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.

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?

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?

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?

*Charles Darwin (no stranger to strange looks I’d imagine)

Every day.  Every sodding day.

Every day I wake up and swear blind that I’ll go to bed early for a change.  I hate waking up… that is I hate waking up when I know I have to get up;  I love waking up and finding out that I don’t have to get up for another two hours, no surprise there, my homo brethriens.  My best friend is the snooze button on my mobile phone (the same phone I won two years ago!  I’ll miss my Ericsson should I ever go iPhonebound).

It’s just so HARD to go to bed at night.

From 08:00 to 21:00 every day, I belong to somebody else, many people in fact.  Six dependants depend on me to keep them alive and happy, and this causes quite a lot of noise, because I can’t deal with them all at once:  My baby needs input and a clean bum-hole.  My eldest son needs music and attention and someone to remind him to stop grinding his teeth.  My daughter loves to hang around with me and do things with me and asks me constantly to look at her doing funny things, which is a beautiful gift and something I adore and enjoy very much, but only in medium doses.  My dog needs exercise, a luxury I’m too lazy to afford him which cuts me up, and he whines and gives me big dark sad eyes to rub salt on the wound.  My cat meanders around my busy feet and trips me up…  and through it all, my husband needs silence while he sleeps.  Daytime silence, three children and a large dog – these are difficult things to shuffle!!

-o0o-

And so the last child is tucked into bed, and Einstein’s theory of relativity kicks in.

Silence.  Pure, peaceful silence, the possiblities endless.

And so I dive for the fridge for a can of beer, and I wonder how to fill my night.  And while I wonder how to fill my night, I fall into the Facebook pit and drown in stupid television and give in to the munchies and waste my hours on pointlessness.  When 11pm comes round, I feel unfulfilled and ignored.  I can’t go to bed unfulfilled and ignored!!!

-o0o-

It seems to be a common theme among people, that need to burn the candle at both ends.  Two hours of selfish time is just not enough when you’re a nightowl like me.  Sleep tortures us and wakes us up at night time and hates us the next day, and stolen naps create demons with sticky eyes, it’s just not fair.  You know what I mean.

I vote for a re-jigging of the 24 hour clock… Days should be longer and weeks shorter for starters, I bet the moon would be up for that.  The sun might get in the way somewhat but we’d get used to it pretty quickly with a bit of black-out lining and a heavy duvet.  It can’t be all that difficult to arrange, the re-invention of time!?

The three day week… yet another thing I’d do if I was Teeshirt.

1. I would solve overpopulation of prisons by putting criminals of a lesser threat to hard work in war-torn or third world countries. Fraud is such a clever felony, I’m sure such a brain would be of great use to school children in Malawi, it’s such a waste having them rot away in their en-suite (all mod cons) prison cells and chewing through so much tax.

2. I would make adoption of said third world or war torn orphans faaaar less expensive. Couples all over Europe have trouble conceiving kids of their own, yet have large houses more than capable of rooming several disadvantaged kids but they can’t, because adoption (at least in Ireland) costs roughly the same amount of yoyos as a brand new Jaguar X-type. I don’t understand why with a bit of vetting, they’re not throwing those kids at us. They should be on sale in Lidl, they should be giving them out free with Happy Meals but they’re not!! They’re leaving them to die or selling them to rich people who aren’t necessarily better parents just because they’re rich. So bizarre.

Thankfully I’m not the Teeshirt of Ireland and never will be (because the country would most likely go to pot and all the small furry animals would die because I seem to have that effect and would probably have a hard time explaining that to Ryan Tubridy).

I would however welcome the present Teeshirt of Ireland to read my blog and steal my ideas and also fertilize my crops in Farmville for me sure aswell while he’s at it by way of thanks.

Speaking of small furry animals…

The Nesting Instinct

You may or may not have heard references to this phenomenon before.  It’s described as an instinct that kicks in at some point during pregnancy, most commonly when birth is imminent.

There are whimsical references to it in books and in films, down the pub and during Ann Summers parties… this urge to clean obscure and bizarre places.  But!  It should never be underestimated.  It is a very serious thing indeed.

I’m not talking about getting on your hands and knees to scrub yellowed pee and crusty puke from the dark corners of the no-man’s land behind the toilet, I’m not talking about risking life and limb to reach the waterproof covering on the bulb in the porch to extract the countless dead bodies of flies that have accumulated over the years (how the hell did they get in there in the first place?!?)

I’m talking about demon possession here.

One morning, you might wake up and decide that every floor surface in the entire house must be bleached to within an inch of its varnished life.  Superhuman strength makes you lift the couch and drag heavy oak tables outside, even though you’re tired and hungry, you will not rest until it’s done.  You’ll happily risk your life, your back, and your growing belly for the cause.  It’s a very strange thing.

Today it happened to me, but I’m nowhere near my due date.  At least I hope I’m not.

This is what it looked like at 9am this morning:

Twelve hours later, it looks like this:

I’m not sure how it happened, nor where all the junk went to – I blacked out for a while and may have eaten it all. All I know is that if somebody called to the door with a de-fibrillator right now, I’d happily have a go of it. Even blinking hurts.

So, if you have a room that needs de-cluttering, forget Kim and Aggie, all you have to do is get yourself up the duff. Most of the time, it works every time.

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…

I worked hard for an hour, and was delighted to find a sapling Hawthorn tree, almost strangled completely with ivy.  I freed it up to give it room to grow, and sent it some energy as you do… then began to work on the area around the entrance to the tomb to see if I could get inside.

A car pulled up on the road beside the field in which I was working.

“OI!!!  What are you at?!” a woman in a silver car shouted from her driver’s seat.  As I approached, she wound her window up to within four inches, as though I was about to attack her from the other side of a heavily barbed fence.  She had a face on her like a Chihuahua chewing on an earwig.

“I’m very sorry to trespass… I…”

“You’re not trespassing!” she interrupted.

“I found this tomb over-run with brambles and thought I might take it upon myself to clean it up.”  I smiled my prettiest smile.

“You have no business doing that!” she shrieked.  “I’m sick of young ruffians coming in like they own the place and destroying everything, sick of it!!”

“I promise you, I’m no ruffian” I replied; “I used to be an archaeology student and this sort of thing fascinates me.  I’m destroying nothing, only cleaning the place up.  I’m very proud of it.”

“I’m proud of it too, so GO AWAY! When one comes in to wreck the place, the rest of them follow”  she shouted.

“I didn’t mean to offend…”

“Well then GO AWAY” she shouted even louder.  I began to get slightly pissed off.

“Look, if you don’t let me do this, then I can’t find a way to protect it.  The Council could come in tomorrow and bulldoze the lot and we’d lose a seriously amazing piece of history.”

“It is protected!”

“I don’t believe it is… I looked on the archaeology information website and can’t find any record of it.”

“SO WHAT?!” she scowled.

“So… could you tell me how I can get permission to access the tomb to clean it up and protect it?”

“You can’t have permission!!  GO AWAY!!”  She smiled a demonic sort of smile and shut her window.  End of conversation.  I walked away, furious.

-o0o-

What are the politics behind this?  Does anybody know?  If I’m not trespassing then who is she to tell me to leave?

I hope the tomb faeries break the pistons on her crappy little car.  Stupid bint.

So close, yet so far.

I failed this search for a very good reason; there is no Dolmen.  There is instead a megalithic tomb, or *happy claps* possibly even a chambered grave.  Thanks to the combined efforts of my dear old Dad, my neighbour, a website (what are the odds?!) and Google Earth, we found it.

Today, being the second day of our Irish summer, I decided to go and explore it.  Yes, I have been given a myriad of household things to be done at Headrambles Manor, but… call me Ms Croft, the curiosity of ancient history got the better of me.  Sorry Dad, the cesspit can wait.

Not much to look at, is it?  Hidden in plain view by a thick blanket of raspberry brambles and nettles, the knarly looking Hawthorne tree should have been a major clue.  My neighbour, before she moved away, wanted to visit this place at midnight on a full moon with me.  I thought she was a bit touched for wanting to do so at the time if I’m quite honest, but today when I went to visit the tomb, I could feel what she was talking about.  I felt like I was trespassing, dancing on somebody’s grave.  It was not my place to explore… call me quirky, but I felt a very weird condensed sort of energy surround this place.

Armed with a pair of secateurs,  hedge-clippers, gardening gloves and a ribbon, I attacked.  No… wait… that sounds quite violent – of course I asked it for permission first.  I’m not stupid.  Just because I might not believe in something, doesn’t necessarily mean it isn’t true.  1,000 ancient Irish Druids can’t be wrong, I’m not about to go inviting faery curses upon my family, thank you very much.

This is the tomb after an hour’s worth of pulling brambles apart.  The ribbon on the left tied to a branch is a gift, I thought it couldn’t do any harm.  The wee hill in the background is Carrickgollogan, or Catty Gallagher, if you ever wondered how Katie Gallagher’s pub beside Bray’s Dart station got its name, now you know.

At one point, a very loud “MUUUERURURRR” sound from behind startled the Bejeezus out of me.  Turns out I’d attracted an audience.

After two and a half hours I had to quit to collect Puppychild, but I’ll be back.  Apart from all the embedded thorns which I’m having a lot of fun tweezing out, I consider myself extremely lucky to have such an unusual pile of rocks near my gaff.  Cleaning them out and taking care of them is kind of nice in a painful sort of way and besides, you never know when the Council may sneak along on a dark night and bulldoze the lot… somebody needs to classify it and protect it.  That’s me I suppose.

Parknasillogue Megalithic Tomb: After a haircut