Instead of blogging I have been:

• Reading novels
• Sleeping more
• Ignoring the news
• Doing more voluntary work
• Listening to new music
• Playing with my camera
• Gawping at the gorgeous autumnal leaves
• Drinking lots of Baileys coffees and red wine
• Creating informative handouts for my doula clients
• Networking and advertising my business to get more clients
• Selling out to The Man by considering placing an ad here
• Planning my trip to the States in 3 weeks (all by myself! no kids!!!)
• Learning more about Marxism
• Getting my mojo back
• Plotting a redesign for this site soon
• Rearranging furniture
• Wondering why I don’t particularly feel like blogging
• Not caring enough to find out

What have y’all been up to? Is it just me feeling this blogging inertia? I don’t know if it’s winter blahs, the time change or that (god forbid) I have just run out of stuff to say.

Please, control your laughter. It could happen, you know!

Don’t try saying that three times fast.

So here’s what’s been on my mind:

– My oh-so-dreamy, clever boyfriend, Stephen Fry. I love him more and more each time I read something by or about him. And today he won me over once again with the gleeful revelation that he enjoys being hated by the Daily Mail. This line in particular* caught my attention: “I don’t read it of course: like anyone of education or sense or moral decency I wouldn’t have such a purulent creepy production in the house.”

If Stephen ever decides he’d like a baby with his partner and needs to find a womb pod, I’d volunteer mine for free. Anyone who is that hated by the Daily Mail is a hero in my book. I think we all know how much I despise that rag.

– Jonathan Franzen (of The Corrections fame) has apparently kissed and made up with Oprah after their ‘spat’ nine years ago. In a nutshell, Franzen dismissed Oprah’s Book Club as “schmaltzy” and “one-dimensional” and expressed concerns that male readers would be alienated by the Book Club logo because they associate it with ‘chick lit’.

Now, while I can understand Franzen’s reservations about his novel appearing on such a mainstream book list and think his point about reaching male readers is important (women read far more fiction than men), I still bristle at the idea that because it was mainly women buying Oprah’s suggested books that this meant said books would be taken less seriously. The message seemed to be that either a) female readers are not a desirable fan base, b) a book club by and for women is mainly about light, summer reads and not ‘serious’ fiction, i.e. it is all ‘chick lit’, or c) men being turned off from reading a novel based on a sticker on its cover from a (mainly) women’s book club is a problem with the book club itself, not the men’s (or at least the macho cultural idea that a book promoted by women is less-than and inferior to ones widely read by men).

I’m sure purist book snobs will disagree, but I’m glad to see that he’s embracing the publicity and welcoming the legions of readers he will gain from Oprah’s endorsement. Even though I don’t personally watch or even like her show, I do have a lot of respect for some of the things she’s been able to accomplish, the Book Club among them. Anyone who can get people reading deserves praise and kudos as far as I’m concerned.

– Only one newspaper out of the top 50 in the US had any mention of the winners of last night’s WNBA championship on the front page, and that was in the winning team’s home town. Sigh. Women’s sports and respect…that’s a thin leaflet.

– I’m disappointed that an op-ed on closing the wage gap in the Washington Post today by Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to President Obama and chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, did not mention the words mothers, maternity or parent(ing) once. Are there really still people who don’t realise that the gender pay gap is mainly a mothers‘ pay gap?

– The pointy-hatted one is here. Yawn.

Finally, this, which I can’t stop watching and listening to, even if I am more than a little jealous of how fabulous this woman looks throughout her pregnancy. Catchy little ditty though!

Magic- A Belly Grows from The Panic Room Videos on Vimeo.

Enjoy your weekend, folks.

*hat tip to NH

If you’re looking at my site and notice it’s looking rather strange and garbled, it’s because I managed to delete the tiniest bit of code from my sidebar while attempting to get rid of a widget and messed up the whole thing. I’ve had to uninstall and reinstall my theme and then need to clean up the mess, which the fantastic Aaron is helping me with. But I’ve also got a sicky baby (NB woke up with a stomach bug this morning) and a full day ahead of me so it may continue to look funkafied for awhile longer.

Check back later for a shouty, curse-filled post in which I rant about the Pope, Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and various other powerful leaders with whom I am angry. If you’re the head of a large and powerful institution I would stay away from Noble Savage today. Because when I am done with you, you will cry like a little girl with PMS chopping 9,000 onions. Or so I’d like to believe.

Photo credit

The first rule of writer’s block is — don’t talk about writer’s block. The second rule of writer’s block is don’t talk about writer’s block on your blog and then plead with your readers to hang tight while you scavenge your brain for nuggets of wisdom and entertaining anecdotes. The third rule of writer’s block is…well, you know the rest.

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Just a quickie (no, not that kind — get your minds out of the gutter!) to say that from now on, the entity formerly known as TNC (The Noble Child) will henceforth be referred to as NG (Noble Girl) and the child formerly known as TNB (The Noble Baby) will be NB (Noble Boy). TNH (The Noble Husband) will just be NH. The reasons for this are a) TNB is not a baby anymore *sniff*, b) I’ve always been just Noble Savage, not THE Noble Savage (except for on Twitter because, annoyingly, the name was already taken) so I reckon we should all be the same and c) it’s my blog and I can bloody well do what I want to (she says while stamping her foot in a rebellious manner).

So yeah, that was all I wanted to say. Do you think this is possibly my worst blog post ever? I’d say it’s a contender, along with this pathetic, two-word post during NaBloPoMo ’07.