Let me bring you upto date here!

My past is scarred, with my first failed marriage, due to physical abuse, I had three children with this man, the only good thing to come out it.
My second marriage, resulted in another three lovely kids, which I class as another good thing.
I am still married, but this may well change at some point in the not too distant future.
I am blessed with six wonderful children, three boys and three girls. And yes I do mean BLESSED! I love my children, I live for them, if it was not for my wonderful children my life would be a miserable existence.
I would have given up long ago if it was not for them keeping me going, keeping me young, and making me feel life can get better.
Last year was a difficult year for me, I was becoming very restless, not happy at home, with arguments as frequent as the buses, I felt UN-loved, and UN-appreciated. Then when my mother sadly passed away in August, I felt lost inside. I did not feel I had accomplished anything in my life other than my children.
This did not make me feel good. This in fact made me feel very bad.
I decided that my previous efforts to leave my husband had failed due to lack of motivation on my behalf, I did not have the strength to fight another battle. My life had been one long battle. My ex-husband was NOT a nice man, he tried everything, from calling social services, to trying to steal my children and take them abroad, he never wanted the children, except perhaps our daughter, but still it did not stop him from trying to ruin our lives. We are thankfully shot of him as he now lives abroad, the other side of this big world.
And each day we thank our lucky stars that he can no longer cause us pain.
My second husband though fairly kind, is not easy to live with, having had 8 years of abuse, I needed calm and help to get over the bad things that happened to me, sadly this was not to be, as no matter what I did for him or how I tried to be the 'perfect' wife it was never good enough, and so after 13 years of this I decided enough was enough.
November third 2006 was the day I changed my life, it was the day I stopped being this married woman pandering to her husbands needs, and started being Me!
Yes it was hard, yes I made mistakes, but YES I felt better, the kids happier, and I knew it was the right decision.
I had no money, a failing business (due to husbands knack of ruining things) and no place to go, homeless housing was not an option, having tried that earlier in the year I would not recommend it to anyone! Instead I thought hard, I sat down and tried really hard to come up with an option.
A way out of this misery, then one night after asking my mother for help, it came to me. I already had a small loan with a loan shark, paying weekly amounts, and though I had asked before for higher amounts and been turned down, it was worth a try, the gods must have been on my side, because I asked for £1000 and they said yes, once they took the money for the amount left owing from the previous loan I had £810 to spend, this combined with £200 I had managed to save up over the last few weeks, meant I had £1010 to spend on renting a place for us to live.
The following day I realised the gods were with us, as in the paper was a small 2 bed bungalow for rent for £550 per month, around here that is unheard of! I rang and was the first one to call, I went straight over to view it, and though not perfect was OK for now, and best of all was the fact that with hard cash in my hand I was able to negotiate the deposit down to just £200, which meant I had £360 left to help me with the move, and to buy anything I could not take with us.
And so for the next few days I moved things out whilst my husband was at work, it was not easy, but I managed it, and then on the day I moved the 3rd November my husband left for work at 3am, I kissed him goodbye, the heartache I felt nearly made me stop, and stay there. But I thought about the life I had, and the one I wanted, and found the strength to carry on, as he left the road and turned the corner, I went back inside and started packing.
It took several trips backwards and forwards with the car to move everything, and in the end I had to leave some behind as I did not want to be there when he came home, it would be too painful for me, and he would try to talk me out of it.
I wiped a tear from my eye as I left the house for the last time.
Though times were hard, we managed and gradually I got my life back. My kids were happier because I was happier. Life was good.
Then disaster struck, at the beginning of December I got sick, I had already been having daily asthma attacks, but didn't link it to the house, I got a cough that would not shift, it got worse, and as such by the end of December I was coughing up blood, I didn't dare go to the doctor as she would definitely have sent me to hospital. I found out what the problem was, inside the house the walls were damp, this progressed to large mould patches growing on the walls, even mushroom type moulds growing from my bedroom floor, what really repulsed me though was when I changed the mattresses over on the children's beds and found to my disgust that they were rotten with mould, large furry green mould all over, my kids had been sleeping on this, no wonder they too were getting sick.
I spoke to my landlord and he ignored the subject entirely and chose to completely forget what I had said, when I moaned again he told me to put up and shut up. That was the red flag to the bull, my rent was due, I paid him with a rubber cheque, as he had said he was going on holiday for two weeks, this would give me the chance I thought to escape the house and find another, and I would have a little money to rent it with.
Sadly three days later he told me he was too sick to travel, and would be staying home, now I was panicking, how the hell can I get out without him noticing when he lives next door?
Then I decided to lie, I told him because of my illness I had to go into hospital and so the kids would be going to my sisters (I don't have one!) he bought it, and carefully over two days I moved things out, however finding another place to go to took a bit of cunning on my part, with very little money I did not have a months rent or even a months deposit. After searching the papers for days, I found a four bed house about 14 miles away, and rang to ask about it, he said it was still available, and that he was OK to work out terms for the deposit. When I saw it I explained that the place I was in was terrible, and I really needed to get out, I told him I could pay the rent weekly, and then in a couple of months would be able to pay monthly and pay the deposit, he came back to me with a proposal, he would let me have the house if I found £400 up front by Thursday (two days away!) OK I said... Then panic again, on the phone to my brother 'can you lend me some money?' fortunately he said yes, and so I borrowed the £400 I needed to pay the two weeks rent in advance, and got the keys.
At last I felt safe, and happy, we moved in on the 3rd January, and I thought all was going to be well.
Life has a habit of kicking me in the teeth, I was managing - just with the rent, whilst waiting for a housing benefit application to come through, and then disaster struck, my old landlord managed to get my new phone number, all hell broke loose, he rang me threatening me, causing me many sleepless nights until the police finally rang him - oh yes they were so kind - NOT! having told me they would pay him a visit that night and five days later I find out no one has even spoken to him I was a little annoyed! But so far things in that area have calmed down.
However money being very tight, me not currently earning due to having no money to advertise with, I was relying on my housing benefit coming through to help me out, I rang lots of times only to be told it would take a while due to the fact they had installed new computers, and had a back log - why is this my fault? god only knows, and so I was told four weeks. I was angry I wrote to the local news paper, and UN-be known to me they printed it, that was a week ago, the 9th of February, this week apparently the paper got loads of people phoning in, the reporter showed up on my doorstep on Friday with some letters, which contained cash! £155 to be precise, I was in shock, I immediately said yes to the article, as a way of saying thank you to those kind people who sent in money and support.
Funny thing is, on Tuesday I got a letter from the council telling me they had set up my BACS payments, then Thursday I got a payment from them for £131, and a letter telling me my benefit was sorted and I would get it four weekly in arrears, and that my back payment was currently being looked at!
This brings you up to date, as I sit here I can see light at the end of the tunnel, but still have a long journey ahead of me, I still have no beds, no settee, no fridge, no freezer, no washing machine, and things are still hard, it cost's me a lot to feed us each week because I have no freezer or fridge, but I am getting there, now I have this kind donation money I can buy a fridge, and a microwave, and at least we will be able to keep food fresh, and cook easier than we can at the moment.
I am slowly arranging my life to fall around the four weekly in arrears payments, and trying to get us into some kind of routine.
Life is very hard, we have a gas card meter and an electric key meter, which means if I cant afford to put money on we either have no gas, no electric or both, and I can tell you when we had the snow, I had no money - we froze for a few days!
I do not have an over draft, I do not have a credit card, and I don't have anyone who can lend me money, so when I have no money I really have just that - NO MONEY!
Trying to get people to understand this is not easy, people look on in disbelief that I have no actual money at times.
But it has brought us together, we are stronger now, and so am I personally.
I have come through this, I think shining, and I know things will get better soon, I just hope life does not kick me again just yet, let me at least get on my feet a bit first, Please?
It is hoped that this blog will help other people struggling with life to see that it can change, that there are Nice people out there, and your dreams can come true, I hope to one day write a book, and that my business's will shine, I have worked hard on them, and hopefully they will bring me in some good money soon.
You can visit my websites from my links page.
This is intended to be a daily diary of my life as a single mum.
I do hope you like it, and that you visit again soon.
Mandy