Sunday 26 July 2015

Falling Down

Breaking point. Any of you who have seen the 1991 film 'Falling Down', starring Michael Douglas will know exactly what I am talking about. The straw that broke the camel's back. In the film, Douglas, a man on the edge, goes into a local fast food establishment and orders breakfast. It is three minutes past the 11.30am cut off time for serving breakfast and the staff refuse to serve him. Douglas chucks a wobbler, takes out a shotgun and accidentally takes pot shots. The terrified staff eventually serve him breakfast (while bears little resemblance to the advertisement displayed on the wall, prompting another reaction from Douglas).

I had one of those moments yesterday. You could say that I brought it on myself, bringing myself and my two fellow vegetarian chizzlers to a well-known multi-national chain of fast food ‘restaurants’ as a treat for being dragged along to yet another work related ‘yoke’. The restaurant is the kind of establishment that pre-baby-me swore that I would never bring my yet to be born children to – My children would only dine on home cooked goodness. Bless my innocent good intentions.

I was yet to appreciate the lure of the much coveted toy that accompanied children’s meals. Except this establishment doesn’t offer vegetarian children’s meals, so you can’t avail of the ‘free’ toy, unless you buy them for one euro each. In fairness though, the toys are pretty decent.
Lil woman wanted chips. I ordered a veggie wrap, which is actually a veggie burger cut in two, dressed with salad. The boy wanted the veggie burger, not cut in two, in a burger bun i.e. like a ‘real’ burger.

You get me ? Simple, right ? Nope.

The pleasant Young Fella at the Till couldn’t find an A.N.Other option on his till to key in our request, so he apologetically called his manager to advise. Equally pleasant, Helga told me that because of ‘customer demand’, the veggie burger in a burger bun option had been taken off the menu and was replaced with the wrap.

‘But I AM a customer. Small boy is a potential customer, if you would just give him what he wants. It IS a veggie burger after all’, I protested and stated the obvious. ‘You just cut it in half and put it in a wrap.’

Helga, very politely, said that she couldn’t ask the kitchen to ‘alter the menu’ as it would set a precedent.

Alter the menu ? Precedent? Really ?

I could just see the queues of vegetarians forming outside, at the thought that they could now have the veggie option in a thick, spongy round carbohydrate instead of the flat round option.

‘It can be our secret. I won’t tell anyone’, I whispered calmly, ‘I swear.’

I pointed to the pasty face of the hungry boy.

‘He JUST wants a veggie burger.’

I was aware that I was now speaking in a high pitched squeaky voice, somewhere between hysteria and bursting into tears. Helga remained calm and pleasant. I felt that she had training in Customer Relations, or perhaps Hostage Management. Helga suggested that they could prepare the usual veggie wrap, but give me an extra burger bun so that we ‘could assemble’ the burger ourselves at the table.

‘You aren’t going to charge me extra for the bun, are you ?’ I dared to ask.

The queue of people behind me were getting fidgety. They wanted their fast food fast. Faster than my queue was going. Tutting and throwing of eyes.

‘No madam, no extra charge’, Helga said reassuringly.

‘Thank you’, I said, barely audible now. ‘No relish please.’

I stepped away from the counter, exchanging a smile with the amused Young Fella at the Till. At the table, we took the cut-in-two burger out of the wrap and put it into the burger bun. Hungry boy horsed into it.  Little woman wrapped some of her chips in the discarded wrap.  Two contented children and a relieved Momma.   A small victory for the little people.

Doot, doot, doot, doot, do, I’m lovin’ it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-eREiQhBDIk

Thursday 23 July 2015

Waiting for Hu

I was recently asked by MS Ireland to be one of their ambassadors, along with my children, for their Readathon fund raising campaign later this year.  I was happy to oblige this organisation who have helped me in many ways.  But more about that another time soon. 

Today though, I’ll just write about today.  MS Ireland organised a photographer and staff from MS Ireland and the marketing company to come to my home to get some publicity photographs for the Readathon this afternoon.  I organised a day off work and the little ones were attending a summer camp from 10am to 1pm.  Three whole hours to clean the house and to beautify and gather myself.  Sorted, it seemed.
I thought that I would make a head start by power hosing showering the children and myself last night, but we were all too tired for that craic.  I set my alarm for 7am, but I was awake before the beep, restless.  I showered and took great care applying fake tan to my legs.  I peeled two tired children out of their beds, scrubbing away days of accumulated grime.  Gleaming, I deposited them into the summer camp and set out to clean Poppy Cottage with gusto.  I started with the bathroom, with a toothbrush and bleach.  No crevice was left unscrubbed.  The toilet seat was so clean that not alone could you eat your dinner from it, you would also lick the bowl.   I placed a lovely arrangement of roses on the bathroom window.  I stood back to admire my work and hoped that my visitors would appreciate it when they spent a penny.

To the kitchen.  I was taking no chances here.  I assumed that my visitors may have need to look in my cupboards, swipe their hands across my shelves, look under the sink.  I cleaned and scrubbed accordingly.  More roses in a vase to complete the look.
The living room.  The likely scene for the family photos.  Carefully vacuuming and mopping required here, mostly out of fear that my visitors dropped something and had to get on their hands and knees, only to discover a new eco system comprising of popcorn and pasta droplets under the couch.  

Bedrooms.  Essential to clean these from top to bottom, in case my visitors need a wee lie-down, mid photo shoot.  I stopped short of changing the bed sheets.  Although this was essential, it had to be abandoned nonetheless, as the clock ticked on.  I regretted spending so long cleaning the bathroom.  There was shoving of clothes into wardrobes and other spaces.  I hoped that my visitors had no need to go pooching in my cupboards.  
I took the time to spray my roses for green fly.  Why ?  An essential task to produce photographs showing a family reading ?  Perhaps the photographer would like a close up ? Roses and novels ?  Hardly.  Did I think that this was a feature for 'House and Home' magazine ?

In the midst of this, I did manage to declutter some.  I binned 6 months’ worth of Sunday Times magazines.  The ones that I kept in the hope that I would have a ‘me day’ sometime and look through them all, tearing out inspiring photographs.  It was a painful parting.  As I write now though, I am contemplating retrieving said magazines.  Yes, I think I will. 
One o’clock came too quickly and I had to collect the children from the summer camp.  At home, we had the usual, painful stand off about Mya’s attire.  She, quite rightly, said that the photographs should be about ‘our faces and books’ and that it didn’t matter what she wore.  Hard to argue with that logic.  We compromised with pink leggings, rather than the usual worn-to-death black ones. 

I hadn’t planned my own outfit and I was out of time, so I pulled on a half ironed top and jeans, covering up the carefully applied fake tan.  Usually my fake tan application resembles an accident in a chocolate factory, but today I looked au naturelle, like I had sunbathed in the South of France.  No time to apply nail varnish either.  Maybe I should have given the greenfly spraying a miss. 
I didn’t want the children to undo my tidying, so they were only allowed to eat food that didn’t require cooking, or a plate or create crumbs.  They couldn’t believe their eyes that they were having chocolate for lunch.

The crew of three arrived at 2pm on the button and the photographic shoot went smoothly.  Hu, the photographer was lovely and had a great way with my camera shy children.   But despite his cajoling and my offers of ‘paper money’ later, Leon barely cracked a smile throughout and refused to remove his thick hoodie.  Mya meanwhile, wouldn’t pull her hair back from her face.  I hope that we will, at least, see her nose in the photos. 

Then they were gone.  I realised that no one had peed in my loo, looked in my cupboards, or under the bed, nor swiped my shelves for dust.  I really should have taken five minutes to do my nails.
Still, the house is cleaner than it has been in months.  I’m ready for visitors.  But if you are coming, can you do so before the dust settles (literally), the flowers wilt and I have to do it all again ?

Wednesday 22 July 2015

Jerusalem

The quietness was the first thing that struck me.  I’d been here before, but I had forgotten how silently beautiful it was, this chapel.  ‘If this was in France, there would be paid guided tours to get in here, with queues of people outside,’ I thought, wondering how many local people even knew it was here, never mind visit. 

I found it hard to concentrate on our Tour Guide’s facts and figures, reassuring myself that I am a visual person and needed to see it all written down, or illustrated on paper to retain such information.  Or maybe I just retain things that I consider useful?  If I need to find out more, I can always consult with Google after all.

‘That balcony was built for John Paul II’s visit to Ireland in 1979’, the Tour Guide said and suddenly, I tuned in.  The year that Eoin Paul Russell was born, while the Pope was in Drogheda.  I was a 5 year old, bored to tears in Mrs Mc’s house with nothing on TV, except yer man, smiling and waving to the joyful crowd.   I was raging that I didn’t have a new sister.   Meanwhile my Dad trying to convince the security staff in Drogheda Hospital that his wife really was having a baby and that he wasn’t just blagging a much sought after parking space to go and see the Pope.  My mother queued for the pay phone in the hospital.  She had to interrupt my Nana retelling details of the Pope’s visit to announce that there was a new grandson, before her coins ran out.  My illusion of how innocent and holy the Papal visit was, was dispelled many years later when I heard about a teenage encounter, underneath a currach en-route to see the Pope in Knock.  I guess it was the nearest thing to a music festival in the ‘70’s.

The Tour Guide pointed out the Stations of the Cross.  They seemed to be hand painted directly on the walls in pastel shades.  A few extra stations had been added, beyond the usual twelve.  'To prolong prayer?  To fill the wall space ?', I wondered.
A lot quieter than usual, probably because of the unfamiliar company, he eventually whispered,
 
‘Mam?’
‘Yes?’

‘You know Jerusalem ?’
‘Eh, yes ?’ I said, hoping that there was no accurate geographical information required in what was to come next.

‘Can we go there ? Jerusalem?’

‘Maybe, some day.  Why Jerusalem?’ I wondered how his holiday destination of choice had jumped so drastically from Disney Land.

‘I’d like to go and see Jesus’s grave.  But he’s not there anymore.  He went up to heaven. ‘ I smiled and nodded, going along with this familiar story as if it was the first time that I had heard it.

The Tour Guide moved us along.  I regretted that I hadn’t more time to take it all in.  I had one of those familiar Greta Garbo moments, where I realised that I wanted to be alone. 

Friday 17 July 2015

Password Overload

Although I use t’internet daily for work and personal reasons and have a very smart phone, I am pretty much a techo dinosaur.  I’m so bad, or lazy, that I haven’t quite sussed the music downloading thing.  Maybe it’s because there is no space left on the afore mentioned smart ass phone, because I haven’t figured out how to move them to a fluffy cloud in Internet Land.  It’s driving me crazy, as I’d love to experiment further with Instagram, which, I expect would make me feel like a complete and rounded human being.

Right now though, I am struggling with passwords.  Passwords for flipping everything.  I got a slap-on-the-wrist email from the IT department at work this week. They did a security check on the organisations email passwords and found that ‘some’ members of staff were still using ‘PASSWORD’ as their, well, password, which represented a security risk.  Moi included.  Morto.  Slap (rather than public flogging) accepted. Password changed.
Truth is, I’m struggling to keep up.  I don’t think that I can take ONE more password.  To enter the building at work via the back entrance, I’ve to enter a code.  To enter the office via the café, there is another code.  Assuming that I have remembered these, I have a password to turn on the computer and, as mentioned above) a different one to access email.  I’ve to use another system, with unique password, to approve staff requests for annual leave and a different one to (mis)manage my own.  To approve payments, there is a whole other system, with, of course, a sequence of magic numbers.  It’s a wonder we get anything done at all. 

I’m an approver to authorise weekly wages for a work related venture.   When I see the email coming in, I hide under the desk until my co-approver does the approval.  I can’t be dealing with the three stage approval thing.  It is the same system for my personal bank.  I’ve changed my password so often now that I regularly draw a blank and have to get the password reset.  My kindly on-line bank person recently told me now that I can do all of this through their automated service.  I think that they set the new system purely to cut down the workload of having to deal with me.

In hindsight, it all started to go horribly wrong when security was hiked up across t’internet and 1. You had to use eight digit codes, with at least one capital letter.  2. You couldn’t reuse a password that you had used previously.  Messages flash across the screen warning you not to write the password down.  You tell yourself that this new password is so clever that you couldn’t possibly forget it … at least until you log on again anyway …
In setting up this blog, I inadvertently linked it to my Google account, where I also inadvertently set the security settings to ‘Fort Knox’.  For convenience, sometimes I write blogs on my phone.  In order for me to upload a blog, I enter a password and then have to enter a code sent to my mobile phone.   It seems that my Google account doesn’t like my iPhone and won’t let me upload photos to the blog, hence my sadly-lacking-in-photos blog.  It's not really very 'convenient' at all ! You are lucky to be reading this at all.

And as for bills.  This go-green, save-the-planet, no-paper bill thing is good for me, but every month, I get a stream of emails advising me that my bill is available to view online.  Simple !  If only I could remember the fricking username and of course, password.  Sometimes, I can’t cope with the logging in.  So, sometimes I guess how much the bill is, fire a few euro in, via my eight-digit-three-stage-online-banking-system and hope that the Sheriff’s Office don’t come looking for me.   I don’t know that the big deal is about security around bills anyway.  What’s the worst that will happen ?  Someone has a Bill Fairy Moment, goes online and pays a bill for me ?  I could live with that.
I was terribly excited about getting a new laptop recently.  But the initial set up and inevitable set up codes almost had me in tears.  No, I do not want to enter the name of my first pet as a reminder if I get locked out.  I lamented the passing of the good old days when you just plugged it in and away ya go.  I’ve just about conquered Word, t’internet and I’ll leave it at that.  The other new fangled functions can wait until my seven year olds figure them out and show me.

It’s always the simple things that get you in the end though, isn’t it ?  I stood at a checkout in LidldAldi recently.  The children swinging out of the trolley.  Huge queue behind me.  They all looked like Russian body builders, who would open their beer cans with their teeth.  My new shiny bank card wouldn’t work.  My mouth went dry, wondering how I had the wrong password, despite using the same number for years.  Worried that I would block the card and have to wait a week while it was all sorted out.  Morto, I left the trolley aside and felt mild panic that MAYBE someone had accessed my bank account, despite my three-stage-security system.  Thankfully, it was much simpler than that.  My credit card company had also sent me a similarly shiny new card and I was using it by mistake.  Phew.   
Passwords to download apps, assuming I have enough space freed up on my phone.  Passwords to turn on my two phones, for Facebook, Skype and Twitter.  To access my two personal email accounts.  Remembering the passwords for the three work related Facebook accounts, never mind updating the content.  Did I mention the code for the photocopier ?

I guess this high security thing is here to stay, but if someone offered to surgically insert a chip in my arm to avoid all of this password malarkey, I’d be first to hop on the operating table.  Because I can’t be doing with this.

Wednesday 15 July 2015

NCT Calling

Latest Blog Post : NCT Calling

My Ford Mondeo is up for its NCT at 8.40am in the morning.  Genius that I am, when I booked it weeks ago, I thought that I’d get it over and done with - to get a clear run of the day afterwards.   I wasn’t thinking that I might be banjaxed after a weeks work and that I would have to haul two seven year olds out of bed to come with me.  Too late now.  I’ll be damned if I am going to loose my booking fee.

I got a puncture last week.  Mr Tyre Fixer gave me a lecture about getting my tracking tested every six months, to prevent the same thing happening again on fairly new tyres.  Forking out €220 for two new tyres and tracking was enough of a lesson for me, to not allow that to happen again.

Other than that, I didn’t do any mechanical prep for tomorrow.  But that’s not to say that I haven’t prepared for it.

I’ve only had my new-to-me-car since last Hallowe’en, courtesy of the Credit Union, bless their cotton socks.   Until tonight,  I haven’t had a reason to open the bonnet … Okay, I probably should have been checking ‘car stuff’ regularly, but I haven’t.  I’m thinking of doing a wee crash course in ‘Servicing One’s Own Car For Plebs’ to help me in this problem area.

For the life of me, I couldn’t find the lever to open the bonnet.  I consulted the car manual.  From the diagram, I still couldn’t figure it out.  A good twenty minutes I was, fumbling around the steering wheel.  Before consulting Google, I asked the children to figure it out.  Mya was thrilled with herself when she spotted it, on the passenger side of the car.  Since when were yokes like that moved over that side of cars ??? Just as well that it wasn’t an emergency. 

Bonnet opened, I set about checking the oil.  Note to self : Never try to check engine oil with two seven enthusiastic seven year olds, thrilled with the dipping and wiping and fighting over who does it, while also swiping my top with a good glug of oil.  GIVE ME STRENGTH !!  Turns out the Mondeo needed a good glug of oil, so off we went to the garage.   The children reckoned that we should buy an air freshener.  A Simpson’s cartoon one.  ‘We could be on to something here’, I thought.  Maybe nice Car Tester Man likes fragrance other than 'wet dog' and surely he gets humour ?

‘We should get the car washed too’, piped up Leon.  ‘Agreed’, I thought.  Car Tester Man will see that I’ve gone the extra mile.  He might have a touch of OCD around car cleanliness.  Let’s hope so.

Back home and the still enthusiastic children, who are usually allergic to housework, wanted to help me to clean out the car.  At this stage, it was almost 9pm and I actively encouraged them indoors to play on any electronic device they wanted.  ‘NOOOOOooo Mam, we are helping you !’.  It was not negotiable.

Mya got into the car boot and started hoovering.  She was having a whale of a time.  Meanwhile, Leon undid all of the nice car wash shininess by hand washing the windows.  As I pulled out the children’s car seats to clean behind them, I realised what total mingers my children are.  I’m a minger too for not noticing the various decomposed organic matter shoved into the crevices at the base of the seat belts.   I tried not to wretch.  An entire stand-alone eco system living in my car.  I could almost run a travelling science show in it.  I could charge in and recoup the money spent on my new car tyres.  I temporarily reclaimed the hoover from my daughter to clean this organic matter out.  A very strange noise ran up the hose.  The dull thud of thick organic stuff, amid the rattle of metal.  I wondered if it was my long lost earring, or two euro coins.  But it’s never a TWO euro coin though, is it ?  It’s always just coppers for me.

Leon suddenly turned into the OCD project foreman and began giving me orders.  ‘Get those shopping bags out of the boot Mam !’.  ‘I don’t like that cream in the door’.  Cream ?  I had a look – It was anti-wrinkle cream.  Car Tester Man does not need to think of me in that light.  I agreed with my boy.  It has to go.

I began to think more strategically.  Maybe I should try to get Car Tester Man to feel sorry for me.  A casually placed bank statement left on the passenger seat perhaps ?  My laminate from the MS Patient summit that I attended recently, accidently ‘dropped’ on the car floor ?  Medication alongside ? Two bed head children standing by my side, looking all street urchin ?  Note to Self 2 : Make sure to muck up their faces in the morning.  I was also wondering what nationality Car Tester Man would be, as, to date, I’ve never met an Irish born tester.  I wondered about having a strategically placed music track in his native tongue on the CD as he turns the car on, to get Car Tester Man in the mood for passing my wee motor, a bit like baking fresh bread for a house viewing and hope that no one notices the damp on the ceiling.


Will I wear a shorter skirt/tighter top/redder lipstick ?  Whatever it takes to get it over the line.  I suppose there’s a bit of technical stuff thrown in there too, but you hardly expect me to know about that ?

Tuesday 14 July 2015

Home with a capital 'H'

I always like driving home, especially after a long day in the office, but I really love driving Home. To the one with the capital ‘H’. Milltown, Kilmainhamwood, Co Meath. A place that lots of people haven’t heard of. ‘Ah, Brian Stafford country’, some people say and I wonder is it really that long since we have had a GAA legend in our midst. ‘Near Gypsum Industries’. Or mention Cabra Castle, outside of Kingscourt and someone says that they have been to a wedding there. ‘Oh, to be in Dun-A-Ri …’, the song goes. (Although one must emphasise that Kingscourt is in Co Cavan, albeit only two miles away, and therefore is a different republic altogether … obviously).

I’m of that rare breed that Home is actually the house where I was brought up, the expectation from a farming background that Home is a constant. I love driving up the Milltown Glen, the steep incline, the final furlong on the drive home. If you blind folded me, I think that I would know when I arrived in the Glen. It’s a damp woody smell. The sound of the river. The temperature a degree or two lower than on the main road, the overlapping trees keeping the sun out.

I come from a large family, many of whom still live in proximity to where my family live, the Russell family home. The children get confused about who-is-who. There was a stage when I could fob them off with the blanket explanation, ‘he/she is your cousin.’ Not anymore. The first/second cousin/second cousin-once-removed craic is so confusing, that I get confused myself.  And that's before we even mention my Mam's family, the Bellews.  Can we not just say that we are related ?

My parents' house is sometimes like a train station. When the word gets out that someone is ‘home’, random rellies can pop in at any time. I spent four rare days there recently, with the children. At one stage, so many school friends/cousins/uncles/aunts had called in that Mya, eyes wide open said, ‘I wonder who will walk in through the door next ?’

Two uncles happened to arrive at the same time last Saturday. Between them and my father, they discussed/ranted/cursed about Greece, the Euro, the Angelus, milk quotas and GAA. The language was colourful. Uncle James told a tale, as only he can, about a fella he knew. It was probably half true, although I’m not sure which half. The grown-ups laughed. My children sat watching this mini drama unfold before their eyes, not really sure what was going on, but amused by it all.

As children, the gatherings usually included myself and my three brothers, my cousins that lived across the hedge on one side, and other cousins who lived on the other side, with just a field in between. We could run safely between the houses. Our cousins-cousins came along.  And sometimes kids from ‘the town’ came along too.  And if you were lucky, the Bellew cousins.  To bring the cows home for milking along the dry mud tracks or to pick stones from newly ploughed fields. The more the merrier. Summers seemed endless. The sun always seemed to shine. Spontaneous picnics with cream crackers and diluted orange. Maybe even a sugar sandwich thrown in there too. It was one big adventure. Gradually, we started to grow up and move away and while it is harder to get us all together, the family connection and the importance of the Gathering of the Clan has always remained strong.

I’ve spent a lot of time at home this year. Mostly to help heal my little heart. Although I am 41-and-a-half and really should be pampering my Mam, she is spoiling me. Homemade bread and tea in bed. Minding the children, so that I can have a lie-on, listening to the river. Doing my laundry. Praying for me. Listening. We hop in the car and go visiting. Chatting in the car, where all life’s problems are solved. Delighted that I made the effort to visit someone, but then feeling guilty about those I didn’t. There’s never enough time and too many relations. Next time. Uncles don’t ask me how I am, but squeeze my hand, or hug me a little bit harder than they normally would, or throw me a wink and I know that they are thinking of me.

The Gatherings now centre around the next generation of cousins and second cousins. And our cousins-cousins children. My cousin Anthony’s 40th birthday party last weekend was one such example. Everywhere you looked, there was a clatter of children, running, laughing, tousling. Red cheeks, snotty noses and wet socks. Admiration for the latest arrivals and marvelling at how they have progressed. Watching your cousins grow into their roles as parents. Messing and craic. Slagging – leave your sensitivity at the door. Tea and wine. Home baking and cooking. All Russell specialities.

A walk to Ervey Lake and I head back to Kildare tired, but recharged. Always glad that I made the journey, but happy to be home (small ‘h’), to unpack my freshly laundered clothes. I flick through the radio stations a few days later and I hear Hector Ó hEochagáin and his thick Meath accent and the slagging. And I feel a little pang as I think of Home.

Saturday 4 July 2015

When The Cupboard is Bare

School’s out, uniforms are in the bin and routine is out the window.  I’m loving it.  I can cruise into work, shaving ten minutes off my travel time, without the heaving school traffic congestion in Newbridge.  My dog is delighted with his longer walks in the morning time. The children and I are enjoying a reprieve from the school year clock-watching in the morning time.

The school year routine meant that the fridge was always full of whatever fickle lunch requests my children had on a given week.  No sooner that one of them decided on their ‘most favourite thing for lunch ever’, a week later, there was a change of mind to ‘I’m not eating that any more, it’s disgusting’ and it was back to the drawing board.

The children were pretty banjaxed last evening after their first weeks’ holiday of sun, fresh air, athletics and late nights.   After a trip to the newly renovated playground in town, we made a quick trip to Lidl to get some essentials – cat food, vegetable stock cubes and cat food – and we headed home.

I could tell from the tired faces that tea was going to be a battle.  Leon spread eagled on the couch, wanted a big glass of milk.  I, his obedient servant, obliged in pouring a glass, but also emptying the carton.  I stood in the kitchen offering suggestions about what the pair might like to eat, sounding like a broken record saying, ‘I’m not standing here all night’.   I had déjà vu, remembering my mother saying the same thing when I was a child.  Sorry Mammy Kay, I was a pain in the ass.

Mya, curled up like a cat, said that she wanted pasta and pesto, Leon, pancakes.  Sorted, thought I, two fail safe options.  Except when there is no pasta in the cupboard or milk in the fridge to make pancakes.  How did I manage that ?  I NEVER run out of pasta.  Ever.  Except today.  Just ten minutes previously, I was standing in a shop, laden down with milk and pasta.  On other occasions, I could set up a pasta shop, with my ‘just in case’ supply of the non-perishable.  The observant among you will have noticed that both menu options were sadly lacking in vitamins, but I can verify that the children got their quota from the heap of strawberries on Thursday.  They ate them so fast that I got none of them.  Not one lovely fresh Wexford strawberry for me …

No milk last night, meant no milk for breakfast this morning and I intended today, Saturday, to have the laziest of starts.  There was no option, but pile the two of them back in the car and drive down to the shops.  Except my little woman was so exhausted that she begged me not to put her in the car again.  Her tired, pasty face put the guilts on me.  Little man, on the other hand told his sister that she was ‘a big meanie with a lazy bum’ and ordered in the car.  Still in her feline curl, Mya gave him a look that said, ‘I ain’t going anywhere.’
Stand-offs between two strong minded seven year olds can be trying and I wasn’t in the humour for refereeing.  I chatted to them to about what compromise was and suggested that they come to a mutually agreeable solution. Car ? No car ?.  Choose something else for dinner.  I showed them four different frozen veggie options.  ‘No’, they said in unison.  ‘They are all DISGUSTING.’   One of their favourite word these days.  Funnily, I remember my baby brother Eoin as a child, using the same word regularly, often in reference to new clothes that he didn’t fancy.  Maybe the use of certain words are hereditary.  

I advised the children to hurry up with their decision as I was opening my bottle of wine any minute. They huffed and puffed from their couch throne.  I opened the wine.  I cooked some risotto rice and thought about drinking the wine directly from the bottle.
I put the pesto into the fluffy cooked rice.  It looked good.  Real comfort food.  ‘That’s what people eat in Rome, you know.  I ate it there and it was yummy,’ I said, hoping that somehow this statement would conjure up an exoticness in their little tired, grumpy heads and encourage them to eat.

I put two bowls in front to the pair and disappeared into the bedroom to take a telephone call.  ‘It’s DISGUSTING Mam !’, the boy roared from the sitting room.  I knew rightly that he hadn’t even tried it.  Phone call over, I noted that my tiny girl had eaten both bowls of rice.  Not a scrap left.  A 50% success rate.  Not bad. 

The boy announced that he would like French toast.  Maybe all that talk of Rome had made him feel continental.  ‘I thought that you didn’t like French toast any more Leon ?.’ ‘I changed my mind Mam.’  I was wondering if he only wanted it so that he could crack the eggs in the bowl.  But no, he horsed into three big slices of the eggy, bready mix.  Mya decided that she wanted a slice too, despite her recent declaration that she won’t eat eggs in anything unless she ‘can’t see them’, because guess what ? ‘They are disgusting.’
Two well fed, tired children went to bed and I had a second, peaceful glass of wine.
It’s now the day-after-the-night-before.  I’m writing this blog, looking out on my garden, through my rather fabulous window boxes.  My boy is snuggled beside me watching Minecraft videos and little woman is still in a deep sleep.  I’d love to bring a bowl of porridge into my leaba, to complete the cosy, satisfied feeling, but alas, milk hasn’t miraculously appeared in my fridge overnight.  It’s too early for wine.  Now that I’m on a roll, I might try some of that French toast for my boy and I.  Before it becomes disgusting again.  Failing that, I’m sure that there is chocolate somewhere.