Eastery Artistry
Easter Holidays. A time to reflect about how much fun school actually is. A time to figure out ways to entertain one’s children without involving the television or the outside world because it’s feckin’ snowing out there for some reason.
I thought about making something chocolaty but given that I’m pregnant, it turns out there isn’t an ounce of the stuff left in the whole house. I thought about glueing eggshells back together but eggshells are flaky things and refuse to stay in tact under the pressure of a five-year-old’s grasp. I’d hard-boil them, but hey, we’re in a recession.
It was Puppychild who suggested an Art Attack. It’s one of her most favourite TV shows, bar Supernanny and Spongebob Squarepants. I showed her the website and guided her through its archives, asking her to pick an art project to do. I expected her to choose something involving fairies or fashion or something pink at least, but no.
She chose the severed hand.
I’m so delighted she’s inherited my sense of the macabre. TAT objected that this art project isn’t exactly Easter related but I disagreed… it does have loose connections to the theme of resurrection, if you think about it.
In a world where sanity is a commodity
This is a blog post which probably should go without being written, but given the cathartic nature of blogging, fuck it.
Echinacea failed me last week for a change. I found myself standing in Laughingboy’s bedroom in dismay as our family doctor spoke on the phone to the ambulance crew in the background and my little boy fought to squeeze oxygen into his clogged up little lungs. Auto-pilot took a while to take over, but next thing I knew, the bag had been packed and I was riding in the back of the ambulance with the sirens blaring. “Hey dude, they’re playing that for you! How cool is that?!” The irony hit me that ambulance sirens are only cool when you’re not on the stretcher, so I shut up to the quiet amusement of the paramedic.
He’s home now, fully oxygenated and saturated with antibiotics. I was getting used to his hospital room, it was peaceful in there, apart from the odd 3am emergency helicopter landing outside our window.
I had a rough night last night… I dreamed of wading through rubbish-dumps full of rotting corpses, and trying to hawk two black bags full of household un-want at a car boot sale, also full of dead people. It’s strange, but Puppychild losing her blanket has affected me far more than her.
One of the people who babysat her during our wee trip to the hospital took it upon herself to decide that now was the time my five-year-old must grow out of her comfort blanket, see. So, it went in the bin. I thought it would have been a proverbial bin, but it wasn’t. By the time I had phoned to retrieve it (to stash in the attic until Puppychild reaches twenty one), the bin-men had come and gone, apparently. Gutted doesn’t even come close. It’s amazing how like a pet a raggedy smelly old blanket becomes.
I’m thinking that some people actually deserve to have their toilet-seat superglued.
Earlier today a woman behind the counter in Avoca Handweavers smiled at my swelling belly and asked me how long I had left. I hear that question a lot, and the answers are getting frighteningly short so today I changed tack, because I was in the mood. I gasped in indignance and retorted at the top of my voice; ‘ARE YOU SAYING I’M FAT?!?’, and stormed off with a big smile on my face. It felt good. I think I might leave that as my standard answer from now on.
Human milk rules
When I had Laughingboy eight years ago and came face-to-boob with a myriad of problems caused by his developmental delay, I had no idea where to turn. The nurses in the maternity hospital were less helpful than they were physically violent… it’s a weird thing entirely having your delicate lady lumps viciously man-handled by a bearded nurse, and being woken every two hours to ‘try again’ when I was severely sleep deprived wasn’t very nice. They put me off the whole idea to be honest.
There are various local groups and enterprises that are there to help in this situation, but the vast range of opinions can be confusing, so I’m delighted to see this new parent-orientated version ‘Friends Of Breastfeeding‘ evolving.
“Friends of Breastfeeding was formed by a group of mothers who met on online parenting forums. Many of these mothers found the internet to be the only place they could access true support and reliable information and advice about breastfeeding. The need for two things was clear to everyone involved – better understanding of breastfeeding across the general public, and improved access to good breastfeeding support in Ireland for women who want to breastfeed their babies.”
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Feeding Puppychild was an entirely different, easier and much more lovely experience. She and I would retreat to a quiet place and she would make the back of my neck tingle as the flow commenced… we would sit there for as long as she needed until her eyelids drooped. I can’t describe what an addictive feeling that is, it’s a maternal opiate. They told me when I had tonsillitis that I had to cease breastfeeding while taking antibiotics. Turns out this was complete bullshit, and the horrendous rip through the sacred bond that followed was totally unnecessary. I wish parental support and advice could have been around back then.
Now I have a new problem. Puppychild now realises that this new baby won’t be fed by magic glittery bottle like her doll babies are, rather he or she will get milk from mummy’s boobs.
Puppychild is fine with this. Her curiosity is encouraging, in fact. A little too encouraging.
She asks me every now and then if she can have a go, and is perfectly accepting of my reply that there simply isn’t any milk yet, until the baby actually appears. But, there will be a day when she will be entirely more insistent that she have a go of my boob, straight from the tap as it were.
I’ve never heard of anyone else dealing with that problem before. I don’t want her to sense my revulsion at the idea, and I definitely don’t want the relationship between Puppychild and her new sibling to be founded on jealousy… it’s a horribly awkward position to be in, and yet it must be breezed through like a hot knife through butter.
I suppose the problem lies in society. The YouTube clip below creeps the hell out of me, it makes me gag and retch that a child so old still breastfeeds, but Puppychild wouldn’t flinch. She’d see it for the natural act that it is. So – is this my problem or her problem? I’ve no idea.
Insecure
He dropped her name into conversation a little too casually and made my ears prick up. He told me about how beautiful she was, how sound, sitting in his taxi surrounded by shopping bags. I gave out to him for not finishing his sentences properly.
“She’s really funny though…”
“But not as funny as -” I prompted.
“But not as funny as you, of course. She has lovely hair, too.”
“FINISH THE DAMN SENTENCE!!!”
I got given out to for being touchy. Now on Sunday nights during ‘The All Ireland Talent Show’, TAT locks himself into the bedroom with the television wearing only a dressing-gown, and won’t let me in. I hover with my swollen body trying to think of a good looking Irish male television presenter I can glean revenge with. I fail miserably.
I don’t know whether I’m insecure because of Miss Perfection, or because The Accidental Terrorist’s viewing standards have slipped so low.
Soul stealers
You know the way ‘they’ say that some African tribes intensely dislike having their photographs taken for fear a bit of their souls are taken with them? I know exactly how they feel.
It’s a clever ploy that’s happened several times since Puppychild started school… professional photographers sneak into the building in the dead of lunchtime and snap a few quickies without warning, then they send a blackmail letter home with the kid later that day.
You have one week to pay the sum of €17.50 for a print of our photograph. If you want to see it alive, please view the school’s notice board.
I got a letter like this last week, and took the bait. Sure enough, there was a group photograph of Puppychild and her classmates, sitting angelically in a row outside the main door of the building.
It got to me that nobody had asked my permission to take that picture, or at least warned me about it so that I could have given her hair a pre-emptive brush. It suddenly struck me that if I didn’t pay for this photograph, somebody else would get at it and could potentially do strange and unimaginable things with it. I felt compelled to give these bastards my coal money, just to save my daughter’s soul.
It also occurs to me that there is now a negative somewhere in someone’s studio with my kid on it, and no amount of cash can get it back. I’m highly bloody un-nerved by this.
I will be giving these people an envelope containing €17.50 in exchange for my daughter’s soul. If they had asked for €190 for a print-off the size of a postage-stamp, I’d probably still consider paying for that, too. I feel invaded.
Clever soul stealers.
Valentine musings from the overworked and underpaid
Valentine’s day has always annoyed me a bit. As a late-blooming teenager I had always hoped that an anonymous card would find its way through my letterbox intented for my spotty four-eyed face, but it never did. One year an anonymous card did appear, but it was addressed to Billy Burn who lived at the other end of my road. A set up most likely… possibly by Billy himself, more likely by somebody else who wanted a cheap laugh. I can’t remember whether I delivered it or not, I hope in hindsight that I stuffed it into the exhaust-pipe of his dad’s car, but that’s unlikely.
Since starting on the sordid path of dating, it’s just gone from one extreme to the other… lavender-filled balloons and cheesy teddybears with crappy slogans like ‘You to me are like a spanner; every time I see you, my nuts tighten‘ were given to my by fellas who wanted to know what colour my knickers were, and when I finally hooked up with TAT, I got little or nothing. I prefer little or nothing by far.
This year, Laughingboy showed his love for me by producing a hefty dump in his nappy in the small hours of the morning. When I checked his schoolbag for baby-wipes, I found a sweet glitterish heart-shaped card with painty fingerprints all over it, and a wee bag of homemade chocolates. I let Puppychild show her love for her daddy by jumping on him violently at 5pm to wake him up for his night-time shift. TAT showed his love for me by reading me excerpts from Bill Bryson’s ‘The Lost Continent’ while I scraped eggy gunge from lunchtime kitchen saucepans, and I showed him my love for him by buying him an extremely violent Xbox game – ‘Army of Two, the 40th day’ – a shoot-em-up game that can only be played by in co-op with another. (What could be more romantic than annihalating things together over a glass of wine?)
I will be celebrating my love for myself tonight by lying on the wooden floor and listening to John Coltrane surrounded by candles for an hour or two before digging into a can of Guinness and a game of Assassin’s Creed.
Hallmark didn’t get a brass cent. Ha.
Snail Trail
As I bent over the bathroom sink scraping snot off Puppychild’s school jumper’s sleeve with a toothbrush (her own toothbrush – heh heh), it struck me that I was in a timeless club of parents who, since the birth of school uniforms, are cursed with the plight of snail-trail sleeves.
It also struck me that there is a sad lack of evolution in the school jumper trade. A row of buttons has foiled the snot wiping technique in blazers and shirts since what… the 20′s? Surely it snot too hard to find some sort of equivalent for jumpers and tracksuit tops?
And while they’re at it, what’s wrong with stitching a thumb-hole into school jumpers to save the wearer hours of labour trying to gouge one out with an overbitten thumb-nail? TAT bought a jumper recently from TK Maxx with such a thumb hole already stitched in… that impressed me no end, but then again I’m fierce easy to amuse these days…
El Duderino
The naming of the foetus is an epic task, especially when you haven’t met it yet. Of course there’s always the option of naming it after its zone of conception, but who wants to live their life with ‘Ballybunion’ for a moniker?
Baby name books are pointless, especially Irish baby name books. From Morrigan to Aoife to Siobhán, everyone has something mean to say about a name, (Siobhán your knickers, yer da’s on his way…) or somebody already knows a person by that name and doesn’t like them, or it rhymes with something rude… or maybe it’s just plain naff. Nah, if you ask me, the only way to choose a name is to scan the credits at the end of a film – this method always spews forth interesting possibilities.
Take my friend for instance… she’s due her babby in three weeks time, and she loves the name Charlie. She cannot name her kid Charlie, however, because her surname is Brown. Hell, Snoopy hasn’t been aired for years, if you ask me she’s on to a winner, but her family won’t let up nagging her into changing her mind.
Then there’s my other friend, who gave birth last month and named her baby girl ‘Kitty’. It’s not short for anything, Kitty is her name and Kitty is what she shall be called. I love it, but it’s undoubtedly quite an eccentric name, which beautifully mirrors a very eccentric family. My family is not eccentric, at least TAT’s side isn’t… I can imagine the multitudes of rolled eyeballs, the quick snide remarks directed towards the stoner family at the Christmas table. It’s just not worth it.
No, The Accidental Terrorist and I came up with an idea long ago, we had a flippant moment during a private viewing of The Big Lebowski:
Dude.
Why can’t I call my child Dude? “The Dude. His Dudeness… Duder, or El Duderino if you’re not into the whole brevity thing” to quote The Dude himself.
Yeah, yeah, I know why I can’t call the child ‘Dude’, because someday he’ll grow up and will most likely want a job that doesn’t involve canvas or scripts, or burger flipping. Such is life. Or is it?!?! Such is the beauty of the Irish language perhaps… like the phrase ‘Mahogany Gaspipes’, the word ‘Dude’ could be Irish – all you have to do is add a fada and an ‘i’ somewhere, and the problem is solved, as follows:
-Duaid; short for Duaided, means ‘Evil Death’… who picks on a kid named Evil Death?!?
-Dúid; short for Dúidín, meaning ‘Pipe’. Grandad would be so proud.
-Dóid; meaning ‘Fist’… again, schoolyard politics are in favour of this one.
-Díud; short for Díthugad, meaning ‘Extermination’… a future in pest control perhaps?
-Diúd; short for Diúdán, meaning ‘Giddiness’, which is fitting.
-Duíd; a version of ‘David’, which my mother called me during the first three weeks of my confusing life.
But maybe the most fitting yet:
-Dúd… meaning ‘Mouth‘, because his would be one more to feed.
I do so hope it’s a boy!
Back of the hand
“Fuck off, you stupid fat bitch!”
I love watching Supernanny. Okay, so she’s a tad twee and parents cry way too bloody often for their own good, but it’s wonderful to watch other parents fail. It reminds me that even if I’m failing in some ways too, that nobody’s perfect. Is there any such thing as a non-dysfunctional family? Would The Simpsons be such a success if there were?
The above quote comes from a five-year old boy, spoken to his mother. You can tell he’s potentially a good kid, his diction and pronounciation regarding curse-words are second to none, even with missing teeth interrupting his fricatives. An intelligent kid, whose problem is that he’s just simply loved too much. His mother takes it, every soiled little last word of it, and dies a little bit inside.
Isn’t that madness? The running theme throughout most families of tearaway kids on the show, is that the parents can’t stand to chastise their children because they love them so much, they don’t want to hurt them. That is a seriously cruel thing about nature, the necessity for tough love. I don’t know how many times I’ve retreated to the bathroom in distress after I’ve had to dent Puppychild’s wee fairylike spirit with a firmly spoken NO. Watching her features drop into a look of pure hurt like that – having her tell me that she hates me- she always forgets later about the extremes of her revolt, but I never do. They should just extract the sympathy nerve from a mother during the birth of her first kid… that would soften the world’s problems entirely.
I don’t know why they don’t send Jo Frost to prisons, it’s never too late for tough love. Anyone who looks at her sideways would have to sit on the bold-chair for as many minutes as years they’re alive… listening to Celine Dion, maybe. That would set anyone on the right path.
Frowningboy
Plunged into the sudden creepy hush of a power-cut last night, my Mario Kart game crudely interrupted. Everything died, leaving me wondering for an instant if I’d suddenly turned deaf and blind… a cry from the kid’s bedroom shattered the silence… I wandered in with candles and put little minds to rest.
I rooted out the guitar and began to mess around, but a weird harmonic began to ooze into the chords. I put the guitar down, and listened. A strange noise sounded intermittantly, possibly the axe murderer who had just cut my power was trying to break the lock?? No such luck… I followed the sound into Laughingboy’s bedroom and winced as the tooth-grinding got louder and louder. It’s a totally different sound now, more like a rusty wood planer trying to smooth the underbelly of a hedgehog than the chaffinch sound I was used to.
I brought a candle close to his bed and prized his tensed jaws open for a look-see. The entire row of upper and lower teeth on the left hand side of his mouth are now ground to their bare minimum, his lower insisor grinding raw flesh causing pools of blood to appear on his over-effaced gum, yet he keeps grinding anyway. Presumably pain is relative to the poor kid.
I’m working up a steady input of Magnesium into Laughingboy’s diet as suggested by Jo, but not wanting to bombard him suddenly with too much, the dose is too small yet to make a difference. Maybe the next few weeks will show a change, I hope so.
In the meantime, necessity got me inventing… I cut a section of gum-sheild to the size of his two front teeth, then tied a cotton-covered hairband around it in the style of a friendship bracelet, stretched nice and tight so that the wee bit of plastic stays in place. Once strapped around his head, the shield refuses to budge – it takes a bit of watching for salivary purposes but otherwise it’s perfect!
It took me a while to figure out who he looks like with the gizmo stuck to his teeth, then it hit me;
He looks exactly like Shelley from South Park:
Poor Frowningboy.
