Breast feeding info

Articles on donor milk and reasons to exclusively breastfeed on Friends of Breastfeeding, if anyone is interested.

yes, this would do me...

Life in the Netherlands...

stupidity tax and divine sense of humour

I keep making stupid and costly mistakes at the moment. I can't seem to absorb written information though my eyeballs. Three significant things I've messed up this week, one of which has cost me hundred quid instead of twenty, as I clicked the wrong flight number and booked a 6.45am flight home somehow. It was only a choice of two, I have no idea how I did it. And of course by the time I realised, the right flight was  different price, complete with random taxes. And changing it cost more than buying a new one! Mental.

This may all be totally redundant, as who knows if the plane will go... I was away by myself for a night a week or two before Bodhi was born, and before that for a couple days in Prague when Olivia was three. Apart from that I have been with my children fairly constantly, give or take the odd night Olivia stayed in her granny's.

So now, I take the plunge and try to go away and it snows - in November! For ten days!! Is it a sign?

It's frustrating - I love the snow - I'd rather be here, though the not driving is a pain in the ass. No one clears roads properly in Ireland. But I like the celebration, and the calm, quiet whiteness fills me with a beautiful peace and elation. The smell, the crumping sound of it under your feet, the snuggliness of being in bed warm while the world around you is frozen and still. The sun on the snow and all... I love it.

But leaving the house at 5.30 am in it is a bit alarming :)

Fingers, crossed.

Boring snow photos tomorrow, maybe. And Olivia's snow-documentary. Too tired for uploading now.

BOO!! Exhaust fell off car today, had no cancel trip to drop off work that I was just going ot make it in with and go get it fixed - €130 - thanks to the deer incident you may all remember.


YAY!! Got home to a cheque from the Clampers from same night as said deer incident, which you may also remember. Shocked!

The booo is still winning, but at least something is tipping it a little.

multi tasking post - don't let me burn the sausages

It's clear and cold cold cold today. Bodhi comes home from wherever these days and wants to get in his jammies. His dad let him, then fucked off to his studio forty minutes before I had to go get Olivia. Sigh.

Bodhi cheered up again in the car, in his warm coat and funky brown hat, settled in his car seat for a thumb suck. I heard him say, 'Woahhhhh!!! There's smoke coming out of my thumb!'

I looked at his delighted little face in the rearview mirror, round, chubby and rosy cheeked beneath his wooly hat - and sure enough, the thumb he was goggling at with amazement was steaming merrily.

You know it's winter when you find yourself with a steaming thumb :)

quickie

Bodhi, from the back seat: You're a Pink-ock!!

Me: You're a pink-ock!

Bodhi, smiling with great satisfaction: No, I am Master of Pink-ocks.

Me: What's a pink-ock?

Bodhi: It's a very very small bug.



I'd look for a picture, but I'm scared to google this one...

hello!

I'm still boiling in the cauldron of corrections. It's sleeting - that explains this morning's raw coldness.

I have things to blog about, but no time - will I remember? I don't know!

I'll leave you with this contentious point: I think that the people who don't like the Kings of Leon only feel so strongly because they got so popular. If they hadn't they'd be grand.

I don't get that attitude. I for one am delighted there's still a place in this world for Big Rock Anthems, especially with an alternative slant, and who better to fill that gap than the bearded sons of a fundamentalist Biblebelt preacherman? Hmm?

buzy whizzy

Time and again I swear I won't fuck around and waste time - and time and again I do. Agh.

something else, somthing better than me - can you spin around and around and aroundand around?



Harry Potter tomorrow! Will Olivia be ok with it? We shall see...

not a post

I'm not posting because I have nothing to say, nothing new anyway. But, hello out there.

I have work, and writing that grows urgent  and a playdate for Olivia tomorrow to get organised for and no cash to go get bread with, arg. So boring! And Christmas approaches.

We've been devising a plan for birthdays and christmases, whereby we find out what the kids want and then ask the people who buy them presents to get them. That way we don't end up with loads of surplus plastic crap we don't have space for and everyone's happy. I hope.

I just found a lovley Etsy trader who sells felting kits - nice pressie for older kids, maybe? Check out her brow cow sculpture, it's gorgeous, and modelled on her own cow. The wool comes from her own farm. Nice, nice.

Bear Creek Design.

stylings of a gentleman rhymer

Baha. Chap Hop.



I don't like your Tweed, Sir! Such a cutting repartee. There's not room in town for two gentlemen rhymers.

:)

hahahahaha

I'm glad I checked back - I posted this in the surfer post by accident :)



sceeery... :D

mad bastards

Some of us hide from the wind...

And some people film their very own Point Break.



surfers... is anyone cooler?

cello fetish

lists

I am grateful that there is no illness or disability in my family. I am amazed at the strength others show in the face of adversity.

I was grateful for my new boots, and not having wet feet in this stormy weather even if they're still sitting on my visa bill, but almost immediately after I send that thought out, I realised that my foot was wet because the sole had peeled away from the shoe, and now I have to try and return them and I'm not quite sure what to feel about all that.

I am grateful that I have people to talk to on the internet and the connections I've made.

I am grateful for how warm and blessed my duvet is feeling at the moment and how good it feels to go to sleep at night.

I am profoundly grateful that I'm not suicidal, and even in the middle of wishing for escape and oblivion I don't really want to die.

I'm grateful that the sun is shining. Was shining. Well, that it's not raining right now.

Being positive isn't cheering me up so much at this moment, though, if I'm totally honest. I am grateful, though, I really am.

Keep Calm and Sublimate Emotion With Carbohydrates and Fat.

I need a hug from a male person who loves me, so much I could implode with neediness.

Instead, I am having a cheese baguette.


No pics today says blogger.

a laugh

Oh, excuse the overblogging. I love Fascinating Aida, my parents used to love them when I was a kid - and Dillie Keane is as funny and clever as ever - and up to date!

a halloween retrospective

severed fingers...

er - well, needs no caption

Looked less scary in the day time when you could see her eyes!

atmospheric photo of my halloween washing - stayed wet on the line for a week...

severed finger cupcakes - the red blood syrup slid off, sadly

the kids' bats - hmm, should take a daytime shot!

sceeeeeery! And a little bit pouty for some reason

You betcha the paint is still on the window - Bodhi won't let me wash it off!

dinner fail but all's not lost

Hmm. This was going to be a  self congratulatory post but then the bean burgers were too mushy and the macaroni cheese wasn't cheesy enough.

However, what I did achieve today was calm in the face of Olivia's seriously insane tantrums and desperate rage. This morning with her I don't want to go to school I won't wear these stupid uncomfortable knickers school- stress tantrums, and her I'm hungry give me white bread or die I hate you all I wish I was dead you're all idiots pre dinner tantrums.

 I managed not to shout back or use ugly words ALL DAY - and only an hour to go before bed time. It helped that she went to a friend's house for a few hours, I suppose, I must confess that. Still. It gives me hope. IthinkIcanIthinkIcan...

Careful now!

I'm correcting 5th year Sylvia Plath tests. Ahem. It's interesting to see the different responses, and how generally well adjusted the kids are - they just don't get it. Which is a good thing, I suppose.

But, one young lad just floored me, firstly by asserting that the sentiments in some of Plath's poems are 'not what we would typically associate with a young mother of two beautiful children' (god help the future mother of his children if she ever gets PND...).

And then he goes on to suggest that 'Perhaps her intelligence is nothing more than a burden which was forced upon her by nature, which allows her to think and analyse things too much...'


Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear. This one has me torn. On one hand, dear god, such a view in a 17 year old boy! We women should pray for blissful ignorance and the cheerful void of brainlessness to make our drudgelike domestic lives all the sweeter...

And then the other part of me recognises that I've often had the same thought about myself and my daughter, and wondered should we be avoiding attempts to raise bright, sensitive children and aim for happy, insensitive dullards (as my friend once beautifully put it) instead?

my children, my self

So I'm sitting in the car driving home from Despicable Me, and I'm in my oft-thought motorway reverie, dreaming of another life, and Olivia says, I wish I had an invention that made whatever you want appear in front of you - and pouf! for a second my passenger seat is full of 6'5" worth of green eyed goodness, that disappears again instantly as Bodhi says, I would go to Dad, and I see his sad little missing-his-Dad face in the rearview mirror.

I would have all the video games I ever wanted! Olivia continues gleefully and I reassure my son that tomorrow we'll go to the airport and pick up his father.

a hymn to inaction

It feels like Sunday. It feels like sleeping. Like the grey has sucked my will away under the stones and all there is is listlessness and a faint hunger.
Four hours sleep on Thursday night has sapped my energies and turned me to a faint, drifting, irritable thing. With painful, tender teeth.

I have things to do, indeed I do but I would rather curl into bed and close my eyes and not do anything at all.

free cheese for the needy

No, really.

I'm not sure how you qualify. Or what you do if you're both needy and allergic. But now I have a vision of us sitting down at Christmas to a giant roast ball of Edam.

Blur your eyes a bit more, it almost looks like a puddin'.

Ah, we won't be able to pay our mortgage, they're piling new taxes on top of families who were already well in the red, but it's ok, now they placate us with cheese. Line up, line up. Ask for the Cyanide Cheddar.

What do we take to a student protest?

dogs and horses and nightsticks, oh my



Update from the front line: http://tinman18.wordpress.com/2010/11/04/bata-fada/#comment-2623

recommendation

I have spent €250 on dentistry this week. I have a chest infection manifesting itself yellowly. My evil coldsore is here in force. It's just me, a big pile of work, and the kids this week. Budgetary bleakness is around the corner.

But!

Get yourselves to Superquinn, they're got my favourite brown bread on sale for two for €3. It's still hot, if you get there in the morning. Hot and soft and delicious. And you could get some Saint Dalfour raspberry jam too, it's so nice. That is my tip - winter's coming, get fat and happy.

startling image

http://www.rte.ie/news/2010/1101/harneym.html

Someone threw red paint at our minster for health as she ceremoniously turned a sod at a new mental health centre.

This image strikes me as powerful in its symbolism

Yes, Mary Harney, you have blood on your hands, and you're digging us deeper in, alright.