Much easier when they were little

I should be relaxing after an extremely hard week in which my patience has been tested tenfold. But oh no, my eighteen year old daughter passed her driving test last week and persauded me to add her to my insurance and tonight has harrased me untill I cracked and let her take the car. She has only gone to the cinema and has rang and told me that she has arrived safely but has managed to ruin my evening as I am not going to be able to relax untill she is home and I see that both she and the car are both ok.

Stupid or what, I was beginning to think that things were getting easier, they were growing up, becoming independant and all my worries would soon be over. If only. Spured on by their sister my 16 year old son has received his provisional license in preparation for his 17th birthday in a couple of weeks and the 20 year old is hastily sending off his application on the basis that he cannot allow his two younger siblings to be driving if he is not.

I want a carefree life where I can just think of fluffy things where everything is pink. Is this too much to ask.

Role reversal?

It's been some time since I have posted. Alas I have been working extremely hard. The pickneys have become very independant whilst the people I work with have become very dependant without an individual thought between them.

Since starting my new job in November, I have discovered things about certain colleagues that I had no need to notice before. Up untill this time although we worked in the same Unit we were in different teams and they largely inherited work that I had been involved with. However, in my current post, I currently scrutinise the work of the team and have on occassion found it lacking. This has led to tantrums, testing out and this week to a manager placing a social worker in potential danger and then lying to me about something which we had agreed he would do and which he told me he had done two weeks previously.

Can't shoot em, sack em or work with them. Any suggestions will be gratefully received.

Onto a much more pleasant note. The pickney's are growing in their quest for independance. Even Demanding pickney has become less demanding. I have been struck by the realisation that by June/July this year it could be just myself and Demanding pickney at home. Bashment will be off to University and Mellow, if successful, playing football in Germany.

Maybe I have moved into a parallel universe where children are independant and able and work colleagues are reliant and need constant nurturing.

Thank you Mr. McMuffin

Some of you may have noticed changes made to this blog. These changes and in fact the whole design is down to Mr. McMuffin. Thank you Mr. McMuffin for your lovely design of the ginger cake blog. Each time I look it has changed a little bit more. I have to say if it were not for Mr. McMuffins kindness, My Blog would be very ugly and very very basic.

New Year - Grown up Pickneys

Oh well that's Christmas and the new year over with. All that fuss and its over so quickly. This has been a strange Christmas and New Year in which I have been deeply scarred by playing "Articulate" with the McMuffins. Is it not an easy enough mistake? - Trotsky for Tchaikovsky.

Poor Bashment Ginger Cake has had flu and not a very good Christmas at all unable to eat or drink much or even go out as one attempt at this has set her back considerably.

I left the Ginger Cake Pickneys alone on New Years Eve for the first time ever. Demanding and Mellow asked to have some friends over. When I returned at 10 am on New Years day, there was clear evidence of partying despite their protestations that it "was only a few friends" singing folk songs and the like. This despite finding at least five extra pickneys sleeping off the night before.

Demanding Ginger Cake drank for the first time (he says) and is still saying today "I still feel a bit off" but alas he is off to another party with Mellow Ginger Cake.

Who needs it?

Christmas, I think I shall cancel it this year. I just can't seem to muster up the energy for it. At risk of sounding like misery itself, what is the point?

What I am looking forward to this year is the break from work and the fact that the Ginger Cake pickneys have no great expectations of me providing them with an exciting Christmas and are more than willing to make their own entertainment.

I feel the need to shout "Get off my Tit" at work. If another person waylays me on the way to the toilet, while i am trying to have a conversation with someone else or tries to pursue me as i try to leave the building I shall scream and then probably explode. I seem to be the copied into every email possible, even those which really have nothing to do with me. It feels as if everyone is covering there ass with mine and that's not a pretty sight.

Yesterday I was off work. Prior to this I had arranged with the team a file amnesty day in which they were to book no appointments and make themselves available to sort out their paperwork which I must say for the most part is shoddy. As myself and one of the senior social workers were not available, the team were not able to follow this simple task through and although they have not said anything to me directly, I understand that the file amnesty did not occur because there were not enough managers around. I hear the sound of abandoned children crying "where are mummy and daddy? Have they have left us again and gone to the pub?"

One of the pickney dem is leaving

Mellow Ginger Cake may be leaving home. He has announced that he is going to Germany in May to try out for a Champion's League Football Team. If he is successfull this could mean him taking a break from University and settling in Germany. Of course I am very pleased for him as this all goes to my master plan of a pickney free environment, but I'm now worrying about how he will cope in a country where he doesn't speak the language and given the fact that he appears often to be in a world of his own.

Mellow Ginger Cake as I have mentioned in the past is very laid back to the point of the need to prod him on occassions to ensure he is still with us. At times I have worried that although he is the oldest, he would still be mellowing on the sofa at the age of fourty because he couldn't get the energy to leave. However, over the past few weeks (although it has probably been months but i have failed to notice) he has become very independant to the point that I have just noticed that he actually doesn't spend a lot of time "At home with the Ginger Cakes".

Bashment Ginger Cake appears unbothered by Mellow Ginger Cakes announcement and is busy planning her own "escape" in the summer to Camp America and failing that to University next year.

Demanding Ginger Cake has adopted a tone of "My life is so boring/sad/worthless", and I think, tricked me into allowing him to have more time partying and socialising by appearing depressed and lamenting his lack of friends and social life. After some thought I realised this was ploy on his part to get me to lighten up and give him more freedom by making me feel sorry for him. I nearly fell for it as well untill I realised that his life was far from boring and fuller than Mellow Ginger Cake, Bashment Ginger Cake and mine put together.

I think he may be as cunning as me!!

Christmas is here!!

It hasn't really felt like Christmas untill tonight. I went to pick up Demanding Ginger Cake from football practice (yes the ginger cake pickneys have tracked me down and moved back in despite my attempts to escape them), and there it was. The eighth wonder. It was huge and I am only sorry that I did not have my digital camera with me and the battery on my phone was dead. I think it was a house but I cannot be sure as it was covered in what can only be described as tack. In most recent years, Mrs. McMuffin, Ms. Victorian Sponge and I would drive around looking at the lights and things people would put on the outside of their houses to celebrate Christmas not because we thought they were beautiful but because you are drawn to them and you can do nothing but stare at them in wonder. However, this sight outshines anything I have seen before and is sure to cause an accident before the week is out, or there will be some sort of electrical disaster and the whole lot will burn down. If not and it is still there next week, I will take a picture and post it as I feel I should not be selfish but share this newly discovered wonder with the world. Is it just me or is this obsession with covering your home with lights for Christmas bonkers?

Pickney, pickney, everywhere pickney

The Ginger Cake pickneys and the honorary ginger cake pickney are driving me insane. I suppose I should give them names. Firstly there is Mellow ginger cake who is sometimes so mellow and laid back I sometimes suspect he may be unconscious or as suggested by the Honorary Junior Ginger Cake on drugs. However this mellow attitude has been a feature of his since 2 weeks old and he is now twenty. Secondly there is Bashment ginger cake whose favourite phrase is "whatever mum". At eighteen, she is helpful and kind, great to wind up and developing a sense of cynicism and humour to be proud of. And last but not least Demanding Ginger Cake, sixteen years old, and right now is demanding I get off the computer as he needs to use it. Demanding Ginger Cake in particular is giving me a headache with his shouts of injustice after being placed on the substitute bench for the majority of his football game today. His view being that he is the best player and the team need him. There is no reasoning with him that this is sometimes the nature of the game or that this sometimes happens.

What I really need is some quiet time without the demands of the pickneys. Any ideas?

Too little to late

Why is it that when your employers put on training, it is never quite what you need. I have sat through a whole day of mind numbing training which would have been useful at the start of my previous position but instead has been offered as I move into a new role and appears to have been designed to suit my current needs. The upshot of this training is that everything is the responsibility of the social work manager. In the words of Mrs. Mc M "you may as well allocate all the cases to me". Should I take this on board you may never hear from me again as it probably means I have set up home in the derelict and crumbling building which I call my place of work.

Tomorrow is my first day in my new post. My plan is to assume an air of confidence. On being asked for advice or to make decisions I will look as if I am considering all options, say "I'll think about that" close the door when they leave and then panic. I think this might work as people appear to believe I know what I am talking about - Oh the tangled webs we weave.

Exactly why I take Leave

I've got a blocked drain. After numerous telephone calls throughout the day to Thames Water and waiting in, I have had no success in clearing it. Each person I have spoken to says something different and I have spoken to one person after another, each one coming across as incredibly dim. For a brief moment I was tempted to stick my own arm down the drain and unblock it myself.

If I conducted myself in such an incompetent manner I would feel obliged to shoot myself to save someone else the bother. Oh well the last person I spoke to, who bore the brunt of my frustration, promised faithfully that someone would fix it first thing in the morning. I am sure that when he came of the phone he had some very unflattering things to say about me. If I didn't work full time I suspect that I would very easily slip into the role of professional complainer.