Author: BurntOut

God I’m so tired I think I’m tired tomorrow already.

this is so often the problem with all the work and Uni and kids that when it’s all going right, flowing it’s just like a well oiled machine,

but what about when you’re sick? Or the children decide that tonight’s the night they are going to play who can think of the most reasons for Getting out of bed? The system is so fragile that just one crappy night can have days of bad effects, and all of it becomes chaos. I have so much respect for anyone with sleepless children’s but also for those like nurses etc who work shifts like this too- I have no idea how you are all living !

So right now I’m dreaming of sleep writing a blog entry.  But my son had decided to eat a Ducks toilet disk. He’s all bubbly and smells pine fresh. So I’ll go deal with that now instead 🙄

(PS the reason I didn’t rush off to deal with my foamy son is because this isn’t – sad to say – our first experience of this happening. Our daughter did this when she was little and poison control assured us she was safe) 

I can’t believe how fast time goes now – I thought it was fast with two children but damn! Add university into the mix and I’m on fire 🔥

After a rubbish first Monday my Thursday class turned out really well. I got in early sorted all the bits I needed sorting out, then cracked on with homework.

i have come to expect in a week to need to: read one novel, read four (on average) short stories, write a 600 task, write a short story or research paper and as an additional to all this on these two magical weeks I have also needed to complete a presentation and a lengthy short story for work shopping ; useable in assignments later!

so when you write it down or complete this stuff you feel really good an accomplished; but it’s easy to fall behind and become swamped. But so far, besides more exhaustion, I’m feeling really good about it like I’ve got all my plates spinning. Fingers crossed I’ll be able to maintain it!  🤞

But it’s proving hard work with the children, for sure.  I have had to write stories on the notes page of my phone as the children have played. It’s meant not napping when I desperately want to and typing something up instead. But I’m feeling really accomplished and fulfilled right now just hoping it’ll continue!

It won’t be long until it’s assignment time and wIth children it just feels like every moment of my week has to be planned down to a T. Hard work sometimes and the takeaways are definitely benefiting from the situation 😂

So instead of sorting all that so important uni work out, all has been put aside because tomorrow we have a wedding. No, not mine. Joel and I have been married 7 years. It’s a family wedding! But there’s so much to do it’s just mad!

Today also seemed to be the day my children decided to make a pact to be the loudest and moany they can be. Not even the sticker chart could turn this one around for me today.

Id offered to make cupcakes for the day so I had that going on too and I’ve never messed up so many times in my life! So my angel of a friend drops off my ingredients that I forgot to buy 🙄 I burnt the strawberries 🍓 because I was yelling at my fighting children. So the plan changed to normal vanilla cake with strawberry jam instead of actual strawberry cake.

I eventually called my husband in stressed out tears screaming about trying to eat a ham sandwich without moany arse children then made us all go for a nap because I was so stressed and the kids were crying so much. After we woke up all calmer, happier and more refreshed; nanny and grandad came and wisked the children off to the park while I was left for another go at the cakes.

Only to realise – I couldn’t believe it – I hadnt bought paper cake cases!!! I bought glitter and butterflies and fiddly bits but no cases 🙈

So off to the corner shop to find no cases so off to Tesco I walk. (I hate walking 😂) luckily the rest of the baking went easily once I had all the stuff and got on with it.

Only to have the cakes go over in the box as I delivered them 😭 4 smooshed beyond recognition. Now just the ironing of the outfits, the bag packing and the showers to be done before I can sleep – and it’s already 10pm.

God I hope the kids don’t wake up tonight ; but based on my days luck- I’m not holding my breath.

So I go to collect my ID that I need for basically everything! And you guessed it – its not there! Well it’s not not there but apparently the centre is closed! It’s 4.30 for God sake but apparently it closed at 4pm 🙄

So I go along to try use my book grant and you guessed it I needed my ID! And I can’t go into the library because of – yep ID! I have no idea when I’m going to manage to get in early. I have no idea when I’m going to make it in any earlier. I have to pick my daughter up from school at 3pm first. So that’s great (!) So I end up sitting around because I have no access to all the stuff I thought I would.

I go to the class at 6pm. It’s full of all sort of characters- far more students I ever thought would be on the course. I’ll generalise the next two hours I spent as ‘what the fudge is going on?’ I don’t recognise the authors; I don’t understand the assignments, homework or how to use the VLE. Everyone else in the class look like bobbleheads nodding along ‘hmm yes’ to everything and I’m sitting there thinking – am I hearing another language – parles vous anglais? Ok so it wasn’t that bad but I feel my blood pressure creeping up the whole two hours and at the end feel more high strung then ever.

Ive got so much to do and so much to catch up on. I feel back of the class and I’ve only just begun. I thought going back with a degree already under my belt I’d feel ahead of the game but no such luck 😞

Hoping my Thursday class will go better haha

I feel like I’m going to throw up and I’m wondering who thought this was a good idea.

Oh right – I remember, it was me. I graduated quite a few years ago now with a less than pleasing 2:2 in English Literature. But with all I had going on in 2009 at the tender young age of 18 – moving in with my fiancé, a wedding, two jobs and a full time undergraduate course; I look back and find it no surprise that I just missed the 2:1 I’d been hunting for.

So it’s been at least 5/6 years since  graduated and lots had changed. We’ve moved a total of 7 times since living with our parents. We’ve had pets come and go. We moved far away to chase dreams, and had dreams dashed so we ended back at square one.

We have two beautiful children that I’m so thankful for and blessed to have, equally I have been awarded the sometimes restrictive title ‘Mummy’.

See being a Mummy as an individual ‘job’ can be wonderful. If you give yourself fully to become servant and lord of the home and all in it – I think being Mummy can be a fulfilling and life affirming job. But there’s a problem I have – and I know many others suffer it; the need to work.

Whether it’s to save your sanity or because you can’t survive with a whole family resting on a single wage, (I suffer from both,) Mummy’s (and daddy’s)  must pull themselves away from the safety of home and throw themselves back out to work.

Beforw finding out I was pregnant with my first I had a wonderful, all consuming job as a college GCSE English tutor. I loved my job and I was finally good at something. But as often happens, situations occur and we are forced to make choices. Long story short Joel and I ended up back and my dads house with with no job, no house and me up the duff. At that moment I thought I was lost forever. My career hopes gone. Left full of mistakes and regret with only my first born as a guiding star through all this chaos.

Ive worked so many jobs since having my daughter. I’ve been a home tutor, a waitress, a school assistant at a autistic school, a preschool teaching assistant (where I found myself pregnant with number 2) and I’m now a fish and chip server.

I have been so lucky to find jobs that’s fit my life- childcare certainly hasn’t been consistent or easy. But with work in the evenings and Mummy and wife in the day, I feel constantly like I’m lucky to get through the day – do you get that?! Like when my daughter asks what we are doing tomorrow I’m just filled with bemused unknowing as I try to explain I’m still trying to get to the end of this day first lol.

When it was time to return to work after my first I worked into the night and rarely slept. I used to set her down with the to on and toys around her and sleep in my uniform. Once she bought me a knife she had reached off the kitchen counter and I said ‘thank you honey.’ Took the knife slipped it under my pillow and went back to sleep 😱.

ao when it came time April this year to return to some decent hours after my second baby, I knew I couldn’t do all that again – it was going to be so much harder with two and I couldn’t be falling asleep constantly. An accident will eventually happen and be all my fault.

I got a great few hours and the chip shop across from me. I knew the staff and the boss is the kindest I’ve probably ever had. But for some reason, once I had completed my interview and got the job, I came home and cried.

I cried so much. Not because of the job but because again my skills, My dreams were going to waste. I’ve been watching the years go by, wasting time until the kids are in school. Working unsociable hours for minimum wage or whatever I have been doing,

I couldn’t bare it. I needed more. So I started searching for something anything to make me feel like me again. That’s when I found my Masters course. It’s something I really like doing and I took a little in my undergraduate course so I thought why not? Waste another year or two in a job I didn’t want to do, or try something new. Just for me.

Then guilt sets in – it’s time away from family and work.

But here I am waiting for my first class. I’ll tell you about the application process and just how easy it was and the funding available on another post – because I’ve gone on for ages!!!

I’m so nervous this isn’t what I think it is and I’ve risked so much to be here but equally I’m so ready for something new and more than watching In The Night Garden on repeat!

Thanks for sticking with me – see you on the other side. X