Balancing Act

Before having kids the man and I said that we would never become those parents who let their kids take over their lives. We would have at least one date night a week, go on regular romantic mini breaks and would never lose sight of who we are as people.

6 years later, with Shrek playing on the PC and Cbeebies on the TV beside it in one room (son number 2 inches away from the screen flicking his head back and forth, ever said to your kid “you can’t watch two things at once!”? Well, you’re wrong) and Xbox Lego Harry Potter taking a battering in the other, the man and me hole up in our tiny kitchen (the only area where toys are not allowed, although as I write this I can see a number of infringements just from where I’m sitting) and I am suddenly reminded of our promise. How is it that we have allowed the kids to take over our world and lost the balance between being parents and being people?

The more I think of it the more I realise that balance is key in pretty much every single area of our lives. And most of us struggle to find it.

Our oven has gone haywire this week, it started a month ago when Expensive Cat knocked a speaker down off the fridge freezer and smashed two radiant rings of the ceramic hob. After we discovered the £300 excess on our home insurance we patched it up with a bit of cardboard box, and sellotaped the knobs of the affected rings down. But a month on, the oven bit of it now isn’t working properly either. Sometimes it will turn on and others it won’t, a problem when you’ve just defrosted a chicken ready for roasting, can’t exactly stick it in the microwave.

So we have spent the last week trying to work out how on earth we will manage to afford a new oven and bemoaning that as a result of said new oven, our promised family holiday (which was to be the first in 5 years) and romantic mini break (first time ever) next year may not happen. On the other hand, some very dear friends of ours are getting married and details of stag and hen weekends have been released. While initial reaction is to RSVP in the affirmative instantly (they are our friends, it’s an important time for them after all, we’ll find the money), on reflection we need to think about finding a balance. We are scraping together the money for the oven (and holiday), yet not even flinching at going on hen and stag weekends which will cost almost as much. We need to find some kind of balance between spending money on kitchen appliances and leisure breaks for the family, and being there for our friends.

I don’t think I will ever find a balance between binging on chocolate and dieting, being lazy and obsessively working out. The key is a healthy, balanced diet, and regular exercise with a balance between cardio and strength training, you hear it all the time. But even though I seem to comfortably maintain my weight with my “good during the week, naughty at weekends” philosophy, I don’t feel as if it’s particularly balanced. Wouldn’t a balanced person find a happy medium between “good” and “naughty”?

If my life were a set of scales I feel like it would be frantically swinging up at one side and down at the other, I just can’t get my scales to balance in the middle.

I have been trying to come up with a conclusion to this blog for ages. Usually I can say how I think I could find a balance, offer some kind of pearl of wisdom as to how I think other people do it. But I honestly don’t think there is any such thing, no one has a perfect balance because we all have a finite amount of money and time, and constantly shifting priorities.

Maybe at the moment our kids are taking over our house and we’re feeling the weight of the scales being tipped heavily in their direction, and maybe those scales are also leaning closer to having safe kitchen appliances and being able to roast a chicken rather than holidays and hen do’s, but there will come a time when the scales tip back the other way. I hope so because I want to reclaim my sitting room, watch something other than Shrek and actually be able to afford a flipping romantic mini break for the first time in my life.

Miss/Mrs/Ms? Just say Ma'am

I was having some problems getting into my PayPal account the other day, so I reluctantly phoned them to try and get it sorted.

Before I could speak to an actual human being I had to get through the dreaded talking menus (“Do you need to speak to an operator?” “yes!” “Did you say… No?” “No, I said y…e…s.” “I heard… No. Is that correct?” “No!” “Did you say… No?”), I usually stay quiet not only out of principle but inability to get the damn thing to understand me. I got through the first few levels of menu with no problem; it then said “Please state your issue”. I was so thrown by having to describe my problem in a sentence that an inanimate object would understand that I got quite muddled up “I can’t log into Facebook… no eBay… no I mean PAYPAL, for Christ sake you’re not going to understand that are you?” I then had an agonising 10 seconds of Flight of the Bumblebee (seriously, could they have chosen a more infuriating piece of music?) before I was transferred to a lovely American man who said “The computer says you can’t log into your PayPal account, is that correct Ma’am?” So the computer understood me after all, that’s pretty impressive.

Thumbs up to PayPal because not only was my problem dealt with swiftly but I found the repeated use of the word “Ma’am” quite refreshing. Too many companies these days insist on first name basis, which I utterly despise. If you don’t know me, and are taking my money, please find the most respectful way of addressing me, at least by second name. “Ma’am” is a nice way to avoid wading through the Mrs, Ms., Miss minefield.

A couple of years ago the European Parliament caused outrage when it requested all staff to use Ms. in place of Miss and Mrs. People were highly offended by being forced to use Ms., I don’t blame them, being forced to precede your name with such a horrid sounding syllable would piss me off too.

When we bought our apartment in Ibiza, the deeds referred to the man as ‘Don’ and me as ‘Doña’. It is a basic polite form. The man took great pleasure in the fact that he was ‘The Don’. I just liked that I didn’t have to address whether I was married, unmarried, divorced or whatever anytime I filled out a form.

It’s alright for men. They have it easy. They start off as Master, then at age 16 (or sometimes 18) it’s automatically Mr. Their marital status doesn’t even come into it, it’s a far more dignified process.

I don’t understand why it is different for women. Years ago, Mrs and Miss worked in the same way as Mr and Master. It was an age thing. Derived from the term Mistress, (nothing to do with the current more provocative meaning) Mrs denoted the woman of the household, Miss was the daughter.

I have stubbornly hung onto the title “Miss” for my entire adult life. I’m not married, I don’t plan to be, so why change it? But now I am well into my thirties I would like a more distinguished title, one that doesn’t make me sound like a wrinkly old spinster from a Charlotte Bronte novel.

I hate the word Ms with a passion. Not only does it sound horrid (Mzzzzzz) but it has weird connotations. They may as well put the dot in the middle and replace it with a question mark because Ms automatically makes people suspicious, is she a Mrs or a Miss? Why is she using Ms.?

If I could call myself Mrs I could also call the man “my husband” and be done with it. Without having to choose between “my boyfriend” (sounds like we’ve been together 2 weeks) or “my partner” (is her partner male or female?).

Anyway. I’m not planning on getting married any time soon, although I am the ‘mistress’ of the house. It’s all so flipping complicated. So I kind of get where they were going when then brought out this Ms thing. I just wish they had come up with a word that didn’t make me sound like a defective bumblebee.

Of course, someone (take note the man) could always buy me a nice title like “Lady” for Christmas. That would be far more befitting of my stature.