result of his actions and I tried to make him feel better even though inside I was panicking about whether that litre would be enough and to be honest I was a little bit annoyed at him. I'm sure it's something in the family genes as my father-in-law goes round turning plugs off and has even turned my fridge off once when he came to visit us! So I can't really blame him too much- it's not his fault if he's got faulty DNA 😉
To conserve energy (and fluids) I stayed in bed on Saturday morning while they all went to play crazy golf. I eventually joined them later on when they were playing in the arcades. We had taken bags of 2p coins from my change jar and the kids were playing on the slots and emptying them all of keyrings and any other tat that was inside. They loved doing this and always come away with pockets full of stuff after playing for hours with just a couple of pounds worth of change. We were going to go to a local firework display that evening but nobody fancied standing outside in the cold so we stayed in and watched strictly and X factor and had another no cook buffet like on Friday night.
On Sunday we packed our bags and Hibby loaded everything into the car. He has this amazing ability to get so much stuff into the car, even when you think it's never going to fit. It's a skill that even my Dad thinks is pretty amazing as he likes to think of himself as a good car packer but has said that Hubby is way better at it than him. And it's not often he will admit that.
We then all took a slow walk down to the seafront and went to wetherspoons for breakfast. They had decaf coffee here so while everyone else tucked into massive English breakfasts, I took the big camera outside and started snapping. I had been on a photography course at the beginning of September and I'm learning how to use the camera properly- no more auto setting for me. I love the seaside so there's nothing better to photograph than the sea, the waves etc and where we were had some great views. I could also see the industrial side of Liverpool and this made quite a juxtaposition against the pretty scenery.
We walked along the sea front for a little way, stopping so that I could rest or take pictures. I want to live by the sea. I love it so much and think it would be great to be able to just get up and walk along the beach, fly kites and see it change with the seasons. At the moment it's just a pipe dream as I need to stay close to St Marks and Hubby needs to be close to work but it's something that will eventually become a reality. Even if it's when I'm old and that's where we go to retire.
Eventually the time came to leave and we all hugged and kissed and cried a little. I hate that our family is literally all over the country. I can't imagine what it's like to have your parents 10 minutes away or to be able to see your sister every week instead of a few times a year. We piled into the car and headed for home after a little detour to the nearest Primark so that Liddy could exchange something she had bought on Fruday. The drive home was hellish. The weather wasn't great and the traffic was terrible. I think it took about 6 hours but I sat in the back with the kids and fed them sweets, played top trumps and slept quite a bit so I'm not exact on the timings. We did stop to feed the kids. Three guesses for what they had...McDonalds of course! But at the service station there was also this Chinese noodle bar station and they sold rice. So I was able to sit and have something to eat with them.
We arrived home around 10pm and we unpacked the car, dumping everything in the playroom to sort out in the morning. We all got into bed and were fast asleep, exhausted by the drive and the weekend away.
Monday the kids went back to school. It was a nightmare to wake them up because they had gone to bed so late but eventually they were up and dressed (thank goodness we had ironed school uniform for them before we left because there was no way I had the energy to do that)
I was totally drained so spent most of the day on the sofa. I also had to sort out a problem with my medication and I had ran out of fluids so that needed sorting pretty urgently. While I did this Liddy went to the local shops to do some more clothes shopping. She loves getting stuff in England. She says it's cheaper than Germany plus none if her friends will be wearing the same as her. I had wanted to go with her but just couldn't get up and as the day went on I felt worse and worse. Infact trying to sort out the fluids and prescriptions turned into such a nightmare it will need a seperate blog post to write about what happened!
Lois had popped round to take her to some shops further away and so she could see the kids one more time before she left (Lois' kids were on an inset day). I went to bed and was woken up when Liddy was about to leave for the airport.
I'm told that Lois got my kids from school and then they all stayed for dinner. It was pasta bake which is liddys favourite dinner when she comes to England and we have to make sure that we have it when she comes to stay. I really wanted to go to the airport to say goodbye but I knew that I wasn't well enough to do another car journey and Liddy understood. We said our tearful goodbyes and made promises to FaceTime more often. I lovd Liddy. It's like she's part of the family and I can't wait to get better so we can visit her in Germany.
The week had flown by. As the title of the post suggests there were plenty of half term highs and sadly a few lows but they didn't spoil the overall week. We had great fun visiting family, having Liddy come to stay and having the coffee group round for pizza. I realise that my life is far from perfect but let's face it, whose life is? And I'm very lucky that my un-perfect life is filled with lots of family and fiends and love. So it's not that bad really. I just have to remember that when I'm having a bad day.
NB x
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