gemisht

This is my first ever post for Screw Up Tuesday - the brainchild of Bettina. I will admit to making some stuff ups but none of them have been quite as idiotic as this week’s lot. So, in no particular order, here they are:

Tiger had an early Rugby match on Saturday. I dropped him at school at 7.30 and then went home to get Daisy up, dressed and organised then rush back to watch the game. DH was sitting outside having his morning coffee and reading the paper. I went out to kiss him bye, grabbed everything that I needed and rushed out the door with Daisy. As I was getting in the car, DH appears in the garage and frightened the life out of me. He asked me to make sure that I had left the study door open as I had locked the sliding door after I said bye to him. Ooooppss - I had locked him out - every single door into the house was locked and I had done it without thinking. Its habit because I do it every day when the kids and I leave home. Needless to say DH was not happy, but lucky he caught me before I left.

Thursday last week at work I emptied my office bin into a plastic bag to put into the big outside bin. Only trouble is, I forgot that I had emptied the “holes” out of my hole punch into the bin. Ummm, they went all over the floor in my office. There was more “confettit” on the floor than at a wedding. DH had to vacuum it up for me on the weekend, as the vacuum is too noisy to use when every one is here.

My final stuff up for the week: yesterday morning at home my feet were getting really cold on the tile floor at home. Instead of going back upstairs to get my slippers, I put on my very flat, very comfortable shoes with the intention of changing into high heels for work just before I left home. When I got to work I went to do something and accidentally trod on the bottom of my trousers which were hanging on the ground and all of a sudden, way too long. Looked down and I still had on my very comfortable, very flat shoes with my very long work pants that need high heels to stop the bottom of them dragging on the floor. Oooops. I had to stay like that all day as I didn’t have time to go home and change. How embarrasment…….

So, some spectacular blonde moments this week. Watch this space, because at the rate I am going, there is sure to be more stuff ups next week to keep you entertained.

Popularity: 52% [?]

First of all thanks so much to everyone who has commented on my post about Daisy and the problems that we have faced with school.  I know I replied to some of the comments in the comments on that post, but I wanted to say thanks for all the support from everyone, and that my heart goes out to anyone that may have experienced this kind of thing - either for themselves or their own children. It really is heartbreaking, but knowing that I have support from everyone here makes a difference. Thanks All.

 I just wanted to do a quick update to let you all know what is happening, as a couple of people that read my blog have asked how things are going.

Step 1 of many happened this afternoon. I had a meeting with Daisy’s class teacher and the school counsellor. I thought that it would be about half an hour. Guess again. It was an hour and a half. I don’t think as a parent, in fact I know for sure, that I have ever had that length of time to discuss anything with any of the teachers that either of my kids have had. WOW.

To be honest I lost track of time, but I knew that it was more than half an hour. So the three of us have discussed lots of things to do at home and at school and lots of follow up too.

I also have an appointment for Saturday afternoon for Daisy to see a Speech Pathologist. This is because she has been regressing with her speech and has gone back to speaking with a lisp. She had some speech therapy 2 years ago and at the end of about 6 months seemed to be on top of it all.

I also have an appointment with another psychologist on Wednesday afternoon to discuss in more detail what we need to do and what the next steps will be. I have also spoken to her about some other concerns that I have and I will see what she says about them. Thats a bit cryptic I know, but its a hunch of mine and I promise I will reveal all later.

 So, thanks everyone for all your wonderful comments, and for the messages and support in the meantime. Daisy seems much happier the last few days with some minor changes so I will possibly start to document what we are doing so that we can track what works and what doesn’t.

 I will keep you all posted on what’s happening. Oh, and she smiled at me today - “that” smile, the one that I have been missing. And when I went to pick her up from gymnastics, she ran towards me and I picked her up, and almost threw her in the air.  That’s my girl.

My Daisy will be home soon, I can feel it in my bones.

Popularity: 48% [?]

Anonymum decided that it was time for another rolling post, titled “Too Splendid”, a sequel to “Splendid”. The batten has been passed around and I am second last. There will be a vote to decide on the person to add the finale to the tale, with so many twists and turns already who knows where this will lead.

The fun was started by Anonymum and then pass around to Lightening, JavaQueen, Evyl, Anja, Jayne, Bettina, Hilary, Sarah Flanigan, Cris, Annie, Red, Cowgalutah and finally its my turn. My addition is at the bottom in purple.

Too Splendid

The sun was orange as it set against the ocean.As Natalie walked along the beach, she felt the sting of tears as they sprung to her eyes. How could he do this to her? What would she do now?She had invested 12 years of her life into their marriage, thinking they were happy, only to have him say he was leaving. Her question of why had been left unanswered. There was no explanation or reasons. He had merely looked at her sadly and walked out the door without so much as a backward glance………….

The sand felt cool against her hot face as her legs buckled and she surrendered her weary body to the comfort of the course sand. She curled up into a foetal position, her mind willing her body to simply evaporate. The darkness enveloping her was barely recognisable against the darkness that enveloped her heart. A darkness that had been slowly creeping in over the past decade. Somewhere in the distance, a baby cried…. a cry that tortured her heart with memories of a dim and distant past……

Alone in the sand Natalie couldn’t stop thinking what if. What if she had been able to have a child? If she could have given him that, would she be in this situation now? At one time they had been so happy. She had foolishly thought that they could make it work by just loving each other. Natalie had told him from the start that she might not be able to have children. Back then he just looked in her eyes and said the only thing that mattered is that they had each other. Why had she believed him? Now, after twelve years of marriage she was all alone. They had tried for so many years to have a baby, but they never could. She had been through seven miscarriages and had given up hope. Now her husband had left her. She felt empty inside. If only he had known . . .

It was all a lie. No that wasn’t quite right. There was nothing false about the love at least not for Natalie. Yet the long nights lieing against Brad after the loving exchange of heated passion, whispering softly of the hopes and dreams of the sweet pitter-patter of small feet treading through the carpeted halls of a loving home. The faked miscarriages were not something that Natalie was proud of but it had been her last resort at maintaining a thin veneer over the stained lies that haunted their relationship. For though in her heart, soul, and mind, Natalie was one hundred percent woman, Natalie was born Ned. Yet, how could she have told Brad the truth. For Ned and Brad had been best friends in grade school. Playing catch at the ball park, racing bicycles down the quiet suburban streets, camping in the backyard until that fateful day, when everything changed….

Natalie stared at her perfect breasts in the mirror. That surgeon was worth his weight in gold. She was every man’s dream - beautiful, successful, able to strip an engine faster than any man, but she was missing that one thing - a uterus. Natalie thought she had given Brad everything he wanted. She knew what men wanted in bed; she knew that men liked hot sex, cold beer and sport on the tube. Who was better to know what a man wanted than someone who had spent half of their life as a man, and her husband’s best friend. Life was wonderful until that barbecue with the new neighbours. Curse that little baby with her gummy grin and corn flower blue eyes. Natalie knew their lives would hit a road block when Brad said “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we had one of our own?” Natalie could do everything for a man, be everything for a man, apart from one thing… a mother….Natalie knew there was one last trump card to play, although it was going to be a doozy -she would go back to her surgeon and discuss Changing Wombs. She decided that, after all these years trying to be the perfect woman for Brad, she’d like to experience that female condition with the roller coaster hormones, strange food cravings, sleep deprivation, painful boobs, constant toilet stops and be able to scare the bejebus out of other mums at Playgroup with her own horror birth story. Her surgeon had offered the optional plumbing in his original surgical assessment but Natalie had dismissed it, not considering for a minute that the sport-lovin’ Brad she had her eyes on would succumb to natures tug on his goolies. Having kept several bucket loads of Brad’s love juice on ice at a private storage facility proved the post-op turkey basting would not be a problem and could be a great surprise with which to win Brad back to her side. Natalie made her appointment, booked her ticket and was soon winging her way to motherhood.

Natalie slept for all of that long plane trip, exhausted from the emotions that had ravaged her mind, body and soul. She dreamed of what was to come, the look of surprise on Brad’s face when he saw her swollen with his child, of her triumphant return to his heart and his bed. During the taxi ride from the airport she let her mind wander to their future, longing for the look of wonder and awe as Brad looked upon her with their newborn child for the first time an event that would link them for eternity. She could never had prepared herself though for what was to happen as she entered her surgeon’s office. The sight of Brad sitting in the waiting room looking so pitifully embarrassed to be there, hunched over in his chair holding a magazine high in front of his face set her emotions whirling. His clumsy attempts to disguise himself with that stupid floppy hat and large dark sunglasses, may have fooled some, but not her, not when she had known and loved every contour of his face and tall muscular frame so well for so long. Natalie’s heart lurched as she quickly darted back into the foyer a million questions racing through her mind - What on earth was he doing in sitting in the waiting room of the most highly respected transgender specialist in the country and how could she find out without him knowing that she had seen him there?

She was hovering in the foyer in a lather of indecision when the receptionist’s voice broke into her ruminations, ‘Mr Fothergill, the doctor will see you now.’ Before she knew what she was doing, in three strides and a dive she had caught Brad by the ankles as he approached the consulting room door and brought him down in a tackle that would have brought a smile to the face of their Under 10s rugby coach.‘Brad! NO!’ she cried, desperate tears spilling onto her cheeks, ‘We’re running out of penises!’‘ . . . eenises . . . eenises . . .’ echoed the enthralled silence in the room. She surveyed her slack-jawed waiting-room audience, surreptitiously adjusting her skirt with her free hand.‘What?’ she blustered in confusion. ‘What would you do if your husband’s balls were at stake?’ But a fidgetting in the stalls suggested she was already losing them. A magazine page shuffled. At the reception desk a computer mouse clicked.‘Balls at stake? Meh,’ seemed to be the view in the waiting room of the most highly respected transgender specialist in the country.

A small girl, dressed in a pink pinafore stepped forward,- a naughty smile tugging at the sides of her mouth. “Tick-tock, you lost your cock, but all’s not lost, cuz I’ve been tossed, from the sperm of Brad, so don’t be sad.” She smiled broadly and did a little curtsey. “Hello Mummy and Daddy. It’s me, your long-lost, Maddie.” Before Brad or Natalie could utter a word, the Doctor stepped from his office and said, “So, how do you like her, I’d say she’s the spitting….

image of…..”, the Doctor stopped in his tracks in shock.“B-B-Brad, Natalie, please step into my office, now.” stuttered the Doctor, “Nurse, please take Maddie into the examination room at the back and give her some paper and crayons, and please stay with her in that room until I come and get you.”With that, the couple moved silently into the office behind the Doctor and sat down in stunned silence. Natalie regained her composure first, but her mind raced with questions. If this was Brad’s child, who was her mother? Why wait until now to reveal her to him? And if this was Brad’s child…..what did that mean for the future, their future?

Natalie stood stoically and looked expectantly at the doctor, unable to meet Brad’s gaze. “I’m sure you have questions,” the doctor began, “and you’d have a right to ask them. I only ask that you don’t report me to the authorities…”“Authorities!” Brad roared. “Who is that child? I demand you tell me now!” Natalie had never seen Brad so angry and it frankly aroused her.“She’s yours,” said the doctor and he looked nervously at Natalie, “and yours too, Nat.” The couple could only gape. “Seems a spare frozen egg and some left over sperm made it’s way into…”

… the night-shift cleaning lady. Between her curiousity and desire to experience Motherhood, she dipped into the reserve spunk collection and turkey-basted herself right up.”

Natalie and Brad both shook their head in disgust and disbelief.

Brad was outraged at the surprising news. Natalie wept obnoxiously loud as she looked toward the door, wanting to see the child that was supposedly hers. Through sobs and snot, she managed to whisper, “But . . the child. Where are her arms?” . “Umm…don’t worry about that, it’s just a little problem that we encountered with the mishap abortion that we tried a little to late on my cleaning lady” , the Doctor winced, “To be honest, she’s learned to deal with it quite well. If you’ll follow me over here we can actually observe her through this one way glass.”As he opened the shade they could watch little Maddie as she colored with the nurse, holding the crayon between her toes like a little monkey. Naturally the child had no idea that anything was wrong with what she was doing. Sitting at the window, they watched as she colored a family standing outside of a little home, complete with the image of herself with no arms and a cat curling around what looked like the mothers feet.

“She uses her toes,” Natalie smiled and looked at Brad with a little smile showing threw the tear stained face, “just like you do, when your to lazy to bend over and pick things up.”

“Now,” the Doctor broke into there thoughts, “you’ll have to sign some papers, as her…um, legal parents, to absolve me of any wrong doing, before she leaves for the orphanage.”

Natalie woke with a start. The seat belt sign was on, which meant that they were close to landing. As she fastened her seat belt she struggled to come to terms with her dream and to make sense of it all. But her first concern was whether she had been snoring - despite her fantastic, feminine body, she still snored like a freight train. There was so much that had happened and it seemed so real, she had to try and start at the beginning and work through it. The only thing that she knew for sure was that she had to have the operation so that she could get pregnant and have some hope of bearing Brad’s child. In her dream the Doctor had said that she and Brad were the parents. Why had he said that when in reality he knew that she didn’t have a uterus, and certainly no ovaries to produce an egg, so how could it be her child? She had an uneasy feeling about the child in her dream. Even though she knew that it was a dream, she had an uneasy feeling about it all, because she knew that one of her cousins had been born with no arms, so perhaps this was a genetic flaw in her side of the family. Maybe having the operation wasn’t such a great idea - it would mean modifying her sperm so that she could be a biological mother and this increased the risk of having a disabled child. Maybe she should try and convince Brad that they could adopt a child. But would he be able to love a child that wasn’t his biologically? And would Natalie be able to form a maternal bond with a child that she hadn’t carried herself? Would the hormones that helped her to become a woman be enough to make her really feel like a mother. There were so many unanswered questions, she knew that she had to get to her appointment so that she could at least get some answers and try and work out if the dream was because of her subconscious thoughts or perhaps a premonition. She shuddered at the thought as she raised the back of her seat ready for landing.

 So, now I pass the batten back to Anonymum to get the vote going and find out who will wrap up this splendiferous tale. I can’t wait to see who it is.

Popularity: 51% [?]

First of all I would like to say thank you to everyone for your comments and emails when I took a break for a while. Your support means so much to me

So now I am back, but after a trying couple of weeks. Things have been spiralling slowly downward and almost reached breaking point yesterday morning. Not with me so much, but with Daisy. And its been building for almost 4 weeks now.

To understand where we are now I need to take you back a bit in time, to when she first started school. She was young to be starting but the staff at her preschool assured me that she would be OK, and she was so outgoing and happy that I thought that the only issue she might have was academic. Social problems just weren’t on the radar for her. She was just a social little girl that talked to everyone and had no problems making friends.

Unfortunately, this all changed not long after she started school.  Her teacher at the time had a terminally ill husband so was taking a lot of time off to look after him. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, but lack of continuity with a teacher had a big impact on all the kids. They had a relief teacher on average 2 days per week for first term, and never the same teacher.

Her teacher’s husband passed away in the holidays at the end of term 1. She had four weeks off at the beginning of term 2 (understandably) and finally the class had one teacher for the whole 4 weeks. Then their teacher took all of term 3 off on Long Service Leave and they had a different teacher again, but at least for the whole term.

What I found out in term 3 from the relief teacher was that Daisy was being “punished” for needing to go to the toilet in class time. They had to go in pairs to the toilet so whoever was going with her was getting a sticker and Daisy was loosing one. This of course led to all sorts of toileting issues with Daisy, that we had never had before, and of course name calling and other teasing by the other children at school.

Apparently the teacher didn’t like Daisy and didn’t make much of an effort to hide the fact. Other kids in her class were going home and telling their Mums that they were glad they weren’t her because she got picked on all the time and being put down by the teacher, in front of the whole class. I also had to fight for her to get home readers as everyone else in the class had them except for her. When I asked the teacher about it, she told me Daisy was getting 33% of the words wrong so she wasn’t reading well enough to get one. As far as I could see this was going to turn into a viscous circle - she wasn’t reading well enough to get a home reader, but without it she wasn’t going to improve as much either. Yes, we could have just read books at home, but Daisy felt very left out that she didn’t have home readers and the other kids noticed too - so of course, more teasing. I put my foot down and told the teacher to give her home readers and I would accept full responsibility for her reading.

By the end of the year, my bright eyed, social little girl with all the confidence in the world was not recognisable. She had no confidence, was scared to try to learn anything new, wouldn’t talk to people, let alone look anyone in the eye. And her bright eyes were gone, replaced by murky depths of experience that just shouldn’t be there at her age.  And she was angry all the time at home. She somehow managed to keep it together at school, but would come home and fall apart. She lashed out at the three of us all the time. I understood why and it broke my heart.

I did what I could to change things, but the school wouldn’t move her to another class as they said it was too late in the year. So we had to make the best of a bad situation and make sure that it didn’t get any worse again.

Daisy repeated Kindy at the same school and with a different teacher who was fabulous. She did repair some of the damage from the previous year but Daisy was still in contact with the teacher from the previous year. And she still seemed haunted and I know she was scared of the other teacher.

DH and I made the decision to move her to a different school. Not because we wanted to encourage her to run away from her problems, but because we wanted her to not have any contact with the other teacher and a change of scenery.

This is her third year at the new school and she has been thriving. She is doing so well on all fronts that the difference is staggering. I almost had the real Daisy back again. Until 4 weeks ago.  When school went back at the end of April she started telling me every day that she didn’t want to go to school. And we had tantrums, not the tears and shouting type, but the digging her heels in, refusing to get ready and shrieking at the top of her voice tantrums. And taking 10 minutes to put on a pair of socks just to delay the inevitable of going to school.

Then 2 weeks ago she came home one day and told me her current teacher doesn’t like her. That signals the end of Daisy’s world and renews the fear in her that there might be a repeat of last time. We seemed to get through that OK after she and I talked about it and I have been keeping a watchful eye on Daisy to see how she is.

Until yesterday. I went in to wake her up and she told me she was feeling sick in the tummy and couldn’t go to school. The warning bells that had been a dull roar in the background in my head were suddenly getting louder. I convinced her that she needed to go to school and thought of a couple of things for her to look forward to. Then it came time to get ready and she dug her heels in again. And Just. Wouldn’t. Get. Dressed.  Then the shrieking started. And kept going, and going, and going.

That was almost breaking point. So I went to see the Deputy Head yesterday to talk to her about my concerns regarding Daisy and my suspicion that something had happened, or was still happening, at school to make her so unhappy. The Deputy was great. She had a meeting with Daisy yesterday and they have come up with some things for her to do so that she is a bit happier at school. And some things to do at home to encourage her to get ready in the mornings. And I will talk to the school librarian to make sure that Daisy knows that the library can continue to be her sanctuary if she needs it.

I have a meeting with her class teacher next week and we will go from there. Fingers crossed that we can continue to repair the damage to her self esteem and spirit from that first year of school, rather than going backwards into the abyss that we were in.

I want my little girl back, the one with the bright smile and not afraid to try doing new things. The little girl who loves meeting new people and delights in her own achievements. And if I need to I will move heaven and Earth to make sure that it happens.

Popularity: 58% [?]

I just wanted to let you all know I won’t be around for a while. I’m not sure when I’ll be back, I’ve just got lots of things happening at the moment. I hope I’m back sooner rather than later, but I will have to see what happens.See you soon :) 

Popularity: 64% [?]

A couple of weeks ago, Tiger was playing a game on the computer while I was busy at the other end of the house. He started giggling. Really giggling. The sort of giggle that comes right from the heart and is contagious - when you hear it you can’t help but laugh yourself. So, being the over protective good Mother that I am, I came rushing to see what he was doing.  And this is what he found. Pull up a chair, grab a drink of some kind and crank up the speakers. Enjoy - it’s long but it’s well worth it.

Popularity: 64% [?]