Three people (whom I adore) in the last four days have told me I’m not quite myself. Well actually the first one told me I was a psycho which, given my over-reaction to a certain situation was totally apt – but you know how when you are being a psycho, it’s really hard to be told it be someone else (in fact it’s akin to someone suggesting you may have PMT at a point in time when it is highly likely that you may have PMT, and it would be OK for you to acknowledge that you have PMT but for someone else to suggest it’s the reason you are being unreasonable and overly dramatic makes you want to attack them by the throat (in an unreasonable and overly dramatic manner)). A fourth person looked at me like I was not quite myself but that was my teenage daughter who was engineering an outing with boys and wasn’t keen on my insistence that I eyeball the said boy before she left the house with him. At this point in time I would have thought I did not look like a psycho, but my judgement is a bit off. Mostly it was just that I was totally embarrassing.
Of course, I have had a bit of a think about me saying and doing things that are just not like myself and tried to come up with a reason. I think it would be far too convenient to blame hormones, although I would like to, but for the most part I am a balanced and loving and reasonable person but my reactions have been OTT. It would be really convenient to blame too many times mentioned ex-husband and his erratic behaviour. Or I could blame the moon or the alignment of Jupiter – but honestly it would be silly to blame anything outside of myself….
Things are a-changing in my house, which shouldn’t be too hard to take given the last two years of fairly dramatic changes, but the thing that has really go me in a flutter is that my au pair is leaving.
Had I been a bit more regular in my writing I would have waxed lyrical about my beautiful French au pair who arrived six months ago and has been a part of our family – our nanny, our cook, our grocery shopper, our house-keeper and our friend. But as I didn’t I promise to dedicate another session to the wonder that is an au pair (well our au pair at least!!). In a week she is heading back to France and the life I shaped around her goes back to the one where I am juggling things myself and asking family and friends for favours and having to take extra kids in the car to do other children pick-up, when for 6 months I’ve been FREE. In fact, I think she’s like having a wife (in the nicest possible and most respectful way) except for the romance bit and probably her role is slightly more defined, and until I had one I didn’t realise how much I needed her. It’s not that I’m not capable of doing all the things I did before, although I certainly can’t make crepes as well as her or make the word ‘lizard’ sound sexy, but in all honesty I don’t want to. And she’s easy company, and we’ll miss her and for all the reasons having an au pair and making them part of your family is wonderful, it doesn’t feel good at the point where they’re going to leave and you know your baby will be looking for her, and un-making her part of your family and finding someone new feels a bit traitorous. And it’s never just the convenience of having the washing done and dinner cooked, and French delicacies baked, and kids loved and fed and the schedule do-able (although all these things are fantastic), but in the end she’s a person who fitted with your family, probably knows as much about you as anyone, and is going home (which is continents away).
And so, I’m a bit psycho. Although I know that in the end it will all just fall into place (having faith remember and embracing the unexpected!!) I have to work out how to make it work again. I have to find somebody new who will fit into our family in a different way. I have to let go, when letting go has never been my forte.
Goodbye my lovely Frenchie – we’ll be over to visit one summertime to eat crepes and talk about the lizards xo
