Emptying My Head Into 750 Words

Have you ever heard of a website called 750 words ? It encourages you to empty your head into the computer each day “ kind of a private blog, where you pull no punches and just write splurge all your thoughts into a stream of consciousness as quickly as you can. It’s all about just “getting it all out”. It’s intended to be private, but where’s the fun in that? The clever bit about 750 words is the profiling it then does on your writing “ employing all manner of clever psychological and personality profiling to expose the emotions flying around your head. It’s clever stuff. I’m guessing 750 words is some kind of prescribed amount that forces us to leave our comfort zone “ to elaborate further than we might in some kind of crafted news bite. I’ll post the analysis after this, so you get to see what it figures out. So here I am. It’s heading towards lunchtime on Saturday morning. Most of the rest of the family are at the infant school “May Fayre” “ all except our eldest, who has been grounded for the next week or so. She’s ten years old, and we suspect on the cusp of puberty “ which probably gave rise to the colossal argument and falling down moment that led to her being grounded. She wasn’t so much testing boundaries, as going nuclear all over our asses. Her incarceration means I am stuck here at home keeping an eye on her (in reality she is in her room, supposedly tidying it up “ I’ll believe that when I see it). I should write like this more often “ it’s how I often used to write, and it’s perhaps more honest than thinking “I wonder what people would like to hear about” this is just me. My thoughts. The morning has so far run on rails. Up, tidy the kitchen up, the lounge, the bathroom, the playroom, put the dishwasher on, put the washing machine on, let the chickens out it never stops. We tend to sub for each other if either of us is absent (you know “ like at a School Fayre). The house doesn’t run itself. Yesterday at work we were chatting over coffee about plans for the weekend, and I was reminded once again how many of my colleagues are either single, or don’t have children. Where they can go home, and pretty much do what they want all evening, and all weekend, I get perhaps 20% of their time. I remarked about it, and could see the total lack of comprehension when I explained Every weekday starts at 7am Between 7am, and 8:15am is generally a race against time to get up, washed, dressed, get the kids up, washed, dressed, make breakfasts, make packed lunches, get school bags ready, and out the door. I finally vanish to work on my mountain bike after walking with the kids to school. Nobody asks if I have a hard day ahead. I leave work at 5:30pm and arrive home just before 6. It’s then an immediate race to clear the kitchen and lounge up (which will both have been trashed between the kids getting home, and my return), before my other half finishes cooking dinner “ which arrives on the table a little after 6. Invariably little friends will knock on the door asking the age old “can (insert name) come out to play?”. Every day we tell them we are just about to have dinner. Dinner usually involves some kind of bargaining with somebody who “doesn’t like this”, “doesn’t like that”, or is “full up” (but will still ask about pudding). Go figure. It often degenerates into recriminations; “don’t talk rubbish “ of course you like potatoes “ if you don’t eat it, you get no (insert something they like) in your lunch tomorrow”. I typically go around the table asking what the children have been up to at school “ a tactic we originally started to get the youngest talking (she has developmental problems around communication). Everybody gets their turn except me “ nobody ever asks what I did, because nobody would understand a word of it. Our eldest often jokes that I just sit there, slack jawed, typing like fury. Following dinner, I wash up, clean the kitchen, wash lunchboxes out, and so on. I’m usually finished in time to either read to the younger girls, or listen to the eldest read. Finally “ at about 8pm, the evening becomes my own. Time to hit Email, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and wherever else people might see me. I will try not to think about whatever I’m working on in the day, but will generally fail. I probably make it sound worse than it is “ but for most young families, I expect I have painted the picture of a fairly typical day. It’s certainly the story of pretty much every weekday for us. Of course, today is Saturday. You might think the weekend would be our own. You would be wrong. The weekend is never our own, through one reason or another. We’re either visiting people, being visited, or have agreed to help with some damn fool event (you know like a school fayre). I think I over-ran the 750 words