Oh yes!
The house in Donegal. For Peter's benefit...
Velux windows in
Landing
Office on ground floor
Other side of office
Kitchen and living room
I have one week off work to reacquaint myself with the art of homemaking again. I can't wait. I've already done the kitchen and i have about an hour's worth of clothes folding to do. Yes, i kid you not. Our laundry hamper is Ghin's cot and it is filled to the brim. The clothes are slowly making their own way to the cupboards themselves.
I'm planning to push the detox boat out for lent as well, so i'm hoping that i get the main bit of the spring clean done this week. In the last week of lent, i have promised to treat ourselves to windows being cleaned inside and out. This is because when the sun start shining in that way the sun can only shine in March the water stains of the past year make the windows look at bleary and miserable. So i thought, no, we'll get the windows cleaned to celebrate easter.
The hyacinths are all gone now. It's been almost four weeks since we began the Lovely Spaces of Sacredness operation. In between there has been snow, illness, periods, anniversaries and tantrums. But we are still here... Just listened to Chopin there... is there anything lovelier than Chopin on a Sunday morning.
Was reading this article called Are You a Dummy Mummy? It's a really furious piece by a woman who can't stand women who have become mummy zealots. Women like me possibly, who did think hard before calling my blog shives and mettas mothers sutra, realising that it defined me by my children. Women who would at this stage in their life prefer to look after their children than, despite being highly qualified, work. Work, being a productive activity whereas raising children a traitorious act against feminists who have laid their feminity down for the so-called equality of women.
I think it's great that women choose not to have kids. It is their decision and i wouldn't for a moment dream of saying that they are unfulfilled or unhappy or incomplete. Nonsense. If they choose not to have kids, then it is their choice. I chose not to have kids twice.
But then there are women who have chosen to have kids - like me - and we are poleaxed between the guilt of having been brought up to be economically productive - i.e. 'work' and the natural HUMAN (not FEMALE) instinct - to look after something which you are responsible for. Somehow, in between acheiving equality and having a body which bears children, someone forgot to do something about how could we best look after the most precious assets that we have. For some women these are Manolo Blahniks, fair enough. However, Manolo Blahniks do not become serial killers or get served with ASBOs if you neglect them. They do not suffer from depression, or hunger if you leave them at the back of the closet. They do not runaway or become drug abusers if you mistreat them. And i do not think that this is simply one person's responsibility either - we are ALL responsible for the children. Just as we are ALL responsible for the environment, our old people, the disabled, the state of the ecnonomy.
What really shocked me was the bile which these two women poured into their article. What made them so angry? You could easily criticise a society or a strata of society which fetishies children, but to say that women who choose to devote their lives to their family and use their PhDs to earn Nobel Prizes rather misses the point that we can now choose to do this. Previously we could not choose. We were determined by our biology. Now we can try and do both.
They seemed really exercised by this thing called Bugboo. What be they these Bugboos? How weird... parents seemed to constantly be talking about them.
They said that women would talk incessantly about their antenatal classes and how their children mispronounced words. I have only ever spoken about the latter to my mother and the former i never talked about because i never attended any of these.
But even as i write this, i wonder if this is not the rigour of the 'work ethic' being brought to bear on bringing up children. If you were organising a function for a Minister or something, you'd try and research everything, wouldn't you? You'd talk to people about it, you'd google it, you'd try and do your bloody best. Now you take motherhood. A skill which we have not been prepared for. You think that if you screw up, you have ruined another person's life and you take that fact that it's unpaid and unsupported beyond the platitudes of the fucking Labour government who still prizes cheap nastiness over eveyrthing else, then you see the stakes which these professional perfectionist women are up against. And then you realise why women who do find themselves mothers, beyond their social programming, are panicking like hell.
I do agree with one point though. I can't bear parents who go on and on and on about their children, living vicariously through their lives. That does drive me nuts.
OK, gotta go now, Ghin is tearing through the kitchen, Bolt has done it's baby sitting job for the last hour. My time is now up...
Velux windows in
Landing
Office on ground floor
Other side of office
Kitchen and living room
I have one week off work to reacquaint myself with the art of homemaking again. I can't wait. I've already done the kitchen and i have about an hour's worth of clothes folding to do. Yes, i kid you not. Our laundry hamper is Ghin's cot and it is filled to the brim. The clothes are slowly making their own way to the cupboards themselves.
I'm planning to push the detox boat out for lent as well, so i'm hoping that i get the main bit of the spring clean done this week. In the last week of lent, i have promised to treat ourselves to windows being cleaned inside and out. This is because when the sun start shining in that way the sun can only shine in March the water stains of the past year make the windows look at bleary and miserable. So i thought, no, we'll get the windows cleaned to celebrate easter.
The hyacinths are all gone now. It's been almost four weeks since we began the Lovely Spaces of Sacredness operation. In between there has been snow, illness, periods, anniversaries and tantrums. But we are still here... Just listened to Chopin there... is there anything lovelier than Chopin on a Sunday morning.
Was reading this article called Are You a Dummy Mummy? It's a really furious piece by a woman who can't stand women who have become mummy zealots. Women like me possibly, who did think hard before calling my blog shives and mettas mothers sutra, realising that it defined me by my children. Women who would at this stage in their life prefer to look after their children than, despite being highly qualified, work. Work, being a productive activity whereas raising children a traitorious act against feminists who have laid their feminity down for the so-called equality of women.
I think it's great that women choose not to have kids. It is their decision and i wouldn't for a moment dream of saying that they are unfulfilled or unhappy or incomplete. Nonsense. If they choose not to have kids, then it is their choice. I chose not to have kids twice.
But then there are women who have chosen to have kids - like me - and we are poleaxed between the guilt of having been brought up to be economically productive - i.e. 'work' and the natural HUMAN (not FEMALE) instinct - to look after something which you are responsible for. Somehow, in between acheiving equality and having a body which bears children, someone forgot to do something about how could we best look after the most precious assets that we have. For some women these are Manolo Blahniks, fair enough. However, Manolo Blahniks do not become serial killers or get served with ASBOs if you neglect them. They do not suffer from depression, or hunger if you leave them at the back of the closet. They do not runaway or become drug abusers if you mistreat them. And i do not think that this is simply one person's responsibility either - we are ALL responsible for the children. Just as we are ALL responsible for the environment, our old people, the disabled, the state of the ecnonomy.
What really shocked me was the bile which these two women poured into their article. What made them so angry? You could easily criticise a society or a strata of society which fetishies children, but to say that women who choose to devote their lives to their family and use their PhDs to earn Nobel Prizes rather misses the point that we can now choose to do this. Previously we could not choose. We were determined by our biology. Now we can try and do both.
They seemed really exercised by this thing called Bugboo. What be they these Bugboos? How weird... parents seemed to constantly be talking about them.
They said that women would talk incessantly about their antenatal classes and how their children mispronounced words. I have only ever spoken about the latter to my mother and the former i never talked about because i never attended any of these.
But even as i write this, i wonder if this is not the rigour of the 'work ethic' being brought to bear on bringing up children. If you were organising a function for a Minister or something, you'd try and research everything, wouldn't you? You'd talk to people about it, you'd google it, you'd try and do your bloody best. Now you take motherhood. A skill which we have not been prepared for. You think that if you screw up, you have ruined another person's life and you take that fact that it's unpaid and unsupported beyond the platitudes of the fucking Labour government who still prizes cheap nastiness over eveyrthing else, then you see the stakes which these professional perfectionist women are up against. And then you realise why women who do find themselves mothers, beyond their social programming, are panicking like hell.
I do agree with one point though. I can't bear parents who go on and on and on about their children, living vicariously through their lives. That does drive me nuts.
OK, gotta go now, Ghin is tearing through the kitchen, Bolt has done it's baby sitting job for the last hour. My time is now up...
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