Amelia's Meanderings

fear of facebook

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 12:31:56 GMT

FB gives me the creeps, however I'm fed up with not being able to read the stupid thing so I've started a page for my peace lily.
Do not be surprised if it friends you (and since when is friend a verb anyway?)

Elocution

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 14:56:51 GMT

Not an Ellie related post in point of fact but musings on the strange phenomenon of the British accent.

Now I would generally argue that I do not actually have an accent; other people do, they have foreign accents and regional accents and trying-desperately-to-sound-cool accents, I, on the other hand, speak simple unadulterated English.

I am aware however that at times the effects of careful elocution in childhood, combined with faint overlays of Harrow and Wales leave me sounding a little like a strange cross of Joanna Lumley and Penelope Keith but to be perfectly honest I don't have a problem with this.

And of course it comes with benefits: anyone who has spent any time in America must know that any kind of British accent is like a strange kind of chocolate coated crack to the average American.
Which is great: it can get you things you want, it can get you into places, it renders you at least thirty percent more attractive and can get you out of all sorts of trouble*
Even when Richard drove into the side of a sports car (out for a test drive at that) he had only to begin a halting baffled apology to have the driver of said vehicle stop him, ask "You English?" and wave away all further comment with a big smile.
It seems the cost of fixing or replacing the flashy car you were only borrowing is as naught compared to the joy of meeting a bemused Brit, at the least I suppose it made a good story: "So I get out of the car and he says, get this "Excuse me" yeah just like that so... yeah I let him off, you know they drive on the wrong side of the road over there?..right, so..."

I am more or less used to this, as I am to the moment's blinking incomprehension when my Father answers "Are you English" With "No, Welsh".

I was not however expecting this trick to work on peopler in this country however.

Just now a man came to the door hoping to sign us up to his electricity company.
He used the standard faux official opening "Nothing to worry about love, I'm just checking you're not paying too much for your consumption".
Then paused to allow me to show an intelligent interest or at least tell him how much we pay for energy.
Instead I responded thus: "Excuse me but were you sent by our electricity provider?"
Now admittedly this sounded rather more Lumleyish than usual but it wasn't really enough to warrant the thirty seconds of open mouthed staring that it apparently provoked.
"No love" quoth he at last.
"Then would you please leave?"
After another thirty seconds' gaping he remarked "Can't argue with that can you?" and shuffled off apparently slain by an unexpected acent and calm (if abrupt) good manners.

'Twas very odd.

*sometimes, of course, it can get you into trouble too.

pondering

Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:59:06 GMT

Is it rude to sign with your hands full?

Meme, copied from Badgersandjam

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:53:42 GMT

01. Think of the first word that comes to mind when you think of me.
02. Go to Google Images and search for that word.
03. Reply to this post with one of the pictures on the first page of results (don't tell me the word).
04. Put this in your own journal so that I can do the same. Or, you know, don't.

To insert an img into a comment, use [img src="url"], with <> in place of the square brackets.

Burst balloon.

Mon, 28 Sep 2009 13:36:11 GMT

I put the balloon lampshade cover into its dye bath on saturday and then ran it through the wash overnight.
Yesterday we took it out and it was covered in little tears, I pulled the fabric a little and it tore instantly, the whole thing is disintegrating.

poor mrs Stokely* has no balloon anymore.

I'm going to get a new cover, or maybe a big paper lampshade (a ball shaped one that will look even better) but nevertheless it makes me a little sad.

I'd hoped to pass on a little bit of my childhood to Ellie, now it's broken

*the name of the cat in the balloon basket.

identity

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 11:32:02 GMT

I need a name tag.
I took Ellie to her first Sing and Sign class yesterday (of which more below perhaps) and she made a new friend.
The two of them rampaged hapily about while the other babies sat in circle and paid attention.
The mother of said infant and I therefore bonded over the silliness of sitting there singing The Wheels on the Bus and other such songs without an actual baby to sing it to.

That evening I remarked to Richard that we had each made a friend.
Richard asked my friend's name.
"Ummm Katy's mummy?" I replied.
Not only is this a dire state of affairs but my new and nameless friend didn't ask my name either.
I refuse to be known as just Ellie's mother.
something must be done.

Otherwise Sing and Sign was pretty good, the children are free to sit or rampage if they choose (new friend Katy* is the biggest in the class, Ellie is the second smallest but together they are unstoppable) and we get tea or coffee after although I have to bring my own teabags.

Ellie has also made either a deadly enemy or another friend with a terrible squint.
This is the very smallest baby, who is almost, but not quite, as pretty as Ellie and was being cooed at a lot till we turned up.
In addition to which the class leader kept getting their names mixed up.
Probably not a squint then.

In fact the only real problem with the class is that the Leader can't actually sing.
I don't know if she's tone deaf or just coulon't hit the notes but she was flat for almost the whole 45 minute session

My head still hurts a little now

*This could be a problem: she now has a friend called Katy at ballet, a friend called Katy at sing and sign and an Aunt called katy. I shall have to assign them numbers.

The rest of Richard's post

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:53:03 GMT

Richard has been very impressive and painted the nursery and now justly feels the need to show off about its imminent glories.
He has, however, forgotten some bits.
Yes tis true the walls are willow green (except where they're white) and will soon be stencilled with dancing goblin-imp-fairy things.
And yes we have purchased an amazing grassy rug with 3d flowers on to go over the as-yet-unchanged brown carpet of browness (possibly covering the unfortunate burned bit)
And this will be good
It is true also that we intend to do the woodwork in white (richard got paint on it, thus saving us the long arduous process of deciding whether to leave it natural because it is real wood or cover it up because it's nasty orangey wood).
Likewise we will indeed be painting toadstools on the skirting board (not frieze style though, hopefully they'l just be dotted around as if they'd sprung up overnight).

But there will be so much more.

Which is to say that as well as this there will be big papery puffball things hanging from the ceiling (I saw a tutorial online) looking like clouds, or dandelion seeds or those floaty things you get in elven forests in WoW.
And there will be curtains, we haven't found them yet but they will be GOOD, I want blue ones with clouds on (because the window is where the sky lives, obviously) but that would probably require some batiking and hot wax and baby do not mix.
Furthermore there will be a lampshade like a hot air balloon with a cat in it.
This is an old lampshade from my childhood, I am redying it (it was green but has faded and looks permanaently dusty now) either china blue or turquoise depending what happens, to this I will add green and gold glitter paint, silver and white ribbon and quite possibly a large satin picture hat for the occupant.
It's going to be spectacular.

Also we're going to paint glow in the dark stars on the ceiling (just a few: the stars as they were above our house when Ellie was born we'll add more if and when another baby turns up) and I'm sticking a little 3d butterfly somewhere random as if it had just landed there for a second.

And, naturally, the room needs a bat.

Do we win the over the top parent award yet?

Bit parts

Sun, 20 Sep 2009 15:19:50 GMT

As we were driving home with a carload of painty things for the nursery, our radio merrily spouting "Always look on the bright side of life" we passed a young lady washing her car.
She was not unattractive and was performing this menial duty while wearing skin tight denim pedal pushers a short t-shirt and bright red shiny shoes.
Her large shaggy dog was watching.
As we went past she came up for a second in a hair tossing (despite the 50's style ponty tail) water flicking pose that really should have been slow motion.
The car whistled

I think we just played an incidental role in somebody else's movie.

Play Misty for me.

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:56:56 GMT

I was taking Ellie home from baby ballet (no, really) when I droped in to W.H.Smiths in search of magazines.
Along with the sensible infant related periodicals (yes I know baby eats life but one was Green Parent and the other had a free recipe book) I got a copy of the special edition rerelease of my favourite comic from childhood (you could keep your stupid Bunty comics mine had a vampire-mist-girl hosting twilight zoney horror stories of glorious creepy campiness)

Last night before Traveller I brandished my comic full of the nostalgic joy that can only come from reading about a girl whose stereo was so loud it could wake the dead.

Nobody remembered it but me.

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:58:55 GMT

Ellie has definitely changed us I think, at the very least she's forcing us to face our fears and horrors.
In example of which I offer Richard's death defying leap across the room yesterday: in pursuit of a spider.
I think he actually felt he was protecting me from it (he can't have been protecting Ellie: she was in bed), not only did he try to catch it in a plastic cup but he ran out and got a bigger one when the first didn't fit and put a piece of card underneath to carry it out with.

Then, lest I think he was going to do this all the time from now on, reality reasserted itself and he backed away at some speed while I carried the poor little thing outside.

As for me, I might not have that many phobias (It's ok to be afraid of wasps when they really are plotting to kill you) but there's a bowl of dismembered chicken-bits in the fridge waiting to be turned into baby friendly chicken nuggets.
Anyone want to subscribe to the buy-Amelia-a-pair-of-kitchen-chopsticks-so-long-they-could-be-used-in-hell fund?

No?

Oh well, how did that line from Dune go?

I will not fear, fear is the mind killer, I will face my fear...

Mia smash now.

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 08:56:52 GMT

N.B no baby talk here but peripheral issues

Grrr just got off my parenting forum where they're having a very sensitive disscussion about post traumatic shock after childbirth and the tendency of midwives/visitors to say "well you've got a healthy baby now and that's all that matters" which translates to the distressed mother as: "you are nothing but breeding stock. Your feelings are meaningless."
The conversation started hitting too close to home for some so it was moved to the members quiet area (sensitivity required etc) and some very sad stories started coming out resulting in a great deal of discussion of a seriously neglected issue.

Then a stupid woman posted telling everyone to "toughen up" because "a healthy baby is all that matters ....my sister was born with learning difficulties [due to neglect in childbirth] and she died at eighteen"

obviously the mods jumped all over her but too late: no-one wants to talk any more.

Idiot!
paraplegia may be worse than a broken leg but that won't stop the leg from hurting.

I have put a name to my pain

Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:16:44 GMT

Not Strep anything thank goodness, although having had a severe infection may have helped this on its way.
I have tonsillitis.
I feel thoroughly ridiculous.
And also ill.

plague: again

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 07:49:34 GMT

I have the plague again: stupid high temperature flu has struck for the umpteenth time and I'm starting to wonder if it's something else.

I never had a flu like this before Ellie was born but now it seems to be a regular visitor.
Given that it bears a striking resemblence to the endometriosis I had after her birth I can't help suspecting that this is not just coincidence.
Just looked up strep A infecton and learn that "serious infections may occur sporadically" but not much else (and even that was wikipedia)

I fear a blood test is in order but I suspect that if I listed my symptoms to a doctor today I'd just find myself on tamiflu.

Oh the horror!

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:52:12 GMT

Have recorded the empty eyed zombie child for Richard to see.

My agony must be shared.

Sneaky like a snake

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:01:15 GMT

Today was cage day: the day when the rat cage gets cleaned out.
So, Richard distracted Ellie while I emptied the cage, scrubbed shelves, washed bowls, pulled Luna out of my top and put her back in the cage etc etc.

Unfortunately while taking the bag of old litter to the bin* I managed to lock myself out.
So I went round and knocked on the front door, Richard, somewhat bemusedley, let me in and I attempted to sneak back to the sun room to carry on.
Handily our front room and dining room both open off the hall so I was able to slip past the front room with Ellie in and use the dining room door to sneak into the dining room stay out of sight of the connecting door and sidle round the corner to the sun room, thus avoiding the notice of my monster (as long as she didn't see me I knew she'd be fine with Richard).

Well, that was the plan.
Unbeknownst to me Richard had left a stairgate leaning against the dining room door, I pushed the door, the gate came down with a crash and I stepped through to see Ellie looking, with a ridiculously calm curiosity, through the connecting door and straight at me.

Oh yeah, Ninja Mummy, that's me.

Life Imitating LARP

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:09:55 GMT

Today we went to Beningborough Hall which was rather lovely in many ways and contained some fascinating portraits.
I fear however that Maelstrom is starting to seep into real life: in one room there is a large and charming portrait of Kitty.
Not of Chiara you understand, though it does look very like her, it's quite definitely Caterina (something about her expression I think; you get the distinct impression that she's hiding a pistol in her skirts).

The guide book doesn't mention this picture, I can only assume that it's slipped through a space-time rift from a wall in New Terino.

Monsters on the loose

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 08:47:57 GMT

I am a tired Amelia.

This is probably because Ellie hasn't been sleeping properly for the last few nights (and of course when Ellie doesn't sleep I don't sleep), she was hell to get down on tuesday night, on wednesday she was a little angel while we had people over then a horror the rest of the night (I heard her crying and got up only to find that the sadness was not due to I-Want-Mummy but to her inability to climb out of her cot while in a sleeping bag, this carried on till at threeish I gave up and took her back to our bed).
Last night I thought we'd fixed it by changing her to a warmer sleeping bag but at two-thirty she began wandering around her cot and crying again.
still I kept settling her and putting her back and she eventually went back to sleep until six.

Possibly some of this sleplessness is due to the excitement of wednesday when the Ellie monster went to see the larger Dan-beast and I got to spend some time in adult company for a while (Hurrah for Nicky!).
We took the monsters to the Picnic in the Woods, however as it had been raining off and on all morning this became the Picnic in the Methodist Church, They managed to set up everything they'd normally have though, even the big bouncy castle (high ceiling) with the exception of the big red bus which apparently was off sick.

This was Wildlife week so they had some people with animals for the kids to meet, Ellie was very excited to encounter a large snake, or Cat!, as well as a leopard Gecko and a blue tongued skink, by which time she was getting fretful so I took her off to a quiet area they'd set up for the use of small monsters.
Ellie had a wonderful time, first playing with the car track they'd set up then with a big padded block (from giant building blocks) and some toy dinosaurs, unfortunately I had a less wonderful time as while we were there a little boy came in to say he'd just stroked an owl.
Cue furious Amelia.
I was explaining to one of the organisers why owl-petting is A Bad Thing when the little boy joined in again: "He didn't like it, he was frightened. I wouldn't like it either"
For goodness sakes, if a toddler can see that it's not a good idea you'd think an adult could.

Dan started getting fed up at the absence of the big red bus so we headed back for lunch (the people with the owl were gone unfortunately)
had a carpet picnic, then investigated the horrors of baby tv (empty eyed zombie child!).
Dan had almost every story in the house read to him, we went out again, to the park and apart from Dan's tumble downstairs, at which Nicky went whiter than I'd imagined possible, we had a great time.

I could do with more of them really, if only I could sleep a little inbetween.

Won't somebody think of the children?!

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 09:18:28 GMT

In which Amelia rants incoherently.

If the economy is meant to be picking up then how come so many companies are making people redundant?
Surely they should be thinking "Hmmm things are bad now but increased housing prices mean the economy is picking up so we'd better not fire anyone or we'll have to spend even more to hire new people in a couple of months."
And yet the redundancies continue.

Latest news is that Macmillan are making cuts all over the place which is not good news for those of us whose manuscripts they've been sitting on for months (My agent just mailed to say she's going to start poking Simon and Schuster but I'm guessing the same will be happening there, what effects one company in an industry tends to effect them all) but also is a fairly bad omen for childrens literature in general.

I don't know why but it seems to me that times of either huge economic boom or miserable economic depression seem to be categorised by a huge upsweep in the "It's fun to be a teenager" parts of kid lit and a matching downswing in the creative, fantastic and "It's pretty good just being a kid" bits.

Lately the bookshops have been full of good children's fantasy and historical novels, plus some pretty decent looking adventure stuff all of which made me fairly optimistic about Ellie's future.
Now though the fantasy stuff is dropping off leaving behind shelves of books about thongs and snogging.

There's nothing wrong with these things of course (although the self conscious slanginess of the latter leaves me cold) but they sure as hell aren't all there is to childhood, or indeed teenagerhood.
Still looking at the new releases I fear that these books are going to crowd out the good ones again to the point that teenyfic is all that's available (publishers won't take on a new book if there's no evidence of that kind of book selling at the time *dope slap*).

In short I feel a Sweet Valley High coming on.

*shudder*

Priorities: I has tehm right.

Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:04:51 GMT

This morning:

Me: Ellie can you say mummy?

Ellie : brrrbblbbrllrrrb

Me: Can you say Daddy?

Ellie: EEEEphrrrrr

Arikel: *walks into room*

Ellie: Ca!

Edit

Tybalt just came in, Ellie brought all her powers to bear and summoned up a "t"

"Cat!"

Ladies and Gentlemen: my daughter's first word.

heh

Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:21:47 GMT

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/study_abstinence_only_lunch

Five things* meme via Badgersandjam

Sun, 09 Aug 2009 20:07:26 GMT

Dragons,

I love dragons even when, as is so often the case, they're wyverns.
When I was a child my favourite dragon fact was that the red dragon on the Welsh flag was the same one that's fighting the white dragon of England (who does not get a flag despite being current champion), nowadays most of my friends know that story (is this a result of growing up or just of the company I keep?) so my new favourite is that dragons did not originally breathe fire: the flames on old paintings were just one way of representng the poisonous airs that dragons exhale.
I remember walking (well toddling I can't have been much more than two years old) around the National Gallery with my father while he pointed out dragons breathing fire, dragons breathing fog and, my particular favourite; a dragon breathing frogs.
I don't know why dragons resonate so strongly in the human consciousness (or at least the part that reads fantasy novels), perhaps some small marmoset-like part of the brain still recalls the dinosaurs.

Chaos,

Hail Eris and pass the fractals
Alternatively take a look around my library for the most perfect representation of chaos** you could ever wish for.

Legacy,
This word means different things to different people.
To some it's children, those who'll carry on where they've left off.
I don't know what Ellie is yet but I know she isn't just me redux, nor is she something I've somehow given to the world.
She's Ellie and who and that may be is yet to be seen.
To others, it's stuff: things to leave to those they leave, most commonly of all money.
I remembered the other day the way Richard's grandfather used to insist that his coin collection, his stamp collection and his china collection were "Richard's" not merely willed to Richard but Richard's, every time he added a new piece he reminded us of this.
I recently learned that according to Romany tradition any items like those should be destroyed when their owner dies, I don't know whether this is what he had in mind at the time but I know he wanted his collections to go to Richard, even more than he wanted to collect them in the first place.
I don't want to leave things behind me, I'm sure there will be things but I don't want that to be the sum of my life, all Ellie has to think of me by.
Nor do I want to be, to posterity, no more than Eleanor's Mother.
I am my thoughts, my feelings, my ideas, I am the way that I express these things, the way I recreate them, reform them, mould them, comic, tragic or tragicomic as they are.
A legacy of words would be enough for me.

Bare feet,

The world is different with bare feet.
When you expose yourself to your surroundings in this way you feel them far more intensely.
This may seem obvious but I don't mean simply because you can feel them.
You develop an awareness of things, of the way the interact, not unlike that a cat has through its whiskers, or a snake gains through the taste of the air and the vibration of the ground.
The roughness of tarmac, the silky richness of new soil the iregular soft-sharp rubble of a woodland path and the heat, or lack of it, reflected by those surfaces, combine with the scent of the air, the brightness or dimness of the light, the sounds surrounding you to create a far more perfect picture of the world than could be gleaned by those things alone or by the more restrained physical sensations available to one wearing shoes.
Perhaps even the knowledge that if you tread on a thorn or a nettle you will feel it somehow adds to this superawareness, if it does it it definitely a good thing and worth the thistles.
Allegedly going barefoot at LARP events is somehow hardcore.
I wouldn't really agree with this but I would heartily reccomend the experience.
Well I would if I didn't think I'd end up being sued by an orc with a bramble in his foot.

Lunacy

Scientists these days say that Lunacy doesn't exist.
Personally I think they're nuts.

I'd love to stop there but alas I have more to say and so cannot go out on a punchline.
I don't believe for a second*** that the moon has no impact on peoples minds, I've seen its effects too often for that: from the maternity ward where Ellie was born (always full when the moon is) to the streets of St Leonards and Hastings where care in the community meant you always knew what the moon was doing.
Let alone the surging, unquashable need to be outside that I feel every full moon or the peace and balance I find just before that thin arc of silver reappears.
Perhaps all the research subjects were male; to say that women have no connection to the cycles of the moon is more than a little silly

* ok six technically
** good chaos that is, not that boring new chaos with the underlying order all the kids like these days.
*** Except during a gibbous moon, then I'll believe anything

Sad news

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 20:52:27 GMT

I hope by now I'm not breaking the news to anyone but Mike Mitchell died yesterday.

I can think of maybe three people who read this journal who didn't know him, everybody who knew him knew how dear he was, how warm and friendly he was, how good he could be.
Nic phoned up to tell break the news ths evening sounding as knocked out by the news as I was on hearing it.
The thing is, if it were anyone else, Mike's the one I'd expect to hear it from, the person who'd call to tell us, gently, slowly, making sure he found the right words to express the inexpressable.
He's the one I'd want to go to for a hug too.

We didn't see enough of him: we moved up here and although he would always have been welcome he never managed to visit, he never missed an event for any of the systems he played and they ate up the weekends we might have taken to spend time with a friend.
I'm glad we went to Outcast and saw him there, I wish we'd seen more of him, I wish we'd found him to hug one more time before we left.

We are too fragile.

All important details

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:57:05 GMT

Richard still feels rotten and I have an incipient sore throat, this makes us worry about Shakespeare tomorrow.

Meanwhile Richard required clarification:

R: "Which one is this?"
Me "Much Ado About Nothing"
R "That's the one with the two brothers?"
Me "It has two brothers yes.."
R "We saw a version set in feudal japan."
Me "That was As You Like It"
R "So which one's this?"
Me "Beatrice and Benedct spar with each other constantly so their friends decide to set them up by telling each that theother is madly in love.."
R: "Oh! Keanu Reeves in leather trousers!"
Me: " ...Yes. It is the play with Keanu Reeves in leather trousers."
R: "Damn! Now I really want to see it."
Me: " "
R "...Because it's a really good play."

ahem

Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:56:40 GMT

Much to post but no time so I'll just say: Welcome to planet Earth Miss Shockley!
Please excuse the mess.

oh dear

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 12:32:37 GMT

happily sitting on the settee feeding my Ellie monster when I heard an odd noise.
Looked down o discover that she had somehow removed her nappy one handed while feeding.

Six months isn't really too young to potty train.