January 4^th 2009

Really meant to start this diary three days ago. I've never really been one for keeping a diary,  at least not since I was fourteen.

I remember buying a wonderful glossy Wham! diary from Woolworths with a tiny gold lock and key to keep out prying eyes. George was looking all moody with his big, blonde 80's hair and white baggy shirt, Andrew was smiling his cheekiest smile. 

My intention was to chart the various stages of my first true love - Jason Stone. I thought it would be great being able to look back on it when we were married with kids and read about our first date, our first kiss, the school dance,  the day he proposed to me underneath the Eiffel tower..   

Every night - just before I went to sleep I would purge myself of my deepest heartfelt feelings and declare my undying love for him. Then I'd turn the key in the little plastic lock and hide it carefully in my underwear drawer.

Then about eight days later Karen Jones told me that Piper Smythe told her that Jason told Tim.. somebody… that he thought I was a bit too much like a librarian.  So I ripped up every page and threw it in the next door neigbours bin - just incase - and my relationship with diaries ended there and then.

So why now?

Well I read an article last year - can't quite remember who by - which asked "Do you ever feel that life is whizzing you by?"  Do you ever feel like you can't even remember what you did last weekend let alone last year? Do you every worry that your life is moving along - and that nobody, not even you, is really noticing?

The author spoke about picturing herself, perhaps being cared for by one of her yet to be born children, with little or no memories of the fun she had and the places she had been when she was younger. So she started keeping diaries,  well she was American, so she called them journals - Tomato / Tomatoe - same thing. Anyway she said that she found it a great way to "record today the things that will matter to you tomorrow as you look back and reflect on the special moments" of life.

Then, almost as if by fate, in the Christmas edition of Cosmo or maybe it was Vogue they had an article saying that no list of New Years resolutions should be complete without "Keep a Diary". A "top physiologist" claims that it is a cathartic and therapeutic experience which will both "cleanse the soul and keep you focused on your goals for the year".  

So that was it - Fait accompli. It went straight in at number 7 on my list of New Years resolutions; just under spend less money on over priced toiletries and just ahead of cleaning out my wardrobe and donating to charity everything that I have not worn for over eighteen months.   

Now, apparently every good diary should start with an introduction so here goes..

I'm Kara , Kara Baines although if anyone ever gets to read this they'll probably know that already.  I'm thirty… well let's just say I'm thirty something and separated with a four year old son. Max.

I have a reasonable social life. True - it's not as good as it was a few years ago as  gradually my friends have married and / or had kids - and it's nice to spend any spare time I have with Max. To be honest a hectic social life seems to get less important with every passing year.    

Work? I'm an archeolgist. Whenever I tell people that they say "oh like Lara Croft? That's exiting". Uninspiringly every fourth or fifth person (usually men) manages to come up with - "archaologist? - hey like.. Kara Croft …" without any recognition that they are probably the one hundred and fifth person to come up with that line..

Sadly my life bears little or no resemblence to Lara Croft. I work in a museum tagging and recording a variety of artefacts, checking humidity and temperatures on the exhibitions, and do endless amounts of research on dead people. Sometimes I even get to take groups of disinterested school kids on museum tours. 

On the very few occasions that I have found myself on something that might pass as a dig or expedition I have never been confronted by a group of gun wielding,  homicidal ninja -archaeologists with only my push up bra and tooth whitener for protection.

But anyway, now that Christmas and New Year are over it's back to mundane normality. It's not that I particularily like Christmas and New Year, being paraded in front of family and friends that you haven't seen since last Christmas, whose sole line of conversation is either " And how's work going - anything new happening in archeology?" or "So tell me Kara - are you still on your own?"

"Clock's ticking" proded Aunt Pat wearing a sympathetic almost pitiful expression this year.  

"Perhaps she's - you know - one of those lesbian thingys" I overheard my mums friend June suggest.. "you know - the kind you see on Channel 4".

MMh..

Then there's the performance of giving and receiving presents that no-one needs or wants. Smiling excitedly and pretending that you had been looking for a pair of pink woolen Hello Kitty mittens only last week.  

I'm not a big fan of New Year either. It's great when you're a child and you get to stay up late with all the adults and maybe get a drink of advocaat or sweet sherry to welcome in the New Year. I remember really looking forward to  mixing with the adults - apart from the bit where Mr Davidson from number 17 would kiss me on the lips and cuddle me around the bum.

I did get quite excited at the millenium - a whole new century with lots of fresh new opportunites. Everyone was setting off fireworks and buying champagne and secretly hoping that all of the computers in the world really would shut down - just for a few minutes.

But to be honest every year since has been pretty much the same as any of the previous years and it seems like just another excuse to get drunk and question how in the world after all these years Jools Holland is still so appalingly bad at presenting TV programmes. And does anyone really enjoy listening to Ally whatshisname playing fiddle music while Eddie Reader or Capercaillie perform some traditional Scottish dirge?

On the plus side though, you get extra days off work. Long lies. And no-one questions you if you veg about the house all day in your pyjamas eating industrial sized bars of Cadbury's chocolate and Snow Topped Toblerones all day long drooling over Pirates Of The Caribbean.

Still perhaps this is the year where it all turns around.. so it's back to the real world tomorrow. 

Hope my grey skirt still fits…

                                            

 

January 5^th

My phone wakes me at FIVE AM.. Who in God's name calls you at five in the morning? A hundred options span through my head - has someone died? Has there been an accident? God Max is with his dad - has something happened? Has the museum burnt down?

It was Penny.. My closest but somewhat dizzy friend.

"Are you awake? She shouted "Can you talk?". Through my sleepiness I was sure I could hear tears - surely not - Penny never cried. Again a myriad of possibilities pulled me from my sleep, Terminal Illness. Terrible accident.

It took a while to get any sense out of her - longer even than normal. In the end, it turned out that her 66 year old mother has just got engaged to a 38 year old man that she met on a SAGA holiday in Altinkum.  

Details were a little sketchy and it wasn't easy to get sense between the tears and the rants about being robbed of her inheritance. Anyway… why would a 38 year old man even be on a SAGA holiday? Surely you have to be .. well.. old..

I have a feeling this will not the last hysterical phone call.

My alarm wasn't supposed to go off until 6.45 - but as I am awake I think I may as well make an early start for work.

Thought about doing some sit ups. Decided against it. Didn't want to shock my body any further. I am sure that I've read somewhere that sleep deprivation can be very dangerous.

The shower kicked me into life for about 10 minutes, The industrial strength black coffee gave me another 90 minutes or so.. but by 6.45 I was pretty much ready to go back to bed.  

In the car I put on the Mika CD: I need something cheerful in the morning to get me started.  The radio breakfast shows seems so noisy nowadays - just a rabble - 17 people in a studio all vying for airtime. Same records (do you still call them records?) day after day.  For a while I listened religiously to the breakfast show on 5 Live, which did make me feel much more intelligent and I was able to sound very well informed on all manner of topical issues at work. Then somewhere along the line the BBC seemed to decide that they would only report on bad news and that they would make every story as depressing and negative as possible. So I now simply pick a CD to match my mood - or to match the mood I'd like to have..  

Three cups of coffee and a low fat muffin later I found myself in the sandwich shop across from the museum. Panini in hand reading the free paper.

The first article I stumble across?

"New Year - New Man. 10 ways to change your relationship this year."

Surprisingly going on a SAGA holiday to Turkey did not make the authors top 10.  

Oh - almost forgot.. just to compound my misery the museum secretary caught me in the ladies on my way back to my office. 

"I need to know final numbers for the Charity Foundation Ball Kara  - are you bringing your partner? "

"I don't have a partner right now" I replied - the words fell out of my mouth before I had the chance to stop them… Immediately I knew what was coming.

"Oh, I am sorry." She says. "I'll just mark you down as a one then".

I know I should have had a witty comeback - perhaps something about being on tablets for it, and being confident that it'd clear up in a couple of weeks. Maybe something about being so burnt out with all the great sex I had last year I'd decided to spend the first three months of the new year celibate to allow my body to re-charge. Instead I find myself simply smiling politely and heading towards the hand drier.

Trudged back to the office to get on with my research on Sekhemkhet.

 

 

 

                                            

 

January 6

Max is still on holiday with his father - not due back until the end of the week. Without the detour of taking him to his grandparents on the way to work I got to squeeze in another 40 minutes sleep. And no Five AM phone call.

My morning's work is interrupted by a constant flow of text messages - mostly from Penny, following up on the story about her mother and her younger man. Spent about three hours on the phone last night going through every detail - even forgot to sky+ Holby City!! 

Turns out the man in question, Alev, was a waiter at the hotel. That's original.

Apparently he served the SAGA ladies Turkish tea on the terrace every afternoon and carried the packed lunches for them on their excursions. Clearly the lunches were not all he was packing.

According to Mrs. King (Penny's mother) they were inseparable for the whole of the second week. Morning AND night.. Alev proposed to her at the toga party on the beach the day before she flew home.   Can't help thinking that perhaps the SAGA group got mixed up with the Club 18- 30's.

Penny is distraught. 

The last straw may have been when Mrs. King told her that she had not realised that sex could be so "wild and sweaty".

Oh God - just remembered I'm supposed to be meeting my own mum for lunch the day after tomorrow. Really meant to call tonight and make up some excuse to cancel. Too late now. Will think of a really brilliant excuse tomorrow..

Just received a text from Jane, another friend, telling me that someone in her office told her she was a MILF today - and asking what that meant exactly.

I am tempted to suggest that she calls to ask Mrs. King.   

 

  

 

January 8

Could not get out of lunch with Mum today. Tried everything.

"Busy at work."

"Felt I might be coming down with something. "

"Next doors dog ate my work project and I had to re-do it… "

She was determined.

My mum and I don't have a traditional mother / daughter relationship.

In fact we don't really have any kind of relationship.

Jack, my ex-husband, used to tell me that he thought she was jealous of me - for having the life and the career that she had wanted when she was younger. 

As far as I know my mum was very bright and very attractive when she was young. She went to University, had plenty of admirers and lots of plans. 

Reading between the lines I think that she also liked a good time, well I suppose the sixties liberated a lot of strong minded young women… 

And I was the result of one of those good times… 

I guess back then single parent families were not as in vogue as they are today. So my mum dropped out of University, got married to my dad, and together they have enjoyed a fairly miserable existence ever since. In my mothers eyes I think she always thought she could do better, that she had been destined for better things. I've always felt that she blamed me for the way things turned out, and that she resents me for it. 

She never really shows much interest in me - or even in Max. She never wants to spend time with him, rarely even talks to him. 

Yet come Birthdays and Christmas you can guarantee that she will buy him the biggest gift. It's usually not something he is interested in - but it's big.

I actually think that she spends the entire year working out what to buy him.

It has to be big - so big it will be almost impossible to find space in our house to store it.

And noisy. Noisy is good. Not just moderately noisy like a siren on a car or a talking character. It must be really noisy. Like a drum kit. A keyboard, or a mini -trumpet. A real mini trumpet, I mean where in the world do you find an actual mini trumpet?

He's not even five yet and he's got everything he needs to perform "One Man Band".

She's recently moved onto technology. She knows that I have no idea about technology - and neither does she. So she buys Max lots of hi-tec gadgets knowing that I will have no idea how to work them. Max will pester me to see it working and I will have to call Jack to get him to come over and fix it up.

So it's big, noisy and comes with ritual humiliation.

Still for as long as I can remember mental torture has been one of her specialties.     

Wouldn't surprise me if she worked as a part time consultant for the US in Guantanamo Bay, devising new, undetectable forms of mental torture to inflict upon the detainees. God knows she'd have been the perfect candidate.

Anyway… today was the first time she has wanted to have lunch with me for about three years - and she was determined. I assumed that there must be some kind of agenda.

And she didn't let me down.

We did the small talk for a while about who was ill, and who had died. We went through the various lightly veiled digs at how bad a mother / daughter   I was.   

Mum always does most of the talking - generally always about herself- maybe that's how all mums are - but I don't think she even asked how Max was getting on. Or how I was doing with him being away for so long.

Then - just as I placed my credit card on the plate to pay the bill,

- It came.

"You're dad was at the hospital on Tuesday."

"Is he ok?" I asked - focusing more on getting the attention of the waitress so I could get out of there.

In her favorite "if you were any kind of daughter you'd have known" tone she replied...

"He's got Alzheimer's".

 

January 9

Can't quite take in dad's illness.

I guess we never really imagine our parents getting old. - in our heads I suppose we always see them as we did when we were 13. 

I couldn't get it out of my mind all night last night. Ended up looking it up on the internet at 2am this morning - but that just made me feel worse.

I can't remember my dad ever being ill. He got the cold and the flu, and like every man with the flu he would make it look as though every breath was going to be his last… but he has never actually been ill. Always been really fit for his age, always looked after himself. God he takes more exercise than I do even at 65. He goes to the gym and goes out running twice a week - whatever the weather.

And Alzheimer's is so cruel and undignified.  

Then again - I suppose he might be so far out of it that the indignity might be lost on him. 

But 65 - That's almost middle age nowadays isn't it?  I mean Penny's mum is 66 and there she is running around town on the arm of a 38 year old toy boy displaying the stamina of a 21 year old, fuelled apparently by cocktails of Midouri and multiple orgasms.

And all my dad has to look forward to is being in a permanent daze with someone wiping the dribble from his chin. 

Still .. need to snap out of this..

Max comes back today.

It's nice to get a break for a day or two - but I do miss him when he's not around.

This is the first time that he's ever stayed away for more than a weekend, and the first time he's ever been so far away, so it was a little strange.

Jack picked him up on the 30^th and took him to spend ten days in Pattaya, to meet his new wife's' family.

I wasn't sure about it, I thought it was a really long trip for a four and a half year old, and if I'm honest I guess I wanted his first really glamorous holiday to be with me.. but he seemed keen to go and I thought it would be petty to stand in his way. 

Jack and I still get on quite well.

It wasn't always like that; I found it hard at first, especially when he got together with Kimi so quickly after we split up. Even although it was me who decided that we should call it a day I thought he would mourn the passing of the relationship a little longer than he did. I suppose I thought that he'd fight a little harder to get us back together.

A year on though and he was re-married, and it didn't help that he had opted for a newer, younger model. 

But he's a good father, he loves Max and I really want him to have a good relationship with his dad.

I can't wait to get him back today though. 

I need a cuddle.

   

January 10, 2010

Have spent most of today being told stories about how wonderful Thailand was - and how wonderful, funny and beautiful Kimi is.

Just what I need right now.

"Kimi really is beautiful mum isn't she - and she has a tan all the time - you know like the kind you want?"

Then over lunch…

"Mum - when I grow up do you think I will live next to Kimi and Dad?"

"Mum - why isn't there a beach here like there is in Thailand?"

And when I gave him a row for throwing a tantrum…….

"That's it Mum I have had enough of you.. I'm going to cancel you and get a new mum"

 

…And I knew just the new mum he had in mind.