Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday 2nd March

I was off work as I'm working at the weekend. When Oliver and I got up it was snowing some of the biggest chunks of snow Id ever seen. With Walney being on the coast it never settles long and was gone by the time I took Oliver to school. Oliver was still very anxious about school and was very clingy. I managed to get him in and settled before going for an extremely cold run.
I returned home and felt like crap, as if I was coming down with something. I did the bare minimum for the rest of the day and had an early night, I was exhausted.

Running 9 miles

 All throughout my run I just couldn't get warm (temperature) even though I had 3 layers on. The wind chill was very low and I could feel icy raindrops in it. My body just wouldn't loosen up either. Every muscle, tendon and joint felt tight. I slowed and made my way home along the shore. It was very low tide and I ran on the sand for a few miles before returning to the beach path. I was glad to get back, it was an awful run. Id not had one of them for ages (as a runner you do experience these runs every now and then, you just hope they don't happen on a race day!)

Thursday 3rd March

I was up early for a conference and made my way to work in the cold. I was still really, really tired and I hadn't had the best nights sleep. Halfway through a busy day I received a phone call from Joanne and it was urgent. Oliver had hit a teacher at school and they wanted us up there. My world fell apart in that instance. Its the one thing Ive dreaded ever since he started school. We made our way tentatively into his school and met with the head. I sat there devastated as we were told about what had happened and they were expelling Oliver for the rest of the week.

We took him home and tried to get him to explain what had happened but he couldn't express what had transpired. After we had talked to him about it and told him it wasn't acceptable. (The one hard thing about chastising Oliver is keeping calm. If we raise our voices or get too angry we lose him and he locks his mind away blocking all stimulus from himself. Its so difficult). After he settled down and we'd had some dinner, Joanne was in a lot of pain - probably from the stress and had to go to bed. I sat there, alone on the couch, utterly devastated. I blamed myself (as any parent would) and felt like my heart had been ripped from my chest. I was in so much pain, so much turmoil, so unhappy and so,so sad. It was possibly the worst moment of my life.