twangypearl the elastic girl

*the cool

The clan met at my parents' house yesterday, and I borrowed a jigsaw from Brother to make a wooden box for a show. He showed me its functions and buttons while Spike (4.5 years of age) quizzed us with urgent, unanswerable questions, like:

But what shapes can you really make with it?
Any shape you like, Spike.
But where are the shapes?
...
Brother strongly recommended safety goggles (he has accidentally embedded various shards and pieces of DIY shrapnel in his eyes, over the years) for sawing. I don't have any goggles, but oh! now I think of it, I do have some prescription swimming goggles, which I bought recently in an effort not to miss anything in the pool. I can wear those. I'll be like Bono, but with a jigsaw instead of a microphone and without the fans.

 
(note haughty killer-like expression).

Yesterday evening, after that, we had a meeting in the exhibition "space". (It's always a space, with artists, as you probably know). The meeting was populated with a lot of desperately cool, twenty-something artists in a freezing warehouse in a dodgy part of the inner-city. All the exhibiting artists sat there - a beardy one, some long-haired girls, some pierced ones and one performance artist with the most fantastic facepaint (I didn't dare ask if she had just come from a performance or if this was her usual get-up, if so, very impressed) - as the one of the cool ones explained how the show is going to work. I sat there quietly, glad no one knew The Archers were on my mp3 player.

One of the Young People complained about the cold in there (it's true, there was that bone-chilling concrete dampness) and another one pulled up his top, to show us his vest, and said:
One euro in Guineys! (an inexpensive, nearby clothing/bric-a-brac shop, kind of a Dublin institution).
 
And they all laughed inordinately. I smiled benevolently to show I was friendly. Inside I was thinking, middle-agedly:
Yes, thermal vests. They are not really all that funny, they keep older people (like me) nice and warm.

It was exciting, in a way being twenty-something. But the effort! The endless grooming to appear casually tousled, the fake ennui, the desperate trying to appear experienced!

I prefer being older, on the whole. I think I've been waiting all my life to be middle-aged. And now I am! (Hurray! What an achievement.)

Which was your favourite/least favourite life-era, so far, I'd like to know?

{*oops forgot to title. }

weeds

(Oh dear. The thing is, I can't seem to stop blogging. It's become a displacement activity. There are so many things I should be doing instead, like working on my show, or quoting for a job, laundry, house-work, such-like. We have instituted Date Night on Wednesday evenings, in an effort to avoid the Home for the Bewildered, so I should probably be plucking my eyebrows or something. You know, real world stuff. 

But never mind that, on with the blogging!)

_______________________________________

People are funny. 

I was inspired to do a bit of weeding in the front, last week, before Kerry. (Though, in truth, part of me feels this is discriminating against the weeds. I mean, you know, just because a plant isn't as pretty as the other plants, and is good at growing, must it really be executed by strangulation? After all, I suffered an unattractive, gawky phase in my childhood, where I was the tallest in the class, by at least 6 inches. I was 5 foot tall when I was 8. Very weedy, but no one even attempted my execution. I was thinking about this, as I weeded, in my conflicted way.)

A grey-haired woman came along and we exchanged a "hello!" all friendly-like. She paused.

"Now, please say no, if you don't want to", she said, "but I was wondering if you'd like to collect for the church."

In my new-found honesty, I felt compelled to confide in her as follows:
"Oh! Well, you see, I am not actually a member of it."
And she was all nice and reasonable and said:
"Oh that's fine, even if you were, you still wouldn't have to! I just thought I'd ask as I saw you there."

Beguiled by this lovely respectful way of going about things that the nice lady had, I gaily confessed:
"Actually I'm not even a Catholic!" (not forgetting to slip in, perfidiously) "Though my husband is." (Har! Poor JB)

"Oh well," she said. "Great day for weeding!"

"Indeed!" I agreed, (a word that only ever comes out of my mouth when conversing with vicars and older people) and I go back to the weeds, thinking what a beautiful thing ecumenical relations really are, how we join together in a peaceful reconciliation, each respecting the other, living in harmony.

But as my new friend moved off, her parting shot across the bows was:

"And you have plenty of them!"


 

hello estrogen my old friend

Zol@dex-days are over. Hurray! Although I can hardly complain, it didn't seem to bother me too much, apart from the insomnia.

(Well. Honesty compels me to make it a matter of public record that Zol@dex-sex is not as - ehem - "interesting" as the usual kind. For me at least. And now, let's draw a veil over that whole thing.

Quick, where's the veil? The veil..? 

Phew.)

Well, as I say, technically, the zola-days are over, and yet, I still can't sleep the whole night through, and I am having mildish hot flushes. (Which have the unexpected benefit of cutting down on central heating costs, incidentally).

Maybe my system is trying to reset itself. Who knows? It's such an intricate, fragile thing, this hormonal system. This whole gynaecological set-up. It makes my head hurt to think about it. When I grapple with the idea of it, sometimes I get this odd and alienated sensation, as if I am shooting backward through space, till everything in the world is tiny and ludicrous-looking, and I think:
Seriously, this is the apparatus we humans are to use to reproduce?

This is The Plan?
This..?

Am I the only one to feel like this? Feel free to jump in any time.
Aaaanytime at all!

My mother used to look at me sometimes when I was a child, being crackers in a world of my own creative, and say, not meanly at all, but as if she was telling me there was some pie left in the fridge:

I sometimes wonder if you are all there.

I think now might count as one of those moments.

the shining

Here I am in my father-in-law’s front room, surrounded by photos of his boys in gowns, (ha! Not that sort of gown! that would be a cartoon to do, but no scanner at hand, sadly) in various degree ceremonies. For even unto darkest Kerry I have come, an incredibly lengthy train journey (it would take less time to go to another country altogether, like say, the USA), to see the JB and his Dad. It’s one of those linear Irish towns, his hometown, built as if on a ledge between the side of a mountain and a tidal river, and prone to gloomy dark rain.
This afternoon we went out and walked along the hill behind the town, and back through the terraced houses.  We passed one spooky, grey, semi-abandoned one, and the JB regaled me with a story of how a mad man used live there. The mad man used to forget to take his medication and get up on top of his house and be mad! And there was another, wherein a “shiner” used to live.

A shiner? I said, puzzled. (Did a huge black eye live in the house? Or someone who cleaned shoes for a living?) What’s that?

You know, a shiner, he answered. Someone who, you know, exposes himself to people. He used shine all around town!

I thought about this.

A flasher, you mean?

Pause.

Oh yeah. A flasher.

The JB has a PhD, for Gawd’s sake. He has published a ton of papers. My latest hypothesis about this strange and wonderful JB, is that he reserves all his brain power (every brain cell, yes, I do mean all of them) for his research. It’s a bit like living with a very nice Martian, sometimes. Not so long ago, I witnessed him picking up a packet of cocoa, peering at it, and saying slowly KOH-KOH-AH.

He’ll be the death of me, by laughter.

ask me no questions

Episode 1, last week, in the Torture Chamber
As part of my "recovery", Ms Spangles, my physio, advised me to play ball with my "kids".

Hrmm, where are these kids of whom you speak, Spangly-eyed one?

She's a nice young woman. But what is this assumption that I am marriedwithchildren?
I could be gay/single/part of a harem with children/cats/donkeys/nothing, for all she knows.
I could have fertility issues, Spangles!
It was an opportunity to do a little awareness-raising, in a way. I could have answered with the stunningly obvious:
Not everyone has children, you know!
Or
We haven't been able to have them.

Cue: long pause? toe-curling embarrassment? learning moment?

We'll never know, because I just nodded dumbly. (I was delirious with relief, because I don't have to do back to physio for a month! HURRAY. Then I have to go back to see an Ortho-surgeon, who's going to tell me if I need an operation. But that's A WHOLE MONTH away! and no torture inbetween!)

Episode 2, last night, the doorbell rings.
Goody, I think, pushing myself off the sofa, it's L and/or A, my friends, the sisters, who are fans of the Drop-In.
But no.
It was two clean young men called Elder C*rey and Elder M*ore. They're from the "Knighted States", and want to come in for ten minutes.

Oh, quick, brain, think of a lie. A lie, brain, a lie!

I'm - eh - making the dinner!

Well, we'll have to run with that, brain. Unoriginal but plausible, I suppose.

They press a leaflet into my hands. They're on about The Family. Actually, they are proclaiming to the world some things we've heard before, some fairly obvious things and some things that are, at best, a matter of opinion.

Do I have a family?

Opportunity to stick it to them with a nice, loud, robotic:

No. We have fertility problems.

Except I didn't want to tell them. It's just too personal and sensitive a thing to blurt out like that.
So I went with:
We just got married.

Which was a lie, and a dopey lie, and why do I even care what these people think? Yes, I wanted them to go away and ask our neighbours instead, but really what WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME, THAT I CAN'T JUST BE HONEST?

Yeah. Since early childhood, I have been brainwashed to be nice (at the expense of honesty, clearly) and I just can't break out of it.

 

If anyone has got any good answers to the family question, I'd love to hear them.

Your less-than-frank,
Twangy

Show and Tell

Hello to all, from a blustery Ireland.
You are most welcome.
 __________________________________

In the park recently, in this autumnal weather, with the leaves turning overhead, I came across a couple of parents with a small boy, perched on a bike with stabilizers on it.

There was something so endearing about this family unit, so unassuming, as they pushed their boy off on his first solo ride.

His delighted cry, full of the surprise of discovery:

I can do it!

made my young/old heart fill with longing.

 
Have a look at Mel's Circle Time post to see all the Show and Tell posts.

Freudian slip

I was shearing cutting the JB's fleece hair last night. He goes for a kind of R*ddy Doyle, know the one?

We invested in the Hair Clipping Machine a few years ago, because the JB was too lazy to go to the barber, and would end up with a woolly look, like a bespectacled lamb, that was cute only to me and his Dad.
Like this:

Anyway, last night. We were jokey from relief from dodging the Home for the Bewildered and there I was, ploughing furrows in the JB crop of hair, telling him how good I was getting at this.  (He tells me I am my own best press agent. It's true. For some reason, it amuses me hugely to boast to JB. I do do it a lot. Then I ask him if I am a pain. (However, I'd like to assure everyone, lest they should be put off meeting me in the flesh, that this behaviour is reserved for him.) (And my mother. That's it. I swear. Right, well. Let's pause while you give thanks that you are not married to me.
...
and neither did you give birth to me
...
))

I took the guard (it has settings, like 3 and 4, on it. See? I am practically a professional) off so I could trim some stray wool hairs. I'd just finished. Oh. Wait a minute, it's a little bit uneven there, I'll just...

UH-OH.

I forgot to put the guard on again.

Oh.

 

Home for bewildered: Avoided, by a whisker

We've been through the wringer this weekend. It started in I.KEA, amongst all the nesting, clucking couples, choosing their SNIGLARs on Friday evening. JB was all morose and touchy, and not his normal lovely self (he really is very easy-going normally). But when I'd ask him, he'd claim to be "grand". This went on, the "grandness", until finally that night at home, he admitted to being a bit down about the rough 18 months we've had, and how he felt sad for us. Oh, JB, says I. Tell me next time, so I know.

End of problem, or so we thought.

Saturday was shaky. But better. We went to see Up (which is very good. A child's film with a grown-up central theme, about losing your grip on your dreams and getting older. (How apt)).
In the foyer, JB told me he had been putting money aside for our next visit to the ChildDr in December. Well, (I said) as I 'd explained before, I only made the appointment because the secretary rang me and put me on the spot - I had not committed myself to it. Oh, grand, he said.
By the time we got out I was feeling very sorry for myself. My shoulder was aching, (apparently I have arthritis in it, I discovered on Thursday) I was tired (the 4AM watch continues), I didn't want to think about IVF in December, I was depressed about the whole effing everything.
I started to cry quietly. He asked me if I was ok. We got home. I went into the kitchen, and to my astonishment, he, the JB, my lovely compassionate JB, turned on his computer and started working on a paper, ignoring his sobbing wife.

Me (bitterly, with maximum sarcasm): That must be very important to you, J.
He said he didn't know what to say, and I said he didn't have to say anything, just be with me and give me a hug. Then the whole thing came out, (incoherently, in an un-Jane-like messy rush) about how I felt pressurized to do IVF, and I didn't feel I was getting any support, or he would stick by me even if it was a disaster, and he was avoiding me and just burying himself in work. He admitted he used work to avoid thinking about our problems but he was there with me and we would be okay, he loved me no matter what. Things ended on a better note. He was happy we had cleared the air, we had a bit of a laugh on the sofa about ourselves.

End of problem, or so we thought.

Sunday morning. What does JB want to do today? (Does he want to come down to see my parents, as previously discussed?).

He said: I think I'll stay here and do some work.

ARGG.
More tears. Seriously, this was his response to last night's discussion? Seriously, now? MORE WORK?

Well, (he said) really he just wanted some time by himself and didn't want to hurt my feelings.
Well. I could understand that, I often ask for quiet time. That was okay.

I sometimes think you'd be better off without me, says JB. Your life would be less painful.

Sad silence.

And then a little voice in my head pointed out that the JB feeling guilty like this, it is not good, for either of us.
Thank you, little voice.
In a moment of inspiration, I got up and got my little book, The Portable Therapist, which I bought while having a wobble on our honeymoon. It is so sensible and kind.

We read some chapters to each other and it was like being trapped in a blind alley, and suddenly finding a door handle. The author, a wise, wise woman, tells how destructive and pointless guilt is, how it paralyses you, how it turns into blame and resentment. and prevents you from really living. So all the guilt the poor JB was feeling about wanting a biological child so much, about my having the lap and all the treatment I might need, and the guilt I felt about not being able to get pregnant, all had to stop.
Oh!

What a relief.

Not that that's going to be as simple as that, of course. But I feel like a door opened for us. There's help there if we need it.

We are finally, finally, on the same page, at least for now.

 

entertaining

JB's friend and colleague plus wife/partner (depends who you ask) were to come over on Saturday for dinner.  In the midst of the mad panic culinary preparations, I rang my mother who is a well-known good "cooker" (as the kids say) to ask her how to prepare some chestnuts quickly, in time for dinner. (JB had come home with uncooked chestnuts in their shells.)

She responded:

Where did you get the chestnuts? You didn't.. did you find them in the park?

Ma. I do know you can't give people conkers for dinner.

 

the black night of the soul

Sleeping.

It should be easy, shouldn't it? But it seems to have slipped my mind how to pull it off. I can fall asleep easily enough, but come 4am (not a good time to think about Life, kids) I am half-awake, and then totally awake, and then thrashing around like a dying fish on the pier. It's not so much fact that it's tiring, as it's depressing, the kind of things you think about at that time of night.
Know what I mean?

Last weekend at my parents', on my squeaky old nun's bed, (and no Kerryman to keep me company), marked a bit of a low-point. Mad thoughts circled my mad little head, including (but not limited to):

• dark thoughts
• mournful thoughts (about a pony I knew that died about 20 years ago, funnily enough)
• ludicrous thoughts
• "brilliant" demented ideas
• Thoughts about my post-menopausal role model, Jane (Surely she doesn't ever feel like this?)
• hungry thoughts
• bored thoughts
• frustrated thoughts

And so on. I'm annoying myself with my early morning angst.

Anyway. I got that off my chest.
Here endeth the moaning.

Twangy