I’ve got so many terribly important things I should be doing right now it’s completely unreal, so instead I’ve decided to whip up another blog entry. Returning yet again to my Facebook ranting, I going to take the easy way out by sharing my own recent attempt at a “micro-mini-series” of quasi-comical status updates, just to illustrate how it seems to me that Facebook comes to shape experience and not just report it. As I’ve said countless times, I don’t intend this blog to be about motherhood, but as motherhood ends up being the subject of a large proportion of my Facebook status updates, needs must…
Motherhood multi-tasking masterclass no.1: building a meccano motorbike whilst breast-feeding.
This was a genuine occurrence, and the one that set the whole series
off. The question is, how many of the examples that follow were shaped by the
fact I was now looking for humourous combinations of activities to report on
Facebook?
Motherhood multi-tasking masterclass no. 2: cooking dinner whilst playing tennis - thankfully with an imaginary ball...
Motherhood multi-tasking masterclass no. 3: doing the household accounts whilst simultaneously entertaining a baby with a rattle and "wind the bobbin".
Motherhood multi-tasking masterclass no. 4: winding baby mid-feed whilst dealing with a felt-tip-pen-on-sofa-cushion crisis.
Motherhood multi-tasking masterclass no. 5: putting clothes away whilst helping my son and his imaginary friends fight an imaginary wolf and throw it down the stairs. Then rescuing said wolf because it is in fact a nice wolf.
Motherhood multi-tasking masterclass no. 6: talking to phone technical help/the electricity board/my boss etc. on the phone while pretending to the baby in the bouncy chair that she is getting full attention.
Motherhood multi-tasking masterclass no. 7: manoeuvring around trying to set up computer and internet connection without waking the sleeping baby in arms. Above all take care not to let the dummy fall...
Motherhood multi-tasking masterclass no. 8: making work phone-calls from the day-care centre car park with baby sleeping in the car. Because when you said you'd be in the office the week maternity leave ended you forgot it was also the school holidays.
Motherhood multi-tasking masterclass no.9: discovering work bag doesn't fit in pushchair. Well, it does, but not with the baby...
This last one was not even true. I could in fact fit the bag in, as long
as I put it in first and placed the clip-on car seat afterwards.
What is striking to me, now I have compiled this list, is that none of
these reports (with the possible exception of the first one) seem half as funny
as they seemed to seem to me at the time. Which should really be a lesson to
me. I guess real humour, like real literary art, stands the test of time
because it has been carefully constructed: planned and drafted and re-read and
edited and sculpted and perfected. The problem with the internet is that it makes
it just too easy to put out any old tripe far too quickly. In my last entry I
talked about the useful and necessary process of re-reading and editing made
obligatory by the practice of blogging. Maybe it would be useful if the same
applied to status updates and the like. If it were more necessary to take time,
to “think before you tweet” for example, then a fair few of recent history’s
media-mashup conflicts could have been avoided, and the internet would be not
quite so chock-full of such utter rubbish. And like the paradox that ended my
Blogging versus Motherhood entry, by writing about the problem I am adding to
it.
