NotSheep

Sunday again, huh? And again, I’m managing a blog-post about once a week. Not that there’s been much to say this week – a lot of time has been spent dealing with the aftermath of Monday’s accident, and in between that and having shaky, tearful moments, I’ve been trying to fit in a bit of skool with the boys. The lack of decent sleep (too much stiffness and soreness, too much thinking) has affected me, and the lack of routine has affected most of the boys. They’ve still had the usual round of activities (Scouts, swimming, fencing, etc) but the daytime routine has gone to pot. George in particular is having a hard time, and when George has a hard time, oh boy do the rest of us too. It’s been a long time since he’s been as difficult as he has been in the last few weeks, and the accident has shaken him more than he realises – even though he wasn’t in the car at the time, he’s the one who has been having nightmares about it. Cyril is doing his best to cope with the stresses in the family and with George in particular, but it’s clear he’s still struggling. Toby is looking for attention, and only getting some of it – I’m trying, but I’ve spent so much time on the phone with the insurance company, the accident repair centre, the legal bods that the insurance has engaged, etc – there just hasn’t been enough time and attention to go around. By Friday I decided enough was enough, and went to hang out at a friend’s house along with most of the boys – but the stopping made me realise just how exhausted I was from the running. It’s astonishing just how complicated all this stuff is – goodness knows what it’s like after an accident where there’s a question over whose fault it was.

I took Jack and Toby to Children’s Casualty on Wednesday night, to get them checked over – on Monday Jack said he had sore shoulders and Toby said he had a sore head, then on Wednesday it was Toby’s turn for sore shoulders. The doctor said she had no concerns, that they seemed fine, but on Friday Jack started to complain of a sore head. I saw my own GP on Thursday (for the first time since we moved here four-and-a-half years ago) and have been told that I’m suffering from injury to the soft tissues around my neck, shoulders and back, as well as possibly something to do with a ligament near my right knee. None of us is seriously injured though, and for that, I’m very grateful. It could have so easily been so much worse.

The insurance company has decided that my car is “uneconomical to repair” – which means that it would cost more to repair than they reckon it’s worth. In other words, it’s a write-off, and they’ll give me a cheque for its value. I still don’t know what they’ll decide its value is, though – but we’re certainly going to have to add on money of our own to be able to replace it with anything suitable. In the meantime, the claims people sorted out a car rental for me – a Landrover Discovery – a seven-seater, they claim, although I’d argue that anything which produces two fold-up seats from the floor of the boot and places them right next to the back window is really only a pseudo-seven-seater – and it certainly isn’t something I want my children sitting in, not after two of their heads were only saved by being a reasonably long distance from a back window on Monday. I thought it might at least be nice to drive, but it isn’t. The only thing I can say in its favour is that it’s quite entertaining to try to confuse the sat-nav system. So Scratchy has been driving that to work, and I’ve been using his car. In the meantime, the Cosmic Supply Company appears to have been ‘aving a larf, because what should I see advertised the day after the accident? A nine-seater Caravelle, at a price I can afford – and which we’ve now agreed to buy. It’s going to require a chunk of my own funds, but I hope that the insurance company cheque will arrive promptly, so it can at least cover some of the cost. It will be very different for me – going from what is (or was) a luxury car, with lots of lovely things like bluetooth and cd-changer and heated seats and electric sliding doors, and getting into what is essentially a large van with lots of seats bolted into it. The Caravelle is basic, but it is, for us, extremely practical – and it’s what’s available Right Now. So, er, thanks, Cosmic Supply Company, and next time I’ll be a bit more specific in what I wish for…

I would have attempted to make the upcoming week very routine-y, but we have Film Education movies booked for three of the mornings, so routine isn’t going to happen. (I’m beginning to think that normal, routine weeks are never going to happen.) I think we all need a couple of days of focussing on each other rather than just “dealing with stuff”; maybe we’ll manage that much. Barney needs to get really stuck into skool, because he has only one month until his first science GCSE papers, and he’s finding out the hard way why it was a bad idea to assume he didn’t need to make decent notes. And Hallowe’en is less than two weeks away, and I haven’t even started to make lists for Christmas – argh, I’d better stop now, before I give up and hide!