My School Holiday Pet Hate

Posted by Confessions of a single mum in Latest Posts, Single Mum Ramblings | 7 comments

If there is one thing I hate about school holidays it’s the feeding them bit. Yes I know it’s my parental duty to keep them alive and food is one of the important ones but give me a break. At least when they are at school there are only so many hours that they are home to ask for food. School holidays they always seem extra hungry and trying to fill them up is just a relentless task.

The Big Blue Slide

Posted by Confessions of a single mum in Latest Posts, Single Mum Ramblings | 1 comment

It’s a sad but also happy day in our house, actually garden, today. Ten years ago, when I was still married, we bought our son a slide. Not any old slide but one that would last awhile. Little did I realise that many years later I would be trying to convince my son it was time the slide moved on. This week the slide is going and it has been a long process to convince him he no longer needed a huge great big blue slide in the garden.

The Green Issue Generations Before

Posted by Confessions of a single mum in Being Green, Latest Posts | 0 comments

I had the following sent in an email and thought it was worth sharing as it makes you think.

In the line at the supermarket, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized to him and explained, “We didn’t have the green thing back in my day.”

The checkout responded, “That’s our problem today.  Your generation did not care enough to save our environment.”

He was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day.

Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the shop. The shop sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over.  So they really were recycled.

But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocers and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go half a mile.

But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby’s nappies because we didn’t have the throw-away kind.  We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry the clothes.  Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But that old lady is right; we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the Wales .

In the kitchen, we blended and stirred by hand because we didn’t have electric machines to do everything for us.

When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used a wadded up old newspaper to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap.

Back then, we didn’t fire up an engine and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power.  We exercised by working so we didn’t need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But she’s right; we didn’t have the green thing back then.

We drank from a tap when we were thirsty instead of a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water.

We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But we didn’t have the green thing back then.

Back then, people took the bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their mums into a 24-hour taxi service.

We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances.  And we didn’t need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 2,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest pizza joint.

But isn’t it sad the current generation laments how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn’t have the green thing back then?

Twitter – I think I love you

Posted by Confessions of a single mum in Latest Posts, Single Mum Ramblings | 5 comments

I know it’s dangerous for me to watch DIY SOS and this week’s episode was no different. The team helped a single mum and her autistic son.  Queue tissues on the screen and on my sofa. All they did was to make her life easier, to make her house a home.

Persil, can small and mighty do the job?

Posted by Confessions of a single mum in Latest Posts, Reviews | 0 comments

When I was offered Persil’s Small and Mighty to try out I was a little dubious. Having only used non-smelly washing tablets was I about to inflict days of inching on the kids and I? Would it actually deliver what it says on the bottle, small and mighty even in 30 minutes? Make the children into cart wheeling smiley children?

Only one way to find out.

I Just Embarrassed Myself

Posted by Confessions of a single mum in Latest Posts, Single Mum Ramblings | 0 comments

When I was young, my mother would to take me to the library. It was a place I knew that as soon as we walked through the door talk was minimal and in hushed tones. The only thing you could hear was the clank of the library clerks’ machine as she checked books out.

Me in Cycling Shorts in Public

Posted by Confessions of a single mum in Latest Posts, Single Mum Ramblings | 0 comments

Divorcing a mountain bike enthusiast 10 years ago I thought I was able to hang up cycling shorts for good.  Seems this isn’t so, when a kind friend offered me their old bike in ear shot of my daughter. To my surprise she got all enthusiastic and excited about her and I on bike ride together. I don’t share her love of horses so I did think it could provide a nice summery thing to do together, but in my head all I could think of was the paid and the wobbling.  Rather less unenthusiastically I agreed.