Family Affairs and other matters

GAP YEAR

I see where I was going with my “Bored Solitude” post. My 7 year old was asking me yesterday “where Gapyear was?” because he was definitely going to go there after school as it sounded really cool. I was tempted to tell him that “Gapyear” was an island far far away that costs a huge amount of money to get to, causes a vast amount of stress and worry for parents and creates a generation of young adults who pretend they are more grown up and mature after their experience, but really all they learnt was how to have loads of sex with random strangers, how to take drugs, shear a sheep and maybe build a well or a school.

Anyway, I have developed my initial idea of a week of solitude for all, to a whole “Gap year for grown-ups”. I may need to call it something else, because technically we wouldn’t be going in a “gap” at all. We would be going during “full on, no space in our life” time. Maybe “Long Overdue Year” would work. I like the idea of a gap year. I didn’t have one between school and university (yes, I know I only went to a polytechnic, but it’s a university now). I think my children would understand, especially if they came out to meet me from time to time (as long as they didn’t cramp my style) in places like Uraguay or Vietham.

Such a BRILLIANT idea. I’m very exited. Who’s coming with me? Maybe we could offer specialist sub-sections like “Gap-year’s for bloggers”.

KAI TAK AIRPORT

My daughter is FURIOUS with her brother. He changed her Bebo user name and she didn’t notice for ages. She said “all my friends were sending me messages saying ‘Oh, wow what a great name for you’ and then I realised what they were talking about and OMG mum, it’s so embarrassing! and like not [...]

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“BORED SOLITUDE”

“No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength”. Jack Kerouac. We discussed just this idea on Saturday night. Several of the men, clearly in the grip of their midlife crisis wanted to go [...]

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ANDREA COLLINS SMITH

Today I am feeling very ashamed of myself. I have been selfish and childish and I wish to make a public apology. I have spent some of my day reading “Punk Rock Mommy’s” blog – the woman who is leader of the pack in the “mother’s who blog” 2007 award I have been promoting so [...]

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“BE TRUE TO YOURSELF”

My son has just started his end of year exams. He has very thoughtfully pre-warned me that when he does really badly it will be all my fault for not forcing him to revise. He had English and Geography today. One of the essays he was asked to write in his English exam was “Do [...]

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"HORROR BALL"

In addition to worrying about my older two reprobate children, I have additional worries about my third and youngest child. As previously mentioned, we battle constantly with his weight, devising all sorts of strategies as to how to improve matters. It turns out that at the moment, in our dysfunctional household of four we have [...]

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RETRACTION REQUIRED

I was going to write a review of the “Iron Man” film next because I saw it yesterday and really loved it. Robert Downey Jr doesn’t seem to have suffered at all from his lost years…he’s still very cool and sexy. The raw sexual tension between him and Gwyneth Paltrow (Pepper Potts) was electrifying, his [...]

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