What lies beneath
So there we were in hospital again last week, nothing serious, just a sleep assessment.
Sleep-ful wide-open mouth, Laughingboy has always been a noisy dozer. There’s a strange mechanic though behind his nose somewhere lost in the darkness that stops his flow of snoring air sometimes. A deep snore halts suddenly and creates a pregnant pause…
…it’s a pause that lasts only a few seconds but that’s mountain years for me. I stand by him chanting ‘breathe!’ in my head until his awareness kicks in and shocks him into gasping.
He finds it hard to fall into deep sleep, because of that. Frustrating cycles of falling and waking, falling and waking. I’ve learned to be aware on some level even as I sleep myself. Instinct wakes me sometimes, I wander in a haze to Laughingboy’s room some nights and find him choking. I fluff his pillows, watch him doze, and wonder.
So there he was…
Flick ze sviiiiitch!!!
… all wired up and loving life. He was such a trooper what with all those people invading his personal bubble causing him to itch and make for bumpy sleeps. All that sticky would’ve driven me mental.
I was loving life too. Peaceful room with soothing walls and quiet bleeps in distant places, I had booty from the snack machine and a good book and a chair that was almost comfortable… it made for a nice holiday of sorts.
Bent and stretched from too many chapters I leaned forward and noticed the glitter.
It sparkled from angles, I bent and rolled and admired the rainbows and it made me think of sick children, minus tonsils, running fevers, fear of needles. The sparkles were like a ghost in the room, a happy child who’s mind is taken away from its troubles, the effort a nurse makes to help a helpless kid. I couldn’t pick the glitter up on the pads of my fingers though, they were bet in to the linoleum concentrated mainly around the bed. Sparkles over the years, enemy to the mop. They were beautiful.
And the motors of machines droned, and distant stations beeped quietly and I marked my page and gave up on words.
The plunk of leather on lino echoed, and woke poor Laughingboy. He held out his hand and I grasped it and we fell asleep. I wonder if his machine found that moment, if it registered as a spike and mapped his comfort, lines falling slowly downward into stories of fantasy worlds.
How to wreck your social worker’s buzz
If there’s one thing that scares me more than men with guns or Jehovah’s Witnesses, it’s social workers.
This young wan called ’round recently, jaysus the house stank. The cat had shat in the bath and the dog hair was everywhere. I hadn’t even had a chance to finish my first cup of coffee of the day, and I was fierce bedraggled answering that door. Children seemed to be everywhere, but when she walked in they lined up as though it were a staged musical… it would have been perfect if the director hadn’t been so feckin’ cranky.
She sauntered in and looked for somewhere to place her files, I directed her to place them neatly on the dog, for he was the only thing that didn’t have stuff on it at the time. She did so without batting an eyelid, fair play to her.
She wanted to find out if our housing situation was suitable for us as a family, so I showed her around our tiny kitchen (God love her) and introduced her to the chaos of the bedroom that my 7 year old girl and 2 year old boy try to share. Laughingboy’s batchelor pad was next, but given that his quarters take up the majority of the rest of the house, she seemed happy with his living conditions.
But what point is there in his having adequate living conditions when the rest of us are going insane?
We pointed out that there was a house nearby that is presently empty. It’s adapted for a disabled person, and has four bedrooms. It has a decent kitchen, in which there is room to flip a pancake which would make a nice change. We wondered if we could possibly move into it?
Social worker lady told us that no, that this house has been allocated for travellers, which means that only travellers can move in to it.
So how can I become a traveller? I asked. She laughed nervously. I laughed hysterically.
As she walked out, I noticed the screensaver on our computer… it flashed the following image;
She did a double-take.
But by then the image had moved on to an idyllic family group photograph and I presume she imagined that she’d been seeing things.
I imagine she went home for a stiff one.
D.I.V.O.R.C.E.
What the fuck is going on?!?
Here’s me happily plodding along in my life and expecting the usual landmark occasions such as weddings, christenings, and eventually funerals, happily accepting the happenings that happen in a person’s time-scale. We all accept and expect these things, it’s a part of life.
But then! Right in the middle, when you least expect it, comes the divorce phenomenon.
I might expect an odd divorce. An ODD divorce or separation. When things don’t work out, when people are better off apart, even for their kid’s sake. I’m in the middle of a mass-exodus however. It seems that every happy couple around me; around us, all of our friends are splitting up with each other. Where once a couple were happy to smile upon each other and adore for no other reason but to be in each other’s company, now they choose to quit without a fight.
***
There’s our best bud, and her lovely husband… they can’t work together. Puppychild wonders if he’s still her uncle, because he is, after all, her favourite uncle of all time. I wonder if she’ll ever see him again.
There’s our family friend, he has two small girls, he and the missuz can’t get along… will we ever get to jigsaw and push each other down slides in the future?
There’s the brother of our family bud, he got married to his fella in the ‘Dam a few year back. I did love that guy, he was different. Will I ever get to compare tattoos with him again? Those boys were to me the epitome of love, and now they’re ended. They went through so many obstacles to prove that gay marriage should be fly, but when they earned their wings, they failed to soar.
Then there’s our extended in the U.S., they had it all. But now maybe not so much, because there was the affair.
Apart from these, there are three other couples close to us that have separated within the last year.
***
Did nobody tell these people that marriage would not be easy? Did nobody tell them how to weather the snow? It’s not as though there’s an exam to pass in order to get hitched, getting married is a very simple affair, as long as you have the cash. Getting married means more than money though. WAY more. That certificate merits your ability to toughen the worst storms of your life, it’s harder than a master’s degree. It takes temperance, acceptability, honesty, communication. It hates stonewalling and contempt. It’s a thing of compromise, of sweet ignorance.
I’m inclined to advise friends NOT to get married anymore for that reason, so few can take it.
I don’t understand why these people don’t fight, don’t relax their minds and give it all, to weather the snow and weather the rain because when the sun shines it makes it all worth it. A thing of ultimate sacrifice, it seems all to easy to quit, even if we are in the lucky age of communication and counselling. So why bother?
Because in the end, I guess it’s worth it. A way to not die alone. Donating decades to a cause which in the end, will be worth it somehow. I hope. I hope I can weather it. I hope.
The sort of post that should really be TWO posts.
Don’t you hate it when you can’t remember your username and password for your blog site? That’s a bad sign. Baad blogger. Baad girl.
So I learned an interesting fact recently…
-o0o-
Onions are spurious artifacts. They make you cry. They’re good for clearing paint-smells out of a room. They are the base of any good bolognese recipe. But they are also toxic under the right circumstances. Did you know that?!?
Apparently in the olden days whenever somebody was sick, a half-onion was placed by the bedside, because onions absorb bacteria. It’s one of their better traits. So when you’re at a barbeque and you’re about to sue the dude that’s frying the burgers because you got sick after eating a double-decker with onion relish, think twice. It’s not the meat that’s at fault, nor the cook. It’s the chopped up onion that’s been sitting there for hours absorbing the E-coli around it. It’s why you should -NEVER- store a half onion in the fridge… it’s absorbing the random bacterium in fridge-land and it’s going to make you hurl unless you cook it properly. That is all.
-o0o-
The second part of this post shall be…
How to amuse 100 children?
I like doing the whole fundraising thing for Puppychild’s school. It’s nice meeting with parents and shooting the breeze. It’s nice to share the fact that children don’t just drive you crazy, but keep you sane at the same time.
But…
Movie nights are an integral part of fundraising and they’re the background money-spinner, and yet they’re a dodgy entity.
I mean… I can’t sit still for a whole movie, and I’m an adult. I start wanting munchies, I start wanting to roam or knit or chew my nails and I’m middle-aged for gawd’s sake. How on earth are a whole bunch of 5 – 12 year olds supposed to sit out an hour and a half of film quietly?? We’ve tried it before, and the first-aid kit was broken out because there is such a thing as attention deficit disorder but it’s not limited to those special children, it pretty much exhibits itself in 50% of the ticket holders in most of the films we’ve shown so far. Sugar will do that to small dudes. Parents are starting to not send their children in for these events for this reason, because boredom breeds injury.
I need an alternative to the standard run-of-the-mill movie night. I need a murder-whodunnit-night, or a disco-on-an-extremely-low-budget-night or something. Do any of you have any strange or crazy ideas?
When I say strange or crazy, I mean strange or crazy.
Is there anybody out there who’s ever had to amuse a hundred children on a low budget? I’m guessing that most of you haven’t… but if you had, how would you do it? Should we be sacrificing hamsters to Hermes?
No suggestion would be too weird or inappropriate.. you know me by now.
Erudition regarding knackers
Okay so you may or may not remember a post I wrote four years ago in which I slagged the knackers… I’m still not sure whether I meant that stuff or not. It was sort of knee-jerk, but I didn’t take it away because it was heartfelt too, and it was also my second most commented upon post and I’m shallow like that. But that was then.
Here’s my story for today:
Puppychild bursts through the front door with gusto, gushing about a party that is to be taking place the next day, at 3pm. She begs me to go, there is little reason why she should not, given that the party is in a house but twenty footsteps away and we are doing nothing else that day. The family of the child that is having the party is hovering outside and pregnant for my answer.
Thing is, the child that is having said party is a traveller. This is also why saying ‘no’ was difficult, for what reason would I give aul’ Puppychild?
I said yes, after ten seconds of frantic deliberation.
I bought a cheapo teddy random collectible for the kid. She’s a sweetie… she seems to have respect for me and asks me questions and lets me ask questions in return. Her family have been seen to throw rubbish around, the father bulldozed a cyclist once as he was pulling into the estate, he attempted a hit-and-run, but he drove home which was all of twenty feet away and promptly got busted. I swear, you can’t make this shit up. The younger sister of this family wanders into unlocked houses and cars and takes random things. It’s all very spurious.
But still, Puppychild’s pavee buddy is all of six years old.
I had frantic discussions with The Accidental Terrorist last night, we spoke about prejudice and why sometimes it is not and is deserved, and why it might not be, and why travellers may or may not be likened to the Mississippi fiasco. We argued about age, and development and building harmful bridges and burning same. It was all very confusing, and we agreed to give up, as you do.
The party came and went.
It turns out, that of all of the children in our estate (that would be twelve and a half (net) children) that were invited, only one turned up.
Puppychild gave said kiddo the cheapo teddy, kiddo played with that teddy that whole day and loved it to pieces, instantly.
We got a HUGE slice of cake delivered to the door a few hours after Puppychild came home.
I’m not sure whether to be happy,
or sad.
Music that sucks
I’m not a hater of pop music as such, it’s just not really my cup of tea. Puppychild won a CD recently and insists that it’s played at high volume whenever we engage in any sort of car trip whatsoever, so if I never hear ‘Every Day I’m Shuffling’ by LMFAO ever again, it will be far too soon.
Laughingboy is also a fan of this Godawful stuff though. He likes to have TRENDY FM playing loudly in his room and, much like his tooth grinding, it’s a very difficult sound to get used to.
There is one song, however. Whenever the cheesy announcer dude calls out that this song will be next, I find myself running in to find some random chore to do in the kid’s room. I find myself bopping very, very subtly, lest the neighbours should discover my weakness through the window.
For a long time, I had no idea why I liked this song. It was when I was hoovering the living room rug that I figured it out.
“hmmmmmmmmmmmm”
The harmonic sounded very quietly above the din of the sucking machine. It was Sir Fartsalot, humming along to the hoover’s engine. I remember doing that too, when I was a kid. Puppychild piped in with a higher note.
“No! It’s not hmmmmmmm, it’s HMMMMMMMMM!” she protested.
They both HMMMM’d away until they got to the same tone as the hoover and continued until I’d finished the job. It filled my heart.
That’s what the song reminds me of. If you can stand to listen to the following ‘Tube clip, you’ll hear the doppler-effect bass line dip and rise during the chorus, just like the sound one of those extremely heavy 80′s Hoovers used to make when they were negotiating tight corners.
That was when I was very small, and was afraid that the nasty machine would suck up not just my toys and hair-bobbins, but me along with them. Didn’t stop me singing along with it though. Good times.
Grabbing life by the balls
It was at 9 bells last Saturday night… I had homemade pizza cooked and served. The toddler was in bed, the Laughingboy settled and Puppychild was ready for her bedtime film. I paced in the kitchen. Nervous energy. Wanting. Needing.
The source of my anxiety was the fact that there was a group of people meeting far away, the fact that nestled in the Southwestern part of Ireland there was about to be a kick-ass bonfire of peers that shaped me in my teenage years, people that I hadn’t seen in about twenty years. I needed to be there.
I put this to the husband man who thankfully relieved my anxiety and told me to fuck off.
So off I fucked.
It took three hours to drive there… that’s pretty much the longest time it takes for somebody anywhere in Ireland to drive from one point to another, not counting the Northern Territories. Unless you’re driving from Wexford to Donegal… which is in fairness a very worthwhile waste of four hours. Pittance to Americans and Africans and Europeans, but your diesel is cheaper so shurrup.
I got there at midnight. I wandered along a blackened beach with my torch and found nobody. Just a pile of wood.
I wandered back to the pub, the hub of a very tiny community and found twenty people there. Twenty people who were very surprised to see me. I met a girl with whom I’d shared various schools (far far away from there) for the best part of twelve years. We noted that it was indeed, a very small world. It seemed somehow, meant to be.
The group made its way to the beach, and lit the bonfire with the firelighters I’d brought. We sat around the blaze and re-counted old stories and laughed, and slagged, and when the conversation waned the guitar was brought out.
Problem was, nobody played guitar really, so it was handed to me.
I played them my best Rocky Raccoon, and my Rhiannon, and threw in a Redemption Song for good measure. Come running home again Katie was in the repartoire somewhere, as was Black is the Colour as it usually is in Ireland… Street Spirit made an appearance at some stage, as did Black Boys on Mopeds.
I kept playing, and strumming random things.
They said the sweetest thing.
“K8″ they said… “You’ve travelled a long way for no reason, you’ve helped with the fire, and you’re making our music. Already you’ve made this party ten times better.”
I tell you what. That compliment alone made the diesel money and the unreasonable compulsion and the risk seem so much more worth it.
The party went on…
and on…
until 6am.
I pointed out that there was a lot of crap to be cleaned up so we did that. We gathered cans and bottles and bits of plastic and binned them and threw burnable crap on the fire.
That was when I sort of fell in to said fire.
Ouch.
It doesn’t hurt that much now, it’s wrapped, and seen to. The doctor gave me a lollipop for knowing how to treat second degree burns and sent me home to think about what I’d done.
What with a broken wrist, and now minor burnage… I haven’t been able to shake anybody by the hand for over two months.
Is there a psychological reason behind that?
I don’t know.
I don’t care.
It was fun, and it made me feel better about myself and I’m happier having taken that risk. That’s all that matters in life, I think.
The voices in our heads
Have you ever felt that something about you is not quite right? That is… is there something about you that you’ve been afraid to talk about for fear of labeling, fear that people will think you’re strange? I did. That is until my friend recently reached out to me with an exact same concern, and I found out that I’m not such a psychopath after all. Turns out I don’t need Mental Health Treatment…or maybe I do, and maybe my friend does too.
It seemed a good time to consult the blog.
It normally happens whilst the brain is occupied with something else. I might be cooking, or reading, or flipping a mattress when suddenly a voice would chime in and cause me to pause. It’s not an audible voice as such, merely a realisation that somebody has just shouted at me and seems extremely angry. To pick out the exact words of this voice would seem pointless, language seems unnecessary to this shouting entity. The point is that it’s angry and frustrated with me. It could be saying ‘Cop On!’ or ‘Hurry Up!‘ or ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?!’ but it really doesn’t matter. I hear its tone, I hear that it’s there, and I hear that it’s angry. I don’t know if it’s me, or a guardian angel, or a part of my brain that shouldn’t be there at all.
Disturbing, yes?
Now I realise that I’m not alone in this, and that’s nice. But now I’m curious. Does everybody hear this echo of angriness or is it just me and my buddy? We share similar characteristics in that we’re both slightly insecure with self-esteem issues… we also both have a secret love for the zombie genre and enjoy Salad Fingers cartoons. It has nothing to do with alcohol or drugs, because this voice has been around long before all of that experimentation began. It all seems completely illogical.
It tells me it loves me sometimes. It whispers this. But most of the time it yells.
When it starts to tell me to burn things, or to kill everybody, that’s when I’ll begin self-medication. Drop Dead Fred.
But in the meantime, I’m curious. Very curious.
Do you hear voices too?
In which I ramble on about stuff because I feel like it.
It’s been a long day. It’s bucketing rain outside, I know, because I battled M50 drivers today for the privilege of being the fastest driver out there with the quickest reaction times. Drum and Bass music tends to do that to a lady. The amount of fender-benders I saw! I pointed and laughed and zoomed away with my ABS brakes and threw caution to the wind because I was in that sort of mood.
The power keeps flickering.
Three weeks of rain in two days, they say.
It’s sodding July!
It’s been a long day. Laughingboy is in hospital with a zombie virus. I know it’s a zombie virus because my husband caught it off him and the symptoms are… deathly pallour, creepy moaning, resistance to sunlight and the overall telltale sign… arms outstretched searching for my blood. Or my attention. Whatever. It could be man-flu though, the symptoms are very similar.
I’ve hidden the other children somewhere safe. But now I can’t remember where that is. Oh well.
So anyway, now I’m going to tell you about the last day of library duty.
As soon as you read the words ‘library duty’, I’m sure you switched off to a certain extent, but I can assure you that this library is like no other library because first of all, it’s a haunted library (and I have this theory backed up by a very up-standing member of the faculty staff so I know my suspicions are true) and second of all, the frequenters of this library are very, very small.
I’ve been volunteering at the school library for three years now, and it’s strange… although the night before I’m bricking it, the experience itself is actually kinda nice. The enthusiasm that some five-year-olds have for books is pretty inspiring sometimes. And also it gives me the excuse to say that I DESERVE that quart of scotch afterwards.
On the last day of term, however, it’s different.
It happened two weeks ago.
The last day of term, that is.
Forty five children. Junior infants, Senior Infants, and first class children. All packed into this tiny room full of precious books and maps and posters about chickens and Lord of the Rings. Normally they have this kind of bored and frustrated sort of air to them, which is when I like to drum the enthusiasm of the written word into them.
But this day was different.
It was like their parents had fed them with Nitro-Glycerine for breakfast.
Jesus.
I had a heavy-duty encyclopaedia on-hand, just in case I needed to clobber the overly enthusiastic ones… I swear the teacher wouldn’t have noticed, she was dealing with a dislocated shoulder at the time. In fairness though, some of those shelves take a lot of climbing so injury is to be expected!
Fiachra approached me with a book on trains. He is all of four years old.
“You already have eleven books out, kiddo! This is the summer holidays, you can’t be taking books out, you should be returning the ones you’ve already kept for so long!”
This statement went over his head like a giraffe’s fart.
“I want de trains.” he replied.
“No!” I says, “this library day is different, I’m not giving books out… sure the whole library will end up in your house and your mammy will give out to me!”
The lower lip started to quiver.
I readied my encyclopaedia.
It was when the principal of the school herself appeared to quash the confrontation that I backed down. I did admit that the aforementioned library ghost liked to screw with library tickets to make librarians such as myself to THINK that such kids had oodles of books out when they did indeed have not, so I caved, and gave the kid his train book. As the last of the ankle biters left the room, said library ghost sent the entire shelf of ‘read it yourself’ books tumbling to the floor.
Or that could have been me.
I’m not sure.
Either way, the bottle of Jack Daniels that day was totally deserved.
Photographs and things for your perusal…
…just because I’m in that sort of mood…
…and because it tickles me…
…and because it reminds me that it could always be worse…
…and because some things are just too confusing for words.
(Whoever can caption this photograph first gets the ‘Most Obscurely Orientated Brain’ award.)
And finally I leave you with this. Because it made me make that sound.
Stolen from the enhanced buzz phenomenon via Buzzfeed
