Taking a break

I’m going to be taking a break from blogging. It goes something like this.

The usual complaint: life getting in the way. This is a good sign, though. It means that my life is busy, and that I don’t have so much time to sit and write about it. I no longer have to go to Wal-Mart to make sure that I have had at least one face-to-face adult conversation with someone who isn’t my husband in the course of the day. The week. You think I’m joking. I tell you, it was bad when I first arrived here. So the fact that I have things to do, people to talk to, balls to juggle, visitors for Christmas, is good news. Yay! (as I've learnt to say...)

I haven’t yet empirically tested the theory that my house would be tidier and cleaner if I didn’t blog, but I don’t need to. I know it is not true. However, there is a parallel theory that I think is worth testing. It says that if I didn’t blog, I might go to the gym or the pool or even just walk around the neighborhood (having changed into my sports gear and put my walkman on, to blend in a little) and be a bit fitter. It’s a theory worth testing. There’s that blog post I haven’t quite dared write yet about the American way of life and the big O. When you’re not walking briskly about in the course of your day, it does take its toll, and that gym really needs to see more of me. Obesity, by the way, if you were wondering. I’m not there yet, but something called middle age spread is doing a 360 degree job where my waist used to be, and I’m not ready to admit defeat yet. ('Middle age spread' sounds like something you buy in a jar and put on your toast, doesn’t it? If only…)

So there’s life, and then there’s children. 6-yo has said, on more than one occasion, “you tell us not to get addicted to video games, but you’re addicted to the computer”. He has a point. I mumble stuff about “important jobs”, but then there’s 10-yo who says “what, your blog you mean?” Now, before you leap to my defence and tell me not to be bullied by my children, let me thank you for your support, and tell you that I’m not, but of course they are a large part of this thing called “real life” which intrudes upon blog-writing and blog-reading time. I imagined fondly that when 3-yo started preschool, I would have 3 mornings a week to myself. What I couldn’t have foreseen (it’s really not fair being a parent, is it?) is that going out to preschool would make her more needy of proper time with me when at home. She used to potter independently and happily, but now she seems to need much more in the way of entertainment, and insists on my company, even for watching television. I don’t really mind, as being needed, though demanding, keeps your maternal mind away from such horrors as no longer being needed. The whole process of gaining time for yourself has a bittersweetness to it, I’ve always found (it's really, really not fair being a parent). For months, nay years, you have a small person attached to your breast, hip or lower leg, and dream of the day when you might nip out somewhere spontaneously without finding shoes, thinking up creative ways of making the car seat an attractive prospect, and fast forwarding through endless nursery rhymes in order to find the favourite of the day, which you do just as you arrive at your destination. Then those times come, and you’re not quite sure what to do with them. It probably takes a bit of practice. Sorry, I digress. What I was trying to tell you was that, yes, I do have three 2-hour blocks of time to myself that I didn’t used to have, but for the rest of the week, I have a small person who is deeply jealous of the computer. She worked out a long time ago that she could interrupt a blogging session by putting her shoulder against the side of our wheelie office chair, and pushing me sideways away from the desk. She has now perfected the manoeuvre, and rotates the chair through 180 degrees, so I end up a few feet to the side and facing the room with my back to the desk.

So there’s life, there’s children, and on a happy note, there’s this. I love cruising round the blogosphere, and catching up on what everyone is doing in Scotland, France, London, deepest Africa, Northumberland, other bits of the States, and everywhere else where people who know how to write darn good blogs live. I realize, however, that as the weeks have rolled by, I no longer feel quite the same urgency to do so. I’m not falling out of love with you all, honest, it’s just a sign that I like my own four walls rather more, and am not so desperate to escape them any little spare moment of the day. This is all positive stuff. Do I sniff the words “feeling more settled” in the autumn breeze? (sorry, I love that word too much to exchange it for the prosaic “fall” which to me has a glum feel to it, even if you open up that vowel to make it “fahl”). We arrived in the Midwest on December 4th last year (Iota Day, put it in your diary, send me a cheery email), and I feel that perhaps now is a good time to start looking at my life here through a different lens. It’s time, I think, for it to become not wrong, not different, just ordinary life.

Life, children, happier at home (though still reserving the right for the occasional vent), and – bear with me - one more thing. I’m just wondering, just just wondering, if perhaps, instead of regaling you with blog-sized chunks of my life, I might just keep them all together, and just see if I can write a book. Perhaps just maybe. Just. Dorothy Jones’ Diary (ooh, now there’s a big clue as to my location). I wasn’t going to confess that, but I feel I’m among friends…

I need to write one more blog post. This is partly because I must set up some clever RSS feed or something, so that you can sign up, and then when I run screaming back to the computer in few weeks’ time, unable to face a life without blogging, and begging forgiveness humbly on my knees, you will be notified and can come by to leave a comment saying “what? you think you can just walk away and then expect us to take you back?” (Actually, I'm probably going to carry on reading and commenting, and just give up the writing; I can't see the full cold turkey approach lasting.)

The other reason is that I ploughed my way through Reasons to be cheerful: Parts I and II, in order that I could get to Reasons to be cheerful: Part III, so it would be a darn shame to miss the opportunity. You remember that mad but marvelous song, by Ian Dury and the Blockheads? I’ve always found the reasons to be cheerful/count your blessings approach to life rather a good one, and I’ve relied on it much over the past year. In fact, our decision to come to the Midwest was nudged along in its early days by a 'reasons to be cheerful' moment that saw me sitting on a grass verge, holding 2-yo tighter to my chest than any 2 year old has ever been held before, looking at the wreck that was the car we’d been in, watching the trees swaying in the wind, and thinking “there are worse things than moving to the Midwest”.

But back to Ian Dury. I thought I’d run another wee competitionette while I’m incommunicado on vacation in San Diego (mmm, lovely). I was going to ask you to guess my forthcoming reasons to be cheerful, but it’s very obscure and you’d have no chance unless you lived in the Midwest, and life has enough disappointments for us all without me deliberately setting you up to endure another one, good losers though you are. So instead I’ll ask you all to think up your own reasons to be cheerful, two of them, which rhyme and scan, and if you were Ian Dury, would have made it into the song. You’ll find it easily enough on Youtube and Lyricsmania.com if you need to be reminded of lines such as my favourite which goes:

Hammersmith Palee, the Bolshoi Ballee...

You get the idea. So tell me your reasons to be cheerful. Indulge me for one more post.