Five year old

Mini-D is five years old in the morning. Somehow I have managed to raise another human to half a decade without even noticing. What happened?!

And he is fabulous. Okay, the last year has mostly been a write-off from my perspective, but he has been at a totally new kindergarten in a whole new language and culture and despite a few expected hiccups, he bounds in every morning with only a "Tschuss!" (only 3 weeks in, remember) and out every afternoon full of cheer and excitement. Almost every day he comes home with a new word to tell me, he is excited about me getting a job in a "Kindergarten for grown-ups" and today, we watched the episode of Doctor Who where Rose leaves and at the end he looked at me, quivered, said "Mummy, the Doctor is sad. And it's making me sad too!" and burst into tears. Oh, my baby.

He asked me questions about animal testing the other day, and I had to balance giving him truthful information and not terrifying the crap out of him.

He loves to "do art" and is scathing about what he considers "not real art". He wants to figure out phonics faster than I can figure out what order to teach him the sounds. (Both his drawings, and his written sentences, are adorably hilarious.) He can add single figures and tries to work out subtraction using his fingers. When he feels nervous, he is comforted by having some spare kisses to keep in his pockets. He is still suspicious of new foods. He is far more fond of Coca Cola than I would like. He is constantly trying to figure out his identity, sometimes about gender, occasionally about nationality, often about our family.

He still wants to cuddle, a lot, and he loves to have help with things, especially things that he doesn't really need help with. He will happily hold hands and kiss and hug in public. He is still so wonderfully carefree.

I think I'm doing okay.

Depression can fuck off.

I've been trying to avoid being on the computer all the time since Creepy D asked me if I actually wanted to be here, as I seemed to be avoiding everyone and pushing them away.

Had to tell him this was just my coping mechanism for the last year or so. Bury self in computer, let life go on around self, easy. And so addictive.

Have started doing exercise, in order to try and boost my energy levels and also make me feel more motivated in general. But it seems that cutting off the computer time has led to my depression coming out again. If you'd asked me a week ago, or even yesterday, I'd have said that I felt depressed a year or two ago but I feel okay now. But no, here it comes again. We ended up having a stupid argument about childbirth, of all things, and it's reawakened my "Shouldn't have had children with (ex) utter knob end" thing, and then that has triggered my "Shit, you're so terrible at LIFE that you bought vegetables and didn't use them and now they are mouldy. Well done you!" (tears). Decided to go for a walk to calm down a bit and forgot to take the recycling down with me. Cue another rant at self. "Can't even remember one thing that you decided on a few seconds ago. Oh my god, you can't do anything." Leads to terrible fear that will forget something important for my new job which I'm supposed to be starting next week.

I mean, it's exhausting. And stupid. But when I fail at stuff, even really simple stupid stuff, that just seems to reinforce my self-belief that I fail at EVERYTHING, and it all feeds into itself and is awful.

Actually people are saying nice things about me on facebook (and I am not fishing with moany comments, either) and I suspect I am coming down with a cold and feeling a bit sorry for myself because of that, and I always feel a bit thrown by arguments even though we ended up on the same page. I am sure that in a month when I've settled into the new job and maybe even done my next mad venture (learning to drive, in the land of the Autobahn!) I will be feeling better. And exercise is supposed to help. And I need to take my iron. And stop beginning sentences with And.

Breathe. Sleep. Make plans. Eat. Live.

CV Writing

I have so much to post about GERMANY (said with a hard G) but I keep forgetting to update. Okay, that can wait, for today's rant topic of choice is writing CVs.

I should probably know how to do this by now. It's really not rocket science. You list your education, and previous employment, and then write a bit about yourself which is hopefully relevant to the job you're applying for, stick your contact details on top and you're good to go.

Instead, though, I'm reading loads of German CV websites, which have (by the looks of things) the same 20 years out of date advice as the British ones, (I remember solemnly putting my "health: good" and "non-smoking" status on my application for my first ever job), advising you to include such things as your marital status and number of children.  From speaking to my expat group, this seems to exist purely so that they can ask you at interview how you plan to juggle those three children and work. I have a funny little feeling that this question isn't asked of fathers, so I decided to leave that one off. Still, it's not so bad. Apparently 20 years ago it was standard to include your parents' occupations on a CV, so maybe those websites aren't too out of date after all.

So, getting past the issue of personal information, now it comes down to qualifications. The UK is unusual and a bit awkward in that we don't have an overall grade or mark for high school, but separate grades for each subject. This is probably a good thing, but it's a pain when you left nearly 20 years ago and can't remember what grade you got for what or even half of the subjects that you took. I decided to stick with the number and the grade range.

Then it comes to my qualifications after school, which are, to be perfectly honest, something of a giant mess. I've trained in at least three totally unrelated areas, and not finished any of the qualifications except for my CELTA (which I got a kick-ass grade in, so YEAH!) Have added most of those on the hope that the names they give you for crappy half-finished qualifications won't be understood by anybody who hasn't been educated in England or Wales and I can blag that it's something more important than it is.

Then comes the most dreaded part: personal interests and hobbies. Oh, please. One day, I will fill this section in honestly and say "In my free time, I like to eat crisps and refresh facebook and feedly endlessly in an exhausted sort of manner. If I'm feeling really indulgent, I might even have a bath instead of a shower, that is, if I can be bothered to remove 38 assorted plastic toys from it first." But no, instead you have to invent all sorts of interesting hobbies that you probably would do if you had the time. One site even told me to avoid putting any extreme/dangerous sports in, such as skydiving. Well, god forbid you come across as too interesting!

Anyway, wish me luck!

Packing, it is lacking. Or, I'm a terrible poet.

So, Creepy D found us a house! A real and proper house (well, okay, a holiday/student let, so it's temporary, but it's also a place we can live, and find jobs from, etc!)

I am very quickly realising that I have no idea how to pack stuff for moving house. When I moved out of home I sort of took some stuff that fitted in my ex-boyfriend's car and left the rest, which my mum has been attempting to slowly give me back in small bits over the last 7 years. (Jesus. Seven years.) I am making lists, I'm not sure how much this is helping, and how much I'm actually just procrastinating. So, T-13 days and our house still looks like a normal house that you would live in, minus some pictures and stuff off shelves. Or, actually, the shelves are just slightly less jumbled than they were before.

Also, I got distracted playing an old game that I found when checking through DVD cases. Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions. Great fun! Also not helping with packing.

Thank you Professor Tim. Yes, I do win at packing. Obviously. I am the packing boss.

I feel like I should be running around like a headless chicken. Please remind me of this when I am actually headless chicken-ing in about twelve days' time.

One thing I will miss about England

The sound of a hot summer's evening, in a country which is, firstly, crowded, and secondly, ever and always joyful about the precious few warm evenings that we do get. I love the way that you can hear everyone going about their daily business in a way that you never usually would, because they have all of their windows open and so do you. It's almost like living outdoors, in the open, with everybody.

Floating Away

I had a horrible, horrible dream last night where I was in a park and was watching a family who were letting their baby ride on a helium balloon which was floating in the air. The dad in the family was very careful to keep hold of the balloon, the baby was happy and everyone was generally relaxed and having fun. Then after a while I heard shouting from that side of the park and I realised that they had let the balloon go, having put their older daughter into a basket under it to weigh it down, but she wasn't heavy enough. It was just an utter helpless despair seeing all of the adults in the park try to jump, hold each other up, climb things and yet be unable to reach this balloon which was floating off with their (happy and unaware) children in it and every second that went by it became more and more obvious that they weren't going to be saved. The balloon came down a little while later in a nearby wood and neither of them survived :(

I don't know if it was nudging me to be thankful for what I have but I have been feeling like that today and over the last few days. I've been struggling for the past few months, I won't lie – with parenthood and wrestling with guilt versus apathy. A lot of the time I have been feeling like I just don't enjoy my son's company at the moment and I feel like that is awful for him. But today and for the last few days I have started to enjoy it again. I have got annoyed and we have argued and I haven't always dealt with things in the best way, but I was able to let a slight bit of amusement sneak through the irritation when he was insisting on driving the trolley himself in the supermarket (with disastrous results) and suggest that maybe I could steer from the front if he propelled from the back, rather than just getting annoyed and snapping about it. And I told him I loved him when he was almost asleep and he smiled a little happy smile.

I don't think that the worst is over yet, this age (3-4) has really pushed and challenged me and I don't think that the stage is over. But I feel like I am finally starting to be able to cope with it rather than finding it so overwhelming all of the time. Which probably means I'm due a new seemingly insurmountable parenting challenge after this summer. (Can anyone say bilingualism in more than one language??)

Maybe this is why people have more than one child, so they can feel like they know what they're doing at least some of the time.

It's Been A While

I saw my Dad yesterday for the first time in months, and I feel like maybe we started to connect again after what has been years of a very distant, disjointed sort of relationship. He very much struggled with my teenage years, and then me having my son very young (20). He just didn't know how to relate to me during that time and now I feel like we're on an even footing and able to come to each other as adults, something has changed.

He looked so different when I saw him for the first time, I almost didn't recognise him. But different in a good way – I thought that he looked like an ageing hippy who couldn't quite bring himself to throw off every last fragment of suburbia, which is probably closer to who he is than any other look he's ever had, but he looked taller somehow, less lost in his own skin, and less like he was trying to hide or be someone else. He has stopped dying his hair, cut it short, and grown a beard. We were sitting in the car and I thought, this is just the next chapter really. It was nice. I don't know if he will ever be the kind of father I spoke about in my other recent post on fatherhood, but I am feeling more mellow. He is the dad that he was always meant to be, and I have found my way to adulthood on my own and now he is there and he sort of always was, he just didn't know how to be present all of the time.