December: what I’m looking forward to…

1. Russell Brand on his ‘Messiah Complex’ tour  in London on Thursday with my sister – can’t wait – first night out in I don’t know how long!
2. Booked a few days off work to get my Christmassy bits done which should get me into the Christmas spirit!
3. Taking JJ to see a show called ‘Gorilla’ at the Polka Children’s Theatre in Wimbledon with my Mum on the 14th – wonderful place to take little children, highly recommended.
4. NCT kids & mum’s Christmas get together on the 23rd at my lovely friend Suzy’s house – another fab excuse to get into the Christmassy vibe with mince pies and festive fun!
5. NCT mark II (the EJ ‘Refresher’ years) Christmas get together at my lovely friend Anna’s house on the 16th – more of the above!!
6. Christmas!!! Say no more.
7. Going to the panto in Woking on Jan 4th (not December so cheating a bit here!) – Cinderella starring Justin Fletcher (AKA Mr Tumble) which will probably make JJ’s year!! Going with my lovely friend Clair and her son.
8. Meeting up with friends we haven’t seen for ages on 7th with their son who is EJ’s contemporary – Christmas time really does encourage us to re-connect!
9. Christmas pressie swap and meal at Jamie’s Italian with one of my oldest besties on 14th. Bit of a tradition, lovely to indulge ourselves and reminisce about old times.
10. Big family pre-Christmas ‘in the place of Christmas’ celebration with a meal out at a lovely pub on the 15th. (My sister, BIL and nieces will all be skiing in the Italian Alps (again!!) for the festive season this year so this will be our chance to raise a glass and enjoy each other’s company for the last time in 2013).

And one for luck – albeit another January one! – Jan 18th going to the National Theatre in London to see Tori Amos’s musical “The Light Princess” described as “a dark fairytale about grief, rebellion and the power of love”. Its been a long time since I’ve visited the National although I was brought up on theatre-going, particularly this amazing venue and I absolutely love, love, love the vibe both inside and out on the South Bank.

So yes, once again I find myself counting my blessings and realising that, whilst time enjoying the children is fab (especially at Christmas) not everything in my life has to involve them!

Linking up with http://www.mummyfromtheheart.com’s Reasons to be Cheerful (R2BC) (currently being hosted by Becky at Lakes Single Mum http://www.beckywilloughby.blogspot.co.uk)

Someone help derail my train of thought!!

I was going to say that my train of consciousness is being very British at the moment – it really wants to go somewhere but it can’t because there’s too many of the wrong kind of leaves on the line. However, on reflection this is not actually true. For the past two evenings I have put the boys to bed, had a bath and something to eat, settled down to check emails, Facebook and any interesting blog updates intending to then move on to something more productive, but my train has been derailed and gone shooting off on a tangent, visiting random stations that were never meant to be on the schedule.

Before you know it its 10pm and I’m back at my point of origin with nothing to show for my precious three hours of child- (and to be honest, hubster-)free time (he’s been working lates). Last night, for example, I started off with Eeh Bah Mum’s amusing ode to the joys of Soft Play, was impressed by Cleopatra’s descriptions of her home made Lemon cleaning solution and fiery fig chutney, had a quick peek back at Put up With Rain by Lucy Benedict (not her real name!) and then, wanting to know more about her, got sucked into reading back-dated posts and discovered, little by little, more about her life, love of writing, how her and her partner met and got together, her family relationships, depression, suicide attempts, miscarriage, hatred of Disney Princesses, lust for Ed Balls (!) – at which point I realised that I needed to pull the train over to the sidings and take a little breather – I was beginning to feel like I knew more about her than I did about myself.

I then flicked back to Facebook, saw a link to an article in the Huffington Post giving a negative spin on the Russell Brand Paxman interview/New Statesman editorship and went over to see what that was all about. Interesting point of view but Brand is thoroughly defended through the backlash of comments further down the page including one which provided a link to a website which sets out an alternative future for the world contrary to the current regime/paradigm in which we live. I couldn’t resist and had to check out The Venus Project. That was quite time-consuming too and I’m not entirely convinced that they’ve solved all the Earth’s problems and satisfactorily answered a massive list of Frequently Asked Questions.

The train then finally pulled into Twitter-on-sea for a quick upload, I got sucked into some Katie Price c**p (for shame!) before my eye was caught by a link to an article in the Guardian written by the actress Natasha McElhone discussing gender equality (or lack thereof).

By this time the train was on a collision course with a rapidly approaching brick wall and I was beginning to feel extremely frustrated that the things I was reading about were written by people who were actually doing real things (and then writing about them). All I seem to be able to manage is writing about my random musings. I think I need to get a life and I’m not sure that the “I’ve got a 15-month-old”/Work Four Days a Week/ “Do all the Shopping/Organising/Cleaning/Cooking in this house” excuse is going to cut it for much longer. Am I being too hard on myself?