Pre Natal Tension….

So I am officially pregnant.  Just over 4 weeks now and the countdown has begun towards becoming more swollen and hormonal. I am having waves of queasiness and have gone the hole hog a couple times and thrown up, once was in public, on the high street as I was heading towards the metro at 7am which was nothing short of humiliating. I was en route to having eleventy million blood tests all done sequentially on Boulevard St Germain. They were testing me for every sexually transmitted disease known to mankind, plus other things I don’t even know how to pronounce let alone what they are all about. I couldn’t find the words to tell them I was not here due to sleeping with barrow loads of infected men, that I was infact pregnant with my longish term partner.  By the end of the tests, I felt weak and was worried about whether they had left me enough blood  in my system to keep me going till my body had time to make some more. I had lost all sensation in both of my hands and had more pot marks in my arms than a junkie.

The night before was just as pleasant. I had my first visit to the gynaecologist, Dr F for fruitcake, recommended to me by my boss. Now me being me, entering into the, having a child phase of my life, for the first time, should not be expected to know the exact in’s and out’s that go on at a first meeting with one of these special women’s doctors.  I thought it would be pleasant, kind of introductory, a sort of question and answer type rendez vous. A celebratory visit if you like.

Of course not.

Not to mention the fact that I am in Paris, not able to speak my Mother tongue, which makes it harder. Frenchy asked me if I would be ok to go on my own.

“Of course” I said, not sure whether that would be true. ” I need to get on with these things on my own, anyway, its good for my french speaking.”

As soon as I arrived outside the door of the surgery in Montparnasse, I began to feel like maybe I had made a mistake. I rang the buzzer and waited.

“Oui?!” Came the reply from the speaker.

“ehu oh oui, oui… bonjour! je m’appelle …..”

“Oui Madame, entrez” He interrupted, followed by a Brrrrrrrrrrrr and a click and the door opened.

I got to his front door to find it half open, so I slid through.

“Voulez vous attendrez dans juste en face madame” Came a booming voice from behind the door the to my right.

I walked through to the waiting room which was like no other I had ever experienced before in a doctors surgery. A thousand and one south east asian statuettes aligned every shelf and surface possible. There was this strange music that harked back to theme tunes from the Moomins or Buttton Moon days. A strong smell of burning incense along with the accompanying heavy swirl of blue smoke that incense always annoyingly has.  There were squashy sofas and chairs with Moroccan throws and Indian silks covering them. For a moment I wasn’t entirely sure that I had made a mistake and was at the local pot dealers place. I was wondering who I was about to meet?

“Bonjour madame!”  I turned around and there he was, my doctor. The man who was going to take me through my pregnancy.

He was surprisingly conservative looking.  No dreadlocks, no little John Lennon glasses, just a white haired, fairly robust middle aged man.

He took me into his room and sat me behind his very large desk. We had a conversation in … french … I think, for about 15-20 minutes.  He asked me various questions about my family background, my marital status, smoking, drinking etc. I thought I answered most of these questions well, though I’m not sure now, because the communication broke down completely after that.

He began to ask me about my regles. Periods. Here we go, I thought. On to the important stuff. The reason why Im here. The me being pregnant bit.

The conversation must have gone a bit like this, I will write it in English seeing as though I can’t string more than 3 french words together, which should illustrate how all the confusions arose.

Doctor So when did your last period start?

Me It should have finished last weekend

Doctor When did it start?

Me Well I have to check, I can’t fully remember

Doctor (throwing eyes up to heaven)  Well call your boyfriend then

Me Excuse me?

Doctor WHY HAVE YOU COME TO SEE ME IF YOU DON’T HAVE THIS INFORMATION?

Me I am not calling my partner! I can tell you, hang on, (pull my phone from my bag and nervously find the calendar bit and start counting backwards)

Doctor WHAT ARE YOU DOING?   His voice becomes more aggravated

Me (I have now lost count due to high anxiety)  Listen, I did a test, ovulation? it was around 4th September. I was ovulating, so we did it.. you know… and it worked… my cycle is 31 days you see?

Doctor Ahhhhh, so your cycle is 31 days?

Me Yes! So I need to count back from the 4th September and that is when my period started

Doctor BUT WHAT DATE WAS THE START OF YOUR LAST PERIOD!

Me I TOLD YOU!  15 DAYS BEFORE 4TH SEPTEMBER!

Doctor That was a long time ago, are you periods regular?

Me Yes they are actually

Doctor So that means that you may in fact be pregnant….

Me Of course I am!  That is why I am here!

So there you go, I felt astonished by the end of it all. He slammed his hands down on the table, rupturing the last remaining nerve endings I had left, and congratulated me. I thanked him kindly, if not slightly nervously and thought to myself, so now can I find out the dates of when I will be due, hospitals, diet etc. I wonder??

“Follow me”  He said and disappeared into the adjoining cubicle.

I followed him in.

“Take off you clothes and lie down here”  He said slapping the leather torture chair and disappearing out of the room.

How many of my clothes? I thought?  All of them?  Just my shoes? Would that do?  I’m not having those meat hooks stuck up my nether regions today am I?  I only had a check up recently. Nooooooooooooooooo.

Then I remembered something even more horrific.

I hadn’t de haired any of my body for a while and was seriously over due and waxing. Noooooooooooooooooooooooo.

I stood at the entrance to the door half clad and peered into the doctors office when he was whistling to himself. He looked up..

“Ready?” He said.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Bless Me Father WordPress, It Has Been Over 3 Months Since My Last Confession..

Many thanks first off too Liladreams, Bevchen and Tigirl for your inquiries on how and where I disappeared to. It is lovely to get messages from fellow bloggers and I am feeling the lurrveee!!   I hope you are all well and will be visiting your pages soon to catch up.

It has infact been over 3 months since my last confession. Nothing dark or sinister has happened to make me stop blogging, life got in the way a bit, a feeling of lack of inspirational things to blog about hit me along with some mild lackadaisical laziness.

So in brief, to get me back started on writing in a semi coherent fashion, I think I’m just going to bullet point some highlights of my last three months.

• I got my hair cut. Yes I did. Big highlight seeing as though I have spent the last 9 months razoring bits off myself every time I felt the urge. It was hanging listlessly down my back in ginger type stringiness. I was obsessed with growing it as long as I could even if that meant that I had started to look like a footballer from the 70’s.  I woke up one day and smelt the coffee. It is now in a bob and I am thrilled with the result. I did give the hairdresser a photo of Scarlett Johanssons new do as reference, what a shame I look nothing like her, but a relief that I no longer look like Kevin Keagen.
• Work is work. I have been doing some interesting things such as this:

Which earned me a bit of a bonus in my pay check the month I finished it.  That was good. There is never any good without a teeny bit of bad as far as my life goes though, and the bad with regards to work is that I have been semi feuding with a colleague who I find more annoying than an itch you can’t scratch.  I feel as though there is a massive undermining tactic going on in her corner of the work room and have been forced to bite my lip until it bleeds on more than one occasion. Unfortunately we are like oil and water, she being the oil that sits on top of my wateryness and suffocates me most of the time with her incessant gossiping, whispering of lyrics out loud to her awful r & b music which she plays whenever possible and over use of the word “No” , “Not possible” or “Not my job”.  She also paints her eyebrows green and constantly talks about the fact that she does, like its revolutionary, cutting edge or just too damn cool. Its not. Its awful, unattractive and even our boss asked her last week to refrain from doing so as it does not look good when dealing with clients. Enough of that though.

• My learning of the French language has gone from bad to worse as I seem to live in Paris but everyone speaks English to me. Its like being in Calais. Work colleagues have given up the ghost with me and everyone in the company now speaks English to me all the time. Its quite surreal really, but not surprising seeing as though my grasp of the French language is so far from my reach.
• Frenchy is doing good. Coming off his medication and doing very well. There was a term of very little work coming in for him which was difficult, but seems to be picking up now. I also convinced him to trim his facial into a handle bar moustache and long sideburns, not dissimilar to Nick Cave, who happens to be one of my heroes. Frenchy looks cool as I do too now I have my Scarlett type bob. So we all feel quite smug really.
• I am addicted to playing farmville on facebook. If any of you are not aware of this game DO NOT TRY TO START PLAYING IT. It is bad for your life and well being. It is time consuming and pointless. The only thing you do get from it is a nice looking virtual farm where you can buy workshops you would never be able to afford in real life, cottages to the same effect and far too many trees and cows gifted by neighbours that leave you in a state of high anxiety trying to figure out where the hell to fit them all on your little patch.
• My dear cat Tripod is well and has made a friend in the courtyard called Mimi. She is ginger and has all her paws intact unlike my three legged feline.  They are hilarious to watch as there are evenings when if one is let out before the other, they will croon from the courtyard this kind of come out to play type serenade. Mimi started crooning on Friday night which sent my cat into a frenzy. He jumped on the window sill and started crooning back at her, then sped down the corridor to the front door and cried until we opened the door to let him out. Once out we watched them lay like lions side by side, crooning and meowing at each other in friendly dulcet tones… extraordinary.
• And last but not least, in fact the mostest of the mostest is…… I am pregnant!!!!  After months of trying, we hit the jackpot and I am now just over a month pregnant.  Its early days and I am experiencing the joys of sickness, fatigue and increasingly enlarged breasts.  We are both very excited and I have my first ecography next week.  My visit to the gynaecologist last week was illuminating, I will blog about that separately as it deserves a post of its own.

So there we are, my first post in ages. A brief update and more to come.

Its nice to be back again, so what have you guys been up to?

PPL

Amazing What Two Crappy Tables Can Do..

It is 4.42 am, in the morning, am. Am, standing metaphorically for am-not-asleep.

Maybe it is a bout of my insomniacal vampire moments, but I have a funny feeling that is the after effects of a vodka night with my Frenchy.  We consumed many vodka/cokes from the comfort of our home and debated in louder and more animated tones as the night progressed, the meaning of life and other such ludicracies, as the transparent liquid drained its way out of the bottle and into each of our glasses.

Because of the fact that I can’t sleep, I thought I might use the time as constructively as I can and post a little post as I feel I have not been paying much attention to my blog recently. This led me to thinking about our Saturday just gone, yesterday, the day before the night came, this night, where I should be asleep, but am not.

Saturday was a hugely eventful day. Frenchy and I made headway into our new and improved lifestyle, moving very effeciently away from the lifestyle where one of us is shouting from the loo;

“Bloody hell! There are no toilet rolls left, What am  I going to do now??”

Or pouring milk into our coffee in the morning only to find that it has turned into cheese of the most stenchiest variety.

Or having a filing system that covers any flat surface, including floors.

We woke up and I went into military mode. I told Frenchy briskly to button up his collar and polish his boots, there was work to do.

We walked in formation down to the Monoprix with our wheely cow trolley and filled it up with necessities. Being the very poor people we are at the moment, we paid attention to the price stickers and were inventive with our meal choices.

On our way back home, we passed a brocante or flea market as I would say back home.  My eyes lit up and I felt a surge of excitement as we neared the swarms of Parisians sifting their way through rows of Formica tables heaving with very odds and lots of ends.

“Lets go!” I exclaimed, not even waiting for an answer.

I dragged Frenchy around, grumbling about how hungry he was and how we couldn’t afford to spend money. We found two crappy tables at the corner of the market just standing there, looking tired and cast away. I decided to buy them in that moment. Frenchy tried to talk me out of it. He kept reminding me that we can hardly afford to get through to the end of the month at the moment, let alone buy two tattered, battered tables.

But I felt the fear and did it anyway.

And how glad I am.

Because it spurred something within us as we dragged them back home.

One of the tables is our new computer corner. Where we can sit and type, organise bills, create tangible filing systems and generally look organised.

The other one has pride of place in our unit- less kitchen. We can fill it with stuff that is crammed on top of the fridge and the top can be used as a work station or Frenchy’s vegetable peeling station to be more correct.

Although these tables look shabby and forlorn, when we got them back home we started to discuss sanding them down and repainting them and for 40 euros for the two, I consider them a bargain once given a little after care.

With the sanding down discussion, came the where exactly to put them discussion, which turned into a massive clean out of bookshelves in the sitting room being moved to the hall way to make space. Drawers started to be opened and sorted, boxes emptied and all crap being binned.

4 hours later, we found ourselves sitting in the living room with a vodka and coke and Kate Bush crooning to us about the man with the child in his eyes, and admiring our new look home, clutter free, organised, homely.

We talked then of going wireless, putting up those shelves we have been discussing for ages and getting the old ones that were separating themselves from our walls fixed. Our enthusiasm mounted with all the talk, skillfully fuelled by the vodka, till there was no limit to what we could achieve.

Amazing how two crappy tables can make such a difference.

Eh?

Breaking Down The Door Of The Cukoo’s Nest..

I have tried to avoid talking about mental health with regards to my loved ones for a while now. My blog started from my partners dissolving mental health over a year ago.  It was a truly painful experience but not the first encounter I have had with someone close to me unravelling.

I have hardly written anything about my Mother or other members of my family.  Probably due to the fact that my childhood and relationship with my Mother has been responsible for so many of my own scars, I have tried to have one place where I can forget, not focus and aim to concentrate on more flippant topics.

The thing is though, that I am affected every day by the stuff that has formed me and that continues to form. My concern for my partner, my Mother, my lack of closeness to my siblings who all have different Fathers to me and to add to this, my own well being at times and my thoughts on how well in reality I do cope with all of my past and present.

I had a text arrive on my phone last night from a friend of my Mother. He is a French guy my age who my Mother became close to whilst he was in London. The text sent me into a state of anxiety as I read his words. He wrote that my Mother had texted him to say that her Bi-Polar disorder had become more critical and the doctors had decided to put her back on Lithium. The way he wrote the text sounded like something specific had happened that day to her,  though he didn’t explain what exactly. My anxiety heightened to a level I have experience in feeling on the subject of my Mother.

I live in fear that she may break again and be admitted to hospital or that the phone will ring one day and I will hear that she drank one Gin to many, popped one pill to many, had one to many a harsh word with my out of control half brother who himself started to hit the self destruct button many years ago.

It turned out that when I called her to see how she was, she answered the phone and was in the gym, burning off calories that she can’t afford to lose due to her fairly recent add on obsession to abstaining from eating.  She lives on a diet of Gin and slim-line tonic and one small meal a day at the moment and her weight has gone down to scary supermodel size.  This does not look good on an 18 year old let alone a woman in her 60’s. She told me she would call me back when she was finished her bone cracking work out and that she was fine.

She called me back a bit later and we had a very unusually long telephone conversation that evening.  Frenchy is away again for 4 days on work and with the pair of us being hopelessly broke, this left me in Paris with no money, no friends and no enthusiasm, so it was nice to hear my Mothers familiar voice.

We talked of family. Which is never positive. We talked about her, which is always worrying. We talked of me and Frenchy, being impoverished and struggling with life. We talked of me and my unending feelings of looserism. Lack of friends, social life and general lack of belongings due to them being in London and me being in Paris and not having enough money to go fetch them.

And I feel decidedly blue.

My Mother was in good spirits despite the fact that my eldest half sister has just kicked her husband out again due to his addiction to alcohol and gambling.  My half brother is cultivating his abusive streak and washing it down with a combination of alcohol and cocaine and a string of unsuccessful attempts to find a job. My Grandmother has become a recluse and depressed since my Grandfather died, despite the fact that he himself gave her no happiness whilst he was alive, suffered a nervous breakdown and was in-fact sexually deviant.  I always knew that he was disfunctionally attracted to two out of five of my siblings. One of them being me. The last time he tried it on with me was when I was 18, he never pushed it thank God, but I was the only one in the family that he confided in about his own childhood abuse by his Mothers friends and a teacher. I always felt sorry for him rather than angry, he was a tortured man and spent his whole life hiding behind a cloak that was only transparent to me. 

I am left wondering how sane I actually am.  Wondering how much all the people in my life have affected me.  I long to go get some therapy but I can’t afford it, so I have decided to spill the beans here and feel paranoid and scared writing about it all.  I feel like a big gaping wound.  The loose stitches that I have personally sewed in order to keep my wounds from showing unpick themselves with every word I type.

I cope by getting up every day and doing what everybody else does, but am I really coping?

I talked to my Mother about Frenchy. She asked how he was doing.  He is doing well and after his breakdown last year, he is slowly putting the pieces back together.  The thing that increasingly worries me though and I am starting to feel anger about, is my inability to understand the mental health system.

Frenchy was admitted to a psychiatric ward last year after complete meltdown. He was let out after a period of about 5 weeks and sent home with a bag of rainbow assorted pills. He spent the first couple of months walking around like the living dead, drugged up on a cocktail of unpronounceable medication. He visited his psychiatrist once a week to “check in” and keep an eye on him. This man is apparently one of the top psychiatrists in France.

Well I think he is a complete fuck up. I am angry at him. On many different levels.

I am angry at the mental health system. I hate doctors. I hate them because they can’t fix my loved ones.

My Mother walks around rattling, as does my boyfriend now. Medication is fine, I understand that there is a need for it, but it took doctors 58 years of my Mothers life to diagnose her with Bi-Polar disorder. She went through several break downs and other atrocities, a painful living existence and putting her family through ceaseless feelings of concern and fear. She now has her diagnosis and we all know the reason why she is the way she is.

But why the hell does the system shell out free medication, but charge extortionate rates for good therapy? I understand that some psychiatric illnesses need a life time of medication, but medication is the bandage for the wound, to keep it from bleeding and oozing pain, therapy is the open air the wound needs to attempt to let it dry out, show itself and be made aware of its very existence.

Since my Mothers last break down 4 years ago and her long awaited diagnosis, she has become even more crazy. She has an ever increasing collection of tattoos, 5 at the last count, with another in the pipeline. 11 holes in her ears and a diamond that has been injected above her lip. Her drinking has become very regular and has taken up asking for pot from my brother on occasion. She frequents the local bars in her area alone on a regular basis and chats up any man that happens to be near her. Her hair changes colour weekly, she has the most extraordinary outbursts of temper and has been know on occasion to get out of bed a 2 or 3 in the morning, get in the car and drive off to God knows where.

So tell me doctors, what have you fucking done for her lately?

Because although on the outside this woman looks like she is living her life in colour and has the ability to be the soul of the party, nobody sees what’s going on inside of her and nobody is forcing her to face her problems.

When she was recently put back on Lithium a few weeks ago, he doctor suggested she go back into The Priory for a “rest”.  At 700 pounds sterling a day, this is obviously not an option for my Mother, and my Mother being who she is wouldn’t dream of going into a NHS hospital again for all the tea in China. So it was left there. No after care, no insistence that she get referred to an affordable good therapist. Just a pat on the back and another bottle of pills.

Fucked up.

Which leads me onto Frenchy. Who I love and care for. Who is my lover and my friend and who I feel needs and deserves more help than he is getting.

Now he pays good money every month for medical care, so why is he not getting it?

He has been on medication for a good 7 or 8 months now. His weekly visits to his psychiatrist have been lowered to once every 3 – 4 weeks. He was referred to an analyst months ago, but at  € 180 a session there is no way he can afford it.  Frenchy being who he is, is too proud to explain that he has not got that kind of money along with the fact that he is not keen on therapy. It doesn’t take a intellectual to work out that he has been avoiding the issue for months now. So why is his psychiatrist not chasing this up?

And why after 5 weeks of Frenchy being admitted to psychiatric hospital and being put on heavy medication, has no-one told him what the fucking hell is going on with him???

No diagnosis. No explanation. Just a shit load of pills.

How can you medicate someone if you don’t know what the cause is???

So Frenchy just keeps chewing his way through his daily doses and I watch him getting more and more concerned with the amount of weight he is putting on due to the side effects of the medication. Our financial problems and the fact that although he is getting work in, what he really needs is his next big project to happen are making him feel down and depressed. 

Why the fuck is he depressed when he is being prescribed an inordinate number of pills??

Why the fuck am I the only one who notices this???

I am angry, pissed off and feel anarchic. I don’t like to see the people I love suffer.

When I first came back to Paris after Frenchy got out of hospital, I asked if Frenchy could ask his doctor if I could come to one of his visits with him. I wanted to hear what the doctor had to say about Frenchy, to see if he had any advice for me as Frenchy’s next of kin so to speak.

The answer I got back from this quack was that he was not there to survey me, it was Frenchy he was treating.

Well let me tell you something Doctor Duck, I don’t need your fucking surveillance, what I need is some fucking answers from you. I want to know what gives you the right to fill my loved one’s gills with meds and not take any fucking responsibility for the fact that maybe there is more you could do to help him.

You, with your nice home and your big fat pay check coming in monthly for anaesthetising your patients into walking around like zombies. 

You, who refuses to give any explanation, diagnosis, or general information on what the fuck is going on.

You, who sits in you office and refuses to speak to me, even though I live with Frenchy’s pain too.

You little shit.

I have decided this week, that when Frenchy gets back from being away and makes his next appointment to go see Doctor Duck, that I am going with him.  Doctor Duck will not know about this until I enter through the door of his office. I will have a list of questions I want answered.

So help me God, if he does not answer them, Hell hath no fury…

I have had enough.

Pigs Might Fly But What About Cats?

Because I’m wondering if that is in fact what my cat did last night.

We were asleep so I will never know.

He was snoozing in the lounge when we went to bed and when we woke up this morning he was outside our front door which is lacking in the cat flap department.

Before I explain more, let me introduce you visually to my furry three legged friend, Tripod..

 

I have mentioned him in my blog on many an occasion, but never posted a picture. 

Maybe I am biased because he is mine but I do think he is the most adorable cat that ever was. I feel so close to him, it is almost like I went through the most vicious labour for days to give birth to him…

… and I have to hold back from asking on occasion “Do you think he has my eyes?”

But back to the event in question.

This morning.

I stumbled out of bed in a Saturday morning type fashion. Arms out horizontally forming a radar for locating the coffee pot and remnants of yesterdays mascara encircling my eyes giving me a kind of deranged Gothic look.

I made the coffee and called in Frenchy for his fix. He appeared from the bedroom scratching his….head and we sat down to discuss our plans for our day.

In between the pauses in our conversation, I was sure I heard the faint cry of a cat in the distance. Not from our flat.. no, definitely not. It seemed to be coming from an external source.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Frenchy after a couple of sounds confirmed I wasn’t hearing things.

“It sounds like a cat” He answered.

“Where’s our Tripod?”

“Probably behind the curtain in the bedroom, if not in the laundry” He replied, experienced in the current Tripod haunts.

I heard the cry again. Is it coming from under the floorboards? Has someone buried a cat beneath our Parisian Parquet? Surely not.

The cry came again with a distinct warble to it that I immediately recognised. I got up and searched all popular Tripodeon chill out areas of the moment.

Behind all curtains. Nothing.

Laundry. Nothing but unmatched soiled socks and other atrocities.

I started calling his name. Rien. I have to add that our flat is small and not easy to get lost in.

I heard the cry again.

Frenchy and I looked at each other in disbelief.

“Bloody hell, It’s coming from outside the front door!” I exclaimed.

I ran down the corridor and opened the front door to find Tripod  circling the landing and the neighbours standing at their front door in matching nightwear looking at me .. not looking my best.

I picked him up and explained in my version of French, that I had no idea how he got outside the front door. Cat teleportation had not been invented yet, his inability to walk through walls and not being tall enough to reach the latch on the front door etc….

They looked at me and nodded, then explained that he had been out there all night.

Could they not have rung the doorbell to let us know? More importantly how the hell did he get out there?

We live on the first floor. He doesn’t go out as the Hound Of Hell Gardienne of our block would go mental at the thought of our three legged friend wandering around the courtyard. She has even banned pigeons from entering, I am still trying to find out how she has managed that.

I carried Tripod back in and set him down, he flopped on the floor legs outstretched, looking like an exhausted cocktail stick.

Frenchy and I held a house meeting to work out how this unusual feline escapolgy situation happened. The result of the debate ended up with the decision that he had in fact, jumped.

Did I mention that we live on the first floor of our block and there is a good 9 ft drop from our window to the ground? Well I’m mentioning it again for effect.

Just so that you can envision it;

Our window is the window above the shuttered one, the one on the first floor, the one that is not near the ground.. Just so as we are clear..

Also, just so we can see the birds eye view of what Tripod saw as he kamikaze’d himself off the window ledge, 

Check this out;

 

A fearless feat for a feline with a handicap wouldn’t you say?

I was torn between feelings of concern and a distinct feeling of pride for having such a talented pet.

I am so glad he is ok. We will have to take more care when the window is open in future.

But what a clever thing! No wings, no Super Hero flying cape, no helium inflated insides… Just a cat with a mission, flinging himself into the unknown, taking a chance, feeling the fear and doing it anyway.. and not letting a handicap get in his way.

Tripod, I admire you… Just don’t fucking do it again all right???