Friday, March 30, 2007

Mixed Bag

Mixed bag indeed. I have many thoughts roaming around in my head. It's been awhile. It feels good. Both kids put themselves to sleep tonight and hubby is off at the football, so I have been on my first real blog exploration. (I just have to add that hubby does not make a habit of heading to the footy and leaving me with the kids, he does waaaay more than his fair share. We were planning to go as a family, but it's raining - Hallelujah - so I elected to stay home in case we couldn't get seats under cover).

Can I ramble? Oh so many tangents.

Why hallelujah about the rain? Because we're in the middle of a drought. Melbourne is on water restrictions, as is pretty much the rest of Aus land. And the rain is the good sort, real drenching rain, not the useless drizzle of a normal Melbourne winter. And it has come three days in a row now. And it seems to be over the catchment areas. And my grass is green. It hasn't been green for many months now; we're not allowed to water it anymore.

Footy, btw is Aussie Rules footy. Great game. Go the Dees.

So, where was I? Oh yes, thoughts. Thoughts in my head. This blog land is doing my brain good. Working it out. Out of its narrow focus of kids, kids and how the hell am I going to get some vegies into us all today?

I've been delving around some sites, and have to mention a couple I've enjoyed so far. Mrs Chicken of Chicken and Cheese had one I loved. I think it was a while ago she posted about
'Personal grooming and other thoughts', but being new to this blogging thing I'm not sure. And now I've closed the window and am not sure I could get there again. Gingajoy and Her Bad Mother are well worth a read and i will definitely be visiting BlogRhet again to feed my brain and push it into thinking again.

You see, I started this blog on a whim just to see if I could push myself into thinking again. I started another for friends and family, to update them on the kids, and figured I'd start one just for me as well. It took me a while to get going, but now I'm on a bit of a role. I've just had a comment from Gingajoy, someone I've never met, my first stranger-reader. It feels odd, but strangely welcoming. Like I am becoming part of the community that I have become aware of through Bon from cribchronicles (an actual live friend who I met in S. Korea). I also feel somewhat embarrassed by my blog address and name. Compared to many out there I am not really thinking or wondering much or well at this point. But, that is the point, to get back into the swing of things. After all, I will return to study next semester (August) and it would be nice not to have to spend the first 3 weeks of semester getting my brain above first gear.

I am off to bed now. Enough ranting for the moment. Thank you Gingajoy for your welcome into this (mad) world. I hope, now that I have discovered it, I have the will power to resist the lure of the computer. I tend to get stuck on my laptop to the detriment of the kids learning / playing time with me.

Night night

Thursday, March 29, 2007

Mummyblogging

It's late. Late means past 10 o'clock these days. I've just dream fed Aoife and would be ready for bed myself if I hadn't been blog browsing and decided I need to add my two cents worth. Maybe just one cent, after all, it is late.

Mummyblogging. The debate / discussion is summed up really well by gingajoy at BlogRhet in the title of (I make an assumption here) her post 'Mommyblogging: Communal Activism or Self Centered Blather?'.

Self-centered? No. There is a strong argument that parents lose the ability to be self-centered as they are continually focused on someone else.
Blather? That would assume it's foolish and not useful. Quite the contrary, Mummyblogging provides a wealth of knowledge to the new mum.

My (somewhat jumbled) point is this:

Mummyblogging is based in detailing the daily routines of parenting. This is because becoming a parent is all-encompasing. It takes over your life. You care about the details. They are not mundane, each detail is an amazing event. Mummyblogs are a way of sharing the joy in the details with a community that understands and has details to offer. What's more, the details are amazing. Objectively, not just subjectively. Watching a child learn is unbelievable. If you watch your children carefully you discover how language develops, you begin to recognise the logical steps of physical development and you learn. Learn patience, learn how to speak concisely and exactly, learn, above all, how amazing the human race is and why we are at the top of the food chain. To discuss this is not blather.

6:51am the next day ...

On the usefullness of mummyblogging:

Having a child changes you. Changes your identity. Or adds a new one. Problem is, that new identity takes over. 'I' becomes 'we'. Handbags become nappy bags. 'I' like being 'we' and we never had a handbag before I had children. I spent a lot of my life waiting to be a parent. I worked towards it like others work towards a career. It did not come as a shock to me. But many women did have handbags. They went to work, they wore make-up, they had an identity that didn't involve kids. Becoming a parent was a shock to them, and in the process of that shock they lost the community they were involved in, the workplace.

Mummyblogging provides a community for the stay-at-home mum. It allows discussion with other adults. It provokes thought beyond what to put on the kids toast. It is like a conversation you can take up and put down at will. It is exactly what the intelligent stay-at-home mum needs to stop her turning into this:



...




The communal activism discussion will have to wait. I need to read. To learn more before I blather on about that issue. I think I'll check out what some other mummybloggers have said. :)

Monday, March 26, 2007

Playing Now

Here is the reason I had to mutate the meme. These are currently the 7 most played songs on my computer:

1. The wheels on the bus
2. Hokey Pokey
3. London Bridge is falling down
4. Row row row your boat
5. Fly away Peter, fly away Paul (I guess that's not technically a song, so ...
5. Five little ducks
6. I'm a little teapot
7. Ging gang gooly (gooly gooly gooly watsit)

Euey loves music. It seems indiscriminately, except for a slight leaning toward heavy rock or a lone piano. However, being musically and kinetically challenged I find it difficult to make up actions to go with most songs, so we end up dancing to the kids songs. This is better than Euey learning to dance like me!!!

Memes

I have learnt something new. Something besides how to get a toddler to come when you call (much harder than teaching a dog to come, believe me), or how to exist (not function, just exist) on nowhere near enough sleep. This something is a meme.

Bon's recent discussions on blogs, blogging and all related content has intrigued me. I have ventured to a few blogs via hers and have been so caught up I've been afraid to do it again. See I am something of a computer addict. It takes up a lot of my time and I have on occasion found myself putting Euey in front of the tv so I can have some Internet time. This worries me. An hour here or there won't hurt him, but blogs suck me in. I can browse a single blog for hours, and there are at least 20 links just on Bon's site. Each link has that many links and so on until I feel like the man coming from St Ives.

However, this meme word kept popping up so I decided to do a bit of research. It turns out I am not just blog ignorant, but generally ignorant. Meme is not the blog term I imagined. Adopted by the blogging world I'm sure, but originally the subject of a scientific work by Richard Dawkins. A name I've heard (as have I heard the title of that work, 'The Selfish Gene') but know nothing about. A meme (according to the ever-accurate Wikipedia) is 'a unit of cultural information'. A memeplex is a group of memes. As Internet-happy as I am this is the point I resort to real knowledge and take a trip to the library. As much as I support the idea of knowledge-sharing (like Wikipeida) I just don't trust that everyone knows what they're talking about. I'd rather go to the source. So I will leave this meme post with a 'to be continued' once I've located and read The Selfish Gene (or at least part of it or I'll never be back).

Before I go I'll leave my 7 songs, which is the meme that inspired this post in the first place. I have no iPod. Will has an mP3 player but I don't use it. I have a Korean mP3 player the software to which I have lost which means it's useless. My music is mostly in the archaic format of cds would you believe? So here are the top 7 songs that shaped me* (in random order, it seemed the only fair way considering the difficulty I will have limiting my list to 7 - which, btw, is a very random number).

1. The man who shot Liberty Valance - Gene Pitney.
2. Crying - Roy Orbison.
3. Papa don't preach - Madonna.
4. Coat of many colours - Dolly Parton.
5. Man of colours - Icehouse.
6. The walls came down - Travelling Wilburys.
7. We are the world - Michael Jackson & Friends.

* I think, although will get back to you after reading the book, that this is an example of a meme mutating.

Friday, March 23, 2007

Bravery defined. My friend Bon.


There are some things a person should not have to live with. There are some people who do; with dignity, grace and incredible bravery. This photo, like so many other of Bon's posts brought me to tears. This is O discovering his brother's urn beside Bon's bed. How does one live with something like that beside their bed? How can the small comfort of having that little urn so close overcome the immeasurable loss? How does she keep going?
Bon, I miss you and love reading your blog. Even though it makes me cry. You are possibly the bravest person I know and I just wanted to publicly thank you for sharing.

Sunday, March 11, 2007

Pushover?

Someone close to me asked me today not to breastfeed at his party because he thought it would freak his friends out.

Someone close to me. I've never even been asked that by a stranger in a shop. In fact I've never had anything except positive feedback for breastfeeding in public. I feed anywhere I happen to be and have never felt ashamed. I've never even thought of it as an issue before. It's just so natural.

I was so shocked I actually didn't know whether I was being unreasonable in being hurt and angry at the request. I didn't really respond cause I didn't know what the response should be. Now that I've had time to process it I think I should have told him to get F'd. In the words of my sister, "there are laws against that sort of thing"!

So really, my thoughts and wonderings are this: Why am I such a pushover? Why didn't I just tell him where to go when he said it? I am always like that with friends and family, not really willing to rock the boat. I'm not so bad with strangers, more willing to let them know how I feel. Why the difference? I guess because I don't have to see the strangers again, so if I upset them or make things awkward it doesn't matter.

Hmm, one to think about I guess, as I'm not sure if it's a good or bad thing. It's interesting though, cause I'm sure if you ask any of my friends they would say I'm never shy to let people know what I think.

Enough thinking and wondering about myself for now.
Bye.