We're doing okay!

After a big push on Sunday, I'm over half way to clearing out my room of old things, yay!

Just to finish tidying the room, clearing more stuff, bit of laundry, that kinda thing.

Woohoo, Wednesday! :D

Does motherhood have a sell-by date?

Today, motherhood is shown in the media for three reasons. The first is massive multiple births, which are becoming more and more frequent, given the use of fertility treatments and the increased probability of twins, triplets or even more. The second is girls that are still children themselves having babies. The third are the one I've been thinking about recently - the women who want to reverse their menopause and have a child.

I have some pretty strong feelings about these women, and to try and obtain a view from the other side, I watched a Channel 4 documentary on the subject. I don't feel a great deal differently about it than I previously did.

The documentary started with showing us a 72 year old woman who wanted to have her first child. Since she was single and very old, she would be using both a donor egg and a donor sperm. She would have to conceive with the help of IVF, which is never a guaranteed baby former - it fails even for younger women. She'd have to pump her body full of hormones to ensure the pregnancy would continue. She would put her elderly body through 9 months of strain and pressure. She would then have not only the natural problems of being an older woman, but have to care for a needy baby, then a hyperactive infant, then a clumsy toddler, and so on.

Of course, she has to keep living throughout all of this.

She said she wasn't selfish, she was confident and prepared to have a baby. This is all well and good now. Assuming she survives the pregnancy, she will have a child. Not only does this child have far more chance of having a birth deformity or defect (due to having an older mother), the mother is not immortal. It is very likely that the child will lose her mother far sooner than any of her classmates. Add to this the potential fodder for playground bullies when they find out that Sadie's mother is twice the age of everyone else's mum, and it's hard to see how this couldn't be a selfish decision.

Some of these women are single women, who were career driven earlier in life, then couldn't find a partner to have a child with. Who would look after such a child if the mother was to die? There is no father, and the rest of the family may be equally elderly.

There was one case that was interesting in the programme. A woman became one of the first to have a child with IVF in the 80s at the age of 50-something. She is now 70 and her kids (twin girls) are in high school. They are well-adjusted healthy kids, and they live with their biological father, the woman's husband, and they have a happy home life. This is a happy story, to show that there are circumstances in which having an older mother isn't necessarily guaranteeing gloom and doom.

However, personally, I would love for these women to really ask themselves why they wanted a child. It's not a right, to be able to have children. Sadly, some people cannot have children. And, personally, I don't think that you should reverse nature's way of saying "Stop forming babby... now."

Oh...

Sometimes I seem to invent problems for myself, to try and sabotage anything good that happens. As long as I keep it all in my head (like a crazy lady) then everything will be fine.

I slept so weird last night. I had A Deep Conversation with someone, and by the time we finished at 2:30 I was just exhausted emotionally, but not that physically. I was asleep by three. I woke up at 9:30, because I have to wake up tomorrow at 8:30, and it'll be a lot easier to achieve that if I try to wake earlier today.

Now, the eternal question. What for breakfast? What to do? etc etc.

I have to tweak the budget before my father reviews it, I haven't included extra costs like buying new plates. I really hope that I will get the money. We'll see.

Woohoo!

I just got a letter from Warwick, officially telling me I'm allowed to stay on the MMath course!

Inhale, exhale...

My bed started to sink in a corner again. Same side as the first time, but instead of the head of the bed, it was the foot. So, I settled into the other side of the bed to sleep. Just as I was drifting off, I heard a pretty loud crack. I didn't feel myself sink or anything, but to be on the safe side, I cleared half of the guest room bed, and tried to sleep there.

I was woken at 5:30 by my mother getting ready for work, which included some ironing and blowdrying of hair. Thankfully, my father did fix the bed, and I am most grateful. I think he put some extra nails in this side too, because I never sleep on the left hand side, because the right hand side is closest to the door, and I am intrinsically lazy.

I've been reading more Harry Potter. I'm nearly halfway through HP7, and I have been reading deliberately slowly to make it last. I was planning on taking my brother to the library today, to check out some books (in both senses!) but he went to our cousin's house, so I don't know when he'll be back. It also looks like it might rain all day, so I guess that plan is postponed until Monday.

I went for a bike ride yesterday. That was pretty nice. If the weather clears up today, I might go for a long walk (well, 2 miles).

Work tomorrow, zonino!

Slowly, but surely.

This summer, I have set myself the challenge of sorting out my room properly. Getting rid of old clothes and papers, books I don't read. A proper clearout.

So far, I've done most of the clothes and the bookcase.

I also calculated my budget for the next academic year. This makes me a little bit sad, because my job is a bit crap, and pays minimum wage for 6.5 hours of work a week.

However, I have my granary toast and chai tea in bed, and ANTM is about to start. So, it's not all bad :)

Veet, *this* is what beauty feels like.

Veet, for the uninitiated, is a brand of hair removal products, creams and wax strips.

Basically, you slap the cream or wax strip on your legs, arms, underarms (not recommended for hairy faces or muffs!), then wait. In the case of the cream, you're waiting for the hair to dissolve. The time required also gives you a chance to reflect on how you've just put something that dissolves HAIR onto your bare skin, and whether that's a wise move. In the case of the wax, you're just waiting to pluck up the courage to inflict pain on yourself. Then, you scrape off the cream and rinse, or rip off the wax strip and cry a little.

There are far more painful ways to remove body hair, such as epilators (I spell-checked this word; it suggested mutilators. Ha!) These handy little gadgets rip hair out of you with little barbs and claws and stuff. They look like fun on the adverts, but that's because the advert has calming feminine music, not the musical range of curses that really accompany this product.

I get quite excited talking about feminine stuff. Probably because sometimes I think about the hundreds of products the average woman uses in her lifetime to fit an social norm she's either expected to maintain, or an ideal she's expected to aim for, and I reflect on how it makes me feel, and whether it's worth making yourself feel like crap for "beauty".

The new slogan for Veet is "What beauty feels like." So, basically, once again, we're being told that female beauty is a hairless leg. Bollocks.

Confession: I haven't shaved my legs for several months now. I made this decision shortly after going out to see a friend last summer, and I was planning on wearing a really pretty floaty white knee-length skirt, since it was quite hot outside, and I fancied something light. However, I'd cut myself shaving on my knee (knees are so fiddly, I always cut myself there) and it wouldn't stop bleeding, so I had to opt for a pair of jeans and die of heat-related heat.

After that, I thought "What is the point of shaving?" I mean, women do it to feel beautiful, don't they? You get nice shiny smooth pins for two days, then the stubble comes in, and you feel a bit irritated but you can't really depilate with wax or creams unless you've got some decent growth first, and shaving every two days is rather time consuming. So, you wait, and you just feel ugly until it's time to remove the hair. Lather, rinse, repeat.

So, I've just stopped with the whole palaver. I am probably quite lucky though, in the sense that I have dark hair and dark skin, so unless you happened to be stroking my leg, you probably wouldn't notice I haven't shaved, so it's not like people pick up on it and stare at me when I wear shorts.

For some reason, I think that if my mother found out I'd stopped shaving, she'd probably feel disappointed in me. Maybe it's because I'm just a pair of dungarees away from becoming a Full-On Raging Lesbian. (This is partly a joke: to be a lesbian, you'd have to define as a woman, and frankly, I'm not up for that.)

So, to those who churn out slogans for Veet: take a look at my legs, if you can bear to stand it. I think they're beautiful. I'm sure others do. And they're not hairless like a child's. They are natural. A pair of naturally beautiful legs.

Ha!

This might be weird, but...

When I was twelve, I wanted to have a disco for my birthday to herald the Beginning Of My Teenage Years. I shared it with two other girls (neither of whom I talk to at all anymore).

Despite the fact that my mother had done most of the work, everyone mostly thought it was their party, and it was also mine - like I was a afterthought.

A boy called Daniel was in my class, and I'd always thought he was someone I'd like to be arranged to marry, if I was unfortunate enough to be 35, unmarried, and desperately wanting a family. His dad was English and his mom was Jamaican, so he had the most gorgeous hair and skin, and I just quite liked him. Never seriously, just as a "Well, it would be perfect, if it wasn't for the complete lack of chemistry."

At the birthday party, he brought one present. It was for me. It was a kilogram of Cadbury's Whole Nut, which is my all-time favourite chocolate bar.

How did he know it was my favourite? He must have known I liked it, for chocolate is a risky buy given that so many kids don't deal with nuts well, and Whole Nut is about as risky as it gets.

For a long time, I read this simple gesture as his way of telling me that he felt exactly the same way as I did, and that eventually we will marry and have a loving and completely non-sexual relationship.

I still don't know what the chocolate meant. I still think to ask him, but he would probably be very freaked out that I still think of that moment seven and a half years ago, when I was shy and unattractive, and he was the quiet boy with the curly hair in the back of the class.

Misty, watercoloured memories...

I've been doing a few flashback-inspiring activities today: using the downstairs PC that I have barely touched since getting Audrey and going to university, looking through photos of the Christmas cruises and clearing out drawers and cupboards in my room.

I was on the downstairs PC to look through pictures of the cruise for some DVDs I am making for a few relatives. I put some video clips together in a reasonably nice way, and I had to design DVD covers. I like to work to music, so I checked out what music I had. I found a song I heard on Heroes, S1, and Miss Misery from Good Will Hunting. It was quite nice to find those.

I also played Tyrant by The Bravery, which I listened to a lot when I was with Matt.

Looking through the first cruise's pictures, I found pictures of the day in Trinidad. I remember this day. This was the day Ashley broke my heart. I remember, we didn't buy any internet credits on the ship because Dad said it was too expensive (however, he relented on the second). So, I was excited to get to Trinidad, because my cousins had a dial-up connection, and I could check my mail.

At this point, Ashley and I were getting on very well. We'd agreed that after the Christmas holiday, we'd properly sort things out between us and make it work. So, I checked Hotmail and Facebook eagerly... to find he was "in a relationship". And it wasn't with me.

I cried. I was hurt. Betrayed. Angry. I'd waited for him, and put things aside to wait for him, confident that this would be the time he didn't let me down. But, no. I asked him what had happened later on (I think this was once I'd got back to university) and he told me something that was not "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" because it didn't seem to quite make sense.

There was one photo taken of me on that day. I'm smiling, but if you look closely enough, I don't look happy. I wonder if my parents noticed at all.

Clearing the cupboards has been fun. I've gotten quite a lot fatter since high school, so I've got rid of nearly half of my clothes. I also read some letters I got. I found two from Matt (one while we were dating, one while we were fucking), and one from David.

David's letters are brief and succinct. They are also condensed pockets of written love to me. He thinks he writes crap letters but he is wrong because they are really not. They are so condensed and powerful that every time I read one, I always tear up just a tiny bit, because... I feel like he loves me so honestly. It's a little scary sometimes, but I just try to let myself trust him, and trust the Us, and... it's okay.

I didn't read Matt's first letter entirely. I read the second, much briefer, letter however.

It's been interesting to mull over these moments for a while.

Family lols.

My brother is a stubborn 14 year old with a love of the phrase "Yeah, but...".

My mother is a stubborn woman with a name that means "spear strength."

Cue the fireworks.