Day one of the rest of my life

Today is just another one of those days. I'm ill - I have some sort of flu-type thing (please dear god, do not let it be the dreaded swine) - Dave (the hubby) has left me at home with small one year old boy in order to go to work. He did his usual "here is some toast and some paracetamol - see you later, I'm off", which led to a lot of angry texting and some heavy sobbing from my end.
Something along the lines of "thanks for leaving me in the lurch". It annoys me that he will never have to be in this situation - when he is ill he phones in sick to work and takes a day to chill out while I look after him, make a fuss and cook loving homemade food. I don't get to phone in sick.
Meanwhile, small one year old boy is climbing the walls, the dog and anything else he looks like he can destroy. The power of him is amazing.
Dave thoughtfully (?) also forgot to put a nappy on small one year old boy, which I did not find out until small one year old boy pooed all over the floor (it's ok, it's laminate). Thank goodness I had not drunk any of the orange juice that Dave had left me to line my stomach with (aye, good job Dave).

So here I am, stuck at home watching cbeebies on a loop while I try to eke out every small activity for poor child while I waitwith wobbly head the ten hours for my husband to return home and take over. I am having strong feelings of hatred towards everything right now and it's only because I am stuck and can't do a damned thing about it.

Welcome to me life. You would be forgiven for shutting off and moving on; I really do not care. This is a personal exercise for me. A sanity-keeper. A way of surviving the next however long it takes to get myself out of the situation that I am in.

As you can probably tell, I am a young mother. My 25th birthday was 2 days ago and I was married at the beginning of the year (January 5th). I am also currently at University, doing my Masters (an MLitt in Creative Writing and Theory in Humanities).

And....

I live in this small town just outside of Dundee in Scotland called Monifieth (hence the title of this blog). It's a place which is, simply put, at the arse end of nowhere.
It's not a terrible place - no, indeed it is quite beautiful really. It's a suburban and green with lots of parks and open spaces. There is a cute little village in the centre along a high street, where we live, with a few local shops. It also happens to be home to the largest population of elderly folk in Europe.
There are 11 nursing homes and 2 sheltered housing residences. Four or five churches. Five hairdressers. Three pubs (all terrifying in their own individual ways). A shoesmith. A mobile phone shop. An optician. Two private dentists just about to open (woo) and a discount store. A small ill-equipped library. A small charity shop. Three take-away food varieties. Multiple newsagents. A butcher. A bike shop. A Farmfoods. A small coffee shope (which won't let buggies in).
Oh and a Tesco.

The bus service is...interesting; always late, always packed, always a total nightmare to use. Especially with a baby and buggy in tow.
I would say that nine times out of ten is the statistic for harsh comments about using the buggy/wheelchair space on the bus, especially if an elderly person is sitting there and moves to let you in. They like to make it very clear to you that they "wouldn't have moved", "that space is for wheelchairs, not buggies" and that "it's a disgrace that young lassies aren't working these days, just having kids".
Yes, I've had it all.

On the days that I cannot stand being talked about loudly on the bus for all to hear/feeling like a social outcast for daring to wheel my pram onto the bus (like many mothers get to do I may add! It's not a new service either!)/can't hack the massive expeditions into town we/ I walk to the nearest populated area - Broughty Ferry, where things are larger and you can blend in (just a tiny) bit more. It's a good three miles into the Ferry from where we live and a nice walk if you take the coastal route. If you want to get it out of the way or are in a hurry, walking along the main road is your other option. Of course the elderly in Monifieth rarely venture along the pavements outside of the high street (except via bus) thus the council have thoughtfully decided to save money by ignoring the upkeep of the pavements here which are uneven, ungritted in winter and I'm pretty sure are slowly giving my son brain damage due to all the bumping in his pram when we walk along it.

If it's cold/rainy or we have no money (which is a very frequent occurrence) our choices are thus limited to Monifieth to provide us with our days entertainment. W e then can either head to the park (with equipment which is all currently aimed at an older age group than my small one year old) where we try to keep son's hands out of drains/stop him for eating sand/crawling into the path of bikes ridden by teenage maniacs, or we can head to our ye olde favourite thing to do, which is walk around Monifieth. It's a shopping experience like no other. First we head to the Cats Protection League charity shop which is full of scary junk that should actually - no exaggeration, I promise - be in the bin. It's full of stained sheets, towels, dull brass ornaments with missing bits and tacky holiday souveniers that holidaymakers would have bought in 80's Spain. We always have a good shifty around in the charity shop, as I am a firm believer in charity shop goody finding, but after a year of scouring for that elusive bargain, it is safe to say that there are none, nor will there ever be any. We donated our last batch of unused baby toys thereout of sympathy - at least they will have had something nice on their shelves for a couple of days to keep interest up. One day when Tom is grown up I shall volunteer - it's a small dream of mine to arrange all the shit so that it at least looks its best.

After smiling manically at the shop assistant we then exit the charity shop and meander over the way to the discount store, which smells like the dodgy plastic shoes that they sell. It's the smell of quality goods at discount prices.
Here we pretend to look interested in the various homewares on display, while trying to mentally picture it in any of the people who avtually live in the areas houses. It would just never happen. The people who live around here actually spent a good few months campaigning against the store opening in the first place. Which could have been disaster for us! Apparently it's tacky and brings down the value of the community.
No comment.

We then come out of the discount store and, well, that's it! Unless we wander to Tesco to buy enough beer for us to drown our boredom, we head home. There really is nothing else to do.

As it was my birthday on Tuesday and I am 25 now (and thus more or less a little bit more responsible) I have decided to change my life. I hate it here. It's boring, it's tiresome and it's draining the life out of me. I have spent a year trying to see the positives and to no avail. It grinds me down and so, before it does I am going to do something about it.