Psara's guide to party etiquette

The Humble House Party

For those of you with children, a "house party" is a social gathering of adults (a party if you will) in the house of a person, the host (hence house party). Where drinks containing a substance known as alcohol is consumed and conversations are held at leisure with people, sometimes as tall or taller than you, about current affairs, life events, weather and points of mutual interest.

This weekend I went to one of these house parties and I thought it may be useful to offer some simple behavioural guidelines to other parents, now that we are entering the festive season. It is important that you are aware of how these events work since although, like algebra, you may have once understood them it is likely that as time has passed you have forgotten the finer details and mechanisms of such occasions.

Psara's Guide to Party Etiquette

#1 Rid yourself of spawn.

Children are not welcome, you will need a babysitter. You should ensure that for the evening you address your desperate need for once to not talk constantly about the children by talking constantly about the children, perhaps about your need to not talk about the children. Ensure that people who do not have children are aware that your child is better than all other children in every respect. Also ensure that you show photographs of your children to each person at the party in turn, this is a nice way to lead into a conversation about how you don't want to spend the night talking about the children.

#2 Prepare yourself.

Get dressed in clothes, including shoes. Possibly with heels. Also apply make-up. This is what ladies put on their faces to stop themselves looking like they haven't slept a full night in three years.

#3 Embrace the theme.

Embracing the theme often means interpreting the title in such a way that you can dress as a themed prostitute. For the holiday season think 'sexy elf' or perhaps 'sexy santa'. If the theme is a famous work of American Literature set in the 1920s, try to find some way of expressing yourself as a 1920s American prostitute. You probably don't own any clothes that fit. This will be a helpful start to your outfit. So dig out something from that period in your young life before the children where you were a bit fat and team it up with some ill fitting stockings that can then end up falling down just enough to show off the suspenders you haven't worn since you were single. They will complete the desperate "hasn't been out in a while so is dressing like a teenager" look. First and foremost you must be classy.

#4 Introduce yourself to new people.

After a few beverages, I find that the best way to meet new people isn't to quietly say hello to whoever is near you and ask their name, offer yours and ask some insightful question about their work or study. Personally I like to bound eagerly up to anyone I haven't seen before, get right in their face and demand to know who the HELL they are, what the HELL they are doing there and then point out some obvious feature of their appearance to them. "You've got a moustache", "You're wearing a watch", "You're eating some cheese", anything will do really. That way they will feel entranced by your wit and intellect and will obviously want to be your new best friend. Which is lucky because you should finish up by announcing to the room that this is your new best friend before moving on to the next victim. I mean guest.

#5 Hug existing acquaintances.

You may not usually be much of a hugger, but a few extra beverages will help in that respect. If you come across anyone at the party who you have ever met before, embrace them with glee as if they are the one person you came to the party to see. You may not actually know them very well, but by balls you know their name already and why they are there so it seems only logical. If you don't remember their name, after the hug is usually the best time to ask.

#6 Drink

Make sure that you have another drink in between each friendly conversation and also during if you should be offered a top up. You shouldn't try to keep any track of the number of drinks you have had. Have a drink or two before you arrive if you can and then continuously drink throughout the party. This is important for several reasons: firstly since you haven't had more than a couple of glasses of wine in an evening for such a long time you will have forgotten what it feels like to drink your own weight, this is the perfect opportunity to remind yourself. Secondly, you can't be certain when you will be able to leave your house in the evening again, so it is important to drink enough alcoholic drinks to appease the alcohol quotient per capita as advised by the British Government. It is advised that women drink two to three units of alcohol per day, so in three years that is between two thousand, one hundred and ninety units and three thousand, two hundred and eighty five units of alcohol. That amounts to about one thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight point seven five large glasses of wine. After the first hundred or so you should lose the ability to count your legs so trying to keep up with your alcohol consumption is largely pointless.

#7 Dance.

Like a loon. A loon on fire. A loon on fire in a sexual frenzy. A loon on fire in a sexual frenzy on a mountaintop just before an explosion that is about to cause a near fatal avalanche, thus permanently disabling them and ending forever their ability to express their otherwise undying lust for the dance.

#8 Vomit.

After your 1368.75th glass of wine, it is wise to step outside for a while. The combination of alcohol, dancing, shouting at strangers and euphoria should now enable you to freely vomit, providing the final touch to your house-party experience. Enlist a friend and your relatively sober spouse to find your shoes and carry you to the nearest place you can safely sleep, perhaps the house of a friend who is still at the party, and fall asleep in their bed. Make sure that you vomit some more onto their clean sheets and apologise profusely to your spouse until you lose consciousness.

#9 Leave.

When you return to consciousness it is likely to be the next day. Panic about the vomit. Change the sheets. Panic about the children waking up without you home (if you haven't got a babysitter staying over you should report yourself to social services at this point) *disclaimer: we did have a babysitter staying over* Panic about how your erstwhile friends now probably think you're an idiot. Panic about the fact that your spouse has lost any respect they previously had for you. Panic that despite your efforts, you did in fact spend all night talking to strangers about the children.

#10 Embrace the shame.

Apologise to the children, apologise to the babysitters, apologise some more to your spouse. Apologise to anyone you have ever met, perhaps via the medium of a blog.

Sorry everyone.

Bloody good party though.

God and Boobies

Since the recent vomiting episode escalated into a full-blown horror, I haven't had much to write about because other than a lot more chundering not much has happened.
One thing happened in real life, one thing happened on the internet and one thing happened in the news.
In real life, Angry Bird has decided to give Baby Woo the odd bottle of formula. Please put your shocked face away. On the internet I got into some debates about a BBC article on breastfeeding rates that I found deeply offensive in its use of language. In the news, the General Synod of the Church of England voted against having female bishops. Put your shocked face back on if you like.

God and Boobies

 Much as the internet is awash with commentary on the subject, I feel like I should probably make some mention of the Church of England sort of voting against women bishops. But the whole thing is so obviously absurd that there doesn't seem much to say about it. The Bible doesn't say that the Church shouldn't involve women - well it does if you read it that way I suppose but then if you want to play that game you can make the Bible say whatever you want it to say. The basic principles of Christianity are the equality of all in the eyes of God, we can't judge other people because that's God's job and we should just be nice to everyone (but especially nice to God). So it seems pretty un-Christian to deny women any rights quite frankly. But there is no need to even say that because most people agree. It's just unfortunate that there are enough of a minority who don't agree for it to be upheld as a rule. Go men, I'm sure Jesus'll love your attitude.

Now that's said I can talk babies and God! Two of my favourite topics because it's the two things I know most about. Well, two of the things I think most regularly about...

 God was invented by Aristotle. Yes he was. You can't deny it to be honest, there were gods about before but it was all rather tragically disorganised before Aristotle cleared it all up for everyone. Cunningly he managed to do this without living in a world where monotheism was all that much of an option or where Christianity was even a twinkle in the Virgin's eye. Aristotle invented most things, although the Dutch will claim it was them. Aristotle deffo wasn't Dutch. He may have invented the Dutch.

A very brief (this will totally get to babies soon) bit about a little bit of his Philosophy goes thus:

Everything is what it is because of its four causes. If you want to understand what something is, find out what its causes are and then you'll know. That's science. Aristotle also invented science.

Cause 1: The Material Cause. (what is it made of? Let's do science by finding out!)

Cause 2: The Formal Cause (what form does it take? You can think of it as being what shape it takes if you like)

Cause 3: The Efficient Cause (what made the material take that form? That involves tools and workmanship)

Cause 4: The Final Cause (why is it? What is it for? Partly you can think of this as its function, but more specifically it is to do with purpose. This is the clincher. Everything has a purpose. A pencil is for writing, that's what it's for, great! But it all gets a bit more complicated when you look at more complicated things like people, obviously. Don't think about this for too long, you might hurt yourself or else lose your mind. It's ok, mostly we've let it go now outside of organised religion)

When Aristotle did science he said we should be trying to find the meaning of why things were what they were and what they were for.

Let's think about breasts,
you see where this is going?

More to the point, Aristotle (although he wasn't talking about breasts at the time) said that for something to be good it should be good at being what it is.

Breasts are good if they are good at doing what it is that breasts are good at.
You see where this is going?

This eventually becomes a moral condition when Thomas Aquinas squishes all of this Aristotle into his analysis of the Bible and claims Aristotle for Christianity.

For something in nature to be morally good it should do what it is that it naturally does. 

Breasts.

A consequence of this view in the Church was that natural was considered best. For a long time afterwards it was thought that pain relief in childbirth was a morally bad thing because it was not natural. This attitude is from an ancient thinker, interpreted by a medieval thinker, slammed into the modern world without much further critique.

There is STILL an overarching view among people, including government people, that natural childbirth is morally better than unnatural childbirth (ie having a Caesarian), that having no pain relief is morally better than having pain relief (why have an epidural when you can have a water birth?) and that breastfeeding is morally better than formula feeding.

I will completely completely acknowledge that real, proper, non-medieval science has shown the benefits of breastfeeding. It's all very lovely of course.

But the issue is not a moral one.

Be very wary oh readers of mine of those who claim that 'breast is best'. This is not a moral issue and mothers who don't breastfeed, who choose not to for whatever reason are allowed to make that choice and it is purely a practical one and never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever a moral one. Ever. Except maybe when...no. Never.

The scientific enlightenment bore us many geniuses, revolutions in thought, insights and freedoms that pre-enlightenment science never could have done. Its main tenet was the abandonment of the search for the Final Cause of things.
To look for what God has deemed the moral purpose of something is now unconditionally considered to be unscientific and so claims made on this matter are faith-claims and never knowledge claims.

All this 'purpose' language in science (yes Brian Cox, I'm talking to you, you big massive....rude swear word) must be abolished. That is a rant for another time, but I stand by the periphery point that I make to you now; to feed your child at all is certainly a moral issue, but how you choose to do that is not a moral question.

The difference is the same as that between kicking a puppy and kicking a pencil. Don't kick any puppies, that was just an illustration.


Ps. If it was you that I was debating about the BBC article don't be offended, I was really just struggling for a topic other than vomit. This isn't me going way overboard about making my point.

Pps. Please share using the button below, follow using the thing on the right there ----->
or tweet or facebook or whatever. Also please comment below. It's nice to read comments. It fills the void of my otherwise void-filled life. It will also save the children the bother of filling those voids with vomit.

What? I love biscuits...at least I'm honest about it.

"the present findings suggest that an effective attentional control system, as reflected in preschoolers’ ability to direct attention away from tempting aspects of the rewards in a delay-of-gratification task, may share a common mechanism with, or serve as a precursor for, long-term ability to inhibit attentional and behavioral responses, as reflected years later in performance on the go/no-go task. Moreover, because inefficient performance in the go/no-go task has been well documented as being associated with immature development of fronto-striatal and related circuitry, the findings suggest that temptation focus in the delay-of-gratification task at age 4 may already be a marker of the subsequent development of individual differences in this system in adolescence and adulthood." 

(Wikipedia) (maybe not the professional researcher's tool of choice but it sure is easy)

There is a much repeated psychological test performed on children; faced with a favourite snack of their choice they are told "now you're not to eat the biscuit until I return, then you can have two!" 

Woohoo!!

Some kids wait. Some kids eat the snack.
What would you have done? What would you want your children to do?

Personally I'd have finished the biscuit before the researcher had finished saying the word "now". According to the study this means that I was always likely to become a "less competent" teenager...check. And as an adult, have fewer friends...check. Meh.

I'm more than happy with this, if I was going to choose whether I was a waiter or a taker I'd have picked to be a taker because at least it's honest. As an adult the one thing I'm really no good at is lying. This gets me into trouble sometimes but I keep my integrity.

If you put a snack in front of a kid and tell them not to eat it you aren't you basically checking if they can lie to themselves? They DO want to eat it, it's not a bad thing to eat a snack, some people might argue it's bad to disobey an authority figure but where would we be if we all thought that? At church probably, with our slaves tied up outside. Nice.

I don't think being an incompetent teenager is any bad thing either, I was ruddy useless at most things. But when I was asked (true story) "now, do you want to do the washing up or do you want some chocolate?" I may have been too stupid, unlike the other child in this picture, to spot the clever psychological trick being played on me (yeah, genius, well done you) but I was honest. I'd like the chocolate, obviously (my sarcasm ain't new)
The other kid said she would rather do the washing up - guess who got the chocolate. Adults are sometimes ruddy horrible.
Thinking about it, what does that even prove except that she was cleverer than me and saw through the stupid game and I was naive, but honest? Again, I know which I'd pick to be now. (in case she's reading this, the other kid isn't horrible by the way, the grown-up in the story is horrible but she understood his ways better than me and is cleverer than me) (wow, Psara, cleverer than you? Surely not! You make a good point, but she is exceptionally clever so it's ok. Don't panic.)

Yes I don't have a LOT of friends now, but I have maybe 10 best friends, all over the world. It doesn't matter that I don't have a crowd of a million people to go to the pub with who all have some basic knowledge about my life when I have a few amazing friends who know me inside out. Not literally. Not all of them anyway.

Enough about me, what's this all got to do with the babies eh?
Well, as parents we feel a responsibility to bring up our children into the sorts of people we want them to be. On some level this is balls because we can't help who we are entirely as parents and that's bound to rub off a bit. I also don't think I want to bring up Mr Gubbles and Fusty to be like me.

The parental role of the children in the study is merely a footnote. Children who were subject to a broken promise before the test were more likely to take the biscuit, children who were subject to a kept promise were more likely to wait. That speaks volumes doesn't it?

Regardless of the psychological repercussions at stake, I'm pretty much going to try not to break promises to my children, and if that means that they end up having loads of friends then so be it.


Post Script:
I have added some gadgets to the blog page, so now you can share it on your facebook or twitter or google+ account by pressing the 'share' button below! Also you can follow my blog by clicking that button on the side there. Simple. 

Hate and Love

Things I hate: bin juice, vomit, dog poo, paedophiles and leeks.

Come with me if you will, into your imagination...
It's a scorching hot day, you are staying on a secluded tropical island and basking in the midday sun. To cool yourself down you find a beautiful waterfall and bathe beneath its waters. The refreshing and cleansing flow from this natural spring cascades over your skin and you think to yourself this, precisely this, is the best I have ever felt. Perfect, just perfect.

The exact opposite of this is what happened to me last night.

We were staying away at the in-laws for the weekend, my poor husband was on the verge of a meltdown trying to complete his coursework with his already crippling dyslexia being exacerbated by a slowly dying laptop. It had been a long day of cables, inverters, phone calls and stress. I went to bed at 9pm; the house is pretty cold in the evenings so I thought I would snuggle up with a book and go to sleep. And that I did.

At midnight I heard a grumble from Mr Gubbles's room. He rarely wakes up but he has recently been playing "no I don't like it" at dinner time, so he has been known to wake up asking for milk or snacks recently. Since hubbo wasn't in bed yet I assumed he would go and have the inevitable tired snacks row. 5 minutes of grumbling later and no sign of hubbo I sighed and got up. It's very cold, remember how this is opposite? At this point I made two fatal mistakes: 1. I did not put my glasses on and 2. I did not tie back my hair.

Bad. Moves.


Poor Mr Gubbles was sat on his bed crying. I sat on the floor, "what's wrong baby?" ..."mummy a cuddle" came the reply. I do love him when he asks for cuddles. Sneaky little sh.......

As I put my arms around his pudgy neck, my back suddenly feels warmer than it was. It took a few seconds before I identified the sorrowful sob as the telltale 'huukbleurgh' of a full-on gurge. Delightful. Why didn't I tie my ruddy hair back??

So I stood him back on his feet, "oh no, I'll get Daddy". I don't know what the response was going to be, because when he opened his mouth to speak all that came out was "huukbleurgh". TV child-rearing experts have told me to always speak to children at their level. In this situation, and not wearing my glasses, that is NOT good advice. Remember the waterfall? The cool refreshing water cascading over your face? Now imagine that's vomit. Remember how I HATE vomit? Yeah, so now I have vomit not only seeping into my arse-crack but also covering my face and hair, front and back. I say nothing. I am in shock. It is dribbling off the end of my nose like a summer rain in Hell, it's stinging my eyes like tears of fire, it's invading all the places I least want vomit to invade. He adds a final top up to my legs as I sit on the floor. At least he's thorough, though I do now look like some macabre Dr. Who Puke-Monster.

Hubbo finally came to the door.

Now, the first time Mr Gubbles projectile vomited, hubbo was a bit slow on the uptake. Where I had expected him to leap into action in a manly way and either take the kid off me or run to find a muslin he instead had stood, somewhere between dumbstruck and impressed and simply said "he's never done that before". Yes, well done. So this time I was less surprised by his silence but twice as bothered.
Because instead of him rushing to my aid I was forced to say "help me".
Under the waterfall in the land of dreams, opening your mouth is positively encourageable. When you have a face covered in vomit, coupled with a big hatey phobia of vomit, opening your mouth is probably the absolute worst thing you can do.

You know when you're sick and you get some left in your mouth and nose and it's really really gross? That feeling is worse when the vomit is not yours.

So my early night of warm snuggliness turned into a midnight shower in a house of ice where I have no clean pyjamas (hubbo kindly donated me his) (this does correctly imply that I have married a man who still wears jammies, but I've dealt with that). I finally got back to bed at 1 and dreamed of bathing in vomit until morning.

But when Mr Gubbles rudely woke me back up at a frankly stupid hour for what should be an ill child (turns out he's actually fine) all I thought about was whether he was ok. I was happy to rush in to him and get him up and dressed, sing five little ducks while I brushed his teeth and go downstairs to watch the only episode of Thomas I managed to record on the in-laws' telly over and over and over and over and over and over... Because he's my boy and I love him, right down to his insides apparently.

Innies and Outies

I need to cover a few introductory things:

1. Thank you LOADS for coming and reading. My first ever blog post has been read over 1100 times which is immense and I am very humbled.

2. I have received all the necessary apologies from "the incident" so now am resting assured that I'm not a total arse, I really am just misunderstood.

3. You'll need to know some things about me to follow what goes on in my life/brain: I have ejected two small people from my rude bits. I don't want to use their real names so I will be referring to them as Mr. Gubbles, who is 2 and a half and Fusty who is 4 months. Also we have a shared set of best friends, mine is the mum, I will call her Angry Bird, she has two small girl-people; though only one was ejected from her rude bits the other came out of the emperor's exit. The older I call Moo and the younger is Baby Woo. 

Innies and Outies 

Old wives, rude words and other people's junk.

Once you've had a baby, you expect a certain amount of nappy talk, but I'm not sure anyone really expects about 50% of their waking thoughts to be overtaken by the excretions of their offspring. It's all we talk about apart from food, we parents. But all this begs certain other questions about the names that we call things. Yes, we can say 'poo' and 'wee' without cringing, but can anyone really ever refer to a tiny baby girl's bits and bobs as her 'vagina' or 'vulva'...you shuddered just reading that didn't you? So instead, parents sign up to a plethora of ridiculous names and noises to describe their children's private parts and we leave it for teachers in the future to correct their terminology. 
Since me and Angry Bird potty trained our eldest spawn at the same time this became a major issue because the gender difference not only means they have to have a word for their own junk, but they needed to understand the other kind of equipment and have a vague understanding of the mechanics involved in having it. Some things need pointing in certain directions, some do not. Also, since Angry Bird has two girls and I have two boys I wasn't given any opportunity to form my own preferences about what to call the girl bits and just had to adopt her family terminology. Unfortunately this means I now regularly have to affirm to children in my care, sometimes in public that yes, I do indeed have a nunnie. *shudder*. And the boy junk? Well we call it a schmekel. (Wikipedia says that "Schmekel is an all-transgender, Jewish folk punk band from Brooklyn, NY, known for their humor". Thank goodness for blogging because I only just found that out. I'm not sure how Angry Bird will take this information, but I think she will enjoy it perhaps a little more now when Moo publicly announces that "Daddy has a schmekel" I so wish he did.)

Once you've figured out what you're calling everything you have certainly overcome one hurdle of new-parenting. But you have more to cope with. Nappies. 
Yes you have to make choices about brands and cloth, about where you think changing a baby is socially acceptable and occasionally about why the ratio between how much your child can evacuate and how much a nappy can absorb is so drastically drastically unfair. But my problem is actually changing nappies. Wiping poo off nunnies in particular. In my own view, boy nappies are far far easier, everything's there just flopping about, if they try and do a sneaky extra wee you can see it coming (with some practice) you clean all the gubbins off and you're done. But girl nappies? Now that's confusing. There's innie bits, poo shouldn't be in innie bits, I know that at least, given my own innie bits. But you shouldn't be wiping it further in, and you certainly shouldn't be leaving it there. I have literally no clue how to cope with a girl nappy. Angry Bird says it's easier but it's like a crap-covered Rubik's cube to me. Plus where a boy will at least just pee in your face a girl can do a stealth wee, you don't know it's there...soaking into the back of their vest...until you think you've finished and pick them up. Oh nunnie.

My other issue with girl nappies has been one with Baby Woo's nappies (well obviously, Moo is potty trained weren't you listening?) (I say "potty trained", she has been "can wee at will" trained, which often manifests itself in a spite wee, just for the laughs, but she's out of nappies anyway) and having to look at her umbilical hernia. It's not disgusting, but it looks like it should be painful. Angry Bird pokes it, that is a bit gross. The standard medical advice says to leave it alone and it'll either go away on its own or they'll do some surgery in a year or two. An umbilical hernia is a bit of bowel sticking out of the belly button, it looks like an outie belly button, and essentially it is, but Baby Woo's was golf-ball sized. An old wives tale circulated (they do around babies, I could spend forever telling you the mad things people say you should do to your child but I'll save that for another time) so we all dismissed pretty fast the advice that it could be cured by taping a penny over it. However, for lack of anything else to try and on the advice of some old wives that do actually have some medical training, she tried it. After a short 8 weeks of the 2p strap-on technique, Woo's outie is down to a normal size. Amazing. Sometimes it seems old wives do know what they're talking about. 

On which note I'm going to head off so I can stick Fusty outside on the balcony, that'll toughen him up a bit.


Schmekel, let's give those people some hits!

Let them eat blog

A Meta-Blog, a blog about blogging and why I now blog in the form of a blog. 

Blog in or blog off.

Here is a short list of things that have happened to me in the last week:

1. I entered and was not shortlisted in a blog competition.

2. I posted the entry blog on facebook.

3. I wrote and recorded a song in my bedroom for some friends.

4. I was called irritating, a c**t, ugly and many other wonderful and colourful names in response to my facebook activities, well sort of...it was actually in response to other people's responses, I lost track. Morons are difficult to follow in conversation because beside their appalling spelling and grammar, ad hominem arguments and txt spk they actually don't make much sense. Suffice it to say that I didn't actually do or say anything to which they were responding. So it wasn't so much responding as just sponding. People should spond less.

5. I was persuaded that I should make a blog...not everyone thinks I'm a c**t, one person thinks I'm "mildly amusing in places". Probably my face.

Here are some relevant attachments!

1. My blog entry:


It is a well cited factoid that ‘only 2% of mothers are medically unable to breastfeed’. Baby 2 was born at a sturdy 8lb 5oz. I relished feeding him but ‘established’ breastfeeding was not actually all it cracked up to be. He sank through the centiles like a poo in a paddling pool and no one could figure out why.

Fundamentally it doesn’t make a crusty nipple of a difference what centile a baby is on, so long as all their centiles in all the various categories are more or less the same. Baby 2 was on the 98^th for head circumference, 91^st for length but only the 9^th for weight. This made medical professionals quietly panic wherever we went.

One frozen poo in a jar later and there we have it. Primary lactose intolerance.


As it transpires, almost all breastfeeding mothers claim that their baby is lactose intolerant, which is surprising given that it is quite rare. I have discovered that the main reason for this is that no one really understands what lactose intolerance is. Lactose is the particular sugar found in milk. All milk has lactose in, even soya milk. Lactose intolerance is an inability of the body to break down lactose using the enzyme lactase into glucose, which we can use for all sorts of biological gubbins. Cutting lactose out of your diet won’t stop your milk having lactose in it any more than drinking lots of cola will make your milk fizzy.


Arguments about breast feeding and formula feeding are rife but the fact of the matter is that not all mothers can breastfeed their child. For some, formula is best…it’s a shame that’s less catchy. For this baby at least breast was certainly not best. We are the 2%.


There have been various speculations about this, apparently there's a mistake in it but I'm just blind to it. There may be a word missing, I am blind to it. It might be hugely offensive to breast feeders, fail to see that too. Maybe I'm not the shiniest penny.

2. A link to the song I wrote on youtube (did you notice the baby behind me? He's not been drugged or microwaved, he's always like that)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QrebRIAMLTU

Contrary to friendly suggestion, this video cannot be found by typing "irritating c**t" into the search box but maybe I should add it as a tag?