Welcome!

I keep thinking that I want to write more. I keep having things that I want to say that take up more space than a Facebook status update. I keep writing things in my head and never committing them to screen or paper. I don't think I'm a born writer. I'm not driven to write, but sometimes words just want to overflow out of me, and I don't seem to have a place to put them. So I'm going to have a go at putting them here. I'm not sure yet what "here" will be. I'm not sure who will come and read it. I'm not sure whether I'll have the time, competence or commitment to update this once I get over the first thrill of something new to do. I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

The Cast

Me - erm, wow, this is harder than I thought. When discussing the subject of feminism with friends recently, I pointed out that I define myself first and foremost as ME, and I try to be the best ME that I can be. And now I have to define what I mean by ME. I'm a physicist. Kind of. A bit of an engineer as well. But since I'm CPhys, MInstP, I'll stick with physicist as my working title. I'm a mother. I'm a wife. I'm also a daughter, sister, aunt, niece, friend.

LittleBear - my three year old son. He is the light of my life, and I adore him in ways I can't express. You'll probably find I write about him a lot. It will be more or less evenly divided into coo-ing (and potentially nauseating) purple prose praising his cuteness and brilliance and growling rants at his irritating behaiour and unco-operativeness.

Husband or BigBear - my own favourite introvert, whose privacy I will largely protect by not writing about him. He manages to be remarkably tolerant of my foibles, which is more than enough reason to love him.

ThatCat - I provide a home for a very furry, very needy moggy. One day I will have nice furniture and carpets. That day will not arrive while I still have ThatCat in the house. He's very cute though so mostly I forgive him.

Others - a random assortment of friends, relations and colleagues will also feature.

What this is

It's going to be my thoughts, feelings, musings and ramblings on anything I feel like. There'll be physics, feminism, politics, parenting, food, families, and Random Other Things. Some of it will undoubtedly be very personal, but personal only in the sense of giving an insight into my psyche, my worldview and my emotions.

My working title for this blog is Mothering Along. Largely because that's what I think I'm doing. I'm muddling my way through life, and particularly mothering, sometimes getting things right, sometimes getting things wrong, mostly not really being sure what counts as "right" or "wrong" but just hoping I don't emotionally scar anyone too badly along the way.

What this isn't

This isn't going to be personal stuff about my marriage, or any other relationship with innocent living beings. Other than my son - he's three and he's fair game. I'll deal with his complaints on the subject when he's older.

It's not going to be a chance to have a passive-aggressive dig at my husband if I think he's not loading the dishwasher the right way. I mean, he doesn't load it the right way, but he already knows that, he doesn't need to read it here. Besides, apparently not loading it the right way is *my* problem, and not his, so that's OK. Seriously though, Husband, if you're reading this, I promise not to complain about you other than in terms that have been mutually agreed in advance.

It's not going to include any detailed rants about any of my colleagues. I know I've frothed at the mouth about work before, and I will again, but this is different. This has the potential to get out into the wild, and to be honest, I quite like being gainfully employed, so I'll try and restrain myself on the frothing rant front. You're welcome to leave now if you were looking forward to that part.

Finding my voice

I've written notes, rants, accounts, journals, technical manuals and stiff letters before. At least three people have found some of the things I've written amusing in the past, and only one of those people was giggling at instructions on operating a mass spectrometer. So I know I can be occasionally witty. I can also be long-winded and verging on pompous. I'll try and avoid those. OK, I'll try and avoid pompous. I think long-winded might just be how I am.

I do have an unfortunate tendency to be overly influenced by what I'm currently reading, and certainly inside my own head my internal monologue adopts the style and voice of my current favourite author. So my challenge is going to be to write as me, not as a weak copy of someone that I admire. I'm not utterly sure I know what my own "voice" is.I'm sort of interested to find out whether I settle into a consistent voice here, or whether I remain a chameleon. I quite like chameleons. I've had them sit on me. Did you know a really good way of finding a chameleon is to already have one? If you take the one you've already got out with you, it changes colour when it detects another chameleon nearby. Doesn't really solve the problem of how you catch your first chameleon. Get lucky I think.

Oh, and I'm putting some old Facebook "notes" here as blog posts, as they were fun to write, and I thought they deserved a new home. Anything old that I drag over will count as "archive material". Just so you know.