Well it’s exciting news today, good news, for a change – I feel like it’s been doom and gloom for so long now that my brain chemistry seems to have re-aligned or something. But today; ironically, since it’s supposed to be Blue Monday, the most depressing day of the year; today the blues lifted, and the sun shone, and I now have got myself a literary agent. Okay, so I’m kind of excited. Well, actually. I’m REALLY excited. I’m massively, stupidly, ridiculously excited. I’m excited enough to put an exclamation mark here! Okay, maybe even TWO exclamation marks!! (with some CAPITAL LETTERS!!). Mum, I think, said something like, oh for goodness sake, don’t get too excited… but sod that, I’m going to be excited for a bit – it’s my party and I’ll get excited if I want to!!!
So it happened this way… on the self same day that I had the phone call telling me that dad was critically ill in hospital and I drove over to East Surrey like a lunatic to see him – on that day, on my return, I had received an email from an agent saying she was interested in seeing my manuscript. What a strange, extreme conflict of emotions I was thrown into then! I hardly knew how I felt, except I did feel somehow guilty that I felt happy and excited about that, when I felt that I ought to be feeling really sad and worried about dad. Which I did of course, too. How do you reconcile two quite opposite states of emotion? I don’t think I allowed myself to really start getting excited or happy about it until today. Anyway, today I went up to Clapham and met the agent for lunch, and talked books, and children’s books, and my books, and all things Owen – and I feel very keyed up and eager to start really tackling my manuscript again – lots of work to do, lots of ideas, need to get cracking on it asap and get those ideas into shape before they all melt away… it’s going to be hard work but I’m so up for it now. That first manuscript has been sitting around waiting for this moment, and I know I can make it even better than it is already. Bring it on!
In Owen world, lest I forget the wee man (heaven forbid – and he’d never allow that to happen!) What a little terror he was today when I picked him up from nursery! I swear they are teaching him how to be mean to mummy. They are always telling me how wonderfully well-behaved he is, and yet the minute we are out of the door he’s screaming and yelling at me for something or other, and he can be really nasty when he wants to be! After such a lovely day, this evening has been horrid, I felt completely dreadful because he was so badly behaved and I ended up yelling at him. And then mum took him off the minute we got in and played the nice cop to my nasty cop, and that made me feel even worse. Why do I have to be the bad cop always? I want to be the good cop, but it never works out that way. But someone has to set the boundaries. And he still keeps asking me if I’m happy. He was in a lovely mood this morning, really cheeky and cheerful – but after nursery he always seems to be full of anger and aggression. This is not good. I don’t know if this is a normal thing, maybe it is. Maybe I should ask a few other mums their experiences of post-nursery behaviour.
Ah, I’m tired now. It’s early but I’m going to have to call it a day. Well, hopefully after a good long sleep, little man will have recovered his equanimity.
