Finding Perspective

I spent half of the day today fretting uselessly about money and trying to shake that uncomfortable, nagging feeling of being hopelessly skint — a feeling exacerbated by over-tiredness, thanks to the baby getting me up four times last night. Again and again, I asked myself why we made this move, if we were [...]

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Back To Being Mummy’s Little Girl

We have had the loan of my sister’s car since we arrived — she started the lease when she was living out in the country, but now that she lives in a city, she can get by quite well without it and resents having to pay to park it, so she was happy enough to [...]

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Hoping For The Rains To Come

M was hired on an hourly salary plus commission, and anything above 40 hours per week was at time-and-a-half. We knew the commission wouldn’t come into play until he’d been working for awhile, so we didn’t budget for it. But we also knew that the kind of work he does rarely gets finished [...]

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Lost in Translation

There are so many odd words that you don’t give a moment’s thought to when you’ve grown up with them. Brits don’t register any reaction at all to such things as Spotted Dick or Faggots. These words have been a part of their verbal landscape for so long that they’ve lost their [...]

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A Quick Interruption for Something Personal

I just want to interrupt normal programming to say a quick thank you to someone with whom I have no other way of communicating…
K, thank you so much for my birthday gift!  I am chuffed and have not been able to put it down since it arrived.  I was confused for a moment, and then [...]

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Pondering The Politics of Colour

I am trying to figure out how (or whether) to teach my toddler about race. It’s never been a issue before — she wasn’t old enough to verbalise any differences in people she might have noticed and, to be honest, there simply weren’t many differences to notice. So much of rural England is [...]

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The Allergist: No News and Bad News

I am thoroughly confused. No sooner had I said that the pain had gone away for a few days than it came back again with renewed intensity. It has been going on for three months now, on a daily-to-near-daily basis, and I am sick of it so, naturally, I am trying every sensible [...]

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Poisoned Kiss

There are many reasons why extended breastfeeding is a pain — the continued broken nights, the physical strain on the mother, the teeth! — but so many ways that it is a joy. Probably the biggest way is how it gives a mother and child a chance to recapture of that same intense intimacy [...]

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Taking a Gamble Either Way

We are struggling to know what to do. We went to view the house yesterday and it is nice — as nice a rental as I’ve seen in our price range so far: it’s fairly well-kept, the main areas are floored in hard wood (which is so much better in a rental than carpet), [...]

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Self-Medication: Drink Up!

It’s been a stressful week and sometimes I’ve handled the stress well and other times I’ve been… less than magnanimous. There have been a lot of bad things to deal with — and I will discuss them sometime — but, for now — for a change –it’s time for an injection of positiveness. [...]

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