To quarter or not to quarter, that is the question.

In previous posts, I have alluded to our living situation and how this may change now that OH is away. The plan was initially for me to return to my home town to be near my family but now that 6 months have passed and the reality of being a RN WAG is sinking in, it is becoming clear that a move back home may not be the best option as it will not solve the essential issue of us being apart.


I have always been very resistant to the idea of moving with OH. He started the RN application process three years ago and I have always said that I won't be moving onto base. The main reason for this is that I have wanted to keep DD near her Dad to ensure that their relationship is preserved. I did think about moving back home when we split up but I am glad I have stayed put for those extra few years as it has given them a chance that they would perhaps not have had if we had relocated when she was younger.


However, things have changed in the five years since the split and the situation is not the same as it was when I made the initial decision to stay. At the moment, OH is coming home as often as he can but due to lack of funds, this is usually only once a fortnight on average. He gets a travel allowance but at the moment we are waiting for the local council to tell us whether he is allowed to use this to get home or whether this must go to pay our rent. There is likely to be a rant about this in a later post. So it may be that we see him even less than we do currently and of course when he is deployed, he will not be coming home at all. Due to his career choice, there will be large chunks of each year when we cannot even have any contact with him, making the time he is on land even more precious.


So, I have a really hard decision to make. Luckily, OH's job role will mean that he won't be hopping about from base to base and will probably stay in one place (when he's on land, anyway) for pretty much his whole career. Out of the bases he could have ended up at, he will be going to the one that is closest to our current location and it is not an unreasonable journey by train or by car.  


I've been thrashing out the pros and cons of MQ for a while now. So far, the pros far outweigh the one con - moving DD away from her Dad. I'm not saying that she'd never see him. In fact, as she is more likely to want to stay with him in blocks over school holidays, she will probably see him more than she does at the moment. It is just going to be the 'distance factor' that will cause issues although I have a fair few ideas on how to make that work as well.


The pros? Well, cost is a major factor. The most we will pay for a quarter will be £300 less than we are paying in rent at the moment and is likely to be even cheaper unless we are very lucky with the property! This means that we can stop relying on benefit to help with our rent and will still be slightly better off than we are at the moment.

OH will be home every night he is not working. Although he is exceptionally good at annoying me, he is quite useful to have around sometimes... I should be less exhausted and stressed and the kids will benefit from having us both there. It also means that he is more likely to be home for the first steps, the first words etc that he would almost definitely miss otherwise.


The community is another pro on the list. There are no phone calls, emails or blueys for submariners and I am dreading OH being away as although I am sure people will sympathise, even infantry at the frontline in Afghan will usually get a weekly phone call. Being with other families in the same position makes a lot of sense and although it won't be the same as having my family around, I have been told that the support network is the best there is.


There are other things that make us think that MQs are the way to go but even if it were just those three reasons, I think they are good enough. I need to be thinking about the family that DD and I have now, rather than the family we used to have. 


There is always the possibility that she will prefer to stay here with her Dad and that is a risk we will have to take although I am not sure she will be old enough at the age of 9 or 10 to make that decision. It may also be that I am prevented from taking her by the legal system although at the moment, the parental rights lie with me alone. It will be a 'cross the bridge when we come to it' situation I think.


Moving into married quarters will entail actually getting married and as I am not one of the lucky ones who 'bloom' when pregnant, that isn't going to be happening for a while yet. As I also tend to look like I've eaten my entire family by the time I give birth, I will also have a bit of weight to lose! So I'm not about to haul the family onto base in the next few months.


The decision has not been made and it will not be made for a fair while yet. I am still chewing over the options and trying to think of how I can do what is best for everyone. I think the question in the title of the post will still be on my mind for a long time to come.

We will remember them.

So, it seems that hormones and Remembrance Sunday don't mix. I got very emotional watching the ceremony at the Cenotaph this morning and it's a good job that the service wasn't followed by the donkey sanctuary advert or I would probably still be crying now. Luckily, it was followed instead by Sebastian Vettel having a first lap puncture which cheered me up no end!


It wasn't just the hormones though. I think this year was different as we are officially a forces family now. OH was at Westminster for the service in the Abbey and although I didn't spot him on TV at the Cenotaph, I am still stupidly proud of him. Obviously, he has not yet been deployed or seen active service but there is no doubt that this will happen in the near future.


OH is not the first family member in the military, however. DD had issues with wearing her poppy last year as some of the girls at school made fun of her for wearing it. When November 11th started to come round again, I was determined to make sure she wore it.

This year she was armed with the knowledge that OH is in the Royal Navy; her Great Grandma, Great Grandad and Great Great Uncle Ron were in the Royal Air Force during WWII; her Great Great Uncle Doug was in the Army and her Great Great Grandad served in the Army in WWI. There may be more but I only really know about my Mum's side of the family in this respect. 

So DD has worn her poppy with pride this year. I think being given permission by me to tell anyone giving her grief to "suck it" buoyed her confidence slightly. Maybe not the most adult of responses but I was having a juvenile moment at the time!


Remembrance Sunday and Armistice Day are two traditions in this country that we seem to continue to be proud of. No matter how many factions try and destroy the pride, the meaning of the poppy and the importance of the two minutes silence is being passed on through generations. The names of the fallen since last Remembrance Sunday were shown this morning during the ceremony and that list demonstrates how important it is that the country at large continues to show their respect, gratitude and belief in our armed forces, irrespective of what we may believe politically. I do think that the two can be separated.


To them, it's just a job. To us, it's much more than that. Lest we forget.

I'm baaaaaaaaack!

I know, I know. It's been two months. I'm a very bad blogger. There has been a very good reason for the gap though - I'm rubbish at keeping secrets!


Those of you who are facebook friends will now know that OH and I are expecting another baby in May next year. I had my dating scan yesterday and everything is good so far which means I can finally break my silence. 


I've been staying clear of the blog as I knew there was no way I could not give it away. Especially since all I had to talk about was my inability to keep anything in my stomach and desperate need to sleep every minute of the day. I still can't keep food down and would cheerfully sleep until the baby is born but at least I can let people know why now.


DD is happy about the baby although she has specifically requested a sister, so hopefully she'll continue being happy after the next scan. DS doesn't have a clue what is going on but that's pretty much par for the course with him anyway. OH is obviously very chuffed, especially as we managed to conceive pretty much straight away and he credits this entirely to his 'super sperm'. I obviously had nothing to do with it at all...


There are days when I think we're totally insane to be having another one, mainly the days where DD and DS scream at each other constantly and I just want to run away! It's not going to be easy with OH being away although we're now talking about changing the long term plan. Now that I'm definitely not going to be going back to work for a while, there is no real reason for us not to be living as a family so looks like a wedding and married quarters will be on the cards at some point in the next year. This is going to cause problems in some areas but it'll solve more problems than it causes so I think I've been a bit daft being so resistant to it so far!


That's it for now but I'll be back shortly to have a good whinge about certain things that have happened in the last couple of months. This is not going to be the world's most stress free pregnancy by any means!

May contain nuts...

There is not a single sentence in the English language which irritates me more than the one in the title of this post. Three simple words regularly make me want to scream in frustration.


As some of you will know, I have a severe nut allergy and it is quite possible that a microscopic piece of food will one day kill me. So far, I have been lucky. I have had a few scares and one memorable overnight stay in hospital attached to a drip but I am still here to tell the tale.


Part of the reason for this is that I am very, very careful. I tend to cook a lot of my food from scratch and will carefully read the ingredient list for anything pre-made before buying it or putting it anywhere near my mouth. I am also fortunate that I have some kind of hyper-awareness built into my body that tells me when something is not quite right. I can smell a Snickers bar at 50 paces and have been known to get a very itchy throat when someone is eating nuts in the vicinity. I once had to use someone else's desk at work when my PC wasn't working - within half an hour I was itching all over as the usual owner of the desk had been eating nuts the day before and the residue must have still been on their keyboard.


It's peanuts and cashew nuts that are the fatal ones for me. Weirdly, neither are actually nuts - one is a seed and one is a pea! Other nuts will make me itch and vomit but just the smallest piece of the two biggies will make my body and airway swell, restricting my oxygen intake and eventually sending me into anapylactic shock.


Anaphylaxis is not a fun thing. I have luckily never progressed fully to that stage, although the last scare was very close and it was only my close proximity to the hospital at the time that prevented it from developing. I fully intend that I will never get to that stage. This however is much harder than you would think.


All of my life, I have had to contend with the people who are convinced that I merely 'don't like' nuts. Even a family member was adamant that I was just being fussy! 


Part of the problem is that the word 'allergy' is often confused with 'intolerance'. A food intolerance can result in migraines, bloatedness, sluggishness and stomach problems. It does not lead to death. 


Allergies can also be much less serious, for instance a pet hair allergy will usually make someone very uncomfortable but will rarely kill them. Nobody will bat an eyelid if someone says they are allergic to wasp stings or chlorine but for some reason, any food related allergies are written off as insignificant. I sometimes get the impression that people think that I am joking when I say "it will kill me". 


To be fair, most people who have known me for a while or who have had personal experience with severe allergies are usually very sympathetic. They know not to put out bowls of nuts at parties (there are few things worse than being ravenous and not being able to eat anything at a buffet due to cross-contamination), not to eat nuts before coming to visit and to take me seriously if my super-sense kicks in. They also know to save the boxes for any pre-made food that I am unfamiliar with so that I can check the ingredients. If I am not sure, I don't eat it. Better safe than sorry.

That brings me back to that dreaded sentence. Think about the phrasing. The word 'may' is key. I have lost count of the number of times I have been told "you can't have this - it may contain nuts". It may contain cat hair and half a dead mouse too but they don't put that on the flipping box. 


It has got to the point where I don't declare my allergy if I go out for a meal as I will more often than not be told that the vast majority of the menu is off limits. This omission may sound stupid considering how careful I usually am but having a whole food group banned from my diet is hard enough without being told that the pre-made sauce for the salmon may contain nuts and the chef is scared of getting sued so won't serve it to me. 


There is a big difference between the sentence 'may contain nuts' and 'contains nuts'. Both are found on packaging. 'Contains nuts' is a clear indication that the food will make me very ill, even if it doesn't kill me. 'May contain nuts' is an advisory note, nothing more. My general rule is that if there are no nuts listed in the ingredients then the odds of the food containing nuts are similar to the odds of it containing the aforementioned dead mouse.


I love my food and get very ratty when I am not allowed to make an informed choice. In my opinion, if a basic strawberry yoghurt 'may contain nuts' then someone needs to start cleaning the equipment more thoroughly. My world would be a much simpler place if the phrase 'may contain nuts' was removed from it.

Autumn days, when the grass is jewelled...

It was back to school this morning for DD. She is in Year 4 this year and is starting to look really grown up. Worryingly tall as well! We had the usual problems that accompany a school morning - DD needing to be crowbarred out of bed; spending more time staring into space with the spoon halfway to her mouth than eating her breakfast; and reading 'The Railway Children' rather than putting some clothes on but we did make it eventually. 


Watching her walk into the playground in search of her friends, I started to reminisce about my own days at primary school. I was very lucky in that I attended an excellent school and I have some very fond memories.


It was a very small school in terms of both the building itself and the number of children it could hold. There were only five classrooms and 140 children, so of course everybody knew everybody else. As the school was not big enough to be split into Infants and Juniors, there were often a number of children from the same family together in assembly, at lunch and at playtime. 


It was a Church of England school, connected by a small wooden bridge over the beck to the parish church where my parents were married and my sisters and I were baptised and although the area it was in was very much part of the main town by then, many people (including my Grandparents) still referred to it as 'The Village'. The parish priest came into assembly every Tuesday morning and the curate of the time was fed to the wolves in Friday assembly. Out of the four curates who were posted with the church whilst I was at the school, some did markedly better than others when it came to dealing with the children. Being asked to draw a picture of God by one of my sisters can't have been the easiest task in the world!


I was at primary school a fair few years ago and in those days there was much less interference from the government in terms of a hard and fast curriculum and targets. My year didn't do SATs until Year 9 and the closest we got to any kind of testing at primary school was the mental arithmetic each morning and the famous times table test in Class 5. I'm sure that my teachers did have certain things they had to teach us at certain times but it all seemed to be very ad hoc and due to this it was incredibly enjoyable. DD has had a set timetable for her lessons since Year 1 and has had homework since Reception class. There seems to be a lot to cram in to a week at school these days and although I am sure that focus groups and OFSTED are ecstatic about it, it doesn't seem to be that much fun for the children.


I am probably remembering through rose-tinted glasses but things were much less structured back then. If we were doing maths (Scottish Maths books - remember them?) before lunch and we were all getting on ok, we were allowed to continue after lunch. We didn't have to drop things and move onto something else. 


Time on the (now ancient but at the time very state of the art) BBC computers was given as a reward and an incentive. PE would make the HSE these days cry - clambering around untethered on rickety metal apparatus or playing shinty were my particular favourites. 


Creative writing was very much encouraged and if we were on a roll we could continue until the piece was finished. I despair when reading DDs exercise books as it is obvious she has not been allowed time to finish stories properly and has rushed the ending. Think Stephen King and you get the picture.


Our headteacher was allowed to teach, rather than being cloistered in his office completing paperwork. Our deputy head was also the class 5 teacher. Mums would come into school and help us with our reading and the dinner ladies were for the most part related to at least one child eating. 


We had proper assemblies every morning and we sang hymns and various other songs every day. I was surprised recently to hear Johnny Cash singing "Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream" and it occurred to me that it probably wasn't a hymn after all! There are some songs that instantly take me back to school and one of them popped into my head this morning to inspire the title of this post.


Alumni of Cockerton Primary - all together now:


"So I musn't forget, no I mustn't forget, to say a great big thank you, I musn't forget".

Stresshead? Moi?

I can't believe it's been almost a month to the day since I wrote my last post. It honestly doesn't feel that long and I'm quite annoyed with myself for letting it go that far. The blame lies totally with OH for coming home and distracting me!


OH is back at HMS Sultan now and the kids and I are starting to settle back into our routine. One thing I am finding harder this time is not being able to do a countdown as we don't know for definite when OH will be back again. All being well he will be allowed weekend leave from next week but actually coming home is very much dependent on funds being available from our household budget for his travel as the Navy don't do travel warrants any more.


He will be getting a monthly travel allowance but this obviously has to be declared for Housing Benefit and Tax Credit purposes so chances are we will end up with exactly the same amount of spare money at the end of it all - nothing. 


Train fare is obscenely expensive so OH will be hoping to car share with other people who happen to be driving up this way, hence us not knowing for sure when this will be. All being well, we should be in a position by next summer to get him his own car which will make life an awful lot easier and enable me to actually plan things. 


I'm a bit of a control freak and feel very uneasy when I can't plan ahead. I like knowing exactly what I am doing and when and I don't do spontaneity very easily. This drives people around me slightly insane. For instance, I am struggling at the moment with our budget as OH has been paid different amounts each month so far and I have the nagging feeling that something is a bit wrong somewhere. 


I have our budget on a very pretty Excel spreadsheet with fields that change automatically when different values are entered (this may sound very basic to most people but I'm not great with Excel and am still massively proud of being able to create this) but I have given up using it for the time being and have gone back to basics with a tally on an envelope in the kitchen drawer.


I'm not very good at putting nagging worries to the back of my mind and forgetting them. I tend to prod away at small niggles until they have opened up into great big festering, screaming traumas. When DD was little she was obsessed with the Mr Men and I felt a kindred spirit in Mr Worry - when the wizard took away his worries he worried about not having anything to worry about! My inability to chill out has driven people barmy for many a year and although this is a personality fault I am well aware of, I really am incapable of changing at this stage of my life.


OH is very laid back and I feel that we compliment each other well. I kick him into action every so often and he calms me down and talks me off the proverbial ledge on a much more frequent basis. The difficulty is times like this when he isn't here and I am sometimes in danger of losing the plot completely. 


At times like that the only real solution is to eat cheese, watch some wrestling and try and remember where I put my marbles. Think I may go and do that now.

When I grow up I want to be...

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.