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Wednesday 15 October 2008

So what gives?

I promised a proper catch up a while back and so I guess I'd better spill what's been going on and where I'm at. There's not going to be much knitting content (if any) in this post so feel free to stop reading now.

So what gives? I mentioned previously that I was lacking motivation to write and well that's mostly because I've been a little stressed out by recent events. This is mainly a knitting blog so I've probably never made it clear about how my life is set up but basically I'm a single parent and I have a beautiful little boy who's now in school. I'm just beginning to get my life back on track. Or so I thought. We have a pretty good relationship with his family but at the end of the day, being on opposite sides of the world is never easy and it's been about three years since we actually saw the MM's father. So where is this going? Well that would be the sudden offer of plane tickets to Australia and the complete emotional roller coaster that it started.

I think I have gone from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other over the last few months and it's left me completely reeling. I swear I'm spottier now than I ever was as a teenager! From unsatisfactory meetings with the school headmaster to negotiating with the education board to take holiday during term time. I ended up writing almost an essay on the school holiday application to justify why exactly I am choosing to disrupt his education and how I'm going to work around this. I'm generally a fairly private person (yes I do know I write a blog) but have had to lay myself open emotionally to almost complete strangers. I've never felt more out of control in my life and I don't like it. I'm obviously more like my mother than I realised - I'm a closet control freak!

Just when I thought it was all sorted out and the tickets arrive, I get slammed again this time by the bureaucrats of the Australian government. Get this, to enable the MM to have a tourist visa to visit Australia, I now have to prove that I have the sole legal right to make decisions for him. So now, I have to go and find myself a solicitor and get them to certify copies of his birth certificate to say that yes, I have. Who'd have thought back then I'd have been so pleased now that his father wasn't there to register his birth?! Once I've sent that to them then will then "reconsider" his application. Getting his first passport was a complete breeze by comparison.

Still, there are lots of positives to this trip too and once I've finished detangling all the red tape we can start thinking about actually packing our bags. The trip's planned for the end of November so I guess I should really start counting down now.

Sometimes I've been happy, sometimes I've been gloomy but can I just say a great big thank you to all my friends who have listened to me and talked me down (or up) when I've needed it. I raise my cuppa to you all seeing as it's far to early in the day to be anything stronger. So anyhow, now that that's all out of the way normal service can resume and the (ir)regular knit posts can continue.

1 comment:

suse-the-slow-knitta said...

the complexities of being a parent, go and pet some yarn, you'll feel better!
When you got OZ take a little jotter/notebook for the wee man to put stuff in: a proper oldfashioned scrapbook if you like, his drawings, zoo tickets, sweet wrappers, postcards, whatever. He will be soooo proud of what he's doing on his adventure and it will get the education bods off your back.