Category: Bloggy Stuff

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Tomorrow

This is an easy gallery posting for me to write about.  I have not joined the gallery before, so this is a new one for me.  I am writing this, and keeping it as short as I can.

It has the ability to end up as a rant, but I really want it to act as an education.

On twitter today, I had a discussion with a few people who had differing views on spelling and grammatical errors.   It was a pleasant chat and we discussed some opinions on this.  I hope this post is taken in the same vein.

I have come across the spelling / grammer issues many times, and without being dictatorial about it, The Gallery gives this the perfect platform.  I waded in with both feet on twitter as it is a theme that I have been aware of a lot more recently.

More and more tweets flash past in my timeline, and they are complaining about  spelling and grammar.  I am doing my little bit to stop that going any further than it already has as social media houses a very large proportion of fanatical readers and writers (myself included).  It took me a long time to learn what I am going to say, and I wish I had realised it earlier in my life.  It really did take having special needs children for this to sink in.

Lets just stop and think for a moment.

  • What if your opinion today is that people with bad spelling and grammatical errors are lazy, or just can’t be bothered?
  • What if you are offended by those people who get their words mixed up and use them in the wrong context?
  • How do you react when people whose commas, full stops, and question marks are in the wrong place?

Lets look at this from a different angle.

  • What if you came from an abusive background and you had little schooling.  You struggled to read and write, and  you couldn’t attend classes as you have three young children to look after.  There is no-one to help you with childcare, and social media is your sole way of communicating and talking to other adults?
  • What if you have grown up with a learning difficulty, but you have fought to be able to learn to communicate, and your brain won’t always let you remember the correct order, work formation and structure to sentences.
  • What if you had an aptitude so fantastic that you could receive a Nobel Peace Prize for the value of your work in Mathematics, but you just couldn’t grasp the reasoning behind why some words mean completely different things in different sentences.
  • What if you have a brilliant business brain, and people better than you at english do your promotional literature, but you want to meet your public through social media.  Would you prefer they saw you, or someone pretending to be you because their spelling is better.
  • Imagine you are a small business start up who can’t afford to employ someone to do your social media for you.  How are you going to connect with people if you can’t enter the modern age because people will judge your business by how well you can write?

If a company has promotional material to make themselves look professional, then they pay for that to be error free.  Large companies can afford to have eloquent people run their social media for them.

Perhaps the person at the other end of the spelling mistakes is ill.  Perhaps they could be the best friend that you ever made.  Perhaps you need some help and they are the one that steps up to the plate for you.

All I have to say to those who struggle to accept people who do not manage to meet your own standards of writing in the English language is:

Tomorrow – “Step away from the dictionary.”

ps I have not spell checked this post.

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I’ve Been Tagged – Find Out More About Me…

I thought I had missed the mass tagging, although I had quite enjoyed reading some.

The Q&A tag came from @nickie72 and her blog Typecast 

It started one day when Mrs Lister,  set out to find out about her fellow bloggers, using the same format as is used in the Guardian Q&A when they interview celebs.

You want to know more about me – here goes……
———————————–

Which living person do you most admire, and why?
My mum.  She battled cancer, thyroid disease, Type 1 Diabetes, Arthritis and much much more –  and still comes up smiling at 76.
When were you happiest?
When I was a student.  I remember the dreams, the goals, the excitement, the socialising, the life.   Ahhh, memories !!!!!!!
What was your most embarrassing moment?
When I was in the chemist with my three kids, a dad was there with his two kids.  At the counter, was a woman asking for eye drops.  The chemist proceeds to tell her that it is very infectious.  The dad standing with his kids takes a step backwards and opens his eyes wide.  I look over at him and laugh at the reaction, but unfortunately catch his eye.  He shrinks back even more in horror, and I realise that instead of realising I was laughing at his horror of “very infectious”, he thinks I am flirting with him.   I am mortified in the way that only women over 40 can be as he is obviously offended by it.
Aside from property, what’s the most expensive thing you’ve bought?
Probably our home from home on four wheels.  I do love the peg.
What is your most treasured possession?
I have my grandmothers engagement ring, and my mothers photographs..  I love those.
Where would you like to live?
Somewhere warmer than Scotland.  Anywhere would do.
What’s your favourite smell?
My kids after a bath.  Next would be fresh strawberries and ground coffee.
Who would play you in the film of your life?
Isla Fischer
What is your favourite book?
I have dozens of favourites.   It is soo hard to choose for this one.  I loved the Master and Commander film and the whole series of books by Patrick O’Brien about life on the ocean waves.  I read them ALL.  I bet that surprised you all.  Next would be the Hornblower novels.
What is your most unappealing habit?
Eating too much and tweeting.
What would be your fancy dress costume of choice?
I have a maids outfit that I put together with some old clothes and the underskirt of my wedding dress.  It does a treat, and has been borrowed several times by other people.
What is your earliest memory?
My earliest memory sadly is one of being sent to my room for going to the local shop and saying I wanted an ice lolly and that my mother would pay for it later.  All my friends had money for one, and we were skint.  I got home with it, caught by mother and was sent to my bed with ice lolly in hand and had to eat it or it would have  melted across the floor.   I wish it was a nice one, but there you to.  I very rarely got into trouble, so that was obviously a biggie for me.
What is your guiltiest pleasure?
Writing drivel that I hope some people might like.
What do you owe your parents?
To my father, thank you for the sperm donation.  To my mother, thank you for everything else.  You rock.
To whom would you most like to say sorry, and why?
To my grandparents for not spending enough time with them when they were alive.
What or who is the greatest love of your life?
My kids and my animals.
What does love feel like?
Responsibility, guilt, wishes, protection, care and time.
What was the best kiss of your life?
My first kiss, in my classroom aged 5.  I still remember feeling his lips on my cheek lol.
Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
Stop fighting – 3 boys *saynomore*
That’ll be shining bright – whenever any of my brood tells me a porkie.
Okay dokey – though I am working hard on phasing this one out.
What is the worst job you’ve done?
Night shift at photo factory, while working day shift in bookies when I was at college.  I was perma exhausted, and it was soo boring that I could hardly keep my eyes open.  Many people would have ended up with negatives cut halfway across the picture frame as I was too tired to stop the cutters in time when it misaligned.  If that was your treasured photos *sorry*.
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
The age I had kids.  But then I wouldn’t have the ones I have, so moot point.
What is the closest you’ve come to death?
I once spun off a road in my car, ended upside down in a field with a post skewering the passenger seat.  Luckily I didn’t have a passenger, and I walked away with only the dunt from undoing my seatbelt when I was upside down and not realising.
Another time, helicopter I was travelling in lost power miles from anywhere in middle of north sea in choppy weather – we dropped from the air and  it was a frightening few seconds before the  pilot restarted the engines again.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Being a mum.  It was a hard road.
When did you last cry, and why?
After an operation.    It hurt.
How do you relax?
Twitter, walking the dog, writing, reading.
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Not being a food addict.
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
I was exceptionally lucky to be born in a developed country with a caring  mother.
I am tagging
@netcurtains who likes a meme
@123andbreathe because she wants to
@meetjosmith for being a good sport and
@the_moiderer  for living within an hours drive
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Fill In The Blanks !!!!! Meme

I have been tagged by @jontybabe AND @helloitsgemma on twitter.    They are getting me back for tagging them last week (only kidding).

Fill in the blanks is as it sounds.  A list of words that I have to fill in the blanks of.

I am… 
Trying to be the best mum that I can be.  I know I am not perfect.  I know my kids actually wish me out of the way at times, and I know that sometimes I get things wrong.   It doesn’t stop me trying though, and maybe, one day, my kids will understand that there are rules for their own good.

The bravest thing I’ve ever done…
I’m not very brave.  I will challenge things that I don’t think are right, but I am not a gung ho type of person, not any more.  The kids took care of that.    In fact, bringing 3 children into my life was probably my bravest feat.

I feel prettiest…
Now this is predictable and corny for me.  Easy – I feel prettiest when  I am thin, and on the day I get my hair coloured.   At the moment, the first is out of the equation, but the second was done last week, so I’m still feeling slightly confident.

Something that keeps me awake at night…
Education struggles for one of my children and my childrens special needs sometimes does keep me awake for hours at a time.

My favourite meal is…
I don’t particularly have a favourite meal.  I have a love/hate relationship with food, but if pushed, it would swing from (proper) stovies with baked beans, milk and oatcakes, to chicken risotto.

The way to my heart is…
Through my children.  Treat them well, and my heart goes out to you.

I would like to be…
A fly on the wall in the education and council departments as they make swathing cuts to childrens services.

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Beautiful Blogs Collection

Beautiful Blogs – I have a page on my blog that is compiling a list of goreous blogs for me, and for others to share.  There is the option to share yours, just by filling in the form to add your link.  You can choose to add the code to a post on your blog, and then you will have the same list.

If you want to be added, but are struggling to get it to work, send me your email and blog address to scottishmum@gmail.com, or DM me it on twitter at @scottish_mum.

You have to follow me on google connect for me to keep the link to you in my collection.   Apart from that, I will google connect all those who sign up for the collection.  Take note, any blogs that sign up, and who are not relevant to my blog, or contain inappropriate material, I will be removing from the list.  If you are in doubt, send me an email to ask.

Go to my beautiful blog collection page which will remain permanently on the blog.  click here

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5 Things That Make You Feel Good.

With all the juggling that we do on a daily basis, it seems to me to be a good thing to celebrate our womanhood, and what we like to do as women.   Not as employees, girlfriends, wives, mothers, daughters, or friends.   As I have been focussing on the negative aspects of my body and life recently, I wanted to move to the things about me that make me feel good.

I have seen lots of posts about what we struggle with, or things that we like to do, and I’d like to find out a bit more information about all of you. 

This is my way of doing it.     I am looking forward to visiting some of you on the blog hop.

What you cannot choose.  The Rules are Simple
We all know that blogging / facebook, & or twitter  is in our arena of what we like to do, so I am going to rule them out as one of the 5 that you can post about.  They really are not very girly.    Likewise, phones, computers, ipads are all out of the running.

 I am challenging myself to this, as I am really not a girly girly type of person, and I want to find that within myself.   It’s not all about power suits, filofaxes, ipads and designer phones.

If you want to pass this along, pick bloggers that you want to find out more about, and challenge them to write up their 5 secret passions that make them feel good.  The idea is to lift our spirits this week.  The fact that there is a linky added, just makes it all the more worthwhile in doing.

Here goes.

1 – I actually, really love my hair.  I pretend that I don’t, as its thick, tends to frizz with curl when it is humid, and can be difficult to tame.   What it can do, well, almost anything really if I really set my mind to it.  I can wave it, curl it, frizz it, or straighten it.  I choose to straighten mine nowadays as I like it that way, but in the 80’s, I used to have it like a poodle perm.  It takes colour beautifully (when I get time to go to the hairdressers), and I do tend to change my hair colour by the year.  Last year I was brunette, this year I am sort of blondish.

2 – I have no bunions, corns or callouses on my feet.  Yay me.  I hated my mother when I was growing up as she made me wear sensible shoes until I was old enough to buy shoes for myself.   She used to wear gym shoes as she couldn’t afford to buy both me and her shoes, but I didn’t know that as a child.  I so love her now for it, especially as I have internal foot problems with nerve damage, and I am grateful that the outside of my feet were never damaged by badly fitting shoes. 

3 – I love my pink epilator.  I used to spend a fortune on waxing, then I spied an epilator in Costco a couple of years ago.  It cost me £40, but has saved me hundreds of pounds on waxing.

4 – Shoes.  I have always had a shoes passion.  Unfortunately I can’t wear  most of the lovely things that are out there these days, so my passion has shifted to fitflops.   I can handle that.    It nearly broke my heart to sell the lovely Prada boots I had in my cupboard and the pair of Manolos that I had treasured, but when a couple of pairs of new fitflop boots arrived, I quickly got over my angst. 

5 –  I love make up and smellies.  You probably wouldn’t think so as I don’t go overboard with mine these days, but I do.  So many things are now free of the nasty stuff, that they are nice to try out.   I love scented oils, candles, perfumes, mascaras.   You can’t ever have too much make up choice, and a nice scented candle always makes me smile. 

I am tagging some people from twitter today, but anyone can join in, and add an old post that covers the same topic.  Lets find out a little more about each other.

 This will initially go to:

@crystaljigsaw @nettiewriter @kateab @superamazingmum @melaina25 @tara_cain @flutterbyrosa @softthistle @mummylion
@theboyandme @mrs_moog @jontybabe @jencull @mid30slife

Add your link to a new or existing post.   Grab the code, enter it into the html of your own post to see the same list as everyone else. 

get the InLinkz code