Holiday time...

It’s really only struck me recently that 3 kids under 6 yo, 1 x 17 year old grumpy cat, 1 x blind foster dog and a fabulous au pair constitutes a reasonably large family. We have lurched from mini issue to mini issue, and then into the fire with extended family major ailments, and then back again to the daily routine of mini issue to mini issue. It’s holiday time. We’re only one weekend into the holidays and 2 hours into the weekday and the holidays have already picked me up by my feet, swung me around their head, and flung me into a bin. The one with all the dirty nappies. It all came to a crashing halt in bed this morning when I woke up and couldn't breathe or straighten out my fingers on either hand, my limbs paralysed with anxiety. I don't know if it has to do with having 3 kids and the fatigue of getting them to this point. Sometimes it pokes through everything that I'm doing to squash it, and the room starts to spin and I feel like my heart is going to explode or crawl up and out of my throat. Those times are usually set off by little things that I have let build up over time, and suddenly I'm in the kitchen thinking about everything - and I'm suddenly overcome with the urge to chuck. Except that's one more thing I'd have to clean up. There is no reason at all whatsoever to freak out about stuff, but when you let sleep deprivation creep up on you, or certain other parts of your life start to spin out of control, those little things can seem like elephants. And then you just have to laugh at the ludicrousness of it - I mean most of it is all rather trivial and silly and you just need to get on with it. Mark has a mantra of GSD. Just 'get shit done' and I tend to agree with him but for the record and to dump everything out of my head so I can clear it, here's a list that contributed to my mini freeze this morning. I worry about Lakeisha’s friendships, Bella’s tendency to overeat and then jump around and vomit and then her not wanting to eat for days, oh and the cat racing over to eat her vomit (and the poor au pair trying not to vomit on the cat), Mack’s extreme reaction to teething and his desire to sit on Mummy’s hip 24/7 or scream his lungs out (and Mummy only has one good hip so it’s rather exhausting), the blind dog’s garbage stench farting and tendency to sneak onto my shag pile rug as it’s comfy and warm and then it starts to smell like dog, who is going to take a blind dog and what do we do with her when we are in Fiji, Mark’s dad having overnight surgery for kidney stones on the weekend, Mark’s dad being told he might have early dementia, that the good sleep fairy hates us – see email below……. what in the hell I get Mark for his birthday from the kids and I have less than 24 hopurs to decide (they want to buy him a beer T-shirt but methinks he won’t like that), the fact that I’m off to Fiji in a few week’s but I’m 10kgs overweight since my last tropical holiday so I have no clothes, the need to do some shopping for a caveman diet so I can drop off all the weight before Fiji – or at least a baby elephant portion of it, designing a holiday program for the kids so they don’t get bored, I need to send Irene’s birthday presents to Italy which I’ve bought but they've been sitting in a bag for over a week now, letting my 98 year old Grandma know she’s on the waiting list for care in Canberra and then the worry about having to deal with her possessions etc when she gets a place, extended family politics, wrapping up La Bella properly for the EOFY, one of my team being sick …………….. Right now…. I'm focusing on today, this hour, this word. I try not to think about tomorrow or the day after that because sometimes when I lift my eyes and stare straight ahead I see miles and miles of fire. Flames stretching so far that they hide the entire sky. I see waves of terrifying, oppressive heat spilling out across every inch of ground in front of me. And then panic swells in my lungs, that old familiar rush of anxiety and dread and certainty that the world is going to fall apart. So I look back down at my hands, at this word. And this word. And this one. And everything is okay. And then I smile when I think about the small things in life like Mack pulling Bella's hair, Bella's queries about real live princesses and why Prince Edward isn't a King when he's married to a Queen, or Lakeisha making up her first joke. Q) Why did the toilet paper roll down the hill? A) To get to the bottom.. Breathe............... ------------------------------- I would like to register an issue with an accommodation experience I have which has been bothering me for the last 24 hours. On Saturday night my husband and I stayed at Crowne Plaza in Canberra on a celebratory package. The package was to celebrate his birthday and his gift was a full night’s sleep (as we have 3 children under 6 that have been waking in the night – 13 month old is teething – 4 year has been sick – 6 year old wakes with the 4 yo). We live in Canberra and we stayed in the Hotel which is less than 10 minutes from our home. We are so desperate for a sleep through that this seemed like a good idea and Grandma volunteered to babysit overnight. Except that we were woken at 2.15am by the intercom denoting a possible fire evacuation. 15 minutes later this was followed by evacuation noises and then the intercom stating we could go back to sleep. In that 15 minutes we were woken and were working out what to take and where to go in case of an evacuation. It took us ages to get back to sleep. This does not constitute a sleep through and I feel like the bad sleep fairy followed us! In return we were offered a late checkout but we had family commitments and could not take up the offer. I would like to stress how disappointed we are. Especially in that the alarm procedures were rather irregular and contributed to the angst. Up until this experience the staff had been wonderful and our stay appeared to augur well. The next morning no-one really cared that we lost sleep and it was a ‘too bad – so sad’ attitude. I was told that some people were smoking in their room. I would like to make sure that you pursue fining these people or banning them from future Crowne plaza hotels and that someone somewhere empathises that our stay was in vain.