Is it April ? Already ? Surely not.

I've written about Sunday night syndrome before. That sinking feeling you get when the realisation kicks in that the weekend is over and it's going to be Monday very soon. I don't usually succumb to this. For me a Monday is pretty much like any other day. Actually at the moment I'm often not sure what day it is. Obviously Bank Holidays mess with everyone's idea of time anyway. Almost everyone I know was convinced that it was Saturday on Good Friday and it's taken me a while to realise it's Sunday today and not Monday.

And now it's April. In my head it's still January. I remember when we were undergoing the assessment for adoption we learned about the effects of trauma. Adults who have experienced trauma in childhood are often stuck in the age at which it happened - emotionally. It's important for us as parents to support our child so he is able to process and move on from early trauma. I had no idea this would be relevant to me at any point.

This year started with the death of a close friend. It was a shock and when I see a facebook memory that she commented on or a photo of her beautiful smile it throws me. The kindness of people I barely know has been a surprise. I've been keeping in contact with her partner and try to sit down with him every two weeks so he has space to talk about her and to cry if he wants to. I take food for him and their son so that they don't have to worry about cooking. In the sadness of it all I'm grateful that we were friends and that I can do something to help her husband and son. Grief absolutely sucks. It's draining. It's relentless. Having things to do helps.

Of course fate intevened to ensure I'd be kept busy and this during the recent 'thundersnow' - our boiler broke down. In the afternoon I noticed that the radiator was cooling down and asked Hubbie to check the boiler was ok and he said it had a fault code he didn't recognise. We had a long drawn out drama* with the company we pay to maintain the boiler for us. They were less than helpful and suffice it to say that actual Corgis would have been more useful in helping us resolve the issue than they have been. We were very lucky that our lovely neighbour let us use her bathroom to give the kids their baths and we were boiling pans of water to wash up. It wasn't exactly hardship, but it was annoying when we'd been paying for cover to ensure this sort of thing wouldn't happen.

As if having no hot water or heating for three weeks wasn't bad enough the car battery decided to fail right in the middle of all the cold weather. Another mum from school helped me pick up the boys - why is it always at the most inconvenient times that these things happen ? The fab bloke from the RAC came out to us and replaced the battery for us so I now don't have to keep my fingers crossed every time I turn the key and hope it starts. The car is a lot like Trigger's broom in Only Fools and Horses. At some point it's had pretty much everything replaced on it and I doubt much is left of the original car we bought.

Everything that broke down eventually got fixed. Well, not the oven, but that's another story for another day. The one thing that I can't replace or mend is the feelings of sadness and loss. The need I have for this not to have happened.

*if you really want to know more about this read the thread I wrote on twitter about it.