My Epiphany...

This week I had a bit of a epiphany and it went a little bit like this..

On Monday i went into London to have lunch with my old work colleagues, another “last team lunch” at our local pub near work.  So as we sat there discussing what was happening in Libya, the previous weekends six nation’s results and the upcoming football internationals it suddenly occurred to me that the thing I was going to miss most was their company?  Yes some of the guys in particular but want I really mean is male company. 

You see the majority of my working life has been in IT, the last 5 years as a manager of a team of 16 and only two of the team were women.  So I have always worked with men and I enjoy their company so before the comment is taken the wrong way in a sexual, pervy kind of way let me explain... 

Men are uncomplicated creatures.  They don’t bitch about what each other is wearing, or pass judgement on what you are wearing, they don’t try and compete over the silly things, never on diets, you never find them crying in the toilets and they really don’t care if they are having bad hair days!.  But most of importantly for me is what you see is what you get, it’s as simple as that.  If you have a disagreement over something it is soon forgotten not dragged up again next time you are having a night out (in a flood of tears).  If you think they have over stepped the mark on something you can tell them without (generally) them getting upset.  You can laugh with them at stuff that might be a little bit inappropriate but its okay as they won’t judge you over it.  So you see working with men is easy, so after 17 years in their company I just relate so much better to men than women...

So now, not only have I become a stay at home mum but I also need to learn to relate better with my own gender.  Don’t get me wrong I do have a lot of female friends and three sisters who I am very close to. But what I need to do is the small talk at the school gates, show an interest in what other people’s children’s are doing, chat to the other mums at birthday parties. 

This may seem like a simple and easy thing for a lot of you to do but to me it fills me with trepidation and dread as I really don’t know what to talk to them about  AND I will have to watch my language as well..