matching

Breaking news:

• My poor, forlorn, lonelyheart socks have progressed as far as a detention centre on the top of a bench, where they await their fate. Shall their One True Partner come and bail them out, miraculously? Shall they? Or shall they be imprisoned in a plastic bag in the middle of the spare room, to be thrown out into the actual bin, in as soon as - oh! - anytime in the next year or two.
  
  Edge-of-your-seat stuff, I am sure you'll agree.

• In other news, and speaking of The Spare Room: we did finally get our declaration from the Adoption Authority. It came on paper headed solemnly with the harp symbol that signifies officialdom in Ireland. (If it's got a harp on it, it's serious and may be even worth something. DON'TFECKINGLOSEITYOUBIGEEJIT, MammyIreland might be presumed to be telling us with it. ) Some people have described this as an empowering moment, akin to being pregnant, but I just thought: Oh, there you go when the JB opened it. Since then, though, there has been a general glow of satisfaction, interpersed with the odd chilly moment of GAAHJAYSTHISISREALLYREALLYREAL.


• Since that day, we have been up to our elbows in paperwork. EVERYTHING has to be negotiated for, awaited, copied, scanned, signed, notarised, apostilled. It's like the Bureaucracy Olympics. We are getting more and more friendly with our solicitor, a floppy-haired, good-hearted fusspot of a young fellow who hangs out in Dublin 1.
  
  
• I admit the JB has done A Large Part of This Mental Power-lifting/Bureaucratising. Good husband! He is coming up in the polls, as I regularly tell him.
  
  
• It does seem wrong that we are required to survive this long battle of wits, which seems more like the psychological equivalent of an IronMan competition, and less like anything remotely to do with parenting, and must surely mean less bloody-minded people - who none the less might be really good parents - fall by the wayside and give up?


• Life continues to be packed to bursting. Whywhywhy is that, tell me? Don't you remember the hours and hours in your youth, where there was nothing to do, only loll around and watch The Multicoloured Swapshop? And it was good? Why is life so franticfranticfrantic? I am that harrassed state of mind where you miss your stop on the Luas, and only raise your head when the name Fortunestown is called out. Fortunestown? You've never even heard of such a place. Or where you say to yourself: Ooh, look, if the knife slips now, it could easily (but keep cutting) - OW! Or narrowly avoid being run over by another bus not the one you really wanted to catch, or sundry other unforced errors, as they say in tennis. The poor kitty nearly got an iron in the head this morning. I could have killed the kitty! With a flying iron! That fell as I was foolishly moving the board without removing it first!

I need to take a sabbatical from my own life. How about you? Tell me the secret of calmness. Kittalo will thank you for it.

T

 
I WILL. I'LL THANK YOU.

Comments

[a]

That cat looks quite cranky! I love it.

The secret of calmness? I wouldn't know. I do know, however, that it is dangerous to wish that life were more exciting.

Hurray for official paperwork! The official harp makes me think of the beer, for some reason. However, in my brief week there 13 years ago, it seemed the official beer of Ireland was freaking Budweiser. Now, I hate beer, but even I know that's disgraceful!

[Dr Spouse]

Cuddles are very calming. Think of the cuddles to come.

[G]

Don't throw out the socks! There's plenty of life in them yet:
http://www.thereusesite.com/30_Uses_for_Old_Socks.html

G (a serial hoarder)

[QoB]

You ended up in Fortunestown?? That said I'm always puzzled by the 39A: Ongar? Where in jaysus' name is Ongar?

Congratulations on the Official Letter. And I'm glad you haven't been caught up in the Mexico adoptions thing. Heartbreaking for all involved.

[Valery]

secret of calmness...: 1)one thing at the time. 2)Need time to think? sit down and think. 3)Afraid to forget? write it down. 4)Overwhelmed? repeat from 1 ;-)

One day at the time, one step at the time, one piece of paper at the time.
Apostilles, like they don't know you by now, like it is the previous millennium still.

And um, is The Kittalo sufficiently tame that he sits on your lap and you stroke him? Very calming, that.
(well, in the absence of the immediate danger of bodily harm caused by small claws that is)

[Hairy Farmer Family]

When I get to that state, I take refuge in The List, else all around me falls into chaos, and I arrive panting and straggle-haired at Place A (having wasted half an hour trying to match BLOODY socks), when I should *actually* be at Place B, five hours ago.

Ohh, Calm. How we study to find you, and fail.

[May]

How I achieve Calm in the face of Busyness and Stress - I don't. I flail wildly. I too would probably near-squish a kitty, had we a kitty, by wildly flinging irons about. I'd offer you a soothing cup of tea but I'd probably knock the kettle over and smash another glass (I am on a glass-wear smashing BENDER this week. GAH). Let's go on sabbatical together and have someone else make the tea and sort the socks. Surely there's an agency for that.

As for Official Harp-Bearing Documents, I clasp my hands and am round-eyed with excitement and now I shall do a little dance

*dances, much to everyone's embarrassment*

Love the sketch of grumpy Kittalo. That's how I look most mornings these days.

All unmatched socks live on top of the underwear cubbyholes in the wardrobe. Covered in dust. FOREVER.

[Andie]

LOVE LOVE LOVE the Kittalo. LOVE.

OOOOOH all offical, that is wonderful news, Twangy. I think you have done very well, because, as you say, I think many would fall by the wayside in the face of such bureacracy (me. I would. I did).

Calm - well - am in much the sort of situation you are - frantic - and am quite bad at being calm. Until I cant take it anymore, and take to my bed with the vapours. Which is to say, for day, with bonnet novels and hot chocolate. Very restorative, I tell you.

About the socks. If you can't bear to throw them into the afterlife, you can do as I do, and turn them into useful household and garden helpers. Lo, the garlic is hung up to dry! The tomatoes are staked! All sorts of uses, I say.

[Fernando]

Congrats on the officialdom of the paperwork!

Soon the word "matching" will have nothing to do with socks to you...

[bunny]

Hurrah for the DOCUMENT. I hope it wasn't disappointing that it didn't make you feel complete and whole all on its own...

I can't bear to be busy, so that's my secret. Just limit your activities and interactions until life is joyless and grey.