The Sanity Grant
I brought Puppychild for a playdate today, to the house of a domestic Goddess. This is a woman who has three children, all under the age of five, and another mouth on the way. She bakes scones and muffins every other day, makes marshmallow surprises for an entire classfull of children with no excuse needed at all, and organizes extravagant parties and picnics for enormous groups of parents and children at the slightest hint of a sunny day. She even brought a batch of strawberry double-chocolate cookies to my hen-party which was bizarre, but much appreciated!
Today she was baking chocolate mousse-ish things with meringue and treacle strands, brandy was involved somehow with the prospect of blow-torch action later on, all for an impending dinner party she was hosting. They looked delicious, but different to the photograph in the recipe, and this mattered to her, no matter what I said. Three children (plus my own anklebiter) were fighting in the background and a sickening THUMP could be heard followed by inevitable wails from the smallest child, who came runnning into the kitchen, covered in Toilet-Duck goo.
A war ensued, involving a chocolate covered mother (don’t go there, Maxi!) and a four-year-old who refused to relinquish the bottle of highly toxic toilet bleach. The war ended with a slap… a swift slap across the back of the kid’s head which ended the fight, but destroyed the Goddess. She crumbled and covered her head with inner turmoil – “I did it again!! I’m such a terrible mother!” She was utterly ashamed that I had witnessed the act.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard those words, sure I’ve said them myself. As a wise friend once said to me… ‘it’s far easier to punish yourself than to recognise the good things you do.’ How true. Okay so in this instance, the mother would have been better off removing herself from the situation, or just not allowing her stress levels to get so high, maybe hosting dinner parties isn’t such a good idea when you have so many dependants constantly vying for her attention, but she’s entitled to a life, and leaving a room crawling with small kids and a bottle of bleach isn’t such an ingenius thing to do. Either way, in years to come, her kids won’t remember that slap, they’ll remember coming home from school to batches of fresh-baked biscuits every day. She is an excellent mother, and I told her so.
This Goddess wouldn’t listen. She wanted to punish herself and cringed at the bad example she was giving. Everything was her fault.
Nothing is her fault. Society is at fault for segregating her from female peers. Irish women covet what they have and compare social status, they don’t reach out to hug and help. Irish mothers are teeny islands all on their own, all forced to keep a brave face and shut the fuck up.
I’ve seen this too many times, all of us torturing ourselves silently because we have rare occasions when we can’t cope and we lash out at the child, or the dog, or the plate-cupboard. We turn to booze, to drugs, to self-harm, because we feel unworthy of our children, of our lives. National Geographic shows tiger mothers showing no regret at biting her cubs because they pissed her off by crawling on her while she’s trying to nap, why should we?
Domestic violence is entirely different, I feel I should probably stick this in here. There is no way any of us could ever condone the sickness that is child-abuse, but child-abuse is NOT the same as a temporary lapse in sanity. Abuse is constant. Deliberate. A show of contempt towards those who are weaker… repeated beatings in moments of clarity. A smack caused by an incessantly whingey child plus a barking dog plus a spilled canister of sugar is simply natural cause-and-effect. Even a Saint’s patience only reaches so far.
I seriously wish there was a law that provides a grant for mothers, and otherwise un-kiddified women to compulsively meet up at least once a week outside the home environment for a jar or two with other women… to unwind, to advise, to complain, to share grievances and short-comings, to praise each other on the fact that their kids are still alive at all.
But, there isn’t. Everywhere there are closed doors with apparently perfect women inside with apparently perfect children. These apparently perfect people scream for help all the time, but they scream into pillows and get bad advice from lonesome google searches.
This needs to change… there needs to be an emphasis on the fact that a child’s health depends on that of its mother’s. The hand that rocks the cradle is not powered with batteries, but with reassurance, of which there is an enormous shortage. THAT, if you ask me, is what’s wrong with the world today.
Dance, bitch!!
I just found this and had such a good time with it, I thought I’d share it.
Maxi Cane has written a savage article about men’s versus women’s magazines and who they do (or don’t) exploit. He mentioned a few magazines he’ll be reviewing, and that led me to google FHM, my once favourited rag. I don’t really buy them, because there’s so much to be had on their website.
If you are (ahem) one of the few who only read FHM for the articles, you might be aware of their reviews e.g. their 100 greatest websites ever! which led me to something too odd for words:
Now call me easily entertained, but when I click a link and find a guy in a chicken-suit sitting on a couch who suddenly stands up to face me, I get a bit edgy. I’m told to enter a command into the dialogue box at the bottom, so I did.
“Wave”
The dude in the chicken suit waved.
“Dance!”
The chicken began to do a Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. He was very good!
“Thanks :)” I said… I felt bad. I felt I had to step back and think of some oddball things for him to do.
Poor bastard. Some people just have the weirdest jobs!!!
Anthrophobia
The Accidental Terrorist wombled into the sitting room this morning as he usually does, making a beeline for the kettle.
“Augh! This place reeks of piss!” he exclaimed, covering his nose with his fart-soaked dressing gown.
“No it doesn’t!” I am always in defence of the smell of my house, covering up the reek of wet dog is important to me.
“It does! It stinks in here!”
“All I can smell are flowers?” I pointed to the vase of white lillies on the table. He ambled over and inhaled.
“That’s it!” he cried; “get rid of them, they smell like piss!” Irish men are so romantic.
“Wha? They smell like lillies – unmistakably floral… what’s wrong with you? Hash plants smell like piss! Unfortunately there aren’t any in here though.”
“Hash plants smell lovely!” he retorted.
“No, they’re renowned… they smell like cat’s piss.”
“Rubbish.”
It was one of those arguments. I offered the suggestion that perhaps he was smelling by association, that it’s common to find white lillies in hospitals which do invariably smell like piss, especially in Ireland. That didn’t work. I offered to collect a specimen of piss in a jar so that he could compare aromas, but he declined.
I’ve come to the conclusion that TAT’s nose has been eternally screwed up from the C.S. gas he was tortured with during his training in the army, and there’s nothing I can do.
I’m going out for the day, I’m going to fuck with his head by placing bowls of dogshit in hidden spots around the room. Purely in the name of scientific experimentation, of course.
Just me and my dog
Do you remember your first day at school? I do. I remember the smooth grey desks and the undersized chairs that didn’t seem so undersized at the time. I remember feeling panicked, until a little girl approached and told me her name was Kate. I told her my name was Kate too. The rest is history.
I don’t remember my mother on that day though, didn’t consider how she felt. She told me last week that on that day, once she had dropped me off, she returned home and whiled my absence away on the swing, cuddling our dog and crying.
Today was Puppychild’s first day at school.
All dressed up in her tiny uniform, slightly too small but hugely excited, her schoolbag full of brightly coloured books and sandwiches with cheese-strings on the side, she approached the throng of schoolchildren nervously, grasping my hand tightly. Madness and chaos in the playground as families gathered, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that chaos is always fair in its randomness.
I noticed an almost imperceptible squeeze as she grasped my fingers tight, then she let go. The void was so obvious all of a sudden as I watched her walk away from me, it was like removing the nappy from a chimpanzee and releasing it into the wild.
She stood still for a few minutes just staring around her, she smiled at the boys and waved politely at the girls, but nobody came over to talk to her. Instead of being consumed by paranoia, she instead began to chase around after a small bunch of children and just like that, she was at one with them. I couldn’t do that.
A woman ran past me clutching a tissue to her tear-stained face.
The teacher ushered the smalls to their seats and Puppychild found a small kid with a head full of bouncy curls and they began to play shop. I took a picture and walked away.
I would so love to be a fly on the wall in that classroom right now, but I know it’s none of my business. This is her life now, it’s not for me to know. My job is to find something else to do and nurture from a distance, just me and my dog.
