Literacy Privilege

I've been thinking about this a lot during the past few days. I've even started writing it a few times just to delete it again, knowing that there's a few 'super dicks' out there ready and waiting to rip apart my spelling, punctuation and grammar. Then I thought "do I care?" Yes, I do actually and that's the problem. I have a completely average understanding of the English language but yet I still pick apart what I write, worried that if I don't, someone else will. So how does it feel to the people that really struggle? The people that build up the courage and spend the time thinking about what they want to say to be belittled because it's "advice not advise! 😂" People that are quickly labelled as 'thick' or 'too lazy' to write properly. 'Thick' is a little word that stings a lot when it's used to describe you. Thick for not being able to learn something no matter how hard you seem to try, lazy for not being able to memorize something that just won't seem to stick, feeling sick at the thought of standing in front of the board at class, silent tears streaming down your face as all your class mates watch you fail to do something that the teacher expects. A lack of support at home. Laughter from your peers as you shuffle back to your desk, away from the angry teacher, cause that constant burn in your throat and the tears ready to spill over each time you even think about that subject. So how can that get any easier as your life progresses? It doesn't, you just learn to muddle on. Struggling. Being pulled down by other people for their own gratification, for no reason other than to make themselves feel superior. But why does it prickle? Because I did it too. Then I realised that it's no different to my own struggles, because the person above is the childhood me stood at the front of my maths lesson. The child being pulled down by everyone around, for just not being able to understand. But I'm lucky, I don't have to share my struggles on a daily basis with friends, family and complete strangers. And that's just assuming that the reason other people around you are struggling is because they are 'thick' or 'lazy' but maybe it's because they've come from an underprivileged background, their dyslexic, they have learning or mental disabilities, they've had a brain injury or that English isn't their first language. Should we judge any one of these? There is around 8 million adults in the UK that are illiterate. That's almost 1 in 5 people that can't read a medicine bottle label, write a cheque or help their children with their homework. It's not funny to tear these people down, it's actually really sad. So next time you see someone post a status that's full of errors. Ask yourself "does it really matter?!" And if the answer is yes then maybe you are just a dick. Save your eye twitching, jaw clenching irrational anger for those that chew with their mouths open.

Genitals, swearing and pissing yourself. Genitals and swearing are both something I've tried to tackle in the last week. For obvious safeguarding reasons I think it's very important that children are aware of and use the correct terms for body parts. We need to move away from the "I'll tell you when you're older" era and let our children know that we're approachable should they have any questions or need to speak to us. And whilst there's many colourful terms I think it's also important that we save words such as 'cunt' and 'twat' for our other halves. At the end of the day though, they're just body parts! Nothing to be ashamed or embarrassed about. So something that I think should be mixed into every day language to take the stigma away. Mix that with the issue our middle child has with us swearing and you've got a parenting win win right there! You no longer need to leave the room to exclaim to the husband that he's a 'vagina' or a 'sexing masturbator'! And if you're not scared of the questions you can also quite happily tell him to 'sex off'. Whilst you might not want little Billy to go to school and call his teacher a 'penis head', at least they're releasing their anger in a contextual anatomically correct way. If the head teacher calls you up to the school, really what can they say? And what do you say? "I'm sorry, would you rather he calls him a cuntwaffle next time?" Whilst you might not want to go all out and start talking about vulvas to your 3 year old (it's probably not something you want them bringing up, loudly, in depth, on a bus ride) at least stop calling them fi fi's or foo foo's and widdle's and diddle's. There's no need. Now, on to my next topic. Since giving birth have you found yourself stuck to just pissing yourself whilst running, jumping, sneezing, coughing, laughing, on a trampoline or bouncy castle? Do you want to piss yourself at more family occasions? If the answer is yes, then get yourself down to the local arcade and have a dance off with your child on a dance machine. Whilst your body is writhing around in an erratic fashion with a complete lack of coordination, you can now have the pleasure of pissing yourself too! Fucking kegals. So what I've learned is that you wouldn't call an elbow a 'wrinkly knobbly' so we don't need to make up names for our genitals and if you want to do anything remotely interesting with your children then wear either Tena ladies or piss coloured clothes.

Sleep Regression. And on the 7th day God created beautiful bouncing babbies. And on the 8th day he thought "fuck it, have some sleep regression too". Well, that's probably not in the bible, but the bible wasn't written by Mary after she had a shit night sleep with the baby Jesus, she's woken up with flappy, Madonna cone tits cause the baby wasn't even hungry but if you shove a tit in it's gob every 5 minutes it keeps it quiet, and Joseph always just goes straight back to sleep. Because there's no point both of them being awake. Is there?! Oh but there is a point in them both being awake, cause everyone knows that Mary will be irrationally angry at Joseph and his ability to fall straight back asleep, especially when he complains about how tired he is. Oh! You're tired?! *insert manic laugh here* Back to current day, and the sleep regression that's been inclusive of everyone for thousands of years. Or maybe that's why they were gifted Frankincense, maybe it was the Calpol Plug In of it's day to help your baby Jesus sleep better. If you didn't know this was coming from a sleep deprived, half delirious mother, you'd maybe assume that I'm pissed up. No, just tired. I haven't started drinking... yet. But seriously what's that all about? Your little cherub used to sleep for 12 hours, mewling like an adorable little kitten every time it woke up with an empty belly. Now it goes down at 7, has a half hour disco nap, awake for 4, then back down sleeping in 30 second stints till the sun comes up. All the while thumping it's little fists and feet and rotating it's head 360° or at least shaking it from side to side, I'm not quite sure in the dark. Then when 'sun up, baby up', you know you're treading a very fine line, in limited time to get it back to sleep before it wakes up too much and it's game over. So you scoop up a handful of breast off the mattress and gently, but in no uncertain terms stuff it in it's mouth, having the dummy ready to make the nipple/finger/dummy transition. You then make a duvet tent over your heads to block out any minute rays of daylight, but obviously you need plenty of air to still get in so that arm hovers there holding onto the duvet, you know it could be there for the next hour but it's a risk you're willing to take. You make a mental note to chalk it up later as a work out. You see your little cherub drift off and feel like the luckiest woman alive. Now, you've got a decision to make here... do you drift off yourself to be woken up to prison shanks aka babies fingernails clawing at your face, throat, chest, pulling out your hair in tiny, painful fistfuls? Or, do you stay there awake, not daring to move whilst most parts of your body seize up but giving you time to think about the most important of topics such as, do I prefer puff pastry or shortcrust? What are those trails of smoke called after planes in the sky? Why are towns twinned with one another? Then the baby wakes up again anyway so it's all irrelevant, and your little cherub has the most wonderful gummy grin on it's face because it's always so happy to see you, so you scoop up baby and breasts and tiptoe out the room cause whilst Joseph is a dick for sleeping so well, you love him very much. Plus, it's only 7am so you've got plenty of time later to get pissed off at him.

Today I went for my induction at the gym, or as the drill sergeant, I mean personal trainer put it my 'training programme'. Fuck. My. Life. I wasn't actually expecting to do a work out! I thought I'd go and be given a tour of the machines, be shown where the changing rooms are, then bade them a cheery goodbye. Oh how naive I was. He started the hour with some questions to gauge my level of fitness and/or shame. "How often do you work out?" "I don't". "What is your current level of fitness?" "Non. Existent". "When did you last run?" "20 years ago".... At this point I was jogging on the treadmill (little did I know that that was a warm up, sneaky fucker) when he comes out with "Have you hurt your arm?" "No. Why?" "You're holding your arm across your front" Oh. Would you point out at this point that it's because you don't wear a bra? and because you didn't think you'd be working out felt no need to put one on today? No, because you don't want to draw attention to your tits swinging around in time to the background motivational music. It would be far better to wait till you're doing something called a 'slam squat' for your tits to literally dive out over the top of your vest in a bid for freedom every time you jump up. That's far less embarrassing. I then had to get a drink from the water fountain as I hadn't brought a drink, and unfortunately there's no more glamorous way to do that than shut your eyes and spray yourself in the face hoping that at least some will go in your mouth. Stand up and wipe all the water and saliva off your face and pretend you're not in the slightest bit embarrassed. People in American high school films make it appear so easy. It's not. So I endured another 50 minutes of part humiliation, part jelly legs. Whilst he put together my plan. My plan to reduce my cholesterol, lower my resting heart rate, increase my blood pressure all whilst maintaining my perfect BMI. So what you're telling me is, I may be slim on the outside, but on the inside I'm fucked? I think the only things that were lowered were my morale and any intention of going back. So I left with promises to eat more pulses, grains and protein and where did I go? Straight to fucking McDonalds for a large quarter pounder meal, mozzarella dippers and a creme egg mcflurry. It's ok though, I got a diet coke. I learnt 2 things today, I'm really fucking unfit and do not wear grey leggings to the gym as they WILL show up a sweaty bum crack.

The Gym? The only gym I'm interested in is 'Jims cafe'.

So today we joined the gym, it's a posh gym so I made an effort to not be dressed head to toe in Primark clothes for a change. We've decided that we'll take it in turns, so whilst one is in the gym the other will sit with the baby. What I mean by me joining the 'gym', is that when it's my hour I'll probably actually just go to the salon for a treatment, then come downstairs looking suitably exhausted, quick swap over then I'll head over to McDonalds, and stuff my little face so that when he finishes I can suggest something healthy for tea and and be really judgemental if he's craving some carbs. Regarding gym wear, for some unknown reason (probably my strange sense of humour actually) I kinda want to dress in 80's 'active wear' just to see peoples reactions, stroll in all casual with neon sweat bands and leg warmers with permed hair and a ghetto blaster on my shoulder. On a more serious note I am concerned about the opinion people will form of me. It's the kind of gym that is full of footballers and beautiful, taut women. And there will be me rocking up with VPL from the maternity knickers I still wear, sporting a Primark legging that will probably become overly moist as it won't have 'moisture wicking technology', and most likely will split down the arse seam during a vigorous warm up and an old season, chewing gum grey Celtic shirt to finish the ensemble, and sports bras?! I haven't even worn A bra for the past 4 months never mind one that is meant to hold these big, flappy baby feeders in place... maybe I should invest in some new clothes. Maybe something over priced that is made by a designer in conjunction with a trendy sports brand, with any number of features and technologies built in. That realistically won't get tested as I'll be sat on my arse reading Closer magazine and drinking an isotonic drink for the energy I need for my ''work out''. It'll all look the part when I take a gym selfie though with various hashtags claiming '#majorgains' and '#gymlife'. Which begs the question, do I even care? And if so, why?! Yes is the short answer. Yes I do care. I want to be toned, I want to feel fit and healthy. I don't want the kids laughing at me cause I get out of breath putting my pyjama's on! My motivation was summed up yesterday for me when the husband asked me to do a couple jobs round the house. What did I do? I watched porn and played lego games on the playstation whilst repeatedly going back to finish off a full batenberg cake. Serves 8? Yeah, serves me 8 times. So, I either put up with this current level of fitness that I'm unhappy with or I go download the Rocky soundtrack and email a picture if my own face to McDonalds saying 'do not serve this woman'!