it's all down hill from here

So do you see the young woman or the old lady?

Sigh. I was going to post about how after thirty I noticed lines on my face that weren't there before, this year I've been noticing my hands getting older looking, though I'd taken comfort from the fact that when I pinch the sking on the back of my hand it still springs back into place pretty instantly (I always remember my mother saying that to me!).

But today I - I found my first grey hair.

I've suspected before, but always assumed that they were actually just blond ones, I still have a good few very blonde hairs - but not this one, it's without doubt shiny white.

I've always been a staunch supporter or naturally grey or white hair, I don't think women are wrong to 'let themselves go' and let the grey through, as Trinny and Susannah put it.

But I'm not ready! It's too soon! Aaaaagh! It's jsut the stress ageing me prematurely, I'm sure of it!

running away tuesday

I'm not the sort of person who'd just jump in the car and fuck off somewhere. I'm not brave, spontaneous or desperate enough.

But god, today feels like a running away day.

I want to run away from my grumpy, wailing, tantrumy daughter, my passive, uncommunicative husband, having no money, my house that needs enormous amounts of work we can't afford and the smell of dog crap as the dogs messed on the floor this morning (Oh, I wish they'd just die!).
I'd have to run away on public transport as the car's so badly in need of a service.

I'd take the baby with me, there's hope for him yet.

I just feel like I've had enough!

oops

I've nothing really to post about, but I am chastened since yesterday I was talking to one of the teachers I correct for, and he told me my last lot of comments on Fifth year essays had been too sharp and had upset them!

Embarrassing - I'm usually good at being nice but constructive. I knew I'd been critical, but I didn't think I'd been too harsh. Except I have to admit that I've noticed before that my mood can influence the grade I give - isn't that awful? Perhaps the stress of correcting and parenting all at the same time was making me snappy. Snippy. Whatever. Oops!

feh

This doesn't quite apply, this picture, but I think it's so funny I'm going to jump at the chance to post it again. My daughter chose a cake for me this year, so I had a Barbie one...

So I nearly nearly took Rob's advice and just decided to stay in and chill tonight. I knew it would be a good idea. Avoid the stress, and the fear that I have no one I am special to be with on my birthday!

I was happy with my plan, or so I thought, but then someone suggested a 49£ night out eighties dancing and I leapt at it, thought hell, a bit of dinner first, off for a dance, a ready made gang... who could resist! Well, everyone could. Nobody was into the night out, and I lost my own group of friends due to various grannies and mothers inconsiderately celebrating their birthdays the same night as me, sick babies, impending seizures. So we were down to one husband and one friend, I was rushing round the house in a sweat trying to clean and get the kids fed, it just wasn't coming together. I knew my husband hadn't had time to shower this morning so he'd get in from work at 7.30 and would not be ready in 15 mins, I'd be trying to get the kids to sleep and put on make up, we'd be late and stressed, we'd fight and I'd cry. So when Dave texted about going blind in his eye, which forecasts a blackout (!) and said 'it might get better, mind over matter works sometimes', that was it! A sign.

So I'm back to my dvd and night in, and I feel a wave of relief not to have to make the effort. Well, relief, and misery, alternating. I was in such a kerfuffle this morning with ill baby and phonecalls to the homoeopath I didn't have time to dry my new do (My friend Amanda is a hairdresser, she's great, €30 in her house, if anyone wants an affordable hairdo! She's also the most beautiful girl I've ever seen) and I had to use my daughter's shampoo and it boofed up into a fluffy kinky ball :(
So I did it again later, didn't do too bad a job, but now no one will get to see...

Anyway, my husband's home, there's prosecco in the fridge, Ben and Jerry's in the freezer, an Indian is ordered (I hope he's good looking) and I don't have to do any more tidying up. So I have nothing to complain about. Except I keep almost but not quite tearing up if I think about it too hard. So I won't.

I had a lovely hour in the Avoca café with Midget Wrangler, Ginger Pixel and Aisling - I'd planned for a little more, a bit of a shop, a more leisurely chat, but a sick clingy baby put the kaibosh on that, and I had to downsize the plan a bit. It's all so... effortful! Still, we had a lovely morning none the less. I really love talking to other women. Especially motherbloggers! And we must do it weekly. Weekly! Wealthy women do it, why not us!

little funny

My husband brought this joke home from work yesterday:

What's the difference between a married woman and a single woman?

A single woman comes home, looks in the fridge and goes to bed.

A married woman comes home, looks in the bed, and goes to the fridge.

pumpkin pancakes

I make pancakes all the time - I'd really be a pagan if I made then during Lent, but outside Lent, why not!

For parents out there, if you purée veg and mix it in, even some cheese, some peas and sweetcorn, and serve them with tomato sauce, they're gorgeous, and it's a nice way of sneaking greens into kids.

I make pumpkin pancakes because sometimes I get the urge to bake and eat a pumpkin pie, and this is healthier...

My mother made lovely little round pancakes onto the ring of the Aga, a recipe with yoghurt, but it's never worked when I make it.

I just do a cup of flour, pinch of salt, about a teaspoon of baking powder and a tsp of cinnamon. Make a well in the centre and mix in, combined, a cup of milk, a beaten egg, a teaspoon of good vanilla, a dessert spoon of oil (or melted butter). Put in any amount of pumpkin puree (steamed or roasted or canned, whatever - I use the Hokkaido pumpkins as they're so deliciously rich) - today I put in four cubes from the freezer, warmed with a little water to thaw them. Mix in with the liquid.

Let sit for a bit in the fridge. The first pancake is for the dogs, it never works.


I'm sorry this is so inexact, I know it's frustrating (like when my godmother asked for someones bread recipe and was told to start with 'a plate of flour'). But you can't really go wrong, and if you do a bit of trial and error will sort it out.

These aren't really American puffy pancakes, you'll have to up the raising agent for those.

I put honey or maple syrup on them. Nyum.

If you make them and come up with any deities, come back and let me know!

is it a sign?

So it seems the Golden Bhudda appeared to me in a pumpkin pancake today at 1.36pm.



Bhudda on White Plate with Pancake Clouds

brick wall

Ok, a serious one.

This is why we can't 'all just get along'. This is why we still have to fight for breastfeeding, and breast feeding education. The midwives, who are women's first port of call in establishing good, problem free breastfeeding, are not doing their job. Up til very recently, a midwife's job was to place a bottle of formula and two pills for drying up a mother's milk on a bedside locker.

Now the HSE is pushing breastfeeding, apparently in such a way as to put women off before they start, never mind open their eyes to it.

The irony is, that the same women who are pushing it on mothers who don't want to breast feed, are sabotaging it for all the women who do. This thread is so sad.

If someone in hospital gave my child a bottle of formula against my will, I would sue.

What harm does one bottle do? Well, it stretches the baby's tiny stomach and gives it an artificial feeling of fullness so breast milk never fills it up again.

And it alters the stomach flora of the baby, taking weeks to repair.

The hypocrisy of the HSE is overwhelming. The stories in the thread above are ones that the mothers will carry with them their whole lives. It's not good enough.

more sexism

I'm sorry, but, total genius!



heh heh heh.

one for the ladies

Ladies with babies - my cousin is in the doldrums of pregnancy number two morning sickness misery, trying to look after her two year old, the family has stomach bugs, and she's miserable she's not enjoying being pregnant.

Can anyone post a comment to let her know this is just how it is, and that it does get better? Relatively speaking?

I have to keep pinching myself, and reminding myself every day, exactly what it would be like to have a third child. I know EXACTLY what it would be like, I don't want one, yet a strange part of me keeps thinking about it!

Men.. seriously... !

I know this cartoon is really sexist, but it cracks me up.

My husband had a work night out last night, presumably to thank everyone for working like slaves for fuck all remuneration over the last month or so.

He said he'd come home on the 1 o clock bus as I've got to get working today and am in a state of advanced exhaustion already.

I woke at 4 am with the baby, to a text saying he was on the bus, sent at 1.50, saying he'd get up in the morning and I could have a lie in... yeah, right. He got in shortly after.

The baby was up on and off quite a lot from 6 but had gone back to sleep, as had I, when my husband's phone alarm went off in the hall at 7.20 - stern English lady's voice saying 'IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP, IT'S TIME TO WAKE UP' plus buzzing. He grunted a bit, I got up and turned it off, baby awake.

I just don't get it, I really don't. Is it just stupidity, is it callousness, or is it just not giving a fuck?

photos

I'm a little bit in love with Ryan of Rymus.net for his beautiful photos and personal, articulate commentary on them. See his new project at glasseyalley.
And if you're looking for someone to take photos of your kids, Claire at GingerPixel is your woman, her baby photos take my breath away and make me jealous :) She'll come spend the day with you and yours and the disc is yours thereafter.

And of course there is the wonderful McAWilliams, check out the beautiful Sweden photos that make me yearn to be on holiday.

evil pirate privates

My daughter had a hoolie tonight because I wouldn't take all the crap off the piano so she could play a nighttime song. It wasn't that I didn't want to, but her Dad and I have reached some sort of tiredness zenith.

I heard her giving him grief coming out of the sitting room, and came out to intervene when I heard her shouting 'I am hitting you in the parts!!' He lets her really punch him a lot, while I think is iffy, and I would definitely like to discourage part-punching, lest she inadvertently cripples him or takes the delightful practice out into the real world.

But when I came out of the kitchen, I saw that she was wielding the foam pirate sword I'd bought her this week, had it between his legs and was whacking it up and down repeatedly, while shouting her evil intent. I was momentarily stunned, and then laughing too much to admonish her effectively.

Pirates 1, parents nil.

MIDGET WRANGLER

Raising The Filth Standard on a Blog Near You...

boys

I was feeding my 8 1/2 month old baby boy before bed tonight, and kissing his little feet, and pressing one against my eye, and my mouth, as you do, and it suddenly struck me that he was going to grow and stretch into a big hairy man, and the tiny little squishy foot that just covers my mouth will one day be longer than my whole face - and the chances are slim that I'll be wanting to press that size 10, 11, 12? foot to me anymore!

I don't feel that sense of shock about my daughter so much, perhaps because she's so womanly - it's easy to see her as a teenager, as a woman, where her curves are going to fill out. The attitude is certainly there.

But while there are glimpses of the man in my teeny Mr Smallman, he's still pretty much squidgy little not-quite-toddler (the baby is pretty much gone - sob!).

The way children grow fascinates me. When my daughter was a baby I couldn't imagine her at the age she is now, and now her babyhood seems so far away. She's reaching higher almost every day.

I wonder if the otherness of a child who's the opposite sex to you makes person they will be more mysterious? The concept of him growing heavy bone and strong muscle, and elongating, growing hair everywhere is miraculous, astonishing. Mind you, my first boyfriend was so pretty, his skin was like silk and velvet (though that was at fifteen, I'm sure he's lost his untouched glow by now), thinking back, he reminded me of the Anne Rice novels about the Taltos, the race of people who are born fully conscious and grow to adulthood minutes after birth. He was smooth and sweet like a baby quickly stretched into a teenage boy's burgeoning strength and height and, well, all the rest. The gorgeous boy.

I'm so looking forward to having a teenage son, who embodies all that male beauty, holds within him all that gorgeous potential. It's so sad for men, it goes so fast. It's not really fair, I had that conversation with a twenty one year old the other night. What was I thinking? Poor Dave! Being forced to stare down the barrel of the demise of his youth by some aul one in her thirties!

international!

Ok, this is totally uncool, I know I shouldn't say it, but I will anyway, just this once:

As you might have noticed, I finally worked out how to install a statcounter and Oh My God! You're reading this all over the world! Australia, Denmark, Canada, America, England, Norway, Enniskerry... incredible!

Obviously I had no idea.

Helloooo! *waves energetically* Of course I would love to hear from you lurking foreigners. Say hello sometime.

Right, back to being cool now.

oh dear

My birthday's coming again. I can't decide whether to try or not.

I think I'll just treat myself and not bother about anything else. I'll get myself Once, which I still bizarrely haven't seen, and make a nice dinner and sit in and watch it. I'll buy the other John Rocha earring I lost, and have been hoping to get back for years - I like wearing one pair of earrings all the time, I must admit. Otherwise I just take them off, leave them round the house and lose one. Always.

Perhaps a little trip to Avoca Handweavers and a little shop about.

And that'll do. I don't know why my birthday's always been so important to me. Other people my age have stoped making a fuss. Time to grow up!

mood lifter

Is this not the best thing ever? I could watch it all day! I love the southern accents and the little black winter onezies on the babies. And how the dad sounds like Adam Sandler!
Ah boo, it just won't embed for some reason. Here's the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwriOyQf1EA
I can't help but imagine what it's like when they're all crying, though!

bleeding for my filth

I am so delighted with my FILTHY badge, the MidgetWrangler award for filth.

However, I have been punished from on high for it, it seems, as I pricked my finger on the badge when I picked it up and it made me bleed.

I feel a little undeserving, as I haven't really been filthy. As I've said before, the whole post birth/breastfeeding hormone thing has knocked any naughtiness on the head completely. But it was the same before, so I'm not overly worried.

And anyway, Midge knows how filthy I really can be...

'undignified'

I got talking to some ladies about birth the other night, as you do.

I am of the opinion that generally speaking, giving birth does not have to be as dangerous and terrible as it made out to be. If I could have ten births I would, as long as I could avoid the pregnancies... and managing ten children on a day to day basis.

This woman, who wouldn't have the same interest in the whole area of birth that I did, and had a difficult breech labour and section, suddenly suggested with some distaste, that she'd heard of someone giving birth on all fours, and wouldn't that be so undignified.

I'm never sure how to respond to that sort of misguided notion. It seems to me that so many women who feel this way about birth have accepted and internalised the lessons men have been imposing on us about women's strength and power for hundreds of years. If we lived in a matriarchal society I don't think so many people would be so hung up on the indignity of natural birth. Even the fact that the most painful and dangerous way to give birth is lying flat on your back, where the baby has to scrape up and over your coccyx, that the easiest and most gentle way to give birth is leaning forward, on all fours, where your body can open, and follow the rhythms of its contractions, make use of gravity - made no difference - 'well, it seems undignified to me'.

The witch hunters are still winning, all these years later. Women must not lose control, women must give up responsibility for their labour to doctors, lie back and pray for the man in the white coat to rescue you from your inefficient body.

There is no concept of there being beauty in a woman being in communication with her body and baby as they make their way out, of finding her strength and listening to herself. It's a messy, sweaty.. bloody, ugly process. I wonder how this lady would take to the idea that she do all her poos lying on her back. Would that make sense?

During my first labour, as I was pushing my baby out, and it was hard, hard work, my midwife turned to my husband and said 'Isn't she amazing?' And he answered

'Yes, she looks so strong'.

He said that all the muscles in my back (what muscles??) were standing out like a Greek sculpture. Unheard of before or since!

Those comments gave me so much strength and encouragement, more than someone screaming at me to push would have, or any feeling that I had retained my dignity by not assuming an animal posture.

One of the community midwives in Holles Street said that she attended one birth where the woman was on all fours, and both the midwives were on hands and knees too, monitoring her. An oldschool Holles Street obstetrician looked in the door and muttered 'barbaric', in disgust, when faced with the sight of three women's arses in the air.

Oh yes, barbaric. Strap 'em down, hook 'em up to machines, suck or cut the baby out of them, that's the civilised way.

Suggested labour positions

And some more

The Juice are on Phantom!

Friday (tomorrow) morning at 10.10 with Edel Coffey. Two songs, and a play of the single. Tune in, spread the word.

And the video's got 7000 hits in two months.

All good.

pussy power

I'm a big fan of Ewan McGregor, he makes me come over all teenage. I was really entertained by his Long Way Round documentary, and Charlie Boorman was sweet too, being from Annamoe and having the cutest voice, I love the ways he says his name, 'Cho-lay'.

But while my husband and I were watching the series, we were struck repeatedly by the amount of WHINGING the pair of them did, right from the start. We thought it was perhaps the editing, that for other programmes they were putting in all the big upheavals and we were only seeing the fallout.

But I got the book in the recycling recently and it's exactly the same. All this bitching and moaning and reproof and resentment, then making it up again, and analysing why they were moaning in the first place. Crying in their helmets.

Don't get me wrong, I too would have been crying in my helmet if I'd gone through what they'd gone through. And getting stressed and arguing. But I'm a girl: Cowboy Up, lads!

And this made me reevaluate whether we really want our men to be sensitive and communicative. Perhaps that's not so good at all! Perhaps I'd rather if they could just deal and make decisions and get on with it without too much cerebral activity after all.

It reminded me of my husband's story of his stag weekend (yes, weekend) in Edinburgh. The first night there, they had dinner in an Italian close to the hotel, it was shite, they said they wouldn't go back there again. And it hit me, that if there had been women there, it would have been so different. there would have been lots of conversation about it, and regret, and how it had been a waste of one night, and why did you leave a tip, and above all, if only, I wish we hadn't gone there, the other place looked nicer etc etc etc. Not simply, 'we won't go back there again'.

It made me think that we have quite a lot to learn from men.

And then along come Ewan and Charlie, intelligent, funny, sexy, articulate family men, the kind we like. In touch with themselves. And they're a pair of whingey pussies, basically!

It sends me back to something I've always maintained (in honour of Midge's FILTHY post), alongside my wish for my husband to talk to me more: sometimes all a girl needs is to have someone come up and take her roughly from behind.

lists

The perfect illustration, check it out

I love writing lists. Clearly this is part of my 'I'm all about the planning' personality.

I recently found a notebook with January resolutions in it, from 07. I'm ashamed to admit, they were all the same as this years, as I had completed fuck all of them. Hmm.

I find writing lists soothing, though. It allows me to get the tangle of stuff that's in my head halfway organised, and clearer, helps me see what's doable after all, what isn't and doesn't need to be thought about.

Lots of items are there permanently:

Tesco, milk bread eggs

recycling

ironing (often the same pile as on the last list)

hoover

post letter you haven't got round to posting in months...

sort clothes in bedroom

claim tax back, get bupa receipts sorted

Other lists are things I can't do yet, but listing them makes me feel like I might yet be able to one day:

new carpets

French doors in kitchen

wall of shelves

Shomra

custom built wardrobes in bedroom

new windows, front door

range cooker

sustainable energy stuff

Self improvement lists:

Lose weight

exercise

stop shouting at daughter

be tidy

Less computer

And aspirational lists :

Buy Children's Writers' handbook, find agent

Illustrate books

massage course

Italian class

I'd highly recommend the list process for when you wake up at night and can't sleep for thinking. It tends to get it out of your head, like a pensieve.

I was cheered when I read an article about to-do lists and how they can be counter productive. The writer's friend had been writing 'move paint can in sitting room' on her to do lists for about six months. That's me, that is.

I would happily upload a photo of one of my lists, but I've needed to buy batteries for the camera since Good Friday.

would you love me any less

if I told you I'd just dropped hummus on my keyboard?