Day 24

Over 2000 page views... *whistles* If nothing else, at least the blogging has been worthwhile! I'm starting to feel the pressure to perform - I kind of worry that if I post something super lame there'll actually be people who are let down. Scary. 'Letting people down' is about as happy a prospect for me as 'rolling in compost' and 'eating dried cheese off the floor of the car'.

Please don't be let down.

So seeing as I've spent most of the last 23 days slashing at my own ego and generally denigrating my public image on here (hello, the furore over the sponsor child letter writing), I thought tonight I'd try for some encouragement by making a list of some of the things I *think* I do well. A change of tack in case I should decide to sue myself for defamation. Of course, this could backfire horribly and I may end up with people lined up from here to the back fence ready to tell me that I suffer delusions and that I am not, in fact, good at any of the things that I think I am. But we will limp over that bridge when and if we come to it.

Things I can do, or do well:

1. Bed-making. Nobody I know can make a bed as quickly, precisely and as wrinkle-free as me. Years of practice, my young grasshoppers. Stick with it.

2. Forgiving people. You may want to turn this round and say that I suck at holding a grudge, but whatever. I am about as stubborn as chocolate stains on a tongue when it comes to keeping my back up against someone, and I pretty much have never completely burned anyone out of my life, no matter how badly behaved they are. I'm not very tolerant, but I do let things go when they get up my nose. Lucky for Harvey, otherwise he would have been one of those babies who ended up in a big clay jar at the front door, for collection...

3. Side kicks. Not like, 'hey, I'll be your side-kick', but those kicks you do where you swing your leg around and... oh never mind. It's never going to win me a bar fight, anyway.

4. Inventing 'cheats' for recipes. If there's a lazy way to cook it, I will find an even lazier way. For example - substituting barbecue chicken for proper chicken. I don't care how easy it is to cook chicken, it's still easier to shred a BBQ chook.

5. Mixing chemicals up. I'm bad-ass at chemicals. Acids, organics, salt solutions, nutrient broth... I can even do molar calculations in my head, which makes me almost as smart as Stephen Hawking. I also look quite foxy in a lab coat, or so I'm told. Chemicals are to me as a piano is to Beethoven.

6. Being 'in the moment'. I am capable of completely forgetting about anything else other than what I'm doing at the time. I give my attention 100% to the present - which is probably the reason I hate interruptions like phone-calls, unless they are fundamentally relevant to what I'm involved in in the moment. It's also possibly the reason why I once left my three-year-old son in a caravan park unsupervised while I went down the street to a cafe and supermarket... and only realised as I was returning to the park an hour later. Thankfully, some nice people had kind of adopted him, and hadn't called the police. Yet. It was a stretch, but I managed to pass it off as baby brain.

7. Finding new and exciting uses for Nutella. Currently, Nutella is featuring quite prominently in my favourite dessert recipe, which involves a plate with dried banana chips, almonds and sweet bikkies - and a big blob of Nutella for dunking.

8. Tutoring. I love coming up with ways to get things to 'click' for the kids that I tutor, and I'm like a dog with a bone about making sure they understand things. They like to tell you what you want to hear, kids, and so if you ask them 'do you understand this?' and they don't really but they think they have a hope in hell of faking it, they'll still say 'yes'. But there is no mistaking that marvellous moment when the lightbulb comes on - realisation brings a sudden bright shinyness to their eyes, and they push themselves spontaneously back from the table and really look at you, saying "Oh! I get it now!". And then I know I can stop digging, fist pump the air, and then set about patting the newfound knowledge into place with a few more gentle exercises. Best. ever. sense of achievement.

9. Punctuation. I dare you to pick me up on a dodgy comma, or a missing apostrophe. I really dare you. Punctuation is my heroin. And spelling is my cherry on top.

10. Knowing when I'm probably pushing it to keep going with something. And that is why, right now, I'm posting this and off to watch a movie with the hubs.

M xx