What do I do when my body tells me I’m old?

I had a lot of fun turning 40 last year.  I reckon it’s a good age – young enough to feel time is still on your side, but old enough for experience to (mostly) have your back too.

Trouble is, my body seems to be telling me something different.  I do a slightly faster or longer run than normal and I get shin splints.  I move a pile of logs and put my back out.  I choose booze, biscuits and late nights and I get spots a teenager would cringe at and black eyes a panda would kill for.

What’s a girl to do – it’s either grab the gin and head for the oven; do a Gwyneth and go all juice, gym and jimjams by 9; or ignore it all and go hell for leather, life’s short so who cares.

I say there’s another way.

No longer can we rely on ‘use and abuse’ (so 20s).  The ‘I’m just too exhausted by kids/work/life’ doesn’t cut it (so 30s).  We need a new mantra for our 40s:  Suck it up, take the dull on the chin.  Care to live.  Insert your own version as you wish.

Whereas in my 20s I scoffed at the dentist preaching to me about flossing habits, now I both floss and visit the hygienist religiously – better that than massive dental bills or falsies gnashing in a bedside glass by 50.  I don’t want old lady dribble issues, so those pelvic floors will just have to fit into my daily life.   I do my best to resist the siren call of the daily post bedtime glass of wine and chocolate (yeah, that one might need some more work), and I’ve finally signed up to a weekly pilates class – by all accounts  the best (if boring) way to strengthen my body in ways that help as I get older.  I take make-up off every night, I’m finally paying more attention to sitting properly at my desk, I exercise regularly, etc, etc.

Yes, our bodies get old.  I say, deal with it.  We weren’t designed to live so long and evolution will take a damn long time to catch up.  Accept it, take the boring self-care routines on the chin and get on with enjoying the precarious and precious life we are lucky to have.

That said, I’m keeping the gin and oven close at hand.  Much as she glows, the Gwyneth route is far too dull, and ignoring it all just makes my head hurt.   So if my resolve fails, you know where to find me…

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What is going on with our country?

In a recent OECD report, England came 22^nd out of 24 western countries for literacy in 16-24 year olds (21^st for numeracy).  In another OECD / EC report, we top the list of most obese nations in Europe.

What on earth is going on with our country that our basic education and self-care is failing so badly?  What sort of preparation are we giving our children to have active, healthy, productive adult lives?

I was particularly shocked by last weekend’s Sunday Times feature on literacy providing the above OECD report figures (NB link will only show the full article if you are a subscriber).  I am incredulous that some (native English-speaking) 16-24 year olds can’t answer three questions my seven year old or even four year old could (e.g. Match the image (of an ear) to one of four words: ear egg lip or jar).  How can young people be so failed by our education system, and, dare I say it, their parents?

The article talks about a new free school opening in east London, with families flocking to sign up their children.  Most were so-called immigrant families, very few were white working class.  The article comments that in the latter children are growing up contemptuous of education, an attitude instilled by their non-working parents living in areas lacking jobs.

When I read things like this in the media, I immediately caution myself to keep perspective and remember that newspapers want to sell copy, or take a politically nuanced stance that may emphasise certain facts while ignoring others.   Why are those parents not working and resenting the system so completely – did it fail them too?  How many people are we talking about here – aren’t the vast majority of families full of parents working hard to give their kids opportunities, often in very difficult economic and social environments?  Does the report factor in language fluency? Is the picture as bad as the stats paint it?

22^nd out of 24 though.  Hard to explain that away.

I’m as shocked when I read that one in three of our children don’t own a single book, about 4 million of them (see thisarticle).  Given research shows a strong correlation between book ownership and literacy, this too is truly terrible for our society, now and in the future.  What chances do these illiterate young people have without basic life skills?  From society’s standpoint, what is the impact on economic growth, how much time, effort and money will need to be pumped into these individuals to try to redress this start in life or deal with its consequences?  What does it mean for the next generation?

As a person who believes passionately in education as a life-long means and end in itself for a fulfilling life, I don’t quite know what to do with this information.  I love this country and I want my children to love being British while they equally love experiencing and getting to know the wider world.  But these statistics, these quality of life indicators – is this really a healthy and positive society for them to live in?

Japan is top of the literacy table.  I don’t think our answer is tiger mothers, rote learning and cramming schools.  Finland is number two – I also can’t see the Scandinavian model of massive taxation and public services translating well here either.  I imagine it’s hard to cherry pick policies from a very different culture and expect them to work without a lot of investment and commitment.

Apparently, after a world tour of educational approaches and outcomes, top of the action list is that we need better teachers.  “Under-qualified, under-motivated teachers and sub-standard schools are at least partly to blame for England’s poor performance” said Richard Cairns, head of Brighton College and the man doing the world touring.  And yet today sees our junior school among many others across the UK closed due to the teacher’s strike against performance-related pay and other aspects of Michael Gove’s latest reforms.

Really?  I admire and respect all the teachers I know for the jobs they do: it’s a lot of work, full-on days, and often incredibly challenging. It doesn’t look to me like the pay or pay increase potential is particularly motivating and I know zero teachers who do it for the money.  But I don’t understand why performance related pay isn’t a given.  Why would we not incentivise our teachers to do their best to receive greater rewards? And make it less attractive to do a poor job of it?  Surely no teacher except a poor one wants a system that allows poor teachers to get the same rewards as teachers doing a brilliant, or even average, job.

Perhaps the gripe is about the way the performance aspect is implemented or the percentage value.  I’m sure there will always be things that could be done better and I don’t pretend to know the details. Irrespective, it seems to me that fundamental change is needed when the outcomes being delivered are so poor.

I see many examples in life of how small changes make big differences.  The big picture is important, but it’s nothing without the small steps that create it.  I feel hopeful that the changes discussed in this particular article might start to make a dent in this problem.  And I’m relieved that the UK scores better on other quality of life indices (see this helpful OECD site).

As so often when I read articles about issues that touch me, I also feel a little helpless and at sea with what to do with the strength of my feelings.  It feels wrong to read it, react to it, put it aside and go back to life as normal.  But what can I do about it?   The issues are complex, my time is limited, and the options to influence or get involved are so often not realistic, let alone choosing which of society’s issues I believe most passionately in helping address.

Spot the person well beyond the single-minded idealism of youth.

My awareness may be an important first step, choosing my politics and bringing up my own children according to my beliefs two others.  But none of those make a blind bit of different to the illiterate or obese young people in our country today.

I know this is not the England I want to live in.  The question is, what can I, will I do about it.

Fly, Bella, fly…Oh, goddang, I swallowed a fly

This weekend held three firsts for me.  One was my first at-speed insect-swallowing incident while out bike riding.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ew.  A protein shake would have sufficed.  Nearly had a sting in the ear too.  Perhaps these mishaps go along with my second first: cycling on a road bike. A bright yellow one at that.  Check out my gratefully borrowed steed:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I announced the intention to do a triathlon on my blog last summer.  I haven’t talked about it much on here since – other people’s exercise is pretty dull, really – but I can’t help myself today, because of my third first: feeling officially excited about doing it.

I’ve spent the winter steeling myself for road rides on my sluggish mountain bike, and doggedly trudging to the local pool twice a week, alternating struggling for breath with struggling against my inner giver-upper: “Why the hell did I take this on, why can’t I just stop, I’m never going to be able to do this, why am I so crap.”

Copyright memoirsofagrasshopper.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But this weekend I told the gremlin where to go.  Flying along like a yellow she-devil knocked down the last-but-one hurdle to feeling like the event is do-able.  Cycling on roads CAN be fun and I CAN go fast. I nearly laughed aloud with glee at the difference this skinny whippet of a bike made.  It was like swapping a 2CV pulling a tractor for a Ferrari.  Well, maybe that’s stretching it, but you get my drift.

But what was the final hurdle you might wonder.  A very female one, I’m embarrassed to admit: what to wear.

I’ve been having mild what-to-wear panic attacks as I’ve started to think through the practicalities of the event.  Wear a sports bra under my swim suit and then add cycling shorts over the top?  Could that look any less attractive?  Short and crop top combo?  Not for this Mummy-tummy.

I solved the problem this weekend.  I succumbed to my first tri-specific kit purchase, a tri-suit.  This one here, in fact, at a vastly reduced rate I couldn’t possibly turn down.  Yes, it means I’ll be in all-in-one lycra (time to ease up on the cakes and pies), but at least I don’t have to worry about silly combinations or changing clothes.

 

The trouble is, each of these advances limit my ability to excuse a poor show on the day.  I have kit that shouldn’t take me too long to transition between the three disciplines, I have a bike that shouldn’t hold me up.  Goddamn, it’s all down to me and my mental battles in training and on the day.  The giver-upper gremlin’s perfect hunting ground.

The gremlin has been with me throughout my life, particularly for physical challenges.  I like exercising, but only to a point.  If it ever gets beyond that point and actually gets hard, the gremlin wakes up and spends really quite a lot of energy trying to convince me to stop.  Is it just me that does this?  I hope not.  I risked sharing this weirdness with a friend and she told me her husband has a similar gremlin, which made me feel a bit better.  Weirdness shared is weirdness halved and all that.

In learning to swim front crawl for this event, I’ve realised it’s a really, really long time since I put myself in a situation where I genuinely can’t do something and struggle hugely to learn.  It’s not easy.  Duh.  Statement of the obvious.  But experiencing in practice what you intellectually know in theory still feels revelationary, even at nearly forty years old.

Do children feel a similar way about all the things they learn from scratch?  It’s so easy as an adult to avoid situations that truly push you. You almost need to seek them out – life can get stuck in a comfortable groove very easily, which feels, well, comfortable.

For children, by contrast, doing and learning new things is life.  How brilliant is that – new experiences and discoveries being your daily life.  We adults could learn from that.  Maybe one New Year’s resolution each year to do a completely new, out of comfort zone thing would do it.

I read an article in Red magazine recently about a well-being theory called ‘flourishing’ from an eminent psychologist, Martin Seligman (apparently he’s a positive psychology guru).  He thinks it’s no longer enough just to consider human happiness, we need to consider four other dimensions to life fulfillment and wellbeing on top of positive feelings: our engagement with the people and world around us (our flow), the quality of our relationships, finding meaning and purpose in our lives and accomplishment of goals we set ourselves.  Each element has to satisfy three criteria: it contributes to wellbeing; many people pursue it for its own sake (not just in pursuit of other elements); and it can be defined and measured independently of the others.

I like this idea – fulfillment and life satisfaction is about more than feeling happy.  Do I feel happy when I go swimming? No, mostly not, I still find it hard work and nowhere near as pleasurable as running or cycling, but it is satisfying because it contributes to achieving a goal and makes me feel proud of myself for doing something hard.

Making choices I can feel proud of, doing hard things, positive interactions with people, helping a friend, being a good parent and a good partner – these are things that make me happy with who I am.  I know it’s a teeny tiny small thing next to the realities so many people face in the world, but taking on this triathlon is contributing to my ‘flourishing’.

Of course I haven’t actually completed the event yet, nor indeed the training, so the gremlin has plenty of time to do its worst.  It’s a tad late for a New Year’s resolution, but, nonetheless, I think mine is to build an enormous mental mallet that bashes the hell out of the gremlin as soon as it appears.  Without it on my shoulder who knows what I could be capable of.

Ps If you’re interested in the theory of flourishing, check out Martin Seligman’s talk about it on The RSA , or this Guardian article,  or this excerpt from his book. . Or buy the June issue of the UK’s Red magazine.

Keeping the connection alive: Relationship 101

It’s interesting, isn’t it, how relationships ebb and flow.  Just over a year ago, Mr H and I split our weekday jobs into diametrically opposed roles: he would keep working, focusing on his career and bringing in the dosh; I would stop working and do everything else.

On the face of it, you could say I have a cushy life.  We live comfortably without me working.  With Littlest H now at pre-school every morning, I have time (in term) to myself I can decide what to do with.  If there’s a snow day at school, a child is ill or there’s something at school I’d like to attend, my life isn’t turned upside down.  Yes, some rejigging is required, and things I planned to do go un-done, but in comparison to the stress created by the nanny calling in sick or figuring out how to be at home to attend a school event without missing meetings I couldn’t really miss, it’s pretty manageable.

And yet, such a stark split of roles is tough.  Especially as a reasonably feisty, independent woman who enjoyed working and having financial parity with my partner, and who also has a pretty highly honed radar for female stereotyping.  It certainly took a while for us to get used to the new arrangement, without me feeling defensive about perceived expectation of ‘little woman’ behaviour, or a lack of understanding about just how much juggling there is in managing the day to day commitments of two kids. (To give an example, after a typical logistically-challenged day early on last year, that ended with tired, awful children, when Mr H arrived home to discover no milk, he questioned how I could not find time to get more.  A rare reaction, I might add, and rarer still since that particular instance and my response…)

Most of the time I can genuinely say I am happy managing the kids and the household by myself Monday to Friday, although I’ll admit I count the hours to Friday nights.   I’m used to it; we have our established routines and they work well nearly all the time.  I love hearing about the kids days first-hand and being the person ferrying them here and there and getting to know their friends.  I love being part of a community of mums who support each other through good and bad days, emergencies, building work, appointments or just the need for time out or a rant.  It’s also easier now I have some time in the day for decent exercise, as that keeps me sane (Mr H’s hours mean I can’t exercise early morning or evenings).

But I can’t pretend it hasn’t felt a bit dull and mundane sometimes too.  I love my children dearly, but the level of conversation is more “Mummy, I have a joke.  What is it Littlest H.  What do you get if you have a farmer?  I don’t know Littlest H, what do you get.  A farm.  Get it, Mummy?  Isn’t it funny, Mummy?” than discussing whether Cameron is right to call a referendum on Europe or even gossiping about the latest workplace drama or thorny issue.

I don’t think I noticed that mundanity last year.  Alongside the novelty of being with the kids, there were plenty of ‘projects’ that kept me occupied – redecorating, the allotment, planning a home-building project, writing this blog and children’s stories.  It’s only struck me since I started setting up a business with a friend this year.  It feels so purposeful, so constructive, so stimulating to be thinking about the world outside my domestic enclave in a pretty tightly circumscribed corner of Surrey.

But it hasn’t really changed anything about the roles Mr H and I have.  It won’t, as the whole point is for me to find fulfilling work that fits with family life.  In a way it’s harder – the volume of time I need to work on the business competes with time to spend with him, so the need to schedule ‘us-time’ is almost more important.

Being brutally honest, our set up has put a big strain on us, and we’ve fallen into lazy habits that haven’t helped.  Mr H is knackered when he’s home, and rightly puts his limited energy into the children first, who clamour for his attention.  Then there are the outings or social engagements, exercise, and sometimes it feels like we come last.  Not by planning or design, just by circumstance.  Us can feel like a mostly practical, sorting-out thing, a managing-our-lives thing.  A co-existence, not a fulfilling, positive relationship.

Last night we went out for dinner.  Just the two of us, to our favourite local haunt. I think it’s the first time we’ve been out by ourselves since mid December.  It’s been too long.  We’ve let our commitment to weekly date nights, or at least weekly ‘cook together and eat/chat without putting the telly on’ nights, slide.  It shows in our snippiness and lack of connection.  It’s easy to get lazy, but that connection is so important – I’ve seen at close hand what the loss of it has done to other relationships.  Without it, all our relationship is is a vessel for the children’s lives and our own separate existences.

Family life with young children, at the age when careers break through or risk being left behind, is tough.  You’ve survived years of sleep-deprivation. The time, money and energy for things you used to love doing are harder to find.  The fun of life requires more effort.  But allowing a lack of effort towards one’s relationship to slide into routine is a big risk.

So in a way I feel thankful we had a row on Thursday that triggered a rearranging of commitments to go for dinner last night.  Because we talked, we re-connected with each other’s lives and each other’s feelings.  We acknowledged the situation we’re in, the risk and the need to do it differently. We discussed ways to achieve regular date nights that don’t get canned by unavoidable work commitments or opting for the easy way out of tv and laptops.  We’ll book in some fun things to do together.  The ebb will return to a flow.

No doubt we will face another ebb at some point, but I am certain we are strong enough, and have open enough communication lines (albeit sometimes at higher volume than we’d like), to turn it around.  It might be relationship 101 to stay connected, but it can be all too easy to forget.  Marriage was never meant to be easy, but it definitely needs to be fun.  Time to bring on some more fun, I think.  Nevermind the Year of the Snake, let’s make 2013 the Year of Fun.

Botox Babes – would you go plastic?

I had dinner the other night with three feisty, successful, attractive women in their early forties.   Think Surrey Sex in the City.  Two of them (let’s say Samantha and Miranda) were discussing which fillers they will have as they get nearer 50 – both laughingly certain they will fill in the lines demarcating their cheeks from nose/mouth area and probably some kind of double chin eliminator too (assuming they get one). (Picture courtesy of Paramount Pictures)

Not if, not why, just what and when.

Really?  Two of the most intelligent, attractive, independent, articulate and confident women I know and respect want to have cosmetic work done?  For themselves too, I might add, not for a man.  And there was I with a (relatively uninformed) world view that women who indulged in it were bonkers publicity-junkies, women with very low self-esteem, and those in the public eye unable to resist our society’s gender and ageing stereotypes. Oh, and the women who have it for very understandable reasons, where medical issues or accidents mean it can genuinely change their lives through their own and other’s perceptions of them.

I was shocked, naively, perhaps. These women’s, this type of woman’s, choice left me wondering whether I’ve come to a considered enough opinion.

Why does cosmetic surgery feel an order of magnitude different to wearing make-up, dying grey hair or using skin pigmentation-reduction face creams?  Particularly now we have short-term, less invasive treatments like Botox – the so-called ‘lunchtime’ treatments.  Yet it still feels like a big line to cross.

Analysing my feelings, I struggle to justify why it seems so different to these accepted age-defying measures that virtually every woman engages in, in some way, as they get older.  It is more expensive, yes.  It is going under the skin, so feels a more serious decision, yes.  Infection or other problems might be more likely, yes.  But is it any more vain or less acceptable?

Personally, I do believe it is still less socially acceptable, a bit of a taboo.

Although cosmetic surgery is often in the media, I think it is mostly as an object of ridicule, or indulging our fascination with celebrity appearance.

That is counterbalanced somewhat by ageism debate and commentary such as that about the pressures on female TV presenters to look younger than their male counterparts (see here, here or here), or indeed this article about increasing numbers of professional men getting Botox to get ahead.

Whatever the media profile, ageing is a difficult concept to embrace given it is a constant reminder of the diminishing time to do the things with your life your youthful self so animatedly set out to do.  And our society’s obsession with youth makes us feel further and further from that ideal once grey hair and wrinkles force themselves on us.

I do also wonder what message cosmetic treatment sends to our children.  A woman’s body is not ok unless it looks youthful.  Feeling under-confident? Not getting ahead in the workplace? Get a shot of Botox and all will be better. 

If an idea or image is presented often enough, in enough guises, it starts to feel like a truth, an accepted belief or norm.  I think that’s a bit scary for my daughter’s generation.  Or indeed, my son’s.

One of the commenters on my last post said “if you teach your kids discernment they can work it out themselves”.  I think that applies here, too.  All we can do as parents is help our children build a strong base of belief in themselves and who they are, and teach them to think for themselves.  Even with my kids so young, they often ask questions for which the honest answers are uncomfortable – “Mummy, why do you wear make-up?”  for example.  I can choose whether I answer or not, or how truthfully, but, as is the case so often, children hold the mirror up to our / our world’s uncomfortable truths in all their glory.

I can’t think of an answer I would be happy with myself giving to my daughter if I had cosmetic work done. Either I’m too vain or too weak to resist societal norms of appearance.  But, to be honest, the same could be said for most of the appearance-changing things I do to myself.  So I’m not judging my friends for their choice – who’s to say I won’t feel the same way as my own lines deepen – I’ve certainly found greying hair enough of a trauma, and there’s nothing like an absolute statement of principle to make you look silly a few years later.

It’s more that I’m interested to understand whether there is a growing cohort of intelligent, thinking, confident women in their prime thinking like this.

What’s your view?

PS As a slightly silly footnote, while discovering that breast augmentation is the top British plastic surgery procedure, I also discovered that one of the industry bodies is called baaps.  He he he.

Me and my mate Coffee

Me and my mate Coffee go way back.  We met in my teens, but we didn’t become best buddies until my thirties.  Till then I had other friends to hang out with and make me feel good – I could easily go a day without seeing her and not feel bad, often even longer.

When I reached the big 3-0, things seemed to change.  Our friendship really grew, the buzz when we met intensified.  As we’ve got closer, I’ve realised if I can’t have the real Coffee, I prefer to have none – instant friendships just don’t hit the mark.

When I fell pregnant with Little H, we didn’t get along so well for those first few months.  Inbetween retching I mourned the loss of a dear friend.  Luckily Coffee had some tricks up her sleeve, and came back to me in the third trimester without quite the same buzz but just as much character as ever.

Since having the kids our friendship has really blossomed.  I can’t get enough of her. Every morning I look forward to seeing her.  I really notice when we don’t have time to meet.  So do my family and other friends.  Lunchtime is just too late, and I’ve learned through the years together that seeing her in the afternoon leaves me sleepless from all the excitement.  Perhaps that’s her play to make me even more desperate for her company the following morning.

Occasionally I try to wean myself off our friendship – I mean, surely me being such a needy friend can’t be a good thing, can it?  But it’s proved too hard.  She lures me back into our old habits and I think “Why not? What’s so wrong with Coffee anyway?”  People say she’s not good for me, but I’m not so sure.  Some days, nurturing our friendship is all that keeps me going.

The great thing is we love all the same haunts.  She’s a great lover of café culture. She really comes into her own in the best establishments – strong and full of character.  We avoid the places where the real Coffee isn’t appreciated, hiding behind the pale shadows of her instant relatives.

Our conversations are at their best when they’re accompanied by a big wedge of home-made cake, although sometimes we just sit together and read the paper.  I think our friendship will last a lifetime.  There’s just no-one else who makes me feel the same way.

 

 

Love ya, Coffee.  What would I do without you…

Re-finding the mojo magic

It’s a funny thing, mojo.  I think having kids mutates it.  The moments that fill my ‘I love my life’ mojo cup have changed.  Or so I thought.  But this week I’ve asked myself, have they really, or is that the illusion I hold onto to love my life rather than wish it were different?

Take my new sparkly shoes.  Aren’t they GORGEOUS?

And check out the lovely posh make up in front, all new and full of the promise of nights out, especially when coupled with sparkly feet.

Add a hairdresser trip to sort out my wild-lion-on-a-bad-day look…

…And a soupcon of London cool (‘scuse the sex shop photo, but it’s actually the front of La Bodega Negra, an uber-cool Mexican taqueria in the heart of Soho, inside below, complete with gimp suit behind the restaurant reception desk!)

And voila, my twenties mojo resurfaces.  You know, that mojo that lives in the city, knows where the cool hangouts are, stays out late drinking fabulous cocktails (bugger the hangover) and having conversations not about kids or domestic life or hardworking husbands or schools or the mother’s juggling act, and then goes dancing.  Mojo that ends with pictures like this:

 We used to have loads of these – us on a night out, looking a bit rosy in the cheek.  But, as we realised when asked by the fabulously fun women we were out with, the last time we went out properly like this together was at least seven years ago.  That’s a loooooonnnnng time.  Plenty of nights out separately, but together and in the big smoke – that’s a whole different babysitter ballgame.

And do you know what, it felt brilliant.  My sister-in-law asked me if the evening made me feel old.  Quite the opposite – it made me feel young – young, alive and happy.  I wasn’t a mother, I was me.  The me that loves letting my hair down and going a bit mad, especially with Mr H. Not the comfortably middle class domestic me who stays local, has an allotment, mostly socialises with gorgeous but pretty similar / similar lifestage people, and chooses the cultural or physical options like opera or ballet or hiking or biking for any time Mr H and I get together sans enfants.  Now, I’m all excited about using up some grandparent looking-after-the-kids points to go up to London and go out clubbing and stay with our new friends without rushing back for sitters or horribly early bouncing children.

Funnily enough though, re-finding that mojo hasn’t diminished the joy of its family and domestic life mutations.  Nor has it made me resent where my life is now. I love my life – I have a gorgeous husband, two beautiful children (even if they do wind me up immensely too often to think about), a nice enough house in a good town, a load of amazing friends and right now, some pretty exciting personal projects on the go, whether finding my voice through writing, learning to swim freestyle for my first triathlon or exploring a potential business opportunity with a dear friend.  Do I wish I were a young Londoner myself again?  Not really.  Way more angst, sore heads and shopping than I can be bothered with, let alone haemorrhaging money every weekend (ahem, let’s just ignore the haemorrhaging children represent…).

But last weekend did teach me something.  It taught me it’s important to indulge the old mojo every so often, even more so to do it with Mr H, and, when possible, up in the thick of life, in the big smoke.  Not to play it too safe, not to always take the more sensible options.  Not to forget we’re still young, the big 4-0 on the horizon or not.  There’s life in the old girl yet…

Geek breeding

A friend was telling me her husband is thinking of buying their six year old daughter a kids computer programming thingumijig for Christmas.

“What, you want to turn your daughter into a geek, do you?” I teased.

“Rather than wanting her to be pretty and popular, you mean?” she retorted.

Touche, Mrs L, touché!

Computers and other programmed gadgets are increasingly fundamental to life as we know it.  For our children, they will have no other way of being, will never have known anything else.

So? So…understanding how technology works, being confident with it, and knowing how to manage it will open up a world of possibilities, being able to be a Really Useful Geek. It might even make you a fortune, just look at Mr Microsoft, Mr Apple, Mr IBM, Mr Google, Mr Name-any-other-massive-multi-billion-dollar-techie-enterprise-started-by-a-geek-or-two.

Hang on.  I didn’t see any Miss, Ms or Mrs in that list.  What’s going on?

Now, I’m sure there are some leading light lady geeks out there raking in the profits from their techy-ness, but isn’t it interesting that the ones that trip off my tongue are all of the swinging appendage variety (pendulous boobs excepted of course… then again…)?  Even a quick google search hasn’t given me any comparable world-beating female techie founding… umm… mothers.

In fact, digging into where we actually are in the UK on the first step on that road – girls studying maths and computers – I found a startling statistic in this great article.  Figures show that although in 2011 there was a 60-40 male-female split in those taking A-level maths, the rate was 92-8 in computer science.

Wow.  No wonder there aren’t so many Miss, Ms or Mrs tech geek success stories out there, at least, on this side of the pond.  Is being a geek the new feminist frontier, I wonder?  Women who aren’t frightened of technology and how it works, who make it work for them and do cool stuff with it.  Is that what we should want for our daughters?

I can’t think why not (yes, Mrs L, you are entitled to feel smug here). It doesn’t mean they can’t be good at other stuff, does it.  What it might do is  mean they get further along their educational journey believing they are as capable as their brothers or male peers at technology and, possibly more importantly, finding it fun, interesting and useful.   They can feel in control of it, not vice versa.

And despite my pretty strong maths / engineering education, I wonder if Little H sees enough tech-savvy-ness at home to help her down that road. Well, sees it from me, really, if I’m honest. Because even if you are a girl who got and enjoyed maths at school, even if you studied engineering, even if you went so far as to learn a little bit of C++, you can still be someone who shouts at your phone/ipad/pc/sky box/game console. You can still be helpless after you’ve tried turning said device off and on again.  You can still routinely wonder if throwing or hitting a device would help.  You can still defer demurely to male resilience and enthusiasm in the face of broken technology.  Geek chic might have a way to go, but I think it’s worth a shot.  How about you?

A tale of unanticipated consequences

A proud school mum shows off her tandem skydive photo, a tick on her 40^th year to do list.   I think: “what a good idea, a 40^th year to do list.” I turn and ask a dad-friend if he’s ever fancied having a go at triathlon.

While slightly hysterically laughing about sudden triathlon suggestion, an intensely active, just-done-a-marathon dad expresses interest in joining in.

One week later

Wife of marathon man tells me he is pestering her to find out which triathlon.  Gulp.

Two weeks later

Little H and I attend Olympics.  I get fired up about sport, trying new things, the reward of effort, leading by example.  Manage to commit to triathlon goal on blog (see here if you missed post ‘I don’t want to be in Olympics’).  Now public. Double gulp.

Two weeks later

Arrive on holiday to discover French gite hosts are triathletes, indeed one is a coach and ex-pro, no less.  Watch them disappear off for daily bike rides, swims, runs.  Feel a teensy bit envious of lifestyle, bodies.

One week later

Husband asks casually over wine and cheese if I’m serious about triathlon.  I (deep breath, big glug) nod yes.  Husband calls my bluff. Offers early Christmas present of coaching by ex-pro triathlete.  Gulps so big just manage not to choke on wine.

Spend hour with pro talking goals, training plans, races, kit.  Express concern re swimming – never learnt front crawl. Bravado surfaces – maybe I could do or watch a race this season to get a feel for it.  Shopping list grows; from goggles to road bike to gym membership to swim lessons.  Realisation of extent of challenge deepens.  Feel excited, apprehensive, a bit gung-ho.

Last night of holiday

Have swimming lesson in small gite pool. Have to stop, gasping for breath after one length of 5 metres. All bravado deflated to fear.  The reality of racing a 400m swim hits.  Coach suggests how exciting it is to be starting right at the beginning.  Decoded: Wow, she really wasn’t joking when she said she couldn’t do front crawl.

Kit list gets longer.  Many swim aids required, starting with swimsuit.  Coach, husband and I agree halter neck, boy short tankini not really appropriate.

Two days later

On return home, training time negotiations and kit shopping begin.  Whenever brain idle, thoughts turn to triathlon.  Mix of excitement (Cool – a new, difficult challenge! A chance to be properly fit! Professional help to do my best and not just ‘enjoy the experience and not embarrass myself’!), nerves (Can I conquer front crawl – being forced to control breathing when working hard in particular. Will I have the mental strength for proper training that hurts and takes sustained commitment) and wondering about all the unknowns (How does it feel to swim with loads of other people? Will I ride and run in a swim/wetsuit? How much will it hurt not to have crotch padding for a 20km bike ride?  Is the transition from bike to run as hard as everyone says?  Will this take over my life completely or just mostly? Will I want to do another one?  Will all this cost and effort and using up of husband support points be worth it?).

5.40am Monday morning after holiday

Out for a run before Mr H off to work.   And so the journey begins.

In need of an uplift

Last week was a bad week.  I know this because I kept breaking into tears in front of friends, and now I’m consulting Toddler Taming  to find some new strategies.  Or at least to remind me about the things I already know work and don’t work so I can then reflect on the current daily battles and decide which to fight and which to try to ignore or deflect.  Not forgetting step three: negotiate agreement on plan with Mr H so we achieve the holy grail of calm, consistent parenting…well, try to.

No, it definitely wasn’t the week you want to have going into the Big Test of new non-working motherhood: six weeks of summer holidays.  That week would be full of love and gorgeousness with my three year old, reward charts full of stickers and siblings who might actually play together for more than a millisecond.  Instead I felt each smeared loo seat, each refusal to come down the stairs without a pick up, each episode of hitting or shouting, each jab and counter-jab of sibling fencing were arrows pinning me to a summer of despair, an abysmal mother finding no joy in her children, only willing the clock to reach 6pm each day.

Three things lifted me from such awful self-absorbed misery.

Firstly, friends.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again.  They are brilliant.  What would I do without them.  I can’t avoid them either (at least in term time), so when I feel like I want to hide in a black hole feeling sorry for myself, they force me to have the moment of light relief and human contact I actually need.  Last week, they did much more – three chunks of time Littlest H was whisked off me, and precious time it was too.  I read somewhere that people are three more times as likely to say yes to requests for childcare than people are to ask.  Asking for help is hard, even if it’s in return for help I’ve given.  I always feel bad foisting my child on someone else when there isn’t a ‘good’ reason like work or medical appointments.  In reality, time to be alone is good enough.  Even an hour can reset the balance and allow me to face the day with renewed vigour, patience and playfulness.

Secondly, books.  Is there anything more uplifting than a really good read?  I have started reading the books my book club read before I joined it, the latest of which is the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.  What a fabulous little gem of a book.  I loved it, it lifted me up and made me feel warm, positive and happy.  Losing myself in a good book, even if it’s just for a few minutes at bedtime, recharges my batteries, reminds me I’m still me and there’s more to life than our little domestic enclave.  I also found time to read some of the weekend’s paper on the same weekend I bought it, rather than the usual month later.  The fact that I can steal an hour to sit in the sunshine with a coffee and read the paper undisturbed was definitely a pick-me-up, a sign life isn’t all bad and is getting more balanced as the littlies get bigger.

Finally, meditating the parent mantra: “Ommmmmm, it’s only a stage, it’s only a stage, it’s only a stage, ommmmmmmm.”  Things Littlest H made an unholy fuss about a few months ago pass by unnoticed now.  Teeth brushing for instance.  I remember so well battles as described in Playing with the Holsby’s recent post, and now it’s a walk in the park (take heart Mrs Holsby).  Putting shoes and coats on was a grinding battle of wills where now he’s sunny as you like about it.  Only a month ago he refused to come to the table for meals, now he mostly gets up and tucks in without turning a hair. I have to hope the same will happen with walloping his sister and toilet battles. I know in my heart it will.  In the meantime, Toddler Taming is now being joined by ‘How to talk so kids listen’ and ‘Raising Happy Brothers & Sisters’, as recommended by a friend today.  I don’t care if reading how to parenting books makes me an ‘alpha mum’, or a control freak, sometimes I need to read wise words that help me think calmly and positively about ways to make it better.  I used to read work books to find new ways of thinking and approaching my job, so why not now?  This has got to be the hardest job I’ve ever done and it’s not like I can just resign to find a more suitable position, is it.

So on we go.  Two days of summer holiday down, a few bumps already along the road but I feel hopeful last week was a blip.  Seeing more of Little H is wonderful, I miss her when she’s at school.  She’s both an antidote, a help and a fellow sufferer/enjoyer of Littlest H, so it’s great to have her along for the ride.  My new books will wing their way to my door radiating more hope, and no doubt at least one gem will find its way into our lives, making us all rub along a bit more smoothly.  And the glass will feel a bit more full for a while – until the next shift in behaviour of course, and who knows what delights await us then…