Work Life Balance
Divorce in the AI age
In today's fast-paced world, juggling work, family and personal matters can be...read more
Tummy pains
Bonkers daughter has been off sick again. I need, perhaps, to be more sympathetic.
After a disastrous Friday, when I had to wait half an hour in the freezing cold for the bus so was late for work and then an hour later got a call from school to say the bonkers one was ill, things could only improve. My phone was low on battery to cap it all and I saw the words ‘school’ flash up on the screen and said something along the lines of “Shit, it’s the school”, not realising that I had already accidentally pressed answer so the school secretary could hear every word I said. I then had to tell her I was around an hour and a half from home – BAD mother – but would contact my mum/partner to ask them to pick her up. Several hours later, my mum rang to say that she strongly suspected the “illness” was in fact constipation…
The bonkers one, nevertheless, is very good at milking every illness and has spent the weekend saying things like “it stings when I breathe”. I briefly toyed with the idea she might have appendicitis, but she seemed to perk up for lunchtimes and was in fine spirits on Saturday for a friend’s party. She also informed everyone that she had a “bleeding tooth” [it is loose] and a sore arm and leg pains. Many would be surprised that one so ill could in fact create a guinea pig run replete with seesaws and ramps plus captain a boat sailing to Spain. I await this week’s developments with interest. Already everyone has woken up with sore tummies and I have cruelly bundled them off to school, telling them to eat more fruit while secretly wondering whether there is, in fact, some sort of virus thing going round. In the middle of wondering this, I had to do two radio interviews about some research around women settling back into work, while also wondering whether small people were going to burst in halfway through with a loud announcement about toilet habits or something similar.
Related
Flexible Working
Report shows impact of back-to-office policies on women
Nearly half of working women (47%) in the UK say that their stress levels are higher than...read more
