Hello Goodbye
I may have mentioned my neighbour once or twice before… since we moved here eight months ago, she’s been a huge part of this house. Every now and then she’d bring a six-pack by and we’d talk nonsense until silly o’clock. Other times she’d bring something sparkly or jingly for Laughingboy to play with, or a pair of fake wings for Puppychild. We’d shirk housework together in the front garden under the sun and trapse through cowpats with our dogs, she gave me books on family herbal medicine, I gave her my ear whenever she had a gripe, which happened quite often.
She’s moving to the U.S. tomorrow morning forever and ever, so arrived this morning with a crateful of treasure which has kept me amused all day.
I gained:
-A copy of The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
-’For every child, a better world‘ by Kermit the Frog
-Methuen’s ‘The Beatles A – Z’
-A special (eventually collector’s) commemorative edition of TIME magazine’s view of the Obama election
-Magic of the Celtic Otherworld
-A DC comic – Catwoman, dated 1st August 1993
-A Beano annual from 1993
-A Gustav Klimt print of Emilie Flöge (who looks not unlike my neighbour at all at all funnily enough)
-Several jars and herbal teas and picture frames and a clay ‘bits and bobs’ vase covered in runic writing
-A pair of funky Moccasins
I lost:
-A friend.
Poo.
The Dinkle Factor
I love school holidays, because it allows me to be anti-social. I can stay up as late as I like playing with my hero alter-ego on Fable II, and don’t have to face parental small-talk the next morning. I can waste hours doing jigsaws with Puppychild or glueing cut-out felt or making home-made play-dough and not have to talk to another soul. This to me is heaven, but ultimately a bad thing. Sometimes it’s good to get out there and do something, if only for the feeling that something has been done.
But what can one do when one is smashed and relying on the contents of the penny-jar?
Thankfully, if there’s anything cheap in Dublin City, it’s culture. Puppychild and I embarked on a Dart adventure today into Merrion Square to see the National Art Gallery… something I remember my Grandmother doing with me when I was a kid, something that really stuck in my mind. There are discoveries to be made, such as the fact that it’s sometimes okay to colour outside the line, that a cluster of dots often only make sense when you stand a few steps away from them, and that the most important colour for the conveyance of mood is white, or the absence thereof. Even the experience of people-watching in that gallery can be an eye-opener in itself.
Puppychild will not, however, remember any of this.
The highlight of her trip (apart from riding on the train), was the dinkle factor.
Apart from all the naked cherubs hanging around the place, there was the very large Da Vinci-esque statue of a bloke in the centre of the second floor.
“Look Mommy!!! He’s a boy! He has a dinkle!”
“Yes pickle-pants. Yes he does.”
“Touch the dinkle Mommy!” (in her typically attention grabbing loud voice)
Several people stopped viewing artwork and turned to watch. I did not touch the dinkle. I turned instead to search for Caravaggio.
“Mommy!!! Come back and lift me up so I can touch the dinkle!”
Uh Oh.
She’s at that age. Secret curious rendezvous’ in school toilets and closed hallways, in remote fields and behind closed kitchen doors. Small boys and girls dropping their drawers for mutual investigations. I did it. I remember the dinkle factor well. I bet you did it too.
There’s nothing I can do about it other than dish out cringe worthy and most definitely unwanted advice with a side-helping of prophylactic. I’d forgotten that it started so young though. The dinkle factor. We’re all slaves.
Why are you making that noise with your throat, mummy?
I was having a nap on the couch after dinner yesterday afternoon, cuddling into the Puppychild and dreaming of Spongebob. Suddenly Puppychild got thirsty and began to bug me in my dozy state for milk, but I was having none of it.
“You go get the milk, it’s in the fridge, your juice bottle’s on the table.”
Puppychild ambled away and I dozed off again.
A few seconds later, she re-interrupted my dreams of Cartoonito by shoving her juice bottle in my face, announcing that she had some yummy milk for me and I, in my thirsty haziness took the container gratefully and began to drink.
My senses exploded my awareness into full alert, my oesophagus opened and took no responsiblity for what was about to happen.
“Bluergh…” I ran to the sink and spat, spat again, rinsed, spat, then spent a few minutes trying desperately to keep my steak dinner down. Puppychild watched with great amusement.
Once the gag reflex had subsided and my mouth was mine once more, I asked the kid what the mysterious substance was. She opened the fridge and showed me the carton of buttermilk dated 11th March 2009 that I’d been too afraid to open and re-cycle. Completely and utterly my own fault.
“It’s yummy banana milk mummy!”
It was not yummy banana milk. It was way past sour, we are talking cheese culture territory here. It was a substance that tasted something between gism and liquid brie, and would not remove itself from my taste buds for several hours. The memory of my swallowing it haunted me like that of a sixteen year old after a debs ball, but hold it down I did, and for that I was proud.
Note to self;
#1 – Throw out things after they expire, no matter how gicky they might seem, for sooner is most definitely better than later.
#2 – Never accept any substance from a pre-schooler.
#3 – Never accept any substance from anyone until I am fully awake.
Lesson learned.
Sheepish
I love sheep. There, I said it.
A slight complex may have formed as an impressionable five-year-old as I gazed out the window of our family Datsun Cherry while passing a lush field, and my father replied to my innocent cry of ‘Oh! Look at the baby lambs!’ with; ‘You ate one of those for dinner last night you know. One of their legs, to be more accurate.’
Since then, pictures of sheep have populated my bathroom and kitchen, a fridge-magnet or two hang around, despite having been dropped and rendered legless, they still cling and hold onto coupons for dear life. I even had a handcuffed sheep hanging from my rear-view mirror as a trainee driver. His name was Randy Lamb, and he failed me my first driving test, right from the offset. Driving testers don’t have a sense of humour apparently.
I’m not a vegetarian though, don’t get me wrong. When I can afford it, lamb is one of my favourite things to eat. I’m not a hypocrite either… if a farmer gave me a knife and told me to kill a lamb for my family’s consumption, I would do it, albeit through a wall of tears. It’s lower in the food chain, no matter what way you look at it, and it goes too well with mint sauce. Sorry Randy Lamb.
This is a point I worried about, regarding Puppychild. She likes to talk about her food. Pizza is Pizza. Sausages and rashers have obscure names and don’t prompt questions. Chicken, however, gets a raised eyebrow. Puppychild has heard all about chickens on Old Mc Donald’s farm and is dubious, and to this end, she won’t eat meat unless I lie through my teeth (or chewed food as it were) about what her dinner actually contains.
(robbed from Magneto Bold Too)
Last spring, I saw how the other half lives.
A fellow pre-schooler’s mommy brought Puppychild and me to a farm during lambing season, much gushing and cuddling of leggy awkward fluffiness followed, not to mention congratulations to tired and bedraggled looking ewes… the children were in their element. Upon cramming said kids into the car afterwards, fellow mommy rolled down her window and, in full ear-shot of the children, asked a few questions.
“When will they be weaned do you think?”
(assumed answer from farmer)
“And how much would it cost to buy a lamb?”
(random figure from top of farmer’s head)
“And how much would it cost to have it chopped up into pieces?”
(head-scratch from farmer)
“And if I was to buy two lambs, chopped into really small pieces so that I can squish them into my 40 Litre freezer leaving out things like their little heads and feet and tails and things… could you do me a deal?”
… The conversation continued along this way, with this kind motherly lady mentally butchering small fluffy animals in a pensive but very vocal sort of way. I turned around to view the children’s expressions, to find them gazing nonchalantly staring either out the window, or at their colouring books. They were hardened children, used to the life-cycle of farmyard happenings. Puppychild, however, had turned a whiter shade of pale. Her eyebrows were no longer visible, now buried high in her fringe. I watched as she clamped her hands over her ears and went to her happy place.
At least she can’t blame me for that. I had it easy, in retrospect.
(robbed from Early Recovery Blog)
Wartime
Oh, sometimes skies are cloudy
And sometimes skies are blue
And sometimes they say that you eat the bear
But sometimes the bear eats you
And sometimes I feel like I should go
Far far away and hide
‘Cause I keep a waitin’ for my ship to come in
And all that ever comes is the tide-Hard Time Losin’ Man, Jim Croce
I spent most of today with my hand clamped firmly over Laughingboy’s mouth. He’s been suffering from… something… for a few weeks now. Could be teething problems, could be growing pains, could be gas, could be that the planet under the control of his amazing brain power somewhere is suffering from the turmoils of wartime. Everybody offers opinions, but it’s anybody’s guess. Either way, he spends most of his time red faced and screaming, his limbs clenched tight like rusty vice-grips, his eyes wild with anxiety. There’s only so much pain killer a kid can take before he either becomes immune, or suffers from liver malfunction so it’s a case of trying one thing after another until he eventually falls asleep.
Problem is, most of the day must be spent quietly while TAT sleeps off his night-shift, so I must stay glued to Laughingboy’s bedside, gagging his yells with the cupped palm of my hand, stopping briefly every now and then to scream profanities into a soft cottony Spongebob pillow. I caught myself yelling at Puppychild for singing ‘ring a ring o’ roses’ in her sweet little voice over the calamity caused by Cryingboy in the same room. Hers was the voice of peace, but I only saw that once I had shattered it and she looked at me with big eyes brimming with tears, confused at what she had done wrong. It killed me.
When silence briefly reigns, I must spend it washing or cooking or sweeping, or simply staring into an open fridge for two hours. I miss the good parts, the quiet smiles, the interludes.
It grinds a girl down, it makes her want to sleep, to find her reflection in the bottom of a bottle, to forget about sending wedding thank-you-cards and emptying spare-rooms and sunbathing in rare Irish tarmac softening heat. I wonder when things will start to perk up again.
Then something silly happens… in this case, while I was setting up Laughingboy’s feeding bag tonight, and I stood on an up-turned plug. My reaction sounded something like a birthing hyena and it sent both children into hysterics. All three of us, collapsed on a bed, ripped into shreds of giggles and forgetting the bad times. It was right then that I figured it isn’t Laughingboy who has special needs, but me. It’s a need to know that giggles are no good without tears, quiet smiles are accentuated by loud frowns, stress breeds peace.
Whatever it is that Laughingboy is suffering from, it will be but a distant memory someday. I should take this opportunity to teach Puppychild how to deal with stress by example, and to remind Laughingboy what my heartbeat sounds like, instead of having him taste the salty bitterness of my sweaty hand. Nothing comes from nothing, everything comes from understanding.
Like Grannymar once said on her blog; “Be thankful for a lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning, and gutters that need fixing because it means you have a home.”
Men may be the head of the household, but women have the neck.
Something pissed me off last week. More than anything has pissed me off in ages, in fact. It was a stupid thing, borne of stupidity and stupid circumstances.
It was a text message from Carpenter Dude, and the translation from TAT… something along the lines of ‘woman… know your place’. I don’t know, I wasn’t about to read the text.
What you have, my loyal readers, is ‘one of the lads’, I’m a girl’s girl, but also a man’s girl. I’m in that lucky 50-50 position. I play poker and Playstation and the Sexbox and I change tyres by the roadside in the rain quite happily (who doesn’t like wet nuts?). I also like small fluffy animals and am quite partial to a well designed pair of funky shoes. 50 – 50. Most of the company I keep is of the male persuasion, but I have an ultimately female neighbour (with wine) to maintain the balance, a perfect existence for me.
Paint and hinges threw that the fuck out of whack however.
Hinges are hinges. Some are easy, some you have to hang, then re-measure and re-screw and then re-measure and re-screw again. Carpenter Dude did not like the fact that I knew this, Carpenter Dude is oldskool. This was not my place. He also did not like the fact that I don’t like white. When new unit #2 was installed and I returned from my (ever so kind) escapist ventures from drillage and sawing hell, only to find that everything had been coated with white gloss, I ventured an alternative opinion.
Woman, know your place.
Colour is bad. So is feminism, but it also has its place.
It’s interesting though, from a vox-pop of everyone who visits my house, it seems that the only people who like white, are mothers, mother-in-laws, and blokes. Whearas the first two are to be expected, I’m surprised at the blokes, especially TAT, a man who once painted the entire inside of his bachelor pad in gloss marijuana green.
I’m told not to go out and buy paint, to leave it to the men to decide.
Fuck that.
I went to my neighbour’s house, she fed me with Vodka and Ginger, she told me that while men may be the head of the household, women are always the neck… we can turn that head in whichever direction we choose. She also told me that should my dog ever die of poisoning, I should stay the fuck away from my house. She is indeed a very wise woman.
To that effect, I’ve gotten busy not with paint, but with Paintshop. Why trawl aroud Woodies with swatches when I can just get pissed on Guinness and fart around with a computer program?
This is my living room as she is now…
As boring as the subject may be, it’s my living room, my obsession, my need to be different. White just doesnt’ match! Twenty minutes on Photoshop has spewed forth this:
Nothing grabs my interest yet, but it’s early days.
Woman might be good at darning socks and making babies and cooking, but if Carpenter Dude ever wants free website from Woman, Carpenter Dude can whistle.
