tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2009-11-21:/Been there, done it and threw up on the T-Shirt! My life at times seems strange to me. I wonder how I have gotten into similar situations that I often find myself watching on TV when I can't be bothered to find the remote to change channels. To those around me however, I lead a seemingly straight forward 'normal' uneventful life...and that's the way I like it!MokoFeed2009-11-21T07:42:49+01:00tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2009-06-24:/2009/06/24/labour-day-6382966/debbiecole19792009-06-24T21:10:20+02:002009-06-24T21:10:20+02:00 <p>It’s been an eventful few months, namely turning 30, starting maternity leave and well, having a baby… so this is the first chance to write about it and a long one… well labour takes a long time and I want my daughter to read this one day.</p> <p>March was my 30th Birthday and wasn’t all bad even though I really did not want it. Turning 30 is quite a big grown up milestone and I’m not ready for that yet! I had a surprise party that my husband planned and he invited some friends from school I hadn’t seen in years which was a very lovely thought as I know such thinking doesn’t come easy to him! My maternity leave started well, bit of sad occasion to leave all my colleagues behind but I have had so many visits from them all that I haven’t needed to miss them at all, they are so fabulous… and then the icing on the cake was the birth of my gorgeous daughter.</p> <p>The due date snuck up on me pretty quickly. The last few weeks of pregnancy are bloody tough. The weight, the size, the heat, the pain, everything makes it extremely difficult to do anything and exhausting. By 38 weeks I was begging for my labour to start, I had really had enough. I was having Braxton Hicks contractions quite regularly that were starting to hurt more and more and my progress was being tracked by my boss to our team ‘cervix updates’ as she called them! Wasn’t much to report as nothing was really happening. I tried everything to get things moving, all the old wives tales and anything my midwife suggested I try… nothing. 2 days after my due date my midwife decided to examine me and some news that I wanted to hear came – 1cm dilated and waters bulging and by her experience said I should go into labour within the next 2 days… great I thought, can get this over with…. nothing. The induction was booked which I wanted to avoid at all costs.</p> <p>Days went by and still my labour wouldn’t start, so again went through all the wives tales and bouncing on a birthing ball… still nothing. Then my friend sent me a tip I hadn’t seen anywhere suggesting I try to bathe in clary sage essential oil and rub some on my bump. In desperation and nothing else working I went to buy some straight away. That evening I had my disgusting smelly bath and went to bed. 2am in the morning I woke with a dull ache in my stomach, bit of blood, woke my husband and I started to feel contractions but thought nothing of them as I had been having them for a while. I went back to bed, told my husband to go back to sleep, if it was labour we could be at home a while anyway. 5 minutes later I woke him again as the pain was worse than I had before and he started to time them. Every 5 minutes on the dot lasting 50 seconds. I managed 90 minutes of it before calling the delivery suite to confirm my labour had started. Can’t say I was impressed with the response given the amount of pain I was in…. have a warm bath, your labour could go on for a long time before it’s established as it’s your first child, so take some paracetemol. PARACETEMOL are you having a f-ing laugh?!! Like that’s going to touch it.</p> <p>I managed to stay at home until 6.30am when the pain was becoming so bad I needed some pain relief, I didn’t have a TENS machine or anything to try so needed to be in hospital. Called them again to say I was coming in, they tried to convince me to stay home longer, but this time I wasn’t having it I was going in to be examined.</p> <p>Relief when we got to the hospital, then only to find that there were no rooms on the delivery suite, apparently Monday the 11th May was one of the busiest days they have had all year. Great, the day my baby decides to make a one week late appearance is the day I have to give birth in the corridor! Not only that but by the time we got to the hospital and up to the delivery suite to be greeted by an assistant, she then informs us that 7am is the start of a new shift and that for the next 30 minutes the midwives will be handing over to each other and therefore cannot get any pain relief to me straight away. Oh God, I didn’t think I could go on much longer, by this point my contractions were every 3 minutes and lasting just over a minute. I knew I was getting close but because I was dealing with the pain in my own quiet way, they felt I wasn’t that far along anyway and didn’t need to worry. Apparently you need to be screaming the house down to get attention which just isn’t my way… lesson learnt.</p> <p>An hour later, a midwife eventually decided to make an appearance to the holding tent (well practically) where I was waiting to be examined. I hopped on the table in a classy beached whale kind of way and then she said ‘oh… actually you are quite far along, 8cm, your baby will be appearing soon’. Shit, and there are no rooms, I told them I needed pain relief desperately… having examined me she agreed and within 5 minutes I was hooked up to gas and air and drunk as a skunk! 30 minutes later the midwife came back to inform us there were still no rooms free but one lady will be moved into the ward shortly, it will be cleaned and I can go in there. It was like a birthing conveyer belt, one in one out. I don’t know how the midwives do it.</p> <p>Anyway I finally got in the room about 9am ish I think and then the time just flew. The midwife asked whether a student could also come and watch, I agreed seeing as everything was hanging out anyway, the more the merrier, bring them all in! So at this point having been asking for pain relief since 7am and all I got was gas and air, I had asked for morphine and an epidural to which I was refused constantly. I was too late for an epidural… in my drunken state I told the midwife what I thought about that and if they weren’t faffing about when I came in and just seen me I might not be in so much pain now and that she was withholding the morphine to save the NHS money! I can’t remember her response, I think another contraction came, I forgot and she was used to abuse and being criticised so probably paid little attention. She tended to ignore any of my little outbursts. Instead she would just turn to my husband and casually tell him I was making all the right noises and labour must be progressing well. I’ll give her right noises!! I remember asking for morphine between every single contraction and still she said no, there was no time, the baby was coming. I was terrified, I never intended to go through labour with practically no pain relief. I’m all up for epidurals, why suffer if you don’t need to, I have nothing to prove.</p> <p>Time went on, the midwife kept checking me, my waters that should have broken 5 days ago still hadn’t gone despite hours of labour so she gave me the hook treatment and they were gone… then discovered that the baby had done a little poo and was slightly distressed. Me and the baby’s heart rate were monitored more carefully and then the words that I had dreaded all the way through… your 10cm now, time to start pushing. Now I may be naïve here, I don’t know why but I always thought that when you are 10cm, there would be some kind of body change or something significant to indicate this, like fireworks going off or something, not just a midwife saying lets have a go. I never got the urge to push either so was relying on her. I started to cry quite hysterically when she told me I was ready, I couldn’t push a baby out with no pain relief as she took my gas and air away from me saying I wouldn’t be effective with it. She told me I was crying because I was just scared and that it wasn’t the lack of pain relief that was the problem as I had done really well without it. I was now full on natural birth sans entonox, I couldn’t do it, I didn’t want to do it but before I could really think about it, the midwife and the student had grabbed my legs, put them on their hips and told me to push. I was a bit scared of the midwife, she became hugely militant, so I obeyed! </p> <p>“PUUUUUSH…”<br> “I can’t” I said, “it hurts”<br> “I know, it’s meant to, now just push, we need to get this baby out…. PUUUUSH, keep it coming, keep going, keep going.” By this point I had turned purple, barely got a time for a breath and she was telling me to push again.<br> “oh no, another contraction” I said.<br> “Good, now PUUUSH, if the pain is still there keep pushing, push, push, good your doing well”<br> “I feel sick” So the student got me a pot while the midwife in her constant commentary to the student throughout my labour (to which I probably heard more than I should have done for my imagination was going wild), she told her that feeling sick was quite normal at this stage. Good I thought, I’m normal.<br> “Now PUUUUSH, I can see the head… keep pushing” my husband was now full on in there watching the crowning. Really quite disgusting, but he was transfixed and I didn’t have time to question him while he snapped away with the camera.<br> “I’m going to make a cut to make delivery easier” oh oh, an episiotomy, didn’t want one of those but whatever, I need the baby out to stop the pain now<br> “right come on PUUUSH…….PAAAANT, PANT, PANT”</p> <p>And that was it. I thought I had hours to go and as I had my eyes shut the whole way through the hour it took push the baby out or I would have felt worse, I had no idea what was going on. I was too focused on obeying the midwife’s instructions and feeling the cold towels my husband was putting on my head to cool me down. It wasn’t until I braved opening my eyes that I was totally amazed to look down and see a baby… I had done it, though I didn’t actually feel it. She was here, my daughter had arrived and the next thing I knew she was put on my chest, my husband cried, I cried, the midwife smiled and lost her military head as the 3 of us cuddled whilst the midwife did some bits down there. Which I have to say was more painful than delivering the baby thanks to a lack of anaesthetic, but it didn’t seem to matter, I had my baby and she was breathing, had all her fingers and toes and looked healthy. </p> <p>She was taken away to be cleaned, weighed (a healthy and surprisingly big 8lbs considering my size) and handed back to be breast fed. The midwives then disappeared and left the 3 of us to be together for an hour or two before returning to dress her and have me examined by a doctor so as I could shower and then be moved onto the ward. The baby needed to be monitored for 24 hours as she was a little stressed on the way out, but all was fine and we were allowed out the next day. It was over, my beautiful daughter was here and well after a 10 hour labour… now let the fun begin!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2009/06/24/labour-day-6382966/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2009-03-05:/2009/03/05/getting-fat-5700917/debbiecole19792009-03-05T22:08:56+01:002009-03-05T22:08:56+01:00 <p>It’s inevitable that a growing baby inside you is going to make you slightly larger than before and yes of course things are going to change, your body is going to alter and the positions you used to be able to get into are no longer. Not those kind of positions before you start wondering (though a fair point!) just simple things actually like bending down. Seriously I just don’t think my stomach can grow anymore. I am only a fairly small framed person and carrying almost 3 stone extra and a 41 inch waist, a good 14 inches bigger than my previous self and still growing, is going to have some kind of impact. </p> <p>Having had a dodgy back and hips before my pregnancy I figured I might suffer a bit towards the end, but didn’t quite anticipate that I would look like a round blob with a huge gut, a fat face, swollen ankles, veins where veins never were before, boobs that sit on my belly, no belly button as my tummy is that stretched, 10 minutes to turn over from one side to the other in bed and a waddle that puts penguins to shame. I think it’s fair to say that if I grow any more I will probably end up in a granny mobile to move around in and require a crane to take me to the hospital to squeeze the bugger out if my stomach doesn’t explode beforehand. It’s not all bad – I don’t have any stretch marks yet!</p> <p>Well. It’s just 8 weeks to D-day… assuming all goes to plan, which let’s face it, very rarely happens. Hmm the prospect of being a mum brings happiness to my mind like I have never had before, but facing the labour before brings nothing but fear, horrifying thoughts, panic and doom. Yeah everyone says you soon forget after… brilliant but it’s not the after I am worried about, it’s the during. The more drugs available the better. Shove this natural birth stuff, what are you trying to prove? If the technology is there to take the pain away, why put yourself through more unnecessary trauma. My birth plan is simple… the closer to unconscious the better!</p> <p>So other than moving like a penguin, looking like an obese beached whale when lying down and being brutally attacked inside by the karate kid with serious attitude I seem to be spawning, there are some positives to being pregnant other than of course seeing my beautiful daughter when she arrives. </p> <p>The benefits, yep they are hmm, let’s see… well, there’s the fact that now everyone talks to my stomach rather than to my face, I’m molested by complete strangers that can’t help but to touch my stomach whilst asking it when it’s due (don’t like to tell them that she can’t speak yet), finding out things about other women’s lower regions when I barely even know their names, getting hostile looks by bitter jealous women that can’t find a shag let alone find someone with half decent genes to father their child, the constant horror stories true or otherwise, the vast wisdom on good parenting as clearly every parent is an expert in everything, and the … well as you can see, other than the end product, being pregnant doesn’t come with a package of listed benefits. </p> <p>Whilst I have enjoyed being pregnant and feeling my baby move, now I am just too large, tired, generally a bit fed up, uncomfortable 24 hours per day, in pain and a tad tetchy at not getting it as much as I need anymore. Husband also tetchy! That said, there are some very caring and understanding people out there that make things feel better and whilst few and far between they are the ones that matter to me. I did actually get a kiss, cuddle, wink (so to speak!) and a belly rub from a very lovely man that is allowed to do all of those things anytime he wants. He has permission and yes I did confess to my husband! The rest will just vanish with their niceties along with my large waist hopefully.</p> <p>So there isn’t long to go. The nursery is practically ready, the cot has been made up in case she makes an early appearance, the emergency bag has a couple of bits in it though is working progress and the baby’s wardrobe is more full than my own. NCT classes have started and are surprisingly not as tree hugging as I had anticipated, so I am happy about that. My maternity cover is sorted (bet they love him more than me and resent me when I come back and turf him out!) and my back up birthing partner confirmed! Hee, I say confirmed, she was just told really. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. I think she would be fabulous, I trust her implicitly and I would want no one else to support… but jeez having to stand by and watch all manner of stuff coming out of someone you have only known for a few years would certainly put a whole new perspective on things… that’s some self insight you can do without!!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2009/03/05/getting-fat-5700917/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-12-05:/2008/12/05/feedback-for-ya-5169663/debbiecole19792008-12-05T22:35:08+01:002008-12-05T22:35:08+01:00 <p>Seems like an age since we were in Dubai now, at least a month, time really flies. What a fabulous place and a gorgeous brand new hotel, we had a great time and coming back to the cold and snow was not a pleasant surprise. Other than absolutely hating the cold, I now have a major fear of ice and snow which triggers this awful imagination of mine that can only lead to disaster… falling and seriously hurting my baby. Hideous to even think that, but I feel incredibly protective of my little bump that I refuse to go anywhere cramped where I may get knocked, pubs where you have to stand, too much dancing and I can’t lay in bed without holding an arm in front of my tummy in case a cat tries to jump on it. I know it is probably perfectly safe in its big bag of water, but can’t help but get scared for something I want more than anything in the world. </p> <p>I feel very much in love with the little growth inside of me and feeling it kick last week for the first time was amazing. It isn’t particularly active yet and only very occasionally do I feel it kick now, but it is comforting to know that when all is quiet and you’re all alone, this little thing moves and the loneliness somehow disappears. It did give a bit of a kicking yesterday, I think it feels my stress when I’m upset about something which is not healthy and should be avoided. It does let me know though that nothing is truly worth worrying about because the only thing that really matters is my baby and it brings a whole new perspective. A very wise 19 week old unborn bubba, I should learn to listen to it!</p> <p>It is pretty incredible to think what is going on in there and people I have even barely spoken to are oddly finding their voice to congratulate me and going out of their way to be so lovely. Good job I am actually pregnant or I could be really offended by strangers asking how far gone I am. What If I just packed a few pounds… there would be a few black eyes that’s for sure! I have to say that of all things I didn’t expect pregnancy to teach me, it is that some people are genuinely very lovely. Also highlights those that really couldn’t give a damn and never actually bother to ask how you are, not with any feeling or interest anyway. Not that that worries me actually, it is just eye opening.</p> <p>Speaking of eye openers I have been on a few training courses recently and just finished another one today. I am not the type of person that needs people to blow smoke up my arse, nor tell me when I’ve f*cked up as it is completely obvious, but every now and again a bit of feedback wouldn’t go amiss. It is usually the way that whenever you receive any kind of feedback it tends to be on the negative, what needs to change, what needs to develop, how you can be better and rarely on what you do well and why that is good. I think that is feedback for me in itself actually, perhaps I need to pay more attention!</p> <p>Anyway having been surrounded with feedback after feedback which has been great, I have been told twice in the last 2 weeks by completely different people that I can slit throats with velvet gloves… hmm, unclear if that’s a good or bad thing actually but having been said twice I guess I need to take this on board. Not sure that I want to slit anyone’s throat, nor wear velvet gloves to be honest, but it is apparently what I do. Other feedback is that I am really tough and highly critical of myself. It was therefore really nice to find out that people don’t think I am as useless as I’m led to believe and somewhere, somewhere within me there are a few things that I do quite well and colleagues appreciate me. Who’d have thought it?!</p> <p>Following some fab learning experiences I am now looking forward to the Christmas period and the very busy few weeks ahead. The lack of alcohol over this time of year is really tough, and whilst I have not been a heavy drinker, a few glasses of wine and a gallon or two of Baileys would be awesome. Oh well, all the sacrifices, at least I will have a little baby to show for it and not a defunct liver! </p> <p>My husband is out all night tonight which is great! The house to myself, the remote to myself and the Christmas decorations that I can put up without the whinging in the background about unravelling the lights and passing me baubles. It’s heaven. Saying that he is staying in a posh hotel with some bird, though he assures me they are in separate rooms and he won’t get too drunk… well as long as he is back looking presentable in the morning as we have some baby shopping to do. Then we have the annual Christmas stupidity, present swapping and traditional chrimbo meal with our best friends before we all go to a black tie ball for a bit of dancing and people watching. Me and Woogs can rest our bumps and watch the men get drunk and make fools of themselves as usual! Then Sunday we have a wedding and possibly a bit more dancing to do late into the evening. I think I will struggle to fight back my tears of for the happy bride. I find myself getting incredibly upset by the smallest of things which have me running to the loo to hide myself away. Ah, it will be such a lovely day and I’m very excited for her!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/12/05/feedback-for-ya-5169663/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-10-19:/2008/10/19/i-guess-it-s-official-4896032/debbiecole19792008-10-19T18:07:23+02:002008-10-19T18:15:02+02:00 <p>The last few weeks have been quite eventful, well eventful for my life anyway loads of stuff has happened but the most important part is that we had our first scan last week. I have been terrified of that moment since I found out I was pregnant and have been overcome with worry about what might be going on in there. Up until that day the medical profession had made no confirmation of my pregnancy, just me telling them I’m pregnant, OK and a pregnancy test, alright 3 but still you just never really know.</p> <p>So confirmation finally came last week meaning I can now begin to enjoy my pregnancy ailments and know that it’s that and buy any little things that I can’t bring myself to leave in the store, you know that sort of thing. </p> <p>The scan was a totally weird experience. Other than going to the antenatal clinic once more to look around and see that I am possibly the only pregnant lady in there that has a husband and is over 20, but once you’re over that it starts to feel a bit normal. The receptionists still don’t differ much from the miserable bitter women you tend to find in doctors surgeries, but at least the midwives have a happy bone somewhere deep in their bodies. </p> <p>So there we are sent down the corridor to wait to be called into the dark room to hear one way or another whether there is a baby, whether it is alive, whether it growing normally and whether there is anything wrong with me that could hurt it or whether I am just making the whole thing up. We were busy chatting away when one of the midwives opened the door to her room and out she came… not just any midwife but someone I knew fairly well having recruited and promoted twice in the last 2 years at the company I work for. I heard from her manager 6 months ago that she had left to live her dream of re-training as a midwife. Of all the people, of all the places and of all the times, I had to bump into her whilst waiting for my scan. It was a bit of an awkward moment as she came out of the room with a heavily pregnant women and when she saw me decided to completely ignore the woman she was with and started talking to me about the odd occurrence that had just happened. She didn’t even live locally, what are the chances?! So yet again another place I can’t visit and another thing I can’t keep private.</p> <p>We were finally called in, I laid down, my husband eagerly leaning over to see what happens next and she squirted the horrible jelly stuff that makes me cringe. I wasn’t expecting it to be warm nor was I expecting it to make a farting noise which made me chuckle childishly while I was waiting to see what appeared on the screen in front of me. Clearly a very experienced Sonographer (I think that’s what they are called, not sure, lady with the scanning thing pressing so I hard I was going to wet myself) and straight away she went to the baby and there it was, this little alien thing wriggling inside me, I mean really wriggling, somersaulting in fact. She measured it, showed us it from different angles and at one point I’m sure it waved to us and then it was over. The picture was printed, she said it is exactly the right length from head to bum for that stage of pregnancy, 4.6cm I think, how cute! Then we were sent back to wait for the midwife to hear about my blood test results and the hundred other things I have remember to do over the next month.</p> <p>Anyway, scan over, worry subsiding I can start to get on with things. Well I thought and then one of the cats really hurt me again yesterday by dive bombing into my stomach from great height. I’m sure they are trying to harm my baby, they have no thought or consideration! Anyway stomach cramps in tow we went to see French and Saunders live, only after a bit of retail therapy in Selfridges of course. The show was brilliant, it’s such a shame that it has to end when I have grown up watching their acts, bit of a staple diet actually. But 30 years is a long time and if I earned what they did, to be fair, I would give up too and do something that didn’t involve getting dressed of a morning. I think I would be very good at that!</p> <p>So 2 weeks to go and we are off to Dubai for an extended weekend break for my husbands 30th. Can’t wait, great hotel, good food, non-alcoholic drinks, sunshine, a big bed… well as I have been told I am in enough trouble already and with what the pregnancy hormones have been doing to me in a fantastic way and not being able to get into any more trouble, I intend to have a pretty good time there! Besides my husband will be 30, it is time to celebrate and for these reasons it will be a bigger celebration: we are going to have a baby we both desperately want, this is the last holiday we will be able to take on our own for at least 18 years to come, the last holiday we will have for I don’t know how long, I won’t be able to celebrate Christmas, our 6th wedding anniversary or indeed my own or my best friend’s 30th Birthdays, well not in a traditional way and by then I will be very fat and not want to do much anyway, so now is the time to make up for it!! Watch out Dubai!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/10/19/i-guess-it-s-official-4896032/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-09-09:/2008/09/09/pains-of-my-life-4705553/debbiecole19792008-09-09T21:37:48+02:002008-09-09T21:37:48+02:00 <p>Well as my parents sun themselves abroad and mess about in Dolly Parton’s theme park (so to speak!) we are stuck with their 2 dogs. There’s just a week to go and it can’t go soon enough. I really do love dogs, but I just hate them in my house. They stink, they whinge, they are noisy, they make a mess they sniff everything and they have eaten most of my mail, which pleases me no end when I walk through the door to find a 1000 piece puzzle scattered across the hallway. </p> <p>With five cats in the same house and a separation on the middle floor to keep World War 3 at bay, I have to say that all of this is taking its toll. The house is stair gate galore, teeming with animals and makes me gag from the dog smell. This is not my beautiful house anymore nor is it one where I can feel particularly calm and enjoy my husband, without harassment (so to speak!).</p> <p>Some form of normality will hopefully begin to resume soon though. In the meantime, I get to spend some quality girly time with my best friend tomorrow while her husband poops a lot in India and mine is out watching football. Yippee! Perfect scenario, so now we can finally have a good undisturbed chat about our pregnancy woes. Well, until 9pm anyway which seems to be my typical climbing into bed time these days. </p> <p>The nausea kicks in quite badly around 6.30pm when I start to unwind and try and have a sneaky 10 minute nap on the bed until my husband comes home from work and tells me off for being lazy…! Slightly unfair I think, he should be more sympathetic to my needs! Anyway, the nausea will continue throughout the night waking me up feeling sick and needing to urgently pee. If it’s not my body getting me up it’s the cat being sick every hour as was the case last night. I think I average nearly 3 hours broken sleep per night now and have become quite attached to the 2.30am tripe on Sky. All in the name of good practice I’m sure.</p> <p>The constant moonlight dashes to the toilet either from the top or the bottom end of my body (gross I know) the effort to get back into bed after this is massive, especially knowing that in 50 minutes I will be up again. It hardly seems worth trying to carefully manoeuvre myself back around the cats and husband into a comfortable resting position, whilst trying to protect my painful chest from the weight of the duvet! It’s just ridiculous. </p> <p>First of all why should I care whether I wake the zoo that silently sleeps in or on MY bed? Second of all, it is MY bed and as the woman of the house, I get priority and I am the one that struggles to get back to sleep. In normal circumstances it would take an atomic bomb to get my husband to stir to anything and even then with such great powers of ignorance he could immediately get back to sleep. Me, I would wake to a mosquito fart and have it take me another hour to relax enough to fall back to sleep again. I guess women are just wired that way. Man, is that gonna change!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/09/09/pains-of-my-life-4705553/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-08-31:/2008/08/31/quite-a-week-4663345/debbiecole19792008-08-31T20:49:15+02:002008-08-31T20:49:15+02:00 <p>Well the past week was possibly one of the most emotional weeks on record and whilst coming to terms with and beginning to enjoy a new situation, I have become an auntie for the 4th time. My sister-in-law, the one who now has 4 children with 3 different men popped another little girl out within 3 hours of her waters breaking. I don’t want to mention the word ‘bucket’ to her, but come on…!</p> <p>So this baby has broken the wave of typically chavvy girls names that Sharon would give her children; Chantelle, Shanese and Aleesha and now gone for Jacqueline. Can’t say the name is much better, but at least the poor kid might not get type cast for the rest of her life. Well this news was very exciting so I quickly dragged my husband around the shops looking at pretty baby clothes to take on our visit in the next couple of weeks to cuddle the new sprog and make the other 3 remember that they are still loved of course… and show that Uncle Martin still can be very generous with his debit card in my hands!</p> <p>Making the most of the last day of the summer sunshine yesterday we managed to have a BBQ and a quiet (in fact mute) celebration of the fact my best friend may also be pregnant!! She did a test at home the other day and one with me when she came over and though faint, the line was there! Wow, what fabulous news, couldn’t have timed it better if we actually tried! We are now just waiting for her all important final test before accepting and mentioning the news, but it is all incredibly exciting and keeping my fingers crossed for her. We left the 3 men to it and she I went and had a girly chat and needless to say the nursery is planned and the names are already chosen, so I think she knows the answer. Then it’s just another 8 weeks until the scan. 8 long weeks full of paranoia, hormonal mood swings, toilet trips and sheer worry over every ache or twinge in case it says so much more. All pretty terrifying really.</p> <p>Well speaking of babies, my current babies (cats) have been playing up. My lovely dining room plants have been shredded at the ends from one little sh*t eating it, even when I was in the room painting he had the audacity to stand there doing it knowing I couldn’t get up quick enough to kick his little white arse into oblivion. Another one was in a horrific fight this morning in next doors garden with the neighbourhood bully. He did come off worse unfortunately with 2 claws ripped out and a gash in his neck, but he’ll survive. Another felt it would be fun to go mental and jump on my sore bloated stomach from the windowsill (I nearly killed her) and the other one has shunned me for spending the majority of the day painting rather than tickling her chin. Tut, get over it!</p> <p>Actually the whole attention seeking thing sounds a bit like my husband this week too. It was his attention seeking that got me into this situation in the first place, I think he’s forgotten that! Fair enough, he did buy me a massive bunch of gorgeous flowers for when I got home on Friday and we have either spent the rest of the weekend with other people or I have shut myself away to contemplate. Only natural that he may attention seek I suppose. I was having none of it and decided to ignore him in the hope he would get bored and find something else constructive to do. Seeing my disinterest he stood in front of me and pulled up his top to show me his bulging belly from overeating, nice. Then he lifted it further to repeatedly show me his nipples, which I’m not a particular fan of, especially when trying to concentrate on something else. I’m not sure why he felt the need to do that to be honest, but worse than that… while I tried to contain my queasiness at having to admire his nipples he decided to pull his pants down and give me a full on moony,… brilliant! If I wasn’t feeling sick before, I am now… ewww!!!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/08/31/quite-a-week-4663345/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-08-27:/2008/08/27/emotions-running-high-4645962/debbiecole19792008-08-27T21:12:21+02:002008-08-27T21:12:21+02:00 <p>Well that is how it has been over the past week… lots of highs and very scary stuff going on but all in all things are well.</p> <p>So Friday morning I got to work feeling tired, though not out of the ordinary and continued as always when I got into a riveting conversation with two of my colleagues about SOX (yawn), immigration rights (yawn), work permits in the EEA (yawn) and how we are going to ensure we follow due process (yawn yawn yawn). </p> <p>So on this lively and highly exciting debate we were having, something funny happened to me. Not funny ha ha, no that came later with me trying to deal with it in some deranged Elton John impersonation… bear with me; I actually lost part of my vision, in both eyes. Now this in itself is slightly odd, never heard of immigration induced vision loss before. My colleague came to the rescue and I was marched into a darkened room with a bottle of water until I could see enough to be able to stumble back to my desk. Apparently I was blinded by her beauty… hmm not sure about that but if you get my vision back I’ll tell anything you want to hear!</p> <p>The Elton John bit came in when I did get back to my desk, still partially blind, developing a head ache and feeling really queasy, the only thing left to do was to put on some dark shades to block out the light, however the only ones I could find in my magic drawer were novelty gold rimmed glasses in the shape of stars! Yes the word ‘twat’ did come to mind on quite a few occasions, particularly when unexpected visitors would think I was off my rocker not knowing the ‘valid medical reason’ for why I may need to wear them. Then I started having hot and cold flushes so the dodgy engineer fleece was on then off, then I was running for the loo in a queasy spell and drugging up. Finally I succumbed to really not feeling well and it not being appropriate for me to bring the professionalism of the department right down (whatever!) and I was told to clear off, so I went home.</p> <p>I was really scared about this incident, I called my husband and told him, he then shouted at me and gave me a royal telling off for letting him know sooner, he packed up and came straight home to my aid. Lovely thought that he cared that much to come and see me, but I was comatose for 16 hours in sheer exhaustion so it was a bit of a wasted journey after I made him walk back from the station and all! Still, I could command pretty much whatever I wanted all weekend, so it was worth it!!!</p> <p>Sight back in tact, I was on the mend and other than a few aches everything seemed back to normal. And then I found out something yesterday I wasn’t expecting and today has been a bit of a blur, though fortunately for all, not in the embarrassing Elton John kind of way!</p> <p>So it has been an emotional past week, a colleague has also had a lovely baby and today I was sent some gorgeous pictures of 3 kittens up for grabs. I immediately called my husband to tell him about the great opportunity only to be told a cold “YOU COME HOME WITH ONE MORE CAT AND I WILL FLUSH THE F**KER DOWN THE TOILET” Jesus, only asking, I take it that means no then?!</p> <p>Fair enough, we do have 5 cats already, one of which just won’t leave me alone, she has been literally attached to my hip for the last couple of weeks, not even leaving my side in bed. When I say in bed, I don’t mean IN bed, I mean when I am in bed she has to be with me. This has in the past acted as an occasional contraceptive whereby any late night attempt my husband made to get near me, she would fend off… which to be fair saved the headache situation occurring when I couldn’t be arsed, though I do question its effectiveness! Anyway, she really loves me I’m sure, it can’t be about food all the time. Last night on one of my many hundred trips for the loo, I asked her politely to move, obviously she didn’t, then I did the hug and role trick, still nothing, then I put my hand under her belly which normally gets her to slowly move away but instead she jumped up in a huff, turned to hiss and then spat at me! Charming, I make myself uncomfortable so as she can be all cute and cuddled up and that’s how she repays me. Well she can forget it… tonight Matthew, we are sleeping cat free!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/08/27/emotions-running-high-4645962/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-08-15:/2008/08/15/it-s-a-miracle-4594019/debbiecole19792008-08-15T21:19:50+02:002008-08-15T21:30:59+02:00 <p>Beyond all hope, beyond all possibility my Sharkey has sprung back to full life! I am so happy. He’s gone from minutes to death to normal health as I cared for him, watched him, cleaned him, I gave him his medicine and I spoke to him and he has responded like the amazing goldfish he is!! God, I need to get out more!</p> <p>On another note, my colleague has trusted me with her plants. I warned her that I am great with animals but rubbish with plants. I kill them. I don’t intend to, I really don’t, but there is something in me that completely blocks my mind to think that plants need to be fed too. If a cat is hungry it will annoy the hell out of me so much that I can’t ignore it. If a plant is hungry it wilts a bit, but I don’t notice until it’s too late. </p> <p>My colleague's brother grew her these tomato plants and they normally stand proudly on her balcony. She has gone on holiday and is so deeply attached to these sodding plants that she held me at gun point to take care of them for her. I was only expecting one little tomato plant and in she walks with an entire nursery I have to care for! What am I supposed to do? If I kill them she will go mad, but worse than that, she will be very emotional about the whole thing which will be no fault of my own. Alright maybe a little of my fault, but I did say I wasn’t very good at it. </p> <p>I got home from work tonight and the precious tomato plant (unsurprisingly called Tommy) was not very happy. I don’t know why, we have had torrential rain for the past 2 weeks and it’s been reasonably humid. Alright the frost, arctic wind and lack of sun may have had a little impact, but I can’t be held responsible for that. Bit worried though. I asked if one plant died and I replaced it with one the same size would that be OK, and her words were “I KNOW EVERY F**KING TOMATO, EVERY LEAF AND EVERY LITTLE STEM OF THAT PLANT, SO DON’T EVEN TRY IT!” Tut, I only asked…!</p> <p>Here’s another situation I got myself into. For some reason, I don’t know why, I decided to mention to my boss about how much I love art and that I am not bad at it. Well I used to be much better at it and that is becoming evident in my new project… My boss is buying a new house and I said as a very personal house warming gift I would paint her a picture. In principal it all sounded good, I was very excited to have a new project to concentrate on as I was getting bored of doing things for myself and my parents, so, enthusiastically I have embraced my new canvas… not literally, obviously. I sketched it all out and have so far done the first base coat of half of it. I think it looks OK, but I’m no fine artist. With my attention to detail and need for things be perfect and tidy it is like a piece of magazine print which I know she will hate, so I have to work out a way of making it still look abstract, but also messy to appeal to her…mm... creative mind!. Not sure how I am going to cope with that, I am already feeling over anxious that my dining room now looks like an art studio and is as cluttered as one! My poor mojo!! </p> <p>Well on a work note, it has been the 2 weeks from hell. Actually it has been a great 2 weeks, just stupidly busy. We had a scary pre-audit take place which we thought we had done everything for. I happily accepted my invitation for the audit interview which at first seemed pretty straight forward. She asked me everything but the colour of my underwear and I think that may have been next on the list if I hadn’t made such a speedy exit! Been a little stressful since this trying to get everything in place for the double scary audit in a couple of months. Maybe I will go commando for that one just in case, it will make the answers easier!!</p> <p>There was a bit of a calamity with another colleague and a shoe incident yesterday. A text come through to me saying “sorry, I’m going to be late, shoe fell off, sat in gutter, ran for bus but missed it, there soon…” Very intriguing and sounded strangely like the sort of texts I would get from my boss. Such as going on holiday to relax to text me to say that they messed up her room bookings, she got locked in one of the rooms and had to be rescued, she had to spend thousands more to move to another room and then to another hotel, that 3 visits to the doctors was required and that the Doctor thinks she fancies him…etc! I think it is catching!</p> <p>Anyway, back to the shoe thing. The problem was with a strap that fell off so her shoe wouldn’t stay on. The incident occurred when hurriedly crossing the road to avoid being hit by a lorry which then required some speedy hopping to the other side resulting in a plummet to the gutter and the entire bus stop laughing at her! This is the person that when embarrassed has a tendency to faint, so that was my first concern when I got the text (after laughing hysterically at her misfortune!). Sitting in the gutter embarrassed and bruised whilst being laughed at in the rain on the way to the office, is probably not the best time or place to faint! She made it in shortly after avoiding the learner bus driver and we went about a fix for the shoe. Finally a paper clip twisted into the button hole did the trick which luckily enough could double up as a lightning conductor earthing device. Something that she could be thankful for as we all watched the flats in front of the office get struck by lightning and see the top of the roof fall off! It kept 3000 people in the office occupied as we all watched the fire service come and sort it out. The little things!</p> <p>I also think I have put on at least 2 stone in the past 2 weeks as at least 6 people have celebrated their Birthday, plus one wedding and one departure. It has also made me very poor. I really don’t need to be eating so much crap, I’m fat enough as it is without an additional 3 inch layer of chocolate lard being deposited in my arse. Oh well, guess you only live once!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/08/15/it-s-a-miracle-4594019/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-07-31:/2008/07/31/a-very-golden-age-4526230/debbiecole19792008-07-31T20:23:45+02:002008-07-31T20:23:45+02:00 <p>I got home tonight and my beautiful Sharkey, the Goldfish I have had for 9 years, is what I would call ‘critically’ ill. </p> <p>Sharkey was bought for me when I lived with my friend in the 2nd year of university. He has moved house with me 4 times since, jumped out of the tank twice and got swiped by one of my cats before I got down to pick him up, and he survived the attack! </p> <p>He has taken pride of place in his own tank away from the main 50 gallon aquarium because every friend we gave him (including George), he ate. He grew big and he does have a personality, if only a little one. He has a 6 month memory (not 3 seconds according to the myth). I am a cold and fresh water fish guru, with fish breeding and fry rearing ability don’t you know!!</p> <p>Anyway, he recognises me, kisses my finger (OK yeah he thinks it’s food, but I like to think of it as kissing), he recognises the food pot and tells me when he wants feeding. That’s all I would expect.</p> <p>Yes call me geek, I have already been called an anorak today (I won’t forget!), so really it doesn’t matter. I love my Sharkey and now I am observing the end of his eventful 9 year life. I have shed a few tears tonight as it is a bit of an end of an era for me and all that mean cold horrible husband of mine did, was laugh! He is a very valuable pet to me, and whilst I could go and get another one for £5, they won’t be Sharkey and I’m emotional, so I am incredibly sad about it. That’s all I have to say on the matter. [Sigh].</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/07/31/a-very-golden-age-4526230/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-07-30:/2008/07/30/race-against-the-clock-4521797/debbiecole19792008-07-30T20:36:28+02:002008-07-30T20:44:46+02:00 <p>I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find more and more that I am ruled by time. Not just that actually, but that now it is starting to annoy me and my view on time is changing. </p> <p>I am dictated to by technology almost every minute of my day. When I wake up, when I go to bed (i.e. nothing worth watching on TV!), my diary pop ups telling me where I should have been 10 minutes before, life or death tasks that must be completed by X day or the whole world will collapse without that sodding Excel report. I’ll give you a f-ing Excel report! Seriously, where has the human element of trust gone? No longer can you kindly walk to someone, meet them face to face (yeah, face to face, remember that?!), ask them nicely in a friendly tone and trust that support will be given within a timeframe, give or take a day or two. No, now you do it all by technology. Send an email of what is required and a diary invite for when delivery must be received. If you are really tight to time and fail to deliver by the outlook pop up, you could be lucky enough to receive a text message notifying you that your P45 will be posted and you have been fired! What has the world come to?!</p> <p>Continuing with the subject of time, I just don’t feel I have any. When in reality, I probably have a bit more than most as I don’t have kids yet. I probably do it to myself, I like to plan, I like to have things organised and it’s not unusual for my husband and I to have the next couple of months of weekends and things to do sorted out. I don’t like not knowing, I hate surprises, I book my holidays a year in advance, I’m not particularly spontaneous and going off plan annoys me. Yet I can still moan about time I hear you say! Absolutely, there is a difference. My time (non at work time) is fine to be organised because that’s what I like doing and normally it is things I really want to do. I guess what I am really saying is that if I choose to do something exciting it’s alright, but if it is chosen for me and involves Microsoft, it’s taking my time away! Yeah OK, it’s called a career and that’s life, I get it.</p> <p>Another thing with time, is that it’s really valuable and surprisingly, there is only so much of it. I like not to have many regrets about how it is spent, so watching a role play for an hour then having to hear the exact same thing played over a tape recorder can irritate me slightly. Especially when the vibrations coming from my Blackberry tell me I am missing other vitally important deadlines putting me just a little closer to that text message! </p> <p>Well with the ticking time and the whole thirtyness thing, next year I will enter the dreaded decade, probably one of the scariest and busiest decades of my life and will have to say goodbye to my twenties. In the 20’s you can be forgiven more, ‘she’s still young’ ‘lots of development’ ‘she’ll learn’. In the 30’s all is not forgiven. At 20 you can turn up late for parties and look cool or at worst have eyes rolled at you then it’s immediately forgotten. At 30 if you turn up late to anything you just seem to be considered unreliable, boring, under the thumb or a mother! I hate being late for anything, now I am, and that’s all I need. Whilst there are many things I would like to be when turning 30, being 3 stone heavier and ante-nataled up is definitely not one of them. Time may be disappearing, but I don’t intend to waste it being the sensible Debbie I am always labelled. If only people got to know me and I would talk more! </p> <p>In summary to my time dilemma, there are chances worth taking sometimes and I have had many reminders of this recently. Whilst the path of least resistance sounds great in principal and may have been one I adopted in my early 20’s, it’s not one I think I can get away with in my 30’s. Time to grow up unfortunately!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/07/30/race-against-the-clock-4521797/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-07-16:/2008/07/16/wake-up-calls-4457976/debbiecole19792008-07-16T22:11:21+02:002008-07-16T22:11:21+02:00 <p>Well I guess we all need these. I’m not talking about the irritating loud music that bellows at 5.45am every morning bringing in swarms (or gaggle not sure of the correct term!) of cats onto our bed in excited anticipation of them being fed before we get ready for work. No, I’m talking about wake up calls in the context of work.</p> <p>Every now again I need a bit of a kicking, OK, gentle prod. I’m only human and I’d like to think that I’m not the only one, but it is review time and I need it. I admit that sometimes my confidence does plummet, though I have no idea what the triggers are and on occasions I need reassurance. I do like to feel I’m loved sometimes, except when I’ve got a headache! But here I am, I’m getting what I need and will pick myself up. I have to stop stressing about my personal life and taking it to work. This in itself I can normally do and while I managed to park one of my personal concerns for another day, a reminder of times I would love to forget came back.</p> <p>I went on a dignity at work course. Not because I have no dignity obviously… Daniel took that! I wanted a refresher. I went along looking forward to doing something different and hearing about some interesting cases and then something happened… we got onto bullying and sexual harassment and all these terrible memories from my last boss came flooding back. For every case example the trainer gave I had one just as bad. If only I had the benefit of HR or someone to turn to for support. What do you do when it was the MD doing all these things, the person you are meant to look up to, the person you want most to learn from and be like… what then? Why couldn’t I just have walked away sooner, why didn’t I have the courage to face up to it directly, why was I so withdrawn and quiet about it? How dare he take away my confidence and make me work in such a fearful environment. Who the hell did he think he was?</p> <p>I’m not one to hold a grudge, actually that is a complete lie, I do hold grudges though really only two; one against this man and more importantly against myself for letting myself down. That’s right, I hold a grudge against myself. How ridiculous. I was far better than that, I was good at my job, I was better at his job, I was the shoulder for everyone else being shouted at and humiliated and I kept his business afloat while he was off cheating on his wife. The one thing he used to say that would make me cringe more than anything was the consideration that I was “his right hand.” Gross, there’s no f*cking way you’re having any hand was my usual thought! It wasn’t meant in that context…. but based on his behaviour anything he said usually had a dual meaning and meant jack shit. </p> <p>To this day I still kick myself about not being stronger to deal with it sooner. I dealt with it in the end and left to join the company I love today. And when I hear the same things come up about what I need to improve I could just kick myself for letting my confidence slip and my voice disappear, I owe myself much more than to stagnate and not grow. It’s all my fault and I need to change, so I will, I promise.</p> <p>So after a day of depressing reminders, and forgetting my parents anniversary (it’s been a really bad week!), I went to my best friends for dinner. She is so great, she always knows how to cheer me up and make me laugh. She knows everything about me it’s quite frightening how much we share, especially the love for Dolly Parton! There aren’t many people I can share that with that’s for sure!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/07/16/wake-up-calls-4457976/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-07-04:/2008/07/04/holiday-over-countdown-begins-4404985/debbiecole19792008-07-04T21:49:17+02:002008-07-04T22:00:32+02:00 <p>A wonderful holiday over for another oooh…4 months until we go to Dubai! This was a fabulous holiday, in fact one of the best we have had. We were able to go away not having to worry about whether our jobs will still be there when we get back, whether my parents illnesses will be OK for 2 weeks and not suddenly get worse, whether the cats will survive the ordeal of us leaving them (obviously they are distraught) and whether our fish will cope with no human company. Alright so that is taking it too far, but you know what I mean. We had no real worries so could totally relax.</p> <p>We arrived in Mexico to a really amazing 5 star hotel, complete luxury with the sound of silence from no screaming children; I was totally sold just walking into reception. Starting with our room it was a massive practically double king size bed that was so high I needed a ladder to get onto it and it was a 4 poster with beautiful netting, it was so pretty. Something quite special about 4 posters I find, not sure if it has anything to do with reminiscing about our engagement party and the hotel we stayed in that evening, but it was fab! Next to the bed was a massive Jacuzzi with a fridge full of alcohol. Perfect. Then we found out that the food was amazing posh nosh and as I was eating for three at least a month before we went on holiday it was quite satisfying to find a load of rather well fed fellows from across the pond also doing the same, so I didn’t feel out of place. Then I found out that they had a chocolate fountain in one of the restaurants for breakfast, so that was me sorted for the rest of the holiday! Quite disgusting, but I didn’t care.</p> <p>It was so great to go away and just be with my husband. I know I see him all the time but we don’t spend enough quality time together and it makes me appreciate everything I really love him for that I often take for granted. The one thing that does drive me mad though are couples that go on holiday and are desperate to meet and become friends with anyone to the detriment of each other. Just watching them seek out poor un-expecting people to pounce on and spark conversation in the hope it is reciprocated. Naturally I wouldn’t be impolite…. and I did talk to the muppets that tried to latch onto us, but made it pretty clear I wanted them to f*ck off when the conversation was over. My holiday is my time with my husband, not with Waynes and Waynettas I will never see or speak to again. The thing that made me laugh most was when the desperate leachy couple were approached by another couple who were clearly far too intelligent and out of their league, but they didn’t know so started to ask them what sights they are seeing and whether they have been on any cultural trips or anything yet and the dimbo leaches turned around and said “well we’re going on a pub crawl on Wednesday night and then to Coco Bongos (a nightclub in Cancun) to get w*nkered.” I bowed my head in shame at the dimbo couple being British but it was absolutely hilarious. That stopped the conversation pretty swiftly as the other couple couldn’t swim off quick enough! </p> <p>I had a little incident where I managed to get some dodgy bloke to give me a half naked massage while my husband went off to sort out our adventure trip to the jungle! I have no idea really what happened (it wasn’t my fault), I was quite happily lying on the bed in a beach hut thingy deeply into reading about a murder or something, when a guy came over, mumbled incoherently about the spa I think and the next thing I know he unclipped my top (clearly had a lot of practice!) and I was put into massage paralysis. No idea what happened, but I did think my God if my husband comes back now this is going to look really bad. Carried on anyway, then he put my bra back on and disappeared… weird. Still, I put it down to a Mexican experience.</p> <p>I think my body is still detoxing from all the food and alcohol. I was fairly sensible to start with in keeping my diet relatively similar to home to avoid being ill, but my husband doesn’t listen to such advice so waded in there with ridiculous amounts of rich, spicy and acidic food and then complained of stomach ache for 3 days. Didn’t stop him drinking numerous cocktails throughout the entire day though. I must admit I did drink my own body weight in Baileys which might explain the load of weight I have put on. Nothing like being drunk by 9.30am in the pool. The best bit of this was when me and hubby were pissing about in the pool as normal whilst drinking a cocktail, I pulled his shorts down so he chased after me out of the pool then slipped, nose dived to the floor, spilt his drink, grazed his knees, hurt his hand and massively bruised his ego. Needless to say it absolutely made my day, so funny! He is still nursing his wounds.</p> <p>As I was so nice to him during the whole holiday and he got more than enough of his share (so to speak!), I did manage to get him to willingly go to the best jewellers I have ever seen in my life. It is woman heaven, you have to have a security pass and member of staff with you at all times to go into this place. It is black marble everything, 3 floors, crystal chandeliers and you walk around like royalty with your glass of champagne and chaperone. The diamonds in there were stunning, it puts UK jewellers to shame that’s for sure. We weren’t expecting to see anything I liked being so fussy, but he had promised that this summer he would upgrade my engagement and wedding ring as we were poor Uni students when I got mine and 9 years later I damn well deserve some more! </p> <p>Anyway looking around this jewellers I tried on the most stunning rings I have ever seen, my favourite (though far from the most expensive) was a mere USD 26k. Little out of our price range even after strong negotiation so I am saving this one for the next upgrade. I tried on about a 100 more and 3 hours later had seen one I loved. It was very expensive at half the price of my favourite one which again was a little out of the price range for what we thought would just be a day out to a mall and a Starbucks so weren’t prepared, but with a lot of negotiation, fluttering of eye lashes and it being tax free I got my 2 carats! It is such a beautiful ring, I love it. So much so I got my husband to go back a few days later and get me another one as the wedding ring – well we had to, you can’t get the same quality of diamond and white gold in this country with our tax and mark up...Well that was my excuse anyway, luckily he agreed and I walked away with diamond certificate in hand and a very happy lady! I am very lucky to have such a nice man be so tolerant of me. But like I said, I do deserve it…!</p> <p>With all the excitement from the holiday what with food, drink, bed, Jacuzzi, swinging (not in the throw your keys in a circle way), gambling, diamond, cave swimming, zip lining and abseiling, it was time to go home. I was really gutted as I can’t express how much of a great holiday it was and how much we laughed. But all good things have to end, so here we are. It was quite nice to find an envelope hidden under a load of junk mail informing me of a large inheritance my parents have given me. I can’t touch it and I can’t spend it because it’s tied up, but bonus, I like that kind of mail!! Actually, I quite like being home, I missed everyone.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/07/04/holiday-over-countdown-begins-4404985/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-06-06:/2008/06/06/you-really-should-be-a-motivational-spea-4282548/debbiecole19792008-06-06T21:09:56+02:002008-06-06T21:18:10+02:00 <p>Motivation….let me talk about this in the context of work. I would say that on the whole I have a very good relationship with my manager, but maybe a different relationship to how many people would have their managers, where they would be shown nothing but the utmost respect for their talents (there must be at least one in me somewhere!), support, guidance and loving. Well let me tell you what it has been like for me this week….</p> <p>Monday - An alright day as much as it can be on a Monday. Had a bit of a huddle amongst our HR colleagues, then with my manager being away from her desk for some of the afternoon, it was, well… peaceful.</p> <p>Tuesday - My manager comes in, the first thing she announces to the whole team at the top of her voice is some bollocky radio revolution about how your name would say whether you are good at your job or not. Being called Debbie, a name mentioned in this programme, clearly means I am crap and useless at everything “your name was mentioned Deb, see told you she was a shit manager,” she says to my team. Brilliant, nothing like a bit of motivation to get me going first thing in the morning!! Then in the afternoon after making myself immensely excited over something I really can’t get the least bit excited about, there was the pep talk of “just get it done it needs to happen” (minus the 2 finger salute and a wink you would be expecting next) and then a “you can shove it up your arsehole” comment that followed later on! Fabulous it just gets better.</p> <p>Wednesday – Now having to face the news of the day before, hounded by a business that hates our department and a name that does me no favours, I’m then stuck in a 5 foot square office with her (my manager) for 4 hours where we figure out what to do, talking about ‘twoddling’ (she was doing this when she crashed her car), which didn’t go down too well with the others in the room being all professional. She’s so childish. At the end when I was scrappling with flip charts and trying to balance every other possible loose item on the table in my arms, I asked her what she planned to do with our findings (a reasonable question), when she responded with “how about we shove it up your arsehole?” Hmm.</p> <p>Thursday – This was an interesting day. The biggest piece of toot that has been sitting on my managers desk for the last 6 months finally got binned as she decided in her wisdom (being of age now!), that having a desk that looks like a poltergeist playing in toys’r’us, may not actually be the best way to get taken seriously. When I told her what to do with Gooey Louis (aka toot), she told me she’d love to “shove it up my arsehole!” Alrighty then, this is becoming a stock response. The day continued on and being fascinated by the endless stories of how horrible and gruesome little children are, we got onto the subject of toilet habits of a 6 year old. To cut a long story short, she was on the phone waiting for the school to answer just as I was making a profound comment about how her boy had a rectal exam the day before he announced he wanted to be a cheerleader and that there could be a connection. At the point she repeated “rectal examination,” the Head Teacher answered!!! Oh the hilarity, she was bound to get it. Shove that up your arsehole I thought, quite literally!</p> <p>Today – From the moment she sat down at her desk I was getting the blame for practically everything that was happening, starting with me single handily shutting down the entire international arm of our business (yeah, funny), to spending thousands of pounds on unscrupulous agencies (I wasn’t) because I’m “crap at being a recruiter”. To put into context, being a recruitment manager is my job, so at the beginning of the week I can’t do the management part, and now I can’t do the recruitment part, so I’m pretty screwed really!</p> <p>Then we started talking about me flying (in an aeroplane obviously) on Friday the 13th and how the plane will crash and they could never see me again and how lovely and quiet it would be without me (in case you can’t tell from this, they didn’t seem in the least bit bothered). So feeling bruised and somewhat bullied from the morning, we moved the conversation onto the company magazine and got into a bit of friendly banter which ended somehow in me being told again to “shove it up my arsehole”. Having been told this every day this week, I wanted to push back on this arsehole thing, where she claimed she didn’t say hole, just arse and if she said hole, she wouldn’t have specified and didn’t want to debate about my holes, which naturally sparked the debate. So all in all it’s been a pretty great week! It’s a good job I can take it, she’d probably argue she gets as good as she gives though. Nothing undeserved I say!</p> <p>Well thankfully it’s Friday and more importantly it is the end of a full working week before I go to Mexico for 2 weeks. I cannot wait and I intend to have a fabulous holiday. It could be the last exotic one for a while so I want to make the most of it. It is a whole 7 days away however and in the meantime I have to have my hair pulled about for 3 hours in an effort to try to make myself appear even remotely half decent to look at for the holiday. Then get the tickets, then go shopping, then go to the vets, then iron the entire wardrobe, then pack, then get up, run 5k, see my parents, go to work, do an interview for the Telegraph, sustain more motivational pep talks, (pretend to) do some work, fight some fires, then take my cats to my parents, finish packing and finally… go on holiday. Roll on Friday; I’m sure I’ll be greatly missed!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/06/06/you-really-should-be-a-motivational-spea-4282548/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-05-16:/2008/05/16/let-s-talk-about-4183626/debbiecole19792008-05-16T21:43:01+02:002008-05-16T21:43:01+02:00 <p>It’s been so long that last wrote a blog, I have had so much to talk about but couldn’t be bothered and now I can be bothered as there is rugby league on (and is always some kind of rugby or football on no matter what time it is) and now I can think of nothing to talk about. My husband has been trying to educate me on the difference between rugby league and rugby union, quite frankly I couldn’t be less interested. All I see are legs and butt and that is all I need to see, but thanks for trying.</p> <p>Hmm anyway what shall I talk about, well what are my favourite subjects, sex, murder and alcohol I think. Not all at once, that would be weird, and in no particular order:</p> <p>By murder I don’t mean I commit them or indeed ever intend to commit, but a part of my really warped personality likes to read about them. I also truly believe I have some psychic tendencies in my dreams and often what I dream comes true in some form. I told you people thought I was warped and yes I quite openly admit I may be a little bit odd, but hear me out. </p> <p>So this morning when I was waken up I was absolutely knackered. Not in an average I don’t want to go to work kind of way, but in an ‘I can’t physically move as I have zero energy’ kind of way. This is because I spent the entire night slipping in and out of horrific vivid nightmares which has had a huge impact on me today. They were just so real and it felt like they went on for hours. I was back packing in Australia with my best friend and we were staying in hostels and cheap hotels until we found out that there was a serial killer praying on backpackers in that area, so we walked for miles and miles and up and down hills to try and find somewhere safer to stay. When I woke I honestly felt so exhausted from all the walking I didn’t think I could get through the day. I am now incredibly concerned that my nightmare may really come true, so I will be watching the news closely for the next week. </p> <p>When I was younger I used to frequently dream about things that then came true within a week, such as when I dreamt that a cat got through the window and ate the chicken that was on the side cooling down from the oven – this actually happened that very morning which I didn’t know about until my mum told me in the evening. I have also dreamt about tornadoes, earthquakes, kidnapping and plane crashes, all of which have then happened shortly after, so I was a little shaken today. So that is where my murder interest has impacted my day.</p> <p>OK next subject, sex. My boss has done a pretty good job at taming my hormones this week, not that she has personally put me off anything, our relationship isn’t like that… even though she did try to get it on with one of my female colleagues today!. Generally she isn’t like that! When I say taming my hormones, what I mean is that she has used a few examples and analogies to describe things to me using the part of the male anatomy I would normally enjoy and has painted a pretty awful picture in my head of someone you would not put in the shaggable category. In fact, you wouldn’t want to put in any category. To cut a long story short the words ‘stroking’ and ‘cock’ were used in the same sentence as this persons name and I almost saw my breakfast for the 2nd time. </p> <p>So this painted image has been playing on my mind ever since and now whenever I hear his name this comes into my head and I now really really do have to separate these two things to avoid my sex life being ruined. It’s not healthy! On another note an ex shag buddy / booty call man from University has tracked me down. Whilst I don’t have a problem in speaking to any of my previous ‘mistakes’ I am not sure about this one. He was the one I was caught with by my husband at University when I was kind of meant to be seeing him. All a bit complicated, obviously I wasn’t married then and it is all water under the bridge and completely out in the open. I do think I need to tread carefully though and maybe keep a slightly bigger distance now than I had done then! It will be fine…!</p> <p>Final favourite subject is alcohol, or more alcohol induced stupidity in my friends than actually with me. I am fairly tame really, if you discount my run ins with police on peeing in civic grounds with friends, mad drunken road dashes and flashing to the nice kind uniformed people that look like police (err, OK were police, oops) and the tripping over, launching of beer mats at burly men and things I have regretted and would rather forget. So now I try to drink a little less and watch others act just so foolishly. </p> <p>Tomorrow night we are going to my best friends as she and her husband have just got back from holiday and that normally means she will cook us a great meal, she and I will get giggly and silly over cocktails, we will hear all their funny tales and she would have bought me some great presents. This time though I also have a surprise for her as I booked us tickets to go and see Dolly Parton at the O2 in July!!! Wicked, I know it is Dolly Parton and we are waaaayyyyy to young for that, but Dolly is our drunken Singstar Goddess and I know Mounia will love it, so I can’t wait to tell her!</p> <p>In other news, work is still there, I still have to go as I didn’t marry a millionaire (questioning why now!!) but I have a partially new team and it is all very exciting and a great addition to what is already a fabulous team with the best boss ever. The boss also has a rather special Birthday coming up and plans are currently well under way. Oh the fun we could have, I hope she will be in a good mood – a sense of humour on the day and there after will be a pre-requisite for her coming into the office! It can’t be worse than last year so there isn’t much to worry about and sitting far enough away now to be out of firing line is all good. What could possibly happen...?!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/05/16/let-s-talk-about-4183626/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-04-20:/2008/04/20/yet-more-birthdays-4070680/debbiecole19792008-04-20T19:35:13+02:002008-04-20T21:35:29+02:00 <p>It seems to be that most people I know have Birthdays in the spring; probably something to do with the drunken summer holiday conception rates and hence loads of babies born in spring. So for the last month I have been celebrating many Birthdays and last week I went to one of my good friend’s 40th Birthday party in the middle of nowhere in a country golf club. It was heavily populated by 1980’s throw backs with poor dress sense in a part of Hertfordshire where in-breeding is the norm and unless you speak like you’re chewing a wasp or hold a pint of beer with your pinky in the air, you could almost stand out. Naturally we didn’t quite fit in, but she is a great friend and we had to show our face.</p> <p>This Hertfordshire crowd that I have hung around with for the last few years are a crowd of toffs basically. They have more money than sense and will only part with their money for things that they believe will make them appear somehow richer and better than they really are. The kind of people who like to pull car keys out of a hat at the end of the night, that sort of thing. Though allegedly as I found out, rumour has it that my previous boss and I are having an affair…! </p> <p>An affair, my God, what a fantastic affair that must be. The man I worked desperately hard to get away from, the man accused of sexual harassment and the man that I have seen only once in the last 2 years! Oh yeah, the sex in the affair is that great that I have only managed to see him that one time!!! What a joke, but it gave me and my husband a bit of a chuckle when we found out. I guess there isn’t much else for people to talk about in Much Hadham, bless ‘em! I have so many stories of these people and my dreaded old boss, I reckon I could write a book on it all. I certainly could write a few journals on how not to behave in an office or how to lose at a tribunal based on witnessing the world’s biggest f-ing idiot in action!</p> <p>Well speaking of the office, our consultation at work is now over and it’s time to start saying goodbye to those who chose to leave. It was a bit of a sad day on Friday when someone left the company for good, and probably never to be seen again. Real shame actually. There aren’t many people where you can honestly say you would be truly disappointed to see them go, so it was a very sad occasion. My boss, who by her own admission doesn’t like anyone (you would never have guessed!), was quite emotional which was sad to see actually, she isn’t the type to show emotion on the outside to many people, so I did feel bad for her losing her mate. Then all that totally went when she said I was 3rd tier contingency backup for when she had no other friends, so that put me well and truly back in my place. I never forget, and oh, who’s 40th Birthday is coming up next month...? Wonder what serious humiliation can be brought upon her... </p> <p>So next week, we start planning the Birthday of all Birthdays... I need something else to start planning now so this is a perfect opportunity. I have a few ideas already but I am sure once I get around to speaking to other people there will be a whole series of events to look forward to. She is so gonna get it!! Last year’s Birthday was pretty fun, but not a patch on what’s around the corner. I will be researching this one thoroughly, with any luck I might make it to 4th tier!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/04/20/yet-more-birthdays-4070680/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-04-03:/2008/04/03/feeling-thoroughly-pleased-it-is-nearly--3992575/debbiecole19792008-04-03T21:19:26+02:002008-04-03T21:19:26+02:00 <p>For me my job is a reasonably large part of my life; mainly because I need to earn money, not because I just love getting up early and working loads of hours for the hell of it. Whilst that of course sounds like a really great thing to do…!</p> <p>I try to better myself by observing others, learning as much as I can, training, and naturally doing things I hate doing to either get better at it, because my boss makes me or actually just because it is perceived I may be good at it (a.k.a no one else wants to do it!). Anyway last week I went on a disciplinary and grievance course. Sounds like quite a negative thing I suppose, but oddly I loved it! The people I was with on the course from all over the business were great. I was out of my comfort zone, but I felt very comfortable about that. The trainer was fabulous and just shows there are some great people out there that could so easily go unnoticed. I put on my acting skills and even by my own standards think I did a rather great role play to help someone manage a complete arse in their team, so close to reality was my role play I should have got an award!</p> <p>Well generally, I do like my job and I like that it often sucks and throws up many challenges. Recently I have liked it less, what with going through a horrible consultation situation, will I have a job, won’t I, is it what I want, do I really belong, do I fit in, do they really want me anyway and losing someone I like from my team? There were so many questions, but I found my answer and was happy to stay and have the opportunity to stay, and I am pleased to say despite everything I still enjoy it. Then graduate recruitment rears its ugly head again, aaaggghhhhh!!! Graduates, I do love them all, but boy does it cause a lot of pain. Hundreds of CV’s, they all look the same, their test results are similar, but which ones do you pick?? Damned if you do and damned if you don't. So many good ones to choose from and such little opportunity for all of them – but that’s where the assessment centres come in. Days and days of being cooped up in a stuffy dark room whilst the work you left behind piles up, how can you make this work? I can be thankful though that the 22 days last year has been decreased to 6, so really not all bad!</p> <p>If it’s not the moaning of a couple of people, it’s something else or someone else. You can’t win. In my previous life I would have been a politician I think. Perhaps I should think of that as an alternative career now – a free house, loads of money, clothing allowances… sounds like heaven! </p> <p>I have confirmed though that I am still good at printing, planning and organising, little else mind, but where would things be without someone that had the skills to staple, my God?! But the best thing to happen to me all week is that the moaning of few then bought me a beautiful bunch of flowers for my work, which made it all worthwhile. I was totally stunned actually and didn’t quite know what to say in my embarrassment. A little thank you goes such a long way. Whilst the day ended on a bit of a low which is normal when I am not at my desk for longer than an hour, I can look at the flowers and know that I did something okay for once. At least I can look forward to seeing an old pal tomorrow and get thoroughly merry for belated Birthday drinks! I love that it is the weekend already…</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/04/03/feeling-thoroughly-pleased-it-is-nearly--3992575/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-03-28:/2008/03/28/nearly-3959529/debbiecole19792008-03-28T22:43:00+01:002008-03-28T22:43:00+01:00 <p>I am veering worryingly close to my 30th now. I just turned 29 having had my Birthday last weekend and now face the monthly countdown to a new era and the end to my lovely happy 20’s. All the fun and frolics of being 20 something and now I have to face up to being a grown up. I still only feel 18 so this is a bit of a problem for me. You tell people you are 30 and they have an expectation of what that should say about you, like being well into your career, a kid or 2, married, divorced, nice car, respectable house etc etc. I feel that you have to be someone when you are 30. I just don’t think I can make that happen. I don’t want to grow up, I refuse, so there!</p> <p>Still, I did enjoy my Birthday. Bit peeved that with it being over the Easter holiday everyone forgot and my best friends were in France on some forced seeing the family trip so that sucked, but my husband being the great man he is (he may read this!), did try his best to make it special – in his own little odd way.</p> <p>I woke up on Saturday (my Birthday) and he brought in a mountain of presents. I thought it all looked pretty exciting, loads of things to open, so I got stuck in. The first present he gave me was, wait for it… an iceberg lettuce.<br> “What the f**k is this”<br> “A gift, don’t be ungrateful, open the rest”<br> I hope he is f-ing joking or this leads to something great. I am not a morning person and this is not funny.<br> “This one better not be salad dressing. What the hell is it?”<br> “It’s maple syrup obviously, it says, look right there. Keep opening.”<br> “Okay, this is a Canadian flag, I know that coz I saw it once in a geography lesson at school! Why on Earth have you given me this? The next one better be worth a lot of money I can tell ya” Clearly I really am the most ungrateful person in the world.<br> “Just shut up and keep opening the presents will you.”<br> “Huh. Are we going to Canada,” I said with an excited revelation.<br> “Just shut up and open or I will do it for you.”<br> “Alright moody, didn’t know there was a time limit.” I continued opening.<br> “Hmm, Celine Dion DVD….. oh my God….. are we going to Canada? Are we going to Canada to see Celine Dion? Are we going to Las Vegas?….. What, what, what are we doing?”<br> “You’ll find out, just keep opening.”</p> <p>By this point I was really starting to lose interest. I HATE surprises, I cannot stand not knowing things, or not being able to plan. I wished he would just tell me, I was getting tetchy. Anyway I kept opening all these little presents, a couple of other DVD’s, some jewellery, a lovely charm bracelet with a graduation hat on to signify where we first met (puke!) and a few other little things. </p> <p>Finally I finished opening everything and I asked him what we were doing as opening everything else had not given me any more indication. Or worse he was winding me up and I was going to kill him. Then he said I hadn’t opened everything yet. I kept looking but there were no other presents, I was really getting fed up. Then he told me to open the Celine Dion DVD and in there he had put 2 tickets for us to go and see her play live on her word tour in May to the O2. Wicked! I love Celine Dion, as much as I love Elton John in fact. OK, not really to everyone’s taste, but I am practically 30 so that must be more acceptable now. Alright, I admit that it’s sad but I think she is great and I am huge fan so this was an amazing present. Damn, he’s going to want something for this!</p> <p>Morning gifts over with, he was taking me to London for the day starting with Selfridges – great wonder if he will buy me a nice expensive bag? No chance and I would have to listen to him whine for hours so I’ll just have a quick look then we can move on. 10 mile walk in the freezing cold later (as he insisted there were no cabs despite a thousand flying past), he took me to little intimate bowling alley with a cocktail bar and everything. Slightly odd treat but you couldn’t put a price on the amount of laughs we got out of it when 2 people on either side of us went to bowl, not paying any attention as to why there is a big black foul line separating the part you step on to the part the ball rolls on and both of them fell flat on their faces. It was absolutely hilarious, and what made it even funnier was when they stood up, in amazement they both said “be careful, it’s really slippery on there…” No shit!!! I often wondered what oil on a shiny surface felt like – muppets! </p> <p>After a few cocktails and jug of beer it was fair to say I was feeling a little tipsy, so we went to walk to the next place. Yeah walk. What is wrong with that man, I wonder whether he realises you can just hail a cab in London, you don’t have to book in advance. I was more than willing to flash some flesh if that would have helped but he wouldn’t let me. Probably a wise choice, it was pretty cold!</p> <p>Next place was the restaurant, Dans Le Noir. What an amazing experience. As you would expect, you eat in the dark. And when I say dark, I mean you see nothing, I have never been in such darkness in my life. I have to admit that for someone who has to sleep with night lights on in the house, I did get a little bit panicked as the blind waiter separated me from my husband to seat me the other side of the table. The thoughts going through my head at this point were how will I know whose leg I am touching or whose hand I am holding? You can’t get done for sexual harassment if you have no idea you are doing anything can you?! </p> <p>It was a table of 12, all couples and all strangers. The best thing about eating in the dark, other than it being totally acceptable to make slob of yourself, is that all your inhibitions are completely stripped away. Ordinarily I wouldn’t talk to random people I didn’t know nor would I be interested in starting conversations with them. I also wouldn’t lean round and tap the person next to me on their shoulder so they thought someone else did it. I wouldn’t hide their drinks just for the fun of it and take amusement at them frantically feeling their way to find it. They couldn’t see it was me, so what they hell! They wouldn’t even know it was me when got back in the light. No problem….. until we went to pay and I looked up behind the bar and there on the big screen was displayed CCTV of the restaurant in night vision cameras so everyone can have a good laugh at what’s going on. Oh God, wonder if the guy I took the piss out of is that 7 foot rugby player over there?!! Come on Mart, let’s go now!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/03/28/nearly-3959529/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-03-14:/2008/03/14/weekends-are-not-long-enough-3878436/debbiecole19792008-03-14T23:07:33+01:002008-03-14T23:19:30+01:00 <p>Once per year (we can only cope with once) we try and do a nice deed for my sister-in-law, whereby we take her kids off her for the weekend, entertain them and spoil them completely.</p> <p>Last weekend we did just that. It did also mean that we had to cope with the mother-in-law as well, but give her a reclining sofa and a full belly and she is pretty harmless. So we took 2 kids this time, a 9 year old (going on 65 and grumpy as hell) and the 5 (and a quarter) year old. The story of my Gloucestershire in-laws has always been an interesting one. They are a bit mental, not quite all there and really don’t have much money - they actually don’t bother trying to have much money and the sister-in-law (a qualified hairdresser don’t you know) would much rather sit on her arse, or should I say lie flat on her back, as evident with a 4th child at 16 weeks pregnant… </p> <p>Yes speaking of the 4th child. This came as a bit of a shock when we found out. We thought 3 kids from 2 different fathers was enough, but no. Now it will be 4 children from 3 fathers and about the 7th father the first child has had to get used to. It’s no wonder she is a little grump, poor kid. The only stability she has is seeing us a few times every year. The least we can do when she comes over is to spoil her and her sister bit. The so called rich aunty and uncle, though we couldn’t be more skint, but that’s how they see it. Thing that gets me is the mother-in-law when here will not offer to pay for anything, even to take the kids swimming which cost £6 in total and claims she has no money. Yet she will quite happily spend £30 to top her mobile to go on the internet all evening to chat to weird blokes on ‘girls date for free’. Talk about get your priorities straight.</p> <p>Anyway, these kids are really wonderful. We took them to climb big plastic things, slide down big plastic things that ‘made fireworks’ on their little arms but still they loved it. Then we went bowling, but I gave so much help to the little one with all the barriers and things that she ended up beating me – I wasn’t impressed! Then we went to Pizza Hut. Such a simple thing but they have never been, and the best thing about having a kid with me is that I could go to the ice cream factory!!! Brilliant. I lived my uni life of cheapo pizza wishing I had a kid just so as I had a real excuse to go to make my own ice cream and not feel like a complete twat!</p> <p>The next morning we took them swimming. I have never found swimming a pleasure really unless on holiday or until they put a sauna at my gym and my whole outlook changed. This time though swimming was one of the biggest pleasures ever. The 5 year old had never been. Can you imagine that, never been to a pool. This is the kind of life the children live unfortunately; they just have no opportunity to do anything, OK money is tight, but come on they’re kids they deserve to have fun, there's no excuse for something so cheap. They would spend more than that in cigarettes in a day. As we walked in the little one held my hand so tightly right up to the edge of the pool. She was terrified of the water, it took at least 15 minutes of coaxing to get her to walk down the steps just to get her knees wet. Finally having watched all the other children laughing she decided to do it. As she started to walk across the pool and her confidence grew the smile on her face was so amazing. I’ve never felt like that before and in this moment I decided that I definitely want children…..</p> <p>After the sobering quiet of the children having left, I’ve really missed it. I would give anything to be able to experience that myself and whilst I know they are not mine and I can hand them back after a weekend and in reality they can be such annoying pains, I am sure it is a small price to pay for everything that goes with it. I absolutely love my cuddles and always need a bit of attention, so it was great that for the weekend my attention was also being innocently craved back, all be it to someone else’s beautiful little girls. I love them loads.</p> <p>Having had a great weekend I am now pleased that the working week went quickly and that the best thing other than it being Friday today of course, was when a supplier ‘strategic partner’ that no one likes or values, accidentally sent me an email instead of his colleague to talk about an interview we had to cancel next week… Whilst he totally slagged us off in this email and told me on the phone something different to his email suggested around the cancellation fee, it also highlighted in blatant admission that he overcharges us quite significantly for every piece of work he completes for us. When I say significantly I am talking thousands. Now I could have responded in a way that made him really have a brown trouser moment, or could say nothing… yet. He probably won’t notice that he sent it to me and we can use this as ammo at a later date. So I chose the latter to keep him stewing a bit. I kept the email and sent it to my boss for interesting reading on her return from holiday. What I suspect will happen is that on talking to his colleague thinking she has read the mail, she will have no clue and he will realise it didn’t get to her. He will check his mail, realise that instead of forward he pressed reply and hence it turned up in my inbox. He will then call me and be all nice and complimentary, clearly fake. In the meantime he will call his ‘friend in high places’ to smooth the waves before my boss returns from holiday and lets rip. Not sure which one of these will happen, but I can’t wait to see!!! </p> <p>With a great work ending to the week I can start my Birthday weekend of drunken torture once more. Tomorrow night it is the dodgy pikey tacky Greek restaurant with plate smashing, crazy dancers, sweaty waiters and a few hundred cocktails. This will be followed by severe hangover on Sunday whilst husband finishes ruining the paintwork of our en suite which he started and didn’t finish on a decorating weekend long ago. During this time his mood will get worse, I will hear swear words I didn’t know existed and for the rest of the evening will have to contend with a miserable short fused man I now name ‘Mooby Dick’. The reason for this name is due to the little appearance of flab in his upper region he claims is not there. That will teach him for saying I have a fat arse, even if it is true!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/03/14/weekends-are-not-long-enough-3878436/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-02-27:/2008/02/27/oh-the-drama-3790025/debbiecole19792008-02-27T21:53:49+01:002008-02-27T22:05:24+01:00 <p>Monday didn’t get off to a great start. Well, it was fine for me actually but my boss had a little accident. She came in looking a little more distressed than normal. I wasn’t sure whether or not it was safe to ask if she was ok, but I did anyway and prepared myself for a scary, duck in my seat response.</p> <p>“Morning, you OK”<br> “Don’t want to talk about it.” Alright I thought, that’s fine, clearly she isn’t happy. I’ll just let her be and I’m sure she’ll talk about it when she feels better (she really scares me). So I shut up knowing that she always wants to talk and assumed she would start talking when ready. 2 seconds later…..<br> “I just crashed my car in”<br> “What, really?” I asked knowing that she has a teensy tendency to exaggerate things slightly! Normally a comment like this would mean she tripped over it or something.<br> “So what’s happened, are you hurt, have you totally trashed it, where?”<br> “Well I was going along and there was an accident in front and I didn’t see the (50 tonne) car in front of me and before I knew it I went straight into the back of him.”<br> “Oh God, was he alright.”<br> “Yeah I think so, we just had to rush into the office to get a parking space, I parked next to him.” (Yep, she chose someone who worked for the same company to bump – keep it local!)<br> “Right, so what’s the damage?” I asked concerned. And I really was concerned because having been in a terrifying road rage dash on the A1 whilst trapped in her car with a colleague, I thought she must have been travelling at lightning speed and the car would be wrecked, and perhaps she has done more damage to herself than first realised. I wanted to keep an eye on her for any strange behaviour, if I could notice any difference that is…<br> “My beautiful car, it is practically written off, the bonnet is all folded up (then she did these huge arm movements to indicate the extent of the damage), the bumper is all bent, oh Deb it’s a mess”</p> <p>Well she seemed pretty traumatised and I was really worried about her. The lovely Audi she has treasured and mothered since the day she bought it (in an almost weird way), she seemed devastated so the damage must be awful.</p> <p>Anyway that was the initial part of it, then of course came the call to her insurance company to log the claim. “Deb I got a speeding fine and points and didn’t tell them, will that matter?” Will that matter… It’s an insurance company that will do everything in their power to avoid paying a claim, especially one of £7k damage just 2 months into the policy! So yes it could matter, there is that big bold sentence at the beginning of all insurance policies that says something along the lines of ‘If you fail to declare any changes to your circumstances, i.e. change of address, motoring convictions etc, it could invalidate any future claim’. Clearly she had missed this part of any standard insurance document and I don’t think I was being particularly helpful at this point. I’m normally quite direct about things!</p> <p>So once she had spoken to the insurance company and had sorted it all out, things calmed down a bit. A few hours later when she finished flirting over email with the man she nearly killed who worked in the building next door and who called her a ‘lovely lady’ or something like that, she could then reflect on what actually happened and we started talking about it again in the afternoon. Events seemed slightly different then, here is how they sounded:</p> <p>“Can’t believe I went into the back of someone, I had made the decision to swerve (yep, she used the word ‘swerve’) around the accident up front, I assumed he had made the same decision (yep, ‘assumed’), but he didn’t and then I went into the back of him.”<br> So I had to ask “what were you actually doing at the point when you crashed? Were you on the phone (God forbid), did you have your head in the glove box looking for lipstick, were you falling asleep to the drone of radio 4, what was going on?”<br> “I wasn’t doing any of those things, I was just twoddling myself, I don’t know.”<br> “Sorry, you were whatting yourself? Twoddling, is that….?”</p> <p>Anyway, that made us laugh for a while, but she never really did give an answer for that and I would really rather not know the answer to it in fact, so moving on.</p> <p>“What is the damage to the car then, can I see the picture you took?” I asked this because she seemed quite distressed earlier, whilst I know everything she does or says is dramatised, I felt anxious as she seemed really genuine this time. I should have known really.<br> “Yeah, here look at it, my beautiful car, look at the damage.”<br> “Sorry [pause, looking intently at the picture], what damage, what am I looking at?”<br> “The bonnet, look at it, it’s totally crumpled.”<br> “No I’m sorry, you said it was like this (then I reminded her of the arm movements she demonstrated earlier), it barely has a little gap at the front, what’s wrong with you?”<br> “What, how can you not see it, it’s awful?” </p> <p>Well OK, I was missing something here. Then it came to light that she thinks she may have banged her head without knowing it (think that happened years ago mate) and that now she has whiplash or something. I doubt she got it from the car crash, but if she says she has whiplash, she has whiplash, where she got it from is her business quite frankly.</p> <p>So this drama has been continuing all week and now she is starting to get back to her normal self. I think it is worth highlighting though that the use of the words above describing the real accident such as ‘swerve’, ‘assume’ and ‘twoddling’ should be completely left out of the insurance claim write up. Please at least listen to me now, for once!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/02/27/oh-the-drama-3790025/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-02-23:/2008/02/23/picture_purrrfect~3769645/debbiecole19792008-02-23T17:52:07+01:002008-02-24T12:51:17+01:00 <p>It feels like it has been a long week. Can't cope with this working 5 days a week lark. Wouldn’t part-time be great?! I need a kid, perhaps I need to add this new reasoning for part time work into my justification to have a child. 10 hours a day is tough going!! There aren't many opportunities for breaks at work (well there is but not if you really do have stuff to do!) and with the lunch being pretty rank most days like the dodgy soup made from the previous weeks leftovers and seasoned to the point where every different soup tastes the same as the last. The offer for lunch mid week was then a very welcome treat to escape from the office for a chat. Little did I know I was then going to be dragged around the shops looking for ski jackets and he thinking I may be able to select something nice. I don’t think he thought I was particularly helpful when the one jacket to attract me was a fluorescent yellow thing that looked spookily similar to something the office fire marshal would wear. OK it was a bit off the wall but at least if he got caught in an avalanche he would have a greater chance of being found! Got to think practically about these things. Still the bonus of my ski jacket selections meant we only needed to search for 10 minutes before he got bored and we could leave. Job done!</p> <p>So I am not sure how I got caught up in this, but last week I was volunteered to appear in our company magazine for what has to be one the cheesiest and embarrassing articles it has possibly ever presented. Apparently I am considered to be a technical geek, though in reality know very little about technology, I just have a teensy interest in it. Working for a mobile company is great in that I can be geeky without generally standing out like a sore thumb. That was until the same man that took for me for lunch, who gave me my new phone, who volunteered me for this stupid article, who offered me champagne... made me agree to do it. Well how bad can it be I thought?</p> <p>I got the call yesterday to say the copywriter and photographer were running a few minutes late and that they would swing by my desk and pick me up shortly. I said “no that’s fine, I will come to you, where are you?” She told me and said she will call me when they are ready and I can go upstairs to the office. “Great, see you then.” Being the very shy person I am (!), the last thing I wanted was any of my colleagues to know what I was doing, hence the secrecy I pleaded. 10 minutes later a group of the little buggers walk over to my desk looking all official, whilst the git of a man that put me up for this wanted nothing more than to embarrass me. He so owes me one, now bloody everyone in my team knows, just what I wanted!</p> <p>I went upstairs expecting something really unofficial, a little digital camera, one snap, and a chat with the copywriter putting together my little article. No, that’s not what I faced. 2 photographers with lots of equipment and the umbrella things, the copy writer and various people wandering in and out and peering through the door whilst I stand there like a complete muppett posing in various odd positions with my mobile whilst the paparazzi snap away. I looked ridiculous and the article is ridiculous. I have requested some serious air brushing and a proof read before any of this goes live. I hate this kind of stuff, I am happy to be in the background and un-noticed with no one looking at me, being in a company magazine does not do anything for me. I might see if I can scrounge another phone for doing this one though!</p> <p>So trauma over yesterday from my embarrassing parade, it was Friday, thank God. Friday is the one night that I always have dinner out with my husband. He leaves work dead on time and I have make sure I home before him or I get a bollocking. Whatever. As normal we went out, had a lovely meal and returned home to relax only to find that there had been a cat massacre in our house and the hallway now had a ready made fur carpet. Our cats were traumatised and the cat flap was totally busted leaving a gaping and very windy hole in the kitchen door. Examination of the cats meant that another expensive trip to the vets could be avoided and is safe to assume the rogue cat that had rudely entered our house to claim territory was greeted unexpectedly by 5 monsters which tore him to shreads. OK, I don’t know they tore the cat to shreads, but it certainly must have come off much worse looking at the amount of fur it had deposited and the fact that my cats are really hard! Well I don’t think we will be seeing the cat around for a few more days but when it does he better bring the boys along! </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/02/23/picture_purrrfect~3769645/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-02-18:/2008/02/18/to_egypt_and_back~3747529/debbiecole19792008-02-18T23:30:47+01:002008-02-18T23:30:47+01:00 <p>What a lovely holiday we had. Such a distant memory already, it’s surprising how quick you get back into the same old routine. But holding onto the holiday for a second more, it really was fabulous. We arrived in Egypt just in time for dinner being served, went to the room, got ourselves fresh and having been deprived of any decent food for all of, err, 5 hours, we were starving. We gave the buffet a battering then went to the bar. One of many, like a little pub crawl on site, what more could a girl ask for. Needless to say within the first 3 hours of arriving in Egypt we had already gone through the cocktail menu and were rather happy. I think it must have been altitude or something! Once thoroughly sloshed we headed back to the room….. </p> <p>Great night and as a result the first day there I had a stinking hangover to contend with. I know it sounds like I am always drunk, but really I very rarely drink much. Only a handful of times in the year, honestly Sir. The first night put me off of volumes of alcohol and cigars for the rest of the week so I did limit myself to tipsy on the other nights. At least I could remember all the other details so I know I had behaved reasonably well. I didn’t verbally abuse or embarrass anyone nor was I done for indecent exposure so all in all it worked out well.</p> <p>The weather was great, the food was good, the sights were reasonable. Of course by sights I am not talking great Egyptian history, I mean some fairly decent looking tanned totty to keep me amused in a moment of ‘what would it be like to do him, I mean know him?’ I was merely observing the effort that must have been put into having pecks and a six pack so well defined and how long he must be working up a sweat for in the gym and that his stamina must be pretty good. Clearly I would have been interested to know these details, for his health and well being, obviously!</p> <p>So other than the usual little holiday glitches, such as my husband breaking the lock on my case whilst sneaking back to the room when I was sun bathing to romantically hide a piece of jewellery amongst my belongings. In doing so he inadvertently changed the combination of the lock on my case, which was only locked because he broke the safe and we had to put the valuables somewhere before the dodgy cleaner came in. Thus later leading to husband on the floor trawling through 1000 combinations whilst I had a lovely shower, before he was prepared to be beaten and seek help from a handy man. He wasn’t particularly handy if you ask me, but he did get the lock open and Egypt could sleep easy knowing that I wouldn’t have to go commando for the remainder of the holiday! </p> <p>Other than the lock there was an evening with no water as the pipe broke and inconvenienced everyone, but it was soon fixed and we could shower in orange water once more. All was fine until the day we came to leave when our names were not on the list and they refused to take us to the airport. Not sure why they weren’t on the list but a couple of harsh words to the dopey Thomas Cook rep did the trick and we were back on our way.</p> <p>Fabulous, safely home and back to the grindstone. Same amount of cleaning to do, same places to go, same faces to see, food to go buy, which by the way I hate with some severe passion. You come back from holiday all nice and relaxed, then before you manage to drag yourself back into the office you must cling to every last second of what still is a holiday and land yourself in Tesco to get the vitals. </p> <p>God, it is frustrating and even worse during a week day. It is the time that all non working parents in the world flock to a small superstore with what seems thousands of irritating children trailing behind and causing bored havoc whilst their more irritating mums stand gossiping in the aisle when I am trying to get through. I really am not a very patient, nor it seems tolerant person of late and it was only a matter of time before I could see myself having a blazing holiday blues row with some tinned blonde track suit wearing twerp who insisted on getting in my way. Fortunately all of Tesco were saved from my mood when an offer of “let’s get outta this shit ‘ole and grab some lunch,” came my way. Calamity narrowly avoided.</p> <p>Having done the shopping and unpacked it was time to wind up for work. I never thought it would be a smooth transition from holiday to work, only hoping that I could at least be gently eased in, over say a 30 minute period, but 10 seconds in and WHAM. Great your back, now you can deal with this... Oh God, why did I come back? I could I have stayed in Egypt, I could have eloped on my return, I could have ‘accidently’ hurt myself and been signed off for a few more weeks! Just some more time, why now? Oh well, 10 seconds in or 10 hours in, it was gonna get me so may as well have been sooner! Still, emotional wreck or otherwise we will pull through it, just as we always do. As my husband keeps telling me, doesn’t matter how bad things are or perceived to be, we still have each other (errggghhh). But actually, that’s more important to me than anything. What else in the world could possibly matter?!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/02/18/to_egypt_and_back~3747529/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-01-24:/2008/01/24/day~3627995/debbiecole19792008-01-24T21:56:36+01:002008-01-25T21:15:35+01:00 <p>Having gone through the trauma of last week of finding out that the job I have worked so hard for could be disappearing, this week I have actually managed to smile. In fact, it has been quite enjoyable and despite how terrified I am about losing my job, the hatred, the anger and the tears have subsided (well maybe just a little remains) but I feel oddly mellowed if a bit ‘out of body’. It's like I am not really here and instead just peering down watching the play unfold. Bit like watching a soap opera except without the scandal of raunchy affairs… hmm, I hope I end up with the pretty boy at the end too!</p> <p>Well only one more week to go and then I am off to Egypt to temporarily forget all my woes. I can’t wait. Sun, sea, sand and hotel sex, great!! Wonder whether I can manage to get through the entire cocktail list in one night again? I don’t remember much about how great that was the last time we there, but apparently I was helped back to the room by a slightly less drunk husband (at least that’s who I thought it was), and woke up in the same clothes (and shoes) I was ditched with on the bed. Whilst I am sure I had a good time in my pathetically feeble drunken state, my head was seriously telling me the next day that it was not a good idea. They do give you triple shots with everything, it’s pretty horrific and tastes disgusting, but after a few of those many things can pass my lips with limited challenge…</p> <p>The Egypt holidays at this time every year are to mark our wedding anniversary which will now be our 5th year. How we made it this far without one argument or serious head injury I will never know. But we have and no complaints… well other than the typical men are from mars and women are from venus thing. We certainly have many differences and see, think and feel from completely different ends of the spectrum. It makes it interesting but also makes me contemplate whether being with the same sex would bring me less hassle. This is a conversation my husband enjoys having with me as I mull over the option quite innocently, but clearly he is approaching this conversation from a particularly different perspective. Whilst it might be something you muck about with in the uni days, a serious switching I don’t think he could ever convince me of, despite how bought in he seems to be to it! No honey!</p> <p>Anyway, moving on from this the other immensely exciting activity I have been involved with in the last week is contending with a cat with bloody wee. Bloody wee all over my bloody house. Poor little boy, but I was not impressed. I took him straight to the vets knowing it was just cystitis thinking they will give him some miracle pink pills and all will be well again, but no. He has some dodgy bladder lining syringe type thing to put in food paste and some tranquilizers. Yep, tranquilizers! I didn’t think he was a crazy insomniac, I just thought he was a little stressed about something. It is a bit sad that I talk about my cat I know, but if you ever see a cat walking around the hood looking stoned, with braided fur and a Bob Marley hat, send him to me. It’s just Squeak!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/01/24/day~3627995/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-01-20:/2008/01/20/here_we_go_again~3604682/debbiecole19792008-01-20T14:01:39+01:002008-01-20T14:01:39+01:00 <p>This year hadn’t got off to a particularly great start and then suddenly after taking me 7 years to find a role, company and team I absolutely love, in one fair swoop the whole lot is gone. Sorry guys, the department is disappearing, your roles are totally diminishing so you’ve got 90 days, starting now…..</p> <p>Oh shit. Whilst I knew something was coming, I didn’t quite realise it would be this big. So here we are, back to square one. OK am I worried about having to find a new job, no not particularly, there are thousands out there I am sure one of them would suit me if I am prepared to commute for hours (which I’m not), or do something I don’t really enjoy (coz I have a huge mortgage), but what about the team? It ain’t easy to find a whole group of people you completely fit with and more importantly a boss you actually enjoy working for. Unfortunately the general nature of many HR depts I have encountered is not always one of compassion and fun, instead is generally full of people too up their own arse to even give you a second look. So leaving what is an amazing team surprisingly in an HR dept just makes me feel sick. I will never find that again. </p> <p>Following the news we all went to the pub and had a group cry which I started in a domino effect when one of my hiring managers called to say he had heard, what a great job I do and how much he would miss me if I left. I couldn’t contain myself and that was it. I’ve barely stopped crying since and whilst my husband is consoling me and telling me not to worry as I will find another position, he doesn’t quite understand that it’s not about that. It’s actually about the amazing people I am blessed to work with, they are not just colleagues, they are my friends.</p> <p>There is something really quite sobering about trawling through job boards, reading crappy adverts written by half wits that you are now relying on to help you find the next step in your career. I’m sitting there updating my CV, registering, filling in applications when if I am completely honest my heart is just not in it. I can see myself coming up with a hundred excuses as to why the job being presented to me is not for me, because it isn’t what I have now, and just maybe there could be a way for me to stay. I really don’t want to leave, I don’t want to manage any other team than the one I have now and I don’t want to work for a different boss. I love my boss and one of the hardest things will be having to say goodbye to her and even leaving behind some of my team to continue working with her, which is too painful to even think about and so unfair. Maybe there will be a role for me, maybe not, but whatever happens it won’t be as it was… it was great. Thank you boss!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/01/20/here_we_go_again~3604682/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2008-01-08:/2008/01/08/testing_times~3548304/debbiecole19792008-01-08T21:26:00+01:002008-01-08T21:26:00+01:00 <p>So it is that time of year, quarter, month, week, whatever, basically that time of year when performance reviews happen at work and everyone is blocked out for 2 weeks whilst these “quality conversations” take place. Of course this is just my boss’s polite way of saying “you are so gonna get it” which puts the fear of God in me. Of course I am naturally a great employee which she will undoubtedly agree with… ahem, nudge nudge. But still, there is that deep and meaningful “QC” that needs to take place so long as I can hold back the tears and keep the razors at bay… So you would think with this brewing in the background I might try and behave, offer to buy tea, lunch, massage… alright that might be taking it too far, but an element of bribery should perhaps be featuring by now maybe? Well it’s not and still I continue to wind the handle in annoyance and back chat which to be fair she probably gets enough of at home, but I don’t have such opportunity and she is the perfect target. Roll on the review that’s what I say, I’m not scared, bring it on…!</p> <p>OK so my review pending (bricking it) and reviews to conduct on my own team you could say that this year so far has not got off to a great start. All these QC’s and challenging conversations I have already had, I’ve only been back a week from a lovely break and it’s a bit of slap in the face to be honest. To add insult to injury I also offered to take some psychometric tests to try out a new recruitment process and get some feedback – as clearly I am lacking this at the minute. So now I have to go through some rather embarrassing public humiliation whilst my peers find out what a complete nut and dim wit I really am. They already knew that, it’s pretty obvious and I don’t try to hide it, but now it will be official, with an occupational psychologist stamp and everything. Alright, I am not a Head of Dept, and this will only go to prove that I am a substantial way off. Not sure 7 years work experience, no confidence and an attitude would qualify me anyway, but this will be the final nail in the coffin. Might go prepared with my P45 to save time on the way out! </p> <p>Keeping to the work and psycho type theme, I got yet another call from my previous stalking ex-boss over Christmas. He was the one that was always a little over familiar, a bit ‘hands on’ and a little too keen on giving incredibly cutting and negative feedback that served no purpose than to magnify his perception of the size of his own tool. So in this phone call whilst I was off enjoying some alone time, he poured his heart out and spent 20 minutes blubbering on about how his girlfriend has cheated on him. All I could think at this point was that I was glad he was hurting, how shit it is to be on the receiving end of awful behaviour and go tell someone who cares. I didn’t say that obviously, but I really did have to contain myself. I did well to ignore the whining until I thought I should listen for a few minutes and then couldn’t help but feel sorry for what a sad and lonely life this man now leads. I feel bad that he is just one of life’s true losers. I’m not the most forgiving of people, or at least I can forgive a little, but I will never forget. </p> <p>So after the blubbering and the feeling sorry for himself we ended the conversation. I received numerous texts from him and a number of phone calls over the next few days that I couldn’t ignore anymore, so I agreed to go and see him. We met at his house, where he blubbered again and felt even sorrier for himself whilst I took some pleasure in seeing this. Sadistic you might say, take pleasure at another man’s pain… absolutely! About time he got a taste of his own medicine. He has probably caused more psychological bruising to me in the last year I worked for him than I would care to truly acknowledge. This probably also extends to every other woman that has worked for him since. So the benefit for any kind of visit of this nature is that no matter how you may be feeling about your own life at that point in time, there is always someone living a much sadder self inflicted existence, wallowing in their own self loathing. Whilst unbelievably a part of me still really cares about this man, I couldn’t help feeling just a little teensy bit smug on my departure!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2008/01/08/testing_times~3548304/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2007-12-16:/2007/12/16/to_gloucestershire_with_love~3453235/debbiecole19792007-12-16T22:43:26+01:002007-12-16T22:43:26+01:00 <p>With Christmas looming, this weekend saw us making the annual trip to Gloucestershire to deliver presents to my husband’s family… our family…! It is not a trip I look forward to much, not least because the drive is possibly the most boring one you could make in the UK. Seriously, you go from M25 accidents to M4 roadworks, to another really long road with nothing to look at that takes you right into the heart of Gloucestershire. I could barely contain my excitement when I saw that it was also minus 5 degrees there. Then of course at the end of this journey, I have to see the in-laws.</p> <p>Anyway 2 hours after leaving our house at stupid o’clock on Saturday morning, we approached the gigantic and incredibly steep hill that even a brand new car struggles to get up. 15 minutes of vertical driving and white knuckles as I grip to the handle waiting for the car to roll backwards is enough to make anyone feel a little a little woozy and by that point I had completely lost any motivation I did have about seeing the family. We made it to the quaint 1820’s little village carved in the side of the hill to see Nan. The area and her house looked the same way it always did. The milk maid in the same place, the plant pots still the exact ones she has had since she moved in 70 years ago. Traditions have never altered. Everything is as it has always been. No renovations no modernisations. Just a little village from the 1800’s where no one seems to mind the style and no one tries to change it. So naturally I ask myself why and then advise her that she should get an iPod and have Sky installed, spruce the place up a bit!!</p> <p>At 86, Nan is possibly the best part of my in-law family. She is the only Nan left in my family, but she seems to be ageing very quickly now. She lost her best friend last year and has been really lonely since. She won’t ask people for help and she won’t ask to be with anyone for Christmas. She says she doesn’t want to get in the way and is quite happy with her cup of coco and little black and white TV. I don’t consider myself to be totally materialistic at all, but I do like nice things and to have some of the modern accessories to a 21st century life. This is why I find Nan so amazing. She wants for nothing, she never has wanted for anything, she never complains, even when she is in immense pain and she will always make time for you. She is what I would aspire to be. A great woman with great strength that wants for nothing. I have some way to go!</p> <p>So after Nan and the time warp we were trapped in we travelled 2 miles to the next stop to see Martin’s Dad. Not much to say here really as he barely talks and when he does I can’t understand him. An hour went by and I couldn’t tell you one thing we discussed. So moving on to mother and sister-in-law. I don’t mind either of these actually as the Mum I can just spend the entire time winding up. Which I did, she loves it really, she doesn’t see us much and we tend to make her laugh. She goes home happy anyway. </p> <p>We stopped off to see the sister-in-law and the 3 kids. I love seeing them as the kids I only get to see once a year and they are growing up so fast. It’s so lovely that they look forward to us coming and can’t wait to tell us everything they did. Unfortunately as the eldest who is 9 was so excited to see us, she and her friend had prepared around 15 dances to Pink and the High School Musical (full songs) that I had to endure on arrival. One or two I can handle then my concentration goes, so I suggested we play hide and seek. The 4 kids in the house scattered… ahh quiet. So I continued counting then went and sat down. Gave me a good 15 minutes peace before they started to wonder what was going on and began to reveal their hiding spots. I told them they were too good for me and as I lost, I suggested they should go and hide again – they fall for anything!! My punishment for not playing properly was having to watch a rendition of ‘Little Donkey’ in the kitchen which was more torturous than the original dances I tried to cut short! That over with the youngest who is 2 wanted picky uppy and a cuddle so I was stuck with her to my hip for the rest of the evening. Every time I tried to put her down she would scream and grip me like a vice while the 5 year old would try to climb up my back. Where’s my husband whilst I am being mauled by over excited children? Of course, where else but on the sofa chatting to the newest boyfriend. He is a tank driver in the army don’t you know. Wow, a tank!!! That was it, husband occupied.</p> <p>Having finally clambered out of the arms of screaming children, we managed to climb into the car for the journey home. I was knackered by this point and quite glad that our last free Sunday until the new year was going to be a quiet one. Which it has been and it is lovely. No children, no noisy Gloucestershire people (only because they speak a 1000 decibels higher than us), no cigarette smoke, a reasonably tidy house though it could seriously do with a clean, our cats and more importantly, just us. The way I like it.</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2007/12/16/to_gloucestershire_with_love~3453235/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2007-11-25:/2007/11/25/pictures_and_ricks~3350359/debbiecole19792007-11-25T17:30:39+01:002007-11-25T17:37:13+01:00 <p>Following on from the wedding of the century, my best friend went on honeymoon to Hawaii. She called me on Thursday morning having just landed back home to organise us going to her house for dinner and a catch up. I was so pleased to have her back, I missed her so much. Naturally I couldn’t wait to see her and hear all about things and more importantly collect the gifts I knew she had bought me!</p> <p>Friday night we excitedly turned up at their house, had a lovely dinner and talked for hours about what they did, what they saw, who they met etc etc. The first 2 hours of this was great, learning about a new country, drooling over the new gorgeous Gucci watch on her wrist and seeing the newly formed caveman look in her husband, who since being married for 3 weeks has let himself go and hasn’t shaven once! I thought it took at least a year to get to this point but obviously they are very advanced in their married life already!</p> <p>Anyway the night continued and after dinner we went through all the wedding pictures, selected the ones we wanted which was fine, but the night turned and took a bit of a ‘One Foot in the Grave’ episode tone to it. Meaning that the initial excitement of hearing about the honeymoon progressed to looking through thousands of pictures. It is fair to say I was really glazing over, but every now and again I would hum to show my interest and engagement! </p> <p>I genuinely was interested in the whole holiday thing, but I just can’t concentrate for that length of time. I must have hid it well coz then we got onto the movie section of the evening… “(Oh God) Home videos, really? Great...” I have to admit I was a little concerned about what type of videos they may have taken, so was relieved to see a volcano and lava flow. Ordinarily this would actually have been enough to heighten my interest, but by now I was way too tired to bother. I was kind of hoping by this point that we might be exposed to something a bit more risqué than a lava flow just for the shock factor. But no. 2 hours later in the home movie stakes of watching practically every piece of evening entertainment in full, I wanted to throw myself down the stairs. A trip to A&E was becoming more appealing!</p> <p>Video’s finally over, we got onto the wedding gifts. My fault as I had asked what the highlights of the gifts were and whether they got a toaster! Just expecting a one line answer really to close the evening, but they didn’t see it this way. They did in fact get a traditional wedding toaster and new hubby was ordered upstairs to bring the presents down to show us. Oh no, this is at least another 60 minutes worth of chat. Well after we had seen all the presents we spoke about the 4 of us and what we will do on our looming trip together to Las Vegas in a desperate attempt to change the subject. At least this gave us something other than the wedding to talk about which after 6 months of constant conversation, I was quite pleased to see it end. Perhaps we can all renew our wedding vows in Vegas and give us a new type of wedding to discuss?! Oh please.</p> <p>Getting to bed finally in the early hours of Saturday morning without a sleeping pill, I was plagued with hideous scary dreams about zombies chasing me and people being cruel to my cats. I didn’t sleep too well because of this and then had to get up early to drive to my parents. I felt like a zombie myself actually and my husband would probably say I looked like one too. Fair feedback.</p> <p>Now one thing to mention is that it is winter and the mornings are very cold and very icy. Some information that a complete arsehole could have done with on our journey to my parents. We just turned out of our house and had made it to the main road when a boy racer with the car exhaust the size of my entire car was gaining quickly behind me in the distance. When he made it up close I thought it was quite amusing how he was driving with his head hanging out the window as he hadn’t bothered to de-ice the windscreen! We carried on and as I came to a roundabout I slowed down (slippery roads!) and Mr Small Penis in the car behind thought he would be really clever and undertake me as he put his foot down on the roundabout. It got him nowhere as I caught up with him at the next roundabout when he did the same again as he smirked at me and revved his engine thinking how cool he looked when he cut me up. This really angered me. As he pulled around he lost control of the car and the back end skidded out as he did an impressive 360 spin on the ice. Fortunately there was no one else on the road, he shit himself as this happened and looked absolutely terrified when the car stopped. We couldn’t help but laugh, he was incredibly embarrassed so as to respect this as I pulled off the roundabout I gratefully smirked back at him whilst giving him the finger. What a prick. Shame!</p> <p>I love nothing more than when blokes with big egos are firmly put back in their place after showing off. It used to happen to me a lot when I would commute on the M25 as I would drive along at 10 mile an hour stopping intermittently and minding my own business, there would be white vans full of tradesmen going to work who would stare, whistle and generally irritate me. Do they honestly think they look good?! One morning we were going along and I was being pestered by 3 lads as we ended up stopping at the same places sitting in adjacent lanes. I was getting really pissed off as none of them were good looking and worth my effort in teasing back, but as the traffic began moving again they were so busy looking at me and not concentrating, that as the traffic stopped they didn’t react and ploughed straight into a 4x4 in front of them! It was so funny, totally the highlight of my week as the guy in 4x4 was less than impressed and got of his car to give them a mouthful. Needless to say they bowed their heads in embarrassment and the rest of my journey was a peaceful one!</p> <p>I’m not sure what it is about some men, sitting behind a wheel fuels them with so much testosterone they can’t fully expel, so inflict this on everyone else. Same things happen in manual revolving doors. Ever noticed that? You will be going around with other people at a normal speed and a hard man will join and push it with such force you have to run to avoid your ankles being broken. Seriously, what is that about, what point are they trying to prove? I think we already know the real answer, check out the car they drive as an extension to something lacking if you haven’t already figured it out!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2007/11/25/pictures_and_ricks~3350359/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2007-11-17:/2007/11/17/some_quiet_time~3312038/debbiecole19792007-11-17T20:39:04+01:002007-11-17T20:46:19+01:00 <p>Well the lumpy head that I have had for a while and the tragic headaches lasting weeks have finally decided to go away. Not sure if they will make another appearance but at the moment I am free. It did all end in a stupid cold, but if that’s all it will end in then I am pretty happy about that.</p> <p>My husband is away this weekend claiming he is at an exhibition but staying in a hotel with a blonde lady… hmm, I should trust him here I suppose and now that I have finally managed to squeeze my front door shut to all the men queuing up to come in, I can relax! Well that was the plan anyway but getting home this afternoon from a day out with my mum I came home to a number of things. Runny pooh (not me, one of my cats!), what can only be described as exorcist style green vomit on the landing, clumps of black fur all over the house and cat pee by the door. So as I stumbled in with hundreds of shopping bags, I had to hurdle my way into the kitchen to start another mass clean. So off I went armed with disinfectant, carpet cleaner and some muscle.</p> <p>An hour later I had finished cleaning, had put all the shopping away, loaded the dishwasher, put some washing on, all the usual chores and then thought I would feed the cats to get them out from under my feet. They were starting to irritate. </p> <p>Being the nice mummy I am I bought the kitties their favourite incredibly expensive tuna which they all loved and ate in a second and how did they repay me? Like this:-</p> <p>I went upstairs to feed my fish and whilst my back was turned for a second, 2 of them decided to have a massacre in the kitchen and by the time I had managed to get down there, fur was covering the kitchen and dining room floor. As one of my big fat boys pinned down my little girl (I am still talking about cats here but they are my baby equivalents!), she was so terrified that he made her pooh herself, except she did this on the work surface and all over the floor with a pile of pee across the kitchen table just to finish off. Absolutely disgusting and for someone that takes great pride in hygiene and a tidy house, this did not go down too well with me. I kicked the boy outside in the cold and rain and sent my little girl upstairs to wait for me for cuddles. So the cleaning started all over again, really not the relaxing weekend I was hoping for.</p> <p>So the toilet business over with hopefully for the rest of the evening, I can begin to focus on me, which was kind of the benefit of having my husband out for once. Some lovely me quiet time which I greatly need. I have been incredibly emotional over the last few weeks and I don’t feel like I am snapping out of it. I feel like a big ball of hormones and emotions rolling down a hill, bumping into obstacles, finding a different route and just waiting for a place to settle a bit. I’m sure it will come soon.</p> <p>I am very broody and everyone around me is having babies or at least talking about having them. I am not ready by a long stretch but with the sensitive mental state I am in right now I have to admit I am a little concerned. I am crying at everything too, just the smallest sad thing will start me off. All I want are lots of hugs. I feel intensely lonely although I know that I’m not. I am needy, very withdrawn and don’t feel like talking or socialising much. What is wrong with me? I hope I’m not already pregnant.</p> <p>Well speaking of children it must be time for a bit of an update on the in-laws as there has been some more news in the continuing saga. As a reminder my sister-in-law had 3 children by the time she was 24 by 2 different fathers and now she is onto her 3rd long term boyfriend in 6 years. This in itself is not great, but fair enough. She loves her kids and whilst they will never have the greatest lives with her, she has now decided to move yet another boyfriend in and has announced to the family that she is engaged…. again. Ahhhhh, is this another disaster waiting happen? Surely, it must be. I’m thinking of adopting one of our nieces as I absolutely love her to bits and I want to give her more. I don’t think it would go down too well though, so think I may move on from that idea or at least leave the subject until after Christmas. Best not rock the boat!</p> <p>The other walking disaster at the moment besides me, is my mother-in-law. She has spent the best part of the last 6 months saving up for a new car. When I say saving up, I mean she wanted to spend about £300 to get one! Despite consistent warnings and great potential to learn from previous lessons, she went and bought a new car for £250 (bargain) and oddly enough by the end of its first week in her ownership it was dead. She didn’t kill it, it just died, so now she is depressed at not having a car again and starts saving once more. Guess what is on her Christmas list from us… she can think again!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2007/11/17/some_quiet_time~3312038/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2007-11-09:/2007/11/10/i_now_pronounce_you~3272919/debbiecole19792007-11-10T00:10:17+01:002007-11-10T00:27:43+01:00 <p>Since my last blog entry a lot has happened. I have had my best friend’s hen night, the Hanbury Manor night before wedding, my husbands Birthday, my mum’s Birthday, the grooms Birthday, the wedding of the century and a very lumpy head!</p> <p>I’ll start with the hen night which got off to a pretty bad start; the best laid plans and all that. The limo turned up to take all us hens and stags together to London armed with copious amounts of champers having already got tanked up to Singstar in the house beforehand, meant that 2 of the stags needed to pee on the way in a mission critical situation. The limo driver hearing the wincing pain in the back (when the girls cared enough to turn the music down), pulled up to the side of the road and the guys disappeared into someone’s garden with no sense of arrest. Whilst waiting for them in a crowded busy Thursday night City, what else would there be to do but for us girls to open the windows to attract some male attention from the pub overspill? Naturally we got the kisses required then managed to attract a real drunken weirdo (I think that may have been my fault, I am a dodgy geezer magnet), who thought he would catch a great opportunity to sell a bunch of drunk girls all the drugs he had sewn into the lining of his flashers jacket at a ‘good price’. By this point we were wishing the guys would hurry back so we could be on our way. Fortunately they did and whilst the limo began moving and abuse was hurled at the window, we hit another traffic jam. Great.</p> <p>So we arrived at clubland hell and said goodbye to the guys as they merrily skipped to a seedy strip club or wherever it was they were going. I preferred not to know too many details, so we walked swiftly to our club as all of us were bursting for the loo at this point. It didn’t help that when we got there we had to walk up and down 5000 stairs at least 15 times as everyone who worked there had absolutely no clue which floor the restaurant was on. Pissed me off somewhat especially as some bird got really stroppy at the fact we had asked her a question, then started mumbling rudely not in English. Fortunately we were possibly the most multi-lingual hen party London has ever seen and a fellow hen gave her a mouthful back having understood what she said. Needless to say she soon shut up. </p> <p>40 mins later we found the restaurant and took our seats. Myself and the other bridesmaid started to get a bit tetchy with the whole event so far and I noticed a speed dating session taking place at the other end of the bar and suggested we give that a go. What? I wasn’t getting married! So we walked over to see whether we could get ourselves in on the action, there were at least 6 married men in the lot that looked half decent! We were refused unfortunately as it was already underway and she had probably noticed that we too were already married, so that put a stop to the fun. Damn it!</p> <p>The night proceeded fairly uneventfully until we were nearly kicked out for screaming at the top of voices that the live band were “totally shit” and should “go home”. OK in hindsight it probably was a bit harsh, but believe me it was warranted. When the band packed up, the dance floor was ours so up we went. Then some freaky guys thought they could join in (refer to my earlier point about attracting weirdos) and proceeded to try and bump and grind my arse which I didn’t appreciate, but nothing that a few ‘accidental’ elbows couldn’t solve and the dance floor was ours again. The night went on, then the escorts came in. Obviously prostitutes, the no clothes, too much make up and the old scabby ‘would never get any otherwise’ men gave it away. Why go to a club? Seriously, Soho is only 10 mins away, get a room. I don’t want to see it on a dance floor, didn’t you hear THE DANCE FLOOR IS OURS… Anyway, as interested as I certainly was to share my private space with saggy tittied, no bra prossies that seriously have no rhythm in their hips at all (they must be the bargain bin bunch), we did decide enough was enough and we would make a move to catch up with the blokes. Home we went to 3 hours sleep before starting the day prior to the wedding hassle, with responsibility, chores, hotel dashes and more champagne.</p> <p>The wedding day itself was great. My friend went off to get her hair done at the hotel whilst I waited for my husband (Usher) to drop off the other bridesmaid so as we could get ready together. We faffed about a bit and then Mounia (Bride) comes back with her hair all lovely, the veil in and looking excited and fab hoping to come into a room of red carpet and salute, only to be greeted by me and Barbara screaming about our shoe crises, as neither of us could walk. Now what do we do? I know, my husband can drive all the way back to our house, rummage around the loft for my own wedding and previous maid of honour stuff and pull out some shoes from there. Great, then we will stop the wedding car on the way to grab the shoes and change before going in. We thought we looked very pro when we turned up, until everyone piled outside to catch a glimpse of the gorgeous bride in the car with her Dad only to see us two idiot bridemaids changing our shoes and passing our old ones through the vintage car windows! Tut. </p> <p>Thinking that with the shoe crisis over we were off the hook, the bride's wrap broke. Ah, what do we do about that one? Her Dad took the pin out of his flower to patch up the wrap and had to put the flowers in his pocket. Another calamity diverted for us, but then hilarious wedding planner panic set in about this when she had to run around the farm looking for a pin, as the flowers "MUST be on the lapel". Whatever, they are still there. Who cares? After the paparazzi were finished with us and we were now seriously losing interest in the event altogether, they decided to let us go and get married. Phew.</p> <p>The ceremony was fabulous, I fought back the tears and it went really well, except for us bridesmaids again when we pelted it down the isle unintentionally, forgetting that with our new found comfortable shoe freedom, the bride couldn’t walk that fast and was left behind. Oh well. Ceremony over the bride and groom walked out continental style to the Can Can of all things! It went down well with the French side of the family so it was quite amusing. Now the party can start!</p> <p>Having stayed behind until the very end me being the Maid of Honour and my husband being the Usher a.k.a both best friends to the bride and groom, we were also forced to kiss goodbye to everyone, which I really love doing. Not. It was only the 4 of us staying in the hotel at the farm that night, so we went back to our rooms. We had a great night and in the morning went for breakfast with the happy couple only to find that their wedding night was somewhat disturbed. Mounia had bought some lovely surprise lingerie for the special night which was very sexy (I didn’t see it on her in case you’re wondering, just in the shop!), so she was hoping for a nice relaxing night in the 4 poster honeymoon suite. Only to be disrupted by a phone call from her Dad! I think it was intentional, but the story was that her mum had lost a diamond ring, so the groom was ordered out in the cold to go and see if he could find it. Oddly enough the ring was not lost after all and bride and groom were mightily peed! At least the honeymoon won’t go to waste!</p> <p>Now an update on my dull headache situation, which I did get rid of for a while. It came back this week and then in the middle of the night last night I felt a lump in the back of my head. Slightly terrified that my brain may be falling out or a spider is nesting, I woke my husband up from a deep sleep (he looked so cute and comfy too….I really hated to wake him!), I put on all the lights and demanded he investigate my head. He felt it and told me it was probably a spot and rolled over and went immediately back to sleep again. Pleased for his genuine concern I stayed awake fretting about what it could be and how long I may have left to live. A SPOT, it covers most of my flipping head, surely it must be something much more serious than that. Well I hauled myself into work and told everyone about this tragic lump. There was more concern from colleagues in the office than I got from husband… exactly. Anyway, I left my lump, it is still there but less painful, so I will see whether the weekend (or husbands wallet) manages to clear it. Watch this space! </p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2007/11/10/i_now_pronounce_you~3272919/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2007-10-26:/2007/10/26/moving_sleeping_and_throwing~3200932/debbiecole19792007-10-26T22:07:21+02:002007-10-26T22:07:21+02:00 <p>As a kid I always used to love musical chairs. Running around like a lunatic until the music stops before fighting my way through the odd little brat to take my place, whilst Mummy and Daddy look on and turn a blind eye to any wrong doing in the hope they don’t have to deal with it. Kind of similar to most offices really!</p> <p>We had yet another desk move today which must be my 30th seat at least in the last 2 years. You run around all day and as soon as you manage to be at your desk for 5 minutes to warm the chair, you’re moving again. I don’t mind it actually, nice to look at a different wall! However that said not only am I now sitting opposite my boss which she is immensely delighted about as you can imagine, but I am also in whispering distance to my bosses boss and will now actually have to behave. I’m not sure I can do that. It is good for my introverted mojo as it is quiet, but I have to admit I am a bit concerned about moving closer to the door and being strategically positioned near important people. I should have gone on Big Brother for some pre-move training. Perhaps this is tactical on their part; a P45 would have sufficed though!</p> <p>Now having moved I am in direct firing line of germs that come from children and are passed through their parents and onto anyone suitable enough to suffer the bug. Having been woken up numerous times in the middle of the night over the last week in a panic to shift my heaving cat off the bed before some scene from the exorcist erupts, my boss came in today with a similar experience. But hers was of the human form, which in my view is far worse. She came in having nursed her pukey child and then her pukey self after a night of dettol and floor scrubbing (she assured me it wasn’t morning sickness in her case though she couldn’t be too sure of that either which is worrying – if you have a girl can you name her after me… Princess?!!). </p> <p>Anyway what pukey children or animals have highlighted is that men really can sleep through anything. Whilst there are sick sounds, movement, light, scrubbing, running up and down the stairs going on, they still manage to offer no or limited support. In the odd event of my husband miraculously waking up to a huge cat brawl at the end of our bed or me deliberately being loud to wake him up and help, he tends to be useless. Women can wake up and in an instant function pretty much as normal and kick into awake mode. My husband, however, wakes into some kind of weird almost drunken state and I get absolutely no sense out of him at all (less than normal anyway). Like when we go to bed and we’ll be talking and in a 2 minute silence he will fall asleep. I put the TV on and an hour later he wakes up, not fully realising he has been asleep for ages and pretends to be awake by laughing at something on the TV that truly isn’t funny, or is at a really inappropriate moment. Then he will spend the next 5 minutes trying to hold a conversation with me realising he has been idiot, but still trying to persuade me that he was awake the whole time! </p> <p>I remember when we had just started living together about 7 years ago. He was in his final year of Uni and I had just started work. He must have been under some stress or something, but in the middle of the night I woke up because he got out of bed. I watched him stand against the wall for about a minute rubbing his hands all over it. I thought it was funny at first (if a little odd) and then wondered what the hell he was doing. </p> <p>“What are you doing Mart”</p> <p>“Looking for the light switch”</p> <p>I told him that there was no light switch on the wall he was being friendly with.</p> <p>“Where are you going then”</p> <p>“To the toilet” he said (a bit of frustration and why the hell are you asking me this question tone came into his voice).</p> <p>I left it for a few minutes and the next thing I know he was fighting with the front door to go outside. I asked him again and at this point getting quite concerned about his mental state of mind and he said he was looking for the toilet again (real frustration in his voice now). At this point I thought I had best go and help him out. I was quite thankful he was not on the ball enough to work out how to unlock the outside door, otherwise there’s no knowing where he may have ended up. I took him into the bathroom, put the light on, smacked him about a bit and showed him the toilet. He seemed to get it. When he had finished he came straight back into bed again, said “hello” (which was an odd thing to say given what just happened) and then fell asleep. </p> <p>It was all incredibly bizarre. I mean he was obviously sleep-walking but he has never done it since. He does manage to have full conversations with me in the small hours of the morning when I am still trying to get to sleep, but will have no recollection of it at all. I think this could be an early sign of dementia; perhaps I should start monitoring this?</p> <p>The other thing that used to happen with my husband in his final year of Uni and into his first job, was that every 4-5 weeks without fail for a good year or more, he would be sick. It was just for 3 days at a time. The same thing would happen, he would have a bit of a sore throat in the lead up, get a little headache and then throw up and by the end of the 3rd day he would be fine again. As it happened so frequently I started to take note in my diary of when he was ill so as I could predict the next time and plan our social life around it. Now this was weird, it was like the male period from a different end! Coming into the 2nd year of having this thing he got really moody, played up a lot and then it suddenly stopped. Menopause kicked in and whatever it was has not come back. What this does go to show is that I am married to an absolute nutter and possibly a medical freak. I hope he is still fertile?!!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2007/10/26/moving_sleeping_and_throwing~3200932/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>tag:highmaintenance.blog.co.uk,2007-10-20:/2007/10/20/awakening~3168489/debbiecole19792007-10-20T21:14:02+02:002007-10-20T21:14:02+02:00 <p>It really dawned on me first thing this morning and I have actually never really thought about this before, but I am going to be 30 very soon; OK, in 18 months, but that is very soon. As I lay awake and the cat is treading all over me like I’m not even there, I suddenly thought…. increased mortgage payments, best friends wedding, moving up the career ladder and then…. babies. All of these thoughts made me well and truly realise that I haven’t got much time to sort myself out. I used to dread turning 26, it was the worst age to be in your twenties, the realisation that you are now definitely the wrong side of 25. So when I was lying there and thought about everything, this is all going to start happening to me when I hit 30. I’m not afraid to admit that I got quite scared, even though I feel no different now to when I was 18.</p> <p>Yep, so 30 is not very old, I mean in the grand whole average life expectancy thing, so what am I worried about really? It means that I will have a max of 4 years in which to have kids before I will be too old, I will need to move house to accommodate somewhere nice for the kids to grow up. No longer will we be positioning ourselves close to work, cinemas, shops, motorways, pubs. No, then it will be schools, play areas, where it is ‘nice’, no busy roads, no nasty children. I can feel my life changing before I have had the chance to even consciously really think about it. After my terrifying awakening this morning which shook me out of bed, I had to go spend money to cheer myself up again. It works every time!</p> <p>So whilst I wandered around the shops with husband in tow and looking at pretty and expensive jewellery for the new engagement ring I have convinced my husband to save for, I then thought about the excitement I have for my best friends wedding. But before I talk about that, I just want to clarify here the point about a new ring. The engagement ring I have is lovely and there is nothing wrong with it, however we were at University as students when he bought it for me and is only 3 figures worth of ring. So please lets have a bit of consideration for the student budget here and why I might want a new one, with at least 4 digits! Right then…</p> <p>I have been best friends with Mounia since we were 11 and she means the absolute world to me. It’s now just 2 weeks till her wedding and I can’t wait. I have booked us into a lovely hotel the night before her wedding for some girly pampering time, which happens to coincide with my husbands Birthday so I have quite a bit of ground to make up there. I can see what’s coming…. but it ain’t being dragged out for longer than a week, forget it! He will have loads more Birthdays, she will hopefully only marry the once.</p> <p>So everything is pretty much ready now, the attire is waiting, cheesy DJ with his laser lights is booked, the food, placemats and little present things that go on the tables all delivered. The hand crafted menus are nearly finished, the hotel rooms are reserved, the flights from France are also booked, so it is nearly there. I will be Maid of Honour with one other bridesmaid and my husband will be an Usher. It is going to be a very multi-cultural wedding with Mounia being half Moroccan and half Italian but born and raised here, her husband is French and she also has family from Sicily coming. Not sure that I will be able to follow all of the speeches, but after a few bevvies I don’t think it will matter too much. I helped her write her speech and I was OK with that one just about. I have learnt my cues for comments and nervous laughter so it will be alright!</p> <p>The hen night will be taking place the same night as the stag, 2 days before the wedding and we intend to travel down in true chav style a la Limo. My husband already has his sights on a number of strip joints for the stag, though I do seriously have to question who it is really for, but he has a one night pass and I am missing his Birthday, so I guess on this occasion I will allow it. Not sure what the hen night will have in store for us, though if Mounia is anything like she was on mine she will end up hopelessly drunk, falling down the stairs and fracturing her ankle. I think I will be taking a harness just to keep her under control – I’m sure there will be one in my cupboard somewhere!! </p> <p>So moving on…. Other news, my mum has finally made it back from Spain having spent practically the last month out there and leaving my Dad at home by himself for 2 weeks of it. I was quite proud of him actually, I didn’t get one distress call, he did manage to find the kitchen and is not malnourished, the dogs have been walked and he even managed to locate and operate the washing machine for the first time in his life, with thanks to step by step directions left by mum. Dad has also now finished work from his redundancy and is joining the world of the unemployed as he has decided not to retire yet. So that’s great. Incredibly painful though when you are trying to tell a 60 year old man how to interview, how to do a CV, how to dress, to be smart, clean shoes, no stubble, smile….. God, I am losing the will to live, this has been going on for weeks now and I am getting a little tired. Fortunately though as my husband is in recruitment I am starting to handover responsibility to him. It will not do the father daughter relationship much good if it continues.</p> <p>Final news, I have still got a splitting headache. I have had this thing for 7 weeks now, non stop, though it comes in waves throughout the day. I’m on an hour break at the moment I think so just enough time to play on the internet before it comes back!</p> <p>I don’t know what it is, tablets just don’t touch it, so I am back to the Docs next week which I am really not looking forward to. No doubt it will now land me in some dodgy clinic with peeling paint on the walls, 50 year old plastic chairs that still carry 50 years of dirt, stuck in a waiting room with screaming badly behaved kids around me whilst I wait for a blood test. I’m terrified of all this stuff and a blood test for me is possibly the worst thing I could have done. Well, nearly. I can’t stand the sight of blood, needles, doctors or anything clinical. I have an incredibly over active imagination and I am one of the most squeamish people I have known. I can’t go to a place like this on my own. I will faint or just bottle it and not turn up. </p> <p>It took me 5 weeks of agonising headaches where the light can hurt and they make me feel sick and tired constantly, just to drag myself to the Doctors in the first place. But I can’t pretend they aren’t there anymore. The main fear I think is actually really finding out what is wrong with me. What if I don’t like the results? What if I have to change my lifestyle? What if there isn’t anything medically wrong with me and I just have to live with them? What if it’s my job? Oh God, I’m really worried about it. Why can’t it just be like taking a cat to the vets, a couple of pink pills and in 3 days your fine. If I ask for a massage from my husband it carries a pay back and whilst you can get away with a headache for a few days, I can tell you it most certainly doesn’t stretch far beyond a week! I’m gonna have to be brave and sort myself out and for once in my life, act like a responsible adult. Whatever…. Do you know what I think will really help, a shopping spree!!!</p> <p> <small> <a href="http://highmaintenance.blog.co.uk/2007/10/20/awakening~3168489/#comments">Comments</a> </small> </p>