The Brave Babes Battle Bus - Here's To STAYING On A Sober Holiday!

[Mouseface]

Hello, I'm Mouse

I have an abusive and volatile relationship with alcohol.

This is the Brave Babes Bus, it's filled with sober, drinking and somewhere in between Babes who are all here for the journey ahead, whatever that may entail.

EVERYONE is welcome on this Bus. No-one will judge what you are going through, what you drink, what you don't or what you do.

Come take a seat.

Take a peek at the journeys so far (including the thread by JWN that started this whole journey off) HERE

legal - it's not always easy reading and you will come across a few spats but one thing remains, this Bus is for support. Nothing but support xx

Ds has been home from uni for 5 weeks, so who would like to guess how many baskets of dirty washing and how many bags of rubbish I have extricated from his room today? (he has gone away for a few days so I dared to enter his enclave)
Enough to turn anyone to drink methinks

Evening all,

Dh at cricket, and guess what? DC2 has just cooked spaghetti carbonara for dinner. All lovely and peaceful here. I am going to have a bath and watch "Sliding doors" on BBC3, is it any good?

I am hoping that Dc2 won't spend all evening on Facebook, as I think they are all winding each other into a nervous state about the results tomorrow. I think he's the best thing ever (along with his brother!) whatever happens. To my mind education is about the learning on the journey, not the grades at the end, although unfortunately the universities beg to differ! Dc has to get A*AA to get into his first choice. Madness really, I often think I should have sent them to Fanny Annie's cookery school on a remote island, so as to avoid the jumping through of hoops! Sorry, last word on the subject from me!

BB umm, I guess at least 5 or 6 baskets of washing?, including the stuff from last term .

Mousie I'm so happy that you sound so much happier, well bloody done on weathering the storm. Hugs to you my friend. xxxx

Very last word. If Dc gets his grades, he will really be going , I feel very quandraried (I think I made that up!) tonight.

P.s Ma are you ok tonight?

I'm ok. only had two beers and that's it.DD1 is 20. I am closer to DD2 who is nearly 18 and who understands a bit more about how I am feeling with DH. it was DD2 who "told" DD1 that a divorce was imminent.
I continue to value your support.

Thurso best of luck for tomorrow.
I have done 3 loads so far and still have a mini mountain of laundry. So annoying to have to do it all at once, why he can't put in the machine on a regular basis I just don't know. I was feeling quite kindly towards him but now I am GRRRR!!

Morning all,

I was awake very early this morning, and am at least two cups of tea down!

I hope everyone had a sober and peaceful night, and a gentle awakening.

Ma well done on keeping to two beers. Our children are the nearly the same age, You have a 12yr old as well, to keep you young, though

Speak later
xxxx

He's in

Congratulations to the thurso household for raising hardworking and intelligent sons . dd2 is also off to Uni in Sept but she left school last year and this is the first time in 8 years that we have been without an anxious wait for results.

thurso - you must be so proud and well done to YOU as well as huge congratulations to him!!!

Brilliant news Thurso, congrats to your DS.

Doing a JWN boing in and out again, just to say hello to everyone, and huge well done to thurso and her son - you must be soooo proud.

Feel like a swan gliding serenely above the water but with feet frantically paddling to stay afloat ATM. FIL still hanging on in there, and may now hang on for a few more weeks, so DH in pieces trying to decide whether to stay or come home. Work is one issue, but he's also finding it hard not to drink there (its France, and drinking alcohol is like daily bread there).

Really craving carbs and sugar. Maybe the losing weight think it a bit less likely that I thought.

Thank you so much everyone. I haven't been on the phone to my Mum yet, so have to do that now.

I've just come back from swimming, as I have to say Ds was incredibly uncommunicative this morning, apart from telling us the results that he had downloaded. He hasn't seen this side of 10.45am for 6 weeks!!, and didn't want me to talk!!!, so I cried instead, and went swimming .

He is up at the school now, gone to see his friends, fingers crossed that they all got what they hoped for.

Now, just got to find DC1 a flat in the city for when he starts his new job, and wonder how we are going to pay for it all!!!!

Have put any future Grandchildren's names down for Fanny Annie's!!!

congrats thurso! bet he comes home pissed as a fart!

Thurso many congratulations on DS's success. Are you going to post it on the bragging expectations thread
By the way, DS is only 9, not 12 so still got a good bit to go before he's off my hands.
waves to all
A bit of online flirting with a client has cheered me up today....

Right - back again. have been thoroughly defeated in my attempt to read all the back threads - I am a pretty fast reader but it would take months! So if I make any insensitive comments please forgive me!

TBoM, sorry to hear about your DH/FIL. I suppose there's no chance you could take a week off work and join him in France? Strength in numbers and all that...

thurso, congrats to your DC2. Have just found out that DS's babysitter got the grades that she needed, she is very excited!

Made me think about the time when I went off to uni, aged nearly 17 and a half. I was staying in a hall of residence and was having such a good time that I didn't bother making contact with my parents for seven weeks, during which time I'd changed my degree from mathematics to law. At the time it didn't occur to me that they might be concerned / expect to have any input into my choice of course (I was right on the latter point, but perhaps not the former!).

Have managed to stick to my non-weekday drinking plan so far this week - week 3 - and it seems to be getting easier, although still feel the need to constantly drink tea / cordial etc. Have been taking vitamins and minerals but still feel absolutely exhausted - am getting a lot less done than I usually would. Am trying to think of it as a period of convalescence - does that sound right?

legal a period of convalescence sounds just perfect - time spent being kind to yourself, doing things gently, eating well, sleeping well, napping if you get the chance, while you body restores and renews itself, your hair becomes lustrous and shiny and your skin becomes gently pink and glowing.

newlylush you posted yesterday about being high functioning. I would have admitted several years ago to be an alcoholic but I always put 'funcional' in front of it, as if that made it less of a problem. I held down a good job, my bills were paid, I keep home and hearth together, maintained a good relationship with dp. But I can now see how much I was kidding / deluding myself. I held down a job because I'm self employed and most mornings no-one would have noticed if I was bleary eyed and my clients didn't see missed getting pissed on the train on my way home from a meeting. My relationship with dp was maintained because I was incredibly decietful about how much i was drinking, and would manage my drinking so that most of the time he was not aware of the level of excess. I also over-compensated for the times when I did get it wrong. I thought I was functioning OK, in fact i thought i was doing well, but in reality I know that much was held on to by the skin of my teeth, and that I was operating on less than half power, at best.

Hello again,

Ma , yes, and the posters I've ordered should be here soon , also very remiss of me that I didn't take the video recorder into Dc's room this morning to capture the moment .

Actually Dc has sworn me not to tell anyone, I have been allowed to text my sister, and phone my Mum, but, he doesn't want me to tell anyone else. Seems a bit of a weird reaction, maybe it's the stress telling, or maybe I've overdone the "it's not the results, it's the effort" talk. Ah me, wrong again .

JWN Dc is back now, but out on the lash tonight, with the entire upper sixth of the Country, I imagine!!

legal all sounds normal to me, it takes a while to realise that this is the normal tiredness, in my experience, when one stops drinking, the body takes a while to "regroup". You are doing all the right things. it will pass, and you will feel great.

Ma sorry to get Ds's age wrong. But so..... you have done the business quite recently then .

thurso - you've reminded me, normally by mid afternoon the street is full of shrieking middle class teenage girls, with big hair and micro minis, excitedly promenading up and down (there are two big independent schools just up the road). It is however raining here in London - no sign of them so far.

Maybe one or more of your DC's close friends has done less well than they hoped?

No, they all seem to have done pretty well, but, they all seem so much more low key this year than three years ago, when Dc1 got his.

I think maybe all the bloody agony of the pressure to get in this year has killed the joy.

Also, Dc's school sent out the results online at 7am, so maybe that's why you haven't got the shriekers!, they've all gone back to bed to be fresh for tonight!

I picked up a book from the charity shop, after swimming this morning without looking properly at the back. I have just started reading, and in the first chapter, a woman who's eldest child has just graduated from university, and started a job in New York (it's American), and second one gone to Princeton, comes home on a Friday night, to find that her husband of 24 years has left her for a younger woman! Bad choice for today, I think!

I re-read Wuthering Heights last week, knew I should have stuck to what I know!

P.s Is there a mouse in the house?

Thurso - that is hilarious!

venus - i agree wholeheartedly about 'functioning' - i thought i was functioning alright, still running my home, doing my job yadda yadda!, looking back i just cannot see how i was doing it! tbh, i was barely functioning, just hanging on in there on a daily basis and going through the motions of 'normal' life, wishing every night that it would all stop, just so i could have a rest! - life is just so much more simple now, im not running around trying to mop up the chaos i was causing, feeling like crap and eaten up with guilt!

im finding that sober life has its chaotic moments, at least im not adding to it all!