I am sorry to have to tell you this, dear readers. It will shock you to hear it. My wife is lazy. There, i have said it, its out in the open. She seems to be insisting on taking the *whole* gestation period of an average women before giving birth. I mean, seriously folks, do i look like someone with a long attention span?
Apparently it is not appropriate for me to attempt to "unwrap" my new baby early. I feel like my life is in a very strange kind of Christmas Eve twilight zone in which I get myself briefly over excited at the thought of presents and then feel worn out and drift off to sleep, waking to discover not that Christmas Day has arrived but that I have succeded in sleeping for a full two minutes.
In other baby news, we had a vistiation from the Head of Midwifery the other day to discuss our "particular issues". Despite fears that we were going to have to do battle with a dragon over a whole range of issues (e.g. in an emergency, if wife had to be sliced, i would not leave her alone in the hospital as she would then panic - hence if hospital insisted that i could not stay outside visiting hours we would discharge her) they were brillant! They accepted each and every one of our issues, and even gave us the top lady's mobile number in case we encountered any problems and needed her to tell people that she has agreed to meet our requirments. Hopefully of course it won't come to that. I am, at any rate, planning a pain free birth (for me, if not the long suffering wife) at home, where i can surf the net and read books in comfort whilst throwing in the odd soothing comment such as "there, there dear" and "ohhh that's got to smart".
In other news I did a web search today to see if I could find some more information on the problem of evil - the topic result for my search criteria was indeed an interesting starting point to any approach to the topic - unfortunatly however it didn't move my thinking on substantially as it was my own blog post!!
yours as ever,
Bored and Broke,
the Broken Man
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Christmas. Show all posts
Thursday, 27 November 2008
Saturday, 25 October 2008
Soften (and Brighten) my World
I went Christmas shopping today - I'm trying to get most of it done before the baby is born, as I suspect there won't be much time afterwards. I didn't actually manage to find much, but I never do first time out.
However, as a by-product of the Christmas shopping, I continued my long-running search for soft baby socks. We have been given loads of clothes by people who have had children, but socks are the one thing we are short of. Personally, I prefer to be barefoot, and certainly wouldn't go down the pram-shoes/crawlers route, but being practical, this baby is going to be born in the depths of winter, and probably will need some form of sock to keep warm.
I have got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about things being soft and lovely next to the baby's skin - it's part sentimental, I admit, but part practical; Broken Man and I both have allergies, and I can't help thinking soft against delicate skin must be better than crunchy. So began the hunt for soft socks. I can't find any anywhere - maybe cotton does soften up after a few washes, but what if it doesn't? The terry towelling ones start off *really* hard and quite horrible. I found some today which were velour, and thought that, at last, my search was over - but, no, the insides were terry.
Broken Man has some gloriously soft bamboo socks, but I can't find any for babies. I was given some lovely "feather-feel" socks for Christmas last year which would be perfect - but they don't make them for babies.
I was getting very confused. I now have sleepsuits and babygrows in fluffy fleece, buttery organic cotton, silky soft velour and the most amazing furry material, so what's the problem with socks? I had a revelation when I got home and started hanging out some latest batch of baby clothes I had washed. Some of them were inside out, and I realised that (with the exception of the organic cotton) the insides felt nothing like the outside!
The whole thing is a vicious marketing scam. The shops know that we want our babies to feel soft and lovely, and they have made the outsides of their garments wonderfully tactile - without a thought for the baby inside them. It's purely for the benefit of the adult!
It's the same with colour. I know that babies don't really see colour very effectively - I believe they can see black, white and red, but I'm sure that someone will correct me if I'm wrong, so why are all baby clothes (as Broken Man puts it) "offensively pastel"?
I thought perhaps it was the choice of the lovely people who gave us the clothes, so I thought we might treat ourselves to one set of clothes in some nice bright shades that *we* like (as the baby clearly won't have a preferance!). Perhaps some nice bright purples, reds, turquoise....
Again it appears that the shops have decided that people like to see babies in pastels (or white), and the only places you can buy bright baby clothes are from designer and specialist websites, where you could happily pay upwards of £20 for one babygrow. My sister has swapped her designer handbag obsession for a designer babygrow obsession and has very kindly bought us a few - but I object to anyone wasting so much money on something the baby will wear for maybe a month!
I think I will start dying my own - I'm not going to be dictated to by Mothercare! :) And on the sock front, my lovely mother-in-law foolishly offered to knit some things for the baby, so I have bought some feather-feel "wool" and will be setting her to work!
Broken Man's Wife
However, as a by-product of the Christmas shopping, I continued my long-running search for soft baby socks. We have been given loads of clothes by people who have had children, but socks are the one thing we are short of. Personally, I prefer to be barefoot, and certainly wouldn't go down the pram-shoes/crawlers route, but being practical, this baby is going to be born in the depths of winter, and probably will need some form of sock to keep warm.
I have got a bit of a bee in my bonnet about things being soft and lovely next to the baby's skin - it's part sentimental, I admit, but part practical; Broken Man and I both have allergies, and I can't help thinking soft against delicate skin must be better than crunchy. So began the hunt for soft socks. I can't find any anywhere - maybe cotton does soften up after a few washes, but what if it doesn't? The terry towelling ones start off *really* hard and quite horrible. I found some today which were velour, and thought that, at last, my search was over - but, no, the insides were terry.
Broken Man has some gloriously soft bamboo socks, but I can't find any for babies. I was given some lovely "feather-feel" socks for Christmas last year which would be perfect - but they don't make them for babies.
I was getting very confused. I now have sleepsuits and babygrows in fluffy fleece, buttery organic cotton, silky soft velour and the most amazing furry material, so what's the problem with socks? I had a revelation when I got home and started hanging out some latest batch of baby clothes I had washed. Some of them were inside out, and I realised that (with the exception of the organic cotton) the insides felt nothing like the outside!
The whole thing is a vicious marketing scam. The shops know that we want our babies to feel soft and lovely, and they have made the outsides of their garments wonderfully tactile - without a thought for the baby inside them. It's purely for the benefit of the adult!
It's the same with colour. I know that babies don't really see colour very effectively - I believe they can see black, white and red, but I'm sure that someone will correct me if I'm wrong, so why are all baby clothes (as Broken Man puts it) "offensively pastel"?
I thought perhaps it was the choice of the lovely people who gave us the clothes, so I thought we might treat ourselves to one set of clothes in some nice bright shades that *we* like (as the baby clearly won't have a preferance!). Perhaps some nice bright purples, reds, turquoise....
Again it appears that the shops have decided that people like to see babies in pastels (or white), and the only places you can buy bright baby clothes are from designer and specialist websites, where you could happily pay upwards of £20 for one babygrow. My sister has swapped her designer handbag obsession for a designer babygrow obsession and has very kindly bought us a few - but I object to anyone wasting so much money on something the baby will wear for maybe a month!
I think I will start dying my own - I'm not going to be dictated to by Mothercare! :) And on the sock front, my lovely mother-in-law foolishly offered to knit some things for the baby, so I have bought some feather-feel "wool" and will be setting her to work!
Broken Man's Wife
Friday, 18 July 2008
Christmas - In A Box
I am a reasonable man. Really I am. Some might, at a push, describe me as someone who is reasonably in tune with women. I know that the best cure for a broken heart is chocolate. I know accessories matter. I am not insensitive to these things. Yet, having spent another evening in a stifling hot loft trying to pack up boxes and mark them with whether they will be needed in the next three years or not, I found myself truly stumped by a conversation I had with my wife:
Wife – What are you doing with those Christmas Decorations?
Me - I am putting them all into one box.
Wife – They don’t go in one box.
Me - They haven’t in the past, no, but we are trying to minimise the amount of boxes we have.
Wife – The decorations are different colours and we rotate them. They need to be in different boxes so they don’t get muddled up.
Me - Surely if the decorations are different colours, it will be easy to identify which ones go with which colour scheme?
Wife – If they are in the same box we might be tempted to use them together and mess up the scheme.
Me – But you decorate the tree, and you won’t be tempted to use the two colour schemes together so there wont be a problem…
Wife – They go in different boxes…
Me – We also appear to have six sets of Christmas fairy lights; which ones do you want to keep?
Dear reader, I am sure you can imagine how the rest of the conversation went. It seems in two areas my wife is obsessional – Christmas tree decorations (with the attached insistence on a real tree that will drop pine needles around the entire house by magic - I swear I found one on top of a wardrobe last week!) and wrapping presents. I am certain that my wife spends more money each year on wrapping paper than I do on gifts. It’s my brothers birthday – I will get him a bottle of wine, on the way to his flat, three weeks after his birthday. My wife’s sister’s birthday will involve a three month scouring of the shops followed by a further two weeks searching for suitable wrapping paper, followed by an afternoon of careful wrapping and tying of bows.
Really, I try to understand, but I struggle; the wrapping doesn’t matter, surely it doesn’t...
As I write that line for a moment my mind drifts to (avert your eyes, bashful reader) my wife’s lingerie, and some of the, quite frankly, stunning “wrappings” she has covered herself in…hmmm…okay I can see that the wrapping can be worthwhile, I will let that one slide for now…but surely the Christmas tree decorations thing is a sign of mental instability?
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man
Wife – What are you doing with those Christmas Decorations?
Me - I am putting them all into one box.
Wife – They don’t go in one box.
Me - They haven’t in the past, no, but we are trying to minimise the amount of boxes we have.
Wife – The decorations are different colours and we rotate them. They need to be in different boxes so they don’t get muddled up.
Me - Surely if the decorations are different colours, it will be easy to identify which ones go with which colour scheme?
Wife – If they are in the same box we might be tempted to use them together and mess up the scheme.
Me – But you decorate the tree, and you won’t be tempted to use the two colour schemes together so there wont be a problem…
Wife – They go in different boxes…
Me – We also appear to have six sets of Christmas fairy lights; which ones do you want to keep?
Dear reader, I am sure you can imagine how the rest of the conversation went. It seems in two areas my wife is obsessional – Christmas tree decorations (with the attached insistence on a real tree that will drop pine needles around the entire house by magic - I swear I found one on top of a wardrobe last week!) and wrapping presents. I am certain that my wife spends more money each year on wrapping paper than I do on gifts. It’s my brothers birthday – I will get him a bottle of wine, on the way to his flat, three weeks after his birthday. My wife’s sister’s birthday will involve a three month scouring of the shops followed by a further two weeks searching for suitable wrapping paper, followed by an afternoon of careful wrapping and tying of bows.
Really, I try to understand, but I struggle; the wrapping doesn’t matter, surely it doesn’t...
As I write that line for a moment my mind drifts to (avert your eyes, bashful reader) my wife’s lingerie, and some of the, quite frankly, stunning “wrappings” she has covered herself in…hmmm…okay I can see that the wrapping can be worthwhile, I will let that one slide for now…but surely the Christmas tree decorations thing is a sign of mental instability?
Yours as ever,
The Broken Man
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