Mums online

So today started off badly at bedtime last night, the mood is not good. Badly organised bedtime = bad sleep and hectic morning.

During baby's nap this morning, I elected to sit down with a coffee and The Wright Stuff. To find them chortling about the much maligned Mumsnet.

I have reservations about Mumsnet; google lists results from there highly on searches (and indeed other forums) and instead of a sensible answer to your query, you find the opinions of the general public. Who invariably lack specialist knowledge and may write utter drivel. As is the way with forums, you also get incensed arguments from every viewpoint on just about any topic. Idiots are free to post and their opinions are recorded for posterity as long as they adhere to the rules. The rules and etiquette don't allow you to say "you are an imbecile and your opinions are potentially dangerous" so there they are, popping up in your search results. Annoying.

But still. Leave us mums alone. A pet hate of mine is the smugness of those with their interesting media lives mocking those who spend a lot of time online. No, we still don't have anything better to do.

Mumsnet is often targeted: why do mums whine about having so much to do then spend all that time online?

Because of course, when you have a baby you have simply millions of people to speak to... If it is your first baby, you may not know other mothers, you might find your old friends turn a bit glaikit when you bore on about baby and you also are likely to have a million "is this normal??!!!" questions. So you venture online. You find people in the same position. You chat to them. Next time you need to chat, you chat again. It's reassuring. It's companionship.

Later, when you may be feeling aaaaaaaaargh! and at that all-I-do-is-change-nappies stage, you can impart your own knowledge and feel a little bit useful. Never underestimate feeling useful at that stage, it doesn't happen often.

This morning one woman quipped about the women on Mumsnet never leaving the house unless maybe to go to Waitrose.

Welcome to life with a baby. That's what happens. Ho ho, such mirth.

Yes, some über mothers have a full and marvellous life with endless coffee mornings and baby sessions and being out there generally doing things that aren't free to do. But they are not looking for company online, are they? They're at Starbucks with their Real Friends.

I do sort of understand the query as to why mums complain about having no time and then spend time online. But seriously, if you spend hours entertaining, feeding, comforting and generally caring for a baby, and that baby has a nap, are you seriously expected to crack on immediately with chores and not have a spot of feet up time? Should we be being domestic 24/7?

Do people, who are busy with things that aren't children and who complain about having no time, genuinely never watch tv or phone a friend or have a bath, or go to the pub or out for a meal? Never? We all need time out somehow.

You also need to talk to someone, babies aren't the best conversationalists.

Don't get me wrong, I don't LIKE Mumsnet (on account of the idiots, sorry) but please, criticise them for the right reasons instead of insulting all mums.

I need to go now, I'm off out for coffee with a mum friend. The joy of a second baby is that you do know mums now. Huzzah.

Wedding!

Glorious day. Wonderful people. Happy, happy couple.

And from a completely self obsessed point of view:

I have a new dad!! I needed one of them.

So many compliments, I have been called stunning many, many times AND had my/our parenting skills admired. Impeccably behaved gorgeous children.

My mother looked beautiful and radiant; her husband is both very lucky and a wonderful addition to our family.

Sigh. Lovely, lovely.




Yes, I know. But it would feel wrong to post about anything else. Soz.

Break up!

Ross and Rachel broke up!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjaU8vQo83g&feature=youtube_gdata

Actual tears fell here last night, sniffing through Disc 11 of the precious, precious Friends boxset.

Because awful though it was first time round, the knowledge of what lies ahead makes this parting devastating to watch. Rachel: silly, silly girl!! You were on a break! He's your lobster! Seven years of heartbreak ahead: you're going to get married by mistake, and divorced again, you're going to have a baby with the guy and you're going to (probably) realise in the end that he is the one. Realise your mistake, forgive him and understand why it happened!!!!

The nostalgia element added to the tears shed last night while watching the disaster unfold. There are many arty shots of the Twin Towers, which are unbearably poignant, coupled with the memories of watching Friends with friends and being ever so young.

What is really, really, REALLY needed is a Friends movie/one off special. It is. Because we need to know that it worked out, we need to see Ross and Rachel happy together forever, *proving* that true love wins. A Christmas special wouldn't be too much would it? Jennifer?

Ahhh. The luxury of a good old wallow in nostalgia, a nod to good old hyperbole, and being utterly banal.

Birthday actual

Today was my birthday!!!
Woo! I am now halfway through my biblical life.

I LOVE my birthday. Every time someone wishes me a happy birthday or I notice the date, I feel happy. I feel like a loved and lovely person, so I AM lovely. I am quite delightful to people.

Or so I think. The truth may be that I am unsufferably patronising, dull and idiotic. But we shall ignore that. I am nice to people and feel lovely.

Today I "met" two other people who share my birthday. Which is positively exciting beyond words (to me).

My Facebook app tells me when someone posts on my wall. This could be immensely annoying but for today it was cheering to say the least.

I have received a veritable fortune in voucher monies to replace my too big clothes (hurrah!!), and other lovely gifts. I did not however receive anything by mail so I am cross with the Royal Mail for letting snow interfere with My Birthday.

I have only spent the one voucher today (go me) and I fear severe covetation of a handbag, coupled with a emptying of a stupid handbag that doesn't shut, means a handbag will need to be purchased tomorrow. But that is extraordinarily banal so I'm going to Stop Typing About Shopping.

Spoiltness and demandation (me! My day! My week!) was rewarded with balloons and cakes. Which was ace.

Ok. Done now. Return to a place where things are normal and I'm less preoccupied with Me.

Birthday part II

In the midst of birthday season, I invited them-what-matters to my house today for a generic birthday celebration. This week because there would have been too many absences last week, the weather was unforgiving and a little because I care a lot more than the boys do. They like presents, who is present is of no matter to them at all.

So we hads ourselves a mini party. In which I fretted about the tidiness of my house, ending up with one unenterable room, (I so need an upstairs) and my family and closest friends visited, bearing - ace - gifts, to be rewarded with poncy tiny versions of food and a party bag.

Yes. A party bag. Children present were mine, a 12 year old and a 1 year old. Everyone got party bags bar he-who-scoffed who then complained. Everyone except the 12 year old, the baby and the scoffer seemed very pleased. We have a surplus of leftover Haribo.

Not a party in terms of there being a lack of music or any form of entertainment or games. More of an "at home". Yah.

I love having people round. It's better than any other type of socialising. Except maybe going out for lunch. Maybe.

Friends

After many years of yearning, I finally own the entire boxset* of Friends, which is probably my favourite TV programme ever.

I know.

Why I love it:

It makes me laugh. Lots.
It brings back happy memories of when I watched it with my own friends.
I am totally in love with Chandler. Really.
Ross and Rachel. Awwww.
It's all really nice. I like nice these days.

I am partway through series 2, Ross and Rachel have just got together properly and it's all quite lovely. I am doing very little else with my time.

Yes. Boring. There's norralorra point in writing about the content, you either know it by now or you don't.

I may watch some...


* "entire boxset" is not right. The boxset of the entire run of all ten series of Friends" would be righter. But hey ho diddle oh.


- Posted without any claim to factual correctness or interest to any living person. Brought to you by the combined wonder of BlogPress and iPhone.

Positivity

I'm feeling a little warm and fuzzy. Or fizzy, as I seem to find the locating of the correct keys in the correct order a little challenging tonight.

So, the fizzy fuzziness is a result of that Christmas thing. Christmas itself was a little tiring due to ill people not sleeping between Christmas Eve and Boxing Day, and stupid people not going to bed when they can. But the whole time around is just lovely. A little impetus to catch up with people and suddenly you remember that perhaps you're not as crap as you thought you were and that people aren't necessarily pissed off with you. It's easy to spend time with people after all. And it's always nice to get stuff. I like stuff. I got lots of lovely stuff.

Going to a splendid wedding on the 20th helped set the mood, but it's nice. I refuse to accept that it's not nice. Yes, I spent most of Christmas Day in the kitchen. Yes, I have had to see virtually all of my relatives. Yes, it's been hectic. Yes, I'm knackered and yes, I couldn't afford it. But it's all been nice and sort of life affirming. Spending Christmas Day with two children who have no memories of previous Christmases is simply magical, the discovery of Santa's visit was one of my best parenting moments yet. And I got to write my first letter from Santa! All nice. Nice nice nice and I have nice people.
(And crap ones, but they're crap and thus aren't entering my psyche at the moment because they don't deserve to, and because they are insignificant and diminished by the sheer existence of all the nice people).

However, Christmas is over, it doesn't really go on for 12 days and enough already, thank you.

People seem to be feeling a bit bla at the moment. Noone seems to have had a good year. Some have had less good, some have had ok years, but noone seems to have said "yes, this was a good year". Everything seems to be petering out, ending, getting too much to cope with; people are putting their heads down and surviving, licking their wounds, trying to get to the end. It's saddening, but it does seem to be universal.

But look! There is an end! An end to this year. A new year starts in just a few days, and marks a new beginning. For everything that has ended, so there must be a new beginning for something else. 2008 was to be the year of new beginnings, but it forgot and instead stamped a big final full stop to all those things. 2009 will be the rebirth year. 2009 will be the year that all those things that should have happened already actually happen. 9's a good number.

Trust me.

This year in ponders

At some point earlier this evening I had a momentary panic about the date, for I was quite sure it was next year. Wishful thinking perhaps, but I can only assume that the whole thing about time slowing down when you're busy is true, for this week is incredibly long and I've done more this week than I've done in the last 6 months!

I do believe time does literally slow down but that's something my brain doesn't understand.

So I got to thinking back over this year and what it's been. According to the bible, the year 2008, or 8 to make things simpler, is a year of new beginnings and rebirth. 8 being the number after 7, which is how long everything's supposed to take to complete a cycle, based on the 7 days in a week thing and an awful lot of excitement about the number 7. So, 2007 saw the end of the cycle begun in 2000 and 2008 was the beginning of the next cycle.

Brilliant.

So we can look forward to another 6 years of economic downturn and the media being idiotic. Myself, I think I'd like to opt out of life until 2015 and live in a commune somewhere, eating carrots and seeing if I suit dreadlocks.

The economy:

not that great, really. I don't fully understand it all because it's imaginary money. Somebody somewhere said "actually, I'm not going to give you any more "money" because you might not pay it back" and the whole world ground to a halt. Prior to this, everyone just lent pretend money happily in the belief that it would be virtually returned to them later and all was happy, then suddenly they didn't. And everything collapsed. Why they couldn't say "only joking, of course I'll transfer some not-there money to you and look, we'll say you owe me it and they owe you that and we'll all get some new cars".

Now everything's shutting down. Except it's not. It's not the good stuff. It's the kind of rubbish companies that have been winging along on the happy economy. It's not stuff we want or need. It's the dregs. It's the shops that exist purely because they always have. Nostalgia is not a reason to keep something. This here blog post says some of what I want to say, I shall link it instead of badly paraphrasing.

And banks, I don't care. We don't need a million of them. They're all greedy and provide a non-service. Even Nationwide want all their cash back. Standard Life aren't passing on much of the interest rate cut, because hey, the customer can subsidise them.

The loss of jobs is indeed sad, and terrible for those it is happening to, but, erm, that's what happens in a recession. Never mind, only 6 more years!

The Media:

Well, the biggest story of the year has to be the Russell Brand/Jonathan Ross/Andrew Sachs debacle. Whataloadofnonsense. Yes, it was cruel and I don't consider what they did to be funny, but Andrew Sachs had agreed the broadcast could go ahead. So he wasn't that offended. Who are the Daily Mail to be offended on his behalf? Utter nonsense.

The other piece of utter stupidity was the fraca about the turning on of the LHC. Not that many people understood it but the media focussed on the whole idea that this was the end of the world and ignored the actual science. Noone got excited about the implications, apart from that guy from D:Ream who everyone fancied for a day (Brian Cox, remember? no?). It was really important. It could have answered the fundamental questions about life. But it got turned on, we didn't die, it got broken and everyone thought it was quite amusing. It's still exciting and will still be mega when it gets turned on again next year? the year after? sometime? And we still won't die.

People have died, they always do. I'm not even going to try to suggest which deaths were significant, every death is important to someone. Other people were born: 2 little girls and 1 little boy arrived in my little circle, all perfect, all gorgeous and all most welcome.

Myself:

My own year hasn't been all that eventful although I have mostly been a rather rubbish friend. 2009 is going to be the year I stop saying sorry: no more apologising for things I haven't done, and no more doing things I have to apologise for.
The nicest thing that I do appreciate this year knows it.

The other stuff that mattered this year: I proudly and exhaustedly watched my two little guys grow from toddling babies into competent little boys, I turned vegetarian, and I got an iPhone. And I've been 33.

Friends

I blame Friends.
For everything.
I want to live in that world, I think I'd like to be Monica. Rachel has to end up with Ross, which is a fate worse than cheese, and Phoebe's too ditzy.

Anyway, having loved Friends obsessively for 8 years or so (took a while to catch on), life has been a crashing disappointment that it didn't turn out like that. See, they were older than me, and they were on when I was a student and had that sort of life, I even had a friend like Rachel, a friend like Monica and a friend like Phoebe (and people who were nothing like any of them, I think I was probably Janice), and we hung out for coffee and shared every waking thought together. Marvellous.

In Friends however, they were past being students. They were adults. They still lived in each others pockets and were there for each other. Sex and the City is the same thing I believe. Girls together having endless fun and being there for each other.

But in real life, people have children, jobs, commitments and time constraints, and no matter what the best intention is or how much you love someone to bits, there simply isn't space to have interwoven lives like you had when you were younger. You seem to float through and you have the same circle of friends that you always have, feeling mutually neglected, meeting up and promising not to leave it so long, and returning to email and facebook again.

Not all bad, I can post "Morag wants a hug" on facebook and almost instanteously have 15 lovely virtual hugs from friends all over the world, or as I did the other week in a less needy manner, put "Morag is turning vegetarian" and get debates and comments on the pros and cons of marinated tofu - just like that. But it's not the same really. It's all about the nice stuff, and beyond demanding hugs, you don't "talk".

"How are you?" automatically produces the response "fine", or "same as ever" even if the trueanswer is "I have spent the last week in tears, I think I'm having a nervous breakdown". Because everyone else is being shiny and happy and only presenting the happy stuff, you don't like to upset the apple cart by being miserable. Especially if the reason you're miserable is something pathetic and sounds really silly if you put it in words. So you keep it to yourself and go bonkers. Then somewhere down the line you drink way too much wine and confess that actually you're not all that fine, discover that your best friend has also been crying herself to sleep, that you are both appalled that you didn't know, that you couldn't help, that you really really really REALLY love each other and in future you will pick up the phone immediately as soon as there's something wrong. And you don't feel miserable any more because you talked about it and laughed about how silly you were being. Except you sober up, decide not to bother people and when they ask how you're doing, you say "fine"...

New friends come along, mostly when you're lonely in the same place at the same time; some of them become lifelong friends, most of them drift off again when the circumstances change, or when you lump all your annoyances at your other friends onto the new friend and they run away. I remember my hippy thought that it's nice to appreciate being even an insignificant part of someone's life for a while instead of bemoaning all the things they don't turn out to be. I forget that too often.

People are stupid. I do love all my friends and I'm pretty sure very few of them know that as I stagnate and mentally chastise them for ignoring me back. We all sit about feeling lonely, with the undialled phone by our side.

I just did a quiz in Psychologies magazine as to what I need from friendship. Apparently I need reassurance, which was hardly revelatory. Apparently it's not cool to ask for it though. Bugger.

Confuseder

Confused part 2: email

Disclaimer: this does not refer to anyone specific or any emails received or sent, I'm having a ponder.

Email has the most extraordinary capacity to confuse. (As does postal mail, but who gets that any more? Not I , said she, lyingly) Amazon just recommended a DVD that is now unavailable. How incredibly useful. Plough through the tedious "buy your Christmas presents from us! It's so great!" and then see what's left. Not a lot usually, but it's terribly nicely organised with filters and labels and all.

The ignored are still ignoring back (better go to facebook and send some plants), the unignored strangely feeling ignored and the lost remain lost.

I don't understand the etiquette of email. For one, when you do a semi-formal email, it looks really silly if you use "Dear Sir" and "yours faithfully" but if you don't, then is that not rude? Is it rude to do formal things by email at all? But things like job applications are often asked for by email, so it is necessary. Most people seem to do "Hi NAME" and sign off with "regards", but you can guarantee if you choose "regards" you'll get a reply that says "kind regards" and you immediately feel bad for not being kind.

And what about the reply bit, it gets a bit silly when you are thanking someone for thanking you for thanking them for thanking you for thanking them for doing something good/nice/useful, but at what point is it ok to not say "thank you for replying to my email"? I'm sure we didn't used to do that with letters, I definitely don't remember doing "thank you for your thank you card" cards.

Noone seems to feel happy with the number of emails they receive from someone. The person I email most seems to feel neglected half the time, yet all the people I don't speak to much feel much more rightly neglected, while I feel if they wanted to, they could get in touch too. And the poor people I neglect to neglect are probably sick of seeing my name in their inbox. There should be some sort of mechanism for knowing who wants to hear from you, but then again, that would probably be EXTREMELY embarrassing.

Oh, if only we all wrote letters like we used to. Once a year, same people, same words. Easy.