Am I getting a puppy or having another baby?

I’ve prepared the other household members for his arrival, I’ve picked a name, I’ve created a cosy place for him to sleep, I’ve created a routine for feeding, play and rest – when he’s bigger I’ll move everything above grabbing height, plug up the plugholes, put up a stairgate to stop him getting upstairs, I’ll reward him for sitting nicely and not nipping the cats. Yes, it’s the imminent arrival of a puppy, not a baby. But I swear that it’s taking more preparation than I employed for my own human nippers.
After months of deliberation about whether or not to get a puppy, we finally decided, as a family, to take the plunge. I thought it would take weeks, even months to find the puppy we wanted. A new litter, with two boys available, literally popped up the next day. That was just the start of it. If you think that getting a puppy is all about what my teenage son would call the "shiz and giggles", you'd be wrong. It's like preparing for a baby, but more expensive and complicated. This little puppy needs more attention, routine and maintenance than a human infant.
When I accidentally but happily got pregnant with my first son, now 14, I was young (relatively anyway - in my corner of South West London having a baby at 25 was seen as an action of Vicky Pollard-esque stupidity and recklessness, not to mention career suicide), a bit silly, newly jobless after chucking in my well-paid but loathsome job to train to be a journalist instead, and newly shacked-up with my boyfriend. We'd only been living together for two months, and here was a little thing growing inside me. We were terrified. We were excited. We were totally clueless.

I shunned the routine-based regimented advice of Gina Ford, sneering in my cocky young bird’s way at her ideas of “regular bedtimes” “feeding schedules” and “having your life, body and sanity back”. What an idiot.

I loved being pregnant; after the first three months of gut-wrenchingly bad all-day sickness and craving for liquorice allsorts had subsided, I was literally the embodiment of glowing expectant motherhood. But still totally clueless.

We somehow managed to cobble together the requisite clothing, nappies, wipes, sleeping quarters etc that he needed, but the overall feeling was “it’ll be fine, we’ll figure it out.” I read all the books, but ignored most of the advice, feeling that I would be an instinctive parent. And as a baby, he crawled all over my instinctive parenting by staying up all night and sending us mad with fatigue.

I didn’t fare much better with my second one. While other mums in my peer group (it was five and a half years later, so people my own age were squeezing sprogs out too by now) were shopping in John Lewis for nappy stackers and colour coding their children’s Mini Boden wardrobes, I was barely able to remember to pack wipes AND nappies AND milk in his changing bag. It was all far too much for my tiny disorganised mind.
But I won’t make the same mistakes this time. I am now grown up. I am organised. I will be the puppy-owning equivalent of nappy-stacking Mini Boden mum. Now I understand why as a 25-year-old new mum I was so intimidated by the older mothers who seemed to have it all worked out. I’ll never be the queen of forward-planning but a more mature brain loves a bit of order. When you start having senior moments at 40 you need some sort of a plan to remind you of what the hell you’re supposed to be doing.
So the puppy will benefit from this new approach. My kids somehow get to school every day with a clean uniform and a bag with their books and lunch in and I must have a hand in that somewhere along the line. This puppy needs to know who’s boss so he’ll grow up secure and confident in his place in this household. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to draw up his socialisation plan and alphabetise his toys.
(This blog first appeared on Beteenus.com, a great place for parents of teenagers to laugh, cry and support each other.)

Sad news...but hopeful of a happy outcome

I recently posted about my excitement at the imminent arrival of a new puppy. I've now had a cat-shaped curve ball thrown at me which has left me sad, confused and desperate - one of our beloved resident cats, Milky Joe, has gone missing. 

I last saw him on Saturday night, when he was snuggled contentedly in the crook of my knees as I lay on the sofa watching a bad horror film. I could feel his deep, happy purring vibrating against my legs, his reassuring, heavy warmth resting against me. I'd occasionally reach out and squeeze him, his dense fur soft under my fingers, just to make him purr louder. I love the way that cats close their eyes and seem to smile with their whole being when they're well-loved, well-fed, and being adored. And he did, no, does, that a lot.

And now he's gone off somewhere, where I can't reach him, and I am desperate to see him and squeeze him again. He never goes off for more than a day, so something's happened to stop him coming home. I just hope he's hiding, spooked by the windy weather, or stuck somewhere behind a shut door that someone will open any minute now.

My youngest son and Milky have a very special bond. My son was there when our other cat, Violet, Milky's pretty and scatty mum, gave birth to him and four other kittens. Poor Vi was so exhausted with all the pushing and licking of kittens' faces and eating of placentas (sorry) that by the fourth one I had to step in and gently wipe the membrane from the tiny ginger and white kitten's face so that he could take his first breaths. Milky Joe had arrived.

My son, who was four at the time, was right next to me, watching in open-mouthed shock/awe. In that moment, we both fell in love with our ginger boy and knew that he was the one we'd be keeping. Nearly five years later, he and Milky have grown together - he's the only one that Milky will allow to carry him round like a rag doll. Milky's the one that sleeps on my son's bed every day, the one that I know he's with when he goes quiet and retreats to his room. They do a lot of contemplative cuddling.

Both of my sons, and me, are now distraught. For many children, when a pet goes missing or dies, it's their first devastating experience of grief. My youngest is occasionally hit by waves of missing Milky. He'll happily be playing Minecraft, immersed in the moment and forgetting that something is wrong, then I can see his face change and fall as he remembers, and he looks at me, and I know what's coming. The day after the Milk disappeared, he said "I'm worried I'm never going to see Milky again!" So I have to tell him that he is coming back - or should I be preparing him? I can't, because I'm not going to let the thought that he'll come back go. 

I'm amazed at how when I tell people about Milk's disappearance, nearly every one of them has a story of a happy feline reunion to tell - 3 days, a week, 5 weeks - there's more online, of people who've witnessed a long-lost cat sauntering back in through the cat flap after months or even years, a bit thinner (or fatter if they've adopted another smitten owner), but generally acting as if nothing has happened. I'm hoping that's going to be our story to tell.

He's the most gorgeous, loving cat and his absence is like a big fat hole in the middle of our family. I know worse things can happen, of course, and I pray that they don't. But for now we're all focused on getting Milky home - I've called the local vets, animal shelters, council, micro-chipping people; posted leaflets through doors, put up posters, talked to people, meowed at closed garage doors nearby, called out, tweeted, facebooked, registered him on lost animal search websites...

There is hope as long as there's no bad news. I know he's close by. I just have to find him.

How did a puppy appear in our plans?

So further to those puppy pics...whoops here's another one...how did we get here?

I’m not sure how it happened, but we’re getting a dog.

My 14-year-old son has been campaigning for months for a canine familiar. I found it very hard to believe that this boy, his preferred location his bedroom, curtains shut even in summer, attention focused firmly on PC (mainly scanning Reddit for cute pooch pics) or playing Radiohead on bass guitar, would be instantly transformed into a paragon of active and responsible dog ownership if a puppy were to enter the house.

My youngest son isn’t really bothered if we get a dog or a hamster really, it’s just degrees of size to him. As long as it will sit and watch him play Minecraft, he’ll be happy. My partner wasn’t that bothered either, apart from quite liking the idea that having a dog to walk would mean that he could get away from the house when he needed to think about stuff, like why Luis Suarez is such a flawed genius.

The cats were also a major consideration; one is a tightly-wound, emotionally fragile and pretty queen of a female, a bit like Marilyn Monroe, and the other one is a contentedly portly ginger boy with a laid back vibe about him. I don’t think he’d mind that much, as long as the dog didn’t eat his food or lie on his spot on the bed.

As for me, I thought that getting a dog would just mean that I had something else to clean up after and feed that didn’t say thank you or buy me wine.

Then one night, a documentary on how all-round magnificent dogs are appeared on telly. As it wasn’t Game of Thrones or football-based, I didn’t think my partner would be paying much attention. But as I bustled around picking up socks and pants, I realised that all three of the boys were transfixed.  So I sat down and watched too.

Dogs are amazing! Of course there’s those stupid little hairy poos on legs sported in the handbags of birds off TOWIE, but when you get down to the nitty-gritty of it, dogs are pretty awesome. We watched, weeping silently, at the story of a yellow Labrador that had literally brought his owner, a war vet who had withdrawn so far into himself he couldn’t speak or go out, back to life. We gazed open-mouthed at the incredible story of a rescue dog who saved the life of an elderly woman who had got lost one night in a forest after getting off at the wrong bus stop and had fallen and lain tangled in brambles for three days. There’s more to them than doggy smell and slobbery faces, I thought.

Then something deeper stirred, which I haven’t really acknowledged until now. I actually do want something else to look after and love. Despite moaning constantly about being an educated woman, reduced to the status of a household drudge thanks to the acute laziness of my all-male immediate family, I do want something else to nurture, and protect. The fact is that the dog will probably still be lolloping around the house after my boys have left home. Then what will I do? He’ll fill a hole in the empty nest I’m dreading even now.

So we’ve found one, and he’s moving in in June. Our lives will never be the same again. I can’t wait.

(This blog by me originally appeared on Beteenus.com, a fantastic place for parents of teenagers to come together and laugh, cry and support each other through the hormone years.)

Golden nuggets

Nuff said.

What's wrong with stalking my teenager on Facebook?

Quite a lot actually. How would you feel if someone read your diary? Or listened in on your phone calls for information on you, what you were doing, and who you were doing it with? Facebook and Twitter are the main places for teenagers to post every cough, spit, spat and attention-grabbing activity. Where we would have scribbled it down in a diary or had hushed conversations about what we were up to face-to-face with friends then five minutes later on the phone, teenagers in the second decade of the 21st century do it online.

But despite living much of their lives onscreen and through their phones, which is obviously open to spying, judgement or abuse from anyone, I still feel that teenagers are entitled to their privacy (an odd version of it anyway). And for me, that privacy takes the form of leaving my eldest son's online antics between him and his buddies.

When I was a teenager my diary had its own little lock, key, and its own little hiding place (under the mattress, not exactly genius concealment on my part), and I would have died of embarrassment if my parents had read about my first snog with whatshisface from the tennis club, or the first time I got into a nightclub aged 13, or the painfully passionate crush I had on Mike Read off of Radio One. But that's what social media is for our kids - it's their online diary, albeit shared with most of their peers, but it's there that their teenage lives are lived. Our children are digital natives - their social media activity is their personal life, and I for one am not going to hijack my son's right to one.

There's a point where you stop just walking in to your children's rooms, when it becomes not just a part of your house and therefore your territory, but the territory of your child. This is the point where you start to knock before you enter your child's room, usually around the time they hit the 13 mark. Now every time I knock on my 14-year-old son's door, I hear the small yet distinctive sound of a mouse clicking the little 'x' at the top right hand corner of the Facebook page on which he's logged considerable man hours. I'm not worried that he's hiding something from me - if he had any problems I'd hope that we have the sort of relationship where he can come to me and talk, and he usually does, eventually - and equally, I'm not desperate to know what's on that page.

This disinterest isn't a lack of  regard for him on my part, it's to do with trust. I have to trust that he is ok online, that he is being respectful to others online, and that he knows that my respect for his privacy is something that he can rely on. This respect and trust works both ways - because I believe that if I treat his movements with suspicion then he will repay me by never trusting me with anything. Least of all his right to make his own choices, make his own mistakes, and develop into a responsible and respectful adult. What I do is make sure that he is educated on the risks of social media, so that he knows never to chat to, engage with or give personal details to strangers or idiots, of which there are many.

I once knew a woman, the mother of a school friend of my son, who texted me to say that she'd been on (ie stalking) her son's Facebook page, then she went on to tell me what my own son had been posting on there. As if I'd be interested on spying on my own son. I was appalled.

As far as I can fathom (because he told me), most of the time he's hanging around on Facebook to see what his mates are doing and tweeting stupid stuff. Then there's Reddit for the lols and pics of impossibly cute furry things, Tumblr for the blogs and the super massive black hole of the internet, mainly for the games. If he was in trouble, of course I would want to know. Which is why I talk to him. I have to stay vigilant though, I know that. But spying on your kids online, in effect finding, unlocking and reading their virtual diaries, is surely something else.

For Victor

It wasn’t the sight of Ancient Dame Edna Everage chewing her acerbic way through Micky Flanagan’s crackling.

It wasn’t the sublime James Corden’s rousing speech as an inspirational Smithy.

It wasn’t Jack Whitehall’s turn as Jonathan Ross’s much funnier son.

It definitely wasn’t the painful sight of Davina McCall and an eager John Bishop, hopping around like a child waiting for sweeties, both dangling the vile carrot of a sponsored snog in front of an audience cringing with apprehension. (She’s known as “Shut up Davina” in our house. As soon as she appears on screen, ruining my view of Ashley on Got to Dance, I yell those words at the screen.)

It was one film, of a baby called Victor, who had been rushed to hospital by his desperate parents. They knew they were watching him die in front of their eyes. We were feverishly hoping that the tone of the voiceover would change, the uplifting music would start, his parent’s faces would flood with relief, and a healthier, smiling Victor would be shown to us as he got the blood he needed and grabbed his life back. But that wasn’t what happened.

These simple and devastating words appeared instead:

Victor died at 10pm.

Tears streamed down my face. Each one of us in the room felt the senseless, unfair, devastating loss of that little boy who had only ever known hunger and suffering. It was so stark. So simple. So wrong.

I confess I had been watching Comic Relief with cynical eyes. The sight of millionaires demanding money from us is something I find hard to swallow sometimes, especially when they’re flogging something, a new show, a new single. They get something out of it I thought, even if they’re giving their time for free. During Peter Kay’s sitdownathon he had even kissed a cardboard cut-out of Lenny Henry which clearly demonstrated that he was kipping in the budget hotel that Lenny has put his face to. Is there any such thing as a truly selfless act?

Many viewers may have been feeling a bit of “compassion fatigue”, when so many people are struggling these days. When faced with rich celebrities asking for more it can be easy to switch off. But I looked around me, at my home, my healthy children that aren’t dying for want of a meal or a mosquito net, safe in the knowledge that there’s food in the cupboards and fridge and there will be tomorrow, that there’s water in the taps that won’t kill me.

Victor’s parents, and millions of other parents, have lost their children through famine, poverty and preventable disease. Many more will. Comic Relief, Sport Relief, Children in Need, all of those telethons staffed by gossip mag fodder – they may make some of us want to throw our slippers at the screen but those devastating films that show us the truth of it do still remind us of the horror of life, and death, that others suffer everyday.

Breaking up with a friend

Just over a year ago, a person who I thought was one of my best friends betrayed me horribly. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say it escalated from her doing something really wrong to me to her blackmailing and threatening me. 

It took me a long time to get over it. There was definitely a grieving process; denial "How could she do this to me? It will blow over", to anger, "How could the bitch do that to me, after all I did for her", to, eventually, acceptance "She was always crazy, I'm better off without her". 

In fact, the anger I felt towards her only left me a few months ago - I had stopped having those conversations you have in your head, in case you ever bump into them again, had stopped fuming at the injustice of it all. But although it was out of my conscious mind, it was still burrowed deep in my subconscious, like an evil stinking worm.

I would have horrific and violent dreams about her, I’d scream at her until my head exploded. It was pretty screwed up. That’s gone now though and as the anger and hurt faded, reflection took their place.

As I thought back on our friendship, I realised that I had always made excuses for her, because I thought she was vulnerable. She had gone through a terrible break-up with her partner and I was the one who propped her up, the one who brought her back into the world, the one who stuck by her and listened when everyone else had given up. She’d even asked me to have her children for her if anything happened to her. So when she turned on me, it had really hurt.

But there were things she had done that I realised had always been totally unacceptable, but I’d let her get away with them, because I accepted that she was a bit unstable, a bit vulnerable. She had no filter on what she said, and to whom. Including me. 

I thought about all the parties I’d invited her to, when I’d had to warn other friends who had not met her yet about her. She’d sit down and start raving on to people she’d never met before about the size of her latest man’s penis, or how she could barely walk that day because of what she’d been doing the night before. This would be played out a kid’s party. That is no joke. She did it in front of my mum once, who practically faints at the mention of the word S.E.X. It was awful, I had to leave the room, when I should have stopped her there and then.

She though everyone fancied her, man, woman, whatever. 17 or 70, it didn’t matter, everyone was after her. It was quite funny until she came to me and said, 1) My boyfriend had been flirting with her, 2) My dad had been flirting with her at school pick-up. It makes me feel sick even thinking about it now, not because it was true, but because I know for a fact she was deluded. I won’t say what they said when I told them, but she should have been under no illusion. I should have stopped her there and then.

She badgered friends of mine with long texts about her sexploits. She’d talk loudly and derogatorily about her ex in front of her teenage son while his face burned.

As I reflected on all this, I thought “What the hell have I been doing? I should have stopped all this a long time ago”. But when she was being a good friend, she had been the kindest, loveliest person, which is why I probably stuck it out. I thought I was the stronger one, so I laughed off her weirdness, but when she turned on me so quickly, the scales fell from my eyes.

And with that falling away, I also realised that during the years of our friendship, from time to time, I’d had to take a break from her. To withdraw because her behaviour, frankly, did my head in. Then I could come back to the friendship refreshed. She never really noticed because she was so self-obsessed; if I wasn’t around, she’d just talk to a stranger at the school gate about her latest conquest.

So I’ve let it go now. It doesn’t hurt anymore, it doesn’t eat me up with anger. I have wonderful friends and I’ll stick with them. With the people who support me, that I support, and we have an equal love and respect for each other, not some dangerously balanced minefield of a friendship.

I should have stopped her then, but it’s stopped now, and she was the one who brought it about. As with all bad experiences, now I’m out the other side I’m grateful for what it’s taught me.