The Kitchen is Closed

So, my foreign students went and left, as they do and I've figured out how to reset my Facebook settings from Spanish back to English.

So folks, but if any of you are looking for any class of hospitality in the coming weeks, don't bother coming to me.  I can direct you to a lovely hotel down the room.  If you insist on coming here, I can point you towards the kettle and the fridge.  I can't guarantee fresh milk, or biscuits, so it's best that you BYO.  (Naturally, there is a universal exception for wine).

I can't stand over the quality of my toilet facilities either.  It's been three action packed weeks of having two teenage boys here, on top of my own 8 year old one.  All I'll say is that, over the last three weeks, that I have reminded of a poster that my aunt Kathleen and uncle Ciaran had in their bathroom when I was a child, bearing a poignant poem that still has developed meaning over the years -  'If you sprinkle when you tinkle, please be neat and wipe the seat'.

If you would like early-morning homemade pancakes any time soon, can I suggest the Bay Tree in town?  Because I'm done.  At least until Back to School.  The same goes for packed, flipping, lunches.  I won't fret over a balanced diet, human hair, dog hair in food.  If I run out of mayonnaise or milk, we will do without.  (If you are balking at the idea of dog hair in food, just think of it as protein supplement - you heard the ads about keratin in hair, right?)

As for the Socks & Jocks.

Let's face it.  Laundering clothes and undergarments is a chore.

Your children's - You tolerate, only because you love them.  And to gather ammunition for later years. Who, may I ask, invented white, or pastel Socks & Jocks for little people? I'll tell you -  Someone who doesn't have little people, or who doesn't do laundry, that's who.

Guests Socks & Jocks.  Let's just say that there's a limit to what one will do in the name of international relations.

If anyone needs me, I'll be the one lying back on my own couch, slathered in fake tan, drinking wine at 8pm, because night time Josephine Le Taxi has turned off her sign until the end of August.  I may, or may not wear a bra.  I might be cutting my toe nails.  I might be reading, or writing a blog, like I am now, hooray ! (And just for the record, I'm fully clothed as I write this).

I may actually sit down for the full duration of a meal.  The meal may be cream crackers and jam, or some sort of flat carbohydrate with a paste from a jar.  It's unlikely that there will be a table cloth, or napkins.  There may not even be a plate.  My excuse for not shopping is that I need supplies to go down to allow me to 'see what's there' and to create a better view of the mould in the fridge.

There will be no extended queuing for my one-toilet-only Hobbit House, and if there happened to be, I'll ask my children to pee in the garden.  The bringing of electronic devices into the bathroom shall be strictly prohibited.

I may or may not wash the stack of dishes in the sink, or maybe ever, as an experiment on self-cleaning.

But if truth were told, the house seems quiet and I miss hearing The Spaniard belting out tunes from the shower.

Feeling European

It's the final days of having a Spanish and French student in Poppy Cottage, and the hobbit house will soon to return to a teenage-boy-less zone.

For most of the stay, I've had a rotten head cold, that thankfully no one else in the house has caught. A few days into the visit, I caught my thumb in a door, which was excruciatingly painful and made simple things like starting the car and preparing food difficult.  Had it been just myself and the children here, we probably would have lived on breakfast cereal.

I've already discussed feeding the students in a previous blog.  It's only in the last week that I realised though, how much they all love drinking the milk here.  Apparently the milk in both France and Spain isn't a patch on ours.  I can't buy enough of the stuff.

Getting two extra people up and out in the morning has been a little stressful.  Most mornings, I am standing at the back door jingling keys, with my eye on the clock and sweat on my brow.  All being well, I have dropped off my children for the morning and the students for the day and am sitting at my work desk with a cuppa by 9.20am.  My employer gets great value out of me as I pack a full days work into the morning, before dashing back for a 2pm pick up with the children.  I've used the two hour window before the students arrive home to prepare for 'Back to School'.  No lastminute.com here this year.  The Spaniard noticed that I 'shop a lot'.  I laugh.  If only it was for the fun stuff.

The weather, in case you haven't noticed, has been completely pants.  All of my recent slaving in the garden was undone, as the humidity encouraged jungle-like scenes to develop. On top of that, my lawnmower gave up the ghost.  Apparently it just needed a minor adjustment.  Mr Lawnmower Man didn't even charge me for fixing in, but had the machine for 10 days, while my 'football pitch', as the Spaniard called it, grew out of control.   I try to compensate for my overgrown sporting facilities, telling him that the luscious grass is what makes our milk taste so delicious.

The washing machine, in solidarity with the lawnmower, also packed in the other day.  Fan-bloody-tastic.  I was extremely thankful though that I, at least, hadn't given away my previously unused tumble drier, which has been working overtime in the last few weeks. It doesn't know what's hit it.

Speaking of washing, last week, my neighbour's student came to my house for dinner, before a 7pm disco.  There was a great sense of excitement in the house, the shower was on overdrive and there was no sparing on the deodorant.  The student stood before me with his socks.  'Will you wash these for me for tonight please?'.  'Tonight' was now 90 minutes away.  My Domestic Goddess had been maxed out for the day and I say no.  I offered to give him a pair of mine instead.  He's not impressed. I ask if he would like an individually wrapped Cadbury's chocolate mini roll.  He asks if I have something else with caramel.

I spent the first week of the stay fretting over an interview for a job, something that was advertised with an extremely short deadline.  I slapped in an application at the last minute and was notified of interview a few days later.  It's been YEARS since I went for an interview.  This one required a three minute presentation.  I thought about it and researched for a few days, all while getting used to the presence of teenagers in the house.  I wrote my (not half-bad, even if I say so myself) presentation, complete with a nice range of left-of-centre images, all timed to 3 minutes flat. Almost as soon as I had it complete, I decided not to attend for interview after all.  My heart wasn't in it and doing an interview for 'the experience' just wasn't my thing.  So, if any of you out there need a presentation on Arts Participation, I've got one going a beggin'.

In the middle of all of this, I've managed to get delicious slices of  'me-time', including a mad dash to the Galway Film Fleadh on a Saturday.  A manic five-hour round trip, I managed to see the premiere of 'Revolutions: A Roller Derby Story', directed by Laura Mc Gann, had catch ups and networked like you wouldn't believe.  A few snatched hours in Kildare Village, shopping for me, 'a little' and a luxuriously long lunch for one.  I happened across an Irish food promotion and has Presseco and cake for dessert. It's the little things, isn't it?

My dog is delighted with the rare scraps of meat in a usually veggie-only household.  My children love learning elaborate handshakes and the stamp of approval for their new branded sports gear.  'Just Do It' is the new catch phrase in the house.  Oddly, the setting on my Facebook page have changed to Spanish, all by themselves.  Having a good 'Wiffy' connection here has been has a big bonus for both boys.  

Then there was the unimaginable attack on Bastille Day in Nice.  I worried about discussing it with my students the following morning, as the true extent of it unfolded.  They took the news better than I expected.  Neither of them knew anyone involved and I guess that teenagers world's is quite insular. And maybe, there's an element of becoming desensitised by it all.  I worry that my own children will come to regard this sort of thing as 'normal'.  Nonetheless, I was glad that the students, led by the school principal, had an opportunity to discuss it together in school that day.  After the attack, the fallout of Brexit and the more recent coup in Turkey, I will fret until I know that both of my students catch their flights and get through airports safely.   I imagine that all Irish families who have had European students this summer will feel an enhanced connection, and solidarity with our European neighbours after what has happened,  during our watch.  It's hard to know what to say after that.

Channelling my Irish Mammy

It's a fortnight now, since our Spanish student arrived in Poppy Cottage for a three week language school in Athy College.  He was joined by a French student five days ago.  In the intervening period, it seems that the equilibrium has shifted many times in the house.  The only constants has been the rather miserable weather, the endless supply of laundry and me, standing in the kitchen preparing food.

There are three things that I ultimately wanted out of the students stay
1. That the students were happy
2. That they got on well with the children and that the children were also happy
3. That the students liked me ... and my cooking.  Because let's face it, it's all about the grub.  

Apart from the logistics of converting a dining room into a bedroom and juggling work and childcare during the students' stay, the initial thoughts of feeding two teenage boys created a big anxiety in me.  It's been a while since I've cooked for anyone other than my children in my Hobbit House.  It's been even longer since I've cooked meat.  And it's been over 25 years since I've eaten it.  It was highly unlikely that my teenagers would be vegetable loving vegetarians and they aren't.  The more animal flesh they can get their teeth around the better.

Overall, my cooking has gone down well, so far.  There has been a few blips. I couldn't help but feel slightly hurt when my Spanish student politely said that he 'more or less' liked my homemade apple pie.  'More or less?'  No extra marks for my light touch with pastry?  It appeared not.  (But if I am REALLY honest with myself, it could have done with an extra sprinkle of sugar).  My Spanish omelette had a similar response.  I thought that it looked good enough to be photographed for a magazine.  I guess it was a case of presenting sand to the Arabs and expecting them to be impressed.

This is my third time having foreign students and I have established universal food formulas that seem to work for both vegetarians (the children and me) and sometimes fickle students.  It's simple really - Any combination of carbohydrates (pasta, breads, potato), garlic, cheese, tomato and mayonnaise.  If I was looking for an easy life, we could have dined on variations of this for the duration, but in the interest of balance, I threw in a few extra dishes.  Homemade pancakes, early morning, or late at night always go down a treat.  They are like a big group hug, without anyone having to make unnecessary bodily contact.

Last night I made a Chicken Caesar Salad, with roast leg of chicken, while the veggies in the house had pasta.  A neighbour's Spanish student arrived half way through dinner.  'Can I have some dinner please, I'm hungry', he said.  I was amused as I knew he had just finished dinner with my neighbour. I remembered by friend Maria laughing about her son's 'hollow legs', that could store endless amounts of food.  'We are vegetarian you know Andrieu', I said, taking small talk. 'I know, Borja told me already' he smiled.  Hmmm ... They talked about me. I wondered if the context for the conversation was that I was a rubbish cook because I AM veggie, or if I am an excellent cook, DESPITE being veggie.  I was afraid to ask.

The students devoured their dinner, clearing their plates, then asking for some of the children's pasta dish leftovers.  The veggie bolognese got a similar thumbs up.  I dished up pancakes and chocolate spread for dessert.  They couldn't come from the kitchen quick enough.

My Spanish student put his fingers to his lips and blew a kiss.  'My Irish Mother'.

My Irish Mammy heart felt like it might burst.



 

The Boy and The Spaniard

It's almost a week now since our Spanish student arrived at chez Poppy Cottage, at silly o'clock in the night. The Boy was too excited to go to bed before we collected our student from the college.  We were all too tired to really think about the oddness of picking up a young person from a bus and whisking them away into the unknown, the unknown for all of us. The shyness didn't last long.

I felt like I had planned for all eventualities, but I hadn't thought about how having an extra male in the house might shift the balance in the house.

Well, it has.  In fact,The Boy has turned into a walking ball of testosterone. In just seven days, he seems to have acquired broader shoulders, a deeper voice, hairs on his chest and a John Wayneesque stride.  All at the ripe old age of 8.

He has also developed an insatiable appetite to show off.  This show-off-ness seems to be linked directly to undoing my cleaning efforts.  His main mode of transport around my hobbit house is his scooter, best used after repeatedly coating the wheels with mud.  Random acts such as pulling the crumb tray out from under the toaster are common.  At 10pm at night.  There's disappearing when dinner appears on the table to pretend to swim under a couch that he can barely fit under.  Why? Just why ??

Then there's the ransacking of the house to look for 'his favourite' football jerseys, to impress our footie mad Spaniard, amid Euro 2016 mania.  I adopt a puzzled look, assist in the searching and tell The Boy that I don't know where they are.  I decide not to remind his that, until last week, he hated the fabric in the jerseys (I'm not a big fan myself) and that I have in fact, given almost all of them away.  I just hope that his younger cousins don't arrive down in Nana's house sporting the gear any time soon. Thankfully, he finds a jersey that had escaped my recycling endeavors, although he can barely stretch it over his pumped up muscles.

This whole adventure is costing me a fortune.  Today I was cajoled into buying a new pair of football boots, socks and a football.  When explained to the guy in the sports shop about our new found interest in soccer, he showed us the new Real Madrid jersey, which is actually pretty cool, even in 'that' fabric. It will be next on the wish list, no doubt.

But overall, life is good.  The fridge has never been so well stocked.  I'm taking half days from work which means home cooked dinners and desserts every day.  I am digging the Domestic Goddess feeling. My sensitive vegetarian nose is just about getting used to the house smelling of meat.  It's easier than trying to convert a carnivorous teenager to my way of thinking.  And I can always dilute the smell with another rarity in my house, the scent of cleaning products.

As I write, the now over tired Boy is doing anything to avoid sleep and from his bedroom, is cackling like someone who needs an exorcism.

Thankfully, there's wine.  And it doesn't have to be Spanish

Good News Day

I had my annual trip to see my neurologist in Beaumont Hospital in the last week.

The anxiety that I felt that morning is deflected towards the imminent arrival of a Spanish student, getting the children up and out for their last day in school, a thank you present for teacher, the traffic in Dublin and finding a parking space.  I try to read a novel that I started a few weeks ago and haven't made much progress on, but the words swim before my eyes.  I'm not left waiting long.  It's a different neurologist this time, but he has already read my file before I arrive.

'Good news', he says, in a soft Kerry accent.  'The lesions that presented last year have gone'.  He showed me the MRI images and compared them with last years.  Even my untrained eye can see that there is, pretty much, nothing to see.  I'm not the best at the 'science bit' on MS, but I probably knew previously that lesions could disappearing, but I don't recall.  When I heard last year that I had three new lesions, including one on my spine, I was terribly upset.  As the year played out rather dramatically for me, with stress levels off the radar, I was worried that I could have a significant flair up.  But no, no flair up and now, it appears, three less lesions.

I have tried to mind myself as best I can.  I've taken my weekly shitty, poxy injections.  The neurologist said that the drugs I am on have been in use for 40 years now and are successful for lots of people with MS.  No all people though.  I am one of the lucky ones. I ask the neurologist if recent incidents of memory loss could be attributed to MS.  He says 'no', and reminds me of what stress can do to the body, 'you need to take care of yourself'.

I get bloods taken and the nurse is kind.  We chat and I tell her my news.  She's pleased genuinely pleased for me.  She pulls the curtain around my cubicle in the Blood Clinic and we do some relaxation exercises.  I feel like giving her a hug as I leave.

My illness in chronic, with no known cure.  I know that no new lesions don't necessarily mean no symptoms and offer no promise of further progression in the future, but for now, I feel on top of the world.  I leave Beaumont Hospital, with a cream doughnut and a strong coffee, walking past the patients in wheelchairs, relishing every puff  of their cigarettes under the No Smoking' signs.

I'm so happy that I feel like making an announcement on the lunchtime news.   I phone my mother and tell my work colleagues, but I pause after that.

Because I write, I have connected with many people through that platform, through the MS Society and with my brother who also has MS.  Many of the updates I receive from them are personal stories about new symptoms (although usually delivered in an optimistic, we-will-nail-this-fecker-yet attitude), research, advocacy and information on disease management (something I'm not so hot on).

I feel awkward, almost guilty, about announcing that I have good news, although I know that each of them will be happy for me as I would for them. My news comes at a time when there are huge developments in treatments and hopefully, very soon, a cure.

In the meantime, I'm feeling healthier and happier than I have in years.  For now, I'll bask in that.