Michelle Tant

... whatever that is of course. I've spent the day scrubbing, cleaning, changing beds, cooking, changing nappies and for a brief interlude, played a puzzle with my 2 year old and watched Chuggington with him. This is why I work part time. So that I can be the uber-housewife. NO!!! I work part time to spend time with my kids. So how come when ever anyone mentions the hushed word 'cleaner' does the rest of the population seem to go into judgemental overdrive? I might say also that the most vocal of these are the women who had their kids a looong time ago, and were able to give up work until they sent them off to school. Of course then some worked part time hours and the kids had to 'get on with it' while they scrubbed and cleaned. Most families these days cannot afford to have a parent not working. Our mortgages and living costs don't allow it. I haven't bought clothes for myself in goodness knows how long, and forget about eating out; I've pulled in the b...

I have a year of changes coming up and I find I am wandering aimlessly around the internet looking for that elusive magical opportunity that will immediately strike me as being possible and interesting enough to motivate me. First major life change is having the baby. This brings the total to three. At the time she is born, I will have 3 under 5 years old and while we planned it to be so, it brings up certain challenges about childcare etc, life balance, why did we have children etc. We love being a family and so what we really want it to be able to spend more time with said family. I also enjoy working. That is, I love interacting with people, the stimulation is necessary for my emotional wellbeing and stability. I don't rely on them for my happiness but I do rely on adult interaction for a well rounded sanity level to be maintained. So while I don't RELY on them, people make me happy (and sad, but thats another rambling for another posted blog). So my other major change is th...

No-one can make you feel anything. When I first heard that I was inclined to disagree, afterall I can think of a dozen instances off the top of my head where I was made to feel mad, glad, sad, angry etc. Then think a moment longer. Can anyone make me do anything I don't want to? Short of threatening my loved ones or holding a gun to my head, no-one can make me do a single thing that I don't want to do. No-one that is, except for myself of course. So it naturally follows that if I can't be made to do a thing, then I can't be made to feel a feeling. So do I allow myself to feel things? Or is a feeling something which just happens to me without my control? And do I like that thought? Are my feelings just carrying on without my authority so to speak? Or do I have a decision in the direction my feelings take? If I initially feel angry about a situation, do I then have a choice to continue feeling that way or decide to feel something else. If I do decide to feel something els...

I was watching the news this evening and it mentioned the deep drifts in northern parts of England and the views were spectacular (as long as you don't spend too much time thinking about the incredible impact this weather is having on the UK) but what was really spectacular was this road which crossed a county border into Cumbria. The adjoining county council had a snow plough/blower vehicle and they took it up this winding lane toward an outlying village and then at the border turned around and went back. Leaving the road utterly blocked. Utterly bonkers. So there are these examples of just how far the human race has come... nice... and then you see the stories of how neighbours are checking up on each other, communities turning out to clear roads and paths so that children can go to schools, sit exams etc. The difference being of course that the Snow plough guy is under orders from a Council watching its pennies. Our local council says they'd love to get more grit for our roa...

Today I found out that baby number 3 is a girl. I have two boys already and I was convinced that this one would join the blue club. Or perhaps I convinced myself that because I secretly did want a daughter. So it would seem that I am possibly not destined for a house full of testosterone for the rest of my life (of course the ultrasound technician might be wrong yet!) and I was happy before but now I have another kind of happy to add to it. I lay on that bed/gurney and when it came to it, all I really wanted to see was a beating heart and all the parts in the right places, doing the right thing. We saw the brain inside the skull, the perfectly formed spine, the four cavities of the heart, pumping away quickly. Two wiggly legs and hands bashfully hiding her face. She flicked a switch and we saw the flow of blood in the cord, that was amazing. Watching life literally flowing through her. A round tummy with a 'full' bladder and the technician told us that all her 'inner bits...

Clare bit her pencil and she read back her list of New Years Resolutions. The usual suspects appeared, as expected, year after year, flowing unprovoked from her pencil tip and of course year after year, here she was, writing the same list again. She broke off to get herself a cuppa and stood staring out of the kitchen window. On this clear Saturday morning there was a slight mist and a glaze of frost on the grass, transforming the garden into a sparkly winter wonderland. Of course the garden was on the list again, ‘keep garden tidy’ was up there with ‘buy a composter’. Like it was every year, no surprise there then. Likewise, ‘eat less biscuits’, ‘keep on top of housework’, ‘stop biting nails’, ‘do more arty things with the kids’. The latter had actually made a valiant attempt at sticking power, the potato prints and homemade cards lasting well into March but even that had trailed off into leaving them to it with the posterpaints, albeit with a brief foray into toilet tube rockets in O...

If I'd said it once, I've thought it a million more times. I am so fed up of this. My job is a shadow of its former self. I used to proudly say that I was an Housing Officer. It gave me a sense that I was helping in a real way and though some might argue the job hasn't changed all that much, it really has. Now I am an 'Income Co-Ordinator'. How rubbish does that sound? In the merger, a dozen or so of my colleagues lost their jobs and by some miracle I managed to hold onto mine and ended up with this specialised role. They split the job down the middle. The Income side deals with the rent. Everything else, read here, the interesting, peoply, touchy feely side went to the 'Neighbourhood Co-Ordinator'. You may well ask why I didn't go for that job instead but hours are longer and you cover such a wide geographic that at the end of a working day, I might be 70 miles from home and thats no good when I have children to pick up on time. So here I am. Collecting...

Much has been said about Perfect Paula and Manic Martha, but what about the person in between? For example, me? I’m not totally chaotic but I do suffer from periodic time leakage, the days just seem to slip by while my house gets no cleaner, the children don’t really get a ‘proper’ piece of me and as for the husband, well, that kind of nonsense will just have to wait for a day when I don’t collapse into bed unconscious before my head even reaches the pillow. But then there are those rare beatific days when I wake up and without really even seeming to have a plan, the day goes by at a sensible rate. I play with the little ones, get the recycling done, do the online shop and manage to have an adult conversation when husband gets home. No one is late, the lunches are made, dinner is passable (I did say I wasn’t quite Perfect Paula remember) and there’s more than enough time for a little nonsense after an evening of a bath and book. What I long for though is a little consistency. And I don...