Tough decisions

One thing I am very bad at is living in limbo. Give me a psychodynamic test of any kind and they will tell you I am an activist. ( they never test for dreamers so I am safe there!!). I like to plan, prepare, decide, act, when I am given a task and abhor sitting on my hands and doing nothing!! Not so our son. He has a totally different attitude which is more a "I'll jump out of the way just before the bus hits me not when I see it coming in the distance!" kind of attitude. That is youth for you. A lack of worry or concern and a complete belief that it will all be fine. Mum's just getting her knickers in a knot for nothing!! Take his up and coming placement in Sweden. There are forms to complete and send in. There are flights to book and emails to send. There are clothes to buy and suitcases to get out of the attic - the list continues.
On Tuesday I managed to persuade him we needed to go to school and get the forms stamped etc instead of waiting another week for him to go back to school. Action no 1. Tick. The school advised us to continue on to Alkmaar and the DUO offices to hand it in ourselves rather than posting it to Groningen and risking it getting lost or having a mistake and being sent back...he didn't want to. I said its the train home or a ride in the car to Alkmaar, you choose. We went to DUO, and I am so glad we did. They were really helpful and finally I think sonny boy started to appreciate that doing this was GOOD!!! Action no 2. Tick. We sent an email to Sweden but it came back as spam so no idea whether it was received or not. Need to tell school on Monday and get it sorted there. Action no 3:
At the moment we are paying for everything ourselves as we have no idea whether or not he will get any subsidy, so the pot is bare!! Result: cancellation of our holiday. Tick. Sob. Stress. Sad.
Action no 4: ring up and transfer holiday to end of year: Tick!! See, taking action makes me happy again!!! Going to have to wait a lot longer to see the kids but it will be even more worthwhile when we finally get there.
Action no 5: apply for the new passport so I can actually go on holiday! Tick. But at what cost? Almost 200,00 euros!!! The absurdity of it is laughable my friends. I have a British Passport that one used to be able to renew in Amsterdam at our Embassy there. You went, waited, paid up and got it all within an hour or so. Great! And now? It has to be sent registered post to PARIS, France. You have to send the usual passport photos, ok, that's standard, and your credit card information so that it can be paid for when the request gets processed. Takes up to 6 weeks. 6 weeks!!! Does it come back to me from France? No, from the UK. Why? No idea what so ever!! Why couldn't I have just sent it to the UK in the first place, please, folks???? Seems a rather complicated and silly system to me, but then again, I am just your average, compliant citizen who has no choice. Tick.


Do I feel less stressed? Yes, I do actually. Stress comes from inactivity for me. I do not stress easily and it takes an awful lot for things to get to me, but over the past week or so things have been building up and up and the result was I needed to do something. Take control over things instead of them controlling me. My one little word has been tested already!! PERSEVERE Suzanne; persevere.
Sue xx