A Kick Up The Arse

Ioannis came in to sign a letter and stopped for coffee yesterday afternoon at work (he was our last senior registrar). Amongst all the giggles, banter and teasing (I swear we must be twins - he apparently also can't get down his hallway for boxes and crap!) I must've whinged too profusely about the fact that I have no social life and am fed up. As he left, he said 'you've got a man and a family - what more do you need?' Fun and excitement, that's what ...

Anyway, just that one comment has been haunting me since. I DO have an awful lot to be thankful and grateful for. I have my Collypops, who loves me lots and lots and works really hard to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table; and I have my two little monkeys - Sean who is growing into a very mature and sensitive young man, and Ethan, who is warm and cuddly and loves his Mummy so much that he wants to superglue himself to me. However, whilst I do have a lovely family, I also have a house that is a complete shithole most of the time, due to the fact that I never have time to try and get on top of the housework (in fact, trying to keep up with the laundry is bad enough, never mind anything else), a business that takes up more and more of my time, and a complete and utter total lack of anything resembling social interaction with anyone anywhere outside of work. Oh, and I have depression. I can't help but feel that my life is slipping by and I am powerless to actually make it exciting enough to remember in later years.

To cap it all, I'm still suffering from a crisis of confidence. Colin tells me very frequently that I am beautiful (he definitely needs new glasses), but I still feel like an old Trog. Since I've started wearing make-up I've naturally been forced to look in the mirror a lot more regularly than before (ie, before = never). I'm really shocked by what I see - okay, so my skin is getting a little better, but my eyes look dreadful - to quote one of Dad's phrases, they're like 'pissholes in the snow' in the evenings, and I have huge bags under them. Obviously I do need more sleep (she says at 5.06 am) but getting rid of the bags isn't going to magically transform me into a beautiful princess, is it? I am devastated to see how quickly time has caught up with me, and I don't quite know how to stop the rot, now that it has set in. I've also been looking at some fairly recent photographs of myself (taken over the past year), and they have left me even more gobsmacked - I look so ill, haggard, old, Troglike - surely that's not what I look like???? I needed a pic for one of the cybercrop challenges, and I had to apply all sorts of filters to it to make my awful skin bleach out and look better. And as for my hair ... why why why have I let myself get into such a state? My hair needs an urgent restyle and I don't care how much it costs ...

The upshot of all these thoughts and many bitter and feeling-sorry-for-myself tears since yesterday is that we have taken a good hard look at our lives and decided to make some changes. Colin has agreed that he WILL take an active part in the day-to-day running of Scrapbook Mad, so we have agreed that I will pick and pack orders while he invoices and charges them from now on - and we are setting aside specific evenings to deal with orders and paperwork, rather than me struggling to do stuff every night. We've also made a pact to get more US time, because we very rarely get to spend any time together on our own; and we're going to try and start going to line dancing again so that we can at least get a bit of exercise, get out of the house and renew old friendships again. It all sounds great in theory, but let's just wait and see if we ever do manage to put it into practice.

So, an innocent remark from Ioannis has given me the spur to change my life for the better ... perhaps I ought to make him coffee more often, huh?

Blimey, it has been an absolutely manic week this week - I have been so incredibly busy at work while Jenny has been off, with Phil hovering at my office door every two minutes with his 'have you/can you/did you/will you/would you/could you' spiel, and the constant demands of patients and colleagues. It was a relief to lock the door and leave the building for the weekend, but even so I do feel quite enthused and raring to get back on Monday; and I'm not going to think about the 800 redundancies that they're looking to make Trust-wide at all - I can't see that it will affect me, as Jenny put in for early retirement/voluntary redundancy last time they asked for volunteers, but they turned her down as they said her job could not be made redundant. My way of thinking is that as my job is reasonably similar and we are the only two secretaries in our department, my job is safe too; but we shall wait and see.

In the meantime, I consider my arse to be have been well and truly kicked.