twangypearl the elastic girl

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.

big picture

Dear all,

Oh my. Busy again, I was.

Thank you for your comments on my last post. You need never worry about giving me what they call "assvice". You are too kind and experienced to be judgemental or miss the point. If any advice did not seem relevant, I would just put it aside for another situation which it might fit. So that is all good. 

While it is true that I suffer at times from what my lovely American flatmate used to call Big Picture Disease (taking the long view to the point where it becomes hard to have an appropriate response in the moment), a marriage is a long, awful, beautiful stream of experience, where you run into all kinds of unexpected limitations - many of which you have to recognise as your own. You know how it is. So, as you can imagine, the JB and I have had every kind of conversation about our future, from the tearful to the comic. Our style is fairly frank when we argue, but that is only a tiny percent of the time. The rest is really good and the last week or two have been in that mode. We're fine, at least for the moment.

ANYWAY. This was just to let you know I am aok, and not living in a damp bedsit in Mountjoy Sq with an angry cat pissing on my single bed. In fact, I am off to a spa tonight, no less. Oh yes, it's a high-octane, devil-may-care life I lead, you know!

Talk soon.
xx
T

let it unfold

Thank you very much for the ear sympathy. Fascinating/disgusting report: it's quite a bit better, has deflated to a more normal dimension and I can almost hear through a minor static interference. An improvement. I am sporting an impressive Augmentin pallor, however, the kind you otherwise get from being a consumptive, or doing a long stretch inside.

Some of you have kindly enquired as to the progress of our declaration, and so, let us indeed marvel at the smoky and clogged engine that is the relevant Authority, the cogs of which do turn extraordinarily slowly.  Our paperwork is all complete, and now lacks only a stamp of approval from the Authority before we are cleared for take-off and it will all be sent on to India. Mysteriously, however, the Authority cannot seem to stamp the documents in good time, and oh dear! They are so backed-up! And lifting the stamp is so tiring! You'd be wrecked doing it!

Uffa, as Italians have it. UFFA.

As it happens, India itself is closed to new applications until January, while it reconfigures its own system. So if one wanted to be one of those perky, positive people, one could say that at least the two delays are coinciding. But, I don't know, maybe in my youth I read too many moralistic children's stories, wherein the poor blighters wore saggy, wool swimming trunks and were always getting their comeuppance but all this is taking on the aspect of a very heavy-handed karmic lesson. Festina fecking lente, etc. Embrace the crap life you are living. Live in the fecking moment. Seize the saucepan and brain your spouse the day. GOT THE MESSAGE, Universe.

Let it unfold.

That's the hardest, isn't it. The JB and I had a most weird conversation the other night. I know this is going to sound rather bleak, but let's not panic here, it's really okay. It's not as dire as all that. In fact, it's almost as if talking about these things make them more manageable. In a way.

Imagine the following being all conducted in the most lack-lustre tones, like we are discussing our rubbish collection, and whether the green bin alternates with the black every two weeks, or not:

JB, comes in after work, flops on sofa: Sorry about this morning. (He stamped off earlier in the day, in a snit over my response to the delays as above.) I just feel like throwing in the towel, sometimes. It feels to me like our wheels are spinning.

T: What do you mean, throwing in the towel?

JB: You know, giving up, leaving.

T, still with zero inflection: Ah. Breaking up?

JB: Yes.

T: Oh. Well, if that's what you want to do.

I simply had no response anymore, felt calm, in a "Ah well, 'tis the tapestry of life." way, and just lolled there like a badly stuffed doll. I can't continue to keep the show on the road. He is simply going to have to decide for himself. Every suggestion I make - counselling, research, bereavement groups, reading the helpful, straightforward The Portable Therapist - he won't do any of it. He doesn't recognise that the feelings aren't the problem, it's the defeatist behaviour that is. Of course I know that he doesn't mean what he says, he's not going to leave, he loves me, and blah, blah, blah, but those words still undermine my faith in us. My brain starts whirring. The genie is out of the bottle, and I am thinking with half my brain, the part May beautifully describes as sitting there eating popcorn through it all: Blimey. What would that be like? Where would I live? Huh.

The human brain, if mine is anything to go by, anyway, abhors a vacuum. It - I - want to know where my next meal is coming from, at the most basic level. I find it so hard to keep the vision of the alternative lives beside each other in my head, and not preempt whatever will be, and not throw myself on my sword.

Of course there was much apologising and forgiving later. But what has been said cannot be unsaid.



She makes herself comfortable.

on being loved

[Apologies in advance for the gloom-laden, whiny quality of the below.]

P-kit has almost earned the right to drop the Psycho from her name, I do believe. I know cats are reputed to have little in the way of an emotional life, but I would swear she loves me with all her little feline heart. She follows me around, like a dog, purring extravagantly. She lies on my chest and pats my face with her carefully sheathed paw. And since yesterday I drank the water that she had ever so delicately lapped earlier, and wasn't even much bothered, I think it's official. I am, in fact, a cat lady.

How did that happen?

Ah. What it is to be loved. I suspect I'll always be at sea with this thing you humans call love. I never know what it is that is required of me. Am I responsible for the other's happiness? How is that? And how responsible is he?

For the JB continues to trudge through the mire. It's not altogether easy being beside him through it, either. He is so focussed on being a parent, at times I am at risk of feeling like a conduit to his target/like a failure, depending on the mood. It takes some effort to keep it straight in my head: he is choosing to be with me, and I must not second-guess him, or throw myself on my sword. (We are far into the adoption process, after all! He just needs to have a bit of patience. Gah.) All potentially terribly regrettable options. Last night there came about an unhappy confluence of tiredness, sickness (My ear. It feels broken. Uff. Why is my body so weird?) sadness and sensory overload that ended with my telling him he knew where the door was, if he wanted to go. Oh, sigh. It's never a good idea to act rashly on your hurt feelings like that, is it? He did apologise, but he is miserable, and that makes him dramatic and catastrophic. And I was too tired to talk him round.

Maybe I am mistaken, but I believe his starting point is wrong. I feel that you have to start with you two, that that is a great piece of good fortune, to build on, if you are lucky. If it is children you really want from the relationship, you need to be clear. (The JB discovered his desire to be a parent after we were married, a thing that has caused us no end of angst. I had all sorts of issues about it, physical and emotional.) Where does that leave us? We are all out of step with each other. It's not good.

Points of view most welcome. Also kicks in arse, advice, or whatever is required here. You'll know.

xx
T

Drawing from hotel room recently, in [London]Derry. Vurry naice ut twas, toy.

you will comfort me

Back again, my friends. Life has been full on. It used to be that feast and famine was the rule, but now, I am always dementedly busy, and yet persist in not being any more solvent. What is this strange new world? I don't know if I like it.

I joined a choir, did I say? It's been absorbing to be a part of something bigger than me, something I know so little about. Humbling. I keep having these light bulb moments: OH! That's a chord! That's a quaver! Seriously, I am that - what would it be? Immusicate?

We performed, in a kind of flash-mob way, in a busy lunch venue earlier in the week, wearing, per instructions, "black trousers and a top in a solid colour". I didn't think I possessed any black trousers, (an extraordinary factoid, I know) but lo! A pair dated circa 2000 skulked in the back of the wardrobe, made of a millenial fabric that seems to be .. vinyl?

Vinyl, I swear. Maybe it's recycled records. If only I still had a turntable, I could listen to them. I wonder what they'd sound like. Pants? (Groan. Stopping now.)

It was satisfying to hear all our voices turn into one. I could see the familiar figure of the JB, my only only, on the other side of the atrium, and my very stalwarty friend, Sister2. (Stalwarty doesn't sound as flattering as I intend it to be. I am going to trust you know what I mean.)

You are with me, [we sang], you will comfort me.

I think the JB is going through some stuff. He's sleeping much more than usual, and though he has not abandoned his papers, (that would surely be a sign of impending death) he is not his usual ebullient self. He's one of those people that is always on, you know? Even if you wake him up in the middle of the night, he's like a good photograph of himself. Not so now.

Really, I do think All This has been harder for him than for me. Not that it's a quantifiable thing, or a race to be the most hurt, indeed, but he's such a hard worker, he's used to barriers giving way under the weight of his effort, and he is baffled and deeply offended that those rules don't apply here. Of course, it's true that he is also grieving for his father, but somehow the frustration he feels about our efforts to have/be a family has become the focus of that pain too. It comes and goes, of course. Any progress - any tick on our adoption list - rallies the spirits. Any delay or problem brings on the feelings of disappointment and aggrievement.

Lest anyone think the IF shitstorm spares the partners.

So that is where I am. Wearing recycled LPs, and being very busy having no money coming in.
How about you? What's in the back of your wardrobe?

T

Actual news I can actually report

I am half-daunted, half-thrilled. (Is there a single word for that? There should be.) On Tuesday I received a phone call from the by now much-beloved Detective, our social worker, to tell us that we have passed the board, and are deemed suitable to be adoptive parents.

(!!!)

It is big and somewhat odd to be declared (apparently) sane by your government. Something to celebrate! I feel all government-sanctioned! All I need is an APPROVED stamp on my forehead to complete the look.

Then on Wednesday, more life-changing events: we took the train to another town for a meeting in The Hotel of the Swirly Carpet. It was extraordinarily informative, dispelling many myths, and covering all sorts of important stuff on Bulgaria and India, as sending countries. India probably has over 10 million children without families. OVER TEN MILLION. There are any amount of impromptu and unlicensed orphanages that spring up to care for them, but many of the children inevitably do not even have that much luck. It is utterly heart-breaking and overwhelming, isn't it? Words fail. We fail. All those children, all their needs, all their talents, in need of so much nurturing, of so many hours of hugs and stories, so much encouragement, so many peeled potatoes, and slices of toast, so many pairs of pyjamas, so much effort, patience, understanding and love.

So walking back to the train station, the next morning, the JB and I, down the steep steps, with the fog lifting, we made up our minds that India is it.

It seems this is how you make decisions that change your life, while you hurry to catch a train. You've arrived at a fork in the road, and you've run out of time, standing still is not possible, you just have to move one way or the other. So you just take your life in your hands, and go, and try not to be haunted by the ghost of other path, the way unchosen.

So we sent an email to the detective to ask her to change our country to India. The USA was our previous choice, but it seems that there is an uncompatibility between the Irish interpretation of Hague and the American one, which means that private adoption is looking rather uncertain for the time being. We could adopt out of the state system, however. Frustratingly, the JB does continue to waver on this. Yesterday he sent me the link to an (of course) utterly adorable one-year-old on a state website. Now, I do understand that as a purely pragmatic tool, these sites do work in placing children, but it makes me oh-so-uncomfortable to look at the children's profiles. I mean, apart from the awful, awful heart-rending God-is-that-my-kid? That-could-be-my-kid! confusion, it just feels wrong to me. I do believe that it is getting the cart before the horse. There is a reason for the agency being the one that matches parents with children, and doing the referral. They know things.
(What do you think? Maybe it is simply that we are not ready for that yet.)

So.

That was the news from Dublin.

[Insert single word that conveys both the excitement and fear of this moment.]

Yaaaay! Eeek!
T

report

Oh dear. I seem to have dropped the blogging ball, so to speak. I have left you with The Question for an age. (Thank you for your consoling answers. I am Not Taking It Personally. You know, the fact my beloved niece acted like I might stick her with a fork and toast her on the fire, and ran away from me, screaming. Hah! I forgot to report her charming question: You not my mummy. What are you?
Me: WHAT AM I? Just a child-toaster!
Not. Taking. It. Personally.)

It's back to school-ish, cover your books-ish weather here. Time for new shoes, and a new geometry set. Sharpen your pencils! Lay out your uniform! The air has had that delicious autumn chill (I like the Irish Winter. I readily accept that this makes me Odd.) the leaves are turning, there's that wonderfully gloomy smell of decay in the air, with all its intimation of mortality. Ah, yes! Mortality! Don't you just love it?

Ha.

So, yes. I have been busy with these and other preoccupations. I have been drawing a lot. I have been to lots of meetings, and been doing lots of planning. I made a cognitive leap or two.

And today we finally saw our social worker, the dear Detective, who handed over our report to read, and left the room - surely the closest I'll ever get to the red book moment in This is Your Life. Other people from my group have reported finding it tough to read their life story, but I just, for whatever reason, didn't. I mean, it's not like you don't know. None of my life events are a no-go area to me; I've taken the sting out of them by processing them here (And I thank you for reading. That's so important.) or in my work. I don't think anyone could accuse me of living a life unexamined - probably, like all of you too, of the online writing persuasion, I have had ample opportunity to think about My Stuff. We do that, don't we? And, it turns out, that is good for you. Like Guinness.

However. It is very interesting how much of a story resides in the manner of its telling. There are so many ways to spin a life; the details you select are so telling. My mother, the home-maker, the baker of cakes - well, all that is true. There's so much more, though. My mother, defender of the proper use of the apostrophe, arthritis sufferer, stalwart, stoic, charitable figure, nice person, repressed, passive, defensive person, with the sardonic sense of humour. You know? And the fact my father's rather florid temper becomes "a more old-fashioned parenting style". Dramaboy was characterised as "moody and dramatic". Also, to be fair, a massive over-simplication. So where is the truth, exactly?

All that said, our detective friend did a beautiful job for us, in distilling the reams of material to a coherent, credible account of us. A great relief. Now to wait a couple of weeks before the next Adoption Council meeting, where she will go before the board. She doesn't foresee any problems.

Progress, then! Good!

And now, for a picture. I find myself drawing and redrawing this view, it's endlessly interesting to me:

question

I have an important question for people who know these things:

Are three-year-olds mad?

I am a dried husk after yesterday's task,  the minding of my neice for four hours while her mother was at a funeral, and her father, my dear, dear brother, was being fed grapes by a servant in a gold lame (can you just imagine the accent on the e, I am feeling delicate) tunic, or whatever it is you do at a "rugby match".

All started fairly well. She's three and a half, after all, you can talk to her. Can't you? Brother, before he left to swill mead out of a tusk, did express a few misgivings. And I:
She's a child, not a wild animal! HAHA HA!

Ha.

We played for a couple of hours cheerfully enough. Playdough, ponies, drawings of Scooby - the whole gamut of my child entertainment repetoire was run. And then, I don't know why, exactly, but the mood suddenly went south, and despite my best and warmest reassurances that Mummy would be back soon, (OH PLEASE, GOD) and poor Dazzle wouldn't be stuck with her mean aunt for all eternity, there were many, many tears and quite an impressive tantrum. At this point, she wasn't able to speak, and trying to comfort her just resulted in renewed wailing, like she was suddenly petrified of me. So I retreated for a minute and she, seeing her escape route open at last, bolted from the room to fall asleep finally in front of Dora.

At his point, her mother came in and I thought how much I'd always liked adults. Aren't adults lovely?
 
This is Scooby. Or maybe Daphne. Hard to know - small children are MAD.

So now, I am beset with doubts. Up to now, I assumed that kids liked me, but now I see that was based on just one child, Spike, (brother of Dazzle) with whom I have a long-standing rapport based on drawing monsters and games where we pretend the bed is a boat, surrounded by sharks. WHAT IF, dear readers, WHAT IF Spike is actually the only kid in the world who sees the point of Bobbie, as he calls me? What about our poor adopted kid?

Sigh.

T

And rather more urgently, be safe, all those who are in the way of Irene.

voluntary

I apologise for the long silence. I had somesorta bizarro virus which reduced me to a bedridden shivering wreck for a night last week, and then, the next day, I had some disturbance in my vision, whereby a square section of my sight dropped out and went all pixelated and started pulsating sickeningly. And after that, I was afflicted by pins and needles in my hands, a numb thumb and, the ability to see dead people.* But after a bit of lying around watching the disco special light effects on my eyelids, I suddenly recovered and felt reborn and Full of Renewed Purpose. 
So, eh. If anything like that ever happened to you, let me know? Maybe we can start a support group, or something.

Life has been packed recently, I think you could say. On Saturday I met some friends I made doing some voluntary work about 10 years ago. A group of social eccentrics like me, they eschewed Friday nights in lively, warm Dublin pubs and clubs, to hand out sangwiches, soup and company to homeless people on the streets of the Dirty Oul Town. An oddly absorbing activity. Oh! the vomit-dodging adventures, the tragic stories, the cold realities, ambulances, the characters, the randomers in the back of my orange Beetle.

I am not really a group person, but it would be impossible not to be at ease with those people. It was that unicorn of things, a group with no hierarchy and no cliques. You'd come in after the work and everyone would be decompressing loudly after their week, buttering bread, throwing flasks around, stirring soup, complaining, slagging each other. It was a family. We'd pile into cars and split off around town, and though there we went into some dark, frankly dangerous places, the people on the street looked after us. We felt oddly invulnerable. Or naive, depending on your point of view.

One of us, a spark with the nervous energy of a caffeinated humming-bird, is now a project manager for a large Irish charitable organisation. He set up a camp for displaced people in Darfur. We aren't half proud of him and his mental brand of kindness. He'd answer his friends' texts pleading with him to join them in the pub with the immortal words: FUCK OFF, I'M SAVING THE WORLD. FUCK OFF, isn't that fantastic? He is an emphatic, capitalised kind of feller. Other catchphrases: I FEEL SO VIOLATED (in response to nearly anything). And: MAD IN THE HEAD, in response to anything else.
all pronouced in a paint-strippingly strong Donegal accent. (Think Liam Neeson's accent, but on steroids, if you are not familiar.)

And though there has been a sea change in the thinking about how homelessness is managed, about how giving people food on the streets is "enabling", I still like to believe we did did more good than harm. That's about all you can hope for, isn't it? If a real workable alternative existed, then yes, you could say we were helping them to choose to live on the streets. But when someone has nowhere else to go, then, what about that? A sandwich is at least a symbol that someone cares. Don't you think?

Here endeth the nostalgic interlude. Other news: there has been a deluge of biblical proportions today - a great big clatter of rain. Honorblackman is asleep on my desk, like this:


You would think she is exhausted, but that is not the case, believe me, unless sleeping 20 hours a day can tire a cat out. I would draw her doing something else, but she has taken laziness to the level of an artform, so there you are.

We completed the last of our interviews with the detective today. Hurray! We wait now while she compiles a 65 page report on us - (SIXTY-FIVE. About us. Poor, poor woman. I predict she'll lose the will to live around page 14.)

Also, today is the JB's birthday. He is 37, a fact we will celebrate later by ingesting large amounts of cream and sponge. And so it goes. Another year.


T

*Not really, about the dead people.

realities

Ah! A few minutes free to post, at last:

• KDiddy has taken another turn for the worse. Deep, deep sigh. He was moved from Regional Hospital to County Hospital yesterday and was pronounced to be very poorly when he arrived, dehydrated with low blood pressure. He was categorised as critical last night, and upgraded to serious this morning. County thinks Regional should never have moved him. However, County is less busy and is able to give him more attention, so now he's there, it's probably good.
  All these vertiginous ups and downs are making me rethink some things. The reality is sinking in that the care of a chronically ill older patient like KDid is about management of symptoms, about balancing one symptom against another, about diminishing returns. It's sad. Then (not that it's to do with what I think. Heh.) I wonder about quality of life issues - and how long a man with congestive heart failure can live, and I realise all we can do is try to be present with him, and accept that it's a matter of time. It's the best we can do.
  I think the JB was there before me. He is very close to his father, but he has gone through this fire with his mother, who died in 2001, and he has understood something about life that I just haven't had to. He's sad, but calm. He has been preparing himself for this for years, after all.
  On the other hand, KDid might be one of those creaking door people who just keep going. And if that is the case, all we can do is make sure he is as well looked after as possible, and make the most of the time we have.

• Psychokitty is a fecking despot. She just summarily murdered a bird in the garden. I hope she disembowells the poor thing somewhere else. Is there anything I can do, does anyone know, to prevent her turning the garden into an impromptu bird cemetry? (Btw, how much are they meant to eat, these felines? She is always, always begging for food.)

• I got the place on the Child Art Psych*therapy course. I don't think I'll take it, this year, anyway. It's very expensive and there doesn't exactly seem to bring a plethora of work opportunities with it. I am looking at some other related ones, which might give me more of a string to my bow as far as work is concerned.

• We survived the third of our interviews with the detective. Poor her, for cringe cringe cringe, I have a horrible, sneaking suspicion that we came off as the smugest couple in the history of the universe. When you're being assessed, it doesn't seem the moment for total honesty, I suppose. You present a sanitised, saintly view of yourself.
  Huh. We weathered the How Is Your Sex Life, too. I had a horrible moment when the Zany Monkey, feeling left out, lept on my back wanting to tell the detective how lucky we were to be compatible in That Way and how it hadn't been So with previous partners and oh shut up, can someone tape up my lips PLEASE.

I feel a bit robotic and like my adrenaline has run out. Not so bad, really. Like I've finally understood there's no point worrying. HFF and Adele have been over some mighty peaks recently, and I am thrilled to say that bunny is standing on the top of her mountain.

So it goes, eh. Just have to keep pedalling until you can freewheel for a while.

T