Keris Stainton's Blog, page 33

52 Books: Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin

I got this book from Netgalley for a couple of reasons. 1) I’ve heard a lot about Rubin’s previous book, The Happiness Project. 2) I’ve been trying to “sort out” our home lately and I figured I needed all the help I could get. At first I wasn’t at all sure. Rubin’s voice is very dry and I was worried the book would be entirely humourless, but as I read on, I found I got a bit… obsessed.

It’s not unlike me to become besotted with a book, but I’m not really sure why I ended up loving this one so much. I was right about Rubin – she doesn’t really do humour, she readily admits that she struggles in this area – but it ended up not bothering me at all. I liked her voice. I liked how she was honest about her own shortcomings and struggles and she had lots of good, sensible advice for being, you know, happier at home. Nothing earth-shattering, just little things that make you think.

Plus, the book actually contains some of the best relationship advice I’ve ever read. ‘Kiss in the morning, kiss at night’ speaks for itself, but really it’s easy to forget to do it (or rather, get out of the habit of doing it) (kissing, I mean). ‘Make the positive argument’ is the one that really resonated with me. Rubin says she can sometimes fall into a “spiral of criticism” about her husband, Jamie: “He annoys me by not answering me when I speak to him and that get me thinking about how he also annoyed me by not mailing an important form, and so on.” I do exactly this with David. He does something – however small – that annoys me and my brain immediately starts coming up with many, many other examples of annoyances and soon I’m chuntering to myself about how he always does something and never does something else. Rubin says: “When I caught myself thinking ‘Jamie isn’t very thoughtful,’ and my mind started kicking up examples of thoughtlessness, I contradicted myself with ‘Jamie is very thoughtful’ – and sure enough, I was able to come up with many examples of his thoughtful behaviour. ‘Jamie doesn’t enjoy celebrating holidays’; ‘Jamie does enjoy celebrating holidays.’ I could actually feel my opinion shift. It was almost uncanny.” Again, it’s a simple change, but one I can see myself making use of for, you know, ever. Or at least until David stops annoying me…

Beautiful boy

I know my posts have been very Harry and Joe heavy lately, but I just had to post this one. I took it today and I love it so much.

Four go (a bit) mad in a campervan

We’ve all fancied a go in a campervan for a while now. I love the look of them and Joe loves the Peppa Pig song (“We’re going on holiday… in a campervan.”) We’d put ‘Hire a Camper Van’ on our Summer To Do List and so I went about finding one.

We only wanted to try it out – we haven’t been camping so we weren’t sure how the boys would react to being so cooped up – so I booked a van for just one from Jolly Campervans. I went for The Baron, because it was the biggest and I figured the more space the better.

I booked the campsite at Malham Tarn, which I chose because it’s National Trust, so I figured it would be safe and professional. And then I got very overexcited. (We hadn’t told the boys about it; we wanted it to be a surprise.)

The week before we were due to go, I got an email from Jolly Campervans saying that as they’d been invited to go away while we had the van, would we like it for a bit longer for no extra charge? Well we weren’t going to turn that down. So on Sunday, we drove over to pick it up… and then took it to meet some friends for lunch nearby. (We met the friends, not the van.)

I loved it pretty much straight away, but David took a while to get used to driving it – no power steering, for one! The boys loved it too (although they seemed very far away):

After lunch, we drove home again to get used to it before taking it out on a site and, you know, sleeping in it. But the boys wanted another go (and so, for that matter, did I) so we drove to a nearby reservoir and watched the sun set while drinking van-made hot chocolate:

I’d booked a campsite near Morecambe for the next night and we spent most of the day meandering there. By the time we’d had dinner and all settled down in the van, the weather was a bit wild and I was nervous.

Harry had chosen to sleep in the roof and David volunteered to sleep up there with him, while Joe and I slept “downstairs.” I worried that the roof space would collapse and Harry and David would fall on us in the night, but, you know, that didn’t happen. It was rainy and very windy, but the boys slept well and I slept much better than I expected to, despite dreaming that the van had blown into the next field. I was woken by Joe saying, “Is it morning-time, Mama? Can we keep this camping van?”

It was a gorgeous morning and we ate bacon and eggs – cooked in the van (by David) – while watching the tide come in. Bliss.

We moseyed over to Malham and after a hairy drive up some steep and windy hills, found the campsite. It was a mudbath. The staff there said they’d find some hard-standing for us to park on and, once the staff had left for the day, we settled into a surprisingly cosy parking area.

We walked down to the Tarn itself to watch the sun set and it was utterly gorgeous.

Back in the van, Harry wanted me to sleep up in the roof with him, so I did, despite worrying that I would slide out of there during the night (only the blanket did, thank goodness). In the morning, we all had porridge and then set off for Saltaire. We’ve been before and love it, the bookshop in Salt’s Mill, especially.

We had time for dinner before returning the van, so we stopped off at a pub nearby (and I won a fiver on a quiz machine – result!) and then it was time to give The Baron back. None of us wanted to (it’s VERY unusual for David to wait until the last minute to return something – usually he thinks any holiday is over first thing on the last day, but we literally returned it the minute it was due).

Driving home in our own car, we talked about the brilliant time we’d had and when we’d be able to rent a van again. We’ll definitely be doing it. It’s one of the best things we’ve ever done.

Harry Reads to Joe

After reading yesterday that Save the Children have launched their first ever campaign to help UK families in poverty, Harry and I had a chat about what we could do to raise some money. I suggested a sponsored… something and though he was planning to break his own trampoline jumping record, we finally decided on a sponsored read.

One of the few items on our unschooling manifesto (I will get back to unschooling in another post, honest) was for Harry to read to Joe every day. I want Harry to get into the habit of reading every day and Joe likes a book at bedtime (of course), so why not combine the two?

So Harry is doing a Sponsored Read To Joe. He will read a book to Joe every day for the rest of September or until he reaches his target of £1,000. I’ll (try to remember to) take a photo every night, to prove he’s actually doing it and both boys will (probably) share their thoughts on the books too. So that I don’t fill this blog with updates, I’ve set up a new site (of course I have) – Harry Reads to Joe – and have added a link to the posts at the top of this page.

Oh and it would be completely wonderful if you could sponsor him.

Joe’s not wild about the idea, but he’ll get used to it. Maybe.

No more Page 3

My dad used to get The Sun. Page 3 girls were some of the first celebrities I ever realised were celebrities. I was a bit obsessed with them. Linda Lusardi. Suzanne Mizzi. Maria Whittaker. And, of course, eventually, Samantha Fox.

I used to stare at their photos. Not at their breasts – although I probably did a fair amount of staring at them too – but at everything: hair, faces, skin, make-up, teeth. They were so glamorous (they were glamour models, after all).

My mum didn’t buy women’s magazines, so I’m pretty sure the Page 3 Girls were the first images of women I was really familiar with. And, you know, they had no tops on. I can distinctly remember looking at myself in the bathroom mirror and posing like a glamour model. Turn to the side, boobs thrust out. Hands underneath the boobs to hoik them up (this is also how I came to mentally design my amazing hands-holding-boobs bikini top. I couldn’t believe no one had already thought of it. Jeez.)

When the America astronaut Sally Ride died recently, I saw lots of tweets from American women saying she was their role model when they were growing up. I’d never heard of her, but I’ve since learned she was amazing. I wish I’d heard of her when I was growing up, but I don’t remember ever seeing her in The Sun. Even if she had been featured, I doubt I would have noticed her – it was the pictures that leapt out at me. Particularly when they took up an entire page.

When I started writing this post, I googled Maria Whittaker because I remembered her being the Page 3 Girl I most wanted to look like (the women with the unfeasibly large boobs were always my favourites, because I had unfeasibly large boobs – or, at least, I thought I did – so they gave me hope) and I learned that she made her Page 3 debut in 1985 when she was 16. I stared at that for a long time, blinking. She was 16. She was in a national newspaper, topless, for men to drool over and say “Look at the tits on that.” That’s what she was there for. There’s no possible other interpretation. (Is there?) A sixteen year old. In a newspaper. For the sole purpose of sexual objectification.

Please go and read Lucy-Anne Holmes’ post for Bea. And then please sign the petition.

Homeschooling Harry

Towards the end of last term, when Harry was at home one day a week, I already felt like it wasn’t enough, we’d end up wanting more. At the last meeting I had with Harry’s Head Teacher, I floated the idea of full-time homeschooling, but I wanted to try it… it’s seems like such a big decision to go for it without really knowing whether or not it’s going to work. I wanted the Head to offer me, say, the school equivalent of a career break: Yep, take three months or six and, if you’re not happy, you can come back. She didn’t do that. But, of course, I knew Harry could go back anytime, maybe not to that class, that school, but to, you know, proper school.

Anyway, Harry and I talked about it and said that we’d see how we went on over the summer and if, come September, we wanted him to stay home, he could stay home. Great. But that’s not really how my mind works, so over the summer I fretted and read and talked to friends. Could we really give up school completely? Could I really homeschool? And then, after lots of reading (of books and blogs), could we unschool?

Everything I read about unschooling sounded right to me. I love the idea of it and I feel that it would be brilliant for Harry, but it’s just so radical. Although even from the one day a week I knew that, at home, Harry resists anything that smacks of me teaching him. (This, I’ve learned, is very common in homeschoolers!)

We’ve had a brilliant summer. We’ve had a holiday, yes, but we’ve also had lots of days out and lots of lovely days at home. Harry and Joe have got on brilliantly and we’ve (finally) managed to get ourselves into a routine that seems to work really well. One morning at the beginning of August, I was sitting in bed reading a book and drinking tea. Harry came and snuggled in with me with the iPad. Joe was still sleeping. And I thought “I wish life could be like this all the time.” And then I thought “Why can’t it?”

More soon… obviously

N.B. Given that I received some obnoxious comments on my flexischool posts, I’m wary of comments on this one. But this is my blog. Rude/abusive/obnoxious comments won’t be tolerated. So be nice, ‘kay?

30 years on…

We were in a cafe last week and they had a bookcase with novels and magazines you could help yourself to. I spotted a couple of National Geographics that turned out to be from 1982. One of them had a feature about Silicon Valley (you can read the full article here). It was this next bit that really leapt out at me though (click to embiggen).

Co-founder of Apple Computer, 27-year-old Steven Jobs…

I only really became familiar with Steve Jobs in the last five or so years. I don’t really remember much about Apple and I certainly don’t remember him being “Steven” or having long hair. I stared at the magazine, thinking since this magazine came out, he turned Apple into such a ridiculous success, co-founded Pixar, became this huge business and creative icon… and died.

David said, “Well, yeah. It’s been 30 years. A lot can happen in 30 years.” And I get that. I know that. But lately my favourite quote – from Mary Oliver’s The Summer Day – has been running through my head: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

Steve Jobs died much too young. But he packed a hell of a lot into the thirty years since that magazine was published. There’s a man who knew just what to do with his one wild and precious life.

52 Books: The Diviners by Libba Bray

I was intrigued by The Diviners from the first time I heard about it. Not only because Libba Bray is an amazing writer, who manages to range between genres unscathed (selling millions of books will do that for a writer), but also because it’s set in New York in the 1920s. Of course I would want to read that. (The film rights sold for seven figures. That intrigued me too.)

All that aside, though, The Diviners isn’t the kind of book I’d usually read. Because it’s scary. I just watched the trailer – because I’d seen a few bloggers talking about it – and it almost made me wet myself. Genuinely. I actually thing the trailer is a LOT scarier than the book (there’s something about that creepy nursery rhyme singing…  shudder), but the book is indeed creepy. VERY creepy in parts.

BUT! I think you should read it anyway. Because it’s just a brilliant story, brilliantly written, with wonderful, convincing, characters. My only criticism is that I didn’t get the feel of New York in the same way I did with, say, The Alienist by Caleb Carr, but that may just have been me. Really looking forward to the next book in the series.

David tells a joke

Old, but appropriate, photo.

David: “How do you start a race in the Jelly Olympics?”

Harry: “I’ve never even heard of the Jelly Olympics!”

David: “Just pretend you have. So… how do you start a race in the Jelly Olympics?”

Harry: “I didn’t see an opening ceremony…”

David: “Oh forget it.”

(The answer is, of course, “Ready. Get set.” So not worth persevering with.)

What films should I have seen?

Citizen Kane. CBA.

Me and D were talking the other day about how we haven’t seen a lot of films we feel we shouldhave seen. I said I’d find a 100 Best Films list for us to work our way through (D said, “Don’t bother. It’ll only say Citizen Kane and I can’t be arsed.”).

There’s this one, which is all very… what’s the film equivalent of ‘muso’? Basically, we predominantly want to be entertained and a silent movie about the trial of Joan of Arc isn’t really up our street, you know?

So then I thought of Empire magazine. Bound to have done a list and it’s likely to be more populist than the BFI’s list, but I’ve just had a look and it’s so… male. I think there’s maybe five films in the Top 50 with a female lead.

I’m sure Goodfellas and The Matrix and Apocalypse Now are very good films, but light and shade, you know? I’ve accepted I’m finally going to have to watch The Godfather, is that not enough for you people?! (You top film compiling people, that is. Not you blog-reading people. You’re lovely.)

And I’ve just rejoined LoveFilm so Harry and I can have a Studio Ghibli film festival in September, so it seems like the time to watch some of the films we really should have seen by now.

So. Name some. Please. I trust you. (Unless you suggest Vanilla Sky, in which case… GO TO YOUR ROOM!)