‘Life is a rollercoaster, just gotta ride it!’

On Thursdays, my youngest spends the day at nursery which he just loves. For me, it means that I get to have a day for admin, writing and catching up on blogs.

Firstly, I came across this blog post ‘Thank you Liz Jones’ at ‘www.exmoorjane.blogspot.com. It caught my eye as it was about Liz Jones who is not my most favourite journalist in the whole world and I do love to read what crass and inappropriate thing she’s said now.  

As I read through the post, I was sad to see that Jane had lost her Mum in December.  My own Mum died last August, after three years of battling, what we now know was a rare form of Cancer, despite being told differently at the time…..though I guess that’s for another blog!

After reading Jane’s blog and spending some time pondering my own Mothers passing, I read some tweets from Tums2Mums. Sadly she was at her mum in laws funeral. Poor thing. Understandably this bought back thoughts and feelings about Mum’s funeral.

Tums2Mums tweets led me onto Helen from Icklebabe’s blog post, ‘People we lost..’ Please do read it if you get the chance as it’s all about her Father’s sudden passing from a heart attack and how she is creating a grandad book for her youngest child whom he never met. It’s a wonderful post, but it set off the waterworks big time.

My OH was also working from home yesterday, so rather than sit and blub in front of him I took myself off to the downstairs loo and had a good old blart.  My face doesn’t cope with crying and I emerged ten minutes later looking a whole lot worse than when I went in.

I went back to the kitchen, hoping he wouldn’t notice and was relieved to see he was on the phone. It took me a while to realise that he was talking to the CSA. Oh boy!!! I LOVE the CSA…not!!! I’m in the unfortunate position of having to deal with the CSA from both sides of the fence. One side getting money through them for middle son and the other side paying out money through them for OH’s daughter. I’ve often thought that my ex should just pay his maintenance to OH’s ex and cut out the middle man!!

‘What did they want?’ I asked.

Now I know that OH HATES that question when he’s been on the phone to someone. He knows that I’ll want a detailed, step by step, blow by blow account of the whole conversation and he just can’t do it! It must strike fear into his very soul when I ask that. It’s now got to a point that if one of his family calls to make any sort of arrangements  he passes the phone to me as he saves him the hassle of having to explain anything to me.

The truth is I knew what they wanted. It was all to do with OH changing jobs and having to pay more maintenance. Not a problem, however it takes the CSA months to catch up with themselves and they then decide that you owe about three thousand pounds in back-dated payments which you can’t spread out over the year..oh no that would be too easy…they want it back NOW!!!!!

They were telling OH that as we hadn’t contacted them to say we couldn’t afford the arrears in one go (we had ) that they would have to take a lump sum from his salary. (What!!!)

‘So what did you say?’ I asked

OH MY GOD!!!!  That’s the second worse question in the whole world. He knows that no matter what he says it won’t be right and that he will have forgotten to say something really important, which he did because he didn’t tell them that we had contacted them about the arrears.

Whooossh!!! I’m off!! Digging through the paperwork, trying my hardest not to have a panic attack, telling him to call them back and explain, rattling on about how they ‘Can’t take it from your salary…what about our mortgage!!!’ He sat there at the kitchen table, not saying a word, just looking at me like I was mental.

I then started to cry. Very big, snotty, sobbing tears. The more I tried to stop, the worse it got,

‘What’s wrong, why are you so upset?’ He asked in his best empathetic voice.

‘Do you know what I would have done at times like these? ‘ I said through the tears ‘I would have called my MUM and we would have had a bloody good moan about it!’

OH doesn’t do moaning, he does solutions, which I didn’t want, so I decided that the best course of action was to take myself upstairs for a good old cry.

About 10 minutes later I heard him creeping up the stairs, he gingerly opened the door and lay next to me on the bed.

‘You OK?’ He asked.

‘Better’ I replied…bless him, he’s doing his best to be gentle and sweet and kind and understanding. I turned to talk to him about it and….he was asleep!!!

Later that evening after OH had made us all tea of baked beans and cheese on toast, my eldest found me and asked if I’d like to watch a film that he’d rented from the school library. ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’. Great, I’d not seen it.

We settled down to watch it and guess what? Cate Blanchett spends most of the film playing a woman in hospital dying from Cancer! I suddenly remembered my cousin seeing the film last year. ‘It’s a great film, you’d love it, though it will remind you of your Mum.’

Pass me the tissues!!

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