A missed photo opportunity.
It was ten o’clock this morning before I remembered that it is my firstborn’s birthday today. A kid in a wheelchair (how brilliant is it to have a kid in a wheelchair in Puppychild’s class?) in Puppychild’s class reminded me of the date for some reason… I was on Library Duty at the time and he had chosen a buke called ‘Time’.
I rushed home and dived into Laughingboy’s room, where he lay suffering a scorched arse and an aching belly and I kissed him a whispered happy birthday. He had been diagnosed with a bowel infection y’see, more than five days before and in spite of his antibiotics, was seemingly getting worse. If he could have clutched his belly he would have been doing so with gusto. With 82%(!) of the family in ribbons what with some condition or other, I’d completely forgotten the date.
Poor kid.
I rushed out again with Sir Fartsalot to buy copious gifts, which were presented sometime later along with a muffin, a flaming candle, and a Puppychild who led us in birfday song. We knew he couldn’t eat the muffin being a tube-fed sort of urchin, but it was good enough that his sister could enjoy it beside him, maybe, if not only for the company.
He wasn’t arsed with his new runners or his lava lamp. The Spongebob whoopie-cushion idea was lost on him… something that farts is probably not the best gift to give someone with a bad case of the squits though, in hindsight.
Well known voices turned up, as did those not-so-well-known (to the preturbinance of Sir Fartsalot) which blew me away, it felt being visited by fairy godparents and angels but Laughingboy was not in the mood.
He turned double-digits today.
That’s ten years since I became somebody’s ma!
I’ve to drop stool samples into the local hospital every day for three days now, it seems. I’m not squeamish really, but being a mother can be very graphic sometimes. And I think about how hard it is on me, and how hard it is on him, and I suddenly feel like I owe him a much better birthday someday somehow. Like a trip down the liffey on an elephant, or at least sparklers to the playground with the bucket swing and the squeaky see-saw.
I owe him so much but I yearn for ideas as to entertain a kid like him.
Does anyone have a recipie for home-made fireworks?
0% of full
Today is a weird day. It’s not the sort of day I’d normally blog about because its content wouldn’t be the most uplifting, but I’ve entered a pact with another blogger to match him post-for-post, in an effort to motivate each other into prolifickness prolifickity more frequent writing, so here it goes:
My husband of the Accidental Terrorism variety has suffered from a degenerative spine condition for a handful of years now. He’s had surgery before that followed pain of the most extremist type, the type that had him crawling in agony on hands and knees to the bathroom, the type that had him passing out at Christmas dinner tables, a pain that left me wretched with helplessness. Surgery eased the problem, but there came a warning with it; a warning to follow a strict routine of exercise and back care in the years to follow. The warning was forgotten, as were the exercises… and taxi driving took over.
Now, today, The Accidental Terrorist has gone to have operation number two. Laughingboy had been booked into respite. Puppychild and Sir Fartsalot were due to spend a spell in my friend’s house so that I could properly see TAT to his hospital bed and settle him in my wifey ways, but the planets didn’t want it to pass that way for some reason.
Instead Laughingboy suffers a bowel infection, Puppychild a virus and Sir Fartsalot a lung infection. All at the same time do the healthiest children in the world become sick. I find that pretty strange.
And so I waved bye-bye and stifled emotions for the benefit of the children and the heating-engineers and I stuffed it away into a container at the arse end of my soul for later consideration. I hope TAT’s friend is as good a hand-holder as I’d hoped to be, I wonder if TAT feels as lonely as I do despite being surrounded by plenty of people.
Here comes the good part:
I’m a scatty person. As is my mother, and her family… scattiness is most definitely hereditary, I don’t care what anyone says. This means that my mother’s sister’s child is bound to be the same way, doesn’t it?
She stayed with me before, my cousin Diddles. Then she moved far beyond the pale and vowed to visit again but never quite got around to it and time got away from us. It was pointed out to me that it was bad play to keep booking visits and never turn up, but I pointed it out that in the grand scheme of things, scatty people mean well because I know at first hand how it is and I understand and bear no such cancerous Irish grudge on the girl, I’ve got no time for that sorta thing.
We spoke two days ago, she and I. We giggled about willies and spoke of sickness and before I knew it, she had booked herself on the train. She’s trundling her way cross-country to me right now as I write, to come and share the burden and slap the sense of humour back into me, right exactly when I need her, because that’s what matters, right there.
Now all that’s left are the antibiotics, and the waiting…
…
…
Euro forde trolleeee
Milk
Bread
Sugar
Coffee
Butter
Nappies
Plain Flour
Toothpaste
Teabags
Tomatoes
Cabbage
SeXxXual (O)(O) Chocolate
Dog Food
Catfood
Porridge
Jam
Shopping lists have so much un-tapped potential. You’ve all found someone else’s at some stage I bet, lurking in the corner of a trolley or forgotten at the end of the packing-counter, used and unwanted and wanting re-cycling. I defy anybody to not read it in the name of good old fashioned nosiness, and I feel it my duty as a quirky citizen of the planet to at least make them slightly entertaining.
I gave this list to my husband today (his virgin shopping trip in our ten year courtship! Yay!) and as it turned out, he brought his mother.
Scarleh.
I’ll have a pint of serotonin, please.
Right, that’s it. I’m sitting down to write something, anything, on this poor blog. I’m sick of being afraid of it and feeling the nausea surge in close proximity to anything socially computer-related, much like that old friend or relative that needs calling upon, the longer you leave it the worse that feeling gets.
All I want to do is to be invisible, dammit! I want to stay indoors at all times and answer the door by cracking it ajar to give strangers the beady eye before yelling at them to get off my territory ’til I release the rabid cats. I don’t want facebook or twitter, don’t want people to know what I’m doing, what I like or dislike, or where I’m hovering. I just want to be a non-K8. Healthy it isn’t, but oh-so familiar, comforting and predictable it most definitely is.
And yet now a corner has turned in our lives as TAT drops out of the workforce and hangs up his taxi plate… driving was probably not the best profession for a man with a dodgy back to partake in, but surgery looms nonetheless and disability has been claimed so I must take over and get a job.
Get a job?!? Ahhh! You mean I have to go out into the scrutinous public eye and do stuff and be bubbly and interesting all of a sudden? Somebody pass the bucket… I’m not at all sure about this, don’t feel well all of a sudden at all at all. Normal people scare the bejeesus out of me.
But, you’da bin so proud… I did get a job as a bar-wench in a local pub and it was almost fun, that one day I worked. Shame the pub closed down four days later, hey.
So what now? Prostitution? Dog pedicures? Getting this blog out of the darkness might be a good start.
So how have you been?
What does instinct mean?
I could say I love instinct, but that would be a total cop-out in descriptive terms. The truth is, it mystifies me. As a female growing up I’m told that it’s one of my greatest skills, yet every time I try to use it, I fuck it up beyond belief.
Instinct- and that determined little voice that says ‘Go on sure, for the craic!’ are two totally removed entities, as I’m slowly discovering in my old age. The little voice is not to be trusted! like a child who recognises a window of opportunity in which to be silly, it makes it seem like a good idea at the time, but it really isn’t, as hindsight proves.
No, instinct seems to be that thing, that Ono-second after something bad happens when you think to yourself… ‘I knew that would happen.’
Like the following examples:
- You buy a batch of raw chicken legs from a local shop for €1 and you wonder why it’s so cheap, until you break the plasticky seal and a dubious waft of fart makes your stomach contents swirl. Sulphur, an ism of decomposition… fart is bad, instinct tells you that. Bin. No-brainer! Gastroenteritis does not a peaceful evening make.
- You’re dealt a ten and a six of hearts and you suddenly decide that a flush is going to appear and you go all-in, and lose a tenner to a Straight to the Ace. That’s not instinct, that’s that little voice, and it gets the naughty corner for ten minutes.
- You haven’t seen your kid for an hour, it had been called for a while previously and quite frankly you’re pretty grateful for the peace that a neighbourhood child’s distraction can afford. Halfway through your seventh paragraph of peace however, an idea pops into your head. A bad idea that again makes your stomach contents swirl. You wander outside to scout for said child, only to see from far away that it’s crying, and it wants you. ‘That’s mad!’ you might hear a small voice say, and that small voice is told to get back in it’s corner.
- You suddenly wonder if your engine doesn’t need oil and wouldn’t it might be a nice day for a dipstick?
- That voice in your head that tells you that you should probably stop drinking alcohol right about now; the one that if ignored, will involve serious entertainment tax the next morning. Very rarely listened to.
- That strange sound an infected cough makes.
- That oven smell that perfectly timed chocolate-chip biscuits create. Finely-timed instinct is finely-timed.
- That dream, the one where a Boeing side-swipes the M50 in a desperate attempt to land in what are pretty abysmal conditions… the plastic dream that wakes with a clear memory of colours and numbers in a drastic panic of visions of blood and sweat, what does instinct do with those?! Oh. Premonition, the psychotic cousin of the inner-child… the one who is statistically unlikely to exist, and yet does indeed, according to your sister-in-law. To be treated dubiouslesslessnly.
- The feeling that you should be creating music, instead of watching crap on TV.
- That feeling when the spinach finally hits your lower intestine…
- and you realise all of a sudden that it’s probably a good idea to
Stop.
What are other good examples of instinct though?! Instinct tells me I need to sleep and blocks any memories I had during the day, instances that inspired this post. It’s quite frustrating really, this constant need for sleep.
Help a girl out?
The elephant on the porch
A rare golden ball of gas in the sky warmed us today. Blackbirds singing, Laughingboy on the front doorstep in his wheelchair gazing at multicoloured twirly windmills whizzing around in a cool spring breeze. I in the kitchen buttering bread for the baby, a sudden rush of chundering wheels interrupted my train of thought.
The kid in his go-cart skidded to a halt outside our house and looked up at Laughingboy, gazed for a few seconds in unashamed curiosity.
“Hiya” he said. Laughingboy said nothing, his head lolling to one side, his brain processing a multitude of all sorts of things, or nothing at all.
“Hiya” the kid said again. Again Laughingboy stayed mute.
I chose that moment to go outside to spark up a smoke and smiled at the kid who instantly jumped at my presence, as though caught in the act of doing something private. He smiled back. Or half-smiled. He wasn’t sure.
“You’re a clever young lad” I told him. “You know that most people who don’t say hello back, are ignorant. It’s different with my little boy, he can hear you but he can’t reply yet, he hasn’t learned how. Whereas most people give up on saying hello to him, you don’t, and that’s why you’re clever. It’s people like you who’ll teach him how to talk, so thanks… thanks a million.”
“K” said the kid, and go-carted away. Laughingboy giggled at the sound of churning wheels on tarmac and the birds went on singing, as they do.
Parkour Pops
You know that side-vault thing? That thing people do to scale walls or fences in one fluid jump? I’ve always been a fan of that. It’s quite sexy in its own way, that whole ‘I’m unstoppable’ kind of jesture, but I’ve never been able to do it. That is, I’ve never tried… which means I’ve always been to scared to try. I fear injuries involving face-plants and potentially knocked out teeth, see. I blame my dad for that, not that it’s much of an unjustifiable fear, but.
Paddy’s Day was bright and sunshiny this year, we stopped for icecream, Puppychild and Sir Fartsalot and I, and watched the parade move slowly by to the music of screams and vomits from the carnival nearby. We wandered up and down the sea-front and basked in the hysterics and paid carnival-folk for cheap thrills and people-watched until the sun began to set. This wandering lark was interrupted periodically though, by my need to rest. I’m not a big believer in buggies, mad as it seems, I much prefer to hold mah babies until they’re big enough to walk as it makes for an easier life (and bigger biceps) in the long run. I’m just not very fit.
It was during one such stop that it happened. Sir Fartsalot perching on a wall three feet high, Puppychild dancing an Irish jig on top of said wall, me flailing my arms in a ridiculous sort of pattern making noises of relief, a little girl watching us intently from the other side.
“C’mon Grandad!” she said.
An elderly gentleman suddenly appeared from nowhere, took a large stride, then vaulted cleanly over the wall to the little girl. I’d understand this sort of behaviour if… say… the child was on fire, or was in the path of some heavy object travelling very very fast, but she wasn’t. He was simply a very limber octogenarian, and I won’t deny a certain degree of arousal on my part.
Even Puppychild was impressed. “Super Grandad!” she exclaimed, and I agreed wholeheartedly, his freerunning abilities putting me to shame.
Grandads. They don’t make ‘em like they used to!
The pruning of a feeble philanthropist
I been cut back.
I didn’t notice it at first. I watched the news and saw people protesting on behalf of the weaker members of society, but it didn’t once occur to me seriously that they were talking about me. I depend on a Carer’s Allowance, Domicilliary Carer’s Allowance, and Child Benefit for sustainance, all of which were pruned heavily at various stages over the last year or two. Seemingly overnight, my bank balance hit the pits, the lack of digits instilled a panic in me that lasted all of a week or two.
I’m suddenly walking around local markets with a calculator, trying hard to fit a week’s shopping into twenty euros. I’m saving up for kerosene and putting three jumpers on my children until heating is afforded, and have had to cancel direct debits to Concern, Trocaire and the Irish School for the Deaf… that bothered me more than anything else.
(Picture: Adolphe-William Bouguereau)
I’d complain about it, and I’d sure as hell put a flea in the ear of any polititian that darkened my door, but I don’t because I’m pretty sure that this is all a good thing in it’s own peculiar way. What goes up, must come down. We were rich, now we’re poor, our Grandkids will be rich again, it’s just the way things flow.
Meanwhile Puppychild’s un-learning her materialistic fetishes in favour of jigsaws and chalk, Sir Fartsalot’s savings fund is looking bleak but maybe this will teach him the meaning of money so that when he does someday cash in his savings, they’ll go to the right places. The munchie cupboard is bare of biscuits and crisps now, instead it homes flour and baking soda… I’ve been meaning to sharpen my baking skills anyway.
I couldn’t give a flying fuck who’s fault it was, regarding this banking crisis. Part of the time I think it’s just a conspiracy, something somebody made up to cover for a greater plot. My vague attempts at beginning a revolution petered out when I realised that we all have very little to complain about, we still have basic rights and services for when we hit rock bottom and that’s a lot more than some other countries can boast.
The one thing that scares me is Laughingboy. If things should conspire the wrong way and we are left without free medical aid, he’s bunched. Would the government let him die? Probably. I’d most likely have to start a charity in his name to cover the costs of his equipment and medication and giving my past organisational skills, I’m scared for him, but we’ll cross that gorge when we come to it.
Meanwhile I vote for Socialism. I don’t care. Since reading The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists the concept just makes so much sense to me. I’ll vote for Sinn Fein even though I know there’s no point, but the point is to vote anyway, and I hold out the hope the rest of those feeble philanthropists out there vote their own way too, that this will be a fair election.
But it won’t, and so life will go on…
…but hopefully without all the complaining.
Where is my ism?
I find it easier to believe that at the beginning of mankind, we gazed up at the stars and felt very small and lonely and created the need for a universal parent, leading to the creation of Gods. All that other stuff just seems way too far-fetched. But there I believe is something there, and I think Laughingboy has something to do with understanding it.
So many times have strange things happened like this perfect wee house, like the time in the church with Vivaldi, like the strangest feeling in his bedroom as I stoop over his bed performing a myriad of Laughingboy related things; I often feel a presence behind me and I look around and I’m surprised that there’s nobody there, the feeling is that strong. Maybe it’s that vulnerability of having my back to the door, maybe it’s my dead Granny, maybe it’s my overactive imagination.
Did I ever tell you the story of the prophets?
It was when Laughingboy was but a handful of months old, a wee blob of a child who had spent most of his new life in hospital being poked and pricked, and watched by experts of seizures which zapped his tiny brain and made his baby body convulse like the victim of a taser gun forty times a day and all we could do was watch. That was a strange time, most of it has erased itself from my immediate memory, pushed out by new less nightmare-inducing memories over time.
One memory that does stick out however, is that of diagnosis day. Laughingboy’s neurologist had laid it out straight and ugly, the whole truth of Laughingboy’s condition and future, and all about how there would be not much of either. They took Laughingboy away to give us space to think. That hurt.
But what could we do but go to the pub?
Outside of the hospital, Laughingboy’s daddy and I walked in a melted marshmellow haze of unreality, not knowing what to do.
A ringing phone.
It was in the explaining of the whole sticky mess to a third party that made my final resolve break and smash all over the fag-butt-littered street. Ugh. Crying in public is scarletising. I dived into the pub and made a bolt for the jacks in order to score some toilet paper and that was when my shoe fell off.
I can’t remember what shoe I was wearing, nor why it fell off, but I’ve a feeling that if I’d been wearing Converse All-Star runners laced up to the knee at the time, the shoe still would have fallen off. Either way, I found myself fumbling around a dingy pub loo with one wet sock all of a sudden, and grew confused.
The shoe had fallen into the hands of two men who sat directly outside the toilet at the bar, they each had several shots of amber liquid and pints of Guinness in front of them. An aura of spuriousness surrounded them as they leered with gappy teeth at my state of affairs, the man on the left, an emaciated red-faced chap with a cigarette tucked behind a cauliflower ear… he waved my shoe over his head. The other chap made a strange backward laugh and stared a hole through my eye sockets and through the back of my face. His lips moved.
“Howyeh gorgeous!” he leered.
“Ohfafuc..sake, lads. Now’s not a good time, y’know?” *snif* “I’m having a bad day, can I’ve my shoe back please?” I looked pathetic, puffy faced and clogged with hospital air, pretty far from gorgeous.
“Giz a fookin kiss an I’ll givit back tyeh” the first bloke slurred. I sighed, and schlepped away. “Ah c’mere I’m on’y messin’!” he called after me. “What’s wrong wityeh? Smile, sure it may never happen love!”
I hate that expression.
“I’ve a little baby, across the road in that hospital.” I pointed and scowled and bared my wolfmammy teeth. “They just told us that he’s going to be a little retard, a sodding vegetable for the rest of his life. He’ll never go to school, never say my name, he’ll never get better but will probably get worse so he’ll be in that hospital a lot most likely… you and I will be neighbours, are you sure you want to keep tacking the mick out of me?” The venting of innermost cancerous thoughts made me feel a lot better, straight away.
“Haha! Fuck, is thar’all that’s wrong wityeh? Sure isn’t he still der? Can’t you pick him up if yer want teh and cuddle him whenever yeh want? I’d say you’re pretty fuckin’ lucky missus so shurrup and c’mere and giv’z a kiss!”
I felt a bit stupid all of a sudden.
“I would, but me fella might object, he’s sitting over there.” I pointed to a battle-worn heap of lover.
The two men (it transpired that one man was on a day-release from the Joy to celebrate his birthday, the other a newly retired police-officer) invited themselves over to our table and sat next to us, much to TAT’s dismay. TAT shot me a look of warned desperation and looked like he needed a drink. Sure enough before we knew it, several pairs of pints decorated the table and what could we do, but drink them?
The next four hours were a blur of strange inyourendos, inappropriate jokes, and glimpses of divine wisdom… it took me the best part of the following week to assemble a loose jigsaw in my head of what was said, and why. They told me that we are each given only what we can handle, that there will always be somebody worse off, and that love (or at least a good rattle) can cure everything. Pretty cheesy stuff I know, but they phrased it slightly differently and it was exactly what we needed to hear at that exact moment in our lives.
Weird.
But…
…the most divine thing of all about Laughingboy, is this.
He uses four nappies a day. Anybody with children will tell you that nappies are risky business, changing them requires swift agility in order to dodge the probability that the child will choose that exact moment to empty their bladder (or worse) towards your face.
Laughingboy is nine years old.
That’s roughly 13,140 nappies that we’ve changed since he was born, and not once has he hosed us down, which means there is a force at work that’s even stronger than Murphy’s Law. The sad thing is that when I extend my thanks towards it, I don’t know who I’m talking to, nor if they can hear me. An odd frustration for a cynicist like me.
It’s a weird kind of faith I have, one without an ism, it seems. Tell me I’m crazy? I probably wouldn’t object too much.
Undercover something-or-other
““It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”*
Now that masked faces have robbed this country of its affluence, I’m thinking that protesting and re-electing is pointless. We need to think on our feet and invent ways to earn money off the books, tax-free, catch them at their own game sort of thing.
Of course there’s babysitting, but we’ve moved on from that, hey. There’s house cleaning, but ugh, there’s a job! It’s tough enough managing my own house, let alone being in somebody else’s while they breathe down my neck as I iron their Y-fronts. There’s artistry, book writing, but that’s more of a long-term sort of goal… I’m aiming towards a sunny holiday around May-ish, see.
So,
Coming out of the shower the other day (I always get my best ideas in the shower), it hit me. An idea that was so dark, so weird and twisted, so utterly messed up… it just had to work. You see, most people I talk to don’t expect that sort of thing from me, so I get strange looks. You though, you’re different, I can’t see your faces as you judge me so it’s okay!
-o0o-
Small children are vulnerable little objects, I myself have three and my waters are in constant turmoil over the fact. I broke the innocence barrier of my four year old a while back and told her that there was no such thing as monsters, except those that are hidden within people (insert serious face here). Those in cars with sweets, those that say they know me, etc…
She always looks at me with her big brown eyes and says that she will say ‘NO!’ but what if…
…what if there’s a giant Hello Kitty doll on their back seat? What if yon sicko tells her she’s a long-lost princess destined to be the Queen of a very small island? Would she enter the car then? I’d nearly pay somebody I know, just to have them drive by and test the question out.
How weird would it be for me to to that job???
-o0o-
Seriously though.
I could explain my theory to local schools. I could talk to the Gardee about it, and gain a clearance certificate that would back me up in interviews with parents, and propose to them a scheme that could keep children safe from harm. All I’d have to do is drive up to the agreed child, and test it. If it fails, I drive it around the block, give it a good lecturing and then drive it home. If it passes, job done!
When I put the theory across to The Accidental Terrorist, he suggested that the same thing could be done with teenagers, from a drugs point of view. Other people thought I should be sectioned.
But what of my dark and twisted friends of webland? What do you think?
