Let the blogging begin

Well, for someone who in her first blog professed to love writing so much, the absence of a second entry in almost three months may appear somewhat puzzling to the reader. Let me explain.

Five days after my first blog entry, at which time I was bursting with blog-worthy material and desperate to get scribbling: a bombshell. Of the potentially life altering kind. My team and a neighbouring team at work were ushered into a meeting room by senior management and informed that a large scale restructure was imminent and that as a result a number of jobs would be at risk. Mine was one of four positions affected, with the possibility of six redundancies in total. Ah. The R word. Having gone through four weeks of agony with the husband in March when redundancies were announced at his gaff, which thankfully ended happily for him, the big redundancy monster had evidently now come to get me too. Overnight my creative juices ceased to flow and blogging became the last thing on my mind. Instead I spent my lunchtimes seeking employment law advice and panicking about how on earth we would pay the mortgage if I lost my income.

Eight days later: bombshell number two. This time of the most definitely life altering forever scary poo your pants kind. In the form of two pink lines on a plastic stick! Now although the second bombshell was a very welcome and wonderful thing, in the light of the first it was not something I wanted to shout from the rooftops just yet. Which was frustrating because as suddenly as the creative juices had dried up, this momentous news precipitated a whole fresh wave of blog material and gave a whole new slant to stuff I was planning to blog about pre bombshell numero dos. (I bet you can’t wait – the even more incoherent than usual ramblings of a tired, hormonal woman with acid indigestion and an entirely incompatible craving for coffee ice cream).

But first there was the small matter of my future job security to deal with. There would be four weeks of consultation, after which Les Grandes Fromages would decide whether to go ahead with their evil plan. (Of course they would). At which point I would be able to apply for one or more of a number of new jobs on offer. Step One of this process would involve addressing a seemingly never ending list of extremely repetitive questions on the largely incomprehensible (due to excessive management speak) job application. Step Two would be the delightful prospect of being grilled by three of the aforementioned Fromages in a two hour interview complete with power point presentation (by me, to be conducted entirely in management speak, which I detest with a passion second only to my hatred for those who ask if they “can get” a skinny latte). Oh joy. I nearly laughed in the Consultant Obstetrician’s face when he advised me, because I have borderline hypertension and am therefore considered a “high risk pregnancy”, to avoid stress.

To cut a long and potentially tedious story short, the past twelve weeks have been hell. But the good news is that I now have a shiny new job and my maternity pay privileges, built up over the past five years working for the same employer, are safe. As a result I have finally been able to shout that news from the rooftops. And these days, instead of walking past shop windows worrying whether my reflection looks pregnant yet, I am able shamelessly to let it all hang out and to spend my lunchtimes discovering a whole new world of baby and maternity related net surfing opportunities. In fact life is good again and the only worry now is that bombshell number three, since these things apparently always come in threes, will ambush me at any moment.

So now that’s all out of the way, let the blogging begin. Again.