Is anyone else like me? Or how to be a bit clueless in your 99th blog post (reality)

This Saturday I will be going to Nuffnang Blogopolis.
Am I excited? I have no idea.
Am I prepared? Most definitely not.
There has been no time to think about it.
I have watched the blog posts and the status updates and the tweets float by me on the rapids and I still have not put much thought into gathering with a few hundred bloggers in my home town.
Lots of bloggers have been busily making lunch and dinner and drinks plans, shopping, chatting and drinking copious amounts of coffee. You name it they will be doing it. I have one little plan made to have a sandwich with a lovely one. And that's it.

I honestly have no idea how people fit in all the tweeting and blogging and arranging stuff. No idea. I feel utterly clueless and quite a bit out of the loop. I am too busy, most days, surviving.

Busy days filled with autism, therapy, anxiety, meetings, meltdowns, achievements and wins.

The Bowler whose favourite word right now is NO. Yes I mean "No, I don't want to", "No, it's mine", "No, don't touch it". Someone please send me some strength.

The never ending housework and piles of washing. So. Far. Behind.

Cooped up kids with winter cabin fever wrestling on the couch. I need strength for that too.

Being the kinder secretary. Enough said.

The punishing exercise schedule I have set for myself. 5 kilograms more off my bum by the first day of spring.

All of that. And when I read back over that list I know that I am doing way more than surviving. I am living a full and rich and busy and amazing life with my three boys. The sudden and devastating death of someone I knew well almost three weeks ago has been one of those perspective giving kicks up the bum about getting on with it, about being grateful and about giving it all you've got.

So, I will be literally flying by the seat of my pants all the way to Blogopolis. For the most part, clueless. Really. 


Is anyone else like me and completely unprepared for Blogopolis? Are you rocking up with your arrangements all done and dusted or are you crossing your fingers and hoping you find someone you know?

I don't care about Osama, I just want this...

Image by Simon Howden/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Wishful, wishful thinking.

Plastic un-fantastic

It happened on the Batsman’s 1st birthday. It was the day when I first saw the craziness of this. As a deluge of birthday gifts arrived at the party for our precious first boy it became apparent. Do tell, what is the deal with the extraordinary level of plastic packaging around children’s toys?

I remember coming home from his party with the swag of presents he had received. We began to unwrap them, to enjoy them with our little guy. The pile of wrapping paper as well as plastic packaging, plastic ties, tags and other assorted bits of crap plastic quickly became much larger than the pile of toys themselves. It bothered me. IT IS RIDICULOUS.

I have tried very hard ever since to buy gifts that are not over packaged in this superfluous, environmentally unfriendly way. There are so many beautiful “eco” toys and gifts on the out there, one only has to do a quick “Goggle” to find them.

The Batsman and the Bowler often receive lovely gifts when the special days roll around and yesterday I had the occasion to attempt to “de-package” one of them for today’s play. It’s an ark fishing boat complete with Noah a fisherman and an assortment of lovely animals. Here it is:

And here is the amount of packaging we had to unfurl to get to it:

There is a box, an inner box, some other bits of cardboard, 23 (yes 23!) cable ties holding pieces in place and a few other bits of “not plastic fantastic”. It took almost 20 minutes in my carefully planned chaotic day to undo it all. Like I said, ridiculous. Now I am not so naive that I don’t understand the role packaging plays in marketing, presentation and perhaps even (as the Captain pointed out to me) prevention of shoplifting. But for the love of loopy mums and dads everywhere, you can’t possibly convince me that this amount of packaging is even necessary, never mind the planet health implications.

So I know this is not one of the biggest issues going down right now. But it bugged me. It bugged me enough to sit here and write a post about it. It left me shaking my head at our human “wisdom”, that we think we need to use precious resources this way, boiling up a whole lot of poisonous chemicals to do it.

What do you think about the “not plastic fantastic” issue? Have you had any recent moments where you’ve been left shaking your head at the crazy stuff we humans do? What efforts (no matter how small) do you make to counter our overuse of plastic?