kauaioo

Maybe two weeks ago I found evidence of mice in my garage. I have food in storage out there, mostly tins and jars, but there was a bag with chocolate and crisps... The food supply was removed, the place was scrubbed, but we didn’t act in terms of setting traps. 

A few days ago I heard something in the living room, scratching, in the walls or under the floor. I didn’t connect the dots to the garage. Last night some flickering in the corner of my eye was confirmed as a mouse in the living room. We tidied up the toys, did a thorough hoover, moved the sofa to have better access to the area we thought it was in. Of course I told Isabella, and she was delighted to tell her nana and grandad that it was a mystery and we were trying to catch the mouse. She later comes out with “mammy I saw the mouse”, a little bit excited but mostly just interested in this now matter-of-fact addition to our household. No fear. So my primary objective is to ensure I’m not jittery around the mouse. This may be difficult, however my effort in this regard is great. 

She had indeed spotted the mouse*. It had been holed-up in the one bit of furniture we didn’t move during the aforementioned thorough hoovering. And now it was back in the fireplace, where we had seen it last night. It emerged again while Isabella was there and there were no jitters. We waited until she was in bed to put down the traps; two humane and four not. Two humane traps with chocolate in the fireplace, the four snappers with pre-baited tummies-mouse-scent to the right where the mouse had darted back and forth last night.

Mouse appears. Goes left! Then back to the fireplace. We move a trap to the left, a while later the mouse appears, goes left and...jumps over the feckin trap!! Hilariously not remotely funny. Today involved purchasing more traps, removing more toys and furniture from the living room so we can see it all more clearly and trace the evidence, if and when it appears again. I also found some droppings in the kitchen, so that was pretty grim. The scrubbing and removal of loose foods and removal of as much clutter as possible goes on and on and on. But, we are getting there.

Today’s conversations were about how we like the mice, but we don’t like when he poos on our floor (or on our toys) and we want him to find his own house and not live in ours. So, mini-me is on board with that, and happy to continue trying to solve the mystery.

* I stuck a star in above to remind me to loop back to this point - do you ever notice that sometimes adults make assumptions (with 100% fixed belief) that children lie? Whether it be intentionally (eg to get what they want, to blame someone else, to cause trouble) or unintentionally (a flight of fancy, an obvious misunderstanding, a lack of capacity to really know, clearly unbelievable because of the adults’ fixed mindset). Well, I have noticed this. And, I have learned through having children, that children are not born with the understanding of what a lie is, how to do it, what it is for, etc. We teach them. And how we teach them, is either by example (bad adults, shame, shame) or by buying-in to one or more of the multiple, and seemingly culturally accepted beliefs I outlined above. STOP IT PEOPLE!** You are ruining our children and inadvertently perpetuating lies, lies, lies. I picked up on this in myself very early on when mini me said something that I thought must be inaccurate. The specific details were a bit off, it was an account told through a 2 year old’s eyes with their limited vocabulary, so it wasn’t literally true, but it was true. And, the flicker of confusion on her face when she understood that her narrative (facts, motivation, whatever) was being called into question broke my heart a little bit. I was very, very quick to make sure this never happened again (and I stomp all over it if I see someone else doing it with my kids). This means, as with everything involving a now-three year old, things take longer to get through, but that’s time very well spent in my book.  Let’s see how well this goes. It’s just one of many, many MANY (oh my god so many!) things to be mindful of when raising little people. 

** I am not actually targeting my wonderful readers, just shouting at the universe in frustration

Postscript - I can’t recall if I mentioned this before, but bringing up my kids is making me want to study child development in more detail. I did some modules on this in the one year of psychology I studied, so maybe it’s time to consider returning to some unfinished business.

On this day two years ago I was in a bit of an off mood, fed up and frustrated, and on this particular occasion I was in the garage doing a bit of (endless) de-cluttering. The Scot came out and I told him I was going to sell my kayak, it’s just taking up space and realistically it would be a couple of years before I could get back into it and would I even want to at that point. He tried to talk me out of my decision. I had been talked out of the notion multiple times before over the previous two years, but I felt like I was determined this time.

Out of the blue I got a call from our club captain, I assumed it was about committee business or access to our social media, some such. The timing struck me, of all the things I could have been doing. I was mindlessly shuffling things around as I spoke with him, he asked if I’d heard the news about the kayaker who died earlier that day, I hadn’t heard and I didn’t really react, it was always tragic to hear such storied but unfortunately they were more and more kayaking / water-related accidents being reported these days. Then he said, it was Brita.

Everything stopped in that moment. My brain had trouble processing what I had just heard in the context of the preceding story of the kayaking accident. I asked was she ok. He told me she didn’t make it. I couldn’t make sense of that, so I asked again was she alright? And he told me again. She didn’t make it. I asked was he sure. He was sure. 

Brita was a member of our club, a few years younger than me. She was from Dublin but had re-located south to live with her long-term paddling bf, so in the year or two before her death she paddled more with their group than ours. She had become very strong on the water, the other girls and I respected her so much for how well she had progressed, surpassing all of us. Our club, as well as her club down south, were not showy and were always strong on safety. Unfortunately, none of that mattered on the day. Brita suffered a very tragic accident, despite all of the rescue being set-up. What happened was a fluke, something she could have survived at other times, but just not that day.

I sold my kayak.

Brita was a social worker. She worked on the front lines, helping children and families who were in scenarios most of us couldn’t even imagine. She was frequently in court regarding cases she was involved with, something I would find intimidating but that she took in her stride. She had a very tough job, it was thankless a lot of the time, and yet she was deeply committed to it. She had just completed a Masters in the UK, something that involved a heavy workload as well as travel back and forth. Her devotion to her profession was evident, and her energy seemingly boundless.

She was good.

When you’d meet Brita, she would always have the most amazing smile. This is what we all spoke about two years ago. Her smile was natural, warm, infectious, and a constant. We all loved her. She was warm. She was kind. She was fun to spend time with. I miss her. My friends miss her. It is so sad that she died when she did, when she still had so much life to live. I think of how she was vanished from her life that day, her unwashed clothes in the hamper, her unfinished book on the nightstand, her car parked at the riverside, her kayaking gear left on the riverbank. Her gone.

Just like that. 

In my pre-kids days I would put up my Christmas tree on November 1st, to make sure I got a good 3-4 (once 5) months out of it. There’s a lot of management involved when there are 3 little ones running around, you really do need eyes on the back of your head! And a Christmas tree is so shiny and wondrous, it really ups the ante in terms of the vigilance that is needed. And so, I now enter the longest month in the world...waiting for December 1st to go full-Christmas. I’m not going to lie, it’s gonna be hard.

Acedia, my interpretation of a few definitions is it means a feeling of listlessness, restless energy, and lack of purpose or direction. There's a good article on it here, the part I like is the value in bringing this word back into circulation is to "legitimise feelings of listlessness and anxiety as valid emotions in our current context without inducing guilt that others have things worse", and "Second, and more importantly, the feelings associated with physical isolation are exacerbated by emotional isolation – that terrible sense that this thing I feel is mine alone. When an experience can be named, it can be communicated and even shared."

I'm feeling acedia.

Committing to a daily update may have been ambitious! So here is the current meme...

Go to hot drink: rooibos tea, with milk. All day long. I adore a good hot chocolate with marshmallows, my waistline does not.

What book gets you into the cosy spirit: all of my reading these days is with the kids. They love it, and I'm delighted. When I make time for me to read it has been disposable, feelgood fiction for quite some time now. Nothing stands out in my mind.
 
Favourite costume as a child: when I dressed up as a pencil, but everyone thought I was a rocket. We always made our own costumes, and I loved that. 

What woodland animal do you connect to on an emotional level: a squirrel. I'm a squirreler!

Film that gets you in the spooky spirit: I never want to be spooked by a movie, ever. The furthest I'd go would be something like Hotel Transylvania. 
 
Favourite tasty treat to bake: My oven sucks, my kitchen is problematic, and I only bake with toddler assistance so all in all it's a bit of an ordeal to make it through a recipe. I used to bake savage cakes, my chocolate sponge with dark chocolate ganache was a favourite, but right now the best option for me is rice krispie buns! Maximum bang for minimal buck, win win.

Do you fantasise about falling in love with a hot vampire or sickly ghost: of course not.

The scent you want filling your room? Clean.  

Pick a date- gingerbread biscuit decorating, pumpkin patch, hunting through a book shop, popcorn and spooky films? Can we just go for a nap? For me and the Scot, neither are fans of spooky but another movie genre plus popcorn would win hands-down. 
 
If you were a coffee syrup or spice which would you be? It would have to be chocolate really. 
 
Any ghostly encounters? Very vivid auditory hallucinations on the night my granny died. Apparently she had similar-but-different, she heard three loud knocks on the door when her son died. Mine was voices, and a phone ringing.

Favourite time of day during the cinnamon season? Mid afternoon when its crisp and cold but still bright and airy.

I live 5 minutes from the proposed Gaelcon venue for this year, the first time it wasn’t going to be a pain in the ass getting to the after-con catch up session. Who knew that what’s even closer than 5 minutes away, is when the con and the after party is in your own living room, albeit virtually. This worked for me :)

Of course I didn’t play any games, I wouldn’t have time during the daytime and an online version would be too much of a stretch for me anyway. I did enjoy, somewhat, the pub quiz although I will not be rushing to change the format of my own quizzes, I just don’t think zoom quizzes deliver in terms of the quality of the interaction when there’s a large number of participants. I’m happy to sacrifice the interactions between tables in favour of offering the individual tables better quality interactions amongst themselves. Tonight the team messaging and video/audio chat was happening on Discord at the same time that the quiz questions (plus a lot of chit chat) was happening on zoom. I couldn’t enjoy any of it, it was a cacophony, so I stuck with the text box on Discord and waited for the after party to enjoy the banter and catch up...which never fails to deliver!

I would like to play more games but I am so time poor, it just doesn’t seem likely in the short term. I have several two-player games so the Scot and I can do a bit. He had been a Warhammer player a long while back, with aspirations to return to it if and when his free time becomes free again. As for me, it’s the board games I miss. We sometimes play Trans America, Metro or Battle Lines. We’ve only played Alhambra a couple of times, and I think we might have played Carcassonne once. Someone bought me Splendor a couple of years ago and I see that’s two-player, but I haven’t played it yet. I came across Chez Grunt recently, which might be worth a whirl given the Scot’s military background, he might find it funny. Everything else has been moved to the attic.

Mini-me is growing up fast, she’ll be gaming in a few years I’m sure! (She’s getting Ludo and Snakes & Ladders for Christmas to see how the concept of a board game goes down, but she’s way too young yet given she can’t actually count (I don’t know the actual term, she can rattle off numbers 1 to 10, but doesn’t understand yet that each number represents one more item getting added to the pile, or moving the piece one square for each new number. There’s terminology for all of this, of course, I don’t know the terminology but I am loving seeing all of this development in progress, it is fascinating. Maybe I’ll study some child development or some such....I must look into that.)

Anyways, I digress. I want to play some more games. I’ll try to make that happen. I also want to run another pub quiz, so I’ll add that to my list and see how I get on. A lot will depend on how well the kids do with the hour changing; I’m hoping that everything will move back an hour and I’ll get up earlier and therefore re-claim an hour in the evenings.

I feel like I have just recently woken up. Which is ironic given my lack of sleep over the last four years. Anyhoo, something snapped a few weeks ago, things just got so bad that they had to get good. Things are still difficult, but I am aware of the need to take action and I am trying to get some help now as well.

Taking control of my physical environment came first, and is ongoing. My head-space space has been a great success, although I have yet to complete the project by hanging my photos. I have just recently become aware of my inability to finish projects and the impact that has been having on me. This is not something I ever struggled with before. Being aware of its impact is helpful now, it encourages me to keep the momentum going.

I have been struggling with prioritising when it comes to the physical space, mostly because things have been neglected for several years so now everything needs done all at once; literally every room in the house needs attention, as well as all of the outdoor spaces! But, I have a (rough) plan in my head now, and I have been working through things with a view to getting a couple of areas completed so they can be “signed off” and removed from my cluttered head.

Tonight I wallpapered half a wall (toddlers’ room), and I hope to finish the job tomorrow after work. I have ordered wardrobes for that room, my uncle moved a socket to make room for said wardrobes, and he also hung a new light fixture while he was over. I had a crack on the inside window pane and I finally called the guy...so it’s in progress now. I still need to finish the wallpaper, patch and paint the wall where the old socket was, and I’ll need to get new curtains or blinds if I want to finish the room properly. It feels so close. It feels almost-good!

While I am making progress with my physical environment, I am not making much progress with my physical health, particularly weight loss. During the week the frustration got the better of me and I signed up to a behavioural change programme called Second Nature. I had come across them before, thank you Facebook Ads, and this week I decided to give it a try. I signed up, I paid €80 (it took me a while, but I found the € on this keyboard, woo hoo), and I went to sleep. A couple of days later the books arrived by post, and I thought great, I am making progress here...put the books aside, and continued with my insanely busy life. And then tonight arrived and I had done almost nothing to prepare (despite the messages telling me that the one key thing to do before you start, is to prepare!). So, I did a frantic read through of it all tonight, and I feel even less prepared now!

Basically there’s an app, there’s a group, there’s a health coach, there’s a recipe book for suggestions... It’s all about changing behaviours, forming habits, and re-educating me regarding food! They teach you about portion sizes, and the break-down of your meal (quarter protein, quarter carbs, half veg) and the science behind nutrition. They encourage you to go back to basics (whole foods) and remove processed foods. They focus on re-setting your body to move away from sugar and other cravings (I am quite possibly going to die next week) and then later on you can re-introduce a little of what you fancy...but only a little! The programme goes on to look at other aspects, like sleep, stress, mindfulness, physical activity all with a view to building positive, life-long habits. It is 100% the “right” thing...I just hope it works for me (as in I hope I can figure it out and stick with it). And, after my chat with friends in the park today, one of them signed up tonight so I have an extra motivation now, which is great. (Oh, and it links to my fitbit so you will be involved too...assuming I have done the linkage correctly, what are the chances!).

So, that’s my update. I have a bit of a plan now for my health and weight loss, I just need to give it the attention it deserves and requires. I have a bit of a plan for my physical space, and I feel good about that. And, Christmas has hit the shops, so I obviously feel good about that!

My daughter had symptoms. Oh. No.

She is prone to chesty coughs and chest infections, she has been queried for childhood asthma and has been treated with inhalers in the past. She was sick on Sunday, with an elevated temperature that wasn’t quite fever, and she deteriorated into a really bad cough at night. I knew-but-didn’t-“know” it wasn’t Covid. I know how this goes for her, and it seemed exactly like any other time she came down with a dose. However, in the midst of a pandemic, I cannot make that determination on my own and so off I went.

You can’t visit a GP if you are symptomatic, so I had to request a phone consultation. My biggest fear was that the GP would be trigger happy and insist on sending her for a Covid test just to be sure to be sure. If the test was non-invasive, I would have no problems with that, however a swab test for a three year old who is already terrified of doctors sent chills down my spine. Fortunately, our family GP is great and he knows my daughter well and her medical history to date, so he agreed that it seemed like her usual chesty cough so he told me to continue with the over-the-counter remedies, along with her usual inhaler, and he left a prescription for me to fill at my own discretion if she got worse and it sounded like a chest infection. Super.

While I remained calm and was reasonably certain things would work out alright in this case, one big anxiety is that the power to make decisions and the control of my children’s wellbeing was no longer with me. If that GP had told me we needed to rule out Covid, I would have to either comply and take her for testing, or be one of those reported no-show statistics on the news that I was giving out about! The up-side of this minor brush with Covid testing is that I was able to think through all of my options without it being high-stakes. I would seek help to try to ensure that the test is carried out by someone competent, preferably with a paediatric background, or (even better) that a different type of test was done. I’m not sure if the HSE does this for kids, but I would certainly find out before going anywhere! Anyways, thankfully for now it was a fleeting brush with it all and my daughter is already on the mend.

The only disruption for us was that we had to restrict movements for a day while we waited for the GP call-back, however my friend was contact traced after someone she works with tested positive. Thankfully she tested negative, but the ripples are a bit of a pain. She had family who stayed overnight with her that weekend, so her niece was not allowed to start school (first day of the new year!) until my friend’s test results came back. She had to work from home, of course, which was fine for her. She couldn’t go to the shops or anything, the only thing she was allowed to do was go for a walk by herself. And she had to have two tests - they are testing everyone so quickly now that the viral load may not yet present in the tests, so she had to have a second test one week later. The test is unpleasant. I loved the lockdown, and would happily revert to that although I am aware that is a selfish desire given that our economy is now in the toilet. Being put into isolation or restricted movements though when it’s just you and the rest of the world is getting on with life, that was a bit harder for my friend. Anyways, all is well, her second test was negative so she can return to socially distant meetings and her niece can return to school, woo hoo! Drama over, until next time.

I don’t expect to be able to put me first in my life, it’s not a mammy’s role to come first, but I really need to find ways to stop putting myself last all of the time. I am completely and utterly exhausted. I feel drained most of the time, like some of the other people in my life are vampiric and continually suck the life out of me!

This has just been a bad week. It sucks to have a bad week while on annual leave, which just makes the bad badder and the me madder (in every sense of the word). There is a core imbalance in some of my relationships, which is extremely difficult to address and in fact requires addressing by others as opposed to (or at perhaps as well as) me, but I can’t control that. Then there is a habitual imbalance, I am a giver and a helper and a supporter so I find myself constantly doing things for others at the expense of what I need to do for myself. And then there is the acceptable, essential, expected and wholly embraced imbalance of being mammy and putting my little ones’ needs above all else. There is an extension of that essential mammy imbalance though, and that is my own high expectations of myself and my desire to do what is best for them as opposed to doing what will suffice. And, I am ok with that one, however when things get really bad for me I recognise that I need to scale this back a little and that is ok. Sometimes a bit more TV time than the WHO-limit of 30 mins per day is ok. Sometimes a play about in the back garden is fine, the playground can wait until tomorrow. Take a breath.

I am trying to re-balance the scales a little, although I have not been successful to date. Maybe it’s just me and scales. But in all seriousness, I do not know how to unburden myself of some of my stresses when there is nobody there who is willing or able to burden themselves with said stresses. And on that note, I miss MY mammy. I no longer have that undying (yes I appreciate the irony) support, that unwavering dependability, that feeling of someone who is putting me first. I really miss that.

This sounds like a corny job interview answer, but I am the victim of my own ability to manage a multitude of tasks, juggle a huge number of balls and maintain a high level of momentum and progression even when to do so sometimes feels like running uphill while underwater. I have the Frozen song running through my head, “Let it goooo, let it goooo...” but I think I missed that particular life lesson and I can’t allow myself to just drop some of my balls or let things slide (self care aside, of course). This, as at least one of my readers knows, has been a long, long standing issue that goes through peaks and troughs. And thanks to said reader, I can actually recognise these signs now and take evasive actions to prevent them becoming a major issue. There are always not-quite-major issues though, adding to the stress pile and pushing my self care further away.

My physical environment has become an outward projection of some of these problems. I have so.much.stuff, it is drowning me. I can’t seem to let go of things - sentimental reasons, I have always had difficulties letting go; bulk shopping, it’s more time efficient and financially economical....although is it when some things go out of date or (and this is what prompted today’s post) when I find myself in Ikea buying new shelves because I compulsively buy an almost literal tonne of bath products and finally have to address that corner of my bedroom because it has started to get out of hand and now I have enough to open a flipping shop!

As per most kids these days, mine have too much stuff and it is everywhere! Our recent staycation was brilliant because it demonstrated how much play time they can get from a limited supply of toys. And so, the great toy cull of September is upon us. My usual modus operandi is to be gung-ho getting rid of things as far as the garage, then re-thinking the decision, becoming paralysed by indecision, or that fear of somehow needing the items at some point in the future, or feeling like they are too good to just give / throw away and so I gradually re-introduce the items after they’ve spent a couple of weeks clogging up the garage and driving me insane and adding to the misery of my cluttered existence. Ahhhh, it is all just a bit feckin much! Can I please just “Let it gooooo, let it goooo”?!

And then there is my new favourite-not-favourite concept of all time, Imaginary Lifestyle Syndrome! I have this in ABUNDANCE, just like my clutter. My biggest pitfall is with clothes, I always think I will wear things again (things that are now way too small for me). I find it hard to discard things that are not broken or completely obsolete because I seem to think it is my responsibility to see everything through. Another area this hits is kitchen stuff like fancy plates and serving dishes and all sorts of odds and ends that I used to use while living alone and soirée-ing frequently. Now though, the items are far too good and too sentimental to just give away, and I “believe” (I don’t know what that word means anymore) I will use them again in the future and so it’s into the garage they go. I splashed out on 4 large shelving units for the garage and they’re all full with this sort of stuff, and some of the bulk shopping, and now I’m in search for another storage solution for the bikes and scooters and outdoor toys (that can’t be stored / left outdoors or they’ll get wrecked / stolen).

And this post wouldn’t be complete without mention of my in-laws! They live in Scotland so they tend to buy the grandkids stuff all year and then bring it over at birthdays or Christmas. I am so grateful to them, because they provide almost all the clothes we need, plus several nice toys as well. However, sometimes their own enthusiasm gets the better of them and we end up with some larger items that are hard to manage. The biggest (literally) example of this is the fire engine. The Scot’s dad is a retired fireman so loves everything related to the fire service (he has built-in glass cabinets for his own collection of model fire engines, which is epic!) On this occasion, it was Nana who spotted the “little ride-on fire engine” on a second hand site online, maybe a Facebook group or something. She couldn’t resist, thought it was a bit of a bargain too, so bought it...and it arrived in the back of a jeep with a big, strong, able-bodied man who had to come and ask Grandad for help getting it out of the back...alarm bells anyone? The fire engine is nothing short of BRILLIANT! But, it is the size of a smart car. It.is.huge! The kids LOVE it, and I make sure that they get plenty of time playing with it...but the garage is 25% taken up with this, and it will be here for several years to come. We are managing fine and working around this, it is so worth it. But then they went and bought a go-cart and give me grief because it is still in the box. OMG, where the hell are we supposed to put that? Luckily the go cart is age 4+ so I have been able to get away with storing it for now, but it will be making its debut in March...so I need to find a space solution for this. Unfortunately, and this points to one of the imbalances I mentioned above, the Scot is useless at helping with this type of thing, he has literally never taken the fire engine out as it is too much effort and his only suggestion so far has been to store the go-cart on top of the fire engine...because, I’m fucking He Man. Deep. Breath.

So, you know, this post has made me feel better. It’s good to talk. Most of my life is very funny, I will dine out on the fire engine story until my dying day. And there is some amusement at my shuffling random stuff from room to room, eventually to garage and finally sneaking back in to start the cycle again. Of course, it’s funny-not-funny, but so long as I can continue to embrace the funny, it will help keep me away from the darkness.

Today, I am off to buy a desk (because more furniture is exactly what my house needs right now). I have just moved the baby’s cot in to his own room and taken the sides off so it’s a big boy bed, sniff. Now I just need to move him out of my bed, but frankly I have no desire to do that! And my plan is to add a desk area that is just for me, for my writing or doing their scrap books, or whatever little bit of head space I need. If I can get even just one little corner set-up that I can escape to from time to time, I think that will help keep me sane! I am back to work on Monday, and it will be insanely busy from now until Christmas so I feel under pressure to get things sorted before I move into that stage of the year. Wish me luck...