Life is just a Bowl of Cherries.

Not sure how to put the words together today, because I have spent most of it feeling very sad for a friend who is having a very hard time. It does, however, put everything else into perspective. I feel very fortunate that I have a happy, healthy family, and that I don't rely on any other person for my well-being. It's often hard to be on one's own, but on the whole I think it's preferable to being in a dodgy relationship which isn't happy and requires endless compromises. And it's really quite unreasonable of me to moan about my foreign students, after all they do pay the bills.

I did actually turn down a student today, because I am going to have a house full of family and friends at the weekend, and it was just too much to think about yet another person to feed and water. In fact, she was another German lady, so perhaps it was wise. I have had a surfeit of Sauerkraut this last month! My lady from Munich is due to go home on Saturday, and has not really stopped lecturing me on the various superior aspects of German life. I did get my own back a bit by asking her why there were no famous German restaurants - to which there was no reply. And she devours my food with such gusto that I wonder if she ever has home-cooked food at home. I did ask her, but she replied that she is too lazy to cook when she is at home. She went today to the Brighton Pavilion and had to admit that it was stunning -and that there is nothing like it in Germany!

I was reading another Blog this evening, and couldn't help identifying with the writer, whose children are going on holiday with her ex-husband. I recall that my ex-husband was always reluctant to take my two away on holiday. (It cost money, and he liked to keep it all for himself.) He did, however, take them away once - to Butlin's - when they were about 7 and 9, I think. It was apparently the most awful place - damp mattresses, mice (if not rats) and terrible food. And the weather was awful. Thank god they were only there for one week. When they came home, they were so glad to be back that they didn't argue with each other, or me, for about a week. I had missed them so much, and a bit of free time was not really a compensation. The difference between me and the blog-writer I was reading, was that I didn't think lovingly about the past at all. By then I knew how mean and selfish my ex was, and I just felt a fool for not having realized it sooner.

Anyway, I was the lucky one. I got to see my children grow from little toads to big toads, with only a few hiccoughs on the way. We got through the dramas, the tears,
the scares, the exams, the first hangovers, the first loves (in that order) and all the stuff life throws at you. So what if we didn't have the money, the 'lifestyle', the cars and the posh holidays. As far as I'm concerned, we had the best of everything.