C came back for roughly 10 days. It has been a bit of emotional roller-coaster. I am still in the thick of summer holiday and kids. Can’t concentrate. Can’t finish a book. Can’t complete a paragraph. We haven’t really done anything together and we still share our bed with our 6-year-old. Expectation and reality. Give and take. Money. Who is in charge. My composure is a mess.

The old brick shed in the garden is demolished and the deck is completed and all paid for. It is a massive investment. I am still feeling the pain. But now I do love our new deck and sit at the table all the time looking at the birds and butterflies. I even started sketching after dinner last night. I am itching to knit and looking for a suitable patterns for the yarns I already have.

It is actually my annual leave from my data role. I took the week off. It isn’t easy when I am on annual leave as I can’t help catastrophising everything. I often feel I am taking a free-ride on this job, that it can indulge me work-from-home and I don’t have a lot to do. I am worried that I have misread my tasks, or forgot a deadline. Kids on school holiday. I have picked up four morning shifts and one sleep-over instead. I still check work emails when I am off as I am paranoid. There are many incentive for me to pick up more hours in the causal role. Money is one thing. I think mainly is restlessness. I don’t know, but it is definitely the right thing to do. I was working in a short break service for children with complex disabilities. Four kids were in, three kids were going home before 10am. Two of four were non-verbal. I was happy to be able to read with one of them, one book after another. I have also met another girl, who I assume comes from the travelers’ communities. She is rather normal, as kids go, in a children’s home.

I was dead tired when I came back. I went to toilet all the bloody time throughout the week, I think I may be going through some kind of UTI. I have been like this before, nothing major. I start drinking a lot more water yesterday, unfortunately just as much wine. It will be a big commitment to cut it down completely over the summer holiday but I am always all or nothing.

I got some new headphones. I can’t live without my headphones. We went out a few times. We went to the National Glass Centre that was closing.

I got an email asking me to write a mini-bio and I got rather stressed out. I lack a certainty, a reference point, to declare what success look like, what victory look like – relative to the real world. I live in a world that the most exciting happening is a new B&M opening. I don’t understand the hype even I try, just as I don’t understand why everyone at Newcastle Airport goes to Spain where they will stay somewhere that accommodate the same British. How miserable you life has to be to decide this is a good idea?

I am attempting to make sense of the world where the line draws as Deborah Levy observes the posh mothers are less interesting than the mothers with less. I am not sure this is something I agree with – but I am sure posh mummies will bore me shitless as much. Admittedly burdened with the tendency to be unfairly judgmental, hopelessly cynical and premature conclusions, I find everyone’s lives wildly amusing and fascinating. Like a child observing to imitate acceptable and expected behaviours and evaluate where in the world do I stand. And maybe because I am lucky to be able to live in this house that I complain about all the time? I hate myself complaining too. But the thought of going away, jetlag, dog care, managing kids, counting every penny. I can’t relax.

Unlike me, apparently C is more certain about where he stands in the world. C works with people that don’t go to B&M. Maybe because I am a mum. I work, I study, I paint, I knit, I read, I DIY, I garden, but being a mum still definingly overrides everything else in my life to a point everything else appears meaningless and any singular goal feels unachievable. Being a mum makes me feel I can do it all and I can’t do anything. This is my short bio.

I am still waiting for the grade of my latest essay, something solid to define myself.

I am listening to R4 this morning. Women’s Hour discuss ‘good enough marriages’ rather than looking for a perfect partner.

I have a long list of things I want to do and I need to do before C comes home next time.

Everything is good enough.