Mirroring

Okay this term is normally used when you adopt the same body language as the person you are talking to. For example, if you are seated either side of a desk and that person leans in close to the desk, you copy. It’s something we do to make the speaker feel more comfortable with you and quite often we do it without thinking.

I have a new explanation for this term. Read on.

There are many self help books, image books, how to discover yourself books on the market. All designed to help you look at yourself and help you change your ways.

I have an even better way of doing this, just watch your childrens behaviour and speech as they are ‘mirroring’ you. If ever I needed to check myself I only have to listen to what comes out of my children’s mouths. I will give a couple of examples that have recently stopped me in my tracks. They did make me smile but also made me think.

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Mom: (after smelling something unpleasant while watching a video with my daughter). - “Have you just farted?

Daughter (who is 2) -  “No, have you?”

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After nicely telling my daughter for about the 10th time that, no sweetheart we won’t be going to the park today, we are going tomorrow, I observed this role play she had with her toys. I have to make it clear that I was really proud how patient I’d been with her.

Daughter with a mommy giraffe and a baby giraffe, this is the conversation she made up for the giraffes.

Baby giraffe: Can we go to the park?

Mommy giraffe: No sweetheart

Baby giraffe: Can we go to the park?

Mommy giraffe: No sweetheart

Baby giraffe: Can we go to the park?

Mommy giraffe: Shut UP

So if you want to take a good hard look at yourself, look at your children first

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Delicious!

I’m not the best cook in the world, and not the most imaginative if I’m honest, but I can cook a meat and two veg type of dinner and do quite a nice line in salads.

Sometimes when I’m in the kitchen everything seems really in control and the dinner all cooks to perfection and in the right time. Sometimes, however, it doesn’t go that well. Am I the only one?

Take tonight for example. Very simple meal, chicken chasseur (sauce courtesy of Homepride) with mashed potatoes, carrots, peas and broccoli.

I’d cooked the chicken, added the sauce on the hob, put the potatoes on and put the steamer on to cook the other veg (one of my hobs isn’t working so I have to be creative).

As the carrots obviously take longer than the broccoli, I gave them 10 minutes start. At the appropriate time I checked the carrots to find that I hadn’t put the hob on under the steamer after all and the carrots were stone cold.

I hastily put them on, putting boiling water in the steamer to help quicken the process and when I went to the fridge to get the broccoli out to prepare I realised that I hadn’t actually bought any!!

The other night I had decided to do chicken in a different sauce (we like chicken okay!). Different veg this time to make it more interesting.

I’m really fussy with chicken and cut every bit of fat and yuk off, so after defrosting it I realised I didn’t like the look of it. By the time I’d have finished cutting out all the bits I don’t like we wouldn’t have had any meat.

Okay, so how could I turn the meal into something else with no chance to get more meat. I could still have the mashed potatoes and carrots. I could make a cheese sauce for the cauliflower and in the freezer I had some chicken dippers. Not what I really fancied, but it would do.

Well I couldn’t find my normal recipe for the cheese sauce so I used a different cookbook, big mistake. Not only did it only make half the normal quantity, it became so lumpy I had to sieve it over the cauliflower. As time was running out and the family were hungry I didn’t have time to make another batch, so I made it stretch. (I just took some of the cauliflower out of the dish.)

So my lovely chicken in a sauce dinner became ‘chicken hotch potch’ with ‘cauliflower almost cheese’.

Surprisingly the family were happy with the meal but I’m not sure if that’s because they were so hungry they were too weak to complain or I am such a rotten cook they thought it was just the normal standard!

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A Perfect Picnic

I don’t know, as I get older I tend to wonder if when I leave the house I leave my brain behind.

My mom very kindly took the children and myself for a picnic. All I had to do was get the children up, dressed, breakfasted and ready for her arrival.

She made the picnic, supplied the drinks and drove us. The weather had been appalling all through the night, but we made the decision to go as a picnic in the car somewhere different is better than being stuck in the house all day.

We decided to go to a place just outside of Upton (Worcester) and parked up on some common land for a run around and a picnic. It was great especially as my eldest son found a swing that had been set up on a lovely old tree and he was big enough to use it. He had great fun.

My first bout of daftness came when I realised that I hadn’t bought any nappies for my daughter and as we were running around, so were her trousers with the weight of the nappy. Builders bum on a toddler is not a thing to encourage but, thankfully, we found a shop and rectified that little problem.

My second bout of daftness came when I offered to drive us home from our second destination at Welland. I picked the right journey as the grey clouds had started to amass, and we had heard thunder on both sides of the Malvern Hills.

As expected, the Heavens opened and as we approached Worcester we could see that they had already had their fair share of rain.

Now I don’t know about you but I still can’t resist big puddles on the road, providing there are no pedestrians about. I saw ahead of us on the road a large collection of water and I said to my mom ‘I’m going for that’.

I headed straight for it with a little bit extra speed (as I’d been going really slow with the traffic build up) and made a fantastic big splash through the water.

I then heard my mom go ‘Ohhh’. I had only forgotten to tell her to close her window! As she was on the side of the water, she copped the lot through the window. It wet her hair, her clothes, it ran down the inside of the window and into the well of the door, wetting all the bits and pieces in there.

Did I stop the car to assist in her drying out or cleaning the window and door like a good daughter would?

No . . . . I unashamedly burst out laughing and quite frankly I couldn’t stop. Thankfully I have a very loving mother who also saw the funny side of it, but I do wonder if she’ll ever let me drive the car again in the rain.

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Well Woman

I decided to go for one of these Well Women Assessments. Not because I thought I had anything radically wrong with me, but I’ve reached that age where things don’t work as well as they used to.

I have tried to deny it’s because I’m getting older, but with my husband constantly telling me it is, I have given in and accepted it. Its because of things like back ache, tiredness and sometimes not feeling 100%, but not feeling actually poorly.

The assessment covered ‘women things’, blood tests, height, weight, blood pressure, body mass index, body fat and also a mammogram.

The people at the hospital were lovely and made me feel like I was a special customer (which is how all customer service should be, but don’t get me started on that).

It was all going really well until I had to do a sample. Straight forward you would think especially as they gave me a styrofoam cup so plenty of width to not be able to miss.

I did my sample and was holding it in one hand while sorting myself out with the other and took my eye off the ball, so to speak.

I looked up in horror to realise I had the sample at a precarious angle and yes, you’ve guessed it, it was pouring all over the floor.

I started mopping and washing the floor while trying to decide if I had anything left in me to give the nurse.

So there I was when I heard some people outside the door trying to get in. They were talking about how people can get themselves locked in - yikes were they going to crash the door down to rescue me? (That would have been a scene they wouldn’t have forgotten.)

I managed another drop, checked my clothes to make sure I was all dry, checked the floor to see I hadn’t missed anything, checked my foot where some had splashed (yuk) and with one glance around I saw that I had left everything clean.

Hurray, I took my tiny sample and went and sat back down in the reception area. I put the sample out of danger by my bag, pulled out my magazine and to my (second) horror I realised my sandal was wet from you know what down the side.

I knew the toilets were already engaged so surreptitiously I had to get a tissue out of my bag and mop up without alerting any of the people who were already sitting near me.

Oh the stress of it all. Surprisingly my blood pressure was normal!

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I’m No Tigger!

A couple of months ago  I found out I can’t jump up and down any more. Causes headaches you may think, maybe even bad knees (well, yes I could claim that), no to me it’s worse than that.

In the interests of keeping abreast of my children’s education, I recently attended an open invitation to an evening at school to find out how our children learn. It was basically about learning styles, you know, do you learn best by seeing, doing, hearing or to put it in its proper language, visual, auditory or kinesthetic! It was very well presented with activities for us parents to join in with. So far so good.

One of the activities involved skipping which I was desperate for a go at. I used to love skipping at school either on my own with a rope or the long line where two of your friends held the ends while you jumped into the middle.

The task required you to count your skipping up to a certain number, easy peasy. One of the teachers was nearby as I started, encouraging me along. I did a few skips in the ‘running on the spot’ mode which was fine.

I then decided to jump instead, utter and total mistake. Under the watchful eye of one of the teachers and a trainee teacher, as I was jumping and counting,  I realised that my bladder had taken leave of its responsibilites and opened the floodgates. In short I felt myself weeing in my pants with absolutely no control, like a 4 year old.

I then had to continue skipping and smiling like nothing was wrong. My only saving grace was that I had decided not to wear a skirt at the last minute or I would have had an embarassing puddle on the floor. My trousers soaked it up. I turned around and had a sneak look down and realised I had ‘water marks’.

I wrapped my cardigan around my waist under the premise that I was now really hot and made my excuses to go to the toilet, to try some sort of damage control. I really didn’t know whether to laugh or cry but inwardly it really upset me.

The irony of all this is that our telephone number has, on several occasions, been misdialed for the ‘incontinent pad ordering service’ and I’ve had to pick the phone up and stop women leaving messages to order them.

I think it’s time I wrote down the number for my own use.

Oh yes, and cancel those trampoline lessons!

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Sweet Dreams

My son has never liked me singing to him and to be honest I can’t blame him. I can’t sing.

However, recently he has started asking me to sing him to sleep. This would be okay normally except that he rather particular about the type of song and the exact level I have to sing it. This is what happened.

After being asked to sing him  to sleep I attempted my repertoire of songs that I know some of the words to. I tried ‘Row Your Boat’ and was told no. I tried a whole host of nursery rhymes that you can sing to and was told no. I tried ‘Dingle, Dangle Scarecrow’ and was told no.

Then, out of desperation for a song that I knew any words to (and because I was feeling a bit exasperated and a little bit naughty) I started to sing ‘Tainted Love’ by Soft Cell. This is one of my all time favourite songs and I do know almost all of the words. All of a sudden my son looked at me, big grin and said, “that’s my favourite”. Yippee, my manic playing of 80’s music around the house had paid off.

Slight hitch though, I hadn’t got the right sound in my voice!! I was then given a couple of minutes tuition by my child as to what level I should sing, and he made me copy his voice. Three attempts later, I was allowed to continue with my singing. Thankfully, he soon got fed up and started to fall asleep.

But it didn’t end there, a couple of nights later he asked me to sing ‘Tainted Love’ again, but this time when I started singing he kept interrupting me to ask me to explain why the person in the song wanted to run away!! Please bear in mind that my son is only 4, so it was hard to explain that love can sometimes break your heart and you need to get away, but I managed.

I then had to change song, but now we have some additions to the portfolio - ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ (safe) and wait for it . . . ‘Sweet Dreams Are Made of This’ by the Eurythmics!!

Oh for the days when a story was all that was wanted.

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Daydream Believer

I admitted to a close friend recently that I sometimes live in a little fantasy world, all of my own. Half expecting my friend to laugh at me she replied that she too creates little worlds.

Now my conclusion could be that we’re both barking mad, but I don’t think so and when we say fantasy we’re not talking very naughty rude ones. Let me give you an example.

We’ve had a helicopter flying over our house every day for at least 5 days. The fact that we live near the country side and a motorway, and it’s a police helicopter and we’re obviously on the flight path has not stopped me believing that the helicopter pilot fancies me!!

We know how sophisticated their equipment can be and by chance he spotted me in the garden on one of the fly overs. That was it, he just had to keep flying over our house whenever he got the chance. I’ve probably put him off now anyway as on the weekend I was out in the garden in my pyjamas (not the most attractive look).

I mentioned this to my husband. I think my words were (with a little giggle attached) “in my delusional, romantic state of mind, I think that helicopter pilot fancies me”, to which my darling husband who always keeps me grounded replied “that’s right, delusional”.

He did give me a smile with it, but I’ve noticed these smiles are becoming the kind of “there, there keep taking the tablets” type of smile.

My friend, by the way, thinks that every man she talks to fancies her and wants to flirt with her. We both agreed that it wasn’t because we are craving a different life, we like the ones we’ve got and with the people that are in our life.

I think sometimes that a little daydreamy distraction can help you through the day and if it puts a smile on your own face, makes you treat people nicely and doesn’t harm anyone, does it matter?

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Hormonal Me? - Sod Off!

What is it with hormones? They can turn us from being completely sane, kind, loving women to irrational mad cows who need restraining orders. Do I need to explain this one? No, I didn’t think so, but let me give you an example.

Since having my daughter my hormones have been really out of balance. I’ve never really suffered from PMT until this last year. It tends to be that I feel really, really tired and of course with that comes the emotional side. Tiredness can equal cry baby to me. Top that up with sleepless nights which can then evoke the mad cow part that doesn’t think properly.

Being in this state has resulted in the following incidents.

1 Crying when Christopher Eccleston turned into David Tennant in Doctor Who at the end of series one!

2 Crying at the end of Doctor Who when Billie Piper left at the end of series 2!!

But the relationship between being rational and irrational showed itself when one of my children recently went on a 3 day school trip. There was a Birthday in the family and my son had wanted to phone and wish them Happy Birthday.

The school had a policy of children not ringing home during the trip and had said no to my request of allowing my child to phone home (even though it was for a special reason). I stewed on this and as it had been a deciding factor for my son as to whether he would go or not I wrote to the school insisting they allow the phone call and said I would provide him with an old mobile phone to do this.

Anyway, on the day in question my son duly phoned home and I answered the call. I asked if he wanted me to phone back (to save the credit) to which my child politely asked the teacher if this was okay and in the background I heard a stern "NO, we have to get to breakfast". We carried on the conversation, which was quite stilted and not at all natural, but the Happy Birthday wish was fulfilled.

Well, I had this vision of the teacher standing over my child in a separate room, making him nervous. I cried when I came off the phone at the way the teacher had said ‘No’ and the fact that my child had been rushed in this way and my thoughts were that the teacher had only been like that because I had made them let my child phone home.

The hormonal mad cow in me was ready to verbally attack the teacher as soon as they got off the coach. I had visions of me complaining to the Headteacher and refusing to allow that teacher to ever take my child for lessons. As I said that was the mad cow part of me.

The rational part of me (after a cup of tea and cry at my husband) came to the conclusion that it was good of them to allow my request. They were on a tight schedule so had to be conservative with the time. I totally understood that they couldn’t allow all the children to phone home at will and this was an exception.

When my child came home I thanked him for phoning home and asked him about the circumstances in which he had called. First of all the teacher had come in to the dormitory to make sure my son made the call (and before breakfast, which is when I had asked for). Secondly, the call had been made in the dormitory so my son was surrounded by his friends hence why he was reluctant to talk.

Lesson to be learned (apart from try not to be a mad cow)? I think so.

Don’t make assumptions, get the facts and make sure you cool down before you act on something. Oh yes and make sure if you do say something it’s not at ‘that time of the month’ or you may just get that restraining order . . . .

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Bed Wetting - At My Age!

I can’t believe it, I am over 40 and this week I wet the bed. Yes, you read right, I wet the bed. I am not talking dribbly pants here, I soaked myself. I wanted to cry and not with laughing.

Imagine how embarassing it is to wake your partner in the middle of the night to say ’sorry darling, just need to change the sheets, because I’ve wet myself’. Thankfully, we’ve been together a while and he is very understanding, even helped me turn the mattress over!!

How did this happen? My brain totally and utterly tricked me, let me explain.

I used to wet the bed as a child so I am still quite paranoid about having last wees before bedtime etc. Sometimes my daughter wakes in the night, so it is also a signal for me to use the loo before getting back into bed. This particular night, after having a few nights of my daughter waking up in the night and being very tired, my husband very kindly woke up and said “I’ll go”.

Magic words! I did note that I could probably do with going to the toilet but in an attempt not to disturb my daughter I thought (stupidly now) I’ll wait a bit for her to settle, then go.

Oh how wrong I was. I must have fallen into a really deep sleep and then it happened, I dreamt I needed the toilet and worse still I was sitting on it.

I even remember in the dream thinking “am I really on the toilet?”, to which my brain said “yes, you’re fine, carry on”. Safe in this ‘knowledge’ I went for it.

It was when (within my dream) I thought should I really feel this wet when I’m using the toilet that the alarm bells rang and I woke up. I tentatively placed a hand under the bedclothes and was horrified.

I haven’t done that for many, many years. I’ve had the dream of being on the toilet before but immediately woken up before any damage was done.

I now think this is the repayment I got for allowing my husband to settle my daughter. Or maybe it was because I had a full on ‘banging cupboard doors’ strop in the kitchen that morning but that’s another story . . . . . .

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Introduction to Emma’s Dilemma’s

It’s been said that we all have a book inside us waiting to be written (or something like that, never been good on specifics!).

Maybe that’s true and there are probably people out there worthy of that statement. I would expect most women have the ability to write about juggling and multi-tasking!

Me . . . I have difficulty remembering what I went into a room for, so I’d have a lot of trouble writing my own story. Plus my limited use of adjectives would make it quite boring. I really like the word ‘nice’ and it covers a multitude of sins when describing something, but it does have a feel good factor/value. Only, my English teacher at school spent a lot of time trying to encourage the use of words other than nice to describe things.

Why do I mention this, because it’s something that has stuck with me since school, a memory if you like. I have lots of individual memories, not enough to write a book but maybe enough snippets that are mildly amusing, embarrasing, sad or daft even. However, you may be able to relate to them or you might think, thank goodness it’s not just me.

And that’s what this section is about. Join me on a rollercoaster adventure of emotions, funnies and everyday life that you can all hopefully relate to.

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