(no subject)

[tinyjo]

I'm feeling extremely low today. I don't really know why though. I was in tears last night trying to talk about attitudes to child free women in society with Alex (triggered by that obnoxious Observer article white_hart linked; they'll be getting a letter to the editor from me). It is something I find very frustrating but not normally something which would reduce me to tears, even when tipsy. And just now, I suddenly thought; what if this is PMT. What if I'm about to have a period for the first time in years? Just the thought is enough to make me want to cry on it's own. Still, I won a minor victory. I managed to decide that there was no point in making myself feel more depressed by going over to the snack machines and buying chocolate or a pack of carbohydrate-y sandwiches to cheer me up and then not losing any weight either. Instead, I'm treating myself to a crispbread from my desk drawer stash (!) and have just noticed a cup-a-soup in there which I might also have to supplement my breakfast (a banana).

I'll be able to get Zetti's review finished at lunchtime I think, which should give me a sense of achievement and then after work, there'll be a pub meetup, which always cheers me up. Chequers again? I'm not eating this time (I have cooking plans) so if anyone who is wants to go somewhere else, speak now and ye shall be heard. Well or anyone else of course, but I think the eaters probably get the final say - after all, anywhere we go is likely to serve drinkables :) Then I just have to get my Brownie planning done after dinner so that I can go to roleplaying tomorrow with a clear conscience.

It occurs to me that if I do have a period I have literally no stuff for it. And to be honest I have kind of deliberately not got round to buying anything in a kind of "bury head in sand about possibility" way. Perhaps I should go out at lunchtime and buy some panty-liners just in case. Also, I think I may be likely to post a lot today.

Comments

Re: Swimming against the tide

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of unreasonability on this subject is a question of perception. People who are not interested in children (mostly men) literally don't see them unless they are completely unignorable, which is mostly when they are behaving badly in a public place. New and impending fathers are often shocked by how many young kids there are on the streets because they'd never noticed them before. Likewise childfree men tend to believe that all under tens scream all the time because these are the only ones they notice - they typically are overimpressed by their friends' totally normal kids when they happen not to scream all the time.
On the other side, parents of small kids rapidly gain the sanity-saving ability to screen out noisy children, and only react to noises which require them to take some action. Tiny in particular is a very noisy baby, but I don't register this because most of it's happy noises which needn't concern me - I constantly find myself taking him somewhere with lower noise levels and realising slightly too late that he's making disgusting raspberry blowing noises.
Routemasters were killed off for two reasons - they needed conductors, which made them expensive, and they are not accessible to wheelchairs and unfolded pushchairs. In practice, the wheelchair bays in modern buses are used far more often by pushchairs than by wheelchair users (the situation is similar for other disabled facilities, lifts, ramps, large doors, large ground floor loos etc). Jonathan Glancy wrote a deeply obnoxious article in the Guardian a long time ago which still makes me seeth when I think of it - he seems to want a London which is a combination between Hollywood Dickens and Logan's Run, full of fit, thin, childless young people - the aesthetic qualities of the Routemaster far outweighing its actual virtues for people transport.