Actually that is not strictly true as later we need to go to the hairdressers as Eldest looks like one of those Old English Sheepdogs. And not in a good way.
But other than that we are doing nothing.
We got up exceedingly late. I let them watch TV and play on mindless computer games for far too long.
Eldest and Middlest have spent a fair amount of time refining, rewriting and redrafting their Christmas lists. Following extensive on line research into the pros and cons of various Nerf guns.
I sent them out to buy an onion, one carrot and a loaf of bread. My on line shopping often goes awry in the holiday. They went on their bikes and came back with the change and a mouldy onion. So I went out to get another….
Then I banned all forms of electronics. Thus ensued an amazing Nerf gun battle. Which was just as well because I am not going to buy any more foam bullet firing guns unless they will actually get played with. I am pretty stumped Christmas present wise but I am not going to buy stuff that merely languishes in drawers.
Obviously the battle descended into carnage. It started well but deteriorated. People were cheating. Youngest was adamant she was ‘going to win’ and hacked the other two off. I tried to explain that no one ever ‘wins’ in a war, not really. That was too deep for them during their ‘red mist’ and so I took several green disks to the backside. Play fighting became actual fighting. So we stopped.
I made them make their own lunch. Inch thick slices of cucumber anyone?
Then we had an hour before our appointment at the salon.
I left them to it. Boredom is good for kids. It fires their imaginations.
For the last three days Eldest has been on a County Chamber Music course. Playing his cello.
When the invitation to sign up came out he met all the criteria and so I asked him if he was interested and surprisingly he said he was. I might have mentioned his old cello teacher would be there. And he might have been slightly distracted by Minecraft but he agreed readily.
Of course on the morning of the first day he was less keen. He didn’t want to go. He was nervous of meeting new people and of not being a good enough player. I assumed that he would be with others roughly his age playing music roughly of the right standard.
Well he got through that first day and had texted me during it with reassuring little messages. He was exhausted, as expected after concentrating for five hours, but went to bed happy enough.
The next morning however he was weeping into his Weetabix refusing to go back. He felt that he wasn’t good enough, that he would let his other quartet members down, that he had no one to talk to. Suffice to say that a combination of the lack of the promised teacher, three girls in his group much older than him, and apparently much better players than him, and not being able to find the toilets had put him off.
And then I had that dilemma all parents face. How much to push.
It doesn’t matter in what field or at what level, at some point every parent has to decide whether to push or not. It can be anything, anywhere. A party for five year olds when they just want to cling to your leg. The decision to send them on a Cub camp or not. The first residential school trip. Your toddler screaming on the side of a swimming pool refusing to jump in for the teacher. When they are stuck up a large tree you have no hope of climbing and the only way forwards is for them to come down by themselves. How to leave your sobbing four year old on the first day of school.
All of these, and a myriad others particular to each child, involve this knife edge decision.
In this case the instinctive part of me wanted to just ring up the course co-ordinator and say he wasn’t coming back. And tear a strip off him for the lack of introductions, support and basic venue familiarisation undertaken for my 11 year old.
But then the rational part of me remembered that my son is highly strung, a perfectionist, liable to remember only the negative. And a brilliant cellist for his age. Who played a solo in front of 250 people at the end of year school shin dig without much fuss.
I realised that if he quit those three violinists would be left in the lurch.
I knew from experience that although the performance aspect would be scary it would also be exhilarating.
And so I rang the co-ordinatior, bit my tongue and merely explained the facts. He spoke to Eldest and reassured him and he agreed to go back. I made a separate deal. That if he could ring me at lunch and tell me hand on heart that he had hated the whole morning I would fetch him back, no questions asked.
Of course that didn’t happen. His old teacher materialised. The girls found out he was only in Year 7 and took him under their wing. He rang me at lunch to ask if he could order pizza and stay between the end of the dress rehearsal and the actual concert so he could spend more time with them.
We are leaving soon to watch him. He will probably go wrong. And be a bag of nerves. That is fine. But he will also get a massive high from the experience.
He will feel braver and more self confident as a result of pushing through the fear. Let’s face it life is full of things we do not want to face.
And I was right to push.
But it is a balancing act.
Too much pushing will see him resent me for making him do things that made him miserable.
Too little and he will miss out on experiences that could really enrich his life.
There is currently a big black cloud on my horizon. Not literally, although after I put my washing on the line earlier it did go quite dark, no I mean metaphorically.
And the reason is the impending Year 6 Local Environmental Issue project. A forty page plus project on a local environmental issue of your choice. Quite self explanatorily.
Last year when Eldest was in Year 6 we got through the winter term relatively unscathed. Rugby took its toll and in early January his Senior school entrance exams loomed. Although the school were at pains to point out that they were just a formality.
And so he went back to school in January on fine form. Looking forward to the football term although not those exmas. And then on that first day back the school emailed out a letter.
The letter outlined the project that needed to be undertaken during the next term. At first I was confused, did they mean after Easter? Then it dawned on me that the letter was late and should have come out before the Christmas break.
And my heart sank.
The letter pulled no punches. It explained that parental involvement would be necessary. As the project required site visits and interviewing and photos. That in itself was quite refreshing. At least they were being honest about the level of work I would have to do. Usually schools seem to believe children can produce, say, the Taj Mahal out of matchsticks unaided. Ha. Ha. Ha.
In some ways I was glad for the fact that the letter had been issued late. And therefore we had remained in blissful ignorance over the seasonal festivities.
No such luck this year as Middlest hurtles his way towards the same project.
I am never really sure what such pieces of work are for. Or who.
I agree that children need to learn to manage larger pieces of extended work. They need to practise time management. Be able to plan in sensible chapters.
Unfortunately mine are some way off being able to do this independently. And so guess who ends up doing most of it? Well guiding them to do it but you know what I mean.
Not only that but they are supposed to use their humanities lessons at school to progress the project. And so in order to ensure they don’t spent those valuable hours sharpening pencils and chatting to their mates I am left lesson planning too.
And then there is the topic. I shot my best bolt local environmental issue wise last year with Eldest. I now need to think of another issue that around 40 pages of work can be produced about. Along with a photo journey and an interview and site visits. Without too much colouring in. Middlest hates colouring in.
Asking my ten year old to come up with an idea for such a project is laughable. I have asked him a couple of times if he has had any thoughts. I get a sort of blank, quizzical look. I guess one could take it as a shocking lack of knowledge. Or just be realistic; that the average ten year old wants to cause his own environmental catastrophe by owning every plastic gun in the known universe not write an extended piece about it.
So I have been wracking my brains since last year to no real avail. I have come up with the recycling journey of a yogurt pot or the impact of the new bypass near by. Neither are filling me with excitement. And both involve me in speaking to the council to get access and information and facts. Which requires me to do something before Christmas. The clock is ticking.
Had the project been about something Middlest was passionate about, say elephants or the wider environmental and conservation issues surrounding elephants, he might be more engaged. But no it has to be local. Not many elephants round here. That site visit would have been more fun too…
Or it could be a history project which would get my juices flowing and therefore by default his. And we could visit castles and I could once more coo over medieval plumbing (still find that fascinating…the forethought to build drainage through those thick, thick walls, mind blowing). In fact for me it could be any other sort of project really; history, geography, art, politics etc. Just not the same one as last year.
But, no, we are stuck with these parameters. Yawn. I spent six weeks plus of my life living, eating and breathing the last ‘issue’. Spending our weekends trawling round our local Community Forests. I like a woodland walk. I enjoy birds and wildlife. I like feeling that I am ‘contributing’ to such a worthwhile cause whilst eating organic flap jack. I just don’t enjoy having to do all that with half an eye on chapter eight whilst photographing every information board and surveying cyclists. And I certainly don’t relish having to come home and force a child to sit down and write about it. As such I have no enthusiasm left.
It is safe to say that when Eldest got 39 marks out of 40 (he lost a mark for his slightly ‘thin’ Conclusion…. by that point he had truly HAD ENOUGH) my heart sank a little. For now we need to replicate that this year. Or else Middlest will plead favouritism. Again.
I truly hope that in another two years when it is Youngest’s turn the subject will have changed. If not it will be severely tempting to recycle Eldest’s. In the name of the environment.
Footnote: After writing this I was inspired enough to e mail the Council. I got the standard ‘Our turn around time is 10 working days’ response. This is why I need to start now. Weep…
I wanted to write a piece about books. I penned something yesterday and when I came to read it back just now it was not really that great. My writing has let me down just as I want to write about, well, the written word. Ironically.
And so I am going to try again. Deep breath.
I suppose it is true that it is impossible to be a writer, even one as amateurish as me, without having a love for reading.
In today’s world many, many things get in the way of book reading. The TV with its myriad delights, the internet, social media, work, too many children doing too many things, blogging and the like.
It is also true that the reading many of us do has changed. From lengthy novels to snappy titbits on social media pages, magazine articles, blog entries. The modern world is displayed to us in short, easy to digest slices.
I am currently reading a Hilary Mantel. Not the Tudor ones- which I read in hard back as soon as they came to my attention because that part of history is one of my secret passions, my shelves groan with such tomes- no a piece of contemporary fiction. I am enjoying it. But I only seem to find time to read in bed before dropping off to sleep and so I spend an in-ordinate amount of that short period of time flicking back through the pages to remember what has just happened.
Some novels are like that. They need concerted effort. And the only time I seem to have available for such effort is on holiday. Well that is not totally true. I could turn off the TV. Stop writing. Give up Face book. But I don’t.
It wasn’t always like this. As a child I would curl up on my bed and read for hours at a time. Especially in the school holidays when kids’ TV finished at 12 noon and there was no such thing as the internet.
Middlest has the bug too. Despite all those distractions he spends a lot of time reading. He is a complete book worm. When we can’t find him he is usually on his bed in a position very familiar to me. And I am envious of the time he has to be so engrossed in his books. When I go to his room to bring him down for dinner he looks up almost dazed as he drags himself back from Middle Earth or Sendaria or Hogwarts.
My others read too. But much more in the vein of ‘just before bed’. Middlest reads with a single minded dedication and tenacity that I admire. He gets fully immersed. It is something I remember fondly.
And the thing is it shows in his writing, which is amazingly eloquent for a ten year old, and his verbal language, and his vocabulary.
And so I think I need to rediscover my reading mojo.
So here goes. Some random stuff I have discovered today.
It is possible to drive to my kids’ school and back in under 15 minutes when on a games kit/ cello induced mercy dash.
If you turn up 15 minutes late to an exercise class you just miss the boring warm up and only semi important station explanation. Although I may discover tomorrow how vital that warm up is.
Deleting about 18 months worth of text messages will turn your phone back into a relatively responsive tool.
The shops are no longer full of orange hued home accessories now I have decided that orange is to be the accent colour for our newly decorated lounge.
It is apparently Christmas already.
Allowing the kids off music practice in the morning so they can get more sleep after a school induced late night will see us all falling out.
It is quite pleasant to write blogs in Costa.
Belgian chocolate tea cakes make that even pleasanterer.
My phone’s predictive text will predict good when I want home and home when I want good. Which makes that sentence really hard to get right.
One should keep an eye on boiling potatoes rather than ignoring them to write.
It is best to wait for the ceramic hob to cool down before clearing up boiled over water. Unless you like the smell of burnt J cloth.
Allowing Eldest to have a phone not only heads off games kit/ cello induced emergencies but also allows him to text me cute messages which make me feel better about the tiredness induced morning arguments.
I enjoy employing deliberate grammatical errors in my writing. Not sure why. Probably so I can claim any actual errors are supposed to be there. And to annoy pedants.
My reverse parking sensors are wildly over cautious. And I actually need gate post sensors.
Asking Middlest to be quick out of school will make us late for football training.
People are still wearing leggings that are see through enough to be correctly categorised as tights.
It is impossible to watch the final of the Bake Off a day late and not discover who the winner is during that day. And I don’t mind that much.
As much as I love Billy Joel he doesn’t cut it driving music wise. And I still prefer soft rock.
If I would like Youngest to practise her times tables I must threaten the removal of football training.
I can’t do bullets on my phone and will have to add them at home later before the scheduled publishing time. Home more to do at good I mean good more to do at home.
We can still name all the characters on In the Night Garden. And Makka Pakka is still our favourite. Isn’t that a pip?
I still don’t know when to use practice and when to use practise. So I looked it up. C for noun, s for verb. So I need to practise and get some practice in.
I care about accent colours.
That last discovery worries me most.
So there you have it. Just a normal day. One is always learning.
If you are my husband then obviously the Costa is not part of my normal day. Honest gov.
We have a saying in our family. And it goes like this.
“Have you used your Lady Eyes?”
There are a lot of us in this house. Sometimes it feels like there are far too many of us. But the number of children I decided to have is maybe an issue for another day.
So there are a lot of us. And so we have a lot of stuff.
And it appears that it is my job to keep tabs on it all.
I spend a fair amount of my day mentally logging the position of many useful objects, most of which do not belong to me.
For instance my husband finds it really hard to keep track of his spectacles. They appear to be a mobile object despite having arms and not legs. Whenever he is home and I walk past them I make that mental note so that when the inevitable enquiry is made I can respond with a GPS location. Arm of sofa, window sill in bathroom, atop the laundry basket, on the patio furniture, beside the toaster. And such like.
Last Christmas I stumbled upon a fantastic stand for him to use. That is a picture of it up there. It is positioned on the window sill next to the front door. (And incidentally whilst we are there that is the place everyone should look first for any missing item. Just saying). And the stand helps slightly. He uses it when arriving home. Or when swapping from sunglasses to indoor glasses. But it hasn’t eradicated the whole problem. I believe a string around the neck is the only sure fire way. Or he could just wear them all the time…
And then we move on to my children. I suppose we must. The current items which cause the most issues are Eldest’s phone and Middlest’s I pod. In the case of the former we could ring it to find it’s location but unfortunately it is set by default to silent so he does not fall foul of the ‘no phone use in or between lessons’ rule at school. And Middlest’s is not ringable. We lost both yesterday. And then I found them almost entirely camouflaged on the black granite fire surround in the family room. I have suggested that putting their entirely black electronics on the hearth is maybe not such a good idea moving forwards. Especially when we begin lighting the fire.
When things are actually leaving the house the pressure ramps up. I seem to be the only person who does a mental check list when leaving a sports field. This weekend I had a ‘Lady Eyes’ fail. We discovered this at 7.45am this morning when their school lift was revving on the driveway and Eldest decided he had better check his Games kit and found his Ripstop was missing.
The Ripstop is a compulsory item. A sort of semi-waterproof, pull over the head tracksuit top. There are three in this house. People scoff at my diligent name label sewing which I undertake annually each Autumn. They say I should use a laundry pen on the care label. They don’t have three sets of everything in very similar sizes to out sort from the laundry. A name in the collar is actually as useful for me, the laundress, as it is for keeping the kit ‘safe’. I do not want to waste time hunting for initials on a care label on a side seam.
They all have red and black stripy games socks. I decided not to bother labelling them as it is quite hard to sew a name label onto something as stretchy as a sock. What a mistake. I often have 6 socks that look almost identical but are actually slightly different sizes hanging from my airer. I am sure I am probably ruining Eldest’s feet in the manner of Chinese babies and it probably explains the blisters Youngest sometimes gets after football training.
So anyway Eldest must have taken his Ripstop onto the field for his (very sunny) Rugby match on Saturday. And left it there. At the end of the match I did send him off for his water bottle which was clearly missing but as I hadn’t seen the Ripstop come onto the field and it was about 20 degrees it slipped my mind.
It will serve him right if he gets into trouble at Rugby training today. When heavy rain is forecast. I would laugh but it really isn’t that funny at £20 a pop.
Generally my kids do quite well at not losing their stuff. That is because I get very cross when they do. And I have a rule that if they lose something they will pay to replace it. I am training them early to do their own mental checklist. Obviously there is still someway to go.
I am also a name labelling maniac. I put sticky labels on everything. Including Eldest’s phone. Which he is surprisingly sanguine about. I put a sticky label on every one of the fine liners in the pack of 10 I bought Middlest this weekend. They cost nearly £1 a pen. I felt justified. A lot of stationary gets ‘borrowed’ at school. If stuff is labelled some other child cannot claim it is ‘their’s’. Middlest explained that actually each pen cost 99.90p. I retorted that I would allow him to merely pay 99p for the last pen he lost but £1 per mislaid pen up to that point. I think he got the message.
Compared to their school mates, and possibly because of my mercenary approach, they do OK. Already this term there have been impassioned e mails from other parents pleading for the return of black jumpers, entire Games bags with contents, mouth guards, blazers (yikes £75 a go) and odd shoes. The latter really worries me. How did they get home? Hopping?
When they come out from sports clubs in kit my Lady Eyes checklist follows a certain order:- Blazer, school shoes, mouth guard, other branded items, generic clothing of which I have a spare pair at home, generic items of which I have 5 others at home, black socks. I also try to remember to mentally note any lack of musical instruments but to be fair it is quite hard to miss that a cello is missing. If you see what I mean. The absence of a violin my slip through the net however.
And so I am chief ‘finder/ retainer of all things’. Here are my maxims:-
Always put stuff in the same place.
Always label everything.
Ensure kids are on board by employing a mix of ‘mummy is very disappointed’ and financial penalties.
It helps. It hasn’t really dealt with the husband problem though. I guess he will get so short sighted at some point it will solve itself.
Today I made a new meal for tea. I am trying to widen my repertoire.
It is a risky business as I am never sure of the reception such ventures will get.
By scouring the internet I had managed to find a recipe for cheese free lasagna. I had managed to source gluten free pasta sheets. I could assemble the meal and leave it on automatic to reheat. Essential whilst I dealt with the ferrying that a usual Thursday evening entails.
It is true that some of the constituent parts may have fallen foul of someone’s dislike radar. Mushrooms…youngest, spinach….everyone under 12, crème fraiche…husband. I decided to risk it.
Youngest loves lasagna as long is it is ‘not too cheesy’. We have banned her from ordering it in untried restaurants. I am sick of having to swap my delicious meal for a child’s sized portion of oven baked pasta which has failed the ‘fromage’ test. This lasagna had no cheese. Due to husband. But that also played to Youngest’s foible. And so I decided she had to suck up the mushrooms.
As everyone knows spinach tastes of nothing when incorporated with other ingredients and is just there to provide colour interest and make mothers feel better. And so again I thought I could get away with it.
I just closed my ears to the crème fraiche.
Everything else should have passed muster. Sausagemeat, pasta, passata, mild chilli, garlic, a few herbs, some seasoning.
When I was assembling it at 8.30 this morning it smelt fantastic.
Cunningly I had made the off spring wait until after Youngest had returned from football training to eat. By which point it was a full two hours later than we usually dine.
Eldest would probably have eaten anything, literally anything, I put in front of him. Brillo pad en croute… Middlest had spent the 40 minutes it took the dish to bake standing in front of the oven door peering in. I had to physically restrain him from opening up that door to ‘check it was cooking’ on several occasions. Youngest had spent 90 minutes running around a sports hall.
And to top it all apparently it is one of Mary Berry’s grandchildren’s favourites.
And so I had high hopes.
Eldest shovelled his portion down. Middlest declared it was delicious. I was immediately suspicious. This usually means he doesn’t like something. True enough despite being apparently ‘starving’ in the immediate period before serving he was ‘stuffed’ after barely half a plateful…
Youngest peered suspiciously at the ‘bits of sausage’ declaring that they looked a lot like slices of mushroom. They were but I got away with it. I banned her from out sorting all that green, healthy stuff and she managed to eat her plateful. Albeit with little enthusiasm.
Husband didn’t enjoy it at all. To be fair it probably wasn’t so good after a second reheating. And I should never close my ears to crème fraiche.
So I am not sure if it will make another appearance.
Probably not.
And this is why we eat the same meals over and over again.
I think I may have introduced you to Youngest before. If you have somehow missed this please see I Know I Play Like Girl and Youngest.
We are very much alike in many ways. Except she can run 5k in under 30 minutes, score goals in football and throw a ball a long way. And I cannot.
In other ways though we are very similar. She is not at all girly. She does not want to wear jewelry. She is not interested in painting her nails. She doesn’t want to read about unicorns having sparkling adventures. She will not tolerate hair drying.
Although now I ponder on it she is probably this way because I am. But any way there it is.
Today we went on our annual clothes shopping trip. Every autumn she puts on a pair of trousers and they are somewhere around mid calf. And we realise that after a summer in shorts she needs new winter clothes.
When she was a baby and small toddler I loved clothes shopping for her. Before she could voice an opinion she did wear quite traditionally female clothes. Although not many were pink. I preferred red, white and blue. And she looked great in dark and bold colours.
And then once she got to Year 1 she decided she would call the shots attire wise. She refused a pinafore for school. It inhibited her running madly around the playground. So into trousers she went. She took it one step further in Year 2 eschewing the polo top and going for collared shirt and school tie. Not even many boys bothered with that.
And so clothes for leisure wear had to change too. She will not wear skirts. At all. Ever. I was slightly worried when she started her new Junior School because they insist on skirts until Year 6. She has been remarkably sanguine about that. But her line has hardened out of school.
She will wear a pretty frock. But only on holiday to a dinner and disco. I bought her a load for Greece, indulging my secret pretty dress fetish, she wore each one twice and then one of them again to a wedding. But now we cannot persuade her into one for, say, a night out. Without histrionics.
Historically we have relied on a certain large department store to come up with the goods winter clothes wise. She has had a capsule wardrobe of dark purple velour jeans, skinny denims, dark blue and purple tops, the occasional cream roll neck and a selection of fleeces. She was happy with this.
This year their selection was frankly awful. We are not interested in tops with ponies on or unicorns. We want long sleeves not short they are for WINTER. She is a rake and so has to have adjustable waists and the only pair of dark jeans she liked (bottle green) where elasticated. They fitted her legs but had about 5 inches spare round the waist. I am not sure who these clothes are made for. Very skinny legged children with fat tummies. Weird.
And so we trawled everywhere else. It was depressing.
My daughter does not want to wear clothes stating that she is a ‘Princess’ or that ‘Prettier girls have more fun’. Yes seriously. My god. I don’t often blaspheme but for the love of all that is holy why would you put a girl in that…. She doesn’t want handkerchief hems. She doesn’t want to layer in the manner of stylish ‘ladies’. She is eight she needs a top and trousers and maybe a cardy. She doesn’t want panda print smocks or jump suits with puppies on (?). I thought we had strayed into the pyjama department when I saw them but, no, jump suits, for eight year olds, with puppies on….my life. I may have mentioned before that she doesn’t like pink, in any hue. Except for that cycling top, she likes that.
We just want fun clothes in jewel colours, that co-ordinate and fit. We will accept sequins, but not if they form a ‘kiss’ on the front of her chest in a vaguely provocative way.
In the end we cobbled a few outfits together. Our final shop of the day yielded some decent stuff. Although we had to scour the racks.
She seems happy with our purchases. And I can relax for another year.
I am of the ‘If you haven’t been physically sick/ emptied your colon in spectacular and explosive fashion/ hit 40 on the thermometer/ lost a limb then you are going to school’ brigade.
Middlest has not done any of those things. But he is doubling up with stomach cramps on a regular basis. And hasn’t eaten anything substantial all day. And he was so white when he got up that I wondered where all his blood had gone.
I consulted his timetable which is stuck to the fridge. He has his double Rugby lesson today. And it was raining when we got up. And so I relented. And once I reluctantly said he could stay home he took himself back to bed and went to sleep.
So not faking I don’t think.
Anyway to be sure I have made the day as boring as possible. Lots of sleeping in his bedroom. That usually does the trick.
Unfortunately that has also meant I have had a very boring day too. I got through my chores whilst he was sleeping. We have caught up with Bake Off. I have filled in my Neighbourhood Planning Survey. There are other boring jobs I could be doing. But they are, well, boring.
It is ironic (in the proper sense of the word (a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often wryly amusing as a result) not in the American ‘rain on your wedding day’ sense of the word) that when I have an ’empty’ day I find it harder to get on with stuff. Although now I think on it, it isn’t that wryly amusing. But it is true that the more time I have to do stuff the less I actually do.
I should have thought up a few more good blog subjects but that isn’t something I can do to order.
I quite like Facebook. I used to use it for shorter versions of these blog entries. I post less nowadays as a result of musingsponderingsandrants but I still get pleasure from hearing other’s news.
It is also my main platform for sharing this Blog and so I could not really do without it. Well I could but then no one would read anything I wrote except for my handful of loyal followers (thanks to you lovely lot), and those stumbling upon me accidentally.
I have a lot of family and friends who I see too infrequently and I feel closer to them than I would if FB didn’t exist.
I have found handymen and wasp nest killers and cooker repairers from heart felt pleas on its walls.
Others I know successfully sell second hand items through it.
And actually the most lovely thing about it is the snap shot it gives one of one’s life. Nearly daily, because I was such an avid poster, I get a notification that I have ‘Memories to look back on’. In fact I am such a prolific poster that when I tried recently to order one of those ‘My Social Books’ for my time on the site I could not get it under the 500 page limit.
I always look back on those memories. I don’t usually share them because who else is interested. But I gain immense pleasure from them.
Today I was reminded that last year Middlest and Eldest were both away overnight (I have no idea where!) and husband and I took Youngest for her first Chinese restaurant meal. And had a ball.
Two years ago my friendly dashboard spider gave me a fright.
There were pictures of Eldest in Year 4 dressed as a Celtic warrior. It backed up my recent musings that he was by far the most grown up of all my children at that stage in school. Youngest has now just started Year 4 and has no where near the same knowing look in her eye.
Four years ago I had finished knitting Jesus.
And five years ago I was bemoaning how hard it was to cook a curry whilst doing reading with Eldest, avoiding Middlest’s toy cars whizzing by, dressing a dollie for Youngest and avoiding a balloon pig occasionally floating over the hob.
I can remember that moment very clearly- although I have no idea why we had a balloon pig- beacuse I had been reminded of it. I would probably never have thought about it again with out that timely reminder from good old FB.
And so I am glad I was a prolific poster. I am glad I wrestled my inner demons, who worried I was boring everyone to death, and just wrote anyway. I am glad I wrote about the every day, the mundane, the humorous, the annoying and the heartfelt.
For now I have this record of my day to day life since 2009. A most welcome, almost daily, little package of memories which make me go ‘Oh yes I remember that’. It is an on line version of a diary but with pictures.
And it makes me think that I still need to post some little snippets, despite the longer record of current life contained in these blogs. For else I will lose that lovely package of history.
FB has its detractors but for me it has definitely got this right. Thanks.
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