I've been away for 4 whole days...

... so how it come it feels like only 4 hours?

In any case, my brain is fried, so for a far more interesting post than this one I suggest you pop on over to The Iota Quota where my good bloggy friend Iota (who, thanks to the wonder that is Cybermummy, I have met in person, and who is just as lovely and entertaining as you might imagine), has written about where blogging is taking her now.

Oh, and you could also click on over to take a look at In The Powder Room, the fabulous progeny of Powder Room Graffiti and Mums Rock who have recently joined forces. I don't have a new post up there (although I do have some old ones), so this is not in any way a sponsored pointer. Just some recommended reading in case you're not keen on what's on the box this evening. Go on - you won't regret it...

The Gallery: Pride (and Spring)

I didn't take this photo.

A 6 year old child in Boy #1's class did. Sure, I've messed about with the colour and contrast etc, but essentially, this is the photograph that they meant to take. It's one of a number that were taken for something I've already mentioned here; the Silent Auction. For those who didn't read that post, it's an event where staff and parents at the Boys' school are given the chance to bid for baskets containing collections of goodies (but not, it has to be said, my Green & Black's chocolate), or for art projects completed by their children's class.

Being a devotee of the printed photograph album, I suggested to Boy #1's class teacher that this year we create one of those, made up of photographs taken by the children. Each child was lent a digital camera for around 30 minutes, and one of the other parents and I escorted small groups around the school whilst they snapped away to their heart's content. We then edited each child's submission down to the best 3 or 4 each, and I messed around on photoshop to crop them and make the colours pop.

The photograph above is one of the results.

I am so proud of their efforts; it was amazing to me how beautiful some of the photographs that resulted are. I would love to share them all with you to illustrate that, although obviously I can't do that, so those sledges will have to do.

And, because I'm incapable of letting an opportunity past to showcase my own photographs, I thought I would show you this one - which I did actually take - as well. The word that this brings to mind, for me, is Spring, which is finally making an appearance in Moscow.

I know using ice to illustrate Spring seems unlikely but, believe me, snow on the roof has to actually melt to make icicles like these...

This post is for Wk 48 of Tara's Gallery; click here to see all the other fantastic submissions.

Blogging changed my life...

... no, really; it has.

I never thought it would, back when I started this lark in Summer 2007. I certainly never planned that it might. But last week's ice-dipping post prompted the following comment from the wonderful Iota:

'(and you really did it for the blog fodder, didn't you?!)'

Pshaw! I thought. How dare she suggest I would do such a cheap, populist thing. But I know that - as ever - she's right, at least in part. I mean, it's all very well to throw yourself into a pool of freezing, smelly, pond water with a girlfriend just for fun (doesn't everyone do that to celebrate a birthday? No?), but it's another thing entirely to do it and then to be able to write about it. That makes it a lot more attractive to a sick and twisted blogging individual such as myself...

And then at lunch on Sunday with some friends, as they recoiled in horror at news of my ice dip and questioned my sanity in doing it, someone (OK, Husband, the sweet man) pointed out that there are a whole load of things that I have done that I may not have if I hadn't known I would have the chance to write about them afterward. Meeting complete strangers off a bus from Cardiff with the intention of spending an afternoon with them, for one example. Going to a gay club and watching a bloggy mate from across the pond perform her 90's hit for a crowd of adoring fans, for another. Going to the launch of the John Lewis Christmas range - on a hot day in July. Spending a morning road-testing a Dyson vacuum cleaner (you know how to live; rock and roll PM, rock and roll...).

And the big one; moving to Russia. OK, that would probably have happened anyway, but I was certainly a lot more sanguine about making the move knowing that I could write about it and reinvent it, making it funny if it proved not to be...

And this is just for starters; I know if I went back through the 800 or so posts on The Potty Diaries one by one, I would discover a lot more examples of my behaving in an uncharacteristically confident and gung-ho fashion just because I knew I would be able to show off about it to my online mates afterwards...

(Because if I'm honest, there is just a teensy bit of showing off involved when I do these things. I know. Such a surprise!)

Right now, for example, encouraged by the same friend who persuaded me to jump into a frozen lake last week, I'm even considering the madness that is running the Lake Baikal half marathon next March. You know; the one that takes place in minus 15degC, on ice, and which this year had the contestants running the first 15k's through 6 inches of fresh snow in their hobnailed running shoes. The one which has to be completed in 3 hours, or the race organisers pick you up to make sure you don't freeze to death.

I won't do it, of course; I'm the world's worst runner. Well. I probably won't.

But just imagine the blog-fodder if I did.

What about you? If you blog, are there things you've done just because you knew it would make good blog fodder?

The Perils of Oversharing

This has been an eventful week.

On Monday I wrote this post, which I subtitled 'In which I over-share about facial hair.' I wrote it because the incident (in hindsight) made me laugh - if you read it, I hope it did you, too. However, the day after that I went out for lunch with a fellow Moscow-based blogger (you can find her here or on my sidebar; check it out; she's both hilarious and informative) and a couple of others, and as I sat next to her it occurred to me that her frequent sidelong glances at me may not only have been to check that I was listening to what she was saying. She reads my blog, you see. And more than 24 hours had elapsed since my perhaps reckless admission about facial hair doubling as 'sink tidy for snow' the previous day. So...

Apologies Jennifer if I'm wrong in this assumption, but were you checking out the - I can hardly bring myself to say it - moustache situation?

I wouldn't blame you if you were. If the situation had been reversed I most definitely would have been.

In any case, we had a lovely lunch and in the excitement of my ice dipping escapade the next day, I forgot all about my reflections on the wisdom of posting quite that much personal information online.

Until yesterday. Yesterday, The Saturday Times ran a piece which was an interview with US-uber-blogger Dooce, entitled 'Dirty nappies and sex on the sofa - too much information?' (it's online but behind the pay-wall sadly, although if you have a subscription or even better a copy of the newspaper itself, it's in the Life section) and at the foot of the article listed 8 British-based blogs as further examples of the mummy-blog type. Amazingly enough, The Potty Diaries featured in this list, which felt something like winning the lottery, I have to admit.

I do have very slightly mixed feeling about it however, based mainly on the fact that the excerpt they chose to illustrate The Potty Diaries was the very one in which I mentioned my 'snow on the face' incident. I don't want to look a gift-horse in the mouth, you understand, but I think my feelings about this are best summed up by a tweet I wrote when I found out what had happened.

'V Good: The Potty Diaries mentioned in today's Saturday Times (Life). Less good; all their readers now know I have a moustache.'

Things my sons have said to me today...

Boy #1, on being asked why he was carrying an enormous chunk of ice back to the house on the way home from school (it's not as if we didn't have enough of it waiting for us there, after all...):

"Because I've never had an ice collection - and that's so not fair!"

Boy #2, on being asked why he thought his papa had put him on the naughty chair this morning (fyi, the correct answer was; 'Because I was being a pain Mum and refused to get out of bed after being repeatedly asked, even though I knew we were on a deadline.')

"Well, because, you know, Papa's harder to handle than you are, Mama..."

Ice-dipping - yes, I AM that stupid.

This is an e-mail I got on Tuesday night, from a friend who organises a cross-country ski group that meets a couple of times a week near our home.

Hi Ladies

Today was the first day of spring and the forecast is for more sunshine tomorrow!

It is also my birthday and I was hoping to go into the "icy pond" by the lake today but have delayed it until tomorrow and so the plan is to warm up with a ski and then I ( and anyone who would dare join me) will dip. I have ordered some limoncello and so will take it along for you all to enjoy.

x

I read this and laughed. My friend had been threatening to do exactly this for a while now, but I never really thought she would get round to it. Climb into a frozen lake, in the middle of the day, sober? And then ski home? Was she crazy?

But then, completely unbidden, the thought came to me; 'Why not do this with her? No. No! Don't be an idiot, PM.

Although...

I am in Russia. I am relatively young, fit and healthy. I would never get the chance to do this in the UK; ski through a forest, take an ice-dip, and ski home again.

So I did what any self-respecting woman would do these days; I asked Twitter. The overall response that came back was unsurprising; what the hell would you want to do something like that for? That should have put an end to it of course. But funnily enough, I found that I didn't like that answer very much ('what's wrong with me?'), so I asked around some more. I asked Heather from Lapland, who encouragingly told me to wear flipflops going into the water (how practical, not something I would have considered myself), and I e-mailed a friend who's lived here for while. Her response?

'My husband did the ice dipping and got double pneumonia shortly after... but otherwise apparently it makes you feel great!'

Definitely not a good idea, then.

But you know what?

Yesterday morning I put my swimsuit on under my ski clothes, skied for an hour, stopped by a frozen lake, got undressed, and my friend and I jumped in.

Well, when I say 'jumped', what I actually mean is that she bravely waded into the water and spent a minute in there, whilst I gingerly climbed in, dipped once, and climbed straight out again (putting my flipflops on as I did so - such a good tip, Heather, thankyou!).

Was it cold? Hell yes. So cold that I lost the ability to speak whilst I was in there. The water smelt, a little, but then since the lake is essentially a large pond it was always going to do that. And I have to say taking my swimsuit off and replacing it with dry underwear whilst standing on a snow drift in -8degC and in full view of the anyone who cared to look was not something I had planned on, but the changing shed by the ice hole was locked so there was nothing else for it (skiing home in a wet bathing suit under my snow pants appealed even less than the thought of flashing a boob as I struggled into my bra under my thermal t-shirt, for some reason...).

But, it was a beautiful day. The sun shone so brightly on the white snow that it was like standing inside a light-bulb. I had worked up some heat during the ski there, so my circulation was buzzing, and admittedly the adrenaline of 'what on earth are you doing?' might have helped bring on a bit of a sweat. And standing on the banks of the lake afterwards, wrapped in towel, wearing a swimsuit and flipflops and nothing else whilst I knocked back a shot or two of limoncello in celebration, I didn't feel the chill at all.

Husband, when I spoke to him later, was amazed; he never thought I would do it. The Russians I've spoken to about having done it have been uniformly confused. Why would I do such a thing? They know I'm not an Orthodox Christian (for whom this is religious cleansing experience), and I'm not a health nut, so clearly the only explanation is that I am certifiably insane.

They may be right.

But as Husband said to me, over the last two years my boundaries of what I will and won't do have expanded considerably*, and whatever else I may feel about Mother Russia, I have to give her a lot of the credit for that.

Ultimately though, my motivation for doing this probably idiotic thing was impulsive; 'Fxck it. I can do it, so I shall. Life is for living.' And if there's one thing that doing that dip made me feel, it was ALIVE.

* extreme waxing, going blonde, bungy jumping and throwing myself out of airplanes are still off the menu, by the way...

The Gallery Wk 48: Simple Pleasures

Want to know what I did this morning?

(Clue; I'm not talking about the cross country skiing. Although I did do that too...)

Blog post to follow later, when I've warmed up a bit...

This post is for Week 48 of Tara's Gallery. Click here to see all the other fabulous entries.