New Year's resolutions

It’s that time of year again, so here’s a few tips to make your new year’s resolutions successful. Group hug!

1)   1)Don’t make them on the first of January. You have the mother of all hangovers, the bank is shut, and all the stocks of romanian orphans have been sold in the boxing day sales. The smart thing would be to wait til February, that way the holidays are over and you have only 11 months til you can start again.

2)  2) Join a facebook group. It’s just like doing the real thing but without the effort. Truly.

3)  3) Recycling is uber cool, why not re do last year’s resolutions. A word of warning her though, only repeat the fun ones or you’ll be stuck with another year of making the world a better place.

4)  4) Split your new year’s resolution with a friend. Sharing is fun. Take the usual new years resolution of eating more healthy food. Split it into 2 manageable portions, my half is to eat more food and leaving the healthy bit to my bestie.

Group hug.

I’m exhausted and it’s not even Christmas day yet!

It sounded like such a good idea in theory; staying on good terms with the ex’s; welcoming new partners, offspring and relatives into the mix; a bit like the Brady bunch or a Christmas cake.

To put it bluntly- the only thing nuclear in this family is Gran’s alcohol laced trifle (that’s my ex partner’s grandmother, as opposed to my grandmother or my ex husband’s grandmother or his new partner’s grandmother or my new partner’s grandmother).

The kids think it’s great (that’s my biological children, my ex husband’s biological children, my ex husband’s partner’s step children, my ex partner’s ex children, my current partner’s.., oh fuck… you know what I mean!), if I’m not up to standard in my motherly duties then there’s always a couple of spares to make up for my inadequacies.

The trouble comes, of course, in the holiday season.

A traditional separated family would have it all sorted out, one half of the day with Mum and one half with Dad, as set out in the custody agreement and set in stone or Nana’s scones, which are of a firmer texture (that’s my Nana by the way, on my mother’s side- I just have the one mum).

The obvious solution seemed to be a get together involving everyone, but the stadium has been booked already and air new Zealand didn’t have a spare plane.

So it’s back to the drawing board for me, while members of more traditional families wait for Christmas day for the family war I’m starting early.

If I play my cards right I’ll be relative free and be sleeping in on the 25^th.

word police

For Feck’s sake fitness industry people, use spell and grammar check!! And a good proofreader!

There’s probably a good reason that we aren’t looked upon as being that smart…

From healthy food guide November issue; teaching us if we don’t sit down too much we can live forever:

“The women who sat for more than 6 hours each day were more likely to die than women who sat for less than 3 hours each day”

And a gym testimonial from a member who was obviously bored shitless with her membership until she got a PT….

(Don’t even get me started on their spell checking abilities.)

“I joined XYZ Fitness and needed more excitement working out to keep me going.”

Gym websites are the best; this one offers a solution to a unique problem -do their new bodies come premade or kitset?

“If you're searching for a new body - or just a balanced life - we can get you there.”

Okay so now I’m on a roll. Check out this gym’s customer service statement, I want to know how they treat everyone else!

“As a first time member you will be treated with respect and empathy….”

Bad Mamma's Club

Just seen a lovely update on facebook, for mums to write on their status, as an indication of their love for their babies.

Now, I love my babies (now 10 and 12) more than anything. I also know the women who paste these updates are expressing something very cool and that should be celebrated.

BUT…….

Love comes in many ways and sometimes we need to celebrate and respect that not all mums have the same overwhelming joy at every moment, it doesn’t change the love they feel, it just makes it different.

Some Mums thought it was the worst thing that could have happened to be pregnant.

Some Mums take a look at their new born and go ‘oh shit!!!’.

Some Mums are unconscious when their kid is born, or have their baby whisked away before they get to meet them.

Some Mums get post natal depression and are so sad they can’t ‘love’ in the way other Mums do.

Some Mums don’t get to be with their kids 7 days a week through work and separate households or adoption and cannot spare the luxury of stressing each time their baby is away from them.

Some Mums watched their own Mums try to live up to the expectation of others and work hard every day to not fall into that trap.

Some Mums believe that to love yourself is the best way to show your kids the real meaning of love.

Some mums don’t love their kids more than life, cos without taking care of life there isn’t anytime to love your kids.

boys don't cry...

Depression is boring, even our role models are boring…… the bipolar sufferers get Kurt Cobain, the OCD’s get Joey Ramone.

We get John Kirwan.

Now I’m sure he’s a really nice guy and means well but there’s a difference between madness (as in a sexy, pale skin, dark eyeliner kind of way) and just plain madness (as in apricot with chicken kind of way) and this tips the scale towards the latter.

He’s put the cool factor of mental illness sufferers back a good few years and if I wasn’t so medicated that I can’t feel any emotion I’d be quite cross; us crazies have really only just recovered from the whole Brittany fiasco, and now this.

It’s the teenagers I feel the most sadness for. The highlight of a tortured adolescence is the knowledge that no one understands you, you know those sporty types are shallow and have the emotional IQ of, well, a rugby player.

What now for these teens?

I bet he doesn’t even know who Robert Smith is!

Dorothy Parker

I've come over all Dorothy Parker wanna be all of a sudden.
I've been thinking much about how when we are in emotionally stressful situations (not just relationship ones) we are not very good at being pithy and to the point and things are never plain and simple.
SO for you, dear reader I have created a wee note for your next relationship breakup (or perhaps, more likely, relationship breakup fantasy).

I left the house quite early,

It’s in a dreadful state

I’ve left the dishes in the sink

Something you always hate

I haven’t taken out the trash

Or recycled all the cans

The whole place needs a clean up

And I don’t give a damn

I’ve maxed up all the credit cards

And emptied the accounts

I’ll be billing you for services

….ludicrous amounts

No it’s not my usual style

I’m not being very nice

you always said I should be good

-I’m over your advice

Don’t wait up for me tonight

So I can wash your gear

Dinner won’t be waiting as

I’m leaving you my dear

advertising

I thought it was PMT but it turns out I’m just old and cynical.

I love looking at websites, seeing what images businesses offer to make us buy

We (the consumer) are presented with an image or benefit that we can have if we buy the product.

In my perfect world when an advertiser offered us a product and we didn’t identify with the image we’d let them know:

Here’s some examples to start:

Hi infomercial people, I noticed you offer a great new body for summer but your picture is of a thin woman, am I allowed to use your equipment? My partner would like to use your product too, she’s thin but brown, I don’t notice any Maori on your website, is she allowed to use it?

Hi pharmaceutical company, I like the look of your vitamins but all your images are of heterosexual couples, I’m gay, can I still take your pill or are they only for the straight community?

Terminal PMT

The question for the day.

Is blogging like writing a letter to the editor of a women’s magazine?

The truth is I frown upon those who write letters commenting on people they don’t know based on what they read, however, with a virtually terminal case of PMT and a really low pain threshold for stupid people it is safer for me to rant here.

Going out in public may risk the long term welfare of my children as I feel that it my be frowned upon by the long arm of the law if I met a stupid person who breathed funny and give them what I feel they deserve.

To the woman from the group who rang me 3 WEEKS after I emailed her for info and then told me I couldn’t really belong but would send through more information- it’s 4 weeks later and I still haven’t got your bloody information!!!

So why do you think I want to get your bloody newsletter email on the benefits of networking, cos you are clearly no expert so piss off.

Speaking of emails, if you are one of the dumb ass companies who don’t reply to emails that I’ve sent to your info address when I’m asking about the services you offer I would like to suggest you get an autoreply so that I don’t bother wasting my time following up on the email thinking you must have not received it. My suggestion for said autoreply would be “Dear customer, I know we said we would respond to your email but we lied cos we don’t want your money so piss off”. Then I’d get the message and piss off.

To the lady on the bus who felt the need to comment to me on the woman struggling with the buggy on the bus this morning, thank you for sharing but no I don’t think she looked like a mail order bride so piss off.

I’m now off to eat the contents of the fridge and give my girlfriend a lesson on how to fold the towels PROPERLY…

 so piss off.

school holidays

I had a few moments free this morning as the dishwasher was doing it’s thing so I took a look on the internet, it’s where I get all my best recipes you know and you can always find tips for removing those nasty stains from the sofa.

The kids were off somewhere walking the streets so I could relax a bit,  I just vacumned the once today and spent the spare time on the computer.

I’d downloaded a new recipe for bread and butter pudding I came across a list on some lovely website that had nice ladies exercising on it. It must have been hot as they weren’t wearing any clothes.

The lovely people at the website had a list of acronyms explained for the ‘beginner’, lovely.

Anyway it turns out that I should be getting out more, a couple of those thingamees we use instead of words mean totally different things to what I thought they did. 

Gosh, no wonder the ladies at the supermarket look at me funny!!!

G2G means Girl2Girl- I thought it meant Going to Gym, ooops wrong type of workout. 

FtM doesn’t mean Fulltime Mum.

FF is fist f**king not fruit flan, I’m now thinking that nice woman I met at the library hasn’t invited me to her place to swap recipes.

TOYS- this one got me excited, apparently this refers to dildos and vibrators.

I’m off to join the local toy library right now!!!!

specialising

Specialising is, by definition, specific.

Fitness businesses specialising in ‘fat loss and strength gain’ or companies selling ‘solutions based products’ are not being really specific are they?

 I may be making sweeping generalisations here but most people get into fitness to get fit or lose weight and most businesses sell solutions rather than problems.

The sun never sets on actually making a commitment to something specific and telling the world about it, rather than trying to appeal to everyone and ending up looking like everyone else. 

Good Enough

We make the call every day.

An opportunity for work presents itself, someone date-able arrives on the scene, an activity comes up that looks like fun and we make a decision on whether we are ‘good enough’ to apply for the job, ask someone out, or attend that activity.

No one asked us whether we are ‘good enough’, no one said “only apply, ask, attend if you are ‘good enough’”.

Bottom line, it’s not actually our job to decide whether we’re ‘good enough’; it’s our job to apply, ask or attend.

Cos it’s only by doing that we will ever have a chance of finding out whether we are ‘good enough’ or not.

My girlfriend is soooooo butch!

My girlfriend is sooooooo butch!

She’s so butch that she’s the one who wears the pants in our relationship, even if they are pale blue jammie pants with pictures of elmo on them

She’s so butch that when I make a packed lunch for work she shuns the Barbie lunch box for the bob the builder one.

She’s so butch that she keeps her epilady shaver 2000 in a leatherman beltbag, and she only plucks to where her boxer shorts end.

Even when she’s baking she’s butch (not that she bakes much, having me to take care of that). She has a mixer attachment for her power drill.

She’s so butch that she gets treated with respect wherever she goes, when she goes through airports the security staff even call her Sir.

She’s so butch she doesn’t make her coffee (decaf of course) in a coffee plunger, she makes it in a toilet plunger.

She’s even made our cat butch, miss tiddles has a camo collar and a urinal attachment on her cat litter tray.

My girlfriend is soooooooo butch!!

Procrastination

“Procrastination is the solution not the problem” -Ellen Degeneres

It’s what we do when we are avoiding what we are supposed to be doing.

I am an expert, this week especially as I have several deadlines looming and I’ve managed to spend more time off task than on task.

HOWEVER- in the last couple of days I have achieved more than I normally would. In trying to avoid sitting down and writing I’ve found the time to dye my hair (the box of colour has been in the bathroom for a few months), I’ve answered long overdue personal emails, and I’ve started this blog which I have been pondering for about 6 months amongst many, many more things.

So in fact in the act of procrastinating over one or 2 items I have stopped procrastinating and actually done about 20 others.

So perhaps procrastination isn’t really an issue at all, in fact, without procrastination I don’t think I’d get anything done.

Mmmm………..