Dietary Advice.

Did you put on a few pounds over Christmas?

Word of advice: don't take dietary advice from fat people. Whatever advice they're giving you is rubbish obviously as - hello - they are still fat!

Fat people also think they're experts on losing weight. This will generally annoy the hell out of ordinary people who have put on a few pounds and are sensibly cutting back a bit in order to stop those few pounds becoming a permanent fixture. The Fat People will tell you you're doing it wrong.

Even worse are the Deliberately Undermining Fat People. If you have some of these in your life - well, you have my commiserations. They don't want to be the only fat person around so if they can grind you down long enough they reason, you might eat all the chocolate biscuits they so helpfully brought over and stashed in your cupboard.

My advice is to try and ignore these people especially if they are related to you 'in-law'. No good will come from you yelling "Shut the fuck up you fat bitch!" while your significant other tries to manhandle you out of the room. Trust me I know.

So my advice? Have veg/salad and protein with every meal and drink alot of water. Eat what you want, stop when you're full.

Or just take a look at the slim people you know and do what they do.

You're welcome.

P.S. You may have gathered that I have 'in-law' issues.

Big White Dress.

So here's the thing.

I'm reading someone else's blog, someone I really like. Someone who writes well and makes me laugh. She just got engaged and is very obviously deliriously happy which I love.

She's also very stylish and consequently is blogging about some aspects of the wedding e.g. dress choice.

And this made me wonder about the whole wedding thing and why I don't get it.

I should probably say up front that when I got married I wore trousers. It was a very important day for me because I got married but the wedding itself? Couldn't give a monkey's.

What I want to know is: am I the only female who has never, ever, not once, not even for one nanosecond, daydreamed about a fairy tale wedding? Or any wedding for that matter?

It has never been something I thought or cared about, not even as a young child. And yet I fantasised constantly as a child and I still do, about myriad things, but mostly sex if I'm honest.

I wonder whether I didn't fantasise about being taken up the aisle because I was too busy fantasising about being taken in a much more interesting fashion by a gorgeous man in a suit!

This is something else I wonder about. I certaintly masturbated from about the age of 5 because I discovered it felt good. It was not associated with sex at that point and I was certainly not sexualised early because of abuse or anything similar. But the fantasies about sex came not that long after and have continued happily ever since! I was brought up as the child of committed Catholics who did their best to stop me enjoying anything that looked remotely like masturbation but I distinctly remember understanding completely that this was all uptight bullshit and I was going to do it as much I wanted.

So when I read about real women who discover masturbation in their late teens or even later, I am truly gobsmacked. Can you really not have been aware of sex until then? Am I in the minority in this too? Did thoughts of fire and brimstone, possible blindness etc, etc sound remotely plausible to you, even as I child?

I just don't get it.

Cut the cute.

Do you know what I've really had enough of? Having to be bloody cute all the time.

Admittedly I work in the magazine industry where the raison d'etre of most women's mags is to inform their readers how to be fulfilled at work and at home, how to be a great mother/wife/ friend blah blah blah. All helpfully illustrated with case studies of 'real women' - real women my arse.

On top of all this is the unspoken rule that you'd better do all that and make sure you look cute at the same time.

Same old shit ladies. It's not enough to have a brain and to use it, to save lives, to nurse people back to health, to uphold justice, to bear and raise children, to produce a TV show, to run a bank, to design software, to teach, to run a home, to build a house etc etc etc - you get my drift.

What's annoying is I quite like cute. I like clothes and jewellery and nice hair-cuts and good skin. I like good design and nice things around me. I don't deny a good outfit can make me feel good. I'm just not sure any of that really matters. Look around any playground at school pick-up time though and you'll see it sure as shit matters.

And this, this stuff that matters, even though women protest that it doesn't, is what really drives me batshit.

I've started this blog for myself. A place I can go to analyse and reflect on what's important to me. Writing these things down helps me clarify things and I need the reflection right now. My children are growing so fast that I'm starting to really feel the time approaching when they will leave to make their own mark on the world.

And before they go I'd like my kids to understand what it is that I (and their father) consider important. They need to see me spending time on things in proportion to their importance - something I'm not sure happens at the moment.

If you asked my kids what was important to mum they'd probably say 'A tidy house!' This I know is:

a) true and
b) really pathetic.

In my defense I find it hard to relax when surrounded by crap so it's not tidiness I value for it's own sake or the impression it makes on others - it just really, really gets to me to be surrounded by stuff, stuff, stuff.

But it's not just a bit pathetic, its downright disgusting that my children see me get annoyed about an untidy house or excited about a piece of jewellery while letting images of dead Gazans or starving Sudanese go by without a comment. This is not the message I want to give them. This is not how I want them to judge other people in the playground.

So seriously people - remember this shit doesn't matter. While I will always enjoy nice clothes and those lovely shiny earrings I promise to try and not make you feel bad because your life is badly accessorized and your scatter cushions suck.

I've joined the blogosphere to reflect, to explore thoughts, air views, rant (there will almost certainly be quite alot of ranting - you've been warned!) and discuss life in general. So this is my place to think aloud as it were.

If you're interested in thinking with me, I'd love to have you along for the ride.