An introduction – that’s got to be the best place to start. A quick “this is me” free of the pressure to be funny or witty or smart, because goodness knows, I don’t work well under pressure, and goodness only knows, I’m none of those things.
So hello, and thanks for reading!
I’m Aileen. I’m clinging to my mid-30s with a husband and a child at my side, barely coping with my existing responsibilities, but hoping that I might just be able to squeeze this in on top, because I love to write. I don’t know if it matters whether what I write gets read; I just know that writing feels like air, and that when I can’t – when life gets in the way and a month has passed without me opening Word to do anything other than pen a shopping list – I feel like I might suffocate.
We live in Edinburgh, my gorgeous boys and I. I met my husband working for the Mouse (Mickey, specifically) at sea, and stole him away from his native Argentina to start a real grown-up life on solid ground about six years ago. Joaquin is the kind of passionate that sums up the South American stereotype. He cares as much about the quality of sirloin steak you can get at Sainsbury’s as he does about football. He has a recording studio back in his home town of San Martin de los Andes, and sometimes I feel like I’ve put his life on pause – that he’s just biding his time until he can get us over there, to his family and his music and the asados and wine and pastries that make him really come alive. But we’re here, for now, because it makes sense and it makes us happy. Argentina’s a while off, yet.
Roman’s two. He’s the most intense child you could meet. He was born at 36 weeks for no reason other than he’s that type of guy. He literally can’t be contained – even by my womb. He’s hilarious and exhausting, utterly lovable and completely loved.
And I’m intense too. I’m hypersensitive, super excited and so passionate that you might think I was South American if my Spanish was better. I cry at the news on a good day and adverts on a bad day. I put so much energy into my family that I’ve rarely got anything left for friends. I love to learn and hate to be proved wrong. I’d like to get paid to write one day, but if I can’t, I’ll start an ice cream business. And in the meantime, I work mornings as an administrator – we barely break even after paying for childcare, but mentally, neither Roman nor I would have it any other way.
I can’t promise that this will go well, because I’m the girl who started a new journal each Monday and abandoned it each Tuesday, convinced that it was too much like hard work. But if you’ve made it to this point, thank you, I mean that, and I’ll try to make it worth your while.