The altruistic act of giving someone a gift is usually one that should be one for the benefit of the giftee and not the gifter yet how often do people genuinely think of the giftee?  My family especially have a knack of buying what they want the giftee to have or indeed what they think the giftee should have as opposed to what the giftee actually wants.  That's not to say their heart isn't in the right place, the very fact of giving itself is indeed charitable and honorable yet it is possible to be selfish within a none selfish act.

Take for instance a birthday many years ago, I was visiting Camden for the first time, I was young and gothy and my brother very kindly gave me £50 to spend on myself.  This was incredibly unexpected and undoubtedly generous.  Until the rules came.  He gave me an extended list on what I wasn't allowed to spend it on, which basically included anything and everything I'd actually ever want.  By the end of it, there was no fun in the gift anymore, what at first had been an exhilarating chance to go shopping was now a situation where I didn't even want to look for anything to buy.

So you may think well surely if there is so much you don't wish someone to buy for themselves, why give money and not just an actual gift?  Only he's done this too, usually his old expensive electronic gadgets that he's upgraded which although incredibly generous are often things I neither need nor ever actually want yet it is expected to show gratitude.

Don't get me wrong, this isn't about ungratefulness.  Ungratefulness is vile and terribly uncouth.  This is more about the fragile balance between wanting to treat somebody an deciding what they should like.  Surely true generosity is buying someone something they really want even if you deem it to be utterly crap.

When buying for The Mother who loves jewelry, clothing and pretty things he'll buy her electronic items, again, things he feel she should want because it's an area he is interested in.  The Father will examine lists of what a person desires systematically deleting ever single item he doesn't like.

There's not much I actually want.  My Christmas list is usually empty.  The clothes I like I'm too fat for, most shoes or boots I get I end up selling to pay for other things.  The only thing I am genuinely interested in purely for me is tattoo's and that is one of the things they ban me from buying with any gifted money they may give me.  Why?  Because they don't like tattoos.  I could understand if I wanted to buy heroine or prostitutes but they're fundamentally invalidating my personal taste.  

Surely the notion of gifting is thus at times double edged, is a gift being given to treat the giftee or merely to induce a sense of generosity and promote benevolence within the gifter?  To essentially make them feel like a better person?  To give should be to make someone smile, not to dictate to them what should make them smile and never purely to receive gratitude to inflate your own ego and self worth.

True gifts are unconditional.

Eight years

So it would appear that I am the mother of an eight year old as of yesterday as Thing One celebrated his eighth birthday. Quite where these eight years have gone is somewhat of a mystery and yet I managed to squeeze in two house moves and another two pregnancies and a miscarriage in that time which makes me sound rather busy, very unlike me.

By journal rights I should dedicate this entry to my beloved big little dude and bore you all shitless with tales of the last eight years and exercise your scrolling finger with copious amounts of photographs that would make any womb purr of him as a baby and toddler, you know before they turn into pesky children back when they were jolly well cute and far easier to carry.

Alas you are spared due to having no access to photographs of his babyhood on my phone. I will however return, so think of this as a page holder for Thing One's entry.

I do often feel considerably guilty that through being the eldest of three we often forget that he is still only wee himself and possibly expect far too much of him and understand far too little. He is our beloved prototype. Granted he's also a little sod, a tremendously advanced sanity assassin who drives us to the very brink, daily. Yet I wouldn't change him for the world. He is perfectly, him.  He is bloody hard work yet I suspect I am rather hard work myself.

It's okay. You can put the bucket away now.

How the fuck I have survived eight years of motherhood with considerably little alcohol is quite frankly beyond me.

I feel beastly old and tired yet It's more then worth it.

Maybe when the teenage years strike I'll be an alcoholic... or a dribbling incoherent mess.  I don't much like teenagers. They give me an awful case of the fears.