Humour · Personal

The Truth About Me

The Truth About Me
  1. I am absolutely shit at housework. No, scratch that, it’s not the housework I’m bad it, any idiot can work a Hoover. It’s the inclination I lack. And the fact that it all needs doing over and over and over again is what gets me. No sooner have I got the house tidy, someone changes their clothes or wants a meal, or some other inconsiderate thing and it all starts again.
  2. I watch way too much telly. I have a core rotation of shows that I watch every week (Misfits, Desperate Housewives, Being Erica, Life Unexpected, Criminal Minds, The Simpsons, Come Dine With Me, Grand Designs to name but a fraction) plus I supplement these with regular viewings of whatever is on the Good Food Channel, and at least an hour of Friends re-runs every day. God, looking at all of that, it actually scares me to think that I watch SO much telly…
  3. I’m self-deprecating to a really annoying degree. Like, I really hardly ever say anything nice about myself, and I take any opportunity to make a mean joke or take the piss out of myself. This is a skill I have honed over 20-odd years, and I am really good at it. I can make a self directed insult out of the most tenuous of prompts. Husband hates it.
  4. Being a wife/mother/daughter/daughter-in-law/friend is the only thing that really means anything to me. You could take all the other shit away and just leave me with the people who I love and I’d still be as happy as a pig in the proverbial. And no, that wasn’t a fat joke. For once.
  5. I’m ridiculously sensitive. Husband says I could start a row in an empty room with no windows or doors. I have this innate flaw which means I alway think that people are getting at me. This is one of the things I really wish I could change about myself, but don’t really know where to start.
  6. Despite my declaration about my loved ones, I’m actually really rubbish at staying in touch with people. I get this thing where I go a bit reclusive for a while and don’t contact anyone, and then when I come out of my cave I feel like I’ve left it too long and people will be mad at me and I don’t want to call people if they’re mad and maybe I should just stick my head in the sand and pretend everything is okay and there aren’t any phone calls I should be making.
  7. Sometimes it’s really hard work being inside my brain. Above, being the perfect example. I’ve always been afflicted with an ‘over thinking’ problem.
  8. I don’t make friends very easily as I wear my heart on my sleeve and tend to take it as a sign that others don’t like me if they aren’t the same way. In real life, this translates to me meeting someone, telling them my life story, then assuming they don’t like me when they don’t reciprocate. See? Hard work.
  9. I love writing a blog but have become a little obsessed with my site stats. In fact, sometimes, if I write a post and don’t get many hits that day, a tiny part of my brain tells me to stop blogging. But I don’t stop and then I have a good day and am glad I didn’t stop.
Birth Trauma · Personal

Yoda Was Wrong

Photo by Jayson Hinrichsen

Yoda may be a wise little green dude, but I think it’s time someone contradicted him. I have been sitting here for the last hour, trying to write a post about Sausage and how she came into the world. And I think I have realised, that after two and quarter years, I’m still not ready to do it.

The words are flowing out of me readily, but somehow, it feels as if no words can ever do justice to how awful a situation it was. It’s taken a really long time for Husband and I to feel even vaguely normal, but writing about it has made me realise that I am still so angry. I’m angry with the Doctors who were supposed to be there, and weren’t. I’m angry with the crappy bureaucratic system which dictates the way our medical system works. But mostly I’m still angry with myself for ever walking out of that hospital and leaving Sausage there.

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Christmas · Personal

Stuck in my Ways?

Stuck in my Ways?

If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know that Husband has some sleep issues which mean that often, he is awake while the rest of the household is asleep. We’re both avid users of StumbleUpon, which means that I often wake up with a dozen emails from him, little things that he’s read that he thinks I’ll find interesting. And I love it, it’s one of my favourite things as I know that he’s been thinking of me, plus it gives us lots to talk about and debate upon. He’ll send me things which are so random, so totally me that it gives me a warm feeling to think that he really gets me, you know?

Until yesterday.

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Opinion · Parenting · Personal

The True Cost of Parenting

The True Cost of Parenting

Some friends of mine and Husband’s are expecting their first child at the beginning of next year, and they had us over for dinner at the weekend. We were going through the usual baby-related chit-chat (and I swear, I have tried to lay off of baby-talk as I know it’s maddening for a Mum-to-be to have the same conversation with every single person she speaks to) and we got to the subject of shopping. Or more accurately what they were planning to buy, to prepare for their new arrival.

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Parenting · Personal

No Kids Allowed?

No Kids Allowed?

Okay, anyone who is of faint-heart may want to turn away now. Because I have something to say, and it may not be pretty or delicate. It’s something I feel strongly about and if this turns into a rant, don’t blame me, you were warned!

I would really, really like to know; why do people have children if they don’t like spending time with them? I was reading a post from a fellow blogger this morning, where she talks about taking her family on a skiing holiday, and one of her friends told her that with the day care and classes for kids, she’d barely have to see her kids whilst away. As you’ll see if you read the original post, Mediocre Mum had no intention of palming her kids off to strangers for the whole holiday, but the fact that it was said, so out of hand, like children are just accessories, dragged out when we need them, kind of got on my nerves.

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Parenting · Personal

An Ode to Winter

An ode to winter

Photo by Tim Gouw

When I was younger, if you’d have asked me what my favourite season was, my answer, without hesitation, would have been summer. I loved summer, I felt it was my season. I loved the heat, I’d be delirious with excitement when the longer nights set in. I was born in June, a true summer baby. When I first started living with Husband, I’d drag him out on twilight walks to sit in the local public gardens, just so I could soak up the balmy evenings.

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Opinion · Personal

Facebook is Making Me Die Inside

I have a bit of a Facebook problem. I spend far too much time checking my Facebook, time when I should be, you know, parenting Sausage or doing housework or something. I’m more than happy to admit that my main motivation for having a Facebook page is my innate nosiness. I love to look at other people’s pictures, read snippets of what’s going on in their lives.

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Personal

My Overactive Guilt Gland

Guilt

I should probably have been born a Catholic.

Nah, screw that, I’m far too lethargic/apathetic to remember to pray all the time and go to church every week.

But I do have a guilt complex of which a Catholic would be proud.

I feel guilty about EVERYTHING.

You know when you eat a can of baked beans? If I leave even one bean in the can when I empty it into the saucepan (oh alright, microwave dish, I’m not shit-hot enough at being a wife and mother to use metal saucepans to heat things in. But I digress…) I feel actually properly guilty about leaving that one bean, alone. Alone and unable to fulfill its life purpose as a baked bean, which is to be eaten by my child.

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Personal

Collecting Straws

Straws

Photo by Vlad Chețan

My husband is one of those people who knows everything.

Not in a douchey “I’m a know-it-all” kind of way, he’s just got one of those amazing brains which stores an unfathomable amount of stuff. Couple that with an overactive thirst for knowledge and he knows a lot. He’s the kind of guy you want on your team at a pub quiz.

So, the other day, he was doing some reading about various different philosophies relating to anger and he came across the phrase “collecting straws”.

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Health and Beauty · Personal

“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”

“Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”

I had a dream.

Not a particularly profound one, in the great big Dr. King scheme of things, but it really shook me up.

I should probably set the scene.

On Monday, I spent the afternoon cooking. I made a chicken soup from the chicken that was leftover from the previous days roast, and I also made a beef stew as we had company coming for dinner on Tuesday (and besides, I always think a stew tastes better the day after you cooked it). Oh and I also attempted to make bubble and squeak from the veg, also leftover from the roast.

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