I Heart Me, Week 5 - How Do You Blog?

This post is for Notes' weekly "I Heart Me" Linky. This week's question is "How Do You Blog"? Click on the image below to see what everyone else has linked up:

It is probably painfully clear to anyone that has been following this blog for a while that I am not the most consistent of bloggers. Phases of great enthusiasm follow deep troughs of apathy. Life is often busy enough - I simply don't have the time, or perhaps the discipline or inclination to blog it as well! (Last week's question being a case in point - simply didn't get round to it, sorry Notes!)

To me that is ok - the last thing I want is for blogging to become a chore - there seems very little point in putting something up half-heartedly for the sake of it. By definition then, blogging is something snatched and random - a moment when I have a few minutes to think, either when the kids are watching some TV, or in my lunch break at work.

Some posts will have been brewing for a while, whereas others are spontaneous and written down in seconds flat (and usually tagged with "rushed post" in the hope that anyone reading might forgive its slightly more rough and ready nature!). Some posts will have a very defined purpose, a point I wish to make - more often than not, however, they end in a random, meandering sort of wondering as my mind flits on to the next subject...

#SilentSunday - An Evening to Myself

I ♥ Me - Week 3

This week's question by the lovely Notes is:

What Mummy/Parenting behaviours ignores your me, making you want to laugh, scream or cry?

You know what it's like, I'm sure - as a surly teenager pretty much everything your parents do is "Unfair" - the things they make you do, or don't let you do, are done purely out of spite. Their sole purpose and aim in life is to make your life a misery, right?

As you grow older, maybe you mellow somewhat - come to realise that they had some good intentions behind what you considered to be their totally unreasonable expectations. However, there are still some things that you vow you will "never do when you have your own children". After a while, maybe you are lucky enough to become a parent yourself. You tell yourself you won't stress about what they do or don't eat... you won't get overprotective and react like a frightened mother hen when they step near the precipice.... you won't...oh... wait...

Because that's the thing about parenting - a certain amount of it is learned behaviours. Maybe you did decide to become a strict disciplinarian in rebellion against your parents' hippy, laissez-faire attitudes... maybe you buy televisions for every room in the house because your parents did not let you watch ITV as a child...or maybe you just have a strange aversion to wax crayons. However, deep down, I bet you still sing the lullabys your mother sang you, insist your child wears a vest if it falls below 18 degrees C, or holiday in caravans - because it's what you learnt as a child.

Occasionally it makes me scream at myself in frustration when I hear myself uttering the phrases - "hold my hand, this is a busy road", "are you going to finish that", or "do I have to say everything three times?!", and I think "I sound just like my mother".

Then I laugh, and think "Yeah, I probably do...and it's not actually that bad..."

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Now run along and click on the badge at the top and pop over to her blog to see what everyone else has linked up!

Silent Sunday - The Shame

Compatibility Dot Com

Miki, via Flickr

The husband and I were sat watching telly last night when an advert for one of those online dating websites came on. Spurred on by the promises of true love and real compatibility, Mr B looked at me and said;

 "I wonder if we would have come up as compatible if we had joined one of those dating websites?"
"What would you have put as your interests?", I wondered.
He had a think, and replied: "Skiing, Cars, Hockey, Slouching in front of the TV".
"Well, on that last one I guess we would have been ok..." I pondered; "...but I guess it's probably a bit more complicated than that these days. They probably use sophisticated algorithms based on multiple choice questions like whether you like animals...or stuff..."

As you can tell by the conversation, I've never had to use a dating website (ah, the delights of meeting your partner in the days when all it took was a drunken snog in a bar), but it did get me wondering on two counts; firstly, what sort of questions do get asked on dating websites to determine if you are compatible with someone (I was unable to ascertain this without registering on them, which seemed a little excessive even in the interests of research) and secondly, what compatibility is all about anyway.

It's fair to say that I had little or no interest in either skiing or hockey when I first met Mr B. He has since reluctantly dragged me onto the ski slopes (the things you do for love, eh?), and gave up playing hockey a long time ago. To be fair, he probably didn't share my love of women's shoes or yoga either. However, there's more to compatibility than the same hobbies - it's about a shared outlook on life, an ability to make each other laugh, and shared experiences. Physical attraction can never be of any harm either I suppose!

I guess at the end of the day a dating website (or newspaper ad, or any other form of matchmaking) is only a way of bringing people together - what people then do with that is up to them. Maybe it is just the modern equivalent of kissing a few frogs before finding a prince...