Evolution (part 3)

Have just entered another era of parenting. Like today.

Was still in bed this morning when ManChild left the house for his paper round and am typing this from my bed this evening while he's still out babysitting.

We have conversed today and I have been out of bed for most of it, but choosing to lock the front door and go to bed when my kid is not home yet feels weird.

Do I wait up or go to sleep?

Hmm. Bed is calling. Really tired.

He's babysitting for one of my best mates. He's getting a lift home. He's got his key. Have left his fave mug (with a tea bag in) and a hot water bag next to the kettle.

He will have spent the last 3 hours enjoying unrestricted wifi access with no tea making or screen break conditions.

We are encouraging a healthy work ethic and are actually quite... caring parents.... And... Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

Empty nest syndrome

E has made me a cup of tea. My kid is fantastic at making tea. (He gets lots of practise). I take the mug and hug him.

Me: What's that smell? It's like popcorn or something.

E: Doritos.

Me: But we don't have any Doritos in the house.

E: I have some upstairs. 

Me: You're hiding food in your room?!

E: I bought them myself- I'll go get them and I'll trade you some for a bit chocolate.

(We make the swap)

Me: Babe- can I get some more?

E: Have a piece of fruit first - ha ha! (This is the line I use on the kids when they ask for junk). 

Me: Why are you buying food anyway?! You need to save up all your money so you can move out.

E: Sadly that's a while off yet...

Jigsaws (part 3)

Is this how everyone builds a jigsaw?

1. Have possession of all the component parts, including a reference image of finished picture

2. Isolate all the edges

3. Build the frame

4. Gradually piece the thing together

Aside from chunky wooden jigsaws and those with under 24 pieces, I don't know of any other process to use (for grown up jigsaws).

However, Jackson recently suggested a new one to me during the stage 2 edge sort. After chatting and half heartedly helping for the best part of 10 minutes he asked, 'Wouldn't it just be easier to just put it together?'

Life begins...

They say life begins at 40. I'm not sure that's true, but I have experienced some recent revelations in this new(ish) decade so it will be interesting to see how things pan out. OK- So far we have:

1: Cooking is less painful when planned and shopped for in advance. (See more details here).

2: Parenting a teenager is very different to parenting a toddler. Toddlers can do your head in, but they're easily distracted by bubbles or twigs or Milky Way stars and they sleep for half their lives anyway, leaving much respite time to drink wine and watch trashy TV. Teenagers have far more clever arguments at their disposal and are unbelievably stubborn and less prone to the allure of twigs. And they need less sleep - even if you give them wine. Teenagers can also make a parent behave like a toddler, which is annoying.

3: If you like things clean and organised and share a home with other people who are old enough to make things clean and organised but don't, just ask them. Then ask them again. And again. (thanking them in between times when stuff gets done). They are not ignoring the mess and disorder that is so apparent to you - they just don't see it. In the same way I have a mental block in finding Bristol airport and rely on the sat nav EVERY SINGLE TIME, so it is with some people and mess. Clean up together then watch Obsessive Compulsive Cleaners and marvel at how mentally unhinged everyone else is.

4: If your evening could involve either running a bath while putting the kids to bed then soaking in it for 2 hours with a book and a cup of tea until your pulse is pounding in your head and all the hot water runs out, OR having a 5 minute shower before climbing into bed before 11pm to a strategically placed hot water bottle or the prospect of intimate relations- choose the latter. Always. Time is money, people.

5: Care must be taken while multi-tasking - or it just becomes multi failing at different things. Like cooking the meal you planned then writing this blog during the simmering phase with no timer. See?

Annoying. The pan has only just recovered from the last distraction disaster.

(To be continued)

Go. Stop. Wait.

I'm usually pretty good at waiting for things.

Take Christmas for example. Even as a kid I don't ever remember wishing the year would go faster so it would be December. A couple of times when I still lived at home, my mum bought me an early Christmas present and handed it to me to use/wear right away. I handed it back and asked her to wrap it and put it under the tree (much to her amusement). I was happy just to wait.

I loved being pregnant. All our kids were born early so I never got fed up waiting around wondering when they would appear. I avoided a lot of unpleasant side effects and never got that huge with any of them, so this probably helped as well. It also felt like a really efficient use of my time to already be a mother to whoever I was carrying, yet not have to think about feeding, bathing or changing them. I just enjoyed the waiting and the lack of responsibility while they incubated.

Buying a house can be a long and complicated business. The first time we bought a house was so long ago (and in Scotland, where things are slightly more straightforward), all I remember is filling in some forms and getting the keys a few weeks later. The process wasn't particularly stressful or consuming because we were busy doing other stuff like learning to drive, finishing college and getting married.

Our most recent house purchase took much longer and concluded a 4 year rental adventure which saw us informally renting from friends, officially renting through an agency, and the unorthodox situation of turning up on the doorstep of someone I'd never met before and hugging her 30 seconds later when she handed me a key.

When we climbed back onto the property ladder, we bought a house that was not in Scotland. That took ages.

It turns out that running your own business and being considered first time buyers and cancelling a direct debit from an energy supplier who no longer supplies your energy but continues to take money from your account every month and then reports you to the credit expert people when they discover they can no longer do this gives you zero trust with many banking institutions (who collectively screwed up the whole economy and then get to question the integrity of everyone else) - who knew? And so we had to explore one or two options before finding a lender.

Even during all this I was good at waiting. We gave our finance guy all the bits of paper he asked for, chased up our accountant when we were asked for stuff we didn't yet have and reassured our finance guy every time he rung up to ask for things we hadn't given him yet by explaining that we were still waiting for them ourselves.

We were good at waiting.

The seller of our present house was buying another house nearby, and the seller of THAT house was not so good at waiting. Several weeks into the wait she infamously stormed into the estate agents in town, screamed at everyone in the office, then angrily and tearfully pulled out of her sale agreement altogether as a demonstration of 'taking control of her life again'- even though she didn't actually live in the house at the time and still really wanted to sell it.

Sometimes yelling at people who are on your side then rejecting an offer you have already accepted in order to wait for something else to come along when you have already demonstrated you are really bad at waiting feels like an empowering thing to do.

This was hilarious to me. But a small part of me identified with her.

Sometimes the best thing to do in a situation is to do nothing. To wait it out in the knowledge that external circumstances will eventually change and as a result, options will open up that are currently unavailable. At other times, action is needed like now and to do nothing is unwise or lazy or cowardly or all of the above.

I think the tension arises when the person making the decision has no clue which is the correct course of action to take and so fluctuates between both, resulting (in this instance) in a public display of hysteria in the estate agents:
• There is a problem
• Other people I trusted to fix this aren't
• I will therefore fix it myself even though this may actually balls things up even further

So sometimes it's like:
Wait.
Do nothing.
It's OK - Stuff is happening that you can't see.
Please- just wait...

And other times it's like:
The time has come.
You have to go now!
Rrrruuuuuuuuuuunnn!!

• OK - so how do we know which one to go for? (in the absence of being nine months pregnant and contracting and sucking on gas and air already)?

• How to avoid doing nothing out of inertia, indecision, laziness or fear?

• And how to avoid manic activity that will only end in frustration or exhaustion because inaction is actually what's called for? To trust the stuff you can't see. To wait well. To wait patiently. To believe that one day you can and should run or hold a baby in your arms?

Travel WITH the pre cog.
And pick up an umbrella - or whatever else you're told to do.
Even if it makes no sense at the time.

Shoe vs Child

Well after a long and compelling 6 months we finally have a winner and once again child trumps man-made sole and leather upper. Retailers please be reassured that they were almost too small anyway.

Jackson 1 : Clarks 0

Evolution (pt 2)

I don't usually make resolutions ever, but this year I am going to learn to touch type. I can type pretty fast, but usually look at my hands. To not have to do this (as two of my colleagues do) seems like a super power.

12.12.14
My firdt attempt ar rouch typinf with our qieo coeeect.
I wull nir look at me dinfers.
I will not looj at mr fingerd/
I eill not ;oook ar mu dinfers.
I will nor look at mr jinfers.

17.12.14
Mu sevind attempt at typing withour auto correct
Iwill nor look at me fingers
I will not look zt mu fuingers
I will not look T MY fingers

06.01.15
Mr third attempt at typing eithout auto correct
I am looking at mu fingers just a little bit as it's been the hoilidarts ANS I haven;t pracrised. You can so tell I am a nit eusty.

Happy Nww YEAR!!

Next year I will conauer teleportation.

Jigsaws (pt 2)

For the fourth year in a row we and some friends have dedicated an evening in between Christmas and New Year to eat, drink and complete a jigsaw. You know - for fun. I'm not a natural jigsawer and aside from the wooden toddler puzzles that typically co-exist in a house with small children, we've not had jigsaws in the house since I was a kid myself.

A few years ago we inherited a whole room full of toys from some friends whose house we rented while they were overseas. Among the treasures in the converted double garage / playroom was a 500 piece Map of the World jigsaw. It remained in its box for almost 2 years before launching the Eat, Drink and Jigsaw tradition that began the following Christmas holiday.

It turns out the world is a big place. There are lots and lots of oceans. It took hours to complete. In the end the kids went to bed, everyone who didn't live in the house went home, and Keith and me sat up to three in the morning until we finished it -  all bar a single piece of Turukhansky District in Northern Russia which was missing. Anyway, we glued the almost finished thing to a rectangle of cardboard and ManChild had it above his bed for a couple of years (in 4 different bedrooms in 2 different houses). (Another story).

The following Christmas holiday we turned our attention to a second hand 500 piece jigsaw of some trees and a lake purchased at the school Christmas fayre. As already proven, second hand jigsaws can be a bit of a risk, but we knew this one was complete as it was already finished and cling-filmed to a piece of cardboard. It didn't have a box, but we could see what the thing was supposed to look like. We took a photo of the puzzle, printed off an A4 copy of what we were aiming for, then crumbled the puzzle back into its component parts.

But we used a flash to take the picture. And the layer of cling film came out better than the detail underneath. So the only copy of the finished picture was not that helpful. The rebuilding effort lasted several futile hours, during which time such little progress was made that everyone lost interest and the project was called off (although the eating and drinking continued so the evening wasn't wasted).

Christmas 2013: Fire works at Tower Bridge (500 pieces)
OK - this puzzle was technically similar to all previous attempts, but as 90% of the thing was either black sky or black Thames river, the overall percentage of one colour was higher than 71% blue ocean of the whole world with a missing bit of Turukhansky. Worse in fact - because the oceans at least had latitude and longitudinal lines on them. Black was just black. This took ages to complete- although spurred on with additional help from more mates and the older children among us, it was completed within the evening.

The last few pieces were a bit of a challenge as previous misplaced pieces meant what was left wouldn't fit into the remaining space. We ended up reversing the whole thing and using the pattern of the manufacturer's logo on the back to correct the mistakes. No one could go through all that again and remain of sound mind, so this jigsaw was glued down onto cardboard too. (Then spray painted white and made into a birthday present for a mate a few months later).

Christmas 2014: The Wild Wild West with Where's Wally (1000 pieces)
We upped the stakes this year with this one, but this was counterbalanced by the detail that exists in Where's Wally. Despite doubling the puzzle pieces it took only an evening and an hour of the following day to complete. Yay! It's still on our kitchen table right now because no one has the heart to crumble it back into the box and Jackson doesn't want it glued down and sprayed white or any other colour. The Wild Wild West was completed by 6 adults and no children (who were Minecrafting, devising an intruder alarm with technics lego and playing mums and dads with Build-a-Bears)- which was fine because progress was quicker without them. Crucially, progress was also much quicker when in possession of the box lid.

There's just too much going on in Where's Wally to guess at what goes where without it. With a sea of characters and at least a dozen of them wearing blue trousers or a white waistcoat or a brown stetson, any suggestion of just one of these things could potentially belong in over 30 places. Without the finished image for reference, a piece of wooden paneling could be a wardrobe, a wagon, a goldmine entrance or part of the town jail house. And without seeing the image in the first place you don't know these things even exist and are part of the picture anyway.

With the box, everything changes. The basic structure of the frame is easier to form. A strategy can be formed and pieces grouped. Whole areas can be delegated for efficiency or put to the side temporarily to clear the work space until they are needed. With the box lid in your hand or looking over the shoulder of the one who has it, you could select a bit of jigsaw at random, scan the lid for 30 seconds or so, and pretty much identify exactly where it went and (in the later stages) click it right into place.

With the box, the confusion that exists within one little puzzle piece is given context and it makes sense. It belongs.

I've always thought there are huge correlations between jigsaws and faith. I've just googled it now and lots of other people have also drawn parallels, so the concept is not original. It's effective though. How else might you describe the idea of believing what you know to be true while trusting what you don't yet understand?

• Building and grouping and clicking pieces together in the belief that the finished picture will make sense when it's complete.
• Trusting that none of the bits are missing.
• Trusting the advice of the people around you who have also seen the lid of the box.
• Having the stamina to continue building when nothing has clicked into place for a while.
• Trusting the manufacturer of the puzzle when you don't have the box lid yourself.
• Removing / adjusting an individual piece placed in error in order to keep the overall picture correct (and not getting arsey if someone else on your team notices the mistake first).
• Not abandoning the whole project when the pieces don't make up the picture you were expecting.

(The random lake and some trees from 2 Christmas puzzles ago was dull beyond belief anyway- the one you're making now will be much better. Honest. And... Hey - THERE'S WALLY!!!)