Warts and all.

I know, I know. I have a huge catch up to come. But this week has not been a week for blogging. I have been so wiped out from our weekend LAST week to even begin blogging about it THIS week.

I am almost done editing the photos but unfortunately, I am not yet done with the panic attacks. (more on that to come ;-) )

What's with the title? Well, after talking to my sister on my return from our weekend away, she told me that she wanted to hear the story before I cleaned it up beyond recognition, for the Hamster wheel.

What?

Honestly, I don't do this. I swear. Everything I write about does actually happen. But, I can, sort of, see what she means. I mostly focus my posts on the positive of everything that we do. Who wants to sit day after day and write about all of the stress, mess and worries that we encounter? I don't.

I know that I don't do things perfectly every day and that things don't always turn out right. I know I get it wrong. A lot.
You can be guaranteed that there is mess, noise and chaos behind every post that makes it's way onto this here blog.
I do even write about those tough times. I do!

 I love to blog. I do it because I enjoy finding words and taking photos. Mostly I blog to look back on our years as a young family, but also to snuggle into that place, in my own head, where it is quiet and only for me. It's like reading a good book, you when you are so sucked in that it takes someone three attempts to get your attention. I love that and I get that from writing on my blog too. It's my me time, but it doesn't take me away from my favourite people.

I wont ever forget that I spent a lot of times being stressed out and tired. I feel overwhelmed often and I have to talk myself down from it. (who am I kidding, Murray always takes a crisis call from me when my sky is falling.) But I also know that it is easy to forget all of the fun and good moments in amongst the day to day, flat out running around the Hamster wheel of life. So I like to remember those moments, laugh as I look through the photos and enjoy it all over again when I look back at old posts, with Murray or the kids.

Anyway, back to the wedding. I am willing to be totally honest and to share my embarassment in full, But, I don't want to re hash all of these details on the official wedding post, as I will probably share that link with the bride and her family. She does not need reminding of the details. She was there. I think I sullied her day enough. Blush.

****Confession time.**** I got accidently drunk at the wedding. Not just a bit tipsy, like I usually would. But all out , morealcoholthanIhavedrunkforanentireyearallatonetime drunk. And some of it could possibly have been captured for an upcoming tv series. cringe.

 We travelled down to Dorset to attend the wedding of my childhood best friend. I was a little nervous, I only knew Murray and the bride, groom , her sister and her mum.
The venue of the wedding was River Cottage in Dorset, England. This is the setting of a popular cooking/lifestyle TV series. I was terrified I would make a fool of myself with My friend's other (much posher) friends, who are all well educated and know each other.
 I was convinced I would fall over on camera and ruin some great shots. My other big worry was that I would come across Hugh Fearnly-Whittingstall , the chef and presenter of the TV series, and feel like I knew him. I am a real kiss and hug type person so I was worried I would be introduced to him, forget that I was a complete stranger, and kiss him. I didn t, by the way. I managed to mortify myself 45 other ways instead.

It started out well, we arrived and joined in the champagne reception, the canapes were very tasty , but I was immediately wishing we had eaten lunch. We ate a huge cooked breakfast in the morning which made us too full to eat lunch. We arrived at 2.30pm  by the time my tummy was two glasses of bubbly down, it was already telling my head to begin spinning.

After the bubbly came the most amazing white wine I have ever tasted.
Enough said.
My glass was never empty.
Enough said.

The meal was amazing, of course. It went on for a long time though and I knew I was starting to become loud and annoying, like I always do when I am drunk. Murray says I wasn't too bad but I feel bad about it. The food was obviously the main event and it was spectacular, the cameras were on our table for a while but, thankfully, the girl I was sitting next to had consumed as much wine as myself. She accidently dropped some of it on the table while we were being filmed and I immediately dissolved into a fit of giggles and had to put my head into my handbag to muffle the guffawing. Therefore, I am sure they moved along quite quickly, this was not exactly what they are looking for for their upcoming series (I hope!!). If she has saved me from a drunken appearance on tv, I will be forever indebted to her!

As murray summed up - it was an all vegetarian menu accompanied by a free bar. You can take the girl out of Fife but you can't take Fife out of the girl. It was always going to end in disaster.

I did manage to kiss two of the other presenters/chefs and am also hoping against all hope that neither of these will appear on the show.

After the meal we danced two wonderful, scottish twirly dances and then I went out for some fresh air.  At about 11pm (I think) I hit the wall, I told murray I had to leave and so we did. After an hour or so waiting in the fresh air for our taxi, I felt a lot better. We returned to our B&B and I promptly fell asleep.

At 5am I woke up having a panic attack. An actual panic attack. I felt like I had made a complete fool of myself and probably embaressed my beautiful, wonderful friend on her very special day. This feeling happens to me whenever I have too much to drink. But this was worse than usual, I felt like I couldn't breathe. I never want to feel like this again.

It wasn't helped any by the fact that I found two glass things in my handbag from the table at the wedding.
Shame.
 I am NOT a thief.
They were there as a joke. But still. I had to return those on Sunday morning, to the hotel where my friend was staying. Cringe.

Cap it all off with the fact that I was responsible for driving us the 500 or so miles home and I felt awful. I wasn't even sure we would make it home all in one go!

My hangover4 lasted well into Monday.

The only way for me to get past this horrible pahnic and guilt, is to continually go over every single detail again and again. I guess I need to confess it all out of my system or something. This is an attempt at a final purge.

Hopefully by next week I will actually be able to look at the photos of the wedding without cringing and hating myself. I may be able to watch the adverts for River cottage on TV without blushing furiously!

I will now go finish editing the photos and write up a post that is worthy of the beautiful  and very special day we had and my conscience will hopefully be somewhat healed.

And in the spirit of total honesty - in writing this post, I was almost late for picking up K from school.
Awesome. Just what I needed, more guilt.

So there it is, my life warts and all. My secrets are out. Do you still love me? Do I still even like myself? I guess I will find out for sure when the series airs in November. Cringe.

I guess it's not so bad, at least I'm not an axe wielding maniac.

Oh wait............................

I don't think I'll share my accounts with the lovely team at River Cottage.

I am sure they are still trying to work out a way of editing the loud, drunk, scottish girl wearing bright pink, from every single bit of footage they shot.

CRINGE!!