Do I need to make more adjustments?

A commenter on my blog suggested that perhaps I need to learn how to make adjustments with my family so that I didn't find myself so stressed and burned out. I have to say ... it's always easy to make suggestions from the outside, and anyone looking in would see it as an obvious thing, but life just isn't that simple!

I have already adapted and made a LOT of changes to my life to fit a good work / life balance ... and truthfully yes, the life half HAS been slipping lately as I have been focussed on work, but I still make sure that I spend quality time with the children every day and that's what it is all about - in my opinion anyway!

I AM working a lot of hours at the moment, and during the school summer holidays it will be worse because I'll have the children during the day and ONLY be able to work evenings and weekends (aside from Wednesdays at the market), but I'm also doing this for them! They want to have nice things, they want the latest this and that - and because they ARE good kids (most of the time!!) I'd love to be able to treat them and reward them more often.

Yes I know, it's not about money and materialistic posessions - it's about growing up in a safe and loved environment ... but c'mon, when all your friends have really cool clothes and you are wearing school trousers that are too short and tops that don't fit you anymore - then the materialistic stuff DOES matter.

I've felt ashamed and embarrassed some days when I've sent the kids off to school because their uniforms have needed replacing for so long and there just hasn't been the money for it. Both of them have so few clothes in their wardrobes that fit properly and let's not get started on the shoes that are falling to pieces!!

THIS is why I do it. This is why I work hard! It's so I can turn around a flagging business, bring it right up to exactly where it needs to be and for my kids to have the benefit of it!!

Dreams ... and what the fuck is normality anyway???

I've been moaning about how inconvenient it has been to have the kids off for the past two weeks, and now I am faced with the fact that they go back to school tomorrow and that normality must resume!

It's funny how on an evening when I am contemplating normality ... I have also had a discussion with somebody - and the outcome of said discussion could affect my entire life and make it all very UN normal indeed!!!

In traditional ME style, I'm not saying anything about what this "thing" could be in "public". Part of me doesn't want to jinx it until I have really thought about it. I need to chew it over and then regurgitate it and dissect it all again!! ... and part of me is already convinced it would never work anyway, but maybe that's just the eternal pessimist in me.

Is it possible to have a dream that you always thought was the one you really wanted - until an unexpected somebody makes a suggestion - completely out of the blue - of an alternative dream that somehow seems better than your original dream AND more achievable than your original dream ... even though that first dream has been your dream for as long as you remember?

Yeah I bet I'm not making sense to anyone reading this, but *I* know what I mean and that's what counts.

Damn now this isn't what I had expected on a Sunday evening!! I took photos of my lettuces and my chervill to post (all looking very fabby!) ... but that somehow seems a bit irrelevant now!

Okay ignore my waffling I'm done now - I need to go think seriously about totally changing my life! Hopefully normal service will resume by Monday morning when I realise it could never ever ACTUALLY work ...

... or could it??????