Tomorrow it is our 15th wedding anniversary. This is some achievement I can tell you. Ours has not been a smooth path of marital bliss, rather a rocky road littered with the issues of childhoods past, a vengeful ex, the anguish of parenting often absent children plus the normal pressures of everyday life. There have been tears, many, many tears, there has been anger, much, much anger but there has always been love - much, much love. For each other, for the children between us and above all, the belief that the family life we both always wanted is within our grasp.
It makes me feel smiley happy that tomorrow we will sit down for a meal to celebrate our anniversary with Mark's eldest two children, (who sat down to have a meal with us at the same restaurant 15 years ago on the day we got married), and the happiest outcome of our marriage so far - our little boy Oliver. This time last year the relationship with Mark's children was so bad, they had barely spoken for years. In the last six months, although no words have been spoken about the whys and wherefores of the breakdown, there has been an obvious wish to re-establish a relationship and a forgiveness on both sides I would not have imagined possible.
Enough of the Jeremy Kyle.
To celebrate our anniversary, although we do not normally exchange gifts, I decided it would be a Good Idea to get a Siamese kitten for Mark. As a surprise. For years he has been banging on about one day getting a 'proper cat' when ours meet their end, as he once had this siamese who used to sit on his shoulder, come running to see him when he came home from work, blah blah etc etc....
I hunted one down, about an hour's drive away, and on a Friday afternoon, Oliver and I headed off to purchase the Proper Cat. He was a 12 week old Siamese blue point with a pedigree as long as your arm, very small, very beautiful and VERY vocal. Which I didn't really appreciate until I was ten minutes down the road and he wouldn't stop yowling. He yowled on every out breath. Which is a LOT of yowl. An hour's worth of yowl later, my teeth were on edge and I was starting to doubt the wisdom of my purchase. Mark was delighted with him, but man cannot live on delight alone. The yowl continued, on every out breath through the night. The only thing that stopped him was exhausted cat-napping. Come the wee hours, we had decided he must be returned before he gave himself a heart attack. Or we killed each other with our bare hands, whichever was the sooner.
Somehow, after talking to the breeder, we ended up driving back on Monday afternoon to collect a teeny tiny runt of the litter siamese girl to keep the other one company. By this time Mark and I were starting to resemble those cartoon characters with gigantic, vein-strained eyes from no sleep.
This one yowled all the way home too.
The little boy siamese was so thrilled to see his litter-mate, they yowled through the night together. And naughty. These cats were wickedness on a stick. Whatever stereotype image of siamese kittens you have - they are all true.
And some.
The yowling settled as they found new ways to torture us. If they couldn't find anything to climb up with their crampon-claws, they would settle for climbing up people. No cupboard door could be opened before they knew about it and were in there, destroying stuff or squeezing into small cracks leading to the nether. No door could be closed upon them without them realising they were being excluded from our attention, no matter how temporary, and they were there - yowling urgently and shredding the carpet on the other side in desperation. The toilet seat needed nailing down, and even if you were sat on it, you needed to guard the little gap at the back by your arse - where there was a gap - there was a compelling need for the gruesome twosome to squeeze into it.
We were prisoners in our own home. By Wednesday I was meeting the breeder in a layby, handing them over and breathing a sigh of relief as she drove off into the sunset.
It was not to be. It was akin to how I felt when I first had Oliver - shattered beyond belief and overwhelmed to the point of gibbering. And I am a decade older. Neither of us could hack it.
We was crap.
I have no gift to offer Mark as a replacement - the whole kitten thing did for me.
Epic fail.
