Words can haunt you

I got an email from a friend today. She lives on the other side of the world. We chit-chat about books and writing, friends and family. We've never actually met. But I'm always glad to hear from her.

Attached to the bottom of her email was the last email I sent her. Idly, I read through it, wondering what I'd waffled about (it had been a while between emails).

There was a lot of waffle. Then, about halfway down, these words:

"Don't give up. Persistence is the key to this whole mess."

I can't tell you how much I needed to read my own words of advice today.

[image: via weheartit.com]

Making time for friends

After reading this post (by Nicole at Planning With Kids) at the CareerMums blog, I have decided to take a night off. I am going out for a 'noice bistro meal' and a movie with some mates from the school community. We have been talking about it for ages... and now we're finally doing it.

I think there's a misconception as a mum that you need an 'occasion' to go out. That it needs to be an 'event'. With frocks, and heels, and pearls and stuff. A la Sex and The City. I think that is one reason that perhaps we don't go out enough. You don't need an event. You just need to get out of the house.

The Builder laughed when I told him that I was going out... on a Monday. After all, who goes out on Monday night? Mums do, that's who. It's not the coolest night to go out, I agree. But I'm going out. With friends. And that's cool enough.

When was the last time you went out with friends? Do you do it often enough?


[I appreciate that this image has little to do with a night out in Fibrotown...]

Were we all in the library?

Over the past few weeks, I've had several different conversations with several different people, which have all, for one reason or another, wandered back to our high school days. These high school days all took place at different high schools, at different times.

But we all had one thing in common.

"I spent a lot of time in the library in my high school years," confided my bubbly friend N over a cup of Nescafe on the weekend.

"Well, I hid in the library a fair bit," said my outgoing friend M over a glass of red a few weeks ago.

"You spent year 8 in the library, didn't you Al?" said my all-knowing friend A, on the phone.

Choose any night on Twitter and someone is using their 140 characters to confess their misspent youth with the Dewey Decimal System. These are bright, funny people. Very good in writing. Those hours of isolation amongst the dusty shelves have stood them in good stead.

I have just one question. If we were all in the library, who was in the playground? Surely someone was out there, living the dream, being the Cool Kids.

Was it you?

'Fess up. Did you spend your high school years in the library or, er, smoking behind the bike sheds?

[image: Tumblr.com]

The 'same' can be surprising

Now that we have been in Fibrotown for two and a half years, The Builder and I are beginning to notice a little bit of, er, repetition in our social calendar. The various community fundraisers that provide the 'events' in a town of this size, all tend to fall around the same time each year, and take on a similar format from year to year. Which, I confess, can lead to a little bit of 'ho hum' in our attitude towards them. But complacency can often be misplaced.

Last night, we fronted up to our third annual Hall-Near-Fibrotown Ball. We've had a good time in each of the previous years, but were suffering a case of the 'why bothers' this year. We knew the format would be the same, the band unchanged, the faces would be similar - even the fashion wouldn't hold too many surprises as many women I knew, including myself, were planning to wear the same frock as last year, with new accessories. But, it was for a good cause, and we live by the rule that it's churlish to pass up the chance for a night out in an area where they don't come up that much, so we frocked up and headed out into the cold and rain.

We began with a cocktail and a cheese plate at Fibrotown's cocktail bar. Just the two of us, on a sofa, in our finery, enjoying the chance to be grown-ups. "Going somewhere?" asked the barman, nodding towards The Builder's dinner suit with red rose buttonhole. "Just home to watch DVDs," he responded with a straight face. (Yes, we crack ourselves up.)

We arrived at the ball half an hour early - note to self: check the invitation next time - and were promptly dispatched to a friend's house in the next paddock for a pre-ball drink (at which point I was wishing I'd gone with my threat to wear gumboots this year). By the time we returned, the queue for entry stretched beyond the red carpet and into the mud, which gave us plenty of time to catch up with a few people in the line. One of the brilliant things about the ball - which we'd forgotten during the 'why bothers' - is the opportunity to catch up. So many friends in one place, with nobody required to wash up or placate the neighbours.

It was a wonderful night. The best yet. The ball went by in a flash, a series of happy moments (picture one of those sentimental montages they do halfway through schmaltzy movies). There was a lot of laughing, joking and talking. Some quieter moments spent perched on a hay bale, morphing acquaintances into friends. Perhaps a tiny bit of foot stomping and hip shimmying.  There may or may not even have been some interpretive dance.

Before we knew it, we were squashed into a cab with our town friends, reliving the highlights, all of us talking about how much fun we'd had. Expectations are everything, aren't they? It's when you have none that you get the best surprises.

[image: next year, I may be in the same dress again (why mess with a great formula), but I'll be working it back with a pair of wellie boots with knitted boot cuffs, such as these by VintageOfNow/etsy]

Friday on my mind

Fridays used to mean a big night out. Drinks in the city. Catching up with friends. Dancing, laughing, flirting. The end of the week. Time to take a deep breath - and let it all hang out.

Then I had children, and Friday blended into Thursday blended into Monday. In fact, every day was a Tuesday, as The Builder is fond of saying. Particularly as I was working from home, wedging it into whatever hours it would fit, be it Friday, Sunday or sometime in the Never Never.

With Mr6 at school, however, Fridays have reassumed their mantel of importance. No after school activities on Friday. No reading. No guitar practice (actually, not a lot of that at any time, but I'm dealing with that). We walk to town, all of us, and have a milkshake. We come home. We eat leftovers or takeaway or, maybe, even, go out for Chinese. The Builder and I are on the sofa with a glass of wine by 8pm at the latest, in time for a raft of lifestyle programs with which to while away the evening. It's our one total veg night of the week. Veggier, even, than Saturday.

I love Friday nights. There are no interviews to organise, no stories to write. That all waits til Sunday night (I'm a last-minute kind of girl).

This Friday, I'll be reliving my (relative) youth, heading to the Big Smoke to catch up with friends. It will be great fun. But part of me will miss the sofa. The ritual of winding down.

How do you spend your Friday nights?

{image: musicline.de}

Don't forget Weekend Rewind, world's easiest linky, here at the Fibro on Saturday and Sunday. Dust off a favourite old post and link up!

Where do you stand on Christmas cards?

Yesterday I bought two packets of Christmas cards. Lovely, they are. Sweet illustrations, all decked out in silver glitter. Still blank. But I've made the first step.

I'm going to put myself out there and say that I love Christmas cards. I love sending them. I love receiving them. Writing them, I'm not so fond of, but I make time for it every year because it's sometimes the only hand-written note I send all year*. Thank you notes are also hand-written, but not all my friends get one of those every year. All my friends get a Christmas card.

I have one friend who told me that I am never allowed to stop sending cards. Mine is the only proper, actual, hand-written card that she gets. If I stop, the only cards she'll receive are from real estate agents and her bank. One year I toyed with leaving her off the list just to play with her mind, but I resisted. It didn't seem to be in the right spirit, you know?

It's true that I don't always receive cards from people I've sent them to. In fact, many people don't write back. It's also true that I receive cards from people whom I suspect would never have sent me one had I not sent one to them first.

I don't care.

I will continue to write and send my Christmas cards, ignoring the insta-pleasure of the email card, for as long as Australia Post is still around to provide a snail mail service. It's a big part of Christmas for me.

But I will never send a family Christmas letter. Sorry. If you want to know what's going on, you have to actually speak to me. Or read my blog. Which, come to think of it, is one big family Christmas letter.

What about you? Do you send Christmas cards? Do you love them? Hate them? Light your Christmas candles with them? And what's your position on the family Christmas letter?

*It is worth noting that my handwriting is so appalling that it is probably a good thing I only drag it out once a year. There are people all over the country puzzling over my Christmas cards, wondering who the hell they're from.

{image: oldsweetsong.com}