Provide shelter, give comfort, a single parent duality.

So, I should be doing other things. And as I write this entry, I have no clear plan or idea of what exactly I want to share out here in blog land about this day and my place in it as a studying single mother.
But wait - I do know, there are 2 things on my mind. The role of being a provider for my family and the role of being a nurturer for my family, and how to combine these roles in some way to feel good about how I am fulfilling them for my children.
That is a question for me at the moment and I don't have an answer. Unless the answer is , it takes a village to raise a child. The only way I can feel my children are being provided for well enough is to accept that that for us is accepting the heavenly manner manna that falls from the sky - or in our case, from centrelink begrudgingly, and similarly accept that my mother, my neighbour, my children's teachers, sports coaches and the like, are hopefully nurturing my children enough in times I can't.

Meanwhile, I am trying to nurture myself and provide for myself desperately trying to catch up on all of this that I feel I needed to do before I had my children (ah , hindsight you nasty friend!).

So the dual roles I feel I wear in my family, and that it has just occurred to me I am applying to myself retrospectively.
I am sure I am not the only parent who goes through this juggle, I imagine most single parents would also feel this pressure to provide both some sort of family security that seems to tear them away from the day to day childcare needs and also to be there closely involved in the every day childcare needs of children.

I also don't think I am the only needy adult in the world, who is still trying to become 'whole' in an effort to be able to be enough to shelter and support the next generation.

I am though, the only adult in this house - so I share my musings with the internet world in a search for adult ears.

T.I.R.E.D.

I am so tired that it took me a few goes just to get the title all in capital letters. I cannot co ordinate my fingers and my brain.
I am so tired I managed to totally muck up depressing the plunger on my french press this morning and spurted a wave of grainey coffee all over the kitchen.
I am so tired I managed to miss a direct debit of fifty bucks a month coming out of my bank account from a company that no longer provides me a service.
I am so tired.
But let's get on with things.

Take 2 on Tuesday

Time for a new  dog - I mean blog! but I do have the new puppy asleep on my knee as I type this.  The view from my window is an amazing autumn afternoon storm, and I've decided to ignore the formatting problems of my last blogging attempt by going back to the beginning with this new blog. I've asked my teenage daughter to start a gratitude journal and she's chosen to use a blogging format to do that, over at retrospectivesympatheticmusings.blogspot.com and it's inspired me to have another go at blogging myself - I'd already managed one post this year, so why not up the ante and I might even be able to post a photo of the new blog - I mean dog...