#atinylife140 Sunny

Oh, I can’t complain.

I mean,

I try not to complain.

 

When it’s sunny.

And it’s so sunny –

it’s great,

cheered us all right up.

 

In Scotland, you

get this, some years.

Some years, I don’t need

to wear sandals

at any time.

 

(Which is OK,

as it means I don’t

have to paint my toenails, either.)

 

It’s such a cliché

to be one of those serial

moaners

that complain

when it’s sunny

and when it’s raining

and when it’s cold

and when it’s windy.

 

But

I’m not great in the sunshine.

If I don’t wear a hat

I get a headache.

If it’s super hot

I get panicky

if we run low on ice cubes.

 

So I live

in the right country,

because as I said,

this is lovely.

 

But a summer like this is rare.

 

And that’s OK.

#atinylife140 CoffeeShops

On the radio, the man says

‘You’ve just had a baby,

so you’ll be in loads of coffee shops

right?’

 

‘I’m back at work like you!’ she says.

True.

She’s owning him, on the radio.

He thinks

motherhood is easy,

and coffee shops are full of easy woman and their babies.

 

Then

the man says

‘You told me

you’d had an NCT coffee

earlier.’

 

The audience laugh.

 

You could’ve let her be right.

How hard it is:

having a baby, being freelance.

Women wanting to work,

men ripped from their babies,

two weeks later.

Everyone’s guilt.

 

None of it is any good.

 

You know –

it’s no fun in a coffee shop

with a tiny baby.

Getting half a conversation. At best.

But we’re sitting about,

having lovely coffees all day.

 

You could’ve left it.

We get enough of all that.

 

 

#atinylife clothesshopping

‘How long until we need to pick Dan up?’

‘An hour and…forty minutes. We’ve got time to go and swap those trousers, if you like.’ The ‘skinny’ jeans from Asda hung off my oldest’s thighs.

‘OK.’

We arrived and swapped the voluminous trousers for a gift card. Because my oldest is currently identifying as gender non-conforming, we started at what we call the ‘so called’ girls section.

Nothing that sparked an interest.

So we checked the so-called boys section.

Nothing. Unless you count the flicker on a tiger T shirt which wasn’t available for anyone over five.

‘I’m sorry. I’m taking so long,’ my child said.

‘It’s not your fault.’

There was nothing there for an individual that wasn’t a girly girl, or a boyish boy.

I just hope that the whole world isn’t going to be like that.

 

#atinylife break

Due to the events in Manchester on Monday night, I will be taking a break from blogging this week.

It doesn’t feel right to talk about my tinylife when tiny lives have been lost in a city that was my home, once.

I will be back next week.

Wishing you a peaceful day.

#atinylife laundry²

I’m hanging out the laundry. Of course.

It’s lovely, once Spring comes, to be able to hang it outside. The smell of laundry dried outside is right up there with the smell of your child’s shoulder or grass after a May shower.

I have photographs of nappies (for the five minutes that we used disposable nappies), strung out on the bottom lines. I knew I was too tired to remember it myself.

We have two lines. A high one, for trousers and sheets, and a low one, for the kid’s clothes and socks.

But this morning I noticed a change. The oldest’s trousers and tops are big enough for the top row.

It’s both bitter and sweet: good to know that we are further away from nappies and broken nights, sadness that those cloistered days of babyhood are over.

 

#atinylife Podcast

‘I don’t think I can do the interview tomorrow. I’m really not feeling up to it.’

I could have sworn that I only said this to Moira once. But apparently I told her so many times that I wasn’t able to do the interview that she’d spoken to her mentor about it. He had messaged her, asking if I’d been in touch yet, to say I just couldn’t, wasn’t in a place to, hadn’t got the necessary oomph for…

Of course I had. Right up until the day.

I knew Moira would be a brilliant interviewer. I knew we would talk about things that I’m not ashamed of, but don’t talk about often. I knew it would be cleansing, but a particular sort of tiring.

I am so happy with the result. Can’t wait for the next episode, Moira!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MexrSFolntQ

 

#atinylife Tuna

The tuna steaks were a bit over done.

I don’t eat tuna anyway, but I was on a fast day, so hadn’t even been responsible. It’s not like Mr HB. Slap dash is how we refer to my cooking, not his.

But as I scrubbed out the tuna pan, I remembered. He’d come to help me bring in the laundry. The smell of tuna had filled the house once we returned. It was why I put the clean clothes into the hall, not the kitchen.

I’m keeping this memory as proof. It’s not that I am not good at cooking, or couldn’t be, if I wasn’t doing 100 other things at the same time. If the actual labour doesn’t distract me, the emotional labour does.

This isn’t a ‘women’s’ thing. If you are distracted, then the tuna will be over done.