The Gallery: Chilled Out

I think I've joined in the Gallery only once because I'm slovenly. But I liked this week's theme: Chilled Out - so thought I'd join in.

I instantly knew which picture to post. It was taken on our honeymoon in Tanzania. We were in the Selous Game Reserve which is the size of Switzerland with hardly any people in it. Our ranger had taken us by boat up the Sands River, stopped on this sandbank, shooed the hippos and crocodiles away and we'd got out. He set up fishing lines for us and we stood on the warm sand, with the sun setting, sipping on Tusker lager, waiting for a nibble. It was bliss and utterly chilled out.

But it's not so easy to nip off to Tanzania anymore. As a parent you have to find new, less exotic ways to chill out. I discovered two ways this afternoon, sadly I have pictures of neither.

First of all, I downed tools. All of them - blackberry, ipad, computer, dishes, laundry, dinner ingredients - and devoted myself to playing calvinball with my boys. It's a great game - part cricket, part baseball, part tennis, part rounders. Instead of looking at my watch and thinking about the next thing I needed to be doing, I just threw myself into the game wholeheartedly. I have the bird poo stains on my jeans to prove it.

Second, after dinner, while son 1 watched TV, I embarked on a game of tickles with son 2. I can't remember when last I did that. I even played 'this little piggy went to market' and 'round and round the garden path', which I haven't done for what feels like years. And when we were both too exhausted to tickle each other anymore, we did tongue twisters. Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry. She sells seashells. Three flags flying freely. And we laughed and laughed and laughed.

And by the end of the afternoon, I felt very chilled out.

Perhaps that's the art of chilling out - it's about living completely in the moment, no matter what that moment may be.

See the way other bloggers chill out here.

What men don't do

I am trying to determine whether the list I have compiled below is a universal thing for men, or just my husband. Please feel free to enlighten me as to how much of it rings true for your household:

Things men don't do

• Change the toilet roll. That includes removing the old cardboard tube and putting on a new roll.
• Taking the lint out of the tumble dryer.
• Check which things can actually go in a tumble dryer. Like say a plastic raincoat or fine knit sweater
• Open curtains
• Put things in the dishwasher, rather than next to the dishwasher
• Put butter or milk back in the fridge after using them
• Check whether there are any red socks caught up amongst the white wash
• Sort socks into pairs. They will put them into piles until the sock sorting fairies arrive
• Put the things that have to go into the recycling bin, in the recycling bin, rather than washing them and leaving them on the draining board or putting them on the kitchen counter waiting for someone else to put them in the bin
• Make any meal for children other than pasta with pesto and peas
• Buy expensive pieces of art without asking their wives opinion (yes, there is a story there)

And in the interest of fairness and non-sexism, these are things that women don't do:

• Adjust the clocks whether the clocks go forward or back
• Polish shoes
• Change water filters in kettles
• Clean the fish tank
• Close curtains
• Keep a tidy desk
• Put the lids back on things properly
• Buy lightbulbs and batteries

So that's a little snapshot of our world. How does yours compare?

The bleat returns (with a mostly French flavour)

I don't have the mental capacity to write a whole coherent blog post today (see bleat 1 as to why), so I offer you instead some bleats (a cross between a blog and a tweet):

Bleat 1: Cluster f**k
Today I was merrily working away, with a headache that has lingered for two days brewing quietly in the background. Then KAZAM! It hit. It felt as though someone had taken a tazer gun and rammed it up against my brain aimed it down towards my left eye and pulled the trigger. The pain in my head, eye and face was extraordinary. My eye started streaming tears and I was left gasping in pain, thinking that I was possibly dying. I crawled into bed and lay there hoping it would go away. It did. I woke up an hour and a half later with my head feeling as though someone had taken a baseball bat to it. I decided to see a doctor just to check it wasn't a brain embolism. Apparently I had a cluster headache. They're called cluster headaches as they apparently come in clusters. Oh joy. Because that was only number 1....

Bleat 2: Fattening France
We went to France. We ate baguettes and pain au chocolat and croissants and cheese and saucisson and more cheese and drank wine and washed it all down with Easter eggs. How is France not the fattest nation in the world? Even the salads are the size of small cars and are draped with cheese, gizzards, duck liver pate and fried bread or potatoes. I can see why they have so much wine - they have to, to dissolve the fat.

Bleat 3: How to enjoy a holiday with boy children
If you're going self-catering (which unless it's an all inclusive family friendly resort, you really want to do) make sure you stay somewhere that other families are too. Not the great unwashed you understand, but a small selection of nice families - like a gite cluster. The kids then have friends to play with. Make sure the property has lots of kit for them to play with and if not, lots of woods for them to play dens and gangs in. Do not attempt to do too much sightseeing. When you do, find sights that involve blood and gore as far as possible. We found a Roman amphitheatre which did nicely. Use ice cream as a daily incentive. (PS - we had an utterly fantastic holiday by following these principles. I can also say that rural France is a great place to let your children run wild, for any helicopter parents out there who feel the need to hover over their kids every day. It's safe as you like and they (and you) will be so much happier for the freedom).

Bleat 4: When you could just kiss your kids
While in France we decided to go to one of the Cognac houses in Cognac (funny that). We plumped for Remy Martin, not because it was the most child friendly, but because all the others had closed when we called to book. We knew that we were asking a lot of our children. But we patiently explained that mummy and daddy also need to do some things they like on holiday. (And there was the obligatory promise of ice cream). The tour took two hours. Two hours of a woman speaking in broken English about subject matter well above our children's heads. They had every right to be bored witless (we weren't but then we like alcohol). They had every opportunity to run amok and destroy the 100 year old cognac casks housing golden nectar that retails at £1600 per bottle. But they didn't. They were angels. Not a peep or a whinge or paddy. At the end of the tour an elderly couple came up to us and said: "When we saw you arrive, we said to each other - oh no, not kids, that will ruin it. But your children were impeccably behaved. What a pleasure to have them with us."

It's moment like that, right then, that all your children's past wrongs of refusing to eat vegetables and beating each other with sticks and farting in each other's faces and picking their noses at dinner tables and generally screaming and being annoying do not actually mean that they're ASBOs in waiting. And that on very rare occasions they do actually know how to be good. And the inner glow that gives you as a parent is almost as cockle warming as a glass of cognac. So thank you elderly couple for saying that. You made my year.

Sleepless in Seattle - the finale (at last!)

Sorry about the cliffhanger. Due to numerous reasons, I wasn't able to post the final installment of the Sleepless in Seattle series. In case you haven't seen the rest and have no idea what I'm talking about you can see parts 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 by clicking on the respective links.

So where we left it was thus: We'd made the decision to move to Seattle.

Our final day in Seattle saw us having lunch with my husband's boss and telling her that yes, we would like to move there. We rounded it off by seeing one last school before catching our plane and flying back to the UK.

Getting home, we kicked all our plans into action. We told friends we were moving. We contacted estate agents to put our house on the market. My husband told his company to start finding his replacement. I started making plans about my business.

It was all systems go.

But I still wasn't sleeping. I had hoped that having made a decision at last, I could settle down to the practical business of moving, rather than the woolly umming and aahing that we'd done for months and months. So why was every fibre of my being saying that this was the wrong decision? I kept telling myself that it was just nervousness about moving to a new place, that it was normal to feel this way about such a big move. But how do you distinguish between a nervous knot in your tummy and a gut instinct that's telling you it's the wrong decision?

I began to look at the world around me, the British world I had not only taken for granted, but felt didn't live up to my expectations. And suddenly I saw everything with new eyes. The gentle spring days that offer up a soft, subtle loveliness. The friends we have here, both old and new that add richness to every day. The quirky quaintness of virtually everything. The proximity of so many cities all within a few hours, all offering variety. Having Europe and all that it offers right on your doorstep. The BBC. Never ever underestimate the marvellousness of the BBC. The lack of underlying aggression and tension which I felt in the US. The sense of humour.

It was as though blinkers had been taken off my eyes. For so long I'd been looking for perfect. And the grass seemed greener just about everywhere except where we were. But we caught a plane to take a look at the grass. And it wasn't greener. It was different. And probably better in some ways. But on balance, there is a reason why William Blake described England as a green and pleasant land.

I realised that moving was the wrong decision. I figured that if we invested even a small part of the amount of energy we'd have to put into moving and starting from scratch, we could create a life right here that works for us. After one particularly lovely weekend with friends, my husband realised it too.

We cancelled all moving plans. And instead, put into action our 'Create the life we want right here' plan. I will be making changes with my work (more on that later in the year). My husband is going to be putting a new virtual working model into practice where he works at home most of the time instead of commuting into London, compacting his time spent there and abroad into specified weeks. We're changing our house around to use it better. My husband is getting involved in the local community. We're looking at new clubs to join. We're taking what we already have and making it better, instead of starting from scratch. Mostly, we're genuinely appreciating all that living in good ol' Blightly has to offer. It may not be perfect. But it's a lot more perfect than we realised.

I'm still getting the email alerts from US estate agents and a tiny part of me thinks: 'It would have been lovely to have one of those huge houses. And it would have been a grand adventure.' And I do find it quite terrifying to be able to see what our future looks like, rather than the freedom of the unknown with the wealth of possibilities it offers. But this whole experience has made me realise that life can be an adventure wherever you are. It's what you make of it.

Most importantly, I am sleeping soundly at last.

PS - to celebrate the brilliance of having Europe on our doorstep, we're off to France tomorrow. Happy Easter!

The vaginal frontier

There was a time when men and women set forth to conquer unexplored areas. The Antarctic. The Himalayas. The moon.

They invented things - lightbulbs, computers, shoes with wheels in them.

We have come up with solutions to most of life problems and have come up with problems simply to use the solutions that have been created.

But having done these amazing things, there are now few areas left unplundered. Few frontiers unexplored. And until relatively recently, the vagina was one of them.

Or course women have been shaving and waxing for some time. According to Wikipedia, Middle Eastern societies have been waxing since 4000 BC. Us Westerners only caught onto the trend in about 1945, when swimsuits became more revealing and the sight of  pot scourer-like hair flirting out the edges was deemed unsuitable public viewing.

Then, thanks to Sex and the City in the late 90s, the concept of the Brazilian took hold of our imaginations. All of a sudden, a neat bikini line was positively slovenly in comparison to sporting the bald eagle look. And once this particular trend was given an airing, well, all of a sudden the lady garden became the final frontier to be explored.

With the smooth, blank canvas the Brazilian affords, it was inevitable that someone would come up with the next big thing. There, crying out for a bit of beautifying, were millions of naked vajayjays. And thus the words 'Vajazzle' and 'Vajazzling' entered our lexicon. If you don't know what vajazzling is (where have you been?), its a way to pimp your vaj. Bling it up. Make it sparkly. In short, you stick crystals onto it. I won't go into the reasons why you want to do that - Katyboo explains it all brilliantly here (this is a must read). And let's not forget Vattoos....nuff said.

So having gone from not waxing, to waxing, to waxing it all off, to vajazzling and vattoos, not to mention labiaplasty and vaginoplasty, surely we had plumbed the depths of what else could go on in that particular ah-rea.

But no. There's more.

Thanks to a tip off from blogger This Mid Thirties Life, the latest lady garden craze is the Vajacial. That is a facial for your vajayjay. Yes, you read that correctly.

Apparently several US waxing salons are offering these treatments.  For example Stript Wax Bar in San Francisco has a 50-minute long treatment involving four steps:
Skin is cleansed with an antibacterial body wash and witch hazel.
A papaya-based exfoliating gel goes on before the esthetician extracts ingrown hairs.
Then an anti-freckle, anti-acne, or calming mask is applied.
It finishes off with an application of lightening cream.

This brings several questions charging into my brain.

1. Surely there must be a fair amount of 'massage' that takes place as various potions are applied and removed. Couldn't that have .... consequences? And are you charged extra for that?? Nothing like a facial with a happy ending.
2. 
   What if some of that exfoliating gel goes where it shouldn't? That's gotta make your eyes water.
3. Anti-freckle cream?? Really? How many freckles can you get down there? Don't you get freckles from too much sunshine? Quite frankly if you're super freckly down there, perhaps you should have avoided all those nudist beaches. And if your body is naturally freckled all over, surely a freckle free vaj would look odd?
4. Similarly - lightening cream? Why would you want your vaj to be lighter than the rest of your skin? Is it meant to be able to glow in the dark so that it can be easily found, like a fluorescent beacon with landing lights guiding you home? I'm fairly certain that your partner will find it regardless of what colour it is.
5. Why in the name of all things holy would you want to be a vag esthetician? I'll bet it's not a career choice often discussed at career guidance day.

Having given birth twice, I know that a vagina can become very public property. Your 'intimate private' area becomes a shipping lane that might as well be broadcast on the nine o' clock news just in case someone in the world hasn't seen it yet. But that's childbirth. Everyone is too busy looking at what's coming out of your vaj, rather than the vaj itself.

Perhaps I'm simply in the wrong phase of life to consider vajacials and vajazzles and anything else that is designed to beautify this particular area. Perhaps if I was single, in my 20s, living in LA I'd be waiting in line to have exfoliating gel rubbed onto my girly bits.

But I feel - with a rather large portion of relief - that these particular trends are going to have to pass me by. Discussing vajazzle designs and vaginal exfoliating options at the school gate isn't something likely to happen, certainly not in the West Berkshire countryside. And besides, I reckon my poor husband would be happy to see my lady garden at all, horticultured or not.

I shall have to find another frontier to explore instead.

Rio!

This post is still not about Seattle, it's about Rio. Not the place, the movie. I don't often take up PR companies on their offers of freebies but for once, I was offered something that I could go to and I wanted to go to.

We just happened to be in London this weekend as a family (that's us in the pic), so when the offer came in to go to a preview screening of the new animated kids film Rio, I said yes please.

It was very exciting to go to the Empire Cinema on Leicester Square, feeling very much like country mice in the big city. Inside it was crazy with Carnaval type samba dancers shimmying around fake palm trees, while face painters painted and balloon modellers modelled. It was loud, busy and manic and I was very, very pleased to get into the theatre and don our 3D specs.

In case you haven't seen the trailors, Rio features a blue macaw called Blu (Jesse Eisenberg) who can't fly. He's also the last male of his species and is brought to Rio to mate with the beautiful Jewel (Anne Hathaway), the last female blue macaw. Obviously things don't go according to plan, otherwise there wouldn't be much of a story (certainly not one suitable for children!)

During their adventures they meet funny birds Pedro (Will.I.AM) and Nico (Jamie Foxx), Luiz (Tracey Morgan) the drooling bulldog and the baddie Nigel (Jermaine Clement), not to mention lots of thieving monkeys.

The story is sweet (almost sickenly so with the perfect ending) and it's not jam-packed with laughs (although I did laugh out loud with the text message the monkeys sent and the stripping security guard with his gold pants). But what made me smile with my whole body was the music in the film. It was toe-tapping, infectious, booty-wiggling samba with fantastic dance routines by multi-coloured birds, all set against the beautiful backdrop of Rio de Janeiro.

I'm not normally a 3D fan (gives me a headached) but the 3D in this was incredible, particularly when some of the characters were racing through the favellas, while the flying scenes made my toes curl they were so effective (not a big fan of heights).

My kids enjoyed it, although my youngest didn't like some of the bits with the baddies. They liked the drooling dog. They would. They're boys. Anything gross is good. They rated it 8 out of 10, losing marks probably because they don't have their mother's desire to shake her groove thang whenever she hears samba.

Perhaps it was just because I'd sailed to Rio that the location had a special place in my heart, or perhaps deep down I just want to be a samba-dancing, bikini-clad, butt-shaking romantic. But this film, with its bright colours, beautiful scenery and general feel-good vibe made me leave thinking: "I loved that" even though when pressed I couldn't really say why.


Rio opens in cinemas on 8 April, just in time for the Easter holidays. Go to http://www.rio-themovie.co.uk/ for more details.

You are a star

Sorry. I know I should be posting the final Seattle installment, but I can't. For many reasons. I will return to the subject again and give you the final verdict soon.

But I wanted to write a short blog post about something that moved me greatly yesterday. I've been in a pretty blah place recently. And it's become apparent that I sometimes (most of the time) see things half empty instead of half full. I doubt myself and generally lack self esteem. And it's been a long time since I felt shiny.

Then last night I watched 'The Wonders of the Universe' on BBC 2 with Professor Brian Cox. If you haven't see it, go to iplayer and watch both this episode and last weeks. It will blow your mind.

Firstly, the man (besides being fairly good looking and is able to play the piano and has a brain the size of the universe - stand in an orderly line ladies) is able to make complicated scientific things fascinating. He makes me want to go back to school and retake science, and believe me, science and I were not friends.

Anyway, last night's episode was called Stardust and the premise of it was that we are all made out of the exact same elements that stars are. In fact the elements that make up our bodies and our world are formed when a star dies. Carbon to iron - it all comes from the collapse of a star. Without a star dying, we wouldn't be here. You need to watch the show to understand it. But it made me think:

If we are really made out of stars, then we all have the ability to shine brightly.

From now on, whenever I'm feeling more black than white, more down than up, more can't than can, I'm going to remember that I am a star. I have all the chemical elements I need to sparkle. And without wanting to get completely yar-fully-hey-shoo-wow on you, we are literally children of the universe. How friggin awesome is that. And doesn't it make the fact that you have a teetering ironing pile pale into significance?

So if you're ever feeling low, just remember that you too are a star. Let yourself shine.