To tax, or not to tax. That is the question.
So this first-born of mine… Laughingboy, you all know him by now maybe, but if you don’t, let me fill you in.
He was diagnosed with Otahara Syndrome at the tender age of three months. It’s a seizure condition that affects wee small babies but given that he’s now ten years old, his diagnosis has morphed into a very vague ‘Controlled Seizure Disorder with Global Developmental Delay’. We’re entirely lucky to still have him. He lights us up. He’s my dude, and my God.
He can’t do stuff for himself. He needs a wheelchair. He can’t sit on the couch with us and watch The Simpsons because he has no head-support and would fall over. He’s a whopping 33.5kg child who hasn’t progressed beyond the development of a three-month-old baby, but he is his own person who loves Drum and Bass and who is slowly appreciating a love for R&B against all my wishes.
So he needs a mode of transport, right?
We had one, but he grew out of it. We bought it for €13,000. We had means, at the time.
Our panic to find a new vehicle was sincere more recently, being a family of now fewer means. I earn Carer’s Allowance which isn’t much considering I’m doing the Government a huge favour by personally looking after a disabled kid (It feels weird saying that, seeing as not a hundred years ago, said kid would’ve been hidden away or smothered with a pillow for fear of being a burden on society. Is a disabled kid worthy of society? That’s a can of worms and a half). My husband has a severely debilitating condition too… he has Degenerative Disk Disorder, a condition that means that he is on constant opiates, is in constant pain, and most definitely cannot work. That too, is a can of worms and a half.
My point is, is that we have a minimal amount of incoming money.
This is why it seemed like a blessing when a friend of means of ours chose to sell/lease us a vehicle, a beautiful vehicle at that; one that could not only carry Laughingboy, but any one of his other wheelchair-bound friends at a time. It has six gears. It guzzles the diesel, but it’s worth it. And it’s almost paid-off.
But guess what! Because we didn’t buy the vehicle from an ‘approved dealer’, it means we don’t get to avail of the wonderful Tax-Free Grant that usual vehicles of disablement would ordinarily possess. To avail of free annual motor tax, we must buy a new vehicle at a cost of €23,000 or more, but hey, at least we’d get the VRT back, worth €3,000 or so, in said case. Ooooo. ‘Yay’. I would be less sarcastic, if I had that much money just lying around.
It means that we now have to pay a vehicle tax on our vehicle of comparatively ill-gotten means by roughly €1,100 a year. That much money would heat our house for well over a year and a half, plus change.
So, it seems we should sell our vehicle to a registered dealer, then buy it right back off them again, just to avail of free vehicle tax that should normally be entitled to us.
Does that not seem like fraud to you?
Or should we just sell said vehicle to pay for said house-heating and limit Laughingboy’s travel to public services… an hourly shuttle-bus that doesn’t facilitate wheelchairs?
What the fuck is going on with this system???
Ten things they don’t warn you about before you get pregnant #7
Daddies… know your place!
He was just a small kid. I noticed he was tired at the start of the karate class, his punches were lacklustre. Throughout the Satory Dragon creed, through the warm-ups, even through the highly energetic high-kick lesson the kid was tired and thirsty much like the rest of them. Karate lessons can be hard going that way.
Ten minutes before the end of the class however, his father walked in. I could tell that this random man sitting suddenly beside me was the kid’s father, because out of the blue the kid’s attention was sidetracked from his Sensei, he kept a special reserve of backward glances for this stranger who somehow didn’t seem to notice the admiration. The kid’s activity miraculously transformed. His Katas were sharp, precise and well-timed, he was a pleasure to watch all of a sudden… child certainly knew his stuff. I donated a corner of my eye to the bloke beside me who was nose-deep in his smart phone and felt sad for said child. (What if it wasn’t his Dad?! Maybe was child’s first childhood crush??? (Ew.)) Turns out it was indeed his dad, pops had the velcro shoe straps pre-unwrapped, ready for exit sharpish. Burger-time, perhaps.
How strange is that though? That a kid will suddenly perform amazingly in the presence of a parent who doesn’t seem all that bothered… maybe the kid’s obnoxious and this guy is used to it, I don’t know… I just wish he could’ve seen that transformation!
It was like Puppychild’s Christmas play. I and her Daddy were (slightly(!)) late, the concert had already started and as I mooched a spot just inside the main door of the crammed hall, I spotted her searching randomly through the faces in the audience. I saw it straight away, the fact that she felt alone. When she spotted her Daddy’s dodgy haircut through the crowd however, I saw an amazing transformation – she sand loud and proud, her beaming smile did her Angel costume great justice. She pulled faces mid-song and elbowed her buddy beside her…
…’That’s my Daddy.’
There are some parents out there that can’t see that magic and it kills me. It’s an ultimate sort of love and it’s far greater than any salary or smartphone, greater than anything I’ve ever known. It’s a sort of power, maybe. To leave a superpower untapped is criminal, if you ask me. It’s another thing about parent-hood that they never tell you about, the power to inspire greatness in a random dude. How do they not see it, those random few?
Why moaning in blog posts is a good thing
It was in the giving of advice to a new blogger out there that I realized I don’t practice what I preach. Much like leaving the light in the toilet on after I’ve used it, I can’t really afford to give out, for I do it myself.
This new blogger person was wondering if their first post was too negative (for the want of a better remembering of what the word actually was that they used to convey their naked embarrassment of having just splurged their innard thoughts on the interwebs for the first time) and if this first post wasn’t too much of a bad buzz and if it shouldn’t be taken down.
You know what it’s like though, to barf those dark thoughts into print, don’t you? Don’t you worry if people will be shocked, or will be spurned far far away from your web address never to re-visit again for fear of being appalled by how depressing your life is?
I told her to leave it there! Don’t touch it! It’s perfect as it is!
I told her that others relate to your worries in a strange sort of way, that people are more likely to relate and comment on your distress because they too feel those dark feelings. Blogging is a good thing, because it allows an anonymous person to relate in an honest way to the world. But…
I don’t do that. I haven’t the guts. I did it once, but deleted the post and also deleted it also from my memory cringe-bank though it felt good to write it down at the time.
So how much do you hold back and why? Are you afraid of offending your siblings and well-read-commentators, or are you just too yellow to tell people how you really feel? I’d be guilty of that latter, it’s far too easy to try to be funny instead and fail rather than have people judge you negatively but ultimately, who cares?
I say fair play to ye who have the balls to be honest. Fair balls. I aspire to be like you someday.
How to build a bomb-shelter in 364 days
It’s December 21st! Finally, the shortest day. It marks the end of death, of withering, of dark mornings which don’t be the best friend of alarm clocks at all - at all. It also marks the start of our final year together as a human race, in all possiblity.
Yes, K8 the Gr8 is a sucker for sensationalism but she wasn’t caught up with the doomsayers before who warned us that Armageddon was upon us and that we should brush up on our Bible passages…
Nope, I’m used to laughing at those who say the end is upon us. ‘Up your end’, I’d be declaring in gay abandon.
This is different though. The end of days is this time prophesee’d by the Mayans, a people who died out more than a thousand years ago but whose calendar is still accurate give or take 30 seconds or so. They foretold the rise of Hitler, the Stephen’s Day tsunami, their intricately calculated calendar foretold many things besides and ends mysteriously next year, on the 21st December 2012. Ooooo.
Of course, this too is complete bollox and completely mis-representative of Mayan systems and beliefs. But it got me thinking, how nature is an increadibly intelligent thing, how clever it is in maintaining order. Now that humans are breeding at a tremendous rate almost like a virus, wouldn’t it be feasible that nature might try to over compensate with natural disasters? We have had an awful lot of late, and I’m pretty damn sure it has nothing to do with global warming and most likely, absolutely nothing to do with God.
So what could be the end for us as an entire race? A meteorite? An inter-stellar conjunction leading to the interruption of our gravitational pull to the sun? Maybe mysterious methane emmisions from the North Pole will accelerate our passing into the next Ice Age and do us all in. Or! Maybe we’ll all accidentally turn into zombies.
I’m rooting for zombies. I think I stand a chance against those fuckers.
Either way, it makes me wonder. Why worry? We’ll all be dust this time next year. Bwah hah hah hah… etc.
The therapeutic post
Why is it so hard to ask for help?
Is it just an Irish thing, where you feel you owe someone a good deed just because they did something nice for you? The mafia would have theories about this and as yet, I’m not sure that I’m with that idea, or against it. Some people like doing nice things for other people. I get that. Do they secretly keep a mental note of how many times I’ve repaid them? That’s the thinker.
This wrecks my head. As a mammy of a ten year old kid trapped in the body of a baby, a hypersensitive yet outgoing seven year old and a toddler with a head-banging/electric socket fixation, how can I not accept help? This is probably that karma thing that people harp on about, helpful neighbours repaying me for the good things I’ve done, but still it leaves me guilty. I didn’t have kids so that I could be weak, I had them because I knew I could handle everything on my own! It just seems so stupid that I should need anyone else. Selfish, even.
But then, life is more complicated than that.
She and I, we went to a Rattle and Hum gig last weekend. I had a ball. I danced the Streets have no Name till the Elevation came home, but that’s whiskey for you. I dragged her back to my place for a Bailey’s Coffee because I knew she was a complicated lady that needed to talk. And talk she did! But amongst it all, she told me that there was something between us that she couldn’t see, that made her uncomfortable. She knew we could never be friends, but she didn’t know why. I had no idea what she was talking about but the fact that she’d minded wee Fartsalot A LOT in the last few weeks was playing on my mind so now I’m confused.
Like Christmas cards for instance. You’ve just received one from Uncle Mohammed and there’s plenty of time to return the postal festivities, do you rush off a quickie for tomorrow’s post, or do you send a half-assed poke on Facebook? It’s up to whatever you can do in the moment. Or what you can push extra hard to do, maybe.
Do your actions really define you though? People tell me that ‘as long as I don’t take the piss, I’ll be okay’, but I don’t believe them. I don’t believe that a million thanks are enough.
What is a girl to do?
Craven
I’m at a turning point in my life, I think. Not in a Robert Frost sort of way, but imagine his yellow wood had been bulldozed one morning and replaced with a four-lane motorway full of spaghetti junctions… that sort of way.
I was getting so good at hiding from things on my comfy couch surrounded by my lovely little K8lings and thoroughly enjoyed my last three years of shitehawkism beneath the radar, but it seems I’ve been found out by some Greater Power who is suddenly gunning for my blood.
They saw me coming. I’m a big fan of Puppychild’s school you see, it’s an ancient old thing in the middle of nowhere filled with nobles and countryfolk and eccentrics so I used to attend the parent meetings out of curiosity. Then I began to attend them purely because nobody else seemed to want to go so it was sort of obvious when I didn’t. Now I have to go because I got spuriously voted into the position of Chairperson of the Parents Association.
“Sorry? I’m a what now?” I says. They just smiled and handed me their coffee bill.
We have the menial task of raising between ten and twelve thousand quid to cover the money flop this year it seems. One does not just pull a handy grand out of one’s bum, you know. This requires work! A LOT of work. We threw a film night at the school and raked in €400 straight away, it was a great buzz. The flyer for this Friday’s gig looks like this:
Aww, Chwismassy!
My family, however, also demands that I get up off my arse and try some hard graft but I’ve no clue as to how to work that one into an already jammers schedule. Need creativity. And a time machine.
And! Worst of all! Potty training has begun.
Save me.
Snacking between meals
A public health nurse dropped by recently, it wasn’t an official appointment, just an old friend. Just as well, in hindsight. She admired Sir Fartsalot’s struts as he toddled with his funky nappy walk (you know the way they do) around the porch as we chatted on the doorstep, and commented that he had something in his mouth. I leaned down to him, gave the innards of his little mouth a sweep with my pinky finger and evicted a well chewed cigarette butt. Impressed with my mothering skills I think this lady was not, but she didn’t show it. She laughed it off, fair play to her.
He’s down to seven butts a day now, thank God.
Half a job
Story of my life, innit? This blog’s looking like my teenage diary, large gaps filled with absent memories, a half-assed diary of mystery. Still, I’m glad I still have them both, as haphazard as they are.
I’ve learned exactly half of Xtreme’s song ‘More Than Words’ on the guitar. I spent half the time in college that I was supposed to. My house is semi-clean, semi-cluttered. I’m a half a job, a quitter, a loser even.
But that’s good, right? If there were no losers, there’d be no winners. You can’t have night without day, hey.
If I’d been more commited, I would’ve told you about Laughingboy’s brush with botox last month. Not just for those with more money than sense, the stuff happens to be quite useful it seems. I was only too happy to have them inject poison into my kid, in fact.
He mutated earlier this year, you see, from a little boy into a strapping young man. His schoolteachers panicked and swiftly ordered larger equipment to handle him, I rushed out to buy big-boy clothes and meanwhile Laughingboy suffered. Nature would have it that a child’s bones grow first, but their surrounding supportive tendons can take up to a year to catch up. Cruel, isn’t it? Seems Mother Nature’s a bit of a half-a-job, too.
That’s what the botox was for, to relax those muscles, to make them sleep and stop hurting while his cells multiply. You should see the difference it’s made! No longer frog-legged, no longer squirming in his wheelchair, he’s his old Laughingboy self again, but taller.
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… I’m so glad he lives in the 21st century.
Turfism
I do agolopize for the brief promise of more regular postings, it’s just that this weird wave of cyberphobia has kicked in again. I’m sure it’ll go away soon. In the meantime, here is a random photograph of my dear ole dad and some slapper I used to know as a kid. You should see the state of her now.
The monkey’s off my back, but the circus is still in town.
Breakfast this morning consisted of a strong coffee, two cigarettes and another strong coffee. The kids weetabixed, I then woke TAT with strong coffee and joined him for a cigarette. Then I began the process of sorting laundry into colourful piles before having another fag. The washing machine on, I cleaned the kitchen and answered the door to neighbourhood children and watched them scrawl pictures on the driveway with chalk while I had a cigarette.
Then I felt tired. I ate a slice of toast and had a cigarette. Deciding that I had to sit down, I began to sort visa receipts by date and study bank statements but this turned out to be a boring task so I had to have another cigarette before going any further. The job was never finished, of course, before long it was time to cook lunch and fix the next load of laundry but not before doing my nappy rounds and having a cigarette.
It occured to me that the floor needed sweeping, so I went outside to fetch the broom and decided to have a cigarette out there to save time later. I swept. I swept really well even if I do say so myself, lifting furniture out of the way and everything, and found that I deserved a cigarette before mopping. That too went extremely well and was again deserved of a nice relaxing fag and a cuppa tea.
Time for picture cards with Sir Fartsalot and cuddle time with Laughingboy then, the children pulled grimaces when I breathed in their faces and giggled as I squitched their chubby knees.
A large pan heating to boiling point for pasta took too long to wait for, so I went outside for two cigarettes. Onions chopped and garlic mashed, carrots peeled and butter melting, I grabed the chance for a quick smoke. Almost ready to serve up dinner… I took it out of the oven to cool while I had a cigarette,
and another to reward myself for stacking the dishwasher so quickly.
The lads will appear shortly for a game of poker or two, so I’ll probably chain smoke a bit and hang around with them until three am or so.
Tomorrow I’ll wake with a chesty cough and brown fingertips with a headache and a smelly sittingroom.
Tomorrow I’ll wake with an extra tenner in my pocket, regardless of whether I win a poker game or not.
