Crepes and Mulled Whine in your pants

[Auriga]

Somebody had to do it

Totally irrelevant and lighthearted aside:

DP has returned from Geneva, bearing chocolate and a nice present for me - Chanel 19. I love Chanel 19. I also have quite a lot of it, as he bought it for my birthday six months ago and I still hadn't used up the one he bought me before that...

I must be the only dishevelled middle-aged mother in Catford with a Chanel 19 stash.

BTM - that's awful - agree if you get the chance might be worth staking out the road with ds? how nervewracking for you.

Stropps - just to agree with everyone else's wise words and send you lots of supportive vibes really

MI, is a lovely scent

hello Frogs - are you another sarf londoner?

I'm hoping for a duty free gift from DP, who's been in Dublin for the past couple of days, over my birthday. Tho of course the gift card may let him off any slip ups in that regard.

Stropps. I feel for you so much, and wish I had something useful to say. Tho I did have a dim bell ringing when you said she has particular moods that are inescapable. A friend of mine had a very difficult childhood and teenage years, with powerfully moods she couldn't control, and she eventually found it was diet related. Her daughter is the same. A low FODMAP diet (something to do with fermenting matter) has transformed life for both of them. Worth a punt?

Thank you, lalsy - I actually think that would be an excellent system for me to use with dh, because he really doesn't see the signs and I'm sure using the codeword would prevent a few conflagrations. QQ and BTM, I think you are right about the family therapy and in fact the more I think about it, the righter I think you are . If dh, ds and I go off and get some support, it would take the spotlight off dd in some ways and also reduce the amount of control she has over the situation at home, which would be a healthy thing, I think. Gosh, you lot are most excellent. I wish I lived nearer London - I would be round for a glass or two of red and some posh crisps.
My hope is that dd will go off to school in the morning and I will do lots of work. And once I have got a satisfactory few thousand words under my belt, I will ring Camhs and/or GP about family therapy. I am also going to email the school.

MI, I like the picture of you wafting around Catford in a huge cloud of Chanel 19.

Stropps, sympathy. Can't better the advice you've had - help for you first and keep sounding off to us. And MI was right about working out the minimum that has to be done for others.

BTM, hope your ds is ok and not put off cycling. The 4WDs outside Dulwich College used to terrify me when I was a white-knuckled new driver 20 years ago, bet they're worse now.

Thanks for all the kind words - DS seems fine and not put off cycling. Infact, he is looking forwards to getting a new road bike for Christmas. He is waaaay more resilient in every respect than DD, thank God. Meant he was a god-awful younger child at times (don't know how I didn't kill him or myself!), but he is coming into its own now!

The only problem is getting him to wear his helmet and fluorescent top. Even after this

Bloody hell BTM, that really is shocking for that driver to behave like that. I think I would report to the police even with minimal information. What a horrible shock for everyone, my heart would be in my mouth. Thank god he was OK. Have a

Ahem, word of the day: "Lalochezia" n. the emotional relief gained from using abusive or profane language.

&*%$@!!

There was lots of "Lalochezia" this evening as DH and I tackled the first of the blinds which were going up in DD1 and DD2's bedrooms.....One up, one to go.

Strops, sending you strength in dealing with all the family rubbish.

BTM your poor DS, but thank god it wasn't worse.

Stropps - echoing what other have said here about family therapy, I have seen it work strongly - and I am particularly thinking of families I know where there are half siblings. I would add that as the younger child in a very similar situation myself with my sister in her teens, you are right about trying to reduce the amount of control dd's moods have over everyone else in the home. I wish with all my heart that my parents had been willing to (a) be more consistent (I don't necessarily mean tougher, sometimes they certainly should have been kinder) with their approach to dsis's drama and (b) look at their own upbringings and past and try to tease out where maybe some of the battles might be coming from. Instead we all trod on eggshells for 30 years, which was wrong. I think about this a lot myself now, especially when I am busy yelling full tilt at someone over something that is mainly to do with my attitudes and expectations as I don't want my kids to walk on eggshells around me. You are a very articulate person and clearly love your dd very much, and she seems to have a lot going for her in many ways. I would have thought there must be somewhere you can meet in the middle. You have both been through so much. What was that quote - did someone use it here before? "Beyond our ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there." Love that.

PS: you asked about PM'ing me (about BIL's animal stuff?). Whenever the time's right, PM away.

BTM - please, please, please make him wear a helmet and reflective clothing, even if it isn't cool. I saw the aftermath of a terrible accident yesterday where a cyclist had clearly tried to undertake a bus that was pulling into a bus stop at Trafalgar Square. It didn't look good.

Strops - that sounds utterly gruelling, poor you. Echo what others have said (particularly Wilbur) about family therapy.

And MI - Chanel No 19, yum. Catford will never have smelled better!

I still hate my job and don't have enough to do. I am going to ask to move on after March (when it ends) as this is not what I signed up for.

And back to dentist tomorrow probably to have the tooth removed.

He refused to put his helmet on this morning

Even if DH/I stand over him and makes him put it on, he will just take it off up the road. How can we make him want to put it on?

BTM - get him listening to part of the Today prgramme this morning. There was a father on there talking about his 16-year-old son who's just come out of a coma, having had a bike accident when not wearing a helmet. The most he's hoping for is that his son will walk and talk again.

In animal news, the cat wouldn't come out of his anaesthetic very well, and developed a strange swelling on his head. We had to transfer him to the vet hospital last night. No word yet on how he is. Poor old boy.

BTM, confiscate the bike?? Show him James Cracknell's film . His helmet saved his life.

MrsS, sorry to hear the blasted abcess has not gone. Hope it's not too ghastly tomorrow. Also sorry to hear about the ongoing crapness of work.

Herbs, hope you get good news about your cat soon. Poor little chap.

I am cat-sitting for a friend this week and one of her cats is very much on its last legs. I have instructions to take him on his final journey to the vets if things suddenly get worse. He seems quite cheery at the moment, so I am hopeful that he will stay that way until Sunday.

I will see if the Today programme is on catch-up. And that link looks really good, Stropps. DH is going to have another go at him. TBH, I don't think there is much mileage in confiscating the bike as he will just pretend to wear it in our sight - he needs to feel that the helmet is important himself IYSWIM. It doesn't help that all the other boys (especially the older ones) I see cycling in don't wear helmets either

Stropps, I hamster sat once and the hamster was on it's last legs. DS put it in a coffin!

Dd managed to get to school today, albeit a bit late. I have just had an email from the HoY apologising for not seeing her yesterday and saying he is going to see her today. No way of predicting how that is going to play out.

Wilbur, thank you for your kind words. I am well aware that dd and I are peculiar in equal measure :) It's the unpredictability and the intractability of her moods... I am also uncomfortably aware that dh has a certain role he is playing in all of this and he is even more unlikely than dd to want to talk to anyone about it. I couldn't do anything about this last year because he was dealing with cancer (obviously that is ongoing, but he is more his usual self at the moment), but I suspect that family therapy will highlight a few issues that he will feel very unhappy about and that will bring its own stresses. However, it is maybe time that I stopped trying to hold it all together as I'm clearly fighting a losing battle anyway.

LOL, BTM, thanks for those encouraging words about pet-sitting aged and infirm pets.

stropps - holding it all together not always sustainable or even a good idea in the very long run (but it's so difficult to see into the v long run)

herbs - my sister says happy to talk to you/email with you about SALT as she may have some ideas. will pm you

dh and i off to cappadocia this afternoon for a week - looking forward but is v odd. no children. think we may be on coaches with advanced crepeys (was vvv cheap) but won't need to cheer anyone up so that will be great

My friend house-sat once for a friend whose dog died. It was like a C&W song.

@ addle.

Stropps, yy, stop trying to hold it together.

Addle - coach tours ROCK. We went by coach to Germany for our choir tour and I was dreading it. But it was marvellous! Just being bussed about to various places with no decisions to be made, no arguments about routes, just being told where to be at certain times. Very relaxing. And advanced crepeys are often very interesting travelling companions.

BTM - it's so hard about the helmet thing. Would a different type of helmet make him feel more cool in it? Something like this picture? Or a Bern helmet? which is what I have and makes me look slightly less of a dork and protects teh side of my head which I like. Plaster your fridge in pictures of cool cyclists wearing helmets? There are lots here and here. I'm not sure the threat of injury makes any difference at all to young men . I wish they would make them mandatory for under 18s when cycling on roads.

Herbs, sorry about your cat, hope he feels a bit better soon.

I had a very crepey day yesterday. Got a letter from doctor saying yes, I have arthritis in my hands and the beginnings of Herbeden's nodes (the things that give you old witch deformed hands eventually), and then I went to the opticians who said I should have varifocals. Might as well shoot myself now.

Ooh, wilbur thanks for those links! I too wish helmets were compulsory - like seat belts.

addle at Cappadocia sans jeunes, even if it is on a coach!

Stropps, glad your dd went in, fingers crossed the HoY actually does something today. And yes you need to stop trying to hold it all together - your DH needs to accept he has a role to play too.

Things not good on the cat front. As well as the swelling on his head, his heart is racing abnormally, and he's gone blind. Some of these things may be a temporary reaction to the anaesthetic, or latent problems, and may resolve, or may not.

As he's deaf already, the vet's already murmuring about 'quality of life', etc. DS would be heartbroken. As would I, despite the cat being a monumental pain in the arse.