I am getting very into the gym thing. Tis funny how you have a set idea of yourself and things change - suddenly your assumptions are just that. Exercise and I have a chequered history. Joining, going for a couple of weeks and giving up. Add to that, years of children and the guilt that goes with doing something for yourself.

I once broached the lack of me time with someone that I was married to. He told me I could get a horse. Where he thought I would get the money for one was another matter. Horses take a great deal of time and a great deal of money. Four children and a husband rarely around, are not compatible with either. Had I been a lady with nothing better to do - it may have been possible but I am not and if I had nothing better to do, I suspect I would have find something better to do. That is the thing about motherhood, before you know it you are not only not the painting, not just the frame. If you are not careful, you end up as the hook.

Always having something better to do meant the fitness thing went out the window too. I still have lots of better things to do, but I have now re framed my reference. Looking after your own health and mind, means that you are better equipped to deal with the better things to do. Given the things I have to achieve on a daily basis and the scale of the long term responsibility - I am prioritising me and my mind and bottom.

So today I doubled my work out, on the basis that it has not hurt so far. I added 15 yank yourself up on the trapeze ropes. I then added these pull up things that I heard another woman complaining made her sick. Sounded good. You basically hang off a bar and have to heave your knees up to to your elbows. I struggled after 7.

"I can manage 7" I said.

"Excellent" said the gym instructor "So make it ten"

I have worked out that the trick is to not tell the instructor what you can do, lest he holds you to it next time. Next time I go, I may be so bruised I will be unable to walk - let alone lift anything. ~Still, before I know it I will have a bottom of steel and the stamina of a Gurkha.

I have an accolade to give to one of my oldest friends. After years of unadulterated crap, she has found a great freelance job. This woman married someone from a magazine that it also worked on. They had two children. They got divorced. This was the all too common point that he shafted her. She lost their home and because he was self employed, his income 'apparently' plummeted - and she was given enough money every month to pay for about a weeks worth of food.

He was particularly classy. She stayed in the home. He stopped paying the mortgage because he couldn't afford it. Following a visit from the bailiffs, she had to move into a dire rental in a dire area. At this point, he moved back into the house and miraculously began making mortgage payments. She tried working full time but with children to get back and forwards to school, homework, washing and juggling children when ill, she nearly killed herself in the process. He still sees his children, still pleads poverty and still messes her around and yet still has a nice life, still goes on holiday. He even had the audacity to ask her to help advise him on decorating his home.

So she now has some well paid work. Granted, the rent takes up more than half and after bills she still has no money left over for the niceties in life for the children or for herself but after 4 years of hell - she has finally been acknowledges for the talented and strong woman that she is. I know that she is still wrecked, still on her own because she has no spare time - but she is my hero for surviving whilst everything is thrown at her.

I know this man. I liked him. I loathe him now. He never really got his head around the concept that there was no more 'them'. I think to this day that he has failed to accept that he has any say in her life, his actions have been those of grasping straws to remain in control. How making his children lose their home, live on benefits, is beyond my comprehension. I would have thought that he would be bending over backwards to support her in raising his children, in acknowledging the fact that she is there day in day out and cannot simply do as she likes, as he appears to.

It seems to me that there is a great deal of bollocks in the law on children. Current CSA guidelines dictate a man only need pay 15% for 1 child, 20% for 2 or 25% for three or more. (how any more than 3 does not cost more is another mind blower). The very fact that there is a CSA means that there are too many fathers that appear to not be clear on what they should be doing. No child should ever know that the only way they were supported is because a government dictum towards bare minimum.

What I struggle with, is how parents can share legal responsibility and yet are not legally responsible for half of the costs in raising them. Imagine her husband earned about 15k after tax. With 3 children he would have to give her 3.5k per year. Yet in her capacity as sole carer, she has to provide absolutely everything for her three children, all their clothes, their food, their fun, their education, their toothpaste. On top of this she has bigger bills, more washing, cooks all the time. In fact she is a cleaner, Cook, housemaid and personal assistant. Her earning capacity is reduced because the children have holidays, the children are ill and the hours she can work are on the whole, restricted to lower paid jobs.

This is where it is all wrong. 100% of the responsibility and too many thousands of men simply paying the bear minimum . This doesn't include those that try to get away with nothing. Why would anyone want to subject their children to that? There are simply too many woman struggling to look after children, having to work menial or unpaid jobs in a bid to get that little extra because women like my chum, will always do what they have to in making sure that their children are okay. Doing the bear minimum will never be enough. Each and every man that has a child should do what they have to do, to make sure their children are not raised with the minimum.

The law sucks. It is so simple. Make men responsible for paying half the costs of what it actually costs to raise children. Men like Mr P, who can fix his income by various means - should be hauled before the courts and the inland revenue for their creative accounting. The day he moved back into the home, there should have been a court official on the doorstep saying

"Now MR P, something seems a little amiss here"

Yet they don't and because they don't, my chums children cannot understand how Daddy can afford to do things, when Mummy constantly feels guilty about not being able to afford a school trip. Take head in this dear friend, your children worship you because you are always there. You are beautiful and hardy and may this be the start of your life improving.

I guess it all comes down to personal conduct. Mr P is a tosser. My chum knows this and sadly the children can see it to. This is 2010, children shouldn't be looking back at their child hood and still going on about how much their mother suffered in trying to provide a secure and happy life for them. That's what children did in the 30's.

Divorce is an almost certainty for most couple walking up the aisle nowadays. Single parent families are common place. All children should be looking back and marveling at how great it was having two great parents in two different houses, happily going from one to the other and not detecting the games, the differences and the unfairness. All children should know that both parents would do all and everything they can to give them the life they deserve.

So to Mr P. You are an arse and I no longer like you. At all. I pray I do not ever bump into you again as I fear I may have to tell you what I think

On the subject of working. I may have found some possibility of a small amount of money. It means looking after someone else's children on the one night a week that my children are not here. There is a touch of irony here that has not escaped me, but needs must. I need to see if childcare can be arranged first. It is not escaping my notice that when the children are away, I work. When the children are here I work on children responsibility type things.

So much for me time.

I feel another round of stomach crunches coming on