Hello, hello, it's good to be back...

It's nearly a shocking 3 months since I've posted, which is quite appalling. I was feeling this blog was becoming a little popgirl-centric; as the idea was that this should be a collaborative effort between popboy and myself. His injury meant he could barely look at a computer, let alone type (and is still struggling). I was therefore stuck trying to find the balance between things I find interesting (anything), and things potential readers (again, ha!) might find interesting (anything else).

He is now writing again, and I'm supposed to be doing the same. Where better to do it than here, and what better impetus than attempting to blog every day for a month.

This is a good a start as any, I suppose, and I'll try and kick popboy away from twitter long enough to write something tomorrow.

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Today I have mostly been reading nothing, I've been out all day.

ABC123XYZ

In the absence of any time to write a proper post, I thought I'd post a previously answered meme. So here, without further ado, is my A-Z of Me(me):

A - Age: 29, with less than a month left until I turn 30 on the 30th. I'm a little more excited about that than I think I should be. I feel like I should give off this "Argh, I'm old" vibe but really, I've just had a baby, I think I have to come to terms with the fact that I'm a grown-up now. And grown-ups can easily be 30.

B - Bed size: King if I'm sleeping in my actual bed. I'm currently sleeping on a double futon in the study, not due to any marital discord but because I can't sleep through the baby's moaning and groaning all night long, and need my sleep so I can cope with the days.

C - Chore you hate: I don't really hate housework, I just don't have the impetus to do it. I'm trying now, for the baby's sake. I'd have to say my least favourite is all the faffing around with laundry after it's been washed. I don't mind putting it in the machine, but then the taking it out, hanging it up, taking it in, folding it, putting it away etc, it just takes far too long for my attention span. When I've done a job, I want it done straight away, not in several hours when fabric has decided to be dry.

D - Dog's name: I used to want a dog, when I was little. I can clearly remember wishing in a wishing well for a Dalmation. I'm much more of a cat person now, and currently live with Tilly and Maeby. Maeby is special in the head, Tilly is the most clingy cat you could ever imagine.

E - Essential start your day item: Used to be coffee and cigarette - now I'm lucky if both my eyes are open before I'm thrown headlong into a screaming rant about needing some milk IMMEDIATELY.

F - Favorite color: ColoUr not color. Let's say red. I have more trouble than I should answering that question, I get confused by colours. I think red is probably best though.

G - Gold or Silver: Silver. I can't help thinking gold is cheap, although it's probably a hell of a lot more expensive than the silver coloured tat I wear.

H - Height: 5'7". I don't really have much more to say about that.

I - Instruments you play: Piano, best. Guitar, second best. I tried for about 7 years to learn guitar, then suddenly could just play. I stopped when I was up the duff for fear of hurting the baby's little ears, although I continued to tune half-size guitars when required. I have barely picked up a guitar since Jacob was born, although I do find myself itching when I see them all sitting in a row. My heart hurts when I think how long it's been since I've sat down and played the piano properly.

J - Job title: Um ... I have several, due to being employed by different employers for different parts of the same job. For clarity's sake, I usually say I'm a Teaching Assistant, as most people understand that, although I would rather say I'm a Behavioural Therapist, as that's what I really do.

K - Kids: Jacob, 5 months. I didn't ever think I'd be able to answer that ;)

L - Living arrangements: House. Here.

M - Mum's name: Marjorie.

N - Nicknames: Lately, 'Mummy' seems to be quite popular.

O - Overnight hospital stay other than birth: Gah. I didn't used to understand why people didn't like hospitals, until I stayed in one as an adult. 2 stays for gallbladder diagnosis and removal. 1 overlong stay after Jacob's birth. In a cubicle surrounded by a hideous flowery curtain, with no natural light, and horrible women in the other beds complaining about not being able to go out for a fag as they were on drips. Lovely.

P - Pet peeve: Too many to list. People drive me bananas with their inanities.

Q - Quote from a movie: "But funny". Alan Rickman in Dogma. Has to be seen to be got. I fracking love Alan Rickman.

R - Right or left handed: Right.

S - Siblings: One younger sister.

T - Time you wake up: 6.45am on the dot. How a 5 month old baby has such an accurate internal clock is beyond me.

U - Underwear: I really don't understand what kind of detail to go into in answering that question. Yes, I mostly wear underwear. It is of varied colour and design. Will that do?

V - Vegetable you dislike: Courgettes are vile. Cucumbers are ridiculous, they're just all water. I don't like tomatoes unless they're cooked. There's probably more...

W - Ways you run late: I could just list my entire life there. I used to be on time, and get very stressed and upset if I wasn't. Now I've had to learn that it's ok to be late, as you can't plan for anything with a baby.

X - X-rays you've had: Foot for random pain as a child. Ankle after I fell off too high-heeled boots in the Zone. Chest after suspected heart-attack (turned out to be the aforementioned gallstones).

Y - Yummy food you make: Baked goods. Raspberry Crumble Buns are always a winner.

Z -Zoo favorite: Giraffes. I had various food cravings while I was pregnant, but also went a bit mental about giraffes. Luckily they are readily available as nursery decorations/stuffed toys/clothes adornments. Before that, I would probably have said Baboons, as I did an assignment on them during my Psychology A Level.

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Today I have mostly been reading Abby Lee's Girl with a One Track Mind (for my sins), the book, not the blog. Picked up in a charity shop where the 60-plus lady on the till said "Oooh I saw that book come in, I thought it looked like a fun read!".

We used to be friends, a long time ago.

popboy would like to point out to all our (non-existent) readers that he is not not blogging on purpose, but fell down the stairs and can't type.

It's strange, but strangely satisfying, writing to probably no-one, but possibly anyone. It's like writing a diary where you can't be completely honest, in case someone finds it. I'm not saying this isn't true, but you don't need to know a lot of the stuff which goes on in my life ;)

Anyway, yesterday I had a facebook friend request from my best friend while I was at University. She's now married to her then-boyfriend, and expecting a baby boy in October. In true blog style, let's call her L.

We were placed into the same flat in our first year, and over the next 6 months or so became closer and closer. In our second year, all 6 of us from the flat moved into a shared house, and cracks slowly began to show. The other girls were 'townies', going out to dance clubs and generally driving us crazy, while we went to gigs and indie clubs and sat around bitching about the rest of them.. We (me and L) decided to take the plunge, move out, and get a 2 bedroomed flat together. The relief was immense, and for a while we became even closer.

I never really knew what happened, but over the summer before we went into our third year, I went away on holiday with my parents, and when I came back she was different. She said that she'd got used to me not being there, and found it hard to adjust to me coming back (I think I was gone about 3 weeks). She had always been intensely jealous of me having friends who she didn't know, and she started being rude to them, ignoring them and refusing to speak to me if they had been round.

At around the same time, my relationship with my ex-boyfriend broke down, and I began going out with popboy. The flat L and I were living in was sold and we had to move out, and she made it very clear that she didn't want to live with me any more.

And that was it really, we found separate flats, we moved out, I made a few attempts to contact her and was shunned. I gave up, and began my spiral down into depression and anxiety.

I felt broken and confused, I couldn't understand how someone I had felt such affinity with could suddenly dislike me so much. I asked her time and time again what I had done, and she could never tell me. When we bumped into each other, she would accuse me of bizarre things, like not returning a mutual friend's phonecalls (I had not heard from said friend). She made it really awkward for us to be in the same place, so I stopped going out.

Due to her dislike of me having my own friends, most of my friends were her friends first, and so I lost all those friendships at the same time. Ever since, I've found it very hard to make or maintain any close female friendships. I have always remained guarded, as I never knew which aspect of my behaviour or personality it was which turned her against me, so I didn't know how to change to make myself more likeable.

That was nearly 10 years ago now. I had some contact from her through friends reunited, about 3 years ago. She sent me a message or 2, saying that she'd love to be friends again and regretted our falling out. She then went on to say that she didn't remember why we had stopped speaking.

I felt like she'd walked up and slapped me in the face, as I'd spent 7 years mentally torturing myself over what I could have done to make her dislike me, and she had the audacity to say she didn't remember what it was.

I realised that maybe, the problems were all hers, and actually I might be a nice person after all. It's taken me the last 3 years to get over it, and to have a little bit of self-esteem and self-confidence to build on and work on. I still find it hard to maintain friendships, and prefer to keep most people at arm's length.

Yesterday's friend request really shook me up. On the one hand, with her being pregnant we have something in common, something which I've found has made me capable of speaking on a daily basis to complete strangers, and which has made me make more friends in the past 5 months than I've done in the last 10 years. In a boasting way, I'd love her to look at all my photos on facebook, to see how gorgeous minipop is, and how happy I am. I'd like to rub in her face the fact that I've been in a relatively successful indiepop band, and that I have a worthwhile and rewarding job.

So I accepted her friend request. I was immediately filled with levels of anxiety which haven't been so high since minipop was first born and I was worried that each breath he took was going to be his last. That feeling, that horrible droppy feeling you get when you've got a job interview tomorrow, or you've forgotten to pay a bill for 6 months and you get referred to a debt collection agency, that's the feeling I had when minipop was little and that's the feeling I got yesterday. I kept turning the laptop on to see if she'd sent me a message, or commented on any of my photos.

My chest got tighter and tighter, and I got more and more anxious. I couldn't cope any more, so I unfriended her. And it all went away again.

I don't need her in my life any more, and after the way she treated me, she doesn't get to have me.

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Today I have mostly been sleeping, filled with an exhaustion which I would like to put down to last night's anxiety attack ;)

I retreat into self-pity, it's so easy

Maybe weekly blog posts are a more realistic expectation - I can never seem to muster the energy until I feel the end of the week looming.

For weeks and weeks I've been humming, singing, whistling and generally being bugged to hell and back by the lyrics of La Tristesse Durera. Most probably because they resonate strongly with my feelings at the moment; I'm sure I'd be a My Chemical Romance fan if I was a teenager nowadays (my sister called me an emo once, because I was dressed all in red and black. I was offended.).

As time passes, and Minipop gets older, in theory I'm supposed to get better, although postnatal depression can last for years. I do have weeks where I think I'm getting better, and I'm careful to spend time thinking about all the good things that have happened, in order to CBT myself into a more self-confident frame of mind.

Then a week like this week comes along and smacks me in the face, and I end up feeling like I do today: raw, agitated, tearful, edgy and desperate. I feel like the top half of my brain has been frozen and I can barely function. I can physically feel my brain trying to work, and failing. I alternate between wanting to collapse into a ball on the floor and implode into nothingness, and wanting to get out, get away, just run until it's all gone.

It's hard to pull it back, as however hard I try I just get more and more on edge until something tips me over: I have a huge sobbing meltdown and then am back to normal for a while.

But in the meantime, I can't have a normal conversation without taking everything as a criticism. I can't stop obsessing over phonecalls and comments made by my current antagonists (my dad and my sister), until I've gone through thousands of possible come-backs and had hundreds of exaggerated arguments in my head (which frequently reduce me to tears, even though they haven't happened). I can't cope when I'm trying to do something normal, like go to a baby group, and Minipop screams and screams. I know the other mums are empathetic and not disturbed, but I get so uncomfortable and hot that I can't do anything except leave in tears.

The hardest thing is the lethargy. I feel pinned down, like I can't move at all. I only seem capable of performing the most basic of baby-care functions, but other than that I feel immensely fearful of moving from the sofa.

I've learnt to force myself up, to do something, anything, to alleviate that feeling before it gets too bad. The rest of it, I'm still working on.

Writing it all down here has helped. Maybe I should delete this post so I can do it again next time.

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Today I have mostly been reading Bringing Up Baby by Daisy Goodwin.

I wanna see it painted, painted black

One of the side effects of being a bit mental at the moment, is an inability to keep up with the myriad of daily tasks I'm supposed to be doing. Which is mostly why more than a month has gone by since I last wrote anything here.

So I'm turning over a new leaf to try and write more frequently, as I think it helps rather than hinders my mental state. Although more frequent posting may mean I'm writing about less riveting topics, such as paint.

When I first went to playgroup, or school, or some sort of gathering of children with organised activities, we were given the option to paint whenever we liked. Every day, clean pots of lovely shiny poster paint would be lined up before an easel, ready to be slowly turned into a uniform sludge colour by the end of the day.

Friday, however, was a special day, as in addition to all the colours of the rainbow, there would be a pot of beautiful velvety black.

By denying its use throughout the week (it made too much mess), black paint was fetishised for me. And now, I can't get enough of the stuff. I'm not likely to buy a pot and start painting anything, not having an artistic bone in my body, but I find myself thinking about it and looking at it when I'm in a particular frame of mind. Working in a primary school means I'm able to indulge myself as often as I like, and the nursery/reception teachers enjoy teasing me when I detour through their classroom and past the paint table to "have a look".

I shouldn't do this - I'm employed to define, analyse, intervene in and redirect such self-stimulatory behaviours in the autistic child I work with.

I'm currently denied my free access to the black paint (being on maternity leave), and I'm finding that the longer I go without it, the more I think about it. I think that's one thought I'll conceal from my GP/Health Visitor, for fear of them labelling me as more mental than I think I really am.

Although it does make me worry.

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Today I have mostly been reading various Anna Pickard ramblings.

Stop surfing on the internet

You’d think, you know, me being me, the verbose gobshite that I am, that I’d have had more to say so far. But it’s all a bit much at the moment. Work, Poptowers, popgirl, minipop, and the tyranny of myspace, facebook, twitter, digitalspy, theregister, theguardian, theguardian/football, gmail, igoogle, various other webmail accounts, blog trackbacks, my friends’ blogs, and twitter again (oh, and whisper it, but also the daily mail website. It’s like crack to me.).

It’s getting too much. It’s taking over. Can we not put all of these eggs in JUST THE ONE SODDING BASKET please. I need some sort of web-detox. A consolidation of bookmarks. By the time you’ve checked everything, it’s time to check it all again. It’s taking over. Even when I’m walking to the bus-stop I’m checking in with the tweets.

I can’t leave MySpace or Facebook because of my interests, can’t condense my blogs into 140 characters, and I have multiple e-mail addresses for a multitude of reasons. A friend of mine, her PC crashed the other day. Because she had 82 tabs open in firefox. I’m not that far off.

I’m not the kind of person who likes to multi-task though. I’d rather carry a camera and an mp3 player and a phone than all 3 in one. And despite my phone offering photo-taking and music-playing I can’t do that. I can’t deal with one thing having such autonomy over my life. What if it runs out of battery? What if it breaks? Then I can’t take photos of my faulty phone, or phone people up when my mp3 player has stopped working.

I’ll stick with the multitude of log-ins and tabs for now. I think it’s for the best. I do need to reduce what I consume. But I’d rather have a smorgasbord than a luke-warm casserole anyday.

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Today I have mostly been reading Twitter. For no good reason.

See me swim and see me float

This morning I took Minipop to Water Babies for the first time. Anticipating all kinds of screaming shenanigans, I had 2 bags packed to the brim with all kinds of baby pacifying equipment, to cover any eventuality.

We arrived far too early, as I'd left plenty of time for getting lost but actually found the place easily, and so sat in the car in the shade until people started to turn up.

Once undressed and double-nappied, we all took it in turns to pass the babies down to the instructor who was standing in the pool, before running down the steps and swimming round to her to reclaim our babies. Minipop was uncharactistically calm, gazing around at the other babies and seemingly not at all aware that he was in a swimming pool.

It was as warm as a bath and the babies were all happy to be bounced around, swished from side to side, 'jumped' in from the side etc. When it came time for the first 'submersion' (swimming the babies underwater), Minipop zoomed under and popped up as though he'd been doing it all his life, with water streaming off his eyelashes. The instructor said she'd never seen such a chilled out baby, and asked to take him home ;)

I'd been nervous about going, thinking that it would be hard to hold a slippery baby, worrying that he'd need a feed right when we were in there, or that he would scream his head off as soon as we touched the water. But it was like we'd both been doing it all our lives, he was so calm and happy, and it was lovely cuddling and bouncing him around without my arms aching from lugging 17lbs of solid baby around.

Even when we got out, as soon as I'd wrapped him in a towel he fell straight asleep, with none of the ear-piercing screams I'd been anticipating.

Over the next 7 weeks we'll do more and more submersions, and at the end of the course we'll have our very own Nirvana Nevermind style photoshoot.

I can't wait til next week.

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Today I have mostly been reading Jamie Livingston's Photo of the Day.