This week has to rank low on the good week scale. I got ill last weekend, took to my bed on Sunday and basically didn't emerge (other than for a handful of essential school runs, one of which was in my pyjamas) until yesterday. I can hardly recall a time when I was unwell for so long. It reminded me of childhood illnesses, when there is just no choice but to lie there, listless and bored and running a fever. I did read a book cover to cover in a day (sun-lounger style), watched episode after episode of trashy TV, watched Royal Ascot and shed a tear when the right horses won. I did more googling than I though humanly possible. I tweeted, pinned and instagrammed. Along the way I got some pretty strange symptoms - swollen ankles and aches like I have not experienced for years. I literally felt like I have been steam-rollered. I write in past tense; but it's not entirely gone yet. I feel like I have to at least try to restart normal life again, albeit on shaky legs, or I will be done for.
Now suddenly July is on the horizon, although the weather belies that fact, thoughts do turn to the approaching summer holidays. My children break up on the 5th, which seems like madness and will give them a full two months before returning to school in September. I always get school fatigue at this point in the year and long for them to finish and be free of the rigours of the final term. But then the stretch of holiday arrives and it is bittersweet as after the onslaught and discipline of school, they go into some sort of free-fall, where they don't know what to do with themselves and loll around the house restlessly. This is usually followed by a tirade from me on how I used to entertain myself all summer with nothing but my bicycle and a curlywurly bar...circa 1981.
I am starting to see that our choice, years back, to buy a farmhouse surrounded by fields was perhaps not as savvy for family life as it appeared. Although just a mile or so from town, we are isolated and both of my children will always need to be driven from our rural place to see friends or do anything. This is becoming increasingly hard for my 12 year old daughter, whose time with her friends is all-important. I can see that for years to come I will be a taxi for them, but also that I can't get frustrated with that fact; we choose a rural location for its beauty, when we had a toddler and baby on the way. Now they are grown (growing) I see how that choice worked then, and has different challenges now. However come next year we will start big development work on our house, we will be broadening it and making it more teenage-friendly in readiness for years to come. Very much looking forward to that.
Thank you for all of your wonderful, life-asserting comments and emails about my choice to stop work. In my sickened state I re-read them and took comfort from them. So many of you expected this turn of events and could see that in the trajectory of me, it was timely and right. I think so too.
I am ready to do nothing for a few months once I stop working. I will revel in the fact. I want to wake up and have nowhere that I need to be. I can't tell you how liberating that will feel, after so many years of corporate meetings and calls that always start early and run all day. How is it that there is so much speaking required? I want the quiet.
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