Crepeys in the Long Grass of Life

[CointreauVersial]

Thanks Beachy for the frisky title suggestion.

Well, here we all are!

Yes Hatty, I agree that most men seem to be head-in-the-sand and do their own thing (infact I caught a psychologist saying the same on TV this morning!) at home at least!

And OPM, I think you are right about siblings trying to mark out their own identities - noticed that in most of my friends DC and mine who are 19 months apart and were very competitive with each other until a year or two ago.

Feel lucky that I didn't have an Irish or Jewish mama, despite her other failings!

Feel of you BD - I am soooo tired again, despite an hours nap yesterday when I got in from work - DH keeps thrashing around in bed and waking me about 5

I see your Jewish and Irish mamas and raise you Indian family.

My father told me with approval of an Indian friend of his whose dad had told him "you can be friends with boys from any caste but they have to be the top three boys in the class."

One of the reasons DP is rather off-and-on with the girls' academic stuff is that he remembers his Bangladeshi father shouting at them if they hadn't done well.

I am writing about Indian Christianity in the 19th century. And my great-whatever-auntie who was the first Indian Mother Superior in a convent. I think she must have been really quite terrifying.

I always felt a huge pressure to succeed academically, though this never seemed to be spoken outright - I just felt a spotlight on me the whole time. Not sure if this is related to having an older sister who died, and consequent feeling of having to 'make it up to' my parents. My younger sis certainly didn't have the same pressure.

Naturally, I squandered any academic ability I had in a teenage 'yah boo sucks', and have always done the bare minimum to get by.

Now then crepeys. I have to make a chocolate cake for DS's birthday party. Last year for the grown-ups I made the crepey favourite Nigella storecupboard cake (involving jam) but wanted something a bit lighter this year. Any failsafe, lovely and moist, recipes? And MI, what was that fudge icing recipe you gave me - was it chocolate, golden syrup and butter?

Yep - smallish chunk of butter (about 25g), slurp of golden syrup, melt the lot together in a jug and slosh over.

Here's a little anecdote - many years ago DP as he then was and I went to the Indian Embassy to get our India visas. I went first and my lawyer qualification was not commented on. Next up was DP and the middle-aged Indian lady behind the desk looked up at him, beamed and said "Chartered accountant! CLEVER boy!". I have never let him live it down.

OPM that's very interesting. I feel invisible next to what people think about DHs status. What do the Crepeys feel about this invisible woman of a certain age? How do you cope with the put downs? I take it all out on DH. It's not fair really but he's got a career and a family because I had to give up a lot of my status ( which wasn't huge but it meant a lot to me) and dreams. I'm horrible to him about it. Ashamed of my really.

sympathies tilly. We go though phases of having to sleep separately due to DHs disruptive sleep behaviours including snoring. I'd be a zombie and probably crash the car otherwise!

A joke:

Jewish/Irish/Indian mother distraught that her son has fallen into a lake. "Somebody help! My son, the DOCTOR, is drowning!"

Rose - it's partly that feeling of lacking any career identity that kind of set me off wanting to retrain as a teacher. I will then 'be' something, and because I only started doing it at cough late forties, no-one's going to expect me to be a high-flier.

I'm not jealous of DP's career success - he's far harder-working and deserving of it that I ever would be.

How do you know Jesus was Jewish/Indian/Irish?

He lived at home till he was 30, he thought his mum was a virgin and she thought he was God.

Rose, interesting point. I felt it far, far more with my ex who was a journalist (the alcoholic lefty hack) because I was very much in his shade, gazing up at him adoringly and not doing a Proper Journalism Job, just running press offices - albeit usually earning more than him so supporting his Genius. And I was as a result quite horrible to him - he was Important and I wasn't.

I don't, really, feel that with the current Mr Inferior. I think a lot of this is that he does in reality deeply respect a lot of my work and crucially doesn't expect me to put his job first. I mean, I grumble about being the Noticing Things Like This Fairy, but DP doesn't say "I can't do this because I am Important and you are Unimportant" and if I say "I can't do this" he will - once put on the spot - pull out the stops to step up to the plate (if that metaphor works...) And he is good at what he does but I don't want to do what he does.

I would find it really, really tough living with someone in the same field as me who was more successful.

OPM, I love that story.

I hate the fact that we are defined by careers at all, rather than who we are. You should not be a nonentity because you have not have a career. That is one of the problems of the society we live in.

BTM -have similar problems with DH and 5am starts. I am frequently reduced to zombie status.

"do not have a career" - can't even rant correctly.

See MI that's exactly the problem here - dp has the career I want(ed) and I have squandered my talent and intelligence. More annoyingly dp has no/nil/nada ambition and in his position I'd have been VC by now..... And to add to that he often says I'm cleverer than him (I'm not, we are just very different)

Bummer....

< shakes fist at sky >

Why, oh why, of all the days in the year to be thundery downpours does it have to be when I have 8 children to entertain with an OUTDOOR bouncy castle? SO UNFAIR.

Ah, I do not feel at all in DH's shadow (nor he in mine, I am quite sure!) I did take a career step down when I had the DC, but that was my choice and I don't regret it one bit. I have had a career that I have loved and still love and as his is in the same field and to the same level that I was at, I guess I wouldn't feel that he has achieved more? And if he does get promotion in the future, I don't think I will feel over-shadowed.

I don't think I have ever felt that I was/am someone else's shadow. Maybe that's something to do with being an only?

And also, I really do not judge success by academic qualifications/wealth/position of power. In fact, I don't think I would judge anyone I know as more/less successful than each other

Herbs, hope they all have their swimming stuff
Actually the current forecast looks OK for tomorrow. It is tomorrow, isn't it?

No, Sunday, when the real tempest starts.

Very interesting points, Crepeys. As it is, We are in completely different areas. DH is a Director of Tax and Treasury with an accountancy background. I was in public sector, caring professions. When we met, even though it's comparing apples and oranges, I was more senior in terms of size of dept. (I was managing a team of 42). In truth I was ok about leaving it all behind when DC3 was born. We couldn't afford the childcare on what I was earning and the job did need a full timer. I just wanted to keep my hand in, very part time but it hasn't worked out. I retrained like Herbs so that I could teach at home and still get upset when the family are disruptive and DH can't keep the kids quiet, and then he can go off to work without a backward glance.
The real problem happened however, strangely(but echoes of what MI said) in respect of an organisation where I have been volunteering (professional role but voluntary) for a long time, and then DH got asked to be a trustee…Treasurer in fact. Suddenly everyone there started to ignore me (paranoid) and kept asking me where he was or syphoning him off when we were there as a couple for a 'quiet word'. The CEO once said to me…"Well we'll see your DH at the next board meeting, and you when you're picking up the kids…" I have taken it very badly. It was my place. I am not very nice

If it's just showery we can do food during the rain, and shove them outside as soon as it clears up. Maybe they can entertain themselves collecting snails that the rain brings forth...

DH is a grafter, left school with no qualifications, and has slogged his way up the greasy pole to a fairly senior and well-paid position. There has been a promotion dangling in front of him for a few years now (it was scuppered temporarily by the recession/recruitment freeze) but there are signs that it might happen in the next year. He soooo deserves it, and I don't begrudge him his success one bit. Even though I am by far the most academic/qualified there is no way I could do his job, or cope with the attendant politics.

Sometimes he comments that I really should get myself a better job, but he knows I'm in the perfect position - flexible, local employer, work-life balance etc etc - and that is not something I'm prepared to trade while the DCs are still at school. Even if my pay is rubbish and I could do the job in my sleep.

(DH's Irish mama is far from pushy, though. He doesn't recall her taking any interest in his schooling or career choices).

Oh dear Herbs. Fingers crossed for you!
We have friends coming on Saturday evening (plus DD and her mates pre-party they are going to) for a BBQ in the garden. It's not looking good and we can't really sit in the kitchen and the sitting room is full of boxes...

Ah Rose, that must be very frustrating for you - don't blame you for being pissed off!

Hope the weather holds off/up for everyone this weekend.
I'm slumped on the bed having down the laundry and dishwasher and walked over the hill and done some shopping.

I am very glad I took the day off!

Rose, I sympathise madly. I used to find being treated as Alcoholic Ex's secretary on the phone incredibly humiliating. And I am not looking forward to the weeks of the summer when the kids are around - and having said DP steps up to the plate he does rather assume that I will sort out working while they're about. (I have an office door that shuts. This helps massively.)

I would hate to do what DP does. And would be dreadfully bad at it. Conversely, words fail me at how terrible he'd be as a journalist.

Herbs, that is SO UNFAIR. It's unfair to a point of teenage Kevinesque eye-rolling.

DP's Irish mama didn't push him at all either - a matter of some irritation to him, I believe. He still got a degree, but was the first in his family ever to have even got A levels, I think. This sense of grafting has stayed with him. I, however, who always had someone pushing me up the hill, am a lazy bugger.