The sun is up and we’re finally in August. Officially speaking I’m going to be 41 tomorrow, but as far as I’m concerned the official stance is overrated, so I’m gonna be 40 (again). The summer so far has been your typical British summer, i.e. some warm sunny days interspersed in between miserable, cloudy and wet weather. But at least…
“I speak half Portuguese”
We all went out for dinner on Monday with a friend that was visiting from South Africa. We had no babysitter and as the kids are on holiday it’s ok for them to sleep late so off we went. There’s a new(ish) Frankie & Benny’s in our town and I found out the other day that the Manager is Portuguese.…
Is a sweet a treat?
Obesity is a modern world problem. Sure, there was obesity when our grandparents were young but it was the exception. The majority of people ate traditional food of their region, ate plenty of fruits that were in season and vegetables were a staple food. These days we see children as young as two that are obese. We also see youngsters…
Ageing sucks!
The other day I read one of those letters that go viral on Facebook and it brought me to tears. These days this is easily achieved. I don’t know if my emotions changed after I had children or if I was always a softy that used to have a hard shell. This letter was from an old woman writing to…
Equal, not identical!
A couple of weeks ago the US navy announced that they were tripling the Maternity leave entitlement for Navy Moms-to-be. This was of course great news as it could be the start of something bigger for US women in general. We have a Women group chat at work and there was immediately some chatter about this and how it was…
Watch out, I’m a zombie!
These last few weeks have been very eventful. Too eventful if I think about it. I was in the US for a week just before the birthday party of my two eldest. The jet lag didn’t get me but a late night on Friday due to crying baby, the 7 hours long concert at Wembley on Saturday and the 60…
The silver lining of loss
While I was in the US this past week I was chilling out in my room in the evening perusing my Facebook news feed. I bumped into this post from Sheryl Sandberg (the COO of Facebook). Sheryl is possibly one of the most successful women in technology today and so she’s a role model to me. A source of inspiration…
Come join the party…
As I lie here awake on the evening of my daughter’s seventh birthday in a hotel room on the other side of the world, I am thinking of all the things I still have to do before their birthday party on Sunday. Mr A and Miss Z were both born in June so I normally do a joint party for…
What you wish you knew before having kids
I was at a meet up this evening where a panel of women talked to an audience (made up mainly of women) about the stuff we should all know about having kids and managing a career before we have them. I was pleased to see an audience with a varied age demographic. Most of these women work in and around…
Arachnophobia and the like…
When I was a kid I was scared to death of certain bugs. Strangely, I didn’t mind (and in fact played with) a whole other set of bugs. I liked butterflies and lady birds. I played with ants and those little crawlies that curl up into a ball when you touch them (and that I have no idea of their…