Hubris and bla bla bla

I came out of Dreamweaver Brain Drain class today, having had a stonking lesson: very enjoyable, felt like I begun to understand a bit. Oooh, and bought two domain names while I was there: first choice and second choice. I texted husband to say ‘Great Dreamweaver lesson, feeling great, hope you’re having a good day’ and then I wrote another note over food to say: ‘And eating Dim Sum; can life get any better?’

I was definitely guilty of overweening pride, but the gods were sure gonna push me in a filthy puddle for it, and maybe twist my ankle as I went down. In my inbox when I got home was an email from children’s school, titled: Son’s bus behaviour. Mmmm, it’s a fair bet here that they weren’t writing to let me know what a joy he’s been on the bus lately!

We’ve been having diminutive teenage issues at home too (he’s 12). There is only so much nagging and telling off a Mum can do, and there’s unquestionably a limit to how effective this is. For me, it’s only effective for the length of the lecture and then I go all the way to Guilt City: for him, all he appears to hear is ‘bla bla bla’. It makes no impact on future behaviour at all. Whatever the problem, I am sure that I need to give him lots of positive attention... but boy, give me back those toddlers.

Writing? Well, this morning I had a deadline I’d been putting off. I was supposed to send a review of January’s Book Club meeting to the magazine I write for. We’d been reading Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky. I struggled to get it read (because our best friends were here for the whole of Christmas and New Year) but loved it. Only two other people in Book Club had attempted to read it and neither had finished it. January’s meeting was a bit of a disaster on the book front, but interesting because some of the women present talked about their experiences of political unrest and having to flee the country during their expat lives. Maybe you know something about the unrest here in Thailand at the moment? So it felt a very relevant book. Thankfully, the story surrounding Nemirovsky’s life, the book, and its discovery was so incredible, that I told that in my review instead.

So no, as yet I haven’t started writing. I’ve got brain drain homework to do before all the knowledge leaks out of my head: I really should do it tonight.

Tomorrow is February's Book Club day (Alias Grace) … oh dear, more excuses.