The Milkman of Human Kindness

This week I'm working through the first round of copyedits on my novel. Oh em gee.

Thing is, I've waited half my life - at least - for this experience. "My first novel arrives back from the copyeditor" is for me, in the Girlish Dreams stakes, somewhat akin to "man of my dreams goes down on one knee and produces polished rock".

(For the record, I didn't do that latter dream. The actual man of my dreams, viz. niallm, proposed morridge to me on his two feet, while I was brushing my teeth ... so my first response was to spit. This is not to denigrate anyone else's Girlish Dreams, but simply to emphasise the relative importance of the copyediting thing.)

This is the first round of edits, which aim to clean it up enough to go out in advance of the Frankfurt Book Fair. And that's another squee: I remember my father going to the Frankfurt Book Fair in around 1980 - it was clearly an occasion of unparalleled glitz. Apparently nobody reads books at the fair, don'tcha know, so it needs to be ready in advance.

Deadline on Friday.

Word by word...

TheJournal.ie had a piece yesterday about Amnesty's ad campaign for an equal health system in Ireland.

(Incidentally, for me, this comment on that article sums up exactly why a one-tier, free-at-point-of-access health system is really the only defensible approach: "...as soon as rich people have to avail of the same services as the rest of us you’ll be amazed how quickly it gets sorted.")

So I went to sign the petition, and ended up finally writing something that's been brewing for months.

( And this is what she said... )

I wonder will it be read?

I've sent an edited version as a letter to the Irish Times, which is probably still too long to print, so I thought I'd just publish it here too. You know, for closure.

It's worth noting that until ailbhe and I were discussing my A&E experience I had no idea how low the cut-off point for a medical card actually is. If I'm reading the Citizens' Information figures correctly, a 40-hr/week job at minimum wage puts you over the threshold unless you have 3+ children and no other household income (if you're under 66, that is).

Anyway. Go and sign the petition, if you're in Ireland.

If you're not in Ireland, feel free to gnash your teeth at our iniquitous set-up.

Are you still here, lovely people?

I've been howling at this blog post quoting extracts from "Are Women People?" (1915) (via Twitter; I think ailbhe linked to it).

For instance:

If They Meant All They Said

Charm is a woman's strongest arm;
My charwoman is full of charm;
I chose her, not for strength of arm
But for her strange elusive charm.

And how tears heighten woman's powers!
My typist weeps for hours and hours:
I took her for her weeping powers—
They so delight my business hours.

A woman lives by intuition.
Though my accountant shuns addition
She has the rarest intuition.
(And I myself can do addition.)

Timidity in girls is nice.
My cook is so afraid of mice.
Now you'll admit it's very nice
To feel your cook's afraid of mice.

The boys were having a game on the way home from the food co-op just now:

The Oyster: This is a ghost train, and I'm a vampire, and I'm going to chop off your head at midnight!

The Feaster: I'm pretenting to be a toy toothbrush with a gun!

I do heartily wish they'd put a sock in the whole violence schtick.

"Play is a processing mechanism. Play is a processing mechanism," I say to myself. (Sometimes it helps.)

It turns out, right, that living in squalor is really not where I want to be.

But all our housekeeping mechanisms broke down in the onslaught of 2009 (the construction of the south wing) and the early part of 2010 (my vitamin B12 deficiency), and they're only just beginning to come back.

I still feel at sea. So I'm going to take a leaf out of ailbhe's book and start by keeping track, every so often, on a haphazard schedule and without rigid criteria, of the stuff I do.

I think it may help, at least to pinpoint what's getting done, what areas of work are "mine", what's being neglected, and so on.

Here's today's:
( click if you really need to know! )

That brings us to 17:25ish, when I started writing this. I may come back later and update when I've done some more.

Update:
( if anything, even less interesting than the first list )

Moar update:
( you know the drill )

There are mountains of laundry waiting upstairs, and the kitchen backlog will take a while to clear. I want to be doing things like building the new utility room shelves, but clean clothes, meals, and a usable kitchen take precedence.

Maybe I'll get to measure and mark the timber for the shelves this evening. If I can find my effing set square, dammit. I hate it when my tools go missing.

Question: Are you overwhelmed by the maintenance of your living space, or does it feel basically under control? If the latter, what are your top tips?

We are back from four weeks in California, where the weather is apparently always hot and sunny at this time of year. Which gets disconcertingly boring after a while. The drizzle at Dublin Airport this morning was an unexpected pleasure.

Some Random Things I Liked

Swimming!
The residents' pool and jacuzzi. OMG. I haven't been swimming regularly since our last French holiday in 2005. As a child I went on family holidays to the Continent most summers (my parents lecture in French and Italian), which entirely ruined me for indoor swimming pools. (Yes, this is incompatible with my new-found drizzle-love. Work with me.)

The one where we stayed is particularly beautiful - set among white-painted pergolas clothed in wisteria (just finishing, but it must have been incredible two months ago), with white roses and gardenia(?) all around, and birches and mystery flowering trees on the street outside.

The pool was generally deserted during the week, and we never saw it with more than about 30 people. The water didn't smell chlorinated - it seemed to be treated with some kind of salt. The boys and I went nearly every day, and it turns out that the Oyster shares my extreme delight at being in the water. I watched him at the end of each visit - dragging himself along to the steps, not wanting to get out until he absolutely had to - and I thought, I remember that.

The Oyster can basically doggy paddle now, and he can jump in over his head and push himself back to the surface if I'm there to catch him. The Feaster bobs around in his armbands and ring, and can get himself from place to place quite efficiently when he wants to. They both like clinging to my back while I swim. I like that too.

BIG Trees!
We went to Muir Woods. And even though the Oyster was in a mood so finely calculated to push his parents' buttons that it's a wonder we didn't explode, it was spectacular. Coastal redwoods! They are tall. The end.

Safety!
Car seats for people the Feaster's size come with a chest buckle, as well as the crotch buckle we're used to. This is just a plastic slidey thing, but it has the very desirable effect of preventing him from wriggling out of the shoulder straps (something he does regularly in Dublin for the purpose of putting the heart across me). I must see if they're available here.

Efficiency!
Cafés and foodcourts have this brilliant gadget. You place your order at the counter and pay for it. They hand you a square plastic device like a very thick coaster, about the size of your palm, with their logo on it and some little LEDs around the rim. You find a table. After a few minutes, the device buzzes and the LEDs flash, and you go to the collection counter and pick up your food.

It is magic.

Actually, it reminds me of the first time I was in California, in 1997. I went To The Mall, tee em, with one of the Irish friends I was staying with, and she urged me to buy a newfangled drink I'd never seen before. It was a smoothie, and my mind was blown. Within a year, they had hit Dublin.

So I'll be very much looking out for these food buzzer things. (Or am I just fearfully out of touch and everyone else has been using them for months already?)

Right, the Feaster has awoken. I'll be off.

This evening, K stayed home with our sleeping boys, and niallm and I went out.

Like, together.

As in, we actually had a conversation.

With each other.

And it ranged over multiple topics.

And other than waitresses bringing our drinks and so on, nobody interrupted us.

It was Ay. May. Zing.

And because I love you all so much, I'll share two little thoughts that occurred to us. They made us larf and larf.

1. Marxist workplace poster: "You don't have to be alienated from the means of production to work here - but it helps!"

2. When you give your toddler over-the-counter antihistamine to help him sleep, and it doesn't work? Phenergans Wake.

Ahahahahaha.

As you were.

Now I know why I'm so hungry.

The Feaster has had so little solid food this week (see under: winter vomiting bug - better now) that he has reverted to producing breastmilk poo.

Ah, smell-memory!

(Please send calories.)

I am repeating the drastic experiment of April '09 (or was it in fact '08? I can't actually remember), and going to bed at 11pm every night this month. January had got ridiculous, and I was officially Not Coping.

NOT THAT THIS HELPED last night, when I both (a) signally failed to make my deadline, and (b) ... well. Read on.

After a lovely phone call with ailbhe, I was all ready to bed at 23:15, but just then, niallm came home (Thursday being his Evening Off). And he'd had an exceptionally interesting and varied day, all about which he proceeded to tell me.

And then it was 23:55.

So I went up to bed and read for a while, then settled down to sleep.

Then at 0:35, the Feaster went bump. (I found him sitting on the floor beside his bed, still mostly asleep.)

So I fed him all the way back to sleep, came back to my bed at around 0:55, read Niall's new poem (that's what he does of a Thursday evening), and slept until 2:30something, when the Feaster arrived in for more milk.

So then Niall went to the Feaster's bed, and we all slept until 3:30, when the Oyster woke up and got enormously distressed because I'd forgotten to bring his alarm clock upstairs last night. He screeched at Niall for a bit, then came in and began to screech at me, but I persuaded him not to because the Feaster was asleep (with his head on my shoulder, as it happened, so I couldn't get up to deal with the Oyster). So the Oyster went back to Niall, who went down and got the alarm clock, and then they had an incredibly loud conversation about why I had forgotten to bring it up. Whyyyyyy???

Meanwhile, I edged out from under the Feaster without waking him (woohoo!) and went in to comfort the Oyster, because Niall was losing his cool. And the Oyster was in total shuddering meltdown for a bit, and then began to calm down. We had some logic, then some illogic, and then just soothing noises. But he couldn't settle because of a pain in his ankle - which I suspect is what had woken him in the first place. (Growing pain? Do they actually exist? I couldn't see any damage.) So I went and got him some Calpol, and after a bit he consented to let me go back to bed.

So I got into bed without waking the Feaster again (I am NINJA-MAMA) and settled down to sleep at about 4:00.

And at 4:12 the Oyster came in to tell me that the pain in his ankle had gone. Which was lovely of him. But really.

So THEN I slept until the Feaster woke up at 6:20 for more milk, and then again until the Oyster and Niall started moving around some time before 8:00. Then endured the Feaster climbing around on my head (this is not comic exaggeration) until about 8:50, when Niall took him downstairs and I slept until 9:35 and dreamed I was on the run from the police over some vague involvement in a drug deal, and had to take care of an elderly man who was in it with me and wasn't so quick at climbing through windows and similar.

Then I had to get up because Niall was going to work.

It was a hard day. But both boys were absolutely lovely, and I barely lost my temper at all, which was kind of miraculous.

At one point, the Oyster was leading me through an improvised "choose your own adventure" game, and I realised that I simply wasn't following, and his voice was driving spikes through my brain, and so I appealed to him - said I knew he wanted me to play, and on a normal day I'd love to, but I was just too tired.

So he went away and drew me this, which is me sitting on my high-backed desk chair beside my computer monitor:



Made me feel considerably better.

As did the Feaster's contribution at lunchtime, when I put my head down on the table for a few seconds.

Feaster: You go a-seep, Mama!
Mama: *goes a-seep*
Feaster: Cock-a-gooooo!

Which about sums it up, really.

The Feaster is TWO (and six days, because I'm disorganised like that).

We had a lovely party, with balloons and cake and popcorn. None of the other children we'd invited were able to come, until the 12-year-old and 9-year-old turned up in the early evening. But that was fine - he had plenty to take in, what with all the adults and the rain of presents, so it might have been a bit overwhelming if there had been half a dozen toddlers there as well.

He is so not a baby any more. His language has exploded recently: he's doing lovely syntax like "my hat came off" and "wh'are you, bear? a' can't see-um! oh! there you are!", and he's started to ask "what's that?" and "why did you say [x]?" (just like his brother).

To start a race, he says "sadie, sadie, go!" He counts up to ten (fairly accurately), then says "ready or not, here I come!" (not quite as clearly as that, but he hasn't said it today so I'm not sure of the precise pronunciation). When the Oyster and I were discussing infinity the other day, the Feaster piped up with "to i'windy ... a' beyond!"

He's also in the process of dropping his daily nap. This is excruciating. But it will be over soon. Won't it?