They say you learn something new every day, and today I learned something about me. I learned I am “cold, calculating, sad and mad.” Also “lacking in essential humanity”. Oh, and just plain “weird”.  Can’t forget that one!

Why am I all of these things, I hear you ask? (OK, not really, but let’s pretend.) Because I don’t want to have children. And according to a certain columnist for the Daily Fail Mail (a newspaper I hate with every fibre of my being), this makes me all of the above, and more.

I read Carol Sarler’s piece on Why bosses are right to distrust women who don’t have children this morning (I know, I should know better to read anything in the Mail, but there was a link on Twitter, I clicked…), and spent the next ten minutes or so ranting angrily to anyone who would listen (sorry, Terry and Rubin) about how women like Carol are the reason we’ll never have true equality with men: because as long as women insist on putting so much time and energy into tearing each other down, calling each other names and being holier-than-thou about every little choice other women make, we’ll always just seem like a bunch of cats fighting in a sack. And we will never, ever  be taken seriously.

Here’s the part where I prove my point by tearing Carol Sarler down and being holier-than-thou. But where to start?

How about at the very beginning:

“Much as I like to trumpet the importance of a woman’s right to choose all things at all times, [says Carol] there’s one choice I simply cannot understand: the choice of an otherwise sane and healthy woman not to have children…if she says she hasn’t a shred of maternal feeling in her, moreover, if she says she would prefer to concentrate on her career and that a child would only get in the way of it, then my head might acknowledge her right to do so. But my heart whispers: ‘Lady, you’re weird.”

(more…)

So, for the past couple of years, Terry and I have been doing our grocery shopping online, and having it delivered. Because we are lazy, basically. And actually, I say, “Terry and I”, but really, Terry does ALL of it by himself. That’s how lazy I am, and why, to this day, my parents thank their lucky stars each night that they somehow managed to pay him enough to take me of their hands.

Anyway, we get the shopping delivered, and this not only helps us in our quest to never leave the house, ever, it also helps us avoid The Others, who are always at their absolute worst at the supermarket, indulging in their usual behaviour of stopping randomly in the middle of aisles without warning, wielding screaming children like weapons, ramming shopping carts into the back of your legs, that sort of thing. Basically, the supermarket is like the seventh circle of hell to us, and that’s why we get the shopping delivered. That and the fact that I have that rare, incurable condition that forces me to buy a new pair of shoes or item of clothing every time I go near an actual shop. But I digress.

For most of the time we’ve been having the shopping delivered, we’ve been having it delivered by Asda. (Asda being Wal*Mart, for the benefit of those of you in the States) We’ve had a few brief flirtations with Tesco, but it’s just never really worked out with them for various reasons that are too boring to go into here. Yes, even more boring than an entire blog entry about grocery shopping. Look, I don’t get out much, OK?

For the most part, Asda have been OK at delivering our shopping. Sure, they’ve messed up. There was that time they brought us someone else’s shopping, and gave someone else most of our shopping, for instance. There was that other time they… did exactly the same thing. There have been times when they’ve forgotten things, brought things we didn’t order (if anyone needs a pack of baby wipes and some allergy tablets, by the way, we got them in stock. We’re keeping the 12 pack of quilted loo roll though. Swanky!), and just basically sucked, to be honest, but we have kept with them because, well, it’s better the devil you know, sometimes, and also because they do a really nice turkey and stuffing sandwich filler that I really like.

This month, though, Asda randomly decided to start sucking big time. They mostly did this by just not bothering to turn up when they said they would, leaving us starving to death and gnawing the furniture in hunger until they finally rolled up. Then on Friday? They just didn’t turn up at all. AT ALL, people. Of course, Terry called them. They apologised and said they’d bring us our shopping on Saturday afternoon instead. Then they just didn’t bother with that, either. So Terry called them again. “Sunday!” said Asda. “We will bring your shopping on Sunday! Until then, we will stick it in the freezer and hope it doesn’t reach its sell-by date in the meantime!” Actually, they didn’t say that last bit, but that IS what they did – we could tell by the way all the food was FREEZING COLD, and about to go out of date.

Not that we got the food when they said we would, mind you. Oh, they did turn up that time, which was very nice of them. But they only brought half our shopping with them. The rest, they said, would be right along – in fact, was leaving the store on a van RIGHT THAT SECOND! The store is a 20 minute drive from our house. (Told you we were lazy). It took them two and a half hours, and OK, they did send us a huge box of Quality Street by way of apology, but it was too late because by then I’d eaten the dog. Sorry, Rubin.

Yes, you’re right, we should totally just have jumped in the car and gone and picked up the shopping ourselves, only we couldn’t because a) lazy! b) we’d already paid for it, and it was on a van in some unspecified location and c) still lazy! So, basically, our ENTIRE WEEKEND was spent sitting around the house waiting for our time-saving online grocery delivery. Top tip: NEVER DO THAT. Try Tesco. Because even if they don’t have the turkey stuffing sandwich filler, they can’t possibly suck that hard, can they?