I can’t.  I can’t imagine that sort of horrific chaos because I’m a seriously lucky individual and hopefully will never have to go through that.  Humanity made me remember what I have to be thankful for and there’s no price you can put on that.  Well… maybe the price of a family Chinese takeaway and a half-way dacent bottle of wine – if you’re one of the lucky ones, maybe you have more to give, maybe less.  Sometimes money is too precious to be drunk.

*

Anyway, here’s a link to an easy way to help Haiti:

http://www.justgiving.com/Bloggers-For-Haiti

This is a simple idea set up by English Mum, a multiple blogger effort to fund Shelterboxes.  Shelterboxes are basically containers full of basic survival equipment… tents, blankets, tool kits, stoves, colouring books, kitchen utensils etc… but they don’t come cheaply.  Each costs about £500, but there is an undying dedication to send at least one box over.  When I clicked the link early this morning, the site had raised £240.  I clicked it again just a second ago, and found the number has amazingly jumped to £1,650!

A heartbreaking interview with a bloke who voices his frustrations at being able to hear his girlfriend and several other women screaming beneath a pile of college debris. It doesn’t have a happy ending…

…but this one does:

(Found at The Lede)

Please help English Mum shift some boxes!

*

Here is a link for UK outsiders  – Shelterbox
An alternative way to donate – DEC Haiti Earthquake Appeal
or UNICEF

I happened upon a podcast last Saturday night… they let me into it and I threw it into turmoil and chewed curry in their ears.  It’s a cleverly edited chain of ramblings about deer and car crashes and turkey jerky and other such weirdness.

You’ll hear the voices of Grandad Himself, Jefferson Davis, Dr Don,  Brian F and me… I’m the only female, the one who always sounds half-asleep… I had no idea that’s what I sound like but I guess it could always be worse, hey.

Dust off yer boots!

* * *

Five things that I love about being somebody’s Ma…

1.  That hair-brushing moment after a bath, when everything goes beautifully quiet apart from the rhythmic schlepping sound of a hairbrush on stubborn tangles.  Warm light, fluffy towels and that almost simian Zen feeling of brushing someone else’s hair and having your hair brushed in kind.  Peace.

2.  Random public moments.  Like when Puppychild robbed money out of my back-pocket at the sweetie counter last week and ran straight to the poor-box with it, then got a lollypop and an adoring look from the lady behind the counter.  That’s my gal! A mini-Robin-Hood learning Karma all over the place and thankfully not greed.  Or in a lift with Laughingboy and some random people, when he gets his buzz from the lift juddering into movement and gives one of his mad arm-flapping laughs and everybody simultaneously erupts into giggles.  That is such a good buzz.

3. The first smile.  My dancing round the kitchen like nobody’s watchin‘ antics sprouted Puppychild’s first.  There she was suddenly  in her little rocker, saying ‘You’re great craic, Ma!’ with her tiny gummy smiley cheeks and it bubbled me over.  Laughingboy’s happened during his Valium phase back in those days I don’t remember much of apart from that one moment.  He was five months old and had been through hell with confusion and pain from seizures constantly throughout his mini life, and had just been given his first downer.  The next morning, he met me with a smile that tore me apart on many strange levels.  I remember freaking out that it wasn’t him any more to TAT, I was that ecstatically confused.  It was like a golden gate out of the  madness.  Since then smiling is all he does and it’s his most killerest feature.

4. Playgrounds!!!  The excuse to whizzing round a two person roundabout and climb on monkey frames and hang your head upside down on a really high swing?  Need I say more?

5. Learning things all over again.  About absolutely everything imaginable.  Teaching obscure facts about snails and having them remembered in childspeak back to you.   Explaining where the bubble went.  Shoelaces, flour-dough, black and red paint.  Everything has to be tested and chewed and broken apart unless I can think of a damn-good reason for it not to.  Most of the time though, I want to find out too.

* * *

In the words of the originator, Her Bad Mother herself;

Here’s how it’s going to work:… I’m going to link to a couple of other mom bloggers here in Canada, and to a couple of mom bloggers from other countries around the world, and they’ll write their posts, sharing 5 things that they love (or maybe what they don’t so much love – this playground doesn’t force conformity) about being a mom, and then they’ll tag a few more bloggers from their own country and from other countries, and so on. And you’re more than welcome to join: just write a post of your own (5 things that you love about being a mom) and find someone to link to and tag – someone from your own country, if you like, but definitely someone from another country (Google is a good resource if you don’t know any; google any country name and ‘mom’ in their blog search function) (be sure to let them know that you’ve tagged them!) – and link back here and leave a comment and we’ll add you to the ‘itinerary,’ ….

Are you in? I hope you’re in. This is going to be fun. No passport necessary.

This is a real chocolate-chip of a meme, so it is.  I can’t wait to find out what happens next.

My taggins are:

BAINO – ENGLISH MUM- INFANTASIA – MAGNETO BOLD TOO – ONE MORE THING…

Peace out to all the other mammies out there too…

:)

…At least I’m not one of them.

I don’t know her name, the lady that created me, but a part of her is still caught up in my stitching, like a fingerprint, and I liked her a lot.  She bought my bare bones in a woollen mill in Wicklow and brought me home to an old house devoid of heat and life,  but when she stepped through the front door she instantly warmed it with her comforting humming… when she sat down with me, I kept her fingers toasty while she stitched me slowly together.  We kept each other warm for many weeks until the day my button eyes were fixed to my bear-shaped head and I was finally complete.  From a forgotten ball of brown wool in a bargain bin, to a teddy-bear with plush stuffing and a bright blue bow tie.  My smile is wonky like that of my creator, and I have paws made of black embroidery thread.  I noticed straight away that my thumb is coming loose, a detail too fine for bi-focals to catch, I think it shall be my quirk.

It’s dark now.

It has been for several days.  She plopped a wet kiss on my nose and wished me Godspeed before pulling the golden bow taut around my crinkly wrapping, and now here I lie, quiet.

I heard voices multiply this morning.  Different cadences crossed the threshold and I felt the magical suspense as my hour of glory approached.  Smells of cookery and candle-wax wafted through my festive coverings and the clear bell chiming of wine glasses being toasted muffled in my cloth stuffed ears.

“Is it time yet?  Can we open them?” a small voice wheedled.  I hear a subtle grunt of approval and my heart soared.  I’m about to be unwrapped, about to meet my new owner, the person my creator cared so much about.

Gravity shifts suddenly as I’m picked up and squeezed.  I growl a pleased sounding teddy-bear growl which only I can hear.  Daylight.

I see a room lit with flashing lights which hits strands of tinsel and explodes brightly against the walls and the floors and in the eyes of the child that holds me.

“Awww, I have a brown teddy already!” the child’s shoulders slump for a second until he realises there are more gifts to unwrap.  He lets me fall.  I tumble into the pile of discarded wrapping paper below, and come to rest gazing into the eyes of the old lady who made me, I watch as she folds her arthritic hands in her lap and I want to be with her again.  She looks sad.

“Simon! Don’t be so rude!” the mother chastises the child, but does it on a full stomach which weighs her conviction down.  The child ignores her.  I sit where I am for hours, until nightfall.

I’m scooped up and darkness falls again as I land in a moist place that smells like tea-bags and poultry bones.  They can’t see me!  They don’t know I’m here.  I am carried away… I hear a door slam, and I’m cold.

I’m a forgotten bear.  I try to get used to this fact as I sit for a long time in the dustbin outside the front door to the apartment – my black button eyes begin to accumulate frost and people march by, desperate to return to warmth.

Rummaging sounds.

Dirty hands.  A boy in a filthy tweed cap fishes me out and peels greasy tin-foil pieces from my fibres.  I am placed in a satchel, patted with fingerless mittens, and carried away.

Arms.  I am held in two small arms, warm and cosy, periodically extended to be admired by the little sister of my rescuer, as the pair sit beneath an A.T.M. on Christmas Day with their paper cup.  I am loved, I feel the love for the best brother in the world from the happiest girl in the universe.  I’m a happy teddy-bear.

The little girl sings carols as she sits on her plastic bags and cuddles me.  I watch as passers-by throw coins into her cup and I sing along with my teddy bear growl that only I can hear.

I am not forgotten yet!

It started with this:

Then of course Hallowe’en had to happen:

But it’s Christmas time now.  So much magic.  So much sparkly potential.  So much of a temptation to make a mockery of the whole thing!  Of course it has to be done:

The artistes in question flow as follows in order…

 Part I/Part II/Part III/Part IV/Part V/Part VI/Part VII/Part VIII

The family’s plans for Halloween were somewhat spurious this year.  Given the option of a night in my mother-in-law’s or a weekend at my cousin’s house in Mullingar, I chose option C; (I had to fake a rather good breakdown for this option to be plausible) a weekend away on my own.  Not being entirely flushed with cash, I did an inter-net search using the words ‘Guesthouse, cheap, remote, Ireland’.  The search engine asked me if I was feeling lucky, and it just so happened that I was…

I browsed the comments, of which there were only two. 

The first said: ‘My sister had to be booked into the clinic after she stayed here’, the second: ‘This house tested the limits of my humanity! To be avoided.’  Sheer curiosity made me book a room right there and then.

3:00 am

The baby in my arms is screaming fitfully, its jaws look dis-jointed, much like those of a snake as it attempts to swallow something five times its size.  Its hands… no, its claws grab at my hair and pull it out in fistfuls, but all I can do is cuddle it in the hope it could be pacified.  Its eyes bulge, grow larger and larger… they turn into balloons filled with a noxious fluid which sloshes around inside, threatening to drown me when the child’s eyeballs inevitably pop.  The eyeballs don’t pop… the image dissappears as I wake, sweating.  Shouting.

“Please don’t!!!  He didn’t mean it, please don’t do it!!!” 

It’s all gone away and I am extrmely grateful.

My stomach curdles in remembrance of the nightmare, it’ll take a while for those images to abate.  I look around, lost for a second until I remember where I am.  A strange smell wafts that wasn’t there when I had fallen asleep, and a peculiar scraping noise can be heard from above.  I slide out of bed and look up, searching for form in the dusky light.  Holes.  There are holes peppered into the ceiling plaster.  Ugh.  I put my tracksuit on and distinctly hear a disappointed groan. 

That can’t be good.

A baby screams.  My blood curdles and suddenly changes direction rending my extremities cold and the hairs on my body prickly like a million thorns… the memory of my nightmare returns and threatens to stupefy me.  If intuition came in neon lights, mine would be putting a serious energy scourge on this godforsaken grid in this moment, for it is screaming to me that madness is standing right behind my bedroom door.  The benign piece of wood seems to throb as I stare at it and against all my wishes, the doorknob begins to turn.

“Hey!” My voice squeaks in a panicked cadence that isn’t my own.  “How about an old-fashioned knock first?!”

The door swings slowly open and light oozes into my room like a puddle of radioactive waste.  A woman stands on the threshold holding a bundle.  Her hair is long and straw-like and her eyes… her eyes are bearing right into my core, into my past.  I can tell she knows my worst fears immediately.  I freeze as she holds the bundle towards me.  This is too surreal for me.

“The baby hassssssssh to go.  We don’ wannishh.  You wannisssh?  Can’ take’n no more!!” her accent is masked by her stumbling speech pattern.

I pull my adrenaline together into a virtual wrecking ball and slam my body against the back of the door in an effort to close it.  Fuck the baby.  Its cries are all wrong, just like in the dream… I don’t care if I hurt it.  My shoulder crashes against the outer edge of the door, but it goes nowhere.  A dart of pain storms through my shoulder and neck and I fall back towards the bed, now in full view of the occupants of the doorway.  I screw my eyes shut in horror and tell myself it isn’t real.  Even foulness has its limits in everyday society.

The blond lady with the crazy eyes is not alone – she drops the bundle she has been carrying to reveal that it had been a decoy.  The moth-eaten material falls pathetically around the heels of the man who stands beside her… a man whose features are wrong, all wrong, in the manner of a person who is borne from genes too closely linked.  His stumpy fingers hold a rope, and attached to the other end is a rotting mass of child.  The suggestion of bone beneath the mess is indescribable, the smell unbelievable. The baby.  Oh, this is too evil.  Too wrong.  I beg with my sanity to stay with me.

Through the darkness of my eyelids I sense movement and realise that blackness is an even worse enemy than the truth, so my eyes snap open to welcome the horror.  The baby is being held at arm’s length, as though it was being offered to me.

“She seen it now, that be th’end of tha’ gird’le!!”  His nostrils flare as he laughs with mania, a flash of silver crosses his palm as the door is all too suddenly slammed shut, defying the laws of physics.

Darkness, but not silence. 

Hissing.

Snakes?  A jar of insects?  What the hell is the noise?  The answer reaches me before I have a chance to search for a light switch.

I gag.  The air is suddenly scarce and filled with a billion microscopic razor blades.  When it fills my lungs I retch as I feel it try to turn me inside-out.  My eyes burn, fluid streams not from my tear ducts, but from my eyes themselves, like they are melting and are trickling down my cheeks in scalding rivers of putrid pus.  My nose is occluded by two red-hot pokers and is frantically trying to extinguish the heat itself with a torrent of mucus… it oozes into my mouth and onto the carpet as I bend forward and gag helplessly.  Even my ears are suffering from an unruly hell.  What the hell is this stuff?  This clogging, fogging gas that makes me want to shove my head down the unsavoury toilet and flush? 

Death perhaps seems a welcome escape, but not before I notice the old cracked window frame through the noxious fug.  I drag my body to an almost upright position, and sneeze the poison out violently.  Liquid gushes from my head as though I am a possessed hobo and I frantically wipe and claw at my face to clear my view.

I hurl myself at the window and cherish the sweet sound of shattering glass and cool clean Irish air as I plunge to my death.

Or not.

I land on the porch roof and roll… THUD… onto the leafy ground below.  The last of the poisoned CS gas leaves my lungs with the blow and I gasp.  Oxygen floods my brain, enough to fuel the last remnants of adrenaline I have left and I run.

See Kate run.  Run Kate run.

I am almost at the gaping maw of the front gate when I hear it… the all-too realistic human plea.

“HELP!!!”

I waited until he had stepped over the threshold to leave my stakeout position, closing the door of the seemingly innocent taxi cab quietly so as not to attract attention.  Slinking unseen to the front door, I pushed it a little to find its lock engaged, but this didn’t matter, for I’d been given a key.  They had almost made it too easy for me… I was privy to names, addresses, alarm codes, times of expected visitations… the plans had been laid out in detail with the omission of the actual reason for it all, but I didn’t care.  At a price of €20,000 per head for these people, I didn’t ask questions for fear the job would be given to another taxi driver because hey, I have a wedding to pay for.

I pressed my ear to the door and waited as voices receded before inserting the key into the lock.  I opened the door slowly and a warm smell leaked out; pine and perfume mingled with a feint suggestion of home cooking and guilt twinged again, but was quickly squished underfoot as I inched into the first available empty room and waited behind the door-jamb.  Dusk was approaching, my timing was perfect.  I waited.

As night fell, I heard laughter, sometimes nervous but mostly warm and interested; the cadence of conversation rose and fell and I was getting bored. The time had come… I had to separate them, only to have them re-join in un-imaginably unpleasant circumstances, the details of which only my boss had knowledge of.  He was probably welcome to them given his reputation as a twisted gang-lord who seemed to have his filthy hands dipped into more pots than I care to imagine and I knew I was just as bad, but nobody needed to know except for a random few other taxi drivers who had the ability to slink through the night in such obvious disguise… the chosen ones… such a strange honour.  I tapped on the radiator with an unnatural urgency.

“What was that?” I heard the question, deliciously predictable.

Footsteps approached as I fished in my pocket for the first syringe with my gloved hand.  A shadow darkened the doorway and I sucked in my breath.  A man entered the room and I instinctively knew he was reaching for the light-switch by my head, so quickly grabbed his mouth from behind and emptied the contents of the syringe into his jugular - he collapsed like a popped balloon and I dragged his limp form silently to the couch with little effort.  Far too easy.

She however proved to be a tougher target, for I sensed immediately that her natural instinct had whispered to her that something was amiss – I heard the silvery sound of a kitchen knife as it was slyly removed from its housing block and suddenly the house was far too quiet for my liking.  I edged toward the fireplace and stole the poker from its hook and primed it for reckless damage… the suspense was fun.

I heard her.  A creak, a tell-tale sound of nervous intent.  We stood for a second, back-to-back, separated by the section of wall adjacent to the doorway, each aware of the other’s position by sheer logic alone.  The blade suddenly flashed as an arm appeared, the knife flailing in a random fashion as I almost realized too late what was happening.  I ducked as the knife caught my arm; the sharp pain awakened my instinct as fresh warm blood began to ooze into the fibres of my work shirt.  Shit.  I ducked and crouched, swinging the poker a full 360 degrees around the door jamb.  I connected with soft tissue and heard a shriek as I rounded the corner to face my victim, then heard a sickening whistle as the blade passed too close to my ear.  I grabbed the opportunity while her balance was off.  The syringe sank into her neck and she fell, the knife clattering to the hard-wood floor with alarming volume.

Careful not to contaminate the scene, I removed my sock and tied it tightly around my wound, then checked the floor for spilled blood to find nothing… lucky.  Satisfied that my work was almost done, I began to prepare the limp bodies for transit.  He fitted nicely into the boot and she, well she did an excellent impression of a drunken innocent.

The journey to the drop-off point was uneventful.  I played Beethoven’s 9th symphony over and over to inspire the madness… sometimes I fear the truth that A Clockwork Orange may have had more of an effect on my soul than I’d first realized… good old Ludwig Van.  I was empowered by the fact that the deed had run smoothly, laughed my way through a police-check along the way as I gushed through the tired old phrases… ‘Yeah, a little worse for wear I’m afraid’ and ‘I bet she’ll feel that in the morning!’  They didn’t give me a second glance.

I spotted the white van at the address I’d been given… a quiet by-road near an unsuspecting village.  I fished for the second key I’d been given and checked for passers-by as I opened the rear doors of the van and transferred the unsuspecting couple with speedy stealth, right on time.  I approached the driver’s door of the van and waited.  The man inside rolled down his window and nodded subtly. 

“Not bad for your first job… good timing.  He’ll be happy with that.”  He noticed the bloody patch on my arm and the ridiculous looking bandage.  “Small price to pay, hey.  I’ve seen worse.  Here’s your consolation prize…”  He fished a small briefcase from the passenger seat and handed it over with a wink.

Neat bundles of notes lay inside to the tune of €40,000 and I smiled.  A small white envelope lay on top of the piles which I opened as I sat back into my taxi cab, but I paused before reading the name.  Do I really want to do this all over again?  I have a reputation for being a soft-head, a do-gooder… if they only knew.  Is it worth throwing all that away for dirty cash?

Hell yes.

I opened the envelope and read the name of my next target, then frowned, placing the paper on the seat beside me.  What does it mean?  Who cares?  I fired the engine up for its second job of the night and glanced once again at the mystery name of my next victim.

I’m coming for you, English Mum.