I am indebted to Jason for alerting me to this liberal response to this republican proposal.
Industrial Action
The Princess will be six on April 12. She has been preparing thoroughly for this event. Using her new found reading and writing skills she has been drawing up guest lists and food lists and sundry other lists for the big day.
She is particularly concerned about presents. She does not want any more dolls. She has enough dolls and she wants exciting toys like her brothers get.
The other evening I arrived home from work to find her marching up and down with a home-made placard saying “NO MOR BARBEES”.
Those of you who were kind enough to offer advice will (mostly) be pleased to hear that her parents have decided no more ballet. It looks like, following the work to rule, management has caved on one item, at least.
You will remember that I turn 40 this day week
A young Filippina woman offered me her seat on the bus. I demurred. She insisted.
Do I look pregnant or elderly?
Which is worse?
Advice please
The Princess, at her request, started ballet classes before Christmas. We paid for the gear and we paid for the lessons. After two weeks, she said that she didn’t like it and she wanted to give up. I wouldn’t let her on the grounds that I think it’s bad for her to be able to take up and give up things on a whim (we have previously had a similar experience with swimming, I can only rejoice that I have never succombed to requests for a pony).
The ballet teacher has already taken me aside and told me that the Princess shows no interest in class. Last Saturday, I was called aside again. They are having a show at the end of March. As I understood it, the Princess was to be the seventh snowdrop of seven. No longer. The ballet teacher said that since the Princess was inclined to wander off, she was worried that she would fall off the stage. The stage is very high. In my heart of hearts, I believe that the ballet teacher’s real problem is that she does not want one of her snowdrops to be out of time and wandering aimlessly around the stage and she is using health and safety concerns to achieve this objective.  I do sympathise but, at the same time, they are only 5; how much can the Princess be ruining the performance? The ballet teacher is obviously very keen to get rid of the Princess as she has offered (enthusiastically) to refund me the fees for the term.
The Princess is, understandably, a bit upset that she won’t be in the concert but I think she would bear up very well, if she knew that she could give up ballet. We have given her a chance to put her defence which goes as follows a) she cannot hear the teacher b) it is too complicated c) it is too cold d) she does stay with the group and e) it’s not fair.
Internet, what should I do?
Brilliant Dooce
I know now she does a lot of the style guide stuff which is a bit dull; and she balances stuff on her dog’s nose which is also tedious but she is a genius. Take this, possibly one of the best insights into parenthood you will ever find, beautifully expressed:
Because raising Leta more than anything else in my life has helped me piece together the puzzle of what it means to be human. I understand my own childhood so much better, understand my own parents so much better, and there is so much about myself that I have tried to improve that I didn’t know I needed to improve until I was reduced to a late night pair of pacing legs.So much more makes sense now, and I don’t know if there is any other way I could have gained this type of insight into life. And I think this is what a lot of us are talking about when we say it feels like we were let into a secret club, a club we didn’t know existed until we got here, like we had no idea there was this much to know until our children showed it all to us.
You can read the whole post here.
Feeling my age, again
Ireland is awash with angry workers. This morning, I asked my 28 year old colleague whether she had ever seen a strike before. “No,” she said “and I thought to myself as I walked past a man with a placard, this must be what industrial unrest looks like.”
Oh Celtic Tiger cubs, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
