October was BUSY.

Full of Dr’s appointments and smears and scans, and repressed subconscious dread, and 3am fully conscious dread.

Full of school flu vaccine consent forms and parent’s evenings and “your kid isn’t where we would like her to be in English and Maths but try not to feel like a failure as a parent”, and school fetes and forest school and mysterious insect bites from forest school, and head lice and football matches, and forgotten pe kits that need to be driven to the school asap as there’s an external football match we didn’t know about.

Full of job interviews, and important work projects and external webinars (no my hair is not behaving for that!) and research about visas and moving to France, and meetings with estate agents, and potential house viewings and approving photos and putting the house on the market.

Full of laundry and batch cooking and meal planning and playdates and trawling the city for good-quality second hand bicycles, and “it’s the best quality one that they have who cares if it’s pink?”, and buying new reflectors and lights and bike locks, and putting the bike chains back on when they fall off, and waiting on hold for insurance companies and police reports. Full of Christmas and birthday present shopping to spread the costs out.

Full of pay disputes and union meetings and strike ballots, and absorbing the unfolding horrors of Israel and Gaza.

Full of fighting to access post-adoption support that is sorely needed, full of referrals from one team to another team, to another team, who have already closed our case as we were referred onwards…. Endless phone calls and meetings over and over and over again.

Full of stress, full of hormones, full of angry teenagers shouting and screaming and a very tired parent who can no longer be therapuetic because she is EMPTY. Full of general despair and feeling low and miserable and fed up of literally everything.

No I haven’t bought any halloween costumes. No we are not carving any pumpkins. No I haven’t sorted out who is feeding the cat while we are away. No your PE kit isn’t washed yet. No I can’t make the house any tidier for the photos. No I’m not going to get that work project finished on time. No you can’t have a 5th biscuit. No I’m not cooking a different dinner because you don’t like this one. No I didn’t remember that you needed to take cakes in for the bake sale. No I can’t BEAR to do any baking with you because it is exhausting and messy and everyone gets cross and shouts and then I have to clean it all up afterwards. No I do NOT want to join the goddamn PTA please don’t look at me like that. No we haven’t figured out how to log into the new online platform for homework BECAUSE SHE’S 5 YEARS OLD AND SHOULDN’T BE DOING ANY GODDAMN HOMEWORK SHE IS EXHAUSTED TOO. No, none of this will go away if we move anywhere, and none of it will go away if we stay here either.

Basically my brain is at capacity, memory is full, please delete unneccessary apps and load more RAM.

(Oh SHIT I forgot about the goddamn tooth fairy! Dashes out of bed in the dark to hide money in my daughter’s bed….)

(Oh dammit I didn’t book the hall for the birthday party in time and now it’s gone and we’ll have to pick a different weekend….)

I am hanging up my internal “Do Not Disturb” sign and resorting to doing the absolute bare minimum for the next few weeks. Yes we will be splurging all our non-existent money on takeaways and eating fish fingers and chips every night for a week. Yes I feel exhausted and wrung out emotionally. Self-care is sorely needed and extremely hard to achieve sometimes. I blew some savings I had put aside buying us all extra snuggly warm pyjamas so we don’t need to have the heating on as much, and then bought myself an unneccessary bracelet I’ve been wanting for ages to cheer myself up. It hasn’t worked, I’m not at all cheery but now I have a pretty bracelet to be miserable with. And then someone else went on an online shopping spree with my card and tried to spend more money but lucky for me I’m broke so they didn’t get far with my overdraft!

I want to sit back and do nothing for a bit, but my work projects and deadlines are piling up, and half term is looming, and I have to wait on hold to sort out that bank fraud as it’s not the kind of thing you can just ignore, and I have to keep chasing and chasing the adoption support people and having meeting after meeting after meeting otherwise you just drop off their radar entirely (believe me it has been a whole year since I first requested support).

I sincerely hope we end up on strike at work so I can just go back to bed for a goddamn day.

Half term came and went, with various ups and downs (lovely to see some friends, then the car died dramatically, and so on).

I have just eaten an entire chocolate santa by myself, sitting at my desk, and yes I am planning to buy another one tomorrow and I will eat it all at once because it’s delicious and I don’t care.

November is here already and I have a 6th birthday party to organise….