The Birds
When I first saw the Hitchcock version I was nonplussed. What’s the big problem with rake loads of crows hanging around? Around here, they do it all the time. Okay so they don’t do it all the time, just at certain hours at random times of year… I’d do a proper study on it if I could be arsed – maybe some day. It would remind you of a Westlife concert – thousands of people all flocked together – it makes you wonder… what’s the attraction?
One thing I have noticed though, is that they like bin day. I’m impressed that they’ve figured out what day that is, most of my neighbours haven’t even managed that yet. Rubbish mysteriously appears everywhere robbed from slightly overflowing bins, and neighbourhood kids get dirty looks from their elders even though they had nothing to do with it.
Rancid pineapples and small milk cartons are carefully placed on the road by un-seen forces, and when squished by cars, are devoured within minutes. How clever is that?
I made a quick, very boring video of it with my phone recently as the murder flocked in the field next door. From there, they move on to the trees overlooking our houses, and stay there for a while, just watching and learning. What’s really creepy is that if you were to go outside and throw bread for them, they don’t come over to eat it, they just remain. Staring. Plotting. Then they just… bugger off.
Thus ends my highly scientific wildlife observation. Look out David Attenborough.
Ten things they don’t warn you about before you get pregnant… #5
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.
Cheese before bedtime
Last night, as I drifted off to sleep I was visited by a tall Greek Adonis with four tongues and two penises. He had an imagination that had no limits, and was as flexible as an Olympic gold medalist.
Somewhere deep in the night, I was roused from sleep by my cat, who was sitting on the doorstep and rowring through the letterbox loudly. Rather than get out of my bed, I asked the Adonis to let the cat in seeing as he was closer. Unfortunately, being that he was a figment of imagination, he lacked the opposing thumbs necessary to un-do a deadbolt… so I had to do it myself.
When you spend the night nagging your sexual fantasies about how bloody useless they are… that’s when you know your hormones are in serious jeopardy.
Bend over and show me your dark side
I just love to have the shit scared out of me. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because I was never allowed to watch ‘A Nightmare on Elm Street’ as a kid – perhaps the curiosity became addictive in some way? Or it could be some genetic throwback from a previous life as a cave-dude, constantly looking for challenges. Fuck knows. I’m warped, with a curious fascination for oddities and the macarbe. It will be written on my tombstone.
Like this Thing in a Jar, for instance. When I found this website it gave me an itch to make a Thing in a Jar all for myself to store in the fridge and keep family members and Social Workers on their toes. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?
So, after a tough day’s bleaching and marinading and entertaining small people, I want to sit down and watch something intensely creepy and mindlessly horrific on TV to relax – that’s not so much to ask, is it? It just doesn’t happen though. Yeah, sure, there might be some horror flick on or other, but bar ‘The Host‘, they’re all pretty same-ish. There is a television show called ‘Scariest Places on Earth’ which would be right up my alley, if it wasn’t so shite. They pick a family full of whiners and handbag clutchers and ship them off to haunted castles and make them stay there with cameras strapped to their faces for the night. They move them from room to room and scare the bejeebus out of them with obviously rigged booby-traps. It’s painful.
They got it right once. The first time I stumbled across the show, they were running a documentary-type story about the crypts of Paris’ underground. They made a big deal out of a video-tape they’d allegedly found in a camcorder five levels down, owned by a person who’d obviously gotten lost. I watched in abject sympathy as this poor fucker almost soiled himself when he realised he was probably stuck in the bowels of Paris with occult symbols, powdered bones and tortured souls for the rest of his short life. The tape ended as a dark shadow appeared from one end of tunnel, attacked the film-maker and left the camera lying in a puddle recording hair-raising screams receeding into the darkness.
That episode fed my imagination for weeks. I told every living soul about this amazing TV programme and when I finally got to see it again, it was about the Knobend family and their amazing ability to scare easy. It’s amazing how many people piss their pants when a wee gizmo they’re holding suddenly starts flashing red lights, though I would absolutely love to be the person that operates that remote control. Why can’t they just give us the creepy facts, throw in a dodgy ham video and a Thing in a Jar? Now that would be entertaining.
Ten things they don’t warn you about before you get pregnant… #4
PAIN
It’s the one question that everyone asks; when the subject of babies crops up, the look of fear on their faces is unmistakable. They wonder why I’d willingly offer up my body to excruciating hell like that, and tell me they’d go the ‘too posh to push’ way if it came down to them. I can see why they’d say that, but I can also see how vastly misled they are. It’s the film industry… they love the gushing bloodiness, the portrayal of the sweaty monster screaming and cursing at its husband… they make the whole ordeal seem so vulgar and hellish, it’s no wonder so many women opt for the cesarean section.
THE MYTH
In truth, childbirth is not the most painful thing that can happen to a body. Childbirth is about endurance, not about pain. Pain is what happens when you break your leg, or suffer from an abscess. It’s something that involves destruction or infection, something that happens to let your brain know that there’s something wrong. Childbirth is entirely different, so it’s really not fair to taint it with the same brush.
Childbirth is all about creation, and as such it feels different. Yes, the pressure hurts a lot, but it comes and goes, that’s the beauty of it. You get a two-minute rest in between contractions, even in the thick of it, and these two minutes are pure bliss because the void is so beautifully apparent. And, what’s even more amazing, is that once the whole ordeal is over, the pain is over, completely forgotten in the blink of an eye. There are no splints, no metal plates to be inserted, no antibiotics (unless there are complications of course), the pain just… goes away.
One woman I spoke to even told me that she had a pretty amazing orgasm while giving birth once. She has four children with another on the way, and there’s not a chance you’d entice her into a cesarean section if she had a choice. Nor is she particularly masochistic I might add, as I noticed once when she caught her finger in the car door. A bigger whiner you wouldn’t find – yet the concept of labour excites her no end! Go figure.
Of course, there’s the part where one is required to squeeze something the size of a large bag of spuds out of an opening the size of a postage-stamp… surely that’s got to hurt just a tad? It does, no kidding, but here’s where Mother Nature shows her infinite kindness. When… um… things are stretched beyond a certain point, the nerve endings in the area shut down so that in reality, you only have about ten seconds worth of screaming agony. Okay, so it’s a pretty long ten seconds, but it’s not the five hours they portray on television, not by a long shot.
Me? I’ve never had an orgasm while giving birth, I chose the way of the epidural, the drug that is so amazing, you really don’t care that it takes a syringe the size of the Empire State Building to administer it. I would have happily stabbed my spinal cord repetitively with the syringe myself, if there hadn’t been an anaesthesiologist around to do it for me. It makes you want to vomit, it makes your thighs itch uncontrollably, but it gives you a clear enough brain to enjoy the experience. I too was a woman who swore she’d be able to give birth without pain relief, but as a midwife once asked me in the throes of things; “Do you think you’re getting a feckin’ medal for this or something?” She was right. There are no medals for martyrs, that’s the whole point.
THE TRUTH
Pethidine is the Devil’s drug. It hurts. It doesn’t stop labour from hurting. It leaves a numb-spot on your ass for months afterwards and leaves your baby more stoned than Woody Harrelson. Don’t be fooled.
Nitrous Oxide is great craic, especially when the midwife leaves the room and your birth partner gets to have a go and the midwife returns to find everyone gasping in hysterics because there’s a crack in one of the ceiling tiles. It’s that much fun, it should be illegal. Its only downfall is that after a while it feels like you’re swimming in mercury and you end up in the horrors, so less is most definitely more, but very very very funny with it.
Tens machines are only good for the people who get to watch you jump every ten seconds from the electric jolt. They find it hilarious, but you won’t. Yes, it distracts you from the pain a little bit, but frankly what is far more entertaining, is placing one charge on each one of the testicles of your loved one, and then zapping him while he sleeps. Laughter is an excellent pain reliever, especially the evil type.
Last but not least; Yes, you will most likely crap yourself while in labour. As foul as that sounds, it’s the last thing that’ll be on your mind at the time, so why give a shit*?
Bizarro jewellery… you know you want it.
*Did you come all the way down here to see if that was an intended pun? Don’t you know me by now!?!?
I’ll have a virgin scotch on the rocks, please.
“I love you like my left ovary.”
This, coming from a chick you’ve only just met, is a pretty high compliment in my book.
I’d never have heard this if I hadn’t been struck by ‘Yes Man’ – Jim Carrey’s latest film. An invitation into town for a young wan’s birthday party on a frosty winter’s night while up the duff and unable to drink would normally have me gushing excuses; let alone the comfort-zone thing, there’s the fact that I’ve nothing pretty that doesn’t involve elastic to wear. No energy or cash either, but hey… sometimes when you say ‘Yes’ to things, you get led to situations that can be pretty damn interesting.
She was a corset-dealer from Connemara with long black-is-the-colour hair, she wore a candy necklace and drank red wine from the bottle with a straw, and I’d never have met her if I’d been sitting around on my arse at home.
Don’t you just love films like that?
HAPPY NEW YEAR T’YIZ ALL!!
Great expectations
“You all think Christmas just happens. You think all this goodwill just falls from the freakin sky. Well, it doesnt! It falls out of my holly jolly butt! So you can cook your own damn turkey. Wrap your own damn presents. And hey, while youre at it, you can all ride a one horse open sleigh to hell!”
Lois Griffin, ‘A Very Special Family Guy Freakin’ Christmas’
I went to a really lovely carol service last night, everything was frosty breath and little donkeys and talk of Bethlehem… but then I was discovered. Laughingboy drew attention with his chaffinch impressions… epic tooth grinding that even managed to drown out 250 voices all singing at once. In a bid for peace, at one stage I just stuffed his bib in his mouth to chew on. He looked like a kidnap victim, but hey.
Nice people started to talk to me and noticed that I was missing from their flock, but there are only a handful of ways that I can guild the fact that I’m just too damn lazy to go to Church with the kids on a Sunday. Sundays count for 50% of my weekly lie-in potential! Push it forward to lunchtime maybe and we’ll talk.
“Join us.”
“Yes, join us… you’re one of us now!”
“Join ussss!”
It’s difficult to do a legger when you’ve a wheelchair. They were all pregnant too… I touch my belly and wonder if this child will be born blue-eyed and blonde, despite the absence of genes to tell it to. If it is, I’m giving it to Brangelina.
-o-
Go and visit the Corner of Jocelyn Testes Harder. Hers is the kind of Christmas we should be having!
Ten things they don’t warn you about before you get pregnant… #3
They should dedicate a whole chapter to this problem in them maternity books, but so far I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhere. I don’t know why.
There are three types of people out there who can get away with wearing dungarees… toddlers, the downright quirky, and pregnant women. My advice to the latter is; when you are unstrapping yourself in order to pee (which is a common thing these days let’s face it), don’t turn your back to the toilet as you do so.
What! It’s a very serious problem!
Pee-soaked dungaree straps can be the difference between a good day and complete and permanent loss of sanity, y’know.
Conduit for Kismet
I thought it was all about me yesterday, but it wasn’t. I thought the mysterious turn of events that held me in its favour was payback for a good deed I had done, but it wasn’t. I was just a conductor for a greater power.
This is how it happened.
I got into the car to go shopping for a few bits… the dodgy CD player in the car worked first time, which never happens, normally it would quite literally drive me to distraction. Every single one of the fifteen traffic lights I encountered on the way into the town turned green, just as I approached them. When I got to the supermarket, there was one basket left with my name on it. There was one jar of coffee left on the shelves which happened to be the brand I love, in the size I would normally buy it. The queues for the tills were at least five people long when I finally got to them, but just as I went to join the nearest one, a new till opened up and beckoned me forward… I went through during the supermarket’s busiest hour in less than three minutes.
Then, happiest of all happinesses, while purchasing an eight-pack of Guinness cans at the off-licence, I got carded.
Ask any thirty-year-old female out there… to be mistaken for an eighteen-year-old in an off-license is an unbelievably good thing. They almost didn’t sell me the alcohol because I couldn’t produce identification, but I wouldn’t have minded at all. I was grinning from ear to ear as I left the premises, which is when I got ambushed by a bloke with a sponsor card on the street. Apparently he was an ex-heroin addict who had kicked the habit, and was cycling to Cork to raise funds for Drugs Awareness. I was so happy, I gave him twenty euros which was slighly more than I could afford, as I discovered shortly afterwards when it came to paying for my parking ticket. I stood for a while wondering what to do, then I saw the wallet lying on the parking machine. An ID card lay inside.
“LINDA!!!” I shouted into empty space. A lady turned around from the other side of the parking lot, caught luckily by the accoustics, and returned to reclaim her wallet very thankfully indeed. She gave me three euros… more than enough to pay for the ticket. Strange.
Later on, I won a game of poker at home against The Accidental Terrorist, and Billy the Stoner. I won because my good day had given me the confidence to bluff well, and wound up with twenty euros in my back pocket.
So… effectively, Billy the Stoner paid for an ex-heroin addict to cycle to Cork, and THAT, boys and girls, is Kismet.
Mind the bump
There’s nothing like a bumper shopper to make a dull task more interesting. You know that other person who just randomly happens to start their shopping experience at the exact same time that you do? You get that awkward laugh as you both find you need to weigh your broccoli at the same time… you gaze over their shoulder to see which baked beans they prefer out of sheer bored curiosity? Maybe both of us have children who, without any need for introduction, choose to play hide and seek together. That’s a bumper shopper.
Today I got one of those rare nemesis bumper shoppers… they’re much more fun. She annoyed me when she didn’t say ‘thanks’ as I held the door open for her. She pushed past me to get the better pick of the trolleys. My mission throughout the shopping trip is therefore to piss her off in return. There are so many ways to do this – dropping tubes of KY jelly into her trolley when she’s not looking, or maybe I might use her temporary absence to shake up one of her bottles of soda to exploding point. Maybe I’ll snap open a tin of sardines and drizzle some fishy oil through the innards of her handbag while we’re queueing or poke my finger through the cling-film on her juicy steak chunks so that blood trickles through her shopping and onto her stupid shoes, it really depends on my mood which will be highly volatile until roughly April next year.
Pregnancy is a good enough excuse for anything… technically I could murder someone now, and get away scot free! For now it’s mainly being used as an excuse to watch porn and eat enormous amounts of toffee ice-cream and raw chilli (all at the same time). Hey… anything to distract me from unhealthy vices is good, right?
