the catch up and some mental over spill

Its been a strange few weeks here.

Toots finished daycare on 23 December which was very hard on everyone involved. I actually came out of it feeling like a bit of a selfish cow for thinking that the only people effected would be Toots, myself, the husband and my family. I somehow managed to forget about some of the staff in her nursery who have grown very attached to her over the last three years. On in particular, started employment with the nursery the same week Toots started attending. She has moved with her from the baby room, to the toddler house and then to the pre-school room and in all fairness over the course of the last three years, she's spent more time with Toots than I have.

The woman in question was absolutely heart broken that Toots was leaving and made me promise that if I ever need a sitter, I'll call her and I've also promised to bring Toots to the nursery for a visit. Its doubtful that the husband and I will need a sitter as there simply won't be the money for nights out but I will take her to nursery to visit, plus it means she can keep in touch with the friends she made over the years.

Which brings me to my main concern. I was very worried about taking her away from her nursery and all of her friends. She'll be going to school with a lot of them in September but I was still worried that they would forget about her in the next nine months and she'd have to start school as an outsider. I planned to getting her into some dance, art and drama classes held in the local theatre n the hope that some of the kids her age would also be going to the school I've picked for her, but I needn't have worried myself so much.

She spent Christmas day at my mum's house and when she came home she promptly declared that she'd made three new bestest friends in the whole wide world. It seems that the one thing more important than friends that the nursery gave her was the ability to make friends easily. I think its what I'm most grateful for. Toots can start a conversation in an empty room.

I'm unemployed now.

I'm still not quite sure what to do with that one.

I've spent the last couple of months being told by anyone willing to voice an opinion (almost everyone) that I'll be bored to tears at home. Most of these people don't know me very well. I'm actually not that into my job, truth be told. Its just something I fell into when I left school. I'm very grateful for all the opportunities it gave me, but I never really enjoyed it and because of that it was always a bit of a struggle. I think if you really enjoy what you do then it makes it so much easier to get up every morning and just go do it.

Basically, I was just a legal secretary. I spent the first couple of years doing personal injury litigation. You come to conclusion very early on doing this kind of work. Most of your clients are liars and the ones telling the truth get screwed out of what the deserve because of all the liars. That can really make you hate a job.

I spent the next couple of years working on disease cases. These were different because all the clients were telling the truth, unfortunately the insurance companies know that if they hold out long enough and string the case along the inevitable will happen and the client will die. Families get a much smaller pay out for a dead relative no longer suffering than a person still alive and in agony will get. Again, this makes for a hateful job.

I tried some family law. It always amazed me how many couples turn into complete animals once they're in the throws of a divorce and its a hundred times worse when kids are involved. I only lasted in family law for about six months. I just couldn't take all the vindictiveness.

I tried conveyancing, but that was boring because nothing interesting ever happened. I know.

Then I wound up in employment and media litigation, which is where I finished. Its a sad fact that as soon as the rest of the country is in the toilet and redundancy is on the rise, employment lawyers are swamped with work. I suppose its just the nature of the beast. Still not a pleasant prospect to spend your day drafting redundancies. Still there were nice days when you got to tell a particularly greedy couple of companies that actually no they couldn't sack half their staff and putting the rest on rolling rotas. They were just going to have to suck it up and roll with the punches like the rest of us.

Still at my leaving interview I was told that in a year or so I could basically give them a call and I'd be guaranteed my job back.

Not bad considering I've only been there 14 months. I must have made a good impression either that or I made good tea and cakes to go with it.

And I have to sign on at the Social Security Office in a couple of weeks. Not looking forward to that one bit. I've only ever had to sign on once before when I first left school and that was just a cover period until my training course started. I managed to drag my feet about doing it for so long that I signed on and signed off again 8 days later.

I'm actually pretty confident that I'm not entitled to benefits because the husband works full time but when you work in legal some of the clients prefer the staff to have police clearance and you can only get that if you can account for your whereabouts since the day you turned 16. Plus I think you need minimal police clearance to be able to volunteer for school trips and the like which I would like to do at Toots school if the opportunity ever arises.

I had all these fanciful ideas of doing something from home. Trying to sell more baked goods or something along those lines, but to be completely honest I don't even know where to start, so the ideas will more than likely fall into the pipe dream folder.


I'd say I'll be busy enough keeping Toots occupied. We all know its against the law for kids to be bored these days. Families must have to take out loans to keep their kids busy during summer holidays. I hate to go there, but when I was a kid summer holidays usually involved sitting on a wall somewhere.

That was it, just sitting on a wall.

Occasionally we would have cycled from Belfast to Holywood or Cultra, probably so that when we were in our 30s with kids of our own we could tell them how in the summer holidays all we had to do was sit on a wall or cycle somewhere really far away and that they should be eternally grateful for the trip to the swimming pool.

To which they were driven in a car that they weren't embarrassed to be seen in. We've a Laguna and mum has a Merc so the kid's pretty well sorted.

When I was nine I remember my mum driving a Renault Cleo Elf. It was a 1985 from memory and we all had to get out at the bottom of a hill and meet her at the top or the wee thing never would have made it.