Welcome to my tombstone of text

This question has been asked of me. What is grit's day?

(Apart from the obvious. A slab of words laid over a monitor screen; a deathly wordy winding sheet of the sad, self-indulgent bastard who put them there.)

1. It is a blog. Yes, I know blogs are doomed. I am a twenty-first century dinosaur.

2. It is by Grit. I write under a made-up name because I have something to hide. It is called my privacy (or what is left of it).

3. My kids are triplets. I blog about the dynamics of that three-headed body when it overwhelms me. Do not assume they are test-tubed, implanted up my doodah, or Clomided. They are a force of nature who split three ways because even in the womb they couldn't damn well agree on anything. And be warned, young woman, before voicing your contempt about population and irresponsible procreation. What happened to me can happen to you.

4. I blog the days. This is, in part, how I interpret my responsibility as a home educator. So I blog where I take the kids, what situations I put them in (or they me). Not because I assume you think my kids are cute. If I need to quickly compile information for any jobsworthy or local authority, this blog is my aide memoire. Aka, my goddam strong-arm righteous legal power.

5. But of course I am going to write selfishly and self-indulgently! Phobias, fantasies, delights, irritations, opinions, thinkings. I am human. I have no-one else to share this stuff with. But look, here is a blog!

6. No, I will not explain The Sorrow, so no point looking. This is a home education blog about raising triplets out of school. If I explored The Sorrow, you would read all paindespairloss, gnashingteeth, bloodandgristle, and know that I am half human, half dead. But see! There is yet another half, and It Lives!

7. Then take this blog as a celebration of living, regardless of whether the passing days turnbellyup, fallintoapit, or are simplyshit. Read the tone as - intolerably, unendurably, remorselessly, draggedscreamingthroughcorpsejawsandgrittedteeth - happily upbeat.

8. Yes, it is a lot of text. I write a lot, quickly. In the morning / late evening when no children are about. I do not watch TV because I cannot make it work.

9. I have very few expectations of you. That seems a little distant, even to me. It is not unfriendly, but practical. (Anyway, I have even fewer online expectations of me.) I do not get my kicks in the online world. I keep a distance from it, although I find some of ignorant attitudes irritating and the tiffs alternatively wearing/amusing, same as I would from a newspaper. My assumption is that you come and go as you please, and that you can be supportive, irritated, kind, or insulting as you wish.

10. Not surprisingly, I am not a good twitterer. I prefer a decent conversation with voice tone, real pauses for thinking, hesitations, ambiguities, deniabilities, smiles, back-tracking, assumptions, eyebrow movements, building of shared meanings and a glass of wine between us.

11. No, I am not on facebook. I did sign up under a false name which Dig said was missing the point. I received a thousand ads for hormonal replacement therapy and twenty messages from a humourless German asking me if I would be his friend. I did not answer.

12. Having said that, I do meet people who know of me through the blog, and I love it. So if you would like to meet, send me an email. I will be laughing it up in Hong Kong for six months but you never know. You might pass by. And then I come back to England and can say hello there.

13. Posts are late. This blog is not as it happens. I like to think this is an ironic comment on the genre.

14. No, I do not blog about everything. On some matters I am very discreet. I have learned when to keep my mouth shut.

15. You never know, I might show you a different way of living. Home education raises such predictable responses (your children cannot socialise, you cannot teach everything, you must be a religious nut-case, you are probably mentally ill, you undermine the local community, you must be antisocial, social workers should call on you, etc etc etc). If you read for a time, you might come to agree with those opinions, or not. That's up to you.

16. Have you read all of this? Apologies, unless you are the person asking yourself, Can I make money from this blog? Answer, in all likelihood, No. If you are offering something (not plastic junk, thanks) from which I can see an educational opportunity for my three students, then you never know. I might agree to play. But there are no guarantees. I am independent, and do not seek to be liked. Neither does the blog.

There. Did that answer it?