Being free to do what makes you YOU

In the beginning, this blog was born of a desire to share the ins and outs of life in our little family of three, in all its messy reality. For a while now, I’ve also been thinking of branching off into writing coaching content. My working life has involved coaching, supporting people and giving advice and guidance for longer than I care to think about (OK, 20 years or so). I’ve also been at the receiving end of counselling and coaching at various points in my adult life.

However, several things got in the way. I thought I’d need to set up a completely different profile, not associated with me or the Magic Number Three. When I attempted to do this, good old Imposter Syndrome raised its head. I make no secret of the fact that I am often disorganised, forgetful, clumsy, impulsive and irrational. So who am I to be giving advice to others?

For years I’ve swung between wanting to use my experience online to help people, versus entertaining them and making them feel better about themselves by being honest about my struggles in parenting and life. Why not do both at once? I don’t believe we need to be perfect to give advice. Perfection is unrealistic, unattainable, demoralising and looks too much like hard work. I’d rather hear from someone who understands what it’s like to flounder, learn through trial error, rather than someone who makes me feel lacking in comparison to them.

I’m sure there must be others out there who feel the same way I do. Do you ever get zone minutes on your Fitbit while you’re getting everyone ready and out of the house in the morning because it’s so stressful? Are you always embarking on new systems which you’re sure will be the missing piece this time, following advice on how to get organised, lose weight or get your house tidy, only to fall by the wayside when you realise the ideal is so far away from where you’re at right now?

From a coaching perspective, I’m interested in the small changes that make life a little bit easier. When doing housework, our well used phrase is ‘Well, it’s better than it was!’. To me, that’s what good guidance should achieve, making your life better than it was in small increments. Not feeling that you have to change y0ur fundamental nature and become a new you because the you that you are is pretty great, actually. Just making tweaks that make life run that bit more smoothly and give you a little extra time, energy, space and motivation to do the things that make you, you!

My funny Valentine

The day before Valentine’s Day 2021, lockdown no.3, 11 years together and 7 years of marriage.

I’m sitting on the toilet seat in my dressing gown, combing my hair to check it for nits.  The doorbell rings and the man-child receives a package.  Opening it up, he exclaims ‘It’s my Bawbags*!’ and rushes upstairs to hand me a Valentine’s gift of some colourful pants with a Brazilian print on them. (At this point, he has asked me to make it clear that he also bought me a ‘proper present’ for Valentine’s day, but to my mind this gift stood out as the thoughtful one).

Relationship articles often talk about keeping the passion alive in a long term relationship and maintaining some mystery.  That, my friends, is clearly absolute bunkum.  My deepest fantasy is now a 10 hour kip, being woken up with a coffee and peeing without interruption.  It’s impossible to maintain mystery in a two bed terrace with one toilet when one of you has an inflammatory bowel disease and one individual has seen a baby emerge from the other.

The thing that you need to maintain is a bit of niceness (I realise that’s not an actual word).  My husband heard me talking on the headset while working from home in the kitchen, giving the people I work with my fullest attention, consideration and empathy, and commented afterwards ‘Don’t use up all your niceness doing that!!’.  It’s easily done though, particularly when your job involves working with people, and in current times where you’re all cooped up together working, schooling and generally living in the same space.  You can quickly slip into building up a balance sheet of resentments, of who does the most paid work, housework, cooking, childcare and homeschooling or gets the most time to themselves.  

I hesitate to use the phrase ‘be kind’ because we’ve heard it a lot.  I do think though that saving a little bit of patience, courtesy, humour, tolerance and consideration for your loved one goes a very long way.  I reckon a good benchmark is if you wouldn’t say or do it to a close friend, try not to do it to your other half.  

Sometimes love is buying your other half a pair of Brazilian Bawbags because they don’t have any and you’ve bought them for all your friends and family at Christmas (the man-child has a strategy of doing a presents theme each Christmas which has seemed to work well so far).  He wanted to buy me a pair that were meaningful to me, and remembered I’d been to carnival in Brazil many years ago.  It might not be roses, jewellery and date nights, but it is still love.

So what I’ve been trying to say, in far too many words as usual, is just this; save a bit of the good stuff for the one you love this Valentine’s day.

*Bawbags are colourful underwear made by a Scottish company that also raise a lot of money for cancer charities.  Check them out here  https://bawbags.com/pages/about-us Plus you can ask people if they want to see your Bawbags. 

P.s. if you would like to follow me on any of my other platforms that would be grand.  Here are my links https://www.facebook.com/themagicnothree https://www.instagram.com/themagicnumberthree/ https://themagicnumberthree.wordpress.com https://twitter.com/themagicnothree

The sneaky pleasures of lockdown life – dressing down and the video call

August the 1^st.  Scotland’s shielders are now free to rejoin the strange new world. As we exit shielding, it’s time to finish my reflections on the unexpected pleasures of lockdown life.

Relaxing the dress code

No-one wants to cram their expanding stomach and arse into a pair of skinnies to sit about the house.  So what’s the alternative?  Pyjama bottoms of course.  Then the Skype work calls started, meaning you have to look half way decent from the waist up in case you go ‘video on’. However, no-one can see your bottom half.  This has led to the popular ‘mullet outfit’ – business on the top, fun on the bottom.  This liberation rapidly spilled over to outside the home, where I would happily go walking in clashing shades of ‘I don’t give a shit’ then bumping into school parents and chatting in paisley harem pants, a fringed cardigan and flip flops.  Kept having to remind myself that COVID doesn’t affect the eyesight and I can be seen from 2 metres away.  I also rediscovered the joy of dressing up at the weekend and feeling glam just because.  Invariably my hair and makeup turned out pretty well when thre were just two indifferent males there to see me.

Video calls

Something of a mixed blessing.  I’ve mainly used Zoom for exercise classes and Houseparty for the fun.

Advantages of Zoom

1. It makes you tidy up, usually in a sweaty panic the hour before class starts
2. I was finally inspired to update my workout wardrobe
3. Being able to fit in classes that I can’t normally do due to location / time /family commitments
4. Every time you are using an exercise video, someone will poke their head round the door and ask ‘Can they see me?’ then ‘Can you hear me?’.  They will then proceed to stand in a corner and make rude gestures and / or imitate you.  If they don’t do this, are they even your husband? Predictable but funny.

Disadvantages

1. Having to tidy up and look half decent to exercise
2. The need to check you’re on mute before farting
3. Among other things, missing seeing your exercise friends in person

Advantages of Houseparty

1. Selfishly, early lockdown meant our childfree friends had to stay in, so we could finally socialise regularly without the need for a babysitter
2. It functioned as a virtual pub where you could drop in at the weekend and find someone you knew there. 
3. Seeing more of distant friends.  I don’t know why we didn’t think of this earlier.  Online art tutorial and a few glasses of wine with my best friend in Manchester?  Yes please!

Disadvantages

1. Imagine a night out where there are no last orders, you can pour your own measures, don’t have to get a taxi or be up at a specific time in the morning.  Absolutely lethal.
2. The initial horror of seeing your face permanently on screen when you haven’t carefully arranged it for the mirror and realise that not only is there no chance you can pass for late 30s as you’d previously hoped, you are also starting to look like your dad.  A few gins will soon get you over that though.

Anyway, that’s enough from me. Very best of luck to all the shielders who may be stepping out there in the near future or have ventured into the unknown already.

Five things I quite like about you (lockdown)

Episode 2: Proper grown up skincare and getting on yer bike

Coming in at #2 and #3 are…

2. Having a skincare routine

As far back as the age of 11, my skin and I have literally had a bumpy relationship. Since getting called ‘sandpit’ at high school for the amount of concealer I wore, I’ve attacked my skin with apricot scrub, toothpaste, witch hazel, benzoyl peroxide, Clearasil, wipes, Biore blemish bombs (any other noughties spot sufferers remember those?) and even pile cream.  Basically, the harsher the better to punish those spots into submission.  Even as a 40-something mum whose skin has finally settled down I shunned moisturiser in case it brought back the beasties.

I have to confess until lockdown I’ve never had a proper grown up skincare routine.  So what changed?  Time and money – a bit more of both.

I’ve moved from someone who has been known to use toilet wipes (the bum kind, not the toilet pan kind) for make up removal in a pinch, to knowing about hyraulonic acid, double cleansing, acids and retinoids.  I noticed the difference when I woke up after a very Fun Friday night and glanced in the mirror, thinking ‘Oh shit, I didn’t take my make up off’ then realising that I had taken it off and that was how my skin actually looks now.  That, for someone who used to get up before boyfriends to apply make-up in case they saw my naked face is nothing short of a miracle!

If you’re interested, the game changers have been 1) CeraVe moisturiser 2) Double cleansing as recommended by the other Queen Caroline (Hirons) 3) retinoids and most importantly 4) SPF 30+ every god damn day. Oh, and 5) no scrubs.  If that last point makes you mentally sing the TLC classic, it’s probably about time you got yourself a proper grown-up skincare routine.  Unless you are the man-child who washes his face with shower gel in the shower, has been known to ‘bathe’ with industrial cleaning wipes at festivals and is still sickeningly radiant at the age of 51.

3.  Riding bikes for fun

Bike rides have been the surprise hit of lockdown .  I used to think I wasn’t a cycling sort of person, and saw it as a bit of a fitness-wankery type of pastime (apologies to my cycling friends and relatives).  I was wrong!  You don’t need fancy kit or an expensive bike.  I just wear any old tat for it that I don’t mind getting muddy and won’t get stuck in the wheels.  I’ve seen loads of hidden bits of my local area that I didn’t know existed. but in a much quicker way than walking.  It’s great whizzing about freely under your own steam and much less sweaty and jiggly than running.  It has become one of our favourite family activities and one that I really hope we keep up once some normality is resumed. Not convinced?  Get hold of a second hand bike or dust off your old one, take it for a service and give it a try, it’s honestly pretty good.  Unprecedented times indeed. I’m renowned for my clumsy gene and if I can manage it, most people can.  I heard a rumour that the Government are giving out £50 vouchers to get your bike safety checked so that helps.  I especially like to do it after work on a Friday to rack up some extra calories for wine. 

Have you discovered any unexpected pleasures during lockdown, and do you think you’ll keep them up when restrictions are lifted?  I’d love to hear from you.

Five things I quite like about you – lockdown life (Episode 1 – Neighbours)

When we went on lockdown, I felt like my life was coming to an abrupt halt. I I enjoyed my job, being a busy working mum, going to my dance classes, had made new friends and reached a point where I was quite happy with my life in general. I was looking forward to my 5th chair dance show and we had even managed to arrange a whole night ‘out out’ without Heath.

Fast-forward however many weeks it’s been now and there have several unexpected things that I’ve actually enjoyed about lockdown life. I’m sure many of us have enjoyed spending more time with our partners and / or kids, online shopping, not having to commute and the occasional spot of day drinking. However there have been several other little nuggets of gold at the end of the (NHS) rainbow.

The first one is getting to know our neighbours. Normally we’re all busy working, doing the school run, living our lives and don’t really speak to anyone else. We knew two other households in our street, but apart from them wouldn’t recognise anyone else in a police line up. Lockdown has changed all that. I’m now a member of my street’s ‘community support’ Facebook page, some lovely people set up an Easter egg hunt for the kids and we were given, anonymously, a sunflower seed in a pot on our doorstep. The community spirit culminated in an outdoors, socially-distanced VE celebration on a beautiful sunny day. There was music, home made cakes, bags of sweets for the kids and drink. Lots of drink on a sunny Friday, much of it home-made and brought along by the man-child in his duffle bag. I suspect he doesn’t feel the same way about the neighbours, mainly because despite being present for the entire event he still doesn’t know who anyone is. Because he can’t remember. He partook of his home made wine and a friendly neighbour’s whisky, told increasingly wild anectodes and peaked by performing a Highland fling on someone’s front lawn combined with some army style physical fitness training to a smattering of applause. The man-child is still mildly embarrassed upon leaving the house, particularly when using his duffle bag in case people think it has drink in it.

This post was orignally supposed to be a top 5 list, but if 2020 has taught us anything it’s that plans can be subject to change. I’ll sign off for now and soon be back with Episode 2.

Happy (lockdown) birthday to Heath!

Dear son, I sincerely hope you never have another birthday as strange as this one!

We had planned a party with your classmates and plenty of visits from family and friends-who-are-like-family. Instead, we are in the midst of a global pandemic and you haven’t seen your school friends for 5 weeks.

Having a 6 year old is a strange thing altogether too. You’re in your first year of school growing more independent every day yet still my baby in so many ways. Too cool to speak to me on the walk to school yet there’s nothing you love more than being cradled on my lap on the sofa. Insisting you know how to do everything already without being shown yet afraid to go upstairs on your own. Suddenly your trousers are half mast as your limbs sprout, you have angles where there was once squishy softness. I peek at you in your sleep because that’s the only time I can still see traces of your sweet baby face.

Although we’re no spring chickens we often find it hard to comprehend that we have a child, never mind a 6 year old boy, tall and strong, full of attitude and original thoughts. Sometimes when you’re in bed and we’re relaxing downstairs one of us will turn to the other and say in mock disbelief ‘There’s a boy upstairs!’ Strangest of all is when you show new personality traits where we struggle to work out where you got them from then realise they’re your very own. These are unprecedented times indeed.

So although your birthday won’t play out like we planned it would, I hope you enjoy spending the day with your devoted but slightly bemused old mum and dad, who love you more than they ever thought possible.

Can you Kondo? Decluttering in the age of COVID-19

As we move towards our fifth week of lockdown, it seems the nation’s thoughts have turned to home improvements. We too are attempting to declutter our house, and not for the first time.

A couple of years ago I decided it was time my house looked like it was owned by responsible adults.  This was driven by a few different factors. 

Our son started doing play dates and coming home amazed that his friends homes were so clean and tidy.  Then there was the dreaded scramble to clear up when it was our turn to host.

I optimistically downloaded Marie Kondo’s book ‘The Art of Tidying’, took a series of ‘before’ photos and started to sort out all our possessions in categories.  It’s now 2020 and I’d like to share with you some ‘after’ photos.  Except there’s no point because they’d look exactly the same as the ‘before’ ones.

For those unfamiliar with the Marie Kondo method, she suggests sorting by category i.e. collecting the same kind of items together so you can actually see what you’ve got.  This proved to be a problem.   In some homes I believe stationery might be kept in a couple of places. In our home there are about 20 possible location where stationery might lurk including the Box of Crap in the kitchen, the Seven Drawers of Doom in the living room and the Shelf of Shite in the hallway. 

Another basic principle is to keep going with the decluttering until you’ve finished.  For anyone who knows us, this is not how the McBriers roll.  I’m ashamed to admit that we have two tone skirting boards from when we replaced the laminate flooring, which we have been meaning to paint FOR EIGHT YEARS.

Anyway, it’s about time that we gave it another try.  Before COVID-19 aka The Bad Thing happened, we were spending increasing amounts of time looking for things that we’d lost.  The cries of ‘where’s my phone/keys/the remote/my purse/ the scissors’ were growing deafening, I experienced a very uncomfortable conversation with a senior manager while holding a Batman lunchbox as I’d lost mine, and we’d basically reached Peak Stuff.  We’d passed the point of lovably eccentric and moved straight on to losing at adulthood.  During lockdown we can’t fall back on the excuses of ‘not having enough time’ or ‘never being at home’.

I’ve concluded that it’s our basic human characters that are holding us back.  We both come from families who love a bargain, are keen rummagers of pre-loved goods and don’t want to risk getting rid of anything in case it comes in useful.  There’s also the added factors of having a child (toys, toys everywhere!) and of having enjoyed diverse, short-lived but enthusiastic hobbies. A further COVID complication is that all the exit routes are closed – no tip, friends and family or charity shops (fondly known as ‘chazzers’). We are faced with the conundrum of finding somewhere to store our discarded items when opening the loft hatch or garage door could trigger a fatal landslide.  On the flip side, I’m very much excited for when the chazzers open again and we can Womble our way through all the wonderful treasures that the organised people have unearthed and donated…

Goodbye twinkles? Product testing John Frieda’s Defy Grey range

My 40s have brought me a bag of mixed blessings so far. Some positives have been a great new job, increased self confidence, new interests and the ability to care much less about what other people think of me. On the flip side, there’s wrinkles and twinkles. You know, those sparkly grey, unruly tinselly hairs around your face that I’ve now resorted to dyeing every four weeks and using that root cover up that makes you look like you’re wearing a helmet.

I was pleased to get the opportunity from Chick Advisor to test out a range of products that are designed to ‘blend away unwanted grey hairs into natural looking brunette’. Here is the lovely little bundle of goodies that I received;

So, in the name of science, I delayed colouring my roots for a fortnight so I could see what the range could do for me. The shampoo and conditioner were thinner in texture than I expected but not too runny, with a subtle coffee-ish smell a bit like tiramisu. You have to leave them on for a couple of minutes but it gave me time to sort out my feet and de-fuzz so probably time well spent. They rinsed clear and didn’t give my hair that coated feeling that I remember from colour shampoos in the 90s. I also tried the foam, which was a bit watery but left my hair feeling sleek and floppy.

I noticed the strands blending in a little more. They didn’t catch the light in the same way or have the same wiry texture. However I think this product would be more useful for people with those very first greys, as John Frieda says, to help them stop plucking. Also, when using the foam you need to wash your hands thoroughly to avoid tango hands. The shampoo and conditioner also stained my shower curtain and bath mat a bit, though I’m sure they wouldn’t for those of you that clean as you go along. The main problem I have with the concept is that most people probably don’t use conditioner and styling products up to the root of their hairs, so even for people who don’t dye their hair the colour is going to deposit more along the lengths.

So in summary, this could be a good product for people with a few greys but I don’t think it will break up my relationship with the medium brown box dye, though it has let me prolong the time between colouring sessions which can only be a good thing.

A shaky start to school

So we’ve made it to October break. Seven and a half weeks since Facebook and Instagram were flooded with first-day-at-school, new-school-uniform photos, tear-jerking poems and inspirational quotes about parenting. Only this time round I’ve been joining in the party, as my 5 year old boy has started school this August.

I’ve been told by many that it’s harder for a mum to let go of their child than it is for the child themselves. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the experience with Limpet Boy!

After a pretty disastrous first few days involving struggling, crying and trying to run away, we tried out various strategies with varying degrees of success. These included going into school early and waiting in the cloakroom, being first in the queue, being on the last minute and avoiding the queue, bribery, mild threats, role modelling, security objects, ear defenders and letting him ride his bike to breakfast club.

I’d heard that giving your child a meaningful object to take into school can help them feel more secure and connected to home. First I gave him a little bag filled with confidence boosting crystals and a lucky coin, but his bag of shiny treasures was too appealing to the other little magpies. I then had the bright idea of getting him a ‘cool’ keyring to clip onto his bag, with unpredictable results …

The role modelling didn’t seem to make much difference, though I took great delight in forcing his dad to attend the ‘meet the teacher’ event. As I pointed out, a 50 year old man sulking and saying he doesn’t want to go to school isn’t the best role model.

As for the ear defenders, these have worked for him in other situations that he has found ‘too noisy’. The feeling I had when I placed them on his head in front of the other kids and parents is one that I have locked up tightly in the box labelled ‘Is my child autistic’ and turned the key on for the moment.

As a parent, the hardest part has been knowing that my child is feeling lost, frightened and alone and there’s nothing I can do to make it better for him. We knew it would be difficult for him starting school as he didn’t know anyone there before he started, doesn’t like too much noise, large groups and being parted from his mum. What I wasn’t ready for was him coming home and saying he’d had lunch on his own and had no-one to play with. I knew deep down that he will be absolutely fine once he makes friends and feels more settled, because he’s a chatty and characterful child who has made close friendships at nursery already. Until that happens there’s nothing sadder than thinking of your little boy alone in the playground. It tapped into my own fears and insecurities, hoping that he won’t find school the same ordeal that I did and won’t take until his thirties to start to feel confident in his own skin and know his happiness doesn’t depend on the approval of others.

So, with the man-child still being off work after toe surgery, we took matters into our own hands and stalked him on our way to the pub for lunch. Like scruffy, ageing Ninjas we walked the long way round the school peeping from under our hoods, and finally spied him in the playground, running around and playing with two other children apparently quite happy. Yes, it seems our son knows what to say to press our sympathy buttons and is starting to settle in, backed up by the number of children who say ‘Hi, Heath!’ on the playground.

After analysing all our strategies, it appeared that what we did bore no relation to how he went into school. However, over the last couple of weeks he has gone into school with the minimum of fuss, even having to be reminded to give me a goodbye cuddle. Maybe all he needed was time.

The man-child turns 50

Last month the Man-Child had his 50th birthday. As he identifies with Peter Pan and has allegedly opted out of dying, he is finding it difficult to accept that he is now eligible for special exercise classes and Saga insurance. I was anticipating a midlife crisis, thinking of flash cars, a new fixation on his appearance, existential angst and inappropriate flirting.

The day after his 50th birthday, we became the proud owners of a Toyota Alphard, a magnificent beast of an MPV known by the Japanese as ‘the Big Sexy’ or in our household ‘The Great White’ / ‘Beast from the East’. Partly funded by a large win on the horses, this is the loveliest and arguably most grown-up vehicle either of us has owned. However, this meant we no longer have a car, just two large thirsty camper-vans. After a month of motoring like royalty and living like paupers we’re selling the Bongo and buying a car.

The fixation on his appearance has been hampered by his refusal to spend more than £7 on a top or to buy any clothing which isn’t in the sales. For his birthday present, he chose to get clothes and was proud to have chosen 8 items in the New Look sale for under £40. This financial restraint doesn’t extend to other purchases, with his gift to himself being a Viking drinking horn costing £35.

A brief pang of existential angst was soon wiped out when a mutual friend suggested that he make his celebrations part of his 50th year, rather than have a big 50th birthday party. Photographic evidence shows him successfully overcoming his distress.

As for the extramarital business, no need to worry there. For his party I put on an elegant maxi-dress, curled my hair and applied full make up. I came downstairs to find him wearing a striped shirt (£6) with nylon zippered jogging bottoms (£7) and unbrushed hair, to which he later added a pair of cowboy boots that had once belonged to Dolly Parton (£ free, long story). I would be very surprised if he managed to flirt effectively in that rig-out.

Freddy, the ultimate man-child, is proof that age is indeed just a number. He also happens to share his date of birth with Dave Grohl, who happens to be one of my all-time favourite humans and still rockin’ at 50. So without further ado, please raise your Viking drinking horns to growing older but not growing up.

Skol!