So we're not long back from the kids party that we had been preparing for with hippy costumes etc. My son really enjoyed himself. It basically consisted of a 60's disco in a little recreation hall, where the boys and girls had separated themselves into two groups. . One group was getting really into the dancing, and the others stood around talking to their friends. Guess which group was which? WRONG!! The boys were actually the ones who were doing the dancing, while the girls stood tossing their hair and pouting! And no-they're not teenagers-these kids were 9 and 10!!
Having said that, the boys didn't take a blind bit of notice, and spent all their time running round like maniacs :-D
Somebody was smiling down on us today, as it didn't rain, which would have made the walk there & back absolutely horrendous (had no money for the bus), but as it was, we made it back tired but dry. I have to say tho, that my son got a few odd looks along the way, as he completely forgot about being shy on the way back, and walked along happily, with his Peace pendant and hippy clothes!! On the way there, it had been a different story-he had "proper" clothes on top of his costume!
Mummy was planning on finishing up last night's tacos in front of some tv tonight, but I'm not feeling too good..hmm....hope it's nothing to do with the 1 day out of date tuna filling I had in my baked potato for lunch..eek!
You know, since I started this blog recently, I've also joined some single parent websites, and boy I wished I'd done it sooner...the people are so nice and friendly and welcoming..it feels like a little community. Yes...maybe that's what I should do tonight instead of playing with fire by re-heating more food. I will be nice to my tummy and just spend the evening talking to my new friends instead. Aah...much better!

Tonight my son and I sat down for our weekly dose of The Freak Show...otherwise known as the X-factor. The Mariah Carey fan who squeaked his way through "Hero" was the best laugh we had in ages....ooh, and I have it on my Sky+, so we can have a repeat performance if we fancy it-I know, I know...cruel...but so funny!
Well tomorrow my son is going to a birthday party, and get this-it's not just any old kids party....it's a joint party for two of his classmates-very thoughtful of the parents involved to have a joint party in the first week of the month, don't you think? They get to halve their costs.....while we get to double ours....crafty. But as my parents said, it probably didnt even occur to both (two-parent) families how much strain it would put on some of the guests' families to have to buy two presents etc.
Not only that, but there's a theme-Hippies. So last week I found myself ordering a kid's hippy costume online from a fancy dress store, at a cost of £20.51-believe it or not, it was the cheapest one I could find. As were the presents-they were courtesy of the Sainsburys sale. So my son will be attending dressed in a floaty cream shirt, topped with a tasselled waistcoat (complete with beads hanging from the tassles), together with psychedelic patterned trousers, a peace pendant, little round John Lennon glasses (blue), and a frizzy wig....LOL. I must admit-he looks good!
Walking 45 mins to the venue in that get-up should be good for a laugh.....

Ok, so it's 12.31 on a Saturday afternoon, and I am both exhausted, and still in my pjs at this hour. Why, I hear you ask? Well I was woken at 3.30 by some young guys ever so thoughtfully having an extremely loud conversation in the stairwell of my block of flats...grrrr!!! The darlings!! (Not).
But what the heck...if I can't chill out and be lazy after a busy week of housework, school runs, and the like, when can I?
So here I am, me at my pc, while my son blasts everybody into oblivion on his Star Wars Lego PS2 game, and I'm trying to work up the energy to shower, having peeled myself away from the StarWars scene which my son insisted I just HAD to watch! I can feel my eyelids drooping...is it just me, or do other single parents have zero energy too?Believe it or not, before March 2008, I also found time to fit in a full-time job, and now i just think "How did I do that without killing myself?". Ok, so we have no money now, but at the same time, I'm not beavering away on a pile of work which only ever gets bigger, and watching my extremely cliquey team "mates" going out for lunch without me (which they did regularly by the way).
Often I look back on the high-powered world I used to inhabit and it seems completely alien to me now. Yes, I may have swapped having a cleaner and actually having money (sometimes) for sainsburys basics range and scrubbing my own house, but God, it's nice to be able to be a more relaxed mummy, who actually gets dinner on the table before bedtime.
Well, I think I may actually drag myself into the shower now, then put some clothes on. Then I have promised to play with lego with my son, and tonight I am going to make tacos while we sit down and laugh at The X-Factor. Rock and roll!!!

This morning i got soaked. Absolutely bloody drenched!! Aargh! It's been raining non-stop here in Edinburgh for 2 days now, but as my son sometimes says when the weather is this bad "Never mind mum, at least it washes the dog poo off the pavements". And that's true. But really-why should it be any there anyway? The area where we live, is quite bad, and every day I see people wandering along, stepping in it, & treading it everywhere, & most of them not even caring. Because it's the norm. And that surely, can't be right?
I am becoming more & more disillusioned with Britain. Despite being born and bred here, & living here all my life (first in the Northeast of England where I come from, & then Scotland), I feel this country is becoming more and more dirty and shabby, and the people have no consideration or respect. I know I sound like an old granny, rambling on about "young people these days", but it's true!! I'll give you an example. Last October, I went to sweden for the first time-to meet someone I had met on the internet (Facebook, as it happens), and this is the bad relationship I sometimes refer to. Now, the relationship may not have worked out, but WOW, what a beautiful country they have there. Clean streets where you don't have to walk thru animal mess, takeaway wrappings, & vomit. Sorry by the way, I know today's subject is rather gross, but I'm on a roll now...lol.
Even the people look healthy and happy, and the amount of happy dads pushing prams was WAY more than you see here.It's just a different life.
Anyway, after a few blissful days in Stockholm, I came back here, and got on a bus the day after, to pick my son up from school. As I got on the bus, 4 teenagers got on-two girls and two boys. Almost all of them had big gold earrings in, and checked caps, and were swearing as if they had Tourette's syndrome or something! One of the girls also had the obligatory baby with her (the other must have left hers at home).
I sat there and looked around at all the people sitting there with their faces turned away, not saying anything to the group for fear of getting stabbed, and I just thought "Welcome home Julie".
And I can't say it's got any better since then. Nobody seems bothered here any more...they're all content to live in squalor, have a rudimentary (at best) grasp of the English language all their lives, and doss their way thru life. Not me-I've had enough, and I have decided-if The Swede (my second Scandinavian, lol) ever asks me to move over there, me & my son are off!!!

Last night, I bit The Swede's head off, bless him. Being the so-called organised woman that I claim to be, I had put a note on my Msn beside my photo, which said that I was taking my son to Taekwon-Do, and would not be back til after 8pm. However-being the disorganised chump that I actually am some of the time....I had failed to save said message properly, and so instead of paying full attention to the various drop-kicks, running side-kick-jump thingies and so-on, that all the kids were doing in the class, I had The Swede texting me every two minutes, saying he was worried about me because I wasn't online at our usual time, and was I ok? etc etc...
I couldn't even reply, because since we got together, my phone bills have been so humongous, that I have had to take a vow to text him once & only once per day (and I always save that for goodnight)...and if I broke that, it would no doubt open the floodgates to my usual extravagance. A bit like when I open a Choxi bar (my current favourite chocolate because it claims to actually be good for you), and I know as soon as I take a bite, that that sucker ain't gonna see the inside of the packet ever again!
So anyway, my son and I got in the house, and I was simultaneously trying to boot up my p.c (which is super-slow because I only have mobile internet due to not having a landline), & at the same time trying to hurry a 9 year old who thought he was Jackie Chan into bed, via the shower...aargh! And so when I finally managed to get online, unfortunately I let rip at The Poor Swede...eek! I quickly realised it was my fault for somehow not saving the message on Msn properly, but I felt so bad that I took the coward's way out, and hurriedly put the message back on, and told him he must have missed it. Now I feel like a heel......where's that Choxi bar?

I have a confession to make......I'm a little plump...well, maybe the correct phrase is a little overweight.
Oh God, who am I kidding? I'm FAT!! Well there, I said it.....cringe. S'pose there's no point being in denial....since I went thru a load of crap this past year, with the failure of what I thought could be a big relationship, and walking out on my job (not to mention the best friend/flatmate who turned into a violent psychopath), my solution has been to feed my face...with everything I can lay my hands on!
I actually did staggeringly well on a diet called the lemon detox diet late last year, & felt (and looked) fantastic...however, instead of following their healthy eating recommendations when I came off the diet (by this time I was involved in the relationship which went bad), I started eating my own weight in chocolate on a regular basis because I was depressed!!
Now, although I have someone who seems nice and stable in my life, I'm still left with all this accumulated weight, and guess what? I also eat because I'm happy!! Aargh! Something's going to have to change...because I don't want to be fat and 40. Here goes :-)

This morning I was woken by a text from my man, telling me he loved me, which lifted my spirits somewhat, even though it woke me up, due to the time difference. I've been feeling a bit down because of the money situation, and because if my son wants to do something new, I can never just say "Yes" without having to write my budget down and go over everything with a fine-toothed comb (see yesterday's entry). Whoever thought they would end up having to work out if they could afford toilet roll this week? (We can, thankfully).
When my boyfriend visits, it's like he's a different species from me-every time we go somewhere, I check the cost and fret about what he spends because I've become so conditioned to doing that myself. It's like I can't just chil out and enjoy it like he tells me to. He actually has a really good job, and lots more money than me, but to me when he/we spend a lot of money, it feels so decadent...wrong, almost. It makes me feel like a freak, & I wonder if I'm the only person in the world who stands sweating in the checkout line at Sainsburys (or even Aldi), waiting to see if I've added everything up correctly, because I've only got a couple of quid in my purse..
Anyway, this morning I got back from the school run with my paper (I could afford one today, whoo-hoo!), and sat down to read it with some toast, and there was a story about a woman who was suffering from a dreadful lung disease. This was because she used to hug her dad when he came in from work when she was a small child, and he had been working with asbestos and contracted something called Mesothelioma, which eventually killed him. Well, now she has the same thing, and she was just 41, with two young kids, one only 9 months old......the story was so sad, it made me cry.....
It made me realise what was really important, and that if we have a roof over our heads, enough food to eat (most of the time), clothes to wear, and most importantly of all, our health....then we're doing pretty darn good...