The blogs title is a bit of a fraud at the minute, as I am not in fact working, but am on Maternity Leave. I was working full-time before that though and will do again when I return to work in just under two months. I thought I'd better start the blog now though, as I'll probably never get round to it once I'm back with my nose to the grindstone (one of my favourite mantras is, 'why do today what you can put off until tomorrow!).
I took a years maternity leave. The first six weeks at 90% pay, the next four and a half months on half pay (on the condition that I return to work), the next three months on SMP and the last three months are unpaid. It has flown by, but I cannot deny that a year is a long time. I believe that in the US, Mothers only get a few months leave. Baby Jack was, quite frankly, a pain in the ass for the first six months and there were days when i seriously considered booking him in Nursery and going back to work early as i just couldn't cope! He is still difficult but I do enjoy our time together much more, so I am sad now about the prospect of leaving him for 40 odd hours a week.
I had so many plans for my leave, including a writing course, a sparkling house, a manicured garden, more quality time with the older children, coffee mornings with other Mums of babies and more extravagant meals. Erm... didn't do to well on that score:
The writing course: I've got as far as subscribing to Writers Magazine, which I have not actually received for over two months but have not got round to enquiring what has happened. It's one of many, many items on my ongoing 'to-do' list.
The sparkling house: hands up, I'm a natural pig. I so wish that I was one of those tidy people who seem to effortlessly keep their houses in order but I'm not. Far from it in fact. Don't get me wrong, the kitchen sides are (usually) clean and the house doesn't (usually) smell. It's not dirty, but is what I like to call organized chaos. Also, I'm the type of person that only notices the tomato ketchup on the radiator, that has probably been there for weeks, just as a visitor knocks on the door. If my friends suggest meeting up for a cuppa, i will always suggest that its at their house as I'm too daunted by the tidying up that I will have to do to make the house presentable. While I was working I used to make the excuse that I simply did not have the time for housework, but now I'm at home all day I still don't get it done. Mainly this is because I think that I have all day, so i am constantly thinking that I'll do that in a minute, and of course, we all know that minute never comes.
The manicured garden: the garden is a mess. Something else I'll 'do in a minute.'
More quality time with my older children: does sitting watching Eastenders together constitute quality time? Probably not. Still working on that one. MUST NOT KEEP SAYING 'IN A MINUTE' TO THEM. Also, my 13 year old son simply does not want to hang around with his Mum anymore. He wants to go out to play with his mates, play Xbox and look at fast cars on the Internet. His conversation these days is fairly limited to horsepower, speed and the price of Lamborghini's, and its quite hard to talk about this for more than two minutes. My 10 year old daughter is slightly easier but again, its hard to maintain a conversation about Justin Bieber or someone from JLS's six pack (why is she interested in six packs??) for very long.
More extravagant meals: not doing too badly with that. Nothing amazing but I like doing the recipes that celebrity chefs do on daytime TV!
Coffee mornings with other Mums: well, for the first few months the mere prospect of leaving the house looking presentable required such a military operation and energy that I simply did not possess. It just wasn't happening. When I finally put a rocket up my backside and made more effort to get together with other young Mums, I found it was pretty much the last place I wanted to be. This is not the place to start ranting about the Mother's group brigade because, either you are one and will be offended, or you're not and you'll know what I mean anyway. The fact is, I've 'been there, done that'. My older two kids are 12 and 10, I know that it doesn't make a jot of difference when their teeth come through, crawl, smile, potty train etc. THEY WILL NOT GO TO SCHOOL WITH A DUMMY AND NAPPY. CHILL OUT!! I'm sure most of the Mums there were lovely and quite normal, unfortunately, these were not allowed to speak. Only the pushy, judgemental Alpha mummies were going to let their voices be heard. Interestingly, they tended to only have one child, usually under six months old, so, quite how they'd gained their phD's in Motherhood, i don't know. I'd be willing to bet that they practically had shares in Amazon due to the amount of baby text books they are bound to have brought. The final nail in the coffin came when I told them that I would be returning to work full-time when Jack is 11 months old. At first I thought they must have misheard me and thought I'd said: 'I'm intending to wean baby Jack on crack-cocaine.' In fact, I would have probably received a warmer response had I actually said that! Hey-ho; Mother's Coffee Mornings: not a success.
Anyway, thats enough rambling for now. Kids will be home from school soon expecting food and there is a suspiciously nasty whiff coming from baby Jack's direction....
