Monday Miscellaneous

1. As flagged a few weeks ago, I’ve now passed my 10 year anniversary of blogging here.

2. After a few weeks away from home, I had an urge to do some baking on the weekend. I tried a new recipe of chocolate chocolate chip cookies, which are delicious, though a bit cakey. However, my main problem is that the quantity was much bigger than I expected, and I was, as always, once again reminded that I don’t have a big family to eat what I want to bake. My mother baked once a week – biscuits and cakes – and we ate them every day for morning and afternoon teas (cakes only appeared at afternoon tea) and at night with a cup of tea. It was probably an awful chore for her, but I would have liked just a touch of freedom to have tried a few more things that I would know at least one other person in my house might have liked!

3. Loribeth has written (here and here) about Lena Dunham’s piece about her acceptance (probably) of a No Kidding journey. I would have missed it otherwise, so thanks Loribeth. There are a couple of lines in Dunham’s article that were notable. The first was intensely familiar. “So why, if I craved it so much, would I be denied?” I remembered feeling that way, before I realised that there was no reason, that the world is random, and that there was no judgement.

4. She finished her piece with a second comment I loved:

“The irony is that knowing I cannot have a child—my ability to accept that and move on—may be the only reason I deserve to be anyone’s parent at all. I think I finally have something to teach somebody.”

This resonates with me a lot. Knowing what I know now, having gone through loss and grief and grown so much as a result, I’d have been a much better mother. Shrug. Oh well. It’s one of the reasons why I blog here.

5. Finally, I have to add that I’ve been struggling lately. Struggling to blog, and struggling to keep up with the rest of this No Kidding blogging community (let alone my other ALI blogger friends). I just don’t seem to have the time. There’s been so much other stuff to read this last year (gee, I wonder why?) that my blog reading and general book reading has suffered badly. Add to that the fact that I’ve found a new hobby, which I will blog about at some stage either here or at A Separate Life, we’re busy cleaning up father-in-law’s house and estate and preparing for sale, and more recently, that we’ve finally been able to travel (domestically). I hope to get to pay more attention to the No Kidding community soon. In the meantime, I’m grateful if you’ve stuck with me.