Getting back to blogging

Yeah, I know, it's been four months since I last blogged on here. I'm a bad blogger, and you have my heartfelt apologies (all two or three of you).

I do however have a good excuse. It's because I've actually been doing things. Like, real things involving going out and everything! I know, I'm as shocked as you are. In my last post I mentioned that I was dealing with an organisation called Enabling Independence, but I've now been discharged from that service (and I'm missing the lovely Molly dreadfully!) because they felt I was doing so well. I'm now a lead volunteer at my local library, and I'm in charge of the library at Jack's school (on a volunteer basis, but believe me, I'd love to do this as a paid job). Oh, and I'm also thinking about being able to go back to work! That's been the biggest change, that I can think about working and not feel my heart racing and my lungs clamp shut from fear. Unfortunately what I'd love to do is work in a library, but I'm sure no-one needs reminding about the state of library funding these days. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm a lot closer than I was six months ago.

Somewhere I seem to have picked up some self-esteem too. I've looked in the mirror a couple of times lately and thought "Wow, I look really cute today.". It's a major difference for me. A couple of months ago I couldn't even accept a compliment without thinking that the complimenter was lying, and now I'm actually complimenting myself. When it happens I just want to cry with gratitude. I'm planning on writing a separate post about self image and body positivity though, so I'll expand on this a bit more there.

I have still had the odd bad day, it isn't all sunshine and kittens, especially now that it's October and bloody miserable (seriously, I'm starting to forget that the world has a colour other than grey). So while I am still having bad days they are far fewer in number and intensity, and I'm able to deal with them a lot better thanks to the CBT. When I do have bad days I make an effort to not beat myself up about it too much. I was feeling pretty crappy a couple of days ago so I posted a list I wrote of things to remember when I feel depressed.

I promise I'll try and blog a bit more regularly from now on!

How I'm Teaching My Sons About Consent

[Content note: rape]

I've been thinking about consent a lot lately, particularly with regards to children. There's a lot wrong with the way our society teaches about consent (e.g. it doesn't), but a big part of the problem is the examples we set, not just parents but anyone who has any kind of interaction with children. How many times have you seen someone tickling a child while the child laughs but also shouts for them to stop? How many times have you heard someone tell a child to give someone a hug when the child has expressed a wish not to? Or seen someone hug a child who is obviously squirming to get away?

All of these issues are matters of consent that we are teaching children about, whether we realise it or not. When you say to a child "Give your granny a kiss or she'll feel sad and think you don't love her any more." you're teaching your child that it's okay for people to emotionally blackmail you into physical contact, or that it's an acceptable thing to do to other people. When you keep tickling a child because you love the sound of their laughter you're teaching them that if you're bigger and stronger then it's okay to restrain someone and do things to them even though they're asking you not to.

As a parent to two young boys I am especially aware of these lessons. Messages about rape prevention are usually phrased as "Don't Get Raped", but I have the opportunity to teach "Don't Rape" instead. Obviously they're a little young for being told about actual rape yet, but there are things that Andy and I do that teach them positive messages about consent.

• If you're tickling someone and they say stop, you stop immediately.
• You ask before you hug or kiss someone, or climb on their lap.
• If someone asks you to hug, kiss, or touch them and you don't want to, you are absolutely allowed to say no, and to enforce that no by pushing them away if you have to. Surprisingly this doesn't mean that they've ended up smacking the crap out of a grandparent for being too pushy with the hugs.
• When they're in the bath we hand them the sponge and tell them they can ask if they need any help. We never wash any part of them without their permission.
• If they ask for privacy when using the bathroom we let them have it, and the same goes for getting undressed.
• We ask their permission before taking photos of them. If they're doing something and we don't want to disturb them we'll take the photo and ask later if they are happy for us to keep it.
• We never upload photos to social media sites without their permission, and we never upload them to anywhere publicly accessible.

Adam and Jack are only young children at the moment so these rules will obviously change as they get older, but they're a good starting point for teaching them that they have to respect other people's personal space. It might sound like our house is devoid of hugs and physical affection, but I assure you that the opposite is true. Adam and Jack are extraordinarily affectionate, particularly Jack, but they know what the boundaries are, and they don't cross them.

At 4 and 7 years old they already understand the meaning of "No" with regards to physical contact, so why the hell do so many grown men have such a problem with it?

An Open Letter To The Girl Who Oinked At Me

[Content note: fat shaming, self-harm, anxiety, disordered eating]

To "the girl who oinked at me in South Kensington tube station",

I'm sorry for the impersonal greeting there, but obviously, I don't know your name. I suppose I could call you "the vicious, spiteful little fucker", but that hardly narrows it down, does it? Still, it's more polite than the way you greeted me yesterday - by walking right up to me, oinking in my face and laughing with your friends as you walked off.

I get it, I'm fat. Fat people are stereotyped as pigs. Ha ha.

Did you happen to notice that I had my husband and four year old son with me? You may not have done because they were a little bit in front of me, and you no doubt had your hands full trying to manage walking and preparing for your hilarious joke at the same time. I know, these things are hard when you have the intellect of a gnat. Anyway, when we had our oh-so-funny run-in, I was on my way home from spending an afternoon out at a museum with my husband and our youngest son. It was the first time in six months that I'd felt brave enough to go anywhere on a train, and it was the first time in more than a year that I'd been able to take my son somewhere like that.

I find these things hard to do because of arseholes like you. To you, it's just a quick joke, "Ha ha, let's make fun of the fatty!", but to me it's another three weeks stuck at home because I don't want to risk getting similar abuse.

Did you happen to notice the scars on my arms? They're from cutting myself; I started at the age of 12 because of bullies like you.

Did you see that I was staring at the ground, not daring to look up in case I saw someone looking disgusted at me? I kinda think you did. It would explain why you got so close, just so I would be sure to realise that it was me you were directing your abuse towards.

I'm sure you're thinking "It was just a joke, how could I know any of this stuff? I was just messing around!" You couldn't have known that I frequently have days of starving myself, of not eating for 36 hours at a time, as a punishment for anything and everything. You couldn't have known that your 'silly little joke' would cause me to have a panic attack on the train. And that's entirely the fucking point. When you do things like this, you don't know what the other person is going through; you don't know what your little joke might do to someone, SO DON'T DO IT.

The thing is though, the fact that I'm fat was the only thing that you knew about me, and it is by far the least important. I am also an excellent baker. I enjoy crocheting, even if I'm not very good yet. I watch It's A Wonderful Life every Christmas Eve with my husband and I cry like a baby every time. I have several first edition Stephen King books. I am a wife, and a mother, and I am loved. I am human.

And now, you obnoxious privileged brat, I'm going to let go. I refuse to give you any more space in my head, and I won't let you push me into staying home for weeks. I am entitled to exist in a public space even though I am fat.

I hope one day you look back on what you did with shame.

Yours sincerely,

Feminist Cupcakes

Anxiety, And A New Psychiatrist

I started seeing an NHS psychiatrist just before Christmas, and I think she's the first psychiatrist I've seen who I actually liked. So of course, she left and I'm now seeing someone else. I had my first appointment with him last week and it was just awful. I went in expecting a quick "How are you doing? Here's some more medication." but he opened with "Tell me about your childhood."

Fuck.

Nothing makes my mind go blank quicker than a question like that, especially when it's asked by someone I don't know or trust. I stammered out a couple of sentences about it being normal because as I say, I don't know or trust this guy yet, he can't possibly expect me to tell him about the screaming, and fear, and threats of abandonment, right?

He asked what my diagnosis was and when I said Borderline Personality Disorder, depression, and anxiety, he muttered something about everyone being able to fit some symptoms of personality disorders, and some doctors don't really believe in them.

When he asked me about Adam and Jack I started crying. Feeling like a crap mother because of my mental health problems is a big trigger for me, and I hate to cry in front of people, so you can see how much fun that was to go through.

He wants me to do an independence course, art therapy, an online mood gym... It's just too much right now. It sounds so pathetic, but I just want to be left alone. I could probably do one of those things at a time, but just the thought of having to do all of that, and interact with that many new people, is making my chest tighten and my heart race. I know I should be grateful that he wants to help me, and that these resources are there, but I just don't feel like I can manage that much at once. It feels like there are all these people in my life telling me what I should do, and I don't feel in control of it any more.

Things that are making me anxious today:

• My flat is a mess, there is stuff everywhere, and the bathroom smells of cats (I don't have cats, but I do have two young boys with aiming problems).
• We can't afford swimming lessons for both Adam and Jack, so it's just Adam getting them at the moment, and I worry that Jack is going to miss out.
• I have to pick Adam up from school this afternoon because Andy has to take Jack to a birthday party.
• Climate change (don't laugh, the weather is fucked at the moment and it makes me worry about what the world will be like when my kids are adults).
• That I'm fucking up my children just by being their mother.

The Grungiest Carpet You Will Ever See

That right there is what my living room carpet looked like this evening. It's seven years of children spilling food on it, peeing on it, trampling mud over it, and throwing up on it. We've had a rug over it for a while, but the room just isn't big enough for the rug not to get in the way of something or other, so we chucked it in the loft with the rest of the crap we don't use. After having a clean(ish) rug down though, the carpet looks worse than ever, and I just can't take it any more.

When something gets too grungy for even me to put up with, something has to be done about it. We've tried commercial carpet cleaners; the person we paid to do it only charged us half price because he couldn't get the stains out (it was cleaner, just not clean).

A couple of weeks ago Adam threw up in the hall, right after he drank a strawberry and banana smoothie. I was convinced that we'd have a pink stain on the carpet forever, but I dumped a load of bicarbonate of soda (or baking soda for any Americans reading) on the stain, left it for half an hour or so, swept it up and then gave it a scrub with a mix of washing up liquid (I use Ecover), white vinegar, and hot water.* Not only did it get the strawberry coloured vomit out, it the patch I scrubbed was cleaner than the rest of the carpet. Unfortunately I then felt obligated to clean the rest of the hall carpet because it looked so awful in comparison to the one clean spot.

Don't scrub a carpet with a nail brush.
This is a week later and I still have a hole in my knuckle where the blister was.

Seeing as the hall carpet came up so nicely I figured I'd try the same thing on the living room. I'm doing it in parts rather than all at one time, so I started with the worst area - right in front of the sofa.

I actually used a plastic scrubbing brush this time, so no more blisters (but the one from last week stung like fuck when I put it in the vinegar), and it looks so much better now!

You can actually see the line where I stopped cleaning.

It's not spotlessly clean, I don't think it ever will be, but it's a damn sight cleaner than it was.

I may not have picked the best time to do this though. Andy's just called to say he's on his way home from Woodcraft Folk with Adam and Jack and they got so muddy that Jack even has some on his nose. I think I might cry.

*I don't use precise measurements for this 'recipe'. I just use a squirt of washing up liquid and a glug of white vinegar in a mop bucket and fill it just over halfway with water. If you have a carpet cleaner, it would probably be worth going over the carpet with it filled with plain water afterwards, just to give it a bit of a rinse.

The Very Easy Caterpillar

I probably should have ironed this before taking photos. And maybe cleaned the rug.

I made the most adorable t-shirt for Jack this evening. I found the idea here, via Pinterest (where else?), to make a Very Hungry Caterpillar from buttons. I've been meaning to get around to it for ages but I didn't have any buttons, so when I was at my mother-in-law's house this afternoon I asked if she had any red and green buttons I could have. She has several plastic bags full of buttons, so I wasn't too surprised when I found what I was looking for.

This is the easiest thing I've ever made. You just sew on the buttons and use black embroidery thread for the antennae. I can't wait to see how it looks on Jack tomorrow.

Pinterest And Pyjamas

As I mentioned in this post about Lego, I don't do sewing; the bags I made for that project was the first time I had ever used a sewing machine. When I saw this post from Pinstrosity challenging their readers to actually do a project they have pinned I figured I'd give it a shot.

I decided to make a pair of pyjamas for Jack. I used this tutorial from My Cotton Creations, and I used a gorgeously soft and fluffy fleece fabric (with a very cute dinosaur print!).

I have to say, this tutorial is amazing. It's so easy to follow, even for a complete beginner like me. The only problem I had was hemming the bottom cuffs as they were so small! Next time I might hem them before I sew them up. With a bigger child it probably wouldn't be a problem though.

I'm not sure if one leg is actually longer than the other or if it's just the way they're laid out.

I need to clean my rug.

And here they are being worn!

His favourite AC/DC song is Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

I think they turned out really well! I figured seeing as I could do the bottoms I'd have a go at the top too. I used a free pattern from Melly Sews for the basic shape. It unfortunately doesn't come with any instructions on how to sew it together though, and being the complete novice that I am I had no idea what to do. Back to Pinterest to find a tutorial on how to put it all together. I found this great tutorial from Dana Made It on how to sew on sleeves, and this Craftstylish post on how to sew a neckline.

After stabbing myself in the hands with pins several dozen times, I got it finished without bleeding all over it!

Maybe I should have picked up the fabric scraps from the floor before I took a photo.

I don't know how well it shows in these pictures but I did have some problems with the armpits and the neckline is a little wide, but it isn't a problem on this top as Jack hates having tight neck holes pulled over his head.

I think overall this was a success. I'm very proud of myself for managing to make something wearable on my first try, and most importantly Jack loves them.

I cropped his head out intentionally. I'm not that bad with a camera.

Lego: organising and storing

Everyone knows that unexpectedly standing on Lego hurts. It's therefore a massive pain in the arse that the stuff resists organising. No matter how much space you devote to it, it still ends up overflowing onto the floor and rattling up the vacuum cleaner. Despite knowing that I was fighting a losing battle I spent the week or so after Christmas sorting and organising Adam and Jack's Lego collection. I haven't bothered before now because it was only Adam collecting it, but when they got five Lego sets between them for Christmas this year I knew I would have to do something about it.

I really wish I had taken photos of how it looked before, but I don't have a great capacity for public humiliation so it's probably a good thing I don't. They had two of these boxes from Ikea full to the brim, which obviously meant that the pieces kept falling out through the handle holes, and a slightly smaller plastic box also full. Their instruction books were stuffed in another box and getting ripped and lost, it was just a giant mess.

The first thing I did was to sort the bricks, mostly by colour. I put all the red bricks in one box, green in another, blue in another.

That was when I realised that I didn't have enough boxes for every category that I wanted. I ended up mixing black and white, yellow and orange, and dark and light grey.

Photography skillz: I has none.

I still didn't have enough boxes. Dammit. I ended up putting the rest of the bricks into separate plastic bags in the top of the boxes as a temporary solution.

In case you're wondering how long it took me (us actually, Andy and Adam helped. Jack mostly got in the way) to sort all this, we did seven hours the first two days and three hours on the third day. Yes, 17 hours of nothing but sorting Lego bricks. It's a good thing I don't care what my nails look like at the moment. (A word of advice on the nails thing. If you're going to do this, wait until after you've finished sorting to trim your nails. I did it after the first day and couldn't separate any bricks afterwards.)

It took about a day to realise that the plastic bags would have to be a very temporary solution when the bag with the pink and purple bricks leaked into the red box. I decided that I'd have to use bags because we simply don't have the space for any more furniture in their bedroom, so I figured I'd make some drawstring bags. People who actually know me in real life may be laughing their asses off right now because I don't do sewing. Seriously, I don't think I've ever even sewn on a button before (shut up, I know that's pathetic.) So, after yet another trip to Ikea (I think 95% of our stuff comes from there) to get a sewing machine and some fabric, and a quick read through of these sewing tips for beginners I started to make my bags.

The first thing I learned was to sew the channel for the drawstring before sewing the sides together. Once I got the hang of it they really didn't take very long. Of course they're not perfect but I'm pretty pleased with them.

I said they weren't perfect. At least this goes on the inside.

Ignore the dingy carpet. Please. It's gross.

Andy very kindly did the drawing on the bags to show which bricks are inside.

The last thing to do was organise the instruction books, which I did by putting them in plastic pockets in large ring binders.

So my floors are now Lego free and I can walk around barefoot again. I'll let you know how long it lasts.