thinking before speaking

I've started trying to follow through possible interpretations of or reactions people might actually have to the little funny things it occurs to me to say, before I say them. I suppose this is what normal people do?

The thing is, my brain seems to be programmed to respond with funny comments, and my definition of funny (or useful, or whatever) is not widely shared. So I'm working on stopping my kneejerk reaction and analysing possible outcomes, so as not offend/upset and then feel horrible about it for weeks afterwards.

You know what, though? It's exhausting. And chastening. How do people do it? Maybe I should get 'It's Not Funny' tattooed on the inside of my eyeballs and leave it at that.

IT DOESN'T MATTER

peeves

For an annoying person, a lot of things annoy me. I suppose that's how it works. I'm trying to react and complain less and thereby let go of my sensitivities, but in order not to let things build up:

Hate List

• Text Speak - especially in non textular situations. 
• Apostrophe crime*
• (Especially negative) focus on the physical appearance of female public figures is increasingly annoying me
• The reverberating snorking sound my husband makes when he sniffs (this cold is going on too long, please, make it stop) 
• My own procrastination

*Though of course, EVERYONE is entitled to Apostrophe Amnesty. That goes without saying.

Wage Peace

 Wage Peace 

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings
and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children
and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen
and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening:
hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools:
flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don't wait another minute.

I've seen this attributed to Mary Oliver, but the internet says it's really by Judyth Hill. 

This is the most succinct thing I've seen in years. I think Ms Moon will like it, seeing as she lives it already. 

nostalgia/sense of smell.

Making apple sauce for Carrot Cake. The smell of the hot, irony apple mush reminds me so much of babies - of weaning time, simple food and simple excitement at first tastes. They loved the apple and molasses. Watching dexterous fingers picking up peas for the first time, grated apple. The smell of the apples sauce rings me in a warm, soft toned bubble, makes me long to be sitting at a table, spooning food into fat little, messy little cheeks, and laughing. 

thanksgiving

I was just reading Ms Moon's pre-Thanksgiving post, and started to comment. I wasn't going to say anything about this, but then I realised I was writing a blog post in her comments, which would be a bit rude, so I figured, oh well, I'd better post it.


My mother used to do Thanksgiving dinners. The works. Turkey and pumpkin pie and all the bits, and guests over. It was an event.

I tried a couple times but it didn't really pan out. My heart wasn't in it, maybe. My mother in law stubbornly, and somewhat rudely, refused to get it.

So I gave up. You need a clean house for dinners. I don't know how my mother managed the banquets she put on, but these days you need money. You need energy and organisation and motivation, and all sorts of things I don't have.

But maybe on Thurday I'll roast some potatoes and make a little apple pie, or a crumble, and sit around with my kids with some candles and dinner and try to find some stuff they're grateful for, amidst all the wishing for things we don't have or have lost.

light

Sun. Shine. Bright blue cold sky. I plan to go out in it, soon, when I go to buy fondant and cupcake wrappers for vulva cupcakes for a tantric workshop that I mostly likely will not blog about here.. The kids can run on the grass, beneath the trees. We might see a squirrel. We might absorb a little bit of vitamin D and let the breeze blow some of the crabbiness away. Though we'll probably have a row, but, that's just how it is.

I wish they could be more at peace with that, more relaxed about it. Yesterday in the car I tried to tell them how much I cared about them as babies. How much I wanted to feed them well and sleep with them and give them all the love and time I could and how important it was to me. And they just didn't get it. Well, maybe Bodhi does, really, in the right mood. Olivia, no, though. Too much got in the way. Or I just didn't get it right. I know it's too late, but I hope it's not too late in some ways. Though... what's to come doesn't necessarily hold much promise. Deep breaths... walk in the sun. 

things to come

I wrote a miserable post about grief and sadness earlier, but I took the high road and resisted posting it. It will all be better in a little while. I was right, I suppose, if I don't think about anything too hard. My father rang me - my granny is back in hospital - returned lung infection, and this time it's affected her heart enough to put her in the cardiac ward. I think she and my father thought she was dying on Friday night and had a traumatic, panicked rush to hospital. I'm sorry for him. I've been there. It's not something you want to experience.

My granny is 94. This is her first illness, but I don't like that it won't go away. My father thinks it may be the start of the slow slide towards death, now. I know something has to be - no one really wants to be 120, or anything. Well, my friend's amazing grandfather lived independently in a walk up apartment until he was 108, but that's fairly spectacular, isn't it?

Selfish as this may seem, I'm not ready for the bereavement roundabout again. The thought of it makes me quake. I also can't imagine being emotional support to my father. It's all so ... ack. I can accept her dying, at this stage, I think, I really can. It's more the grief itself I'm afraid of, other people's, my own reaction. It's like there's a pit full of it in me, and as soon as the trapdoor is opened at all it wells out like black water. This dark river rushing under the boards, all the time. 

spiritual

I was walking past the rather menacing looking church in Dun Laoghaire yesterday, and there was a dad leading a redfaced, upset looking ten year old boy around outside by the hand. I thought the kid was crying, but I couldn't be sure. I couldn't quite tell if he might have had special needs or not, but he looked upset and a little hard to manage.

As we walked past, Axl snorted - he'd heard the kid shouting, it took me a minute more to process that he'd yelled,

DAD, I JUST REALLY HATE MASS, in an anguished roar.

I know, Son, I know, but it's good for your soul, you see, to be herded into this building to listen to boring, lifeless droning and made to be quiet and told off for not being quiet enough, and having to be taken outside in tears of misery every time. It's all about godliness and spirituality, Son.

For fuck's sake. 

beautiful

Every year for a few days in the month of February, the sun’s angle is such that it lights up Horsetail Falls in Yosemite, as if it were on fire.




I went there! It was amazing. A beautiful, awesome place. I didn't know about this, though. 

Steamcleaning

One corner of the kitchen. With my penguin steam cleaner. As inspired by Ms Moon's gleaming study. My floor beneath the sink is now shiny! I'd say I 'shined my sink', but it's more about clearing gunk off stuff than polishing...

I'd love to keep going, but I should be either working or going out en famille - I think the smallies have decided - a train trip to the Farmer's market and the cinema to see Arthur Christmas. I feel anxious about spending hours out, but I think it's for the best. Yay for the steam cleaning, though. 

shame on you

I have a feeling that the wrong thinking and violence in America is taking a step too far, and may finally eat itself by showing its face too brazenly. The people who are wrong seem to be responding so stupidly to the protests against them that they may end up revealing the truth of what they represent to their supporters and risk losing some of them.

I find this video incredibly affecting - the policeman sprays a group of peaceful, protesting students full in the face with pepper spray as they sit on the ground blocking the path of the riot police. The crowd starts a chant of 'shame on you' and doesn't back down - in fact they slowly, slowly advance, in far greater number than the police... and move them out of their college. It's worth watching. It's a horrible video, it's a great video - it feels like people are waking up. I hope it inspires, in many ways, in many places.

Olivia said she'd be scared to be there. I'd be scared for her to be there too. I'm thinking back to Tinman's post on the student protest we had here, where the police turned violent - his son actually got hit. What are the police here for? To protect the people? Or to protect the State? What is the State?

breastfeeding and reduced breast cancer risk

Breastfeeding two years or more reduces cancer risk by 50%, apparently. It didn't work for my mother, though, sadly (or at least, she was in the wrong 50%), so I don't know what that says for me. 

huddling together for warmth

I'm finished teaching for the year. Bring on the waves of correcting, the making of vulva cupcakes and the finishing of a long overdue task.

Last week I had some Venetian Italian teenagers, a remarkably educated bunch. One class was a little more lively, a little more fun than the other - I noticed that every time I told them to get into their project groups, rather than spread out round the classroom, they'd all sit knee to knee, three groups of three packed up into one corner of the room.

I observed that Irish students would not do this - we like our space, us reserved Irish, in the main. Certainly the boys wouldn't cosy together knee to knee, at least. They shrugged, and said it was normal for them, when I suggested they take more space if they liked.

'It's warmer this way,' the funny one said.

I laughed and said they could huddle together for warmth.

'Yes,' he said, with quiet amusement, twinkling at me with big dark eyes. 'Like pinguins.'

I ♥ those Italians, I really do.

In the other class I gave them film reviews to read and share, from entertainment.ie. The reviews there are fairly fresh, and one of Weekend was candid about the subject matter - an analysis of one young gay man's emotional life. The reader asked me what 'boy beds boy' meant, and I told him, and then asked the girl who was reading the TinTin review could I help her with what she was giggling about - yep - it was the line the review that described him as little more than an anal boy scout with an inexplicable drive. 


So I had to reassure her quickly that it was the Freudian sort of anal, and what boy scout referred  to, and how they weren't really connected in the way she was laughing about - but oops, I'd better read reviews in more detail before I hand them out to classes, maybe. 


Another great line that I hadn't noticed in another review was 'arse clenching tension'. Which is a pretty excellent review phrase I think, but I was getting a little uncomfortable with the theme that was appearing :) 

six minutes of pilates

I have neglected myself sorely. I am a mess. This, this is needed.

And isn't it pretty?

I don't think I'm quite ready for it yet, though - it's not old crock level, even if it's only 6 minutes. 

tee hee

This really cheered me up :)

sads

I hate the raw days, where every little mistake and setback is something to grieve over.

I think one of the reasons I can't make decisions is because I've been plagued my whole life with the knowledge that what ever I choose will the the wrong thing.

The mistakes and missed opportunities all fade away, I know, but in the moment it's so hard not to feel anxious, upset and responsible. Things matter, even little things. It's not really possible to just shrug them off.

Ack. 

hallmark moments

Here is a very salient comment left on the post below, that I was going to respond to in comments, but maybe it deserves more space than that :

Dear me

I think I must be a very unusual mother indeed. Reading the lines 'This is the thing that women don’t tell each other about motherhood. That you will never be who you were' made me think exactly the opposite. Before my first child as born, I had an absolutely clear image of myself as a mother. It was laughter, patience, utter engagememt and closeness to my child, effortlessness, graciousness. Seven years and significant expenditure on anti-psychotics later, I wonder why on earth I ever thought that six hours in the labour ward would transform me into an entirely different person. I'm exactly who I was. Entirely untransformed. Certainly parenthood has forced me to engage differently with the world. I am less judgemental, more forgiving of human fraility, more nuanced in my views. But my essential selfish, impatient, intense and quick-tempered self is exactly as she was. I love my children beyond measure but find family life intensely claustrophobic. I'm happy for the lady who wrote this piece she has found such contentment and meaning in her life but honestly, Christ, this stuff is all pervasive and oppresive if you're not so much made never the same again by motherhood as exactly the same but even more so.

Oh, god, here is my confession: I didn't read that post fully enough - I loved the positive stuff, but the irony is that what drew me to it initially was the idea of the loss of self you experience as a mother! I didn't read it as a reinvention in some sort of maternal saintliness, nor mean to push that experience on anyone else. This sentence was what caught me:

When I did get back to me, I was gone. This is the thing that women don’t tell each other about motherhood. That you will never be who you were. That you will not see anything the way you used to see it, you will never hear language the way you used to hear it, music, color, photos, friends, family, career path–nothing or no one came through my transition from single woman to mother unexamined. Least of all myself.

And I didn't stop to realise that her message was a wholly positive one, and I read this paragraph in a far darker tone than the last line actually posits, thinking 'yes! You are lost and nothing is the same!' before I reached the end of the sentence. And then I just assumed the post was about there being a silver lining, somehow.

I can certainly report that I'm a FAR more awful person now that I have children. I too was consumed with their infant beauty but I couldn't cope with anything else and much of the time I just wish I could be off the hamster wheel and just ... be myself, by myself for an unspecified amount of time. And yes, all my negative characteristics and tendencies have been magnified tenfold, and everyone around me is burning like targeted ants in the beam of my ... untransformedness.

Your point about all pervasiveness is really important, and, well, I'm sorry for not reading this more carefully. I thought it was a far more balanced piece than it is. For me, the reality is that I felt all those feelings, but couldn't follow through. I want it all, but never had the gumption to make it real. As for you, I think you're underplaying the importance of your different engagement with the world, but I know exactly what you mean. I'm really glad you commented.

Ok, let's try another post by someone who made a point about bonding and new babies and motherhood and how it isn't the same picture book story for everyone. This moving post from Betty Octopus.

incredibly beautiful description of motherhood

The yellow from the canvas of day bled all over the black watercolor of night and time became nothing. There was a rhythm of waking of feeding and sleeping. Of changing diapers and cuddling and eating again of sleeping again and I was lost in the curves of my children’s wrists and in the folds of their necks and the freshly baked bread smell of a new baby and the fragile, startling cries that made me gasp inaudibly and sent my heart flitting in my chest like a desperate butterfly.

Click for the link to the post. 

blankie

I  was always a teddy bear sort of girl. Loads of them, arrayed around the bed. Until... well, until I moved in with a man, in truth. not a thumbsucker but a nailbiter. I never had a blankie.

But this morning I had ten minutes to spare, and I'd stayed up later than I should've the night before. So I went upstairs and lay down on the bed. There was my manky hoodie, lumped in a pile on the unmade bed. I lay down and rested my head on it. It felt still warm from being worn earlier, though I'm sure it can't have been. Soft from a decade of wearing and washing. My god, it was the comfiest, most comforting thing, and I basically went to sleep for 10 minutes.

I didn't quite realise it before, but my hoodie is my blankie.

wonderful man

Sorry, perhaps I should elaborate on what this is - this is a man who started out adopting orangutan babies and ended up regrowing thousands of hectares of rain forest - in just a few years.

It's heartening to see this on many levels - that one person can make such a difference, how miraculously resourceful and effective people can be, as well as greedy and destructive. How we could, if we put this model into practice, maybe save the world. That change really is possible - you can regrow an Eden from a poisoned wasteland with some ingenuity and co operation and energy. If he can do it...

beasts and babes

I fear this amazing place is the Yew Tunnel at Kilmacurra, which I've recently heard is condemned due to disease - a tragedy, and we've only just found it :(

 Across the lake - the Beast stalks...

Funny, I could swear I'd never been here before, but the Beast pokes at something familiar feeling. I think I must have gone there with my godparents' family once.

 My little Red Riding Hood.

pretty places

I feel like complaining but someone posted a picture of a white hand holding a withered, skeletal African child's hand on facebook today, and made the point that many people in the world would love to have our lives that we hate. You can't argue with that, so I won't complain about my minor discomforts and stresses.

Instead I'll post a picture Olivia took on our walk into Avondale House on the weekend. It's a beautiful place and the sun was shining. There are trees, and green, and squirrels. Everything was wet from the melted frost (which sadly curtailed our playground activities - and then the other play ground was still locked. And when we went back on the way home, both kids were enjoying themselves but Olivia somehow wet herself and that was the end of the fun. She was quite bothered by that. Should I worry about an eight year old occasionally wetting herself? I think it's probably to do with just not going to the toilet frequently enough. I hope so, anyway.)

ANYWAY. Photo.

If you want beautiful photos and no whinging to detract from them, you should go look at Milk-Moon (see blogroll) that has such pretty words to match. 

want... sigh...

Once upon a time, having one of these meant feeling rich...

I miss that. I miss them too.

oh yes!

The answer is simple: this time in history demands we be BOLD when we give birth. There is no right or wrong birth choice -- a mother can decide on a natural birth or feel she needs pain-relieving drugs -- but there is a choice. Right now pregnant mothers are making no choices when it comes to childbirth. They are sleepwalking 1950s housewives brainwashed into thinking they are not qualified to deliver their babies and submitting to a medical system that is forgetting how to help women deliver babies beyond surgery.


Great article!

I was feeling a bit stroppy because some woman I don't know friended me on facebook because we have causes and interests in common, and she's obviously seen my comments and decided she wants in on my facebook life.

I kind of hate that... because I don't want to see photos of random people's kids or lives, on there, it's so gratuitous and cluttered. But it's rude to say no.

She posted a photo of herself all dolled up for a rare night out a while ago, ankle boots and LBD a gogo, and I though, groan, why do I need to see this. But then I just noticed she'd posted one of her husband doing a similar sexy (silly) pose in his gladrags and I suddenly feel all full of the warm fuzzies for them and the celebration they're making out of it and I hope they have a nice night out.

Damn my sentimental, empathetic heart. 

unusual

I just came back from my friend's pristine and beautiful new dream home and cleared the horrible counter beside the sink. Is it the kelp at work?

Normally I just look at it hate the mess, feel ashamed and wish I was dead but tonight I wanted it clean and ... cleaned it. Well, not quite done yet, I don't know how to clean the gunky wall behind it, but, still, it's a clear space instead of a no-go area.



My friend's French husband calls his 18 month old daughter 'mon coeur' and it slays me every time. Slays me.

perspectives

I was scared of the dark, as a kid. I'm still... conflicted about it at times. Not darkness, just what might be in it. Lurking. Waiting. Breathing.

When we were watching Tremors last week, I suggested to my four year old he stop imagining he's one of the frightened, jeopardised humans being hunted, and imagine instead that he's a hungry wormbeast, on the look out for dinner.

I have no idea why I never thought of that one before.

I was thinking about it again as I walked down our dark lane to get the bins. Why not stop thinking about shadows, and feel your sharp teeth, and growing claws, feel your muscles moving as you walk stalk and your bright green eyes glowing softly in the darkness. Night vision. Hunger.

Then I stood in a puddle.

watch this space

So years ago, when Olivia was small, a friend told me about thyroid underaction, and taking Kelp tablets for it. And I filed that away, and did nothing with it.

Some many months ago, I posted about being cold, and a commenter who I don't know but appreciate suggested getting my thyroid tested. I googled it, and found lots of relevant symptoms like weight gain and depression and apathy and all sorts of other ones, and thought, wow, I should get it tested, even though it sounds like it's too  good to be true, that all of my shit might come down to a physical condition.

So, I hadn't yet committed to the €65 doctor visit and the blood test, but I've been meaning to. You know the way. Today I took the kids to the kineseologist. I wanted to check on Olivia's stomach pains, and the progression of her gluten intolerance (not good. It's time to accept it and deal with it better).

The good news is that I asked her about my thyroid, and Olivia's - and bam. Both of us have underactive thyroids. And no blood test involved.

Now if the idea of kinesiology and muscle testing upsets and enrages you, please feel free to stop reading, because I'm going to write about it, with enthusiasm, from here.

When you muscle test for allergies, the person being tested holds their arm straight out from their body, and tries to keep it level while the practitioner puts pressure on it to try and push it down. You start off like that, so they know how much pressure is normal.

Then you hold the thing you're testing, say cheese, against your cheek. If you're allergic, a most bizarre sensation occurs - all your strength seems to drop away, and you can't stop your arm being pushed straight down. If you're not sensitive, nothing changes.

Today when I held the little thyroid bottle, my arm dropped straight away. It's so weird, the sudden absence of strength. Then I held the bottle together with a small bottle of kelp tablets, and my arm stayed level again, no problem. Now, how many a day?
6? My arm dropped.
9? My arm stayed strong.
12? My arm dropped again, not as low as 6, but it did.

Nine it is.

The first time I was introduced to the idea was at a new agey yoga/shiatsu seminar thingy. The guy doing the course put up a poster of a woman breastfeeding a baby. My sister, who'd been premature and in an incubator alone for a week and never got breastfed, when I did the muscle test on her looking at the picture, her arm dropped away from her instantly, and she got very upset and angry.

It's a simple and fascinating way to answer questions, and find out what you really need, never mind diagnosing diseases or allergies.  And it's fun :)

So yes: I will be embarking on a course of kelp tablets, and you can mark its progress on these pages over the next couple months. Will the weeping and misery and low energy reverse? Could I be all better? Or even a little better?

In fairness, you can't see my scary draft folder, which would be the real decider, but that will just have to be that. Imagine, readers, the shit I don't post...

Oh! Also, Olivia's been taking L-Tryptophan, an amino acid currently banned in the EU. However, she's already stopped having the crazed, hormonal, depressive angry weeping fits and fights that were wrecking us all (5 times a day) and is no longer going to bed crying every night, so I'm optimistic about that too. I'm giving it to her for her OCD type hypersensitivity, after seeing that it helps on an internet message board. I checked out dosage and safety today, and I can give her a whole capsule.

I feel optimistic. I feel mildly hopeful. The gluten intolerance is daunting, but it's getting worse, so it's time to just get real and deal with it. So. We'll have to.

dreams

'This morning I dreamed that I pissed off people working at the zoo with my opinions about insecticide.

They'd melted a glacier they'd found, and prehistoric flies swarmed out. Their plan was to increase the insecticide they sprayed as a way to combat prehistoric lurgies. They didn't like my statement that that wasn't a really great solution. In my dream I wrestled with my need to discuss things and give opinions and the necessity of not alienating people - hey, just like real life. Sigh.

There's not a lot of place for a full length mirror in my house, and yesterday I dreamed that I suddenly discovered we had a corridor I hadn't noticed that I could place it in, and get some perspective on, or distance from? what  I looked like. Symbolic, eh? 

deja vu

On a whim, I just had a quick browse through a new incarnation of a group blog I used to write for, way way back in the mists of time.

It's no longer active, but I came across this post and found myself disgusted. I was just about to leave a comment, when I discovered I already had, some time ago.

I'm half surprised by the restraint of what I wrote then, because what I was going to say today was 'fuck you.' Fuck you and your presumptive condescending judgement and distorted sense of entitlement, poster whose name I can't be bothered to look up.

What the hell is wrong with people???

In other news, I just Youtubed the foxes jumping on a trampoline for Bodhi, and the sidebar videos contained a man with a spider living under the skin of his finger (vomit), a gorilla killing and eating a dog in a zoo (trauma!) and a spider biting a killing a cat  (which the poster of the video presumably taped from an upstairs window and did nothing?).

This world can be a horrible place.