I have found it hard to think of a post topic this week but for once this has not been due to writer's block or due to being unhappy - I just haven't had time to get my brain in gear. The parade last weekend was fantastic - I didn't cry as much as I expected to do which was a good thing and I am just so incredibly proud of OH and his fellow recruits as they put on a fabulous show.
The trip to Cornwall wore me out and now OH has come home early for summer leave - seems being a submariner has it's perks - so I just haven't had any time to write.
I am thoroughly enjoying having OH home and DS is over the moon. DD is still on holiday with her Dad but will be back tomorrow afternoon and my little family will be complete again. Typically, the weather is rubbish but all being well we will have a couple of days of sunshine so that we can get out and about. It feels such a waste of the time we have to spend it in the house if we can possibly avoid it.
OH is home until the end of the month but then it will be back to just the three of us, at least during the week anyway as OH will try and get home on weekends as much as possible. DD will be going into Year 4 at school (second year juniors for those people who like me, think in 'old money') and DS and I will settle back into our routine. I think I have pretty much got the hang of this routine now so I want to do something a bit different and try and exercise my brain a bit, especially since I am no longer working.
At some point, I do want to go back to work although as I have no idea where we will be living or when we will be able to afford the childcare cost, I really do not know what my next job will be. As I said in a previous blog post, I loved my old job but I don't think I will be going back to that kind of work. I would like to do something totally different but do not have a clue what that would be!
Something I know I would like to do however is get a few more qualifications. I have a number of GCSEs and three good A Levels but unfortunately did not complete my degree. There are a few reasons for this (a lack of money once I stopped working 2 jobs in order to concentrate on my third year, for one) but ultimately I just wasn't interested enough in the subject and the course to put the effort in to complete it. I regret not being as stubborn as I usually am when I requested to change courses in my first semester at uni and was talked out of it by my tutor. I don't know for certain that I would have completed the course I wanted to change to either but I think I would have been more motivated by the subject matter and that surely would have helped significantly.
In hindsight, having gained much better A Level grades than was expected of me I should have put university off for a year, got a job and reapplied to different courses the next year. There's not much I can do about my decision now though - hindsight is a fantastic thing but until it comes with a time machine it's pretty much useless.
This then begs the question, what would I have studied? I have never really known what I wanted to be when I grew up and was always the child who would change her mind every five minutes. I still do not know what I want to be and I am very nearly grown up now! I do wish that I had not cut myself off from science and maths after my GCSEs - I came out of school thinking that I was not that good at them when in reality I was, just not compared to the future Oxbridge brains of some of my classmates.
I have a nagging feeling that it is time to reawaken the science side of my brain so have signed up for a short Open University course for people who have not done science or maths for a few years (I think 14 qualifies as a few) and will start the course in October. All being well, my brain will not explode or leak out of my ears and I may possibly go on to do a longer course or even an open degree.
I don't want to end up doing a degree just for the sake of doing one though - that's really where I went wrong initially and I know that I would be even less motivated now after so long out of formal education. I intend to have fun testing the waters and seeing which subject (if any) jumps out at me and comes alive.
Maybe I was meant to do this backwards - when I work out what I want to be, I can finally admit to being grown up.
