It’s been a funny ol’ week for me this week. On Wednesday I had a job offer (practically) for my old career. I was searched out by an agency who had a job perfect for me in the local market town. Fultime, and a sinch with my resume, and I didn’t even know an I.T. jobs were available locally. It was a one in a million chance - and I had to turn it down. It had me wondering for a long time whether this family could work with re-organising the whole child-care thing after school. But as I work in the local kids club, I already knew that I wouldn’t be able to get my daughter into there fulltime, five days a week, as it’s already full. I wonder how many other parents have been forced to give up fultime work because there is not enough after-school care available in this village?

And then there are the school holidays - seven weeks of it coming up soon. So yes, we could have really done with that money, but there was no way I could have arranged for it, without family to help out around here.

It saddens me immensely that I have no control over the situation there, that such an opportunity came up so locally and I couldn’t do it. But it also sinches the deal somewhat. Only a day before the agency contact, I’d busily emailed an old work colleague who went off on maternity leave at the same time I left work, and told her how settled I was in this new life, how I did this, and that, and worked this little bit of work, and how comfortable (mostly) I was with it all.

Then the next day, of course, something was thrown at me to question it all again. Luckily it happened on a day where I was to go off and work my three hours at the local kids club, and it was on a day where the kids weren’t too irritating, and where I felt more at home. Still, it took another few hours the next day before I could bring myself to respond back to the agent with my decision. No, less a decision, than a necessity.

Fortunately yesterday as I was reluctantly making that communication, I found a day where I was helpful in being home with several deliveries arriving at odd hours. I’ve spent a lot of money lately on my daughter - crafts and gifts for her themed birthday party when it comes up later in the year, costumes for a reading day at school, a paddling pool just when it’s begun raining again. Books for me. Presents for father’s day - it arrives here in June. And I had a good time chatting with another mother from school that day during my daughter’s ballet class.

But it’s not always like that. On Friday I was crying because I’d been snubbed twice by the school mums in the playground, and yet they are all much busier than me with work, and other children and family around.

So I seem at a cross-roads of still finding that second identity of mine, no longer that career minded woman, but not quite so centred in this stay at home lonely niche as I thought I was a few days ago. I don’t have a solution for this, only perhaps a learning that many things can upset that fine line I still tread to re-establish my own self this year.  

I’ve just put on a new blog widgety tool thing by AdaptiveBlue. Smartlinks is free, and available for most major blogging platforms (and even for this one on Squarespace). You can find them if you think them helpful, from the button in the meta area of my sidebar, or from this link here.

You can see these in action in the previous blog entry on Favourite Children’s books. When listing the books, I chose to link to them via amazon.co.uk for myself and any UK readers. But once installed, Smartlinks recognises the amazon link, and puts a little blue icon (for a book) to the right. You can either click on the normal link, to take you to my amazon.co.uk or click on that blue icon and a pop-up window will offer you several links, the book cover etc - and US readers can go to find the book at Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble etc. I presume that the same might work for antipodean bloggers, who may choose to link to amazon.co.aus or whatever it is, and still have the ability to provide information for any US readers.

Smartlinks also works for movies and some other media files, but the predominant usage for me is for books. The little pop-up window also lets me check the book through onto stumbleupon or librarything (where I am cataloguing my reading books currently).

Whilst on the subject of books, I’ve just added some of my favourite children’s books to librarything, as I have been revisiting these. We have, like most schools lately, a reading day coming up where the kids have to dress up as Storybook characters, and although some of these might be interesting in interpretation, my daughter is going as either Harry Potter, or Red Riding Hood, because Gruffalo suits are hard to come by.

Aliens Love Underpants by Claire Freedman and Ben Cort- aliens love underpants so much they come down to earth for them. For some reason pants are a huge subject for children’s books lately - lots of titles have the word ‘pants’ in them - it’s a British thing and something I always get caught out on. For me, coming from New Zealand, everything with two legs in it as a piece of clothing is pants, but over here, it means only underwear. So when I go around saying pants everyone giggles like I’ve said something naughty. Then I ask them the simple question - “What’s under your pants then?” and sometimes they click on about underpant meaning underwear under (over) pants, sometimes not. Ah well, it’s a lost cause on that front, and a thematic topic for children’s books it seems.

Julia Donaldson’s books. Brilliant, most of them. The Gruffalo - which started it all off, is constantly on tour as a children’s stage play around Britain it seems. I think it’s Axel Scheffler’s illustrations which originally drew me in, but you’ve gotta just love the poetry through most of them. Some are better than others in my own opinion, so I’m listing those here.  The Gruffalo, Monkey Puzzle, Room on the Broom, Charlie Cook’s Favourite Book (where all the characters come alive, and you can actually read the newspapers and things in the illustrations), The Snail and the Whale and The Smartest Giant in Town (who somehow wears a dress?).

The Writeminded Blog asked this question - What Makes You Buy a Book? And it got me thinking, not only as an avid reader lately but as a wannabe author. As in the Writeminded Blog, people often list the following for choices in selecting a book off a shelf - cover, first paragraph, first page or so, blurb on the back, price (there are so many two for one or three for one packages available nowadays) or known author.

As a wannabe writer I read the constant tips on how to write with interest - just about every how-to book out there says you should spend a lot of time on that first opening paragraph - that gotcha sentence that makes a person want to buy and read the new novel.

Yet, as a reader, and on selecting a book, I never read that first page. I’m obviously an anomoly out there, I know. Instead, I buy because of the genre, sometimes the author, but more often because the blurb at the back is interesting, and yes - mostly because I like the cover.

My tastes have altered over these first few months of the year - I’m reading books I normally wouldn’t get into, simply as a research project for my own writing interests, so the genres I’m reading are increasingly getting larger. But I’ve always been into thriller, crime and fantasy as genres.  

Right now I’ve got a few hours reading to finish off a new one I picked up not long ago. I’m reading Skin Privilege by Karin Slaughter. It comes from a series set in Grant County. The reason I bought it was I couldn’t believe that someone who writes crime thrillers can have the real surname of ‘Slaughter’.

Actually, I’m not that impressed by the book. The blurb promised something to do with bigotry and violence and so far, over 500 pages in, there’s only two or three bodies lying around, still unsolved, and no bigotry. It’s all going to be wound up in a rush in the next fifty pages. The actual violent bits are over in a matter of a few paragraphs and the remaining 550 pages are full of the main characters thinking - pages and pages of the same stuff over and over again. But then, I’m entitled to my own opinion and likes when reading, and I’ve discovered a novel which doesn’t - for me - live up to it’s promises on the back cover. Reading the first paragraphs however wouldn’t have told me that. The first very brief chapter starts off with a graphic murder - as many crime thrillers do.  

You see, I find myself learning from my own reading experiences also. I hope that some of that gets in when I’m writing for myself also.  

I’ve changed the look around for this blog over the last couple of days. A new template - I’m not sure how long it will last as I often get tired of those. A new banner, and new structure to the sidebar menu. All the old stuff is here, but I wanted to clean it down, so if you’re after the links you’re going to have to go looking for them.

I’m restructuring into more of a personal blog, to include both of my hobbies / passions - my own digital scrapbooking and writing. I’ve also spent the last day or so cataloguing up my current 2008 book reading list onto a new discovery, librarything. And now I have to go walk the dog.