Shy

Shyness is a strange thing. At work, I go out to see people all the time, visit complete strangers in their homes, chat to them about all sorts, with no problem at all. I just put on my work face and go to it.  People think I'm confident, because I can stand up in front of a room of people and deliver a presentation about *whatever*.

But then comes the real world. Squeaky has just started going to dance classes just round the corner from our house, and she's loving them. There's a few children she knows from school and preschool, and she's in her element. Me, however? Well that's another story. I'm sitting in the parents' room, clutching my phone as a security blanket so I don't have to talk to anyone. There's someone who I went on a course with last year, a couple of mums I vaguely know from preschool, and worst of all, someone I know through work. Living and working in the same area, it's inevitable, I suppose. But I don't want to talk to anyone. I kind of want to run away and never come back, rather than speak to people.  I don't want people to know I have any sort of life outside of work, I want them to think I'm just Support Robot, not an actual person.

Image courtesy of marcolm at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Thing is, this is exactly what I don't want Squeaky to grow up like. She's got enough "difference" as it is, being far too smart for her own good. I want her to be confident in social situations, and that's why I'm bringing her, as well as involving her in other classes and clubs that she's interested in. Though will it backfire if she sees my discomfort and anxiety?  I suppose I should just put on my big girl pants, and get over it. No-one is actually looking at me, no-one really cares that my t-shirt came from Primark, I haven't washed my hair this morning, and I'm just another face in a rather noisy crowd. Is the moral of this story "Get Over Yourself"? It may very well be.

Shyness and social anxiety are strange creatures, I just want to keep them at bay.  For both of us.

The most natural thing in the world

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. But you don't want to do it too young, so we'll put you on the pill before you have your first serious boyfriend. It'll help with those cramps too.

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. But you don't want to mess up your studies, so we'll keep you on the pill, even though you're practising safe sex. It'll help with those cramps too, because the painkillers don't.

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. But you don't want to screw up your first proper job, so we'll keep you on the pill, even though you're not in any sort of relationship.  Cramps? You don't have those any more, do you?

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. But you don't want a bump on your wedding pictures, do you? We'll keep you on the pill, you wouldn't want to be bleeding on your honeymoon, after all.

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. So finally, you come off the pill.  You don't so much have cramps as want to claw your own uterus out with a rusty teaspoon. After missing 3 days work a month for 6 months due to haemorrhaging so badly you pass out, your employers start to lose patience.  But still, every month, without fail, along comes good old Aunt Flo.  Your friends announce their own pregnancies and elderly relatives start asking questions about when you'll follow suit.

You visit the doctor. He gives you painkillers. You become an expert in prescription and over the counter painkillers, their interactions and side effects. You become the person in the office that everyone comes to when they've got a headache as you have a better supply than the local chemist, on the days you're there, anyway.

Image credit http://www.freeimages.co.uk/

You cry. You go to the doctor and cry some more. Eventually he listens, and refers you to the hospital.  You get your appointment letter, and turn up on time. For a scan. In the ante-natal unit. Surrounded by happy, glowing pregnant women stroking their growing bumps. You cry as they scan your still empty womb.  And you still miss three days of work a month.

The specialist talks you through your options. Someone decides that surgery is the best step. You don't know who, you're too busy holding back the tears.  You go in for surgery. The ward adjoins the maternity ward, and you spend a sleepless night before surgery listening to the cries of other people's newborns, and drift off to sleep somewhere around 5. At 6 you're woken by a nurse with an evil glint in her eye and a single blade razor, who instructs you to have a shower and give yourself the kind of shave usually favoured by porn stars.

After surgery you learn that you're going to spend the next 6 months having a happy fun free trial temporary menopause, to allow your insides to heal. Someone sticks a needle in your bum, and slaps a plaster on your thigh.  You spend three days a month in bed with a migraine. Work remain unimpressed with your attendance.

A friend announces their pregnancy with their second child.  You cry.  That same friend loses their baby during childbirth. You cry again.  You cry for them and their loss. But you also cry for yourself. You're actually jealous. At least they can *get* pregnant in the first place. You hate that you feel this way. You cry because you're a bad person, feeling jealous of someone who has just lost their baby, for goodness sake.

Finally, they stop the injections, the patches, and you're left to nature. And when you're in what the specialist has said is the absolute last chance saloon, a miracle happens.  Somehow you're growing a new life inside you. Work are less than enthusiastic, but they've not seen much of you lately anyway.  Pregnancy is hard, childbirth traumatic. But at the end of it, you're left with the baby you so wanted. Who doesn't come with an instruction manual, and has a new challenge for every day of your life. Who turns your world upside down in ways you hadn't even considered.  Your friend goes on to have more children, and never even knows about your reaction.

Being a mum is the most natural thing in the world. But why did no-one say it would be so hard?

Lost!

I had a real scare last week, when I thought for a full 24 hours that I'd lost my purse.  There were only a couple of possible locations (so I thought) that it could have parted company from my handbag - the office car park, or the leisure centre car park, both pretty popular of an evening for young people hanging around out of sight of their parents and doing whatever it is teenagers get up to these days. Twerking, probably.

Fortunately for my sanity, I keep my bank cards separate to my "cash" purse, so I didn't have to go through all the hassle of cancelling them all, and trying desperately to find the phone number for the credit card I almost never use.  But even so, I started to make a list of the things in my purse that I would have to try and replace, what that was going to set me back, and what I'd more likely lost to the great dust pile in the sky.

The offending purse

• My driving license.  £20 to replace
• Various loyalty cards, with about £40 to spend on them - coffee shops, etc
• Gift cards to various stores, with about £20 on them
• Cash - about £30
• An unscratched lottery ticket - face value £1, could be worth £0, or £25,000 (was actually £0)
• La Squeak's nursery school photo
• Stamps, worth about £6
• Money off vouchers - totalling about £25
• The purse itself £2.50 from a charity shop

I read these studies in the papers about the value of the things we carry around in our handbags, and shake my head - my phone is rubbish, I've rarely got much in the way of spending cash (that day was an exception!), and I try to leave the shiny electronics at home most of the time.  But writing that list made me stop & think!  How much is in my purse that I don't even realise?

Are you the same?  Is there a small fortune scattered across your loyalty card collection, and tucked in between the receipts for a twix & can of fanta?  Or are you like the Queen and never carry cash?

(Oh, and if you're interested, it turns out that my purse wasn't actually lost after all, it was jut enjoying a short holiday in the cupboard under the stairs.)

I got an award!

I remember someone on one of the panels at CybHer basically saying your blog wasn't worth much if you'd not won an award (which got a few backs up in my corner of the room, I can tell you), so I was chuffed to be the recipient of this...

The Leibster Award (German for favourite)!  OK, it's not exactly the MADS, or the Oscars, but what the hey?  I was tagged by the lovely, glamorous & mildly barmy Anna at Elanor's Nails, a friend and fellow snooker fan, as well as a nail blogger, and this is a tag & a bit.


For this tag, you need to do the following:
1. Each person tagged must post 11 things about themselves.
2. They must also answer the 11 questions the 'tagger' has set for them.
3. They must create 11 more questions to ask bloggers they have decided to tag.
4. They must then choose 11 bloggers with less than 200 followers and tag them in their post.
5. These lucky bloggers must then be told.
6. There's no tag backs.

On My Birthday meme

Kate over at The Five Fs has set herself, and the wider internet a challenge. She's collecting every day of the year in posts to the On My Birthday meme. So I'm adding my two pennorth for 4th January


What you will have to do is answer questions about your birthday. If you don't know where to look, the best way is to go to Wikpedia, type in your birthday in the search box and it will tell you all you ever want to know (and more) about your special day. Obviously, you can take what is said with a pinch of salt but it's mostly correct.  I actually did a similar meme way back in 2006 (OMG!), so I went on a hunt & have dug a few of the answers out from there.


So, here goes the questions...


When is your birthday? 4th January


Pick three people who share your birthday and share what you know about them

Michael Stipe. Lead singer of REM, prone to singing songs that make me cry.

Beth Gibbons. Lead singer of Portishead, also prone to singing songs that make me cry.

Craig Revel-Horwood. Ranked third in "People on Strictly I'd like to slap" after Brucie & Brendan Cole.

There's also a load of people I've never heard of, Louis Braille, and James Bond.  Not THAT James Bond, being fictional and all, but another one.

Is anyone listed as being born on the same say as you (i.e. in the same year)? If so, what do you know about them?

An American baseball player, and a cyclist from Luxembourg. I've never heard of either of them, so that's your lot.

List three people who died on your birthday and tell us what you know about them.

Erwin Schrödinger (status of the cat unconfirmed)

Phil Lynott - lead singer of Thin Lizzy. At least one song that makes me cry.

Gerry Rafferty - the Baker Street bloke. At last, a song that doesn't make me cry. And Bob Holness did not play the saxophone on it.

List three notable events that took place on your birthday.

1958 - Sputnik 1 falls to earth

1959 - Luna 1 becomes the first spacecraft to reach the vicinity of the moon

2004 - NASA's Mars rover "Spirit" lands on Mars

My birthday is a really good day for space things.

Tell us about a holiday that falls on your birthday

Independence Day in Myanmar, celebrating their independence from the United Kingdom. It's either that or the Eastern Orthodox church's celebration of 4th January.

So, that's my birthday.  I'm going to tag 

The Blunt Truth

Diary of a Bad Mutha

to share their birthdays with the world (I love a good meme!), and as ever, if I haven't actually tagged you, but you want a go, consider yourself tagged.

Smoke-free for Squeaky & Me

I've taken the pledge.  No.  I'm not signing off my love of Mr Pinot & Mr Grigio, that's for another day.  I've taken the pledge to protect Squeaky, and any other children that travel with me, by making sure my car is a smoke-free environment.  I don't smoke, my family don't smoke, but I have friends who do, and I ask that they respect my wishes and the health of my family by not smoking when we're in the car.

Shocking results from a recent British Lung Foundation survey show that over half of children surveyed had been in a car with someone smoking¹, which is surprising when only 21% of the UK adult population smoke². The research also found that 24% of children have been too embarrassed to ask someone to stop smoking in the car, and 9% too frightened to ask³.

Neither of my parents smoked, but I remember being about 6, and saying to my parents "When I grow up, I'm going to smoke, just like Grandad."  I'm shocked just thinking about that now, and while I'm not certain, I have a feeling that sentence was fairly instrumental in my Grandad's decision to give up smoking shortly afterwards.

Since the smoking ban came into force in the UK, it's been illegal to smoke in a work's vehicle, or a personal vehicle while carrying another person for work, in order to protect the health of other adults.  Surely our children's health, and wishes, are equally as important?  That's why I've signed the pledge at Lung UK and why I'm asking you to do so too.

Your children can join the campaign as well, there's a letter template on Lung UK's young campaigners page which they can send to your local MP asking them to join in supporting the pledge.

I don't often get all political on this blog, you're more likely to find me talking about nailpolish, charity shops & kids tv, but this is an issue that's really important to me, and I'd love it if you'd join me.

1. http://www.lunguk.org/campaigns/childrens-charter 
2. http://www.ic.nhs.uk/statistics-and-data-collections/health-and-lifestyles/smoking/statistics-on-smoking-england-2011-%5Bns%5D  
3. http://www.lunguk.org/campaigns/childrens-charter/young-campaigners-have-your-say  

Two Years...

From this...

To this... 

Happy 2nd Birthday Squeakygirl!  You make my world!

Seven Secrets, an award, and a bundle of tagging

The fabulous Kate at Kateonthinice tagged me, and gave me this  award!

My challenge is to reveal 7 secrets about myself.  Yours is to read them!  (And check down the bottom to see if you've been tagged, natch)

It's harder than you'd think - what constitutes a secret in the blogosphere? Something none of my readers would know? Most wouldn't? Something I'm prepared to run the risk of my mum finding out? (she normally only reads the posts I link on facebook, but you never know)

1. I am part cyborg.  If not actually the $6million woman, than at least the good few $,000 woman.  Both my ankles are held together with meccano style metalwork, which means I've had the dubious pleasure of trying out all sorts of painkilling meds (mmmmm fun), and seem to have a 75% chance of a free grope at the airport.  Coupled with a pair of hearing aids, some days I feel that I owe more to the skills of the NHS (and their overseas counterparts) than nature.
2. I have entire series of books & films that I have made an effort not to watch, and have every intention of continuing to avoid.  These include Star Wars, Harry Potter & Twilight. If this upsets you, tough.  There is nothing you can say that will make me change my mind.
3. I actually really like the taste of Lemsip, and have been known to drink it even when I haven't got a cold.
4. I have travelled on numerous planes with a glasses screwdriver in my purse. It's now become a matter of principal that I won't take it out until a security search is actually vigilant enough to notice the fact I've got a contraband item (and a sharp metal one at that) about my person.
5. When SqueakyDaddy's on late shifts, I tend to be online reading blogs, entering comps, and generally wasting precious sleeping time until about 15 minutes before he's due home. Even if that's 3am
6. I have got a large glass of rum & ribena in front of me, with the excuse that I'm using it for medicinal purposes to defeat my germ. It's not providing any inspiration, but it does taste nice.
7. I'm still convinced that the only reason I passed my driving test, at the second attempt, was that there was a rail strike that day, and the roads around the test centre were jam-packed, so we couldn't do as much driving as normal, and most of that was inching along in second at best.

Now, there seems to be a thing for tagging 15 people on this, but that seems a bit harsh to me (and will also show off where I'm really, really behind in reading other people's blogs when I tag someone that did this weeks ago)  So I'm going to tag:

Wendy at insidethewendyhouse

Danielle at blogbybaby

Mama Syder at thesyders

Lakota at faithhopeandcharityshopping

Emma at emmaand3

Slatterny, or why I'm not allowed nice things

I was tagged by the lovely Wendy at Inside The Wendy House to answer the immortal question, "Where do I blog?"  And then I kept her waiting all weekend while I drank cider, watched The Wurzels and played on the beach, before coming home to answer the question.

We all wonder, I know, what the people behind the blogs we read REALLY get up to.  Are they the saintly neat & tidy people with everything in its place that my husband assumes is how the rest of the world lives, or are they the slatternly folk for whom everything has a place, and that place is wherever it lands?

From that picture, you might be able to guess which side of the line my blogplatz falls on. Highlights of this picture include: a can of Coke Zero, some hair wax, Squeaky's change bag (the black messenger bag on top of the drawers), and almost out of shot, the baby monitor.  You can tell it's real, the screen is showing my last post, mid-way through the creative process.  It's actually not as bad as it could be, there's often a discarded coffee cup or two, and maybe a plate of toast hanging around there somewhere, but as we've been away, I haven't had chance to make too much mess, there's only the static junk there today.

Honestly, though, I can see the tv, Squeaky's usually around my feet (the uncomfortable old wooden chair is because she worked out how to climb onto the computer chair, so I took it away. She can climb on this one now too, though.), or if she's not, she's watching CBeebies just a few feet away.  The desk is getting pretty rickety now, I had it when I went to university, and it kind of leans to the left in a slightly worrisome manner.  I keep thinking about replacing it, but while it's still standing, what's the point?  I'm the last of the Old Skool, in that I'm using a desktop pc (a very new one at that, I only bought it last month when the old one died a death), mostly because my lappy is a temperamental beast, and if I'm writing, I want to know it'll get to where I wanted to post it. Otherwise I'd blog in bed, it's warmer there.

I'm going to tag the following lovelies.  Are you saints, or slatterns like me?
Abigail of Abigail and the Future
Gingembre of Momma Wears Combat Boots

See Bibsey's original post, where it all began.

I had Plans, you know

This is not a good week to be technology in our house.  My camera has gone to meet its maker (literally. I put it in an envelope to go and be repaired under warranty yesterday), and now the PC has had what I can only describe as a Total Existence Failure.  So that's going off to the nice man at the computer shop tomorrow to have its innards ripped out and the useful stuff that was saved on it put into a nice shiny new computer instead.  Luckily we knew this day was coming, and saved a lot of what would have otherwise been on the PC onto an external hard drive a couple of months ago.  I got a "well done" for that from the computer fixing dude in the shop. *smug*

All this means though, that the 3 parts written guest blog I was writing is now hidden somewhere in either the dead pc or the inaccessible hard drive (I'm not touching it til the shop man says that it's free of virii, trojans & other ooo-nasties), my Magpie Monday photos are stuck on a memory card with neither a camera nor a computer to display them on, and I'm reduced to writing everything on a teeny tiny netbook that runs an operating system I don't understand and a version of Firefox so out of date as to be obsolete & not supported by pretty much every webpage I visit.  And I can't figure out how to upgrade it.  I am not a geek, I just pretend to be one.

There were posts I was going to write.  Seriously, there are whole blog posts in my head, and I can't write them, they need pictures and access to my email, and more thinking than I can really do with this silly little netbook which randomly leaps back 3 pages through my browsing history for no obvious reason and without warning. Once the new pc is here, free of germs, and otherwise functioning, I think I'm going to end up paying the nice man at the computer shop to sort this one out as well.  Someone gave me idiot level instructions to do stuff to the netbook once, but I'm clearly even more of an idiot than they thought because it was just *whoosh*.

So, yeah.  Accept my apologies for the extended hiatus. It's not my fault, honestly.  Or, actually, is it? I just thought.  Viruses, germs, bugs, right?  Could I have uncovered a genuine computer/human crossover?  I've been feeling sorry for my self with tonsillitis the last few days, and now my computer has caught a bug too.  Maybe that's what it is?  Can I be awarded some kind of scientific research grant into the spread of tonsillitis via digital means?   

Nervous

We're having a couple of days off.  Squeaky is going to stay with my parents, while Daddy & I take a little excursion to Oxford.  No particular reason for Oxford, apart from that we've never been.

Now, my parents had me, they must have some idea of how to handle a child.  But I'm nervous.  They had her overnight last year for a night, and she was a bit of a minx.  She's sleeping a lot, lot better now, but she's also a lot more active and into absolutely EVERYthing at the moment.  She's going to run them ragged, isn't she?

Ah well, see you after the weekend internets.  Be good.

Oh yeah, and another thing...

That ear infection I picked up in Majorca?  2 months ago?  I'd like it to go away now please.  3 different lots of antibiotic ear drops, the last of which make me dizzy and kind of nauseous, and I've still got a sore, swollen ear with stuff in it.  Which Squeaky of course makes contact with on a shockingly regular basis.  Isn't it time it went away now?

I moaned about it on Twitter last month, and some strange spambot offered me a "free!" gadget treatment.  Free in as much as I pay a fortune in shipping costs ($80?? I think not) for a glorified vibrator, and they would refund me if I submit a video-review to their website.  I offered them a review here for not having to pay the shipping in the first place, but they weren't interested.  Wonder if I'd've ever got the refund? I doubt it somehow. Maybe I should just get a cheap vibrator & hold it against my ear?  (Confession time, I don't own a vibe, I never have. Does that make me strange?)

A personal post

I figured that I write a lot about shopping, a bit less about food, and an AWFUL lot about Squeaky, but actually very little about me.  And maybe I should change that.  There's a few things that make me who I am, that maybe the world should know.

Right.  When I was 12 I had meningitis.  I don't really know the full details, there's a lot they don't tell you, even at that age.  As far as I understand it, I had Pneumococcal Meningitis, which is the variant that's immunised against with the PCV vaccine.  If that vaccine had been available or generally administered 30-odd years ago, I wouldn't need to be writing this post now.

I'm here.  I'm a survivor, ok?  I have severe hearing loss in both ears, with no indication of the long-term outcomes, whether it'll stay the same or not.  I don't know what tomorrow will bring any more than any of us do, but I know that it'll never get better, the nerves are permanently damaged and it's not the sort of problem that can be treated with surgery.  (NB, the level of hearing loss edited on 6/8/13 as I asked the audiologist for the official level)

That's kind of why I didn't try to go to CyberMummy.  I'm not good at crowds, I'm not good at having conversations in loud rooms, or working out different accents.  I worry that people will think I don't like them, or that I'm being rude because I'm being quiet & not joining in.  I worry that I'll get something wrong because I misheard and people will think I'm stupid. I worry all the damn time about something or other.

Having Squeaky gave me a whole new set of worries.  Would something be passed on to her? (how, I don't know, it's like a scar, and I didn't pass on the scars of 2 broken ankles!) Would being pregnant somehow do more damage to me?  Would I be able to hear her crying?  Will I be able to understand her when she starts to talk?  I still don't know the answer to that last one.

I could have got more help than I have.  But that would have involved talking to social services.  And that's not something I'm prepared to do.  I'll have stopped needing any particular bit of help by the time anything arrives, and I really REALLY don't want them in my life if I don't have to.  If I didn't have SqueakyDaddy, yes I would probably have to suck it up & accept that it's necessary, but as he's here, they're not.  And that's the way it's staying.

So what am I saying with this post?  Apart from that I'm pro-vaccination?  Meningitis kills.  Even when it doesn't, it still turns lives upside down.  Know the signs.

Babies & toddlers                                             Children
Fever, Cold Hands & Feet                                   Fever, Cold Hands & Feet
Refusing food, Vomiting                                        Vomiting
Fretful, Dislike handling                                         Drowsy, difficult to wake
Drowsy, floppy, unresponsive                               Confusion & irritability
Rapid breathing                                                     Severe muscle pain
Tense, bulging fontanelle (soft spot)                        Severe headache
Stiff neck                                                               Stiff neck
Dislike bright lights                                                 Dislike bright lights
Convulsions/seizures                                              Convulsions/seizures
Rash that doesn't go away when                             Rash that doesn't go away when
   pressed with a glass                                                 pressed with a glass

Not everyone has all the symptoms, and they can show up in any order.  If you suspect meningitis, phone your GP or NHS Direct or go to your nearest A&E.  Please.

Key facts

• Babies, toddlers and young children under five are an at risk group for meningitis, with over 50% of all cases occurring in this age group.
• With 2,500 cases of bacterial meningitis reported in the UK every year, more than three babies, toddlers or young children will be taken ill with meningitis every day.
• Meningitis kills more children under the age of five than any other infectious disease in the UK.
• Meningitis is the disease parents fear the most.

Why are babies and children at risk?

• Babies and young children are particularly vulnerable to meningitis as they cannot easily fight infection because their immune system is not yet fully developed.
• Babies and toddlers can’t tell you how they are feeling and they can get a lot worse very quickly. Keep checking them

For more information visit Meningitis Trust

I have not been asked to write this post, or been offered any incentive to do so. It is simply a topic that is close to my heart, for obvious reasons

Not At CyberMummy

I was too busy looking for a job to look for a sponsor for CyberMummy this year, everything happened at the wrong time.  So instead of kicking up my heels in London and mingling with the great and good of the mummy blogging world, I'm sitting in front of my computer with a tub of icecream, Wimbledon on the telly, and a head full of hayfever.  There's a bottle or two of Cabernet Sauvignon in the cupboard, but I can't be bothered to get up & get any.  I'll just sit here with my ice cream.

I'll be honest.  If I'd made it, I would probably be sitting in my hotel room right now, on the laptop, watching the tennis and drinking a glass or two of wine on my own.  I'm far too shy and lacking in confidence to have braved going out, even though I've met some of the folk who are going to be there.  The night before the Graco press day, I shared a bottle of wine in the hotel bar with a couple of friends who live in London before retiring to bed at about 8.30 with a Ben & Jerry's from the vending machine & a bottle of lager, but you wouldn't have caught me venturing far, even if I hadn't had Squeaky with me.  I'm a wimp, plain & simple.

I never used to be.  I was the kind of girl who would go clubbing on her own, because I'd always see someone I knew.  I'd be happiest to be the centre of attention, because that's the place where people come to you.  Now if you put me in a room of strangers, you'll probably find I've got a book in my bag & I've spoken to no-one all day.

So.  If I make it to BlogCamp (I've registered for the Bristol one, but heard nothing back), or if the #notatcm11 twitter collective manage to put together a Wales &West satellite CyberMummy type event, someone please come & talk to me? I'm quite nice, and I'll talk to you if you talk to me, I just don't have the nerve to start the conversation myself.  (Also, these 9 years of living in Wales have had a strange effect on me. Every time I try to type CyberMummy, my fingers automatically go to the "m" key after I type Cy)

Oh yeah, and I spent a chunk of this evening taking photos of Squeaky with rubber ducks on her head in the bath & you didn't. So I win.