Personal

Galentine’s Day

09/02/2016 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Are you a Leslie Knope fan? I am. Parks and Recreation is one of my favourite US comedy shows and Leslie Knope is a great character. Perky without being sickly, loyal, ridiculously hard working, good at whatever she wants to be, caring, kick ass and the inventor of Galentine’s Day. What’s not to love?

If you don’t know what Parks and Rec is, we probably can’t be friends. You should definitely look it up. If you’re not sure what Galentine’s Day is, it’s this

Isn’t that just wonderful? I love a good Valentine’s Day as much as the next soppy old romantic. Cards, flowers, gestures of affection for the significant other in your life. But how often do you show the other people in your life, just how much they mean to you. The other mamas who keep you going when the chips are down, the lady with the bottle of bubbles who can insist you forget everything and calm the fuck down. The girls who know you from old, but still refuse to tell ? In my case I know it’s not enough.

We’re really bad in this country at expressing how much we love anyone outside our family or our partner. Why is that? Love can come in so many forms and be born out of so many things. Admiration, inspiration, respect. And yet, I can think of only a handful of people that I have told I love them in my entire life. It’s just not the ‘done’ thing in this country. I think we confuse love born out of respect with romantic love. They are very different, but maybe the cross over confuses us enough to not acknowledge it, either to each other or ourselves.

Which is why I think we really need something like Galentine’s Day in the UK. We need reminding to tell our gal pals that they are loved. I’m not suggesting we all run out and start a new industry in Galentines Day cards and such, but I think we can all use the reminder, in these busy lives we lead, to express to our bestest friends that we love them and what about them makes them so special to us. Or is that just me?

So on the 13th February reach out. Tell the amazing ladies in your life how you feel. I, for example, might be telling Helen, that I love how strong she is for her family, that she’s the most organised person I have ever met and has the most amazing blue eyes. Michelle, I might be mentioning has the most amazing capacity for love, a beautiful creative heart and almost Renaissance curls. Jane R, that she is so thoughtful and has such an awesome knowledge of local and national law (particularly planning ?) and one hell of a laugh! Laura, that she has the most wonderful hugs, amazing sense of direction and legs that just won’t quit! Nicola, that she can get anything done to the absolute best of her ability, has such a capacity for joy and a gorgeous smile. Rach, that she is always there with the wine when needed, can take any situation and turn it around to her advantage and has the best resting bitch face I have ever seen. And Emma F that she has the ability to make me belly laugh, cares so much about her family and has the best trout pout ever!

All of them are also amazing mothers, dealing with life in the best way they know how and they all inspire me every day. I love them.

You know, that kind of thing.

But one gal I haven’t seen for too long is my girl Bethany. Her full time work week and how precious her weekends have become, means I had to think of a really good reason to borrow her from her family for a few hours. So I’m taking her out for a special Galentine’s lunch to her favourite pub on Saturday. I can’t wait to catch up on allllllll the news about life up in that London, the exciting changes that have been going on and updating on how our children are doing. But most of all I can’t wait tell her how ridiculously amazing I think she is for doing all of it with such grace. And that I love her.

Happy Galentine’s ladies. Tell your tribe you love them.

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I miss my Male Friends

25/01/2016 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

Male friends

I’ve always found large groups of women slightly disconcerting. I don’t know why. As a teenager, I was only really happy when the group was well and truly mixed. My best friend in my later teenage years was a guy and since then I’ve always been more comfortable in groups comprised of both genders. It’s not that I don’t like hanging out with other women. I’ve had, and have, some amazing female friends over the years. I just always worked best, both in my personal, and my professional life, in a mixed gender environment.

Since becoming a mother, and particularly a stay at home mother, the opportunities for hanging out with mixed groups has diminished significantly and I realised the other day that I really rather miss it.

I keep reading on social media about the power of the all female group, how we can, and should, always call on our #queens, our mamatribe to support us in this motherhood journey. I read posts extolling the virtue of mummy friends and how important they are and while I can’t deny any of this, I wonder if I’m slightly missing something. Because nearly four years down the road, although I have become more comfortable in all female environments (and believe me if you can’t, motherhood, particularly stay at home motherhood, is NOT for you), I still miss having guy friends.

It’s not even like I have particularly tradiontional ‘male’ interests. I couldn’t give a toss about sports or drinking (gosh that’s terribly sexist isn’t it, sorry guys!). I just don’t seem to care enough about what groups of women seem to want to talk about. Which at my life stage, much of the time, seems to be Babies. And I don’t mean our children. You know I’m happy enough to talk about Oscar, but babies. New babies, wanting babies, trying for babies, feeding babies, missing sleep because of babies. I’m expected to be broody and when I’m not I’m left feeling slightly like I don’t fit in. And this is all before I even start to bring autism into the mix!

Guys enquire that yours is well and when it is, move on to something else. And sometimes that’s all I want. Just to talk about something else. I spend so, so much of my life talking about motherhood, I just sometimes want to change the channel. It’s one of the reasons I get on so well with my good friend Bethany. When we first started hanging out, I remember marvelling to Ben how I could talk to her about things other than our respective children. She got me talking about politics and culture and ethics and history and opinions. And her love of Scotland and gin, preferably together ? And I miss her so much now she’s gone back to work full time.

Because where else will I talk about stuff like that and feel comfortable doing so? It’s not every day you meet anyone, male or female, that you just click with. And the brief, snatched conversations at play dates inevitably come back to the thing you have in common; your children. And that’s fine. Just sometimes I miss the irreverent conversations you can have with a dude who couldn’t give a shit if you want more kids or not.

Unless he’s pissed and tells you can’t possibly have an odd number of children. Over and over again! ? In situations like that you start to wonder what your problem was. Groups of women aren’t so bad and you wish your girls would swoop in and save you !

Your wonderful, understanding mummy friends, that no mother should be without.

xxxx

The gift of friendship

08/12/2015 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

It’s not often a friend comes along that just gets it. Be that you, or the situation or whatever, they’re just right on the money every time. And you know they’d have your back, whatever the cost. Which is nice.

It’s my birthday this Saturday. I’m turning the grand old age of 37 (37! boohoo 🙁 ), but to be honest I feel like the past few months have aged me so much more. But it doesn’t matter how hard or weird or confusing or miserable my life has been this year, Bethany has been there. And it means a lot.

So anyway, today, as an early birthday treat and while the children were in preschool, she took me for pancakes and coffee. And she bought along my gift. We’re off for a night of drinkin’ and bitchin’ on Saturday night, so she wanted me to have my present today, so I didn’t have to carry it round with me on Saturday.

First off it was beautifully wrapped. And who doesn’t love gorgeous wrapping?

Then I opened it. And burst into tears.

In fact I bawled. In public. If you’re not sure why, you should read this post

Then I turned it over. And bawled some more.

But she didn’t get embarrassed at my outburst. She cried with me.

Cos she’s got my back.

She’s going back to work full time in January and I’m going to miss her so much. It can’t help but change things. But I couldn’t be more proud of her for taking this massive step.

Because she inspires me too.

Thank you for my beautiful present Bethany. See you on Saturday! And I promise not to cry again.

Much 😉

Colour Me Happy at Millie Jones Haslemere

07/12/2015 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

It’s been a tough couple of months. I may have mentioned that. I look in the mirror and I no longer like what I see. Yes I’ve gained weight, but I’ve also lost the sparkle I once had. I’m tried and I recently came to the conclusion that I was owed a little pick me up. A friend recently asked me to babysit later in December and in return offered to look after Oscar while Ben and I went out. An impending Date Night gave me the perfect excuse to do something I’ve been thinking about for a while.

My hair is getting really long and, touch all the wood, at the age of very nearly 37, is still relatively grey free (I find the occasional ones, but it’s still few enough that I can pull them out). However the longer it gets the less I’m liking it. It’s starting to look, well, frumpy. So I decided to have a trawl of the Pinterests and see what could be done to long brown hair to zjuzh it up a bit. How gorgeous is this?

I found a couple of images and took them down to my hairdresser, Millie Jones Hair in Haslemere. I’ve written before about how much I love my salon and I knew if I was going to take a step back into the world of hair colour I wanted Millie holding the colouring brush. After all this lady has coloured Nigella’s hair and if it’s good enough for my food idol, it’s good enough for me 😉

We agreed at my consultation to get some subtle golden highlights going on with a brown gloss for shine and even colour. It sounded great, but I think I was just as excited to spend some time away from home, in the calm and elegant environment of the salon.

While she got to work we chatted about this and that, as you do. Christmas, shopping, it was just lovely to not talk about Oscar (well of course I did a bit ?). We agreed we’d start subtley with the colour, as my long hair is completely uncoloured at the moment. Millie couldn’t get over the good condition of my hair (*blush*). She said she could hardly think of any virgin hair she’d had to dye since opening the salon a year ago! A rare treat ?

When the colour was finished Millie handed me over to Paris and Kate to finish the styling at the new Blow Dry bar. I have to say I have never heard of such a thing before, but apparently they’re all the rage up in London. I know my friends and I have said in the past how we can never get our hair to look as good as when someone else styles it. And now Millie Jones have extended the salon and have a section for doing just that. £20 for a wash and blow dry? Why would you ever style your own hair, particularly for an event or a party, ever again?

Although the blow dry bar doesn’t usually involved curling, I asked Kate if she would quickly curl the finished coloured hair for me and she happily did so. Isn’t it pretty?

A cheeky mermaid curl with a peep of gold highlight

I really enjoyed my time with Millie Jones this weekend and I like the colour, but do you know what? I thought I wanted subtle, but I think next time I might be a bit bolder and go for more colour. What do you think?

Thank you to the whole team at Millie Jones. I was given a free colour in exchange for an honest write up.

I was not paid to write this post. As always all opinions are my own.

#AllTheFilters

26/11/2015 by MrsSavageAngel Leave a Comment

If I talk about him too much it’s because he’s all I have. All I am. Everything I’m doing at the moment is him.

I’m sorry if I bore you or if you’d rather talk about more fun things. So would I. SO WOULD I. I want to talk about the latest cinema or the funny things I’ve been up to or the nights I’ve had out or the classes I’m attending.

My life is so dull. The only fun things I do are fun things he does. The only classes I’m attending are Autism 101. The only exciting things happening for me are hearing our EHCP paperwork has been received and that the process is beginning.

I’m sorry if I bore you enough to cut me off. I cut myself off too. Do you notice? Half way through a sentence I realise I’m boring you, so I stop and ask you about yourself. Did you see that? Probably not.

Maybe it’s just too hard for you to hear. You have your own life, your own struggles, your own hard times. Why would you want to hear about mine? I understand that. I do. Not that I focus on the bad, I really, really don’t. Believe me, you get the IG version of how I’m feeling today. Hashtag: allthefilters.

I promised myself when we started this journey that I wouldn’t become all consumed with it. But some days I simply can’t manage anything else.

I’m sorry if I bore you.

This is my life.