new me…..

I am moving, next friday,I am leaving the place I have been for nearly five years, the only home my nearly six year old knows as home, and definatley home for my two and a half year old and baby, but we are leaving next week.

This is the home where my marraige ended, where the relationship of 17 years ended, and the new relationship now of two years began….

But we so need space, space for him from my children, space for me from his…

Does God hate sex?

Ha ha! We all laugh at that don’t we… but this is a life or death question if you live in the third world… bit here, where I am in Dublin, in 2009 I  am dealing with the issues of sex, life and fidelity.

I am a woman, I am 36 years old, I have four children, three of which I had with my partner of 17 years, one of which I have with my partner of two years,  But my sexuality and my children’s paternity subjects me to “shame” people judge me, because I was married and my partner left me, I had to continue my life, taking care of my three children, I found (suprising me) a new relationship, we have a baby now, but people judge us…People think I am not sad because my husband left me, or that I in some way was unfaithful and deserved my husband leaving the marriage.

I was faithful to my partner, I was betrayed but, because I have tried to find a new life and a new love with my partner I have been faced with problems everywhere I turn, I love my new partner, I deserve faithfulness, I deserve a wonderful man who wants me, would all of my friends have been happy, if I had never found any happiness, if I had been left by my partner, and not found a man to love me? But I have found a lovely man, and he is delightful, he makes me feel so special and loved, but if I had not found love I think I would have received more support from my female friends.

Home

I really love that Newton Faulkner song, it has a lovely romantic association for me, but there is another one, and as I believe in the good with the bad, ying and yang etc here it is….

The night before my husband left me we went to see ratatouile with our two older kids, baby was with sitter, and on the way to the Cinema, after picking my husband up from work we were driving in silence apart from the kids (I suppose you’d say there was an atmosphere) and listening to Handbuilt by Robots, and the  song “Feels like Home” came on, now to me the song is a Dear John letter to a girlfriend, forgive me for I have sinned, but I’ve found love so get over it!

Now at the time that was the last thing I wanted to hear, I was working really hard on the forgive bit….which I really would never have been able to do, not in a trillion years, so at the time I felt like every bit of blood in my body froze, I remember clearly reaching my hand from the gear stick toward my husband, stroking the hairs on the back of his hand, and already feeling him shutting me out (  I think men have the ability to just close off bits of themselves emotionally) That moment will haunt me forever I suppose, it was the last time I touched my partner in love before he got up the next morning and left.

I know this is a really moaning, boring post, but I have stopped blogging cos my posts were so mealoncoly, and guess what, I didn’t feel any better keeping things in!

It’s two years since all this happened, my two year old was the same age as my baby is now when all this happened….I look at my baby and wonder how I survived.

Two years have passed, and I am in a new relationship with The evil Scientist, we have a baby (six months today), I am happy, but the happiness is always bittersweet, I wouldn’t be in my new relationship if my marraige hadn’t ended, my kids like my partners kids, but that wouldn’t be an issue if I was still a “happily” married. We are all doing alright, but again, what is alright? And nobody ever wants to be in the position I am in, everyone wants to believe in ture love, in meeting “the one” findng truth love and fidelity that lasts forever! But now, I really think that is a load of fudge and respect and tolerance, being comfortable in each others presence is what matters.

Anyway, I need to stop moaning! Next post I’ll ise my head, not my heart!

Newton is back

Newton Faulkner has a new album out,  and he is gigging here in the Academy in October! I am delighted. The song I tried to upload here is called feels like home, and it’s The Evil Scientist (my partner) and my song….I don’t know if it’s romantic but I have a lovely memory of slow dancing to this in his tiny kitchen in his apartment one Wednesday when we were getting to know each other!

Still here!

Thanks to everyone, in particular Jo who gave me a slap and told me to post today, I am fine, the docs have turned up nothing and my lumpy boobs are (one of many) side effects of the IUD I had fitted in July.

I have to keep a close eye on my boobs, but nothing sinister is afoot!

Sorry haven’t posted

I paid 55 yo yos today to have my lovely GP confirm that I have a firmness in my breast, if it’s still there in seven days I’m off to Vincents for an ultrasound…. to say I am scared would be a horrific under statement, I have four childrn, youngest is 5 months….. breasts scare me.

I love the loose….

I need say no more… other than I would leave my lovely family and join his cult…

My Motto!

So, here it is, I think this is the ultimate post of this blog,  I think this is what this blog is about!

So Last Saturday night I found myself  at U2….they were amazing, but they didn’t preform my song… “stuck in the moment”… this has been my theme song for the last two years…yes, it is two years since my partner of 16, nearly 17 years told me he had never really taken it seriously and had fucked around.. I feel I can say that finally cos the girl he is with is so lovely and special that she won’t be hurt by me saying that and he really is so removed from the situation that he doesn’t care.

So how am I?

Well to cut a long story short I had my heart ripped out by the  man I adored but it was the best thing that ever happened to me, I wound up with my lovely mad scientist partner and our perfect baby!

And my outcome, well  it wound up being the U2 song stuck in the moment, I just felt that I knew lots of people who were “stuck”, that there was something that they just couldn’t or wouldn’t let go of, and now here I am trying to let it all go…..actually trying to convince everyone else that it’s ok to let it go!!!

I really do try to live in the moment, it is hard, today my partner and I drove by a certain place and we got into a discussion about the prson that my ex husband had the major affair with…..she is still happily married to her partner of the time…I never had the balls to make a scene, to tell her partner, to make him feel the pain I felt…

I just can’t, she knows I know, one of the decent things my ex did was tell her he had told me, but I haven’t seen her, and I hope I never will, I did see her a lot when they had the affair.. I was so stupid, I really didn’t see it, I just thought she didn’t like me, cos I can be shy.

My poor partner now ( I like to refer to him as my lover…tacky, I know) but he has to face 100 questions about any new student or girl he is working with…and he is currently a post doc, hoping to be a lecturer…imagine my stress.. I read a report which said university lecturers (male) had the highest level of divorce in the US, it’s a biological thing, even though they rarely gat to date a young (fertile) woman, they are surrounded by them… and leave their wives…

need I say more…..?

this is my motto!

Courgettes

The courgettes finally have bloomed, looks like we’ll have a good harvest, it’s such a struggle with the slugs though……slimy little bastards!

Galway

So at last, weeks after  my little break in Galway I’m finally getting around to blogging about it. I stayed in the Twelve which was amazing, the rooms were lovely, we had amazing food in the West restaurant and then we had a couple of cocktails, all the time while our little baby slept soundly in his buggy.

The hotel has a little bakery attached and the freshly baked scones in the morning were divine. Breakfasts were amazing and the staff were so lovely, very understanding of our situation, finding us the best place to sit with the buggy and not making us feel like a blot on the landscape.

I highly recommend the hotel if you are heading out west, it’s in Bearna, just 15 minutes from Galway, and Bearna in itself  is a lovely little spot.

Last wishes….

I will try to post about my weekend in Galway soon (promise) but right now I want to put something down here.

I visited Brigits Garden over the weekend please check it out if you are out in the wild west over the summer. It was the most beautiful place, I was wishing I hadn’t married just so I could commit to my partner in such a magical place.

So I have found the place where I’d like my ashes scattered after I die, also they allow you for a small donation to have a tree or something dedicated to the memory of someone or an event like a birth or a wedding. This is what I want…. anyone listening?

They also have the amazing message trees (my friend Jo did this when her little son was a year old) you write a wish or dedication on a tag and it is tied onto a special tree, they had a handful of trees with peoples wishes there for everyone to see…. I love it!

So this Saturday my baby Oscar is being baptised, really only for my family and it’s a private affair, my partner is non religious and only doing this for my family, so in August we are going to have a celebration to welcome our son, and we’ll be stealing the tree idea!

Babies

I have had my last baby, definately, there will be no more, but as I type that I want to acknowledge how wonderful babies are….

Babies smell amazing, and I don’t mean the smell of baby shampoo I mean the kinda yeasty smell of little babies. I love that smell.

The warmth, the way a newborn craves human contact and so cuddles into it’s mum….so lovely.

To feel my baby’s breath on my cheek, how lovely that is, how wonderful to feel so special.

Oscar is my little man, I don’t know if it’s cos my new partner and I aren’t married and Oscar has my  surname Murphy, but he feels more mine..

I just want to eat him up he is that cute, he wakes up, gives out a bit but once he sees me he smiles like ” hey, great to see you”, relaxed for about twenty minutes until he doesn’t get his bottle!

Best baby ever!

Food

I don’t post about food that I cook, but tonight I did a taleggio and mushroom puff, it had thyme and rocket from my garden! I was so proud!

Garden

this  is the selection of photo’s from my garden…..Lovely yummy edible things!

Alternative BBQ

So on  Sunday my partner and I had a BBQ, we did all the usual stuff, steak, burgers,  hot dogs, salads, my mozzarella pesto garlic bread and cheesy tortilla chili wraps! Beer and wine , nothing very alternative about the menu, but the guest list might raise a few eyebrows.

We had my ex hubby and his partner, some of their friends who had never seen my ex hubby around his kids, they had done some nice things for us recently. Then there were some friends common to both my ex hubby and I, who we have shared custody of and lastly one of my newer mummy friends and her hubby and brood!

The kids had a ball, it was funny for me, they are so adaptable, it’s mummy and her partner, daddy and his partner and sometimes everyone all together! It does show that they really don’t care about who is with who unless people are fighting. I can say with my hand on my heart that none of my kids (the older two were 3 and 9 when my marriage ended) have ever asked me ill daddy come home. They are happy.

Now it is hard, us oldies find it more difficult, I found the day very stressful and have to admit I drank a good few beers and didn’t eat very much but I am glad we did it, I’m blessed to have a partner who understands my need to do things this way and not feel jealous or resentful that I don’t hate my ex. Now, that’s not to say that the hurt isn’t still there, my partner and I were doing the post mortem yesterday and he said people maybe think that my ex didn’t hurt me, or that I’m “over it”. I hope that’s not the case as I do still hurt. I don’t want people to feel sorry for me, but I don’t want everyone to think I am some sort of robot with an on/off emotion switch (that feature only comes on the male model).

Anyway, it was a nice day, if stressful. Kids had a ball, and I could exhale a little more knowing they are still ok, everything is still working out ok. MY ex looked nervous at allowing his friends to see the “daddy” side of his personality, I wonder what they thought?

You see I am so tightly involved and bound into my children’s lives that my friends would have difficulty separating me from them. Which can be a pain in the ass as I feel like I don’t have any independent non mummy personality left, but I know if I had to choose I’d choose being a parent most of the time, I have moments of extreme jealously, my ex gets to live a single life, go out, have fun, have hangovers,  and then he gets to spend fun time with the kids, best of both worlds? But I get to spend the boring narky times with them too, and we spend so much time together in our tiny box house that we drive each other crazy, but they are my children and I am lucky to have them, there is one thing I am sure of, they are gonna make my life interesting and keep me busy for the rest of my life.

One more thing, I got everyone to bring there own booze, but also bring dessert to the BBQ, worked out a treat, we had such lovely treats I’ll definitely do it again!It was better than Charlie and the chocolate factory, my favorites were the Carrot cake (Avoca recipe made by Paula) and the brown bread (I don’t know where it was from but it was really good) , we also got homemade crumble and cream, meringue roulade, amazing chocolate ganache cake, Romantica ice cream dessert and the kids made cup cakes!

family

These are my beautiful children, I know, i am so lucky, my eldest, who has just finished fifth class,  has had an amazing school report, my five year old is a little genius and my two year old is a little mad scientist, but my little babe is the best baby ever and is so amazingly sweet and lovely!

Kids Cakes

These are my kids ckes…they are my cake decorating slaves!

Am I alone?

Ok, it’s ten minutes to five on a Tuesday afternoon, looks like I have a few minutes to try to write down a few of the things that are going on in my head right now….

Here goes… But first a cute piccy of the newest love of my life…..

Firstly, I’m thinking about joining second life, creating some kind of cyber me that I can transport all the best bits of me and my life onto and then just for an hour or so forget all the horrible bits, I’ve never understood why people did it before now, but now I can totally get it, ok, so now I’m obviously going mad right?

Secondly, I think stay at home mums are the loneliest people on the planet, Monday I meet a friend and she’s in awful form, toddler smearing poo on the walls, five year old not letting her out of his sight, baby on antibiotics, husband oblivious to the strain she is under. I try to cheer her up with a joke or two, a cup of tea and a cake or two. Tuesday roles are reversed and she is the one talking me down from the ledge.  We are all the same? I respect all the mothers I know, the working mums and the stay at home, but definitely staying at home is lonelier, when working I could talk to the other mums about missing our kids and the stress involved – not so at home.

I love my partner, he is an amazing man, but sometimes it feels like we are speaking different languages.  His scientific nature is so opposed to my airy fairy emotional way of dealing with things.

Thirdly, I wish I could get rid of the bad things from the past, my partners ex- wife or WW as I call her (ding dong the witch is dead) he even has a bell tolling for her ring tone, when she calls, as she does often, or when she texts, my heart drops, it’s always bad, there is always emotional upset to follow when she is involved.

Lastly, I should blog more, I am so isolated and lonely a lot of the time I don’t express it, to anyone other than my poor partner or closest friends. Two years ago I started this blog to help me adjust to being a mum to three, now I am a mum to four, separated, in a new relationship, coping with my blokes crazy ex…. I have more reason than ever to blog!

I have been getting away though, my ex and I have come to an arrangement where one Friday a month he doesn’t take the kids and in exchange one weekend a month he takes them on a Friday and Saturday which means my partner our baby Oscar and I get to go away for the weekend once a month, we’ve been to Waterford,visited the much loved Hook lighthouse. Two weeks ago we visited Limerick, the Absolute Hotel in Henry’s Mall was amazing, food not too great but the rooms were spacious and modern, amazing shower. We started the day at Oscars whim, 6.30 in the morning, we did all of the Burren, Cliffs of Moher and Alliwee cave, it was so lovely, relaxed, just our little family unit. Our July stop is the Twelve hotel in Bearna in Galway, I can’t wait to visit it, I’ve driven by it several times, it has it’s own bakery! It’s lovely for me, I like visiting all the lovely bits of Ireland, I’ve seen it all before but my parner hasn’t so he and I get to experience it together, with our little offspring!

Anyway, very disconnected post, baby awake now (actually jusr did a huge baby fart…well I hope it was a fart!).  Have to rescue two year old off climbing frame…again!

Pressure…..so much pressure!

See I knew once I committed myself to blogging again I’d be put under pressure to actually do it!!!! Arse!

It’s not that I don’t want to blog, it’s simply that being a full-time slave to four evil midgets means that I have no time to myself, you think Dobby the house elf has a hard life? Maybe I am exaggerating slightly, sometimes I do have five minutes such as now, or at the end of the day, but I am so drained that most of the time I know blogging would not be a good idea…too much woe is me! When I sit down to do something not child related it’s like an internal alarm goes off and they go off on one! Just now when I sat down my daughter decided to have a temper tantrum over the fact that her friend isn’t home, and the two smallest ones have filled their nappies, the big guy isn’t home from school yet!

I feel so overwhelmed a lot of the time, it’s as if the more children I have, the bigger my family gets, the more people I have to love, the more love I have to give, but also the smaller I get (only figuratively, unfortunately)! I really wanted to start my distance learning thing from DCU, to start working toward the future, but I can’t see it happening. I wanted to do a five week swimming course, that’s just an hour a week…..I couldn’t manage it! I would love to go to Bloom over the weekend, but just thinking about the reality of two adults and four children going to it is just exhausting! I like entertaining here, and have done a few little things, I’m almost recluse like…just call me the Howard Hughes of mothering!

This weekend my partner and I are going to a wedding of his good friend, I have a babysitter booked for my two year old and the baby, my folks are having the two older guys over on a sleepover. I have purchased a beautiful dress, which I think is very sexy, but I look like a bag of potatoes in it. I am totally organised, but I really don’t want to go! Last Saturday night the babysitter did a trial run, I took my two older guys and one of their friends out to see Coraline (loved all around!) my partner was out with his boys, and got home about an hour after I left, which was a blessing cos the babysitter ran into a few problems, my toddler was not happy that his mother had gone out, he hadn’t seen her in quite a while and screamed and was very difficult, so this week she is bringing her mum to help her out. Now she is a brilliant babysitter, and I totally trust her with the kids, but I do know how demanding he can be, and then throw in a screaming nine week old baby? I hope she will be ok…..I’ll be holding my breath all night.

It’s like everything in me is stopping me from leaving “Ah, sure I’ll just stay in, I’m too tired..” or “Sure what’s the point of going out, I look like crap and my brain is fucked, I can’t hold a conversation!” or just ” Ah, he is so cute, I love him so much, why would I leave?”  I suppose all this is biological to keep me attached to my baby, so I don’t get up and leave….?

Of course I’ve been through all of this before, but it is different this time, my partner and I only became aware of each others existence in November of 2007……. and now we are parents together, whereas in my previous relationship we were together for  seven years before our first son was born. Another difference is of course that I was married then…and now I’m…well, still married but not to my current partner! A form arrived in the post today for my ex to sign in the presence of a solicitor, a rebuttal form, declaring he isn’t the father of my baby!!!

Why can’t my ex and I get divorced, why does it take 4 years of separation to “know” you want to divorce? I don’t want to divorce so I can remarry (I don’t know if I ever could do that) but because I’m not divorced my husbands name will be on my baby son’s birth cert along with his dads name. It’s not the same for my partner, his marital status is irrelevant…

Ok, baby screaming, have to scram, a house elf’s work is never done!