i'm not ready for this

Jack: "Whatcha knitting?"
Me: "A boob."
Jack: "Why?"
Me: "We use it to show mummies how to get their babies to drink the milk, if they're having problems."
Jack: "Are there any pictures?"
Me: "No."
Jack: "Aww." [walks away, hugely disappointed]

He's seven. SEVEN.

read the fine print

You know when you win an eBay auction for a really cute lobster trap for your (newly) nautical-themed bathroom and you have plans to use it for storage or a bin? And despite having read the dimensions carefully, your brain doesn't fully calculate its actual size until it arrives?

Yeah. That.

So far, I've discovered that it's big enough to hold two tubes of toothpaste.

a mother's day

I've had a really hideous stomach bug for the past couple of days. I think it was Lynette on "Desperate Housewives" who said "Moms don't get sick days - we're like ER doctors!" Thankfully, I did get a sick day thanks to Isla going into nursery for an extra day and Paul coming home for the school run. I slept and slept and slept and started to feel a little more human yesterday.

I was on the sofa still feeling a bit ropey. Isla came up to me and asked, "All better?" I said no, my head hurts. "Awwww", she said. "Poor mummy," and pat my head. Mia rubbed my belly and Jack...well. He ran into the room wearing nothing but his Star Wars underwear and a cape shouting, "I'M CAPTAIN UNDERPANTS." Which did help me feel better, to be honest.

And then the next day, I was making school lunches, cooking supper, doing the dishes, putting dishes away, clearing up messes and back to business despite still being under the weather. I wasn't incapable, but not really up to it - but that's just what we do. I don't know any mother who can ignore all the jobs that need to be done, who doesn't have a persistent (unending) mental "to do" list, and who can ignore the screaming fights. We plod down the stairs with a head full of stabbing pain, in clothes we haven't had time to change out of for two days, mumbling something to the effect of "Please stop fighting because mummy's head is about to explode."

Paul always tells me to stop doing stuff when I'm unwell; just leave things for another time. But I can't. Once you've produced a child, some dormant gene switches on that forces you to do all the shit that pre-children you would have left until absolutely necessary. I remember resorting to eating off paper towels because I couldn't be arsed to do the dishes.

So tomorrow, give your old mother a break, will ya? Cook a meal, do the dishes, let her sleep past 6:00am. We don't want cards and flowers (okay, maybe a homemade card from the kids - they rock). I know some mothers are big on gifts and a Coach bag or two wouldn't go amiss, but me, I just want a day off and a bit of sleep. And quite a lot of wine.

(Of course all of this is moot because UK Mother's Day was in March. I've campaigned for 7 years to get both, however claiming cultural oppression hasn't worked so far.)

cutting words

On Friday I wrote an article about friends of mine whose baby was born at only 28 weeks (he's turning 1 tomorrow.) It was a tough story to write and a tough interview to review. There were things that I hadn't thought about for a while, things I never knew, and things that made me weep. I spent the day writing and editing and writing and editing and the article ended up being 1,600 words long - I needed it to be 800, maximum. After a very long, exhausting couple of hours, I got it down to 860 and the editor ran it.

I never appreciated how difficult it is to edit your own work when it's so personal. I didn't think I could cut anything out; there was so much I wanted to say. It was such an emotional story and I didn't want it to sound "clinical". This story had been told (relatively briefly) in two of the local papers, but I wanted to tell it from a slightly different angle. I don't know if I really managed to do that, but I'm pretty happy with it.

I just wish I could stick those 800 words back in there.

dress you up

A friend of ours is having an 80s-themed birthday party next month, and I'm trying to come up with costume ideas. Do I wear what I wore back then, or the stereotype like puffy skirts, legwarmers, and neon?

I went through about ten different fashion phases in high school. I started in 1982 (egad) and graduated in 1986, and went through an arty period in university for the next few years. First it was New Romantic (lots of lace, big curly hair that spilled down my face, tons of jewellery/pearls/dangly earrings, puffy shirts, many items from Le Chateau), then it was Mod/Ska (60s inspired, clam diggers, cardigans, plimsoles, miniskirts with turtlenecks), then it was sorta punk/arty (everything came from Salvation Army or the army surplus shop, Doc Martens, trenchcoats, safety pins everywhere), then it was Goth (lots of black. Um...yeah and more black.)

And the hair. Oh, the things I did to my hair. I'm amazed I still have any. I did so many home dye and bleach jobs, my scalp should have melted away by now. The crimping, the blow drying (while hanging upside down for the most volume), spraying my hair with hairspray then frying it on a curling iron, using supermega hair gel/wax/spray and backcombing it until it stood on end. DIY haircuts in the university dorm bathroom at 3am.

My eyebrows were tweezed within an inch of their lives (until it became fashionable again to have eyebrows - or at least draw them in with pencil.) Blindingly bright eyeshadow and in fact, I remember using bright yellow lipstick (!) as eyeshadow at one point. Lots of eyeliner and layer upon layer of mascara. "Laser wound" blush, as my friend Michael used to say (blush that looked like you'd been struck with a laser beam.) I used the palest foundation colour I could get, topped with even paler powder. And why was heavy make up on men not an issue back then? We loved guys in eyeliner, blush, and eyeshadow, and even a little lipstick (or a lot of lipstick if you were Robert Smith.)

I was never much into the neon and legwarmers, actually. Although having said that, I did go through a very brief phase of wearing my dancewear to school (including my jazz oxfords.) So I dunno. So many ideas to choose from. So much of it completely hideous and will look ridiculous on a 43 year old. Maybe I'll just come as Alexis from Dynasty.

cut to the chase

Food bloggers: you don't need to photograph every single step of your recipe. Or if you can't resist doing this, please just put the full recipe at the bottom of the post. Because I really hate it when recipes are like:

First, bring the butter to room temperature.
[Photo of butter being removed from the refrigerator.]
And now I'm going to prattle on about butter and insert a witty quip about butter here. Woooooweeee I love butter! Don't you? It's like bacon! I LOVE BACON!! Next, put the butter and sugar in a bowl.
[Eagle eye view of sugar being tipped into a bowl.]
Cream the butter and sugar together until fluffy. Hey, did I ever tell you this lengthy story about my little girl and that time she ate an entire 2kg bag of castor sugar? Well, it was back in June and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...
...three paragraphs later...
Sift the flour, baking powder, and salt in a large bowl.
[Arty shot of flour wafting through the air into a Williams and Sonoma ceramic bowl.]
Add the flour mixture to the butter, and add the eggs, vanilla, and milk.
[Obligatory shot of an egg being cracked, with shells scattered about in a seemingly random manner. May also contain added wooden spoon.]
[Photo of batter being mixed. Just in case you forgot how to use a spoon.]
[Photo of the batter being tipped into cake tins. Just in case you couldn't figure out how to get it from point A to point B.]
More hilarious anecdotes, possibly unrelated to cake.
[Highly stylised photo of finished cake, wildflowers cascading down the side.]

JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN RECIPE.

this woman's work

I've now been "out of work" for one year now. I put that in quotation marks because if anyone thinks that what stay at home mums do isn't work, you're greatly mistaken. I've seen a few articles and jokes circulating lately about all the nothing we do when we're not at "work", and although they've been funny and made me nod my head knowingly, do we really need to point this out? I've been amazed at the number of people - including other stay at home mothers - who ask me what I do with myself all day long, now that I'm not "working".

What. The. Fucking. Fuck.

I have three children under the age of 8, two of whom are in school and the third is with me for the majority of the week (she does go to nursery two days a week. More on that later.) Little people require quite a lot of tending. Surprised? Then you're an idiot. I don't need or want to detail every little thing I do on a typical day because I don't want to make it sound like my life is miserable. I chose to have kids. I chose to quit my paying job. I love my kids to pieces and think they're the best things since chocolate-covered Pirate cookies. But yes, life's busy. This should not be news.

I quit my job to spend more time with the kids and because I felt like I was missing out on a lot. I couldn't go to assemblies, I missed out on Sports Day, and I couldn't help out in the classroom on special occasions like Christmas decoration day. I wanted to spend more time with them while they're still little. And now, one year on, I'm starting to go a little batshit crazy.

So I'm hitting the virtual pavement, looking for writing gigs that I can do in my spare time. And spare time I do actually have - Isla's in nursery on Mondays and Fridays, and I can increase her hours in September when she gets her grant sessions. Although my background is in technical writing (which I love, despite people thinking it's desperately boring), I'd like to branch out into writing that's...erm...not technical. I've been writing a weekly piece on a friend's site and a weekly blog on a commercial site, and it's been good to get back into the habit of writing regularly.

Now, if I could just find a part time job I can do from home that doesn't involve selling things or phone sex.