Weeknotes 078: I said what I said

After two weeks, it was a less than enthusiastic return to work. A morning of email and afternoon of meetings. It’ll be fun again at some point.

Piglet spent the day welded to the garden swing. The Chef prised her off to tootle round a garden centre when she refused to nap. She micro-napped on me at teatime while watching Just Dance clips. To complement the swing, I set up the pickler slide and she overcame her trepidation to slide without support. Then did it another hundred times.

I’ve restarted morning pages with immediate positive effect. It’s part writing as thinking and part kindness. Because I write them in the third person, it means I can look at myself once-removed and be more gentle.

Relatedly, I’ve started on 4000 weeks. 15 pages in I thought I’d recommend it to The Chef, with a this is what we believe now.” But on consideration, I probably won’t. The whole productivity space is a masculine space, filled with expensive notepads and thoughts of conquest.

On the productivity piece I’ve accidentally ended up with 3 backlogs for my big work project. Fortunately I can map them to the lure, context and detail and instead of overwhelming feels weirdly apt. Doing more work to do less. And I can always stick on Hinako Omori to keep the vibes.

Contra the maleness of productivity is the world of pedagogy. Caring and focused on others. But it’s a space that definitely dwindles. There are untold books proffering advice to make your baby a genius. Then fewer telling you how to get said genius to shut up and do what you tell them. Down to a handful covering what to do with them when they get to school. Some of it maps to the parent’s journey of living with a gradually more human, human. But a bit of it feels that we might outsource the later raising to teachers and club leaders. We’ve time to see how we fit into Piglet’s older life and if you’ve book recommendations, I’m open to them.

After all that not-quite-ranting, in this week’s good story link, there’s loads of them.

Piglet is obsessed with Button Moon at the moment. It’s a gentler pace of TV and, like the Clangers, features a Captain. Military types were part of society’s fabric when I was younger, what with that Big War and all. The older folks at work recall working with ex-military types and never knowing their first names. Just rank and surname.

Lǎolao and Lǎoyé took Piglet for Good Friday while The Chef worked and I finished building the trampoline.

A trampoline, eventually in the ground

The sun was glorious for Daddy-Daughter day. Heading back from the park, Piglet dropped her pants, announced she had a crack in my bum and then pissed in the street. It set her up perfectly to terrorise the cows on the Moor before The Chef joined us for Battle of the Burger. Threshers are where industry met agriculture. That’s how Piglet eats.

I thought she’d be exhausted the next day given the impressive mileage she’d covered, but she was adamant she wanted to listen to the Easter church bells while bouncing on her trampoline. All good prep for four grandparents turning up for their—expertly butchered—roast lamb.

17 April 2022

weeknotes


Previous post
Weeknotes 077: Yer I am. We started the week looking after both toddlers while our hosts worked from home. A minor repayment for the weekend. Dividing to conquer we let them
Next post
Weeknotes 079: Things overheard. Things said. Excuse me, baldy, working man. Girl, can I go on the swing now please? Dishwasher needs to go on tonight. We had a mass debate in the office (say it