The first post

I have started a blog. Another voice in the crowd rambling away about herself and her ideas.

I’ve been meaning to start one, to write things about stuff, for a while. To put all my rants onto paper/screen and to force myself to refine them for public view. I also hope that it will give me a forum to develop in a different context my academic writing, which has slipped by the wayside a little since my eldest was born.

So expect to hear about my frustrations with academic life and life with small children. But also expect to read about the joys of books and ideas and those tiring but brilliant children I have the pleasure to call my own. I’m still working out what their handles will be, but for the meantime I live with Mr Evans, Miss B, and Young Master S. I’ll probably slip as that gets too cumbersome and pretentious.

The other reason for starting this now is that we’re moving to Canada in June. I’m not going to minutely document the move, but it provides a great opportunity to record how my little family copes with a great emigration and all our hopes, fears, and anticipations. As well as the big questions like why doesn’t NZ have a reciprocal drivers licence agreement with Ontario?

This is not a “parenting” blog, but as I’ve only been a very part-time academic for nearly five years, being a mum and housewife is the inevitable focus of my life. Some of this will come with that frustration born of finding myself pregnant at the same time as I finished my PhD and a consequent work/parenting balance decided for me. (Just in case you know someone in a similar situation, it’s always best to congratulate the PhD as lustily and enthusiastically as you would the pregnancy - chances are they put more time and hard work into the thesis!) Some of it will come with my delight in the things I study and research.

Thus, my first proper post will be on the subject of being a mummy, but in the spirit of its thesis, I’ve tried to condense the last five years into a response on why we probably shouldn’t obsess so much about the methodology of parenting. In the words of the great Bill Murray, “It just doesn’t matter!”