Monday. Rest day. And also is the first day we bring my little boy to school. I’m reminded of the refrain in ‘Going on a Bear Day!’: “What  a beautiful day! – We’re not scared!”

We’re Going on a Bear Hunt: Michael Rosen, Helen Oxenbury: 

We head over to his school and he trots in with zero problems, especially when he sees that they have toy cars. I am not sure what to do; parents were never allowed into classrooms, so it is hard to lean on my own experience. We head away, and he’s perfectly okay to see us go. We go back after two hours and again, he’s grand. All happy. So far so good! We spend the afternoon together just hanging out, the three of us, and life is good.

Tuesday. I’m supposed to go running today, but I honestly can’t make myself. We drop little man into school, and go do errands at Dundrum Shopping Centre. We seem to buy everything, then go pick him up. Again, he’s all happy and joyous, all skipping innocence. Home, dinner, all happy joy joy.

Wednesday: So we drop him off early this morning, at 830 am and oh my god the traffic. Lots of lovely Mummies rushing in and out, parking aggressively without actually letting themselves acknowledge it. It’s hellish, and we make the mistake of trying to cross over the M50. Oh my God! How the hell does anyone get anywhere in this city?  It’s so bad I want to cry for them.

Each morning, no matter what, that is your life. 

Being at home means there is much more likelihood of eating. Trying to keep busy when in essence you’re just trying to kill time is hard. We go to pick him up and he is exhausted, he falls asleep in the car. I feel guilty, for some reason. He’s so little. He has to go to school. We’re taking a week off to focus on him, while he gets used to it. But I am here relaxing and getting annoyed at daytime radio, while he copes with it by himself. It seems uncaring and wrong; indulgent.

Thursday: – Right, look enough talk. I get up, do some gentle exercises, then we drive him over to school. He heads in all happy, then home we go. At about ten to eleven, I head out for a jog. I get about half a mile done, and the pain in my hip starts. Then it gets worse, and much worse. I figure, sure, not good, but I’ll walk it off. I try again and the pain is just awful. I walk the rest of the way home. My mood isn’t helped by a size X runner passing me by (size X is a size so small it’s theoretically possible to be less than zero), who gives me a dismissive once over. I glance at myself in a window and confirm that yes, I am all lumpy roundness. Damnit. Damn it. I go in, limp upstairs.

I check my weight. I haven’t done that for 30 days, and have kept to a diet. I have waited for this moment to cheer myself up, and not being able to run is a good time to get some good news. So on the scales I get. And I discover I have lost the grand total of FOUR POUNDS. Misery for 30 days, and now this. After grumpily briefing the other half I head into the shower.

As I begin to wash off the sulk, I get to see a spider rushing out towards me from the corner. A big, hairy spider. I’m superstitious about these, I’m convinced they mean bad news in on the way.

I am Claire’s crushing guilt. 

Nevertheless, the resulting scream was both powerful and courageous, and I was perfectly happy to be covered in soap when I got out of the shower.

I got into bed afterwards to see if a rest would improve the hip. I honestly just wanted to have a bit of a cry, was feeling low because of the pain. And that was when the phone rang.

It was the school.

Little man had managed to get out of the classroom. He’d run to the front door, and managed to nearly get out of there.

Up and out and away we go, not talking.

Friday.

So on Thursday we’d managed to get to the school, and found little man crying his eyes out on the mat in the schoolroom. We made the teacher explain herself (how the hell did he get out please?) and made him apologise for causing such worry to her. Then home, fretting, and lots of chores. Then bed, as early as I could manage. Trauma makes me exhausted, and there was nothing else for it. Friday saw me awake at 4 am, worrying. And also little man decided it was the perfect time to play, despite my ignoring him. Then up at 6 am with the alarm, breakfast, and heading over at 7.30 am.  I headed out later to get my hair cut, determined to keep myself in a permanent state of readiness. This is also the last chance for hair cuts and any real maintenance for ages; strike while the iron is working through phonetic sounds. The haircut is actually a lot of fun, and I come home looking more reasonable than I had for a while. No sign of escapism from Junior either, that seems to go okay.

We pick him up, and the teacher informs us in an appalled tone that he fell asleep in the room. This was utterly unremarkable in the creche two weeks ago. But I am now, it seems, worse than Hitler. We take him home, grateful to all the Gods that it is now Friday, and we can exhale.

Saturday: Dear friends come over, who we have not seen in far too long. Because she is a baker, and she is brilliant.

Youse all mad jealous.

I learn in quick succession:

• A child sleeping in class would indeed be a very bad thing, and we are now those parents.
• I can’t cut fringes for peanuts.

We eat, and laugh, and I feel my shoulders go down slightly. I stay away from the weighing scales, though.

Dundundunnnnnnn!

Sunday

No exercise. Is that to be gone forever, I ask myself? We play for hours in our pjs, and I realise I’ve left the Little Man’s bike out in the rain. We wheel it in, only for the electronic siren to go off again and again. Eventually I take it off the bike and hide it in the sitting room, and the child had the job of running in and turning it off at random intervals; a job not unlike being a parent. We eventually give up and smother the noise with a pillow and a stuffed hedgehog, which isn’t giving me hope for his parenting future.

Hedgehog thinks of murder. ALL. DAY. LONG. 

In an effort to encourage civilising my offspring, I line up Lego figurines to convey the importance of sitting in a desk, of listening and of focus. Two rules are laid out over and over; do what the teacher says, and wait for Mummy and Daddy. He trots off to bed later that day as innocent as snow.

Exercise audit; nothing done so far. A worthy goal would be to have three exercise sessions of small duration this week. A swim during lunch and a run during the week, and a run at the weekend. If I can fit that in, and that is how I am seeing this, then I’ll have accomplished something. Wish me, and us, luck.

Monday; Back from my trip down to the sister, I found myself all exhausted, and so didn’t go for a run. Shame on me, yadayada, but I promised myself I’ll do better the next day.

Tuesday; Today was the day I had put aside to get a few errands done, and so at lunchtime I headed into town. When I was finished, I was waiting at the bus stop when a taxi pulled up. Out stepped a former colleague of mine, dressed beautifully. She was wearing what I call antler heels (where they’re so big as to make a statement). Off she went on her way, and off I went on mine. Which was on the back of a bus taking me back to work. I got through the rest of the day with a weird kind of sadness. Failure, to achieve, and failure to avoid; you imagine I’d be used to it by now.

Anyway; went for my run. I checked it out on google and in fact I was completing a mile and a half, not a mile. Hence the inability to do well. Got it done, in the same time as before. Then down to pick up beloved child, dinner, bath, bed.

Wednesday; Today was the Little man’s last day in the crèche. He’d been there since he was nine months old, and it was both a huge thing and a nothing thing. We’d got lots of presents made up, and I had special cards made for the staff as well. The other half was coming home early from work, and so we headed down together. We gave the staff lots of hugs, thank yous, and hard liquor. Then home we went, and it was only when I was there that I realised how tense I was about this. I place way too much emphasis on this sort of stuff; how well do we/I carry myself off? I can’t help it, but it does mean that I worry too much about how things look rather than how things are.

We delighted little man with a toy when we got home, the Lego Mystery Machine from Scooby Doo. And I know he was delighted because he woke me up at 3am to play with it.

Thursday – Now this was a long day, involving a lot of adulting throughout the day. Maybe to compensate for that moment on Tuesday, I wore a dress and heels, trying to look like a grown up. Fate didn’t come up with any rom-com hilarities for me along the way, no ripped tights or prat falls were experienced by me. Instead it was one long day, on my feet and running around. Meetings, crying students, no lunch, more crying students, colleagues with lots to do, and so on.  I left at 4pm as usual, with the sensation of having hugged a hurricane to myself all day.

And Thursday was the other half’s birthday. I came home with a birthday cake for him, along with some other treats. Little man helped me give him all the parcels we had wrapped for presents, then we ordered takeout for dinner. Afterwards, we had birthday cake.

From a place that rhymes with Thatcheral Quakery.

It was awful; the buttercream icing tasted utterly bland, more like lard than cream.  I took a disbelieving bite, but really some part of the ingredients must have been missing from it. The beloved child didn’t have a second bite, and the other half was unimpressed on it. Nice one, guys. After my long long day, I was in bed by 9.30 pm, exhausted. My stomach was in a riot because of that damn cake, and no run was had by me. I’ll go to my grave with nothing but unfinished to-do lists on my gravestone.

Friday – Right. Swim! I walked towards the gym on Friday morning so utterly uninspired I wondered if it was a good idea. But I just treated that notion like the childish whine it was, and headed in. Got changed and realised I’d forgotten my shampoo. Don’t care, I told myself, I was still going swimming. I got into the Medium lane, and it had to be said, they seemed much slower than last time. So, feeling brave, I headed into the fast lane.

You don’t move into the fast lane unless you are sure you’re not going to be an inconvenience to someone else. I was only going to be swimming twenty minutes but I had to be sure I was going to stick to the pace. So off I went, pushing off from the wall.

And it was fantastic. It was a lovely, wonderful swim, an absolute dream and it saw me feel so much like my old self the years dripped away. I was swift, I was clean, the lines and everything else was perfect. I had walked towards the building feeling like I had nothing to contribute and no good would come of it, but it was fantastically pleasant and I was so happy. Happy! Finally! I met someone on the way into work who told me that I looked all happy and fit and everything was good. I got through work and the excitement of dinner, bath and bed with a good mood. Home, dinner, and finally the weekend.

Saturday; rest day.  I felt so good after the swim I know I could have gone running. But when I said it on Saturday morning, the little man looked so sad at the idea I couldn’t do that. Maybe Sunday?  We spent the day getting him ready for school; lunch boxes, juice bottles, new shoes, extra clothes, and all the rest.

Sunday:  No more excuses. Up, out, and away I went. Not one but two circuits this morning, of three miles in total. I feel wonderful and tired at the same time. I can confirm that there is no pain in my left hip, but there is now a pain in my right hip. Ah bless.

But, it’s done. I’m pleased that I did it, that I added to my music running playlist, that I can rest tomorrow. I’m pleased that this rambling blog is done for this week, and that now I can go to bed. So on that note, good night sisters.

Imagine a TV station that would have this kind of activist on nowadays. We were lucky.