Making it up

on teletubbies

Dick and Dom appear convinced it’s Christmas, what’s that about? Horrid program. One child getting dressed, one parent getting clean, another blogging.

I’m not prepared but none of you are surprised by that. Next year is going to be different in lots of ways. I like Merry’s tag, I’ll do that after Christmas. Small promises that I can and will keep.

The main one is to be happier. I listened to myself last night and realised I sound like a caricature of my worst parental memories from my childhood. Are we really doomed to repeat the past? I think not. Not if we can recognise what we are doing.

Right, washing, washing up, packing, children.

Have a great holiday everyone, hope you all enjoy whatever it is you are celebrating.

Blogging may be patchy over the next few days

I said: “So have you got everything packed?”

“Darling, I haven’t even got everything out of the washing machine yet.”

Any lactivists out there?

I’ve just seen this on the Early Years Home education support list, and am reproducing with the permission of the poster.

MP David Kidney is asking that ppl write Public Health Minister, Caroline Flint. He is hoping to introduce legislation in early January which will make it an offence to prevent or stop a woman from feeding a child in a public place. His bill also calls for the Department of Health to do more to promote breastfeeding.

Flint’s response to Kidney’s attempt to enlist her support for the bill was that “evidence of obstruction for mums wanting to breastfeed in public places is “anecdotal.” He is hoping a torrent of letters to Caroline Flint will help give her the “evidence” she needs.

If you feel like joining in, then take action and write Caroline Flint MP at:
Minister for Public Health
Department of Health
Richmond House, 79
Whitehall, London SW1A 2NS

Debate is in early January - so this is an urgent call for action!

Feel free to write to your own MPs as well - I suspect the more support the better. Plus I feel that writing to our MPs is something that we should do regularly - how else are they to know that we are out here with opinions? It’s not like they ask, is it?

perhaps the fact that I’m not due back in the office til next year is a contributory factor

Do have several days of work to do, but was pleasantly surprised to discover my boss is assuming that I’m doing them from home. Wouldn’t want to disappoint! And I discovered today that one of the forms I wrote up for use internally in incident reporting has actually been promoted and sent out to clients, so it would appear that I *am* making a small difference. And we got our corporate christmas card, stuffed full of gift vouchers. If it wasn’t for the having to work bit, it was really quite a pleasant day

Driving is so much easier as well when there is noone else on the roads. All those ppl with schoolchildren Still home late, but that was because I stayed back to finish something off. Do like to show willing

Home eventually to children who appeared to find Rupert more interesting than mummy. Hm. Big has completed our christmas card pile, so some of them are going to be late, but they will all get posted. Hopefully the ones that went yesterday will get there in time

They had a long relaxing bath tonight, seemed to need it. Then Small ran into the bedroom to play with “barbie” who was in the (signed) house. I did manage to persuade him to say ‘ouse’ quite clearly once, but that was my lot, he wasn’t going to repeat it. The other night he was saying ‘hat’ very clearly, so it looks like the ‘h’ sound is being added to the repertoire atm.

Right, I’m absolutely knackered, and I have already set up a new website this evening Got to keep my hand in with all these new technologies!

Lots to do tomorrow. See you all then.

Independent Online Edition > Independent Online Edition > Transport

From 2006 Britain will be the first country where every journey by every car will be monitored

Is it just me, or is this becoming a scary place to live? While on some levels I accept that the car has broken society, and mobility for criminals is a large part of this problem, I’m not sure that being watched everywhere I go is a price I’m prepared to pay. Anyone wonder whether they are listening as well?

Tim was at home with the offspring today while I went in to work for my christmas meal. It was the least festive festive occasion I’ve ever attended - right down to the bosses finishing their meal, and without so much as a by your leave, leaving. Very odd. Not even a speech to thank the waiting staff - think every corporate meal I’ve been to previously took a collection for a tip and then made a speech.

So that was odd. Spent the day staring at code and slowly coming to the conclusion that I was doing something wrong, or more accurately, that the spec I was working from was requiring me to exceed standard operating parameters

Home to stare at this pc, and wonder how to use my skills in different ways. Or expand my skills? Right now, I think I need to be heading to bed, but couldn’t quit without the latest instalment of linktag (you’re it Jen!) Notice that quite a few of you have explored my link to Jen’s lactivist store on cafepress, but doesn’t look like anyone has indulged yet. Shame.

Considering whether I could raise some cash through cafepress myself, but can’t help feeling that the shipping from US to UK might be offputting for some of my more regular readership, and anyway, can’t really think of any slogans. And I don’t do art. Speaking of art though, was anyone else watching that toys program earlier? Didn’t know you could do that with an Etch a Sketch. Amazing.

Big has written and posted a number of our cards today, I apologise to anyone not in this tranche, as it seems likely your card will be late. The pile is there though, and I’m sure she’ll keep going tomorrow. Way to go with that writing practise

torture

Next they’ll be getting the CIA to fly them to Eastern Europe.

20 mins to actually make the cards.

Isn’t that always the way?

Of course, it is probably going to take 2 1/2 hours to clear up the debris as well, and the cards are too wet to go into envelopes today, hopefully by tonight, so think our cards are going to be late. There’s a surprise.

eta - tv prompted reading breakthrough here - Big has finally figured out that she can work out what is coming on next by reading the bar on the tv, and she has a limited time to do it before it turns itself off, so she is speeding up with her sounding out quite measurably

and feeling pathetic.

I know there are several others on the blogring or close by with far better reason than I to feel down at the moment, but somehow, there but for the grace of omnipotent-deity-I-don’t-even-believe-in isn’t cutting it to cheer me up or motivate me to get off my behind. It’s 5 past 1 in the afternoon, none of us are dressed, I’ve just demanded that the tv be turned off as Small was tantrumming that whatever was on wasn’t what he wanted, and the instant response to that is that they are belting around the room like loonies.

I’m losing track of what I’m supposed to be doing here. Big is outsmarting me at every possible turn - I told her earlier that I wasn’t going to spend the whole day shouting at her, and that if I had to tell her anything more than once, the third meant leave the room. We’ve just had one of those moments, and she wandered off into the kitchen and continued the behaviour, which she knows is *not* what I meant by leave the room, but she is so mind numbingly pedantic (and don’t tell me that you know where she gets it from, it just isn’t funny quite frankly) that I can’t win on that kind of count. And it gets very very wearing to have to be utterly precise with every little instruction that you give, and watch every phrase that passes your lips for double meanings, loopholes, and possible wilful misinterpretations.

I have washed up. I’ve got ciabatta in the oven for lunch. I’m determined that we will finish cards, which has to be the next thing after lunch to give them time to dry, and we need to go out to get milk as we’re almost out.

On the upside, I’m loving watching Small developing his imagination - he’s rowing a boat around the living room with a long tube atm. Very cute. And he’s starting to sing - watching him actually joining in with Old McDonald’s Farm on tikkabilla this morning was fantastic. If we could just get past the constant Dr Who episode reminiscent “mummy, mummy” I’d be very very happy.

Right, the ciabatta has pinged. I need to take it out and let it cool down.

I must get some stuff done off my list this afternoon - it’s such a scary list that I can’t even begin to write it down, not least as the writing would probably take a week I don’t have and then maybe I might feel that I have a fleeting chance at capturing my rapidly evaporating life.

did I mention that I’m tired. All I want to do is sleep, then when I get to bed, it’s the one thing I can’t do. Bleargh.

wondered why Helen was saying I should blog, when I could see a blog post that everyone was ignoring. That would be because for some reason I’d published it as private

I’m also aware that I’ve been tagged for the 7 thing about three times, will try to get around to that today, and I’ve got two blog posts that I’ve been musing over for the last couple of days sitting in draft, so I’ll try to release them too I seem to have had a bizarre version of bloggers block over the last few days - nothing I wrote seemed to quite say what I wanted it to, so I kept fiddling around and redrafting (which is not usually how I blog at all, you usually get the thoughts direct from brain through fingers onto page without so much as a pause) and consequently haven’t actually published.

Sorry. I have *nothing* else to do today…. giggle…. so I’ll try to put that right.

was like a step back in time, being driven home in my parents car, a dead weight head on each shoulder as I’m wedged in the middle of the back seat by sleeping children, after a long day with relatives who all seem slightly confused by my presense or indeed existence.

Except it was my offspring flanking me rather than my siblings, my sister who had horrendously overcatered rather than my grandparents and my peers in the family that were confused instead of my parents generation. Some things don’t change. I do recall my mother at some point yesterday saying that they wondered where I had come from (think it was to do with my dislike of shopping, especially in comparison to my daughter), but overall it was monotonous instead of painful.