Hi! Hi! Hi!
How are you? Are you well?! I am well! Well.. wellish. To tell the complete truth I have had a sore throat for a few days and am feeling a wee bit poorly and achy. Hopefully a nice resty day with my peeps will cure all. I hope! Are you okay? I hope you are!
Do you know what I was thinking about when I woke up? I was thinking about how, when I had had a sick day from school… or needed a note for anything, my Mum used to write in on a lovely blank illustrated card and send it on to school. And she wrote it with a fancy pen. Maybe a fountain pen with green ink. At the time, all I wanted was for her to write it on some crappy piece of paper (hopefully a bit screwed up) with a biro, and shove it in a dog-eared envelope. That’s the way the other kids rode.
Instead I got the cards. I would take them up to the teacher, who would open the card in front of the class and smile… and put it away. And everyone would ask me ‘Is it the teacher’s birthday?’ and I would say ‘No (sigh)’. Then they would look at me funny. At the time, I thought it was embarrassing. But NOW I think… GO MUM! She liked to do things differently, in her own way, with a bit of flair. My Mum liked nice stationery and beautiful things, that’s how she rode (and still does ride!) She did not care to follow convention. I think that if you want to raise kids who will be good problem solvers and creative beings, it’s really important to defy convention.
I think that we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to slot in, to form a line and to do things perfectly (like they are on tv, in magazines or in other people’s perfect lives). There are fashions and conventions we might try to follow, because that’s how everyone else is doing it. But don’t you think it’s better to shake things up a bit, to think about the best and most pleasurable ways to get things done. And to do things like that?
It’s nice to have a perfect dinner party… but maybe it’s just as nice (even nicer?!) to invite all your friends for pot-luck and to sit on the floor and have your shoes off? And maybe the food doesn’t need to be perfect, just plentiful? And maybe you might forget to serve the dessert because you were to busy chatting and sipping? And maybe those are the kind of friends you really need, the shoes-off, chatty, forgetful type? Do you think? Maybe you are shoes on… but totally into plenty and sip? That is good too!
Maybe you don’t want your house to look like the pages of ‘Fabarooni Casa’ magazine? Maybe the clothes in ‘Lady Chi-Chi’ leave you cold? Maybe you serve straight from the pot, unlike the spreads in ‘Yummyesque’? I think you should do stuff the way you want. There is nothing more refreshing than someone who is bold and brave and smiles in the face of convention. Cut loose, I say!
What do you think?! Do you like to do things in your very own way? Even a few tiny things that only you notice?!
xx Pip