The Bluestocking: where conversation should supersede cards

[MyrtleLion]

The Blue Stockings Society was founded by women emphasising education and mutual cooperation. Men could attend as invited guests, but in this Women's Pub, they are only welcome to peer enviously through the windows.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Stockings_Society

All women welcome!

All tastes catered for.

All food containing calories will not increase waistlines.

All drink containing alcohol will not intoxicate beyond the mildy merry and slightly inhibited stage. Guaranteed no hangovers.

Don't mind the gerbils, hamster, capybaras, quokkas and other assorted rodents. They're all female, all staff and very accommodating...

The thread was nearly as funny as the rozzers are coming one a few christmases ago.

I fair near wet myself last night and stayed up longer than intended.

It's taken me nearly two hours to read the whole thread. It was so hilarious I am no longer grumpy. Though my DSD using FOUR rolls of toilet paper a week is driving me mad. It's only toilet paper. I can buy more. I can afford to buy more. I don't have to wait for the Who Gives A Crap delivery that was brought forward by two weeks, having previously brought it forward by a month last delivery, even though I ordered it NOW on Friday and it's taken FIVE days so far. I fucking live next door to a fuckoffhuge supermarket. And a couple of rolls of paper rather than bamboo loo paper won't kill the planet. And at least she's not costing me £80 in plumber's call out fees any more by blocking the upstairs loo with wet wipes. IT WILL BE FINE. IT'S ONLY FUCKING TOILET PAPER.

Are you sure you're not grumpy any more, Myrtle?

Maybe a little bit...

Lots of 'awww poor you cuppas' left outside your door - I knocked and then ran away to safety😨

The toilet rolls are scattering to their safe spaces.

The Rozzers thread was my introduction to FWR, it was love at first sight😍

This one?

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4967923-everyone-scarper-the-rozzers-are-coming

Yes i was an arrival earlier that year so some of the coded language was hard to follow. But if i remember i had a backlog of Christmas tasks and used up all my hankies laughing.

No wonder I struggled to find it . I was posting as

IdidntseeanythingandIamnotBoiledbeetle

Oh yes you got named in the papers was it Hadley freeman

Did I?

Thank you! I really appreciate it. 💐💐💐

Her mother never had the patience to teach her really basic stuff that everyone learns when they're five. And was so cruel DSD was too scared to ask.

DSD is nearly 32 and has lived with us for seven years. But we don't know what she doesn't know until something like this crops up. And she doesn't ask, we have to gently investigate when things like the loo kept getting blocked. Now it's why have we run out of 48 rolls of loo paper in six weeks.

Fortunately DH is a brilliant dad and asked her to explain what she was doing to use so much. He really did it in a kind way without me there and she took it well and wasn't embarrassed. (Thankfully as I would have no idea!)

We thought it might be her periods or makeup (which she doesn't wear often) or using it to clean the loo and sink, but it turns out she has a weird system that uses about 12 squares every time she goes, even if it's just a wee. So he's asked her to reduce it to eight squares (for a wee, for now). In a month or so he'll ask her how she's getting on and can she reduce to four or six at a time.

He's also just agreed to buy a nine-roll pack tomorrow for emergencies that she won't be able to find unless she asks. (This isn't cruel , it means we can order a new box and not resort to taking loads of loo paper off the for us so she can still have some. She has access to the big box but didn't remember to tell us when she emptied it.

Every so often we get blindsided by what her mother did and I'm angry about the way she grew up and that she doesn't even know how to talk about it because she thinks it's normal. She has SEN and can't hold down a job, but she's the friendliest lovely young woman and I'm upset that there are still things she doesn't know that we all take for granted and I feel so sorry for her now and for the little girl who was too scared to ask her mum how to wipe her bottom. 😭

@MyrtleLion You sound so wonderful xxx

@Boiledbeetle pretty sure Hadley did a short piece on the thread and quoted you …… you know she did.

I honestly don't! This is news to me! At least I think it's news to me! I may have known this and forgotten it, but I feel like I've never known this.

Oh my goodness, the poor girl.
for all of you.

I agree completely, @ErrolTheDragon.

@MyrtleLion - you are a truly wonderful person.

Thank you. I'm really not. I bite my tongue all the time and rant at DH about it. I've never felt such vitriol against a person as I do about her mother and I've had so much crap directed at me in the last year that there are a lot of other people who are more deserving of my ire.

I make a huge effort not to show DSD how I feel because it's not her fault, but I also didn't sign up to have a disabled adult child living with us permanently. It was a deliberate decision to never have children and one of thousands of reasons was because I didn't want to run the risk of having to be responsible for a disabled adult child.

When DH and I got together we thought having her would only be for a couple of years while she got on her feet because we hadn't realised the extent of her needs. We thought she would get an entry level admin job and gradually work her way up to a solid role without much responsibility. We thought she'd find some friends and house share until she found a romantic someone and we would probably help her out financially, but she would be independent.

Now she is semi-independent and has her own space and a microwave and fridge (so we can leave her while we go on holiday), but I doubt she'll ever leave. DH batch cooks all our meals once a week and gives her a share to heat up. But everything is tough. She can only handle one thing at a time and not then if she gets derailed, so she hasn't applied for a work capability assessment or PIP because she was focusing on tidying her room... for months. And now a small Kalax has arrived and she's determined to put it together herself, so that will take weeks before she applies for the extra money.

Sorry to go on. It's just hard.

My eldest sister has a son who will probably never live independently. I don't know if he'll ever have a job. He's over thirty and hasn't so far. But at least he was born that way. I don't know how I'd feel if his potential, how he could have been, had been stolen or blighted.

@MyrtleLion

Dear MyrtleLion, it sounds incredibly hard.

I am glad you are here at the Bluestocking. I appreciate your company, and though everything here is imaginary except the people who come, it really does feel like friendship, kindness, silliness and solace. The real things going on in our lives can be set aside for awhile while we're here.

What's that quote, Cher?

"Here's tae us, wha's like us, damn few an' they're a' deid".

Cheers! <sips large calorie-free hot chocolate and even larger tumbler of grand marnier>

I had a really shit mother Myrtle so kudos to you. I realise that it must be sodding hard at times for you, but you are one of lifes goodies for sure. 😘

@Boiledbeetle You may know my ability to search this is wanting lol it doesn’t matter really but i remember you name changing because of it i think one name change was being your sister with some side eyes

I have very good recall as my dishwasher can attest to

I hear you @MyrtleLion - both on the loveability of the person and the inner resentment of having to shoulder a load you didn't sign up for. I get those feelings at the times when my autistic (undiagnosed until he was 33) elder son is in more than usual chaos and all I can do (as he lives across the Atlantic) is throw money at the situation.

Myrtle's story alongside the Rozzer's thread sums up FWR and the Bluestocking in a way - 'the silliness and solace' as Inky so well described it.

I've just laughed myself silly re-reading some of the Rozzer posts.. isn't it amazing how a bunch of women who don't know each other at all in real life can gel like that in an extended tour de force of hilarity?

Laughed myself silly, but in true FWR style, I'm still thinking of Myrtle and sending and