Happy Fat Christmas

The only good thing about being fat is that I have no motivation to buy new clothes, thus saving money. The best clothes in the world are not going to make me look good until I lose at least two stone.

My argument is that I have a whole wardrobe full of clothes which I haven't worn for 18 months since I put all this weight on. Why don't I just lose weight? It would be so much easier, and I'd save money on food in the process.

I wish I could find a happy medium.

Bad Mother = bad nativity costumes

Illustration by Melissa Crow 

It doesn't take much to knock my parenting confidence especially when my mood is at its lowest ebb. A few days 'snowed in' which usually sends people running screaming out of their homes into the company of others, tends to make me want to hide under the duvet even more.
But I have two young children who need to be stimulated, but instead they are developing serious addictions to  Spongebob Squarepants and Peppa Pig. My four year old screams in panic if she's torn away from the box mid-episode. Thank God for Sky+ and the ability to pause live TV.

The guilt of using my reliable babysitter in the corner of the living room is too much, but I still do nothing about it. My lethargy is increasing. I blame the weather, my medication, my weight (too fat to go out), everything.

There it is. I am a crap mum. The knowledge of being a crap mum bears down on me as I drop my children off at the nursery this morning, half an hour late; gloveless, because I forgot them;  and white bread in their sandwiches. I am being told that I have to provide a costume for the school play for both my girls. I am initially annoyed. The last two years, they've provided them, albeit the same costumes, but required no work for me. This year is also the first year that I will have two children at the nursery, which means I have to provide two costumes.

I'll admit, I don't knit or sew, or even have any materials in the house for making items of clothing, although I do have a little sewing kit for reattaching various buttons that might fall off. Even then, I usually lose the button before they get a chance to be reunited with their rightful garment.

As soon as I am in front of teachers, out comes my inner school child self: intimidated and defensive. What kind of costume? I ask. Anything, is the reply. So fairies and princesses are okay, thinking that they'll just about squeeze into the limited dressing up wardrobe we have at home.
Ah, not quite. 'Anything' as long as it's an angel or a shepherd.

I don't have anything like that, I blurted in a helpless school child's voice. Don't you have a spare pillowcase you can cut a hole in.

No we don't have any 'spare' anything. (This is true. We still wear and use all our old stuff). We're a modern, environment-conscious family. We re-use everything. (We can't afford not to).

I left in a tantrum and mumbling something about the girls being fairy/princess-type angels. Sleeping Beauty with a halo, what's the difference?

Am I the only mum who hates school holidays?

I hate holidays. I have a week of hell where I am forced to find constant entertainment for the girls, who are too young to entertain themselves without causing severe damage to each other or the house.

The idyllic notion I had of me and two children skipping happily across the beach or the park hasn't materialised. People can hear us for miles arguing and shouting around the streets. Me pushing a screaming toddler in the push-chair with a whinging 3 year old trailing behind.

Roll on Monday.

My application for a part-time degree in creative writing

Easter eggs are appearing in the shops again. A gentle reminder that it’s nearly a year since mum died. How poignant to die on Easter Sunday, after the church service on the TV. If she could’ve chosen any time to go, it would have been then. She used to love singing along to the hymns. Perhaps we do have a say, after all.
Mum died. The words still burn into my brain. It’s still unimaginable, even now. She was here and now she’s not. I don’t know how I feel. She wasn’t really here anyway; she was in a world of her own half the time – as people are quick to point out. ‘Well, she was ill for so long, wasn’t she?’ It wouldn’t have been much worse if they’d had added ‘it was for the best.’
She died from Bronchial Pneumonia, not the muscle-weakening disease that over the years had reduced her body to a lifeless lump. Years of inactivity and hiding away at home had turned her brain to mush. She was like a child. Where was my mum when I was pregnant about to become a mother myself? She was gone even then. When other pregnant ladies in my ante-natal class were swapping advice and stories passed down by their mums, my own mum was struggling to remember what I’d just said. The isolation of losing a parent had started a long time before she died. But I didn’t notice until she’d gone and I could finally grieve my loss. How could you mourn someone who was still breathing?
When she died I suddenly felt the 18 year old girl’s pain of needing a mother whose health was deteriorating. My young self appearing like a ghost to show me the pain of becoming an adult, of having a lover break her heart, of going to college and escaping the mess of her home-life. The pain of coming home to find her mother can do a few less things than she could manage before. Feeling selfish as she’d dread the next visit to see what new physical aids had been implemented to help mum around the house.
Over the years it got worse and no one wanted to talk about The Illness. There was nothing to talk about as far as mum and dad were concerned. Mum had it, there no was no cure. That was that. We watched home carers come in to get mum up in the morning. We watched the muscles weaken in her face so it became distorted, her eyelids drooping over her eyes. Mum was disappearing in front of us.
I now look at old photos of mum before her condition took hold and she looks like a stranger. Where did this woman go for all these years? Well, she’s here right now. I can see her in myself. I hear myself sound like her and I can see her in my own daughters. Isn’t it funny how I never noticed it before?

Fat, fat fat.

I've been going to the gym, eating much less and I know it's going to take time, but I'm so so so sick of being fat.

I've always been between a (UK) size 6 and 8 with the occasional balloon up to 10. I'm five foot 2 and I'm just over 10stone, when I'm usually 7st 7lbs. I've never been really fat before, until mum died and then I ate and ate for comfort.

I hate it. I really hate being fat. I don't go out apart from nursery runs, dog walks and the gym. I try not to bump into anyone I know. I feel like I'm wearing a fat suit and I just want to take it off. I can't look in the mirror, I can't bear to look at the rolls of fat. Hideous. No one can be happy fat. I don't believe it for a second.

I have such a long way to go (at least two and a half stone) and I feel I'm never going to get there.

Fair weather Mum

I have to admit that when the girls are screaming, or simply whining, I envy my child-free friends. I imagine myself with some kind of career, skipping along the street ecstatic with freedom. Of course, I wouldn't really be without them. But does that make me a fair-weather Mum? I love them, but on the condition they are well-behaved and smiling ALL the time?

It sometimes feels that they scream and shout all day long. Obviously they don't, but I'm sure they do much more shouting and screaming than their fair share of normal.

Yes, I've been getting the toddler/pre-school books out. Is it ADHD, Autism, or some other condition? I can convince myself that something is 'wrong' without much effort, but then remind myself that they are both perfectly well-behaved when they are with other people. So it's us, mum and dad who are a problem. Oh God, they hate us. But then we wouldn't be doing our job if our children didn't hate us most of the time.

Thank God for the occasional 'I like you mummy' to save my sanity.

Are you pregnant again? No I'm just fat

I'm on a diet again. It must be at least the 12th one this year so far. Diets start every Monday, are dropped by Wednesday in amidst some kind of stress which result in a large bar of chocolate, and start again the following week.

But the motivation I needed came in the form of the ultimate humiliation. A friend I hadn't seen for a year thought I was pregnant. I can hardly blame her for thinking this as I've managed to pile on two and a half stone since I last saw her. I am now more than seven pounds heavier than I was at full term pregnancy.

Oh the shame.

I have decided to tackle my comfort-eating behaviour as well as a strict calorie-controlled diet and vigorous exercise regime. It's war. I've declared war on my rolls of fat.