Socks and sanity

Feeling rather anxious and unable to remember the way to my happy place.

Discovery of the day

Leaving a caravan in storage over the Winter months with a solitary packet of Jamie Oliver's Lemon and Spring herb cous cous in a cupboard says this to mice:

Come and live here rent free over the long, cold Winter months.

Stay for many weeks and feast on our generosity. Satisfy yourselves with lemony herbyness. You are but tiny rodents and there is a bountiful supply. Tell your friends!

Procreate. Increase in number and raise your large families amongst our soft furnishings. Munch your way through that groundsheet in your spare time. We are not using it. How selfish of us to expect you not to nest there.

And please do not freeze your tiny furry backsides out in the bitter cold, honestly- there is FINE. And there. And there. Our entire caravan is your communal latrine. 

Shackled

The sun is out. Heart's time tunnel is on and I'm driving to the tip, our car so full of rubbish that the rear view mirror is redundant. A tidy garage, rubbish disposal and music from an age when I actively followed the top 40 all in one go. It's a good day.

For the first time in a long time I'm listening to Shackles by Mary Mary. And in the moment I am transported back, not to the year of its release (2000) but Summer 2005. A band at the festival we are at are covering the song and I am hovering at the rear of the massive tent containing 8000 sweaty, dancing teenagers with a small wriggly child who is determined to crawl underfoot and get trodden on. We have retreated to the small area near the exit designated exclusively for buggy pushers and wheelchair users. The whole tent is shaking and I can feel the bass in my chest. My vocal range doesn't naturally include some of the notes, but I'm singing it loudly anyway, bouncing around with small wriggly child, secure in the knowledge that that no one can hear me sing or him squalk.


I gradually become aware of a girl nearby and try not to stare in her direction. She is a wheelchair user and looks like she has never walked. Her legs are painfully thin with no muscle definition or bulk in the normal places. Her arms are contracted at the elbows and her fingers are curled in on themselves. Like me she is singing along and like me she probably doesn't sound anything like Mary Mary.

But unlike me she is giving the song her all. Seriously- she is going mental. Her whole body, as limited and deformed as it is, shakes and rocks and lurches from side to side. She is whooping and laughing as well as singing. Her carer- a young woman in her 20's, is clearly wrestling to keep the wheelchair and its occupant stable and is standing on the anti-tip bars at the back of the wheelchair in an effort to keep the whole thing from toppling over.

Take the shackles off my feet so I can dance
I just wanna praise you
I just wanna praise you
You broke the chains now I can lift my hands
And I'm gonna praise you
I'm gonna praise you

OK - I am staring more in their direction than anywhere else now. I can't help it. The disparity between the girl's physical condition and the words coming out her mouth are intriguing and puzzling and humbling and I feel strangely jealous. My chest shakes with silent sobbing that has nothing to do with the bass or the wriggly toddler kicking my ribs in his struggle to be released to onto the floor.

She is actually free.

The wheelchair. Her contracted muscles. The uniformly thin legs. Her crooked fingers- they are all a façade. Her soul is free. Her body is lying.

Honestly- what does disability look like? And why do we choose to define it so narrowly? And one day, when we've upgraded to super enhanced post resurrection bodies- what will our earthly shells look like to us? Will we be all like Can you believe we used to walk around in those things?... No airborne or telepathic or teleporting facilities...  Connecting to the world around us with only 5 senses- each operating within such a limited spectrum... HOW did we manage??!

One day the finest athletes of the world will be looked upon as more disabled and limited as the semiconscious bodies that lie in every ICU department bed.

One day the healthiest, strongest and most desirable homo sapiens the world has ever known will be seen as imperfect, wounded and tainted by sin.

And I'll be free. Like the girl in the wheelchair.

There's somebody at the door

Our doorbell went twice yesterday, which is still something of a novelty as we haven't had it that long. The kids still occasionally sneak outside and press it, just so the others will run to answer the door. But the door bell was pressed yesterday by genuine callers and not resident chap door runners.

Caller 1: A child young man who has just started work with a roofing company. They will be in the area tomorrow and will be offering free no obligation quotes guaranteed for 12 months. We spoke politely for 2 minutes, I took one of his flyers to get rid of him and as we said goodbye he remarked 'Wow- you have your hands full' (referring, I assume to the 2 youngest kids who during the course of our brief conversation interrupted to ask if was time to go swimming yet).


Caller 2: TNT delivery driver dropping off a box of conference supplies. The door was actually open when he called and the kids were in that glorious in-between state of weaving their scooters around the swimming rucksacs on the drive and running back into the house to ask me are we ready to leave yet? I hurriedly signed for my delivery and commented to the driver that now we could go swimming (hurrah!). Instead of sharing in the excitement of the occasion he rolled his eyes and offered me a 'Good luck.'

Maybe if one of these exchanges happened in isolation or I was experiencing a different balance of caffeine or hormones or it wasn't the holidays therefore I wasn't both working and trying to enjoy the company of my kids (and feeling guilty for doing neither particularly well) I wouldn't be typing this. But collectively, both blokes hacked me off.

Is it a common assumption that a casually dressed woman answering the door in the middle of the day and being willing to speak politely to a stranger while child related noise is heard from another room is desperate for adult conversation about no obligation quotes for anything as long as it offers respite from CBBC, finding bits of toast down the side of the sofa and accusations of who started something?

And are most people so out of touch with their inner children that the sight of 2 real ones scooting around their own front yard means that luck must surely be needed to cope with the exhaustion of observing them do so?

It's ironic really- the parenting thing is pretty low maintenance at the moment. Keith and me are enjoying that blissful lull between needy small child clinginess and hormone driven grunting and door-slamming. To illustrate, the events of yesterday went thusly:

09.00: Wake. No school so I can lie here a bit longer. Yeah!

09.15: Get up. Kids up already. They have had breakfast. I wipe table and fill sink. J does dishes (his holiday job). E hangs out 2 loads of washing (his holiday job). Madi makes me a cup of tea (her holiday job).

09.40: I put another load of clothes into wash. Leave kids playing the wii-U. Go back to bed with lap top and phone.

10.00 - 12.00: Madi makes me another 3 cups of tea. I drink them. I answer many emails, reconcile 4 payments, work through the amends on a manual that goes to print next week and answer the phone 5 times.

12.00: Kids make their own lunches. Madi makes me another cup of tea. I drink it and sneakily eat 5 bubble gum bottles. (The kids don't know I have any left). J does the lunchtime dishes and says he'd rather be on laundry. It's tough being 2 foot shorter than your brother. You get the low jobs. I'll have to get up soon. I need my laptop charger and a wee.

13.00: Ethan brings in washing which is now dry, and hangs out another 2 loads of damp stuff. I fold the dry washing into separate piles according to owner and the kids put it away and make their beds.

13.30: M and J pack swimming bags for all of us. I am finished my amends (yeah!) and have almost got my inbox down to one page. I get quite excited by this, then remember our new system involves categorising emails. I filter by category and am met with a page of them requiring attention. Darn it.

14.45: The kids are ready to go. I am almost ready. I've just got to allocate the cheques I want to bank today. Give me one minute.

15.00: The one minute coincides nicely with Mr TNT Man. Great - another thing not to wait in for tomorrow. We leave the house, walk to the library and choose 6 books. I do the banking while the kids scoot on to the park. I take a detour to get a takeaway coffee then drink it while watching them play. I collect Dragonvale coins and re-breed my 2 dragon pairs on my phone then we walk / scoot to the leisure centre. The entire pool is now our oyster as everyone can tread water for 30 seconds and swim a length without stopping. Madi and Jackson show me their diving. I can't dive. Water goes up my nose and fizzes around in my sinuses making my eyes water and the rest of me panic. We discover I can still swim faster than Ethan, even though he can easily outstrip me on land. I am happy. He is not, but hides it well.

19.00: We walk to Tesco and get picnic elements for tea. We meet Keith at train station and drive back to park and eat tea together in the sun. Jackson won't have to do his holiday dishes tonight. He is happy. He is glad his holiday job involves dishes and not laundry.

20.05: Brrr. Getting cold. We go home. Everyone gets ready for bed. No one needs a bath or shower as we are clean from swimming. Jammies on and straight to bed with new library books. Everyone is happy.

See what I mean? Things are a doddle now. I made these people. I enjoy their company. They are pleasant and helpful and after years of sacrifice and servitude it's payback time and they are actually quite useful. Especially Manchild. He can reach high stuff and carry heavy things. And at one hour on Minecraft and one Tassimo latte per day, he's easy to keep and quite good value.

So Roofing Child: Little tip for you (the art of small talk is such a tricky thing): Stick to comments about the weather- It's safer. And people like my mother in law love talking about rain and how the forecast is always wrong.

And TNT Man: Just bring me parcels, not conversation. Unless you want to request a go on the scooter. Kids love that. You will instantly become cool and get a swimming invitation which societal norms dictate you must decline.

I spawned a man

It's finally happened. Manchild (aged 13) can now beat me at arm wrestling. We have had several re-matches and although his victory is not consistent (yet), beating him is now exhausting and has left me with aching biceps in both arms and a deep seated sense of unease about my own middle aged feebleness.

How did this happen?

He was only born 5 minutes ago.

I still think of him as being like this.

Now he's more like this.

I don't know why I'm freaked out by this new development. What's parenting all about if it's NOT to watch your kids get bigger, stronger and possibly a bit smarter than yourself?? I am consoling myself with the fact that The Look still works and he's still scared when I get mad (which isn't often).

Keith finds my reaction amusing. It'll be interesting to see if it's still funny in a couple of year's time when Manchild can slosh him too.

Technology (part 2)

I recently spent a fantastic weekend at a cottage in the middle of nowhere with some lovely mates, a collection of books, CDs, wii dance, half a dozen chick flicks and enough food to feed twice as many of us that were there. It was perfect.

Aside from the lack of ability to contact anyone in the outside world.

The holiday cottage backed onto the house of the proprietor, who because of recent storms had temporarily lost her landline, which BT were in the process of fixing.

Between the 5 of us we were customers of 3 different network providers- none of which gave coverage at the house. (Everything Everywhere? Really EE? Have you ever been to Ingleton?)

The closest place to get a signal was over the ridge of a large hill about 2 miles away. We drove out there a couple of times to check on the whereabouts of the last friend to arrive, talk to our respective husbands and kids before bedtime and (me only) forward on half a dozen work related emails to my line manager / husband because I'm on holiday thank you very much I love you.

Ah....
No internet.
No phone line.
No interruptions.
Just friends.
Eating and talking and laughing and being reminded about what made us friends in the first place.

This may sound idyllic to some, and for the most part it totally was, but I am practical and think about things like being able to alert the emergency services in the event of one of us waking at 3 in the morning with crushing chest pain, which given that more than half of us are now over the age of 40 is becoming more of a statistical possibility.

Thankfully this didn't happen and no such assistance was needed. But it did make me think how reliant I am on technology, how I am online a little more often than is probably healthy and the hypocrisy involved in trying to police my adolescent son's dependence on Minecraft when I don't cope too well without email over a long weekend.

WooWooWoo: When does security and sense of self become unhealthily linked to the presence of wifi? And is the answer to this in any way related to missing the sound of Siri's proper voice since the last upgrade?

Am testing this out by leaving the house today for 5 days WITHOUT my lap top. Like on purpose- I didn't just forget it.

I am not strong enough to do this cold turkey thing alone though, so am going with my husband and kids and 2 other families and their kids and my phone (with international calls, texts and data roaming for £4.99/day).

Baby steps.

Facedown

Have recently started this Bible in a year plan, as I've never read through the whole book before. I've attempted it on a few occasions but always got bogged down among bloody animals or a minor prophet.

Am really enjoying it this time. The readings are divided up into chunks from different sections so we hop around a bit. There's stuff in there that I'm reading for the very first time, things I vaguely remember from ages ago but have forgotten the details of, stories I am very familiar with and enjoy reading again and again and other things that confuse me so I end up googling them - like laws about compulsory side burns or avoiding sex during menstruation.

It's an eclectic book, really.

Anyway... from a few days ago:

Psalm 24:1-10
Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord?
Who may stand in his holy place?
The one who has clean hands and a pure heart,
who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god.

Clean hands and a pure heart.
Who can live like this?!
Really and honestly?
No one will be on their feet in God's presence.
NO one.
We'll all be hitting the deck.
Face down.
Completely humbled and overwhelmed in the proximity of holiness that hurts the eyes.

Will it be like the scene in Goldfinger where the plane flies overhead releasing nerve gas and all the soldiers below collapse to the ground as one?

Or the fainting goats - who don't actually faint but their muscles lock up when startled and they keel over and become temporarily paralysed.

I picture the whole of humanity collapsing like narcoleptics. All of us dropping like startled goats or poisoned soldiers.

Some intentionally- the ones who have loved Jesus on earth. Those who are excited and welcome his return. Sheep who know and love the shepherd.

There will be others though- who are hard of heart and refuse to acknowledge his authority- or maybe even any higher power beyond what our limited senses can know and touch and see. 

It doesn't matter- physiologically we are all the same: our muscles will seize in his presence and we will HAVE to fall to the ground and assume a position of worship anyway. Facedown, we will all look the same.

Oh dear God. Then you will separate the sheep who follow you willingly from the paralysed goats who are only bowing because their created muscles and tendons honour your presence even if the goats themselves don't.

This is sobering, frightening and thrilling all at the same time.

And makes me question all the time I waste blogging...

Jigsaws

When a group of friends get together for food, drink and jigsaw building, the conversation can become somewhat nonsensical- primarily due to the lack of consensus re vocabulary. 

I have tried googling the correct anatomical terms for commonly shaped jigsaw pieces but can't find any. So either there are none, or they do exist but are not shared outside some secret jigsaw builders society- you know like Freemasonary or Mormonism- but for jigsaws.