I'm Natalie Lou and you're listening to the baggage reclaim sessions.

Hello. Is anybody else free to have that it is almost, well it is pretty much the end of August?

And that means that for me and maybe some of you guys as well. In just under a week's time my eldest is going off to

secondary school. I'm whispering this because it's still like I'm actually

start to freak out a little bit over it. I mean I'll be fine once the day comes around.

But I still can't believe that I am the mother of a kid who's old enough to go after secondary school and of course my mind has been

racing all over the place about oh my gosh what's the first day going to be like you know this is going to be so much

bigger even though it's a smaller small secondary school in comparison to others in the area.

It's still way bigger than the school that she's just coming from,

and your mind races all over the place, and you start imagining not just what it's going to be like on the first day,

but I'm already like several years ahead going, oh my God, what if she meets somebody in appropriate?

What if somebody tries to get us do drugs? if this what if that yeah I know but then I kind of dial it down and bring it all back so yeah so I'm kind of reconciling myself with that and enjoying the last few days before she heads off.

And I think I get one more day, like the very first day of walking her into school and then that's it, like

independence a hoi and something else actually that happened

which was actually last weekend was that I it was the 10th anniversary of my grandmother's passing and so we had a party and actually

as family gatherings go was a pretty intimate affair because my family gosh I mean they know how to

to basically get a big gathering going and actually in this case it was really

just you know there were some friends there but it was a much more intimate event and it was really really good fun.

I know I mentioned in a previous episode I was like yeah I wonder like if there's going to be

some of the usual moment of family drama but actually oh my gosh I know dare I say it but it was pretty much incident free

My mom came along with me and I will admit and I think this is something I've talked about in a

podcast and definitely on the blog that typically when I have brought my mom

...