Aftermath

With hindsight, it was probably a mistake to let the children eat cake for dinner. When I finally compile my definitive list of 'Things That Annoy Me About Small Children', right there at the top will be they don't really know how to have fun. Don't get me wrong, I know that they do have a lot of fun, but only by accident - they don't know how to determinedly have fun when they might not be in the mood but the situation demands it. I forgot this entirely, last week - after a long, long day of waiting by the phone for news - which turned out to be extraordinarily good news, as I've already told you - I wanted to celebrate. I didn't really feel like celebrating -I was too shocked, and more on that below, but it seemed important to celebrate so I wanted to do it anyway. I got a text from my husband saying I'm going to be late home again and so I thought I know it's dinner time but I don't want to just sit here all evening on my own; I'm taking these children out for a babyccino, dagnabbit. (See, I know how to have fun, even when I don't want to).

Do y'all have babyccinos where you live? They are little espresso cups full of milk froth, often with a sprinkling of cappuccino chocolate on top, sometimes - if you go somewhere upscale - with a marshmallow on the side. My children love them - love them - and I thought this will be the ideal way to mark the occasion of me being not-particularly-likely-to-get-cancer. Special treat, kids, special treat! ("Special treat" is our code word for anything more exciting than a plateful of pasta and a handful of frozen peas). I said  Let's go out and have babyccinos and you can skip your pasta and just have cake for dinner! It seemed like a really good plan. They love cake, they love babyccinos. They said YAAAAAAAY! because they are highly suggestible and we will remember this day forever! I thought.

My children loving some babyccinos. Not the day in question. 

But of course when we got there, they were looking around thinking why are we in a cafe when it is dark outside? and they were thinking where is my pasta and Now it's in front of me I don't really WANT cake for dinner and then Pink threw her plate at Blue and his cake fell on the floor and he spilled his babyccino and then he howled and by that time all the sugar was starting to course through their veins and once I finally managed to bundle them up and out of the cafe to go to the supermarket to buy myself some no-longer-feeling-quite-so-celebratory-champagne, they were screeching their heads off. They were bad. I mean, they were bad. I turned my back on them for a second while we were there - I guess it wasn't obvious we were together at that point - and I heard two women next to me saying Oh my goodness, what awful children in the tone that people only usually use when it comes out that someone's teenager has hacked the Pentagon.I was devastated. I always carry around this hope that my children aren't really as bad as they seem to me - that I am super-sensitive to their behaviour because I am responsible for it. But no, on this day, a day when I wanted to have nothing but hugs and bubbles, they were so bad that total strangers were talking about them. I paid for my champagne and went home, face burning with shame. I think I will always remember that outing, but not for the reasons I hoped. I put them to bed and cried.

*****

With hindsight, it was probably also a mistake to start new asthma medication while waiting for important news. I'm one of those people who gets extremely shaky on asthma medication and this new stuff was a whole grade up from my last prescription. While I was taking it, I could feel my heart beating in a sinister ker-thump-ker-thump way at all hours, and I constantly felt like I was on the verge of a major panic attack. Suddenly, in desperation, I took myself off it in the middle of last week and now I feel like I can function again. That's all to the good, but I wish I had thought of doing it earlier. I don't think the extremely high heart rate and chemically-induced anxiety did much for my coping skills.

***** 

With hindsight, I think it was probably also a mistake to assume that my husband would know what to say and how to act once we finally got my results. I had been warned that I would probably feel pretty churned-up either way - good news or bad- and this turned out to be absolutely true. I cried like a baby, actually, after I got the news - I know how stupid that sounds but it was so unexpected and it's strangely hard to reconfigure what you think your life is going to look like, even when what you thought was something that really stunk. Anyway. I was hoping that a meaningful evening of connection with my beloved spouse would help, which was probably pretty dumb.

Like I said, he was really late home, which wasn't a great start. And as for our conversation:
What I was hoping he would say: I have been so worried. Let me embrace you and show you how much I care by showering you with tears of joy, my angel. 
What he actually said: Wow, I'm so glad we never bothered to pay up for private health insurance! 
Cue me weeping. Cue him getting cranky at me for weeping. Cue me getting cranky at him for getting cranky at me for weeping. Cue a totally out-of-character-for-both-of-us huge argument that got ugly and personal.
Nearly a week later, I realise that he was pretty disappointed too. I think that it went like this for him:
What he was hoping to hear Now that's out of the way, honey, I have used up my quota of emotional crises for the year. Thanks for the support. Why don't you sit on the sofa while I fetch you some beer?
What he actually heard: I don't understand you / how can you say that at a time like this / why don't you love me? / Well why can't you show it? / Why did I have to buy my own champagne? / You don't care about me at all, do you? At ALL? 
I don't think either of us came out of that one particularly well. It was like finally getting the news was not so much like an ending to a story, but more like (apologies, particularly gross simile coming up) lancing a boil. Things were better afterwards, of course, but all the toxic stuff that we had been keeping inside had to come out somehow and that was never going to be pretty.

*****

Once we were friends again, I decided that my act of penance would be to do a deep clean and tidy on our bedroom, which was full of electrical cords and a computer and a gigantic box of blankets from our loft (which he is renovating - and all the junk seemed to have ended up in my our bedroom). With hindsight, I think it was a mistake to make decorating decisions while under the influence of stress, arguing, an adrenaline let-down from the test results and (rather inconveniently) lady-hormones. Usually, my taste tends somewhere between 1850s London Club and Hipster Modern (I'M SORRY! I CAN'T HELP WHAT I LIKE!) This means that the bedrooms I usually lust after have things like a brown leather chair, a dark-painted gallery wall and an unread book about Italian typography displayed prominently, spine-outwards. The bedspread would have of silhouettes of some kind of non-cuddly animal, like a stoat or a weasel, in a non-girly colour like charcoal.

About half-way there. Needs some paper mache antlers. 

On the other extreme - I also love Minimalist Hotel. Either way - sharp edges, dark colours. However, over the last few weeks I suddenly found myself crazed for something totally different - florals. Long story short, I started hanging around Cath Kidston and last week I actually bought this duvet cover for our newly tidy room:

Where do I think I live, 1942?

I put it on the bed and it felt so wrong but SO RIGHT. In the end Jay had to stage an intervention, where he bundled it back into the bag before I had a chance  to sleep under it and then ordered me to return it to the shop. (Maybe he does know what I need after all). About a day later, I came off the asthma medication, saw sense and swapped it for a subtle, tasteful white-on-white beauty that I will no doubt love for years. A part of me does miss those pretty roses, though.

*****

With hindsight, I think it was probably a mistake to start this blog post without any idea of where I was going. I think I just wanted a place to record that the aftermath of this whole experience was pretty weird, even though everything turned out okay, even though I'm sick of thinking about everything and have no need to think about it any more, even though I know that everybody around me is sick of hearing about it. I'm sitting up in my minimalist bed now, in my newly tidy room, listening to my happy cat purr beside me and writing this when I should be looking for a light for our hallway on the internet. And mistake or not, I think it would be a mistake to apologise for writing it, so I won't- every blogger (at least, those of us who have been doing it for years for no money at all) knows that you have to write from your obsessions, and sometimes your obsessions aren't what you wish they were, or what you had scheduled. However, I think I'm over this detour into medical stuff for the time being. Thanks for sticking around. Coming up next: Why Feeling Teary In Baby Gap Is Not A Good Reason To Start A New Adoption.