As a change from QOTD-ing it (as I have been lately in an attempt to keep this thing ticking over!) i have stolen a meme from Jack Yan.
1) What was I doing 10 years ago?
In 1998 I was working full-time in a nursery for under-twos. It was a lovely little centre, and a lovely little job really. I still feel like we had really good outcomes for the wee bubbas. I was saving frantically to go overseas which was easier when petrol was 79 cents a litre.
2) What are five things on my to-do list for today?
Laundry (done), vacuum (done), get something out for dinner (done), write a few cards and letters which are seriously in need of writing!, and ironically, writing a to-do list for the weekend.
3) Snacks I enjoy.
Cheese and crackers. Potato chips and dip. Pita bread and hummus. Today, these cookies:
225g butter
3/4C sugar
3/4C brown sugar
1tsp vanilla
2 eggs
2 1/2C flour
1/2tsp salt
1tsp baking soda
1C choc chips or buttons
Cream butter and sugars until light and fluffy.
Add vanilla and eggs one at a time.
Mix together dry ingredients, except choc and add to butter mix.
Stir in choc.
Place
dessertspoon full blobs onto greases baking tray - allow plenty of room
for spreading. (We usually have to do a couple of trays).
Bake 180C for 15 mins.
4) Things I would do if I were a billionaire.
Get debt free, for starters. Make prudent provision for the well being of my family, then work out how to get the most bang for my buck: funding research, giving to charitable foundations, lobbying Parliament. I'd have my fingers in a lot of pies, I think.
5) Places I have lived.
Taranaki. Palmerston North. Wellington. London. Sydney. Kapiti.
6) Jobs I have had.
Kindergarten teacher. Nursery teacher. Nanny. I've never had a job that didn't involve kids.
What's the hardest part about the role you play in your family?
For me, the hardest part of motherhood is having my heart running around outside my body. The reward for worrying intensely is loving intensely, I suppose. There is never really down time: I could organise a baby sitter, I can leave the kids with their imminently capable father but I think about them always. Quinn is small enough that the reminders are physical: I went too long without nursing while at a concert and had to excuse myself to express in the port-a-loos.
The greatest weight of expectation comes from myself though: I am fortunate to have a husband who infinitely prefers coming home to happiness rather than cleanliness.
My feelings are rubbed raw this week: there seems to be more heartache than I can bear happening to people around me. I have spent more time in prayer today than I have for a long time, but I'm not getting any peace. It's all awful and unfair.
What lesson did your father teach you that still helps you in life?
Hah. Talk about a loaded question, one of which probably can't be answered without many hours of therapy. "Daddy Issues" could be my middle name. Fortunately it isn't, Kate is so much nicer.
Has anything unlucky happened to you today?
Not to me personally, but people associated with me have had an awful run of bad luck lately. Honestly, I have spent the last fortnight baking chocolate brownies and proffering sympathy.
If you had to go on a two-week vacation with any celebrity, who would you pick as your traveling companion and where would you go?
I'd go anywhere with Ewan McGregor, because I love him. I would go up inestimably in my husband's eyes if I partook willingly in one of Ewan McGregor's motorcycle adventures. Craig loves motorbike touring and I am resolutely anti motorbikes, but I guess if Ewan wanted me to...Hah. For starters, I think he is completely gorgeous. He also comes across as particularly charming and intelligent and he is a Unicef ambassador. I mean seriously, who could resist?
Of course, both Ewan and I are married with kids and I'm not the homewrecking kind so I guess I'll have to be satisfied with worshipping from afar. Sigh.
So, get a load of this:
Roshan Doug: Breastfeeding in public is all wrong
May 23 2008 By Roshan Doug
Last Saturday night I was having dinner with a couple of Greek friends in the west end of London, near Covent Garden. As anyone who's been to that salubrious part of the metropolis will know, it's hideously expensive to have even a mediocre hot dog from a street vendor - let alone a proper meal in a decent restaurant.
On this occasion, however, my starter was almost a microscopic salad dish served on a flying-saucer sized plate. And the actual Horiatiki Salata - as my Greek friends call it - was nothing more than a couple of slices of tomatoes, a black olive in feta cheese for something close to £10.
And that's before they give you a shock at the princely price for the main course, moussaka with a glass or two of Ouzo. But, certainly there was no plate smashing and no dance entertainment in the form of Khasapikos or Seibekikos - as they promised in the Good Food Guide.
But that's just scene setting for the purpose of putting this anecdote in context (and perhaps, in the light of this, you might think I was just annoyed at the restaurant, and not at what followed).
Anyway, as we're sitting there enjoying the company and our food, we notice a long-skirted Bohemian woman at a near-by table who has decided that, not only is she going to have dinner with her baby on her laps but that she's going to start breast-feeding whilst sitting at the table.
And she decides to do this in full view of everyone and anyone who has the misfortune of being around her - like us. My friends and I were quite simply flabbergasted - there she was blatantly disregarding us and all the other diners.
Now call me old-fashioned or even snobbish but I don't - and didn't - feel comfortable at such a bold, public display of open indiscretion.
Whatever happened to English social austerity, privacy and feminine modesty? I thought. Whatever happened to women quietly excusing themselves to carry out such business elsewhere - away from preying eyes.
I'm sorry but when I go out to dinner, firstly I do not want to see noisy children running around like complete brats (I had that to contend with in Birmingham a couple of months ago in a Thai restaurant). I think it's incredibly inconsiderate of their parents to bring them along, and who then, more often than not, spoil it for the rest of us.
I'm aware that I'm going to sound like a right-wing fascist who hates children - not unlike the child catcher in Chitty-chitty Bang-bang - but, excuse me, that's the reason why we have babysitters. They sit looking after your children whilst you go out and have a civilised evening with adults.
And seriously, I don't care how much I might be paying for a meal - whether it's an extortionate price in a posh restaurant or a couple of pounds for steak and chips in the local boozer - but I certainly do not want to see a woman taking out one of her breasts and exposing it in all its glory whilst we're eating.
I think it's appalling that we, as men, should be forced to accept it. We get no saying whatsoever. I understand that for some women to expose themselves is easy - some of them are, after all, the product of that cigar-smoking, bra-burning, feminist culture of the seventies where anything goes.
As a male, however - and I'm sure I speak for the majority of men - I don't want to see an audacious indifference to our feelings. Women have to exercise some discretion that shows an understanding - sensitivity - towards how we feel.
And as a man, I think it's high time some of these women thought about the consequences of their actions on other people and, their babies.
It'd be a start if they could see themselves not as the centre, the microcosm, of the universe but as a fragment of it. I ask you, do they know what an inconvenience it is for us men? And to be honest, I'm sure in the future their children won't be too pleased either, at the fact that their mother regularly just plucked out her breast in public to feed them as and where she pleased.
I don't know. I think I'd be embarrassed at being their child or their husband. Just imagine that your mother or your wife spoilt someone's rather expensive moussaka in a celebrity restaurant.
Honestly.
Come on, ladies, let's think about others once in a while - for your own self-respect, if nothing else.
This just seems so over the top that I tend to think Roshan Doug wanted to be famous on the internets and stir up the all-powerful Mommybloggers personally, and he certainly seems to have ruffled a few feathers in my online communities. The Miley Cyrus photos? 'Celebrities' getting out of the car with no knickers on? I could understand the moral outrage. But breastfeeding? You have to be looking pretty closely to even notice, I think. I breastfeed my kids wherever I need to be and have never received anything but compliments and kind looks. I refuse to hide, to miss out on life while I do what my body is made for. I'm growing healthy, strong and smart boys and giving them the best start I can and the world is a better place for having nursing mothers in it. Breastfeeding saves lives.
Share a scene from a movie that uses music perfectly.
Submitted by nohablo.
The last week has just been a blur: Quinn has continued to struggle with being unwell. My usually contented and darling wee boy has been somewhat of a misery guts. In fact, Monday 19th May, 2008 was decreed as the Crying-est Day Of Quinn's Life. Thank heavens for sunshiney autumn weather, I just snuggled him into the twin buggy, strapped Duncan into the other side with a book and a bag of Twisties and walked and walked and walked. The upside is I have lost 1.4kg since Quinn got sick: it could be all the walking or it could be the constant nursing. In any case, I'll take it.
We have playgroup this morning, so I guess we'll make an attempt at leaving the house. I need some adult company: Facebook can only fulfil so many of my social needs.
The rest of the week looks to be filled with more tea drinking.
It's been a bit of a rough week around here. Duncan and Quinn both got colds, then Quinn spiked a temperature so of course we had to treat it like it was a urinary tract infection and try and get a clean urine sample and start antibiotics, and then Quinn reacted to the antibiotics and came out in hives and well, it just went on like that for a few days.
One bright spot was the Westlife concert in New Plymouth. I know, I am too old for boybands, but I am a sucker for a good love song and if there is one thing Westlife can deliver, it's a good love song. Doesn't hurt that they're gorgeous and that I am a sucker for an Irish accent (which seems to have reached epidemic proportions if the deafening screaming anytime one of them spoke is any indication). In any case, after the weekend from hell it was awfully nice to put on some lipstick and leave the house.
Now, I am generally fairly disinterested in NZ female singers, such is my dedication to the perfection that is Bic Runga: no one else is ever that good so I am almost always disappointed (I do have enormous respect for Anika Moa though, I think she is all kinds of awesome). I only vaguely knew who Annabel Fay was from seeing an item on a current events show about her once, and one music video of hers is particularly visually striking so I have noticed it on one of the music channels. Anyway, she opened for Westlife and was pretty good. The venue is little more than a tin-foil lined barn, best suited to basketball games and Home Shows and the sound quality of concerts there can be very variable, but I think she did a good job.
Of course, we were there to see Westlife and it was every bit as cheesy and dripping with pop goodness as I expected. They're certainly blessed with charm in spades, terribly easy to look at and they sounded great. I can also say with a high degree of certainty that Craig would have hated every second of it. I loved it though, and thats the main thing, eh?
For a long time, I have harboured a secret shame. My name is Bridget, and I don't know how to get the "binky" off my kid. Binky and I have been in a love-hate relationship for a long time. As a breastfeeder and wannabe 'Lactivist', the ubiquitous binky/dummy/pacifier never fitted into my plans, but when faced with bleeding nipples and a baby that wanted to suck ALL THE TIME, I went to the pharmacy and through my tears purchased a twin-pack of binkies. At first I hid the binky from my friends, but as time went on I learned to embrace the contentedness of a binky-sucking baby.
Just like that. No tears. No drama. No Binky-Fairy. Obviously, he was ready. I feel ridiculously pleased.
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Recent Comments
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Imatjen said:
Bridget, I pray that the clouds part and you are blessed with a sunshiney day to take the blues away! read more
on QotD: Family Dynamics -
Bridget said:
I can only see half responses which is a pity. read more
on When dumbasses get a newspaper column -
Roshan Doug said:
Hi. That's alright - it was supposed to be tongue in cheek but read more
on When dumbasses get a newspaper column -
Jack Yan said:
OK, that was a bit rude of me. Roshan Doug: first, I’m glad you had the decency to pop by... read more
on When dumbasses get a newspaper column
on Meme