Ebay Addicts Anonymous
Hello everybody. I’m 37, married with two children and a large dog/camel and yes, I suffer from a serious Ebay habit. I’ve tried diversion therapy (look! A sheep! Oh no sorry, that was yesterday), I’ve tried not turning on my computer, I’ve tried everything, but sooner or later I’m back there purchasing all kinds of ridiculous items that I don’t need.
Just to ‘name and shame’ myself further, I’ll give you a list of my most recent acquisitions:
A heart-shaped single egg frying pan (so cute!)
A ceramic pot in the shape of a little fairy cake with a cherry on top (even cuter!)
An oven glove with a fairy cake pattern (cuter still!)
The Two Fat Ladies Ride Again (a girl should know how to cook brains)
Ken Hom’s Travels with a Hot Wok
A book of British Food
A Place in the Sun (the book of the series)
A leopard-print Martingale dog collar (size XXXL)
An X-box controller
Brian Lara Cricket 2007 for X-box
Okay, so those last two weren’t mine but you get my drift. And the worst thing is that in my peculiarly distorted psyche I can justify every one of these purchases as essential. Take the heart-shaped frying pan: when Hubby comes back I can cook him little heart-shaped eggs for breakfast, therefore magically allowing my affection to physically manifest itself upon his toast whilst cleverly demonstrating my domestic goddess-ness. What man could resist?! Oh and the little pot shaped like a cake is just the thing I need to collect my one euro coins towards the purchase of my new KitchenAid (only another 200 to go!).
It gets worse. I’m even obsessed with things that I have no intention of buying. Take my ‘watched items’ list. It currently includes a pink Smeg fridge (they come in 10 colours!), a rather fabulous lime green Le Creuset casserole (only £45 P&P!) and a villa in Florida (a girl can dream). I suppose it’s the on-line equivalent of mooching around a Louis Vuitton store; nobody knows that you can’t afford anything except you. Anyway, I’d love to chat but I’ve got to run. I’m watching a pair of pink and white flip-flops (with sequins!) and the auction finishes in three minutes. Need them? Of course I need them!
Look! A bird!
Okay so this is mainly for Hubby, but hey, this blog’s just one big party and you’re all invited. So, back to our normal two-ness after a somewhat stressful weekend, Bert and I took our usual route down the bottom field, over the stream (now completely choked with grass and ferns), carefully bypassing the sheep (ooh, Bertie loves a sheep – I have to use my entire repertoire of greyhound diversion techniques just to get him to walk in a straight line: ‘look! A bird!’) and around the giant field at the bottom, looping gently back round the edge of the field to meet up with the path that leads up between our house and our nearest neighbours. It’s becoming much more difficult to follow the tyre tracks (one doesn’t trample wheat, it’s a big no no) now because the wheat is almost waist high. In certain spots on our walk, we’re surrounded by it as far as the eye can see and in today’s gorgeous sunshine, with all this lush green stuff gently undulating in the breeze, I felt, somewhat bizarrely I know, that I was wading through some warm azure sea somewhere, instead of dragging a huge, furry, sheep-eating machine through a farmers’ field in the middle of Ireland.
For the purposes of this demonstration, I called upon my beautiful assistant, the Bertilicious Taoiseach, to stand in the aforementioned wheat to give you a kind of 3D, glorious Technicolor-type, ‘diving into the camera’ view so you can appreciate my somewhat elaborate prose. Unfortunately, he was more interested in the sheep. But you get my drift.
Visitors
So, as our multicultural weekend draws to a close, I have to be honest and say that I don’t think I’m a particularly good ‘sleepover Mom’. Well, maybe I should qualify that; I’m certainly not one of those ‘earth mother’ types that positively thrive on a house load of children. Firstly, there’s the discipline aspect. I find it a bit awkward to discipline other people’s children. Our household could probably be categorised as some way between shouty and sweary with quite a lot of silly thrown in. We’re very relaxed and informal, we eat well, drink too much (not in front of the children), but demand good manners and that everyone is treated respectfully. I can see that this can be a little daunting to our younger visitors and that maybe they worry we’re a bit dysfunctional when I yell ‘oh will you bugger off!’ when #2 is trying to climb all over me when I’m sunbathing in the garden. For some reason, though, my shoutiness deserts me when the children are not my own. Hubby says this works with adults too. ‘How come you can bite my bloody head off but can’t stick up for yourself with a total stranger?’ he asks, mystified. And it’s true: my tried and trusted technique with visiting children is to yell in vaguely the direction of all of them, so it looks as if they’re all getting told off and I’m not specifically targeting a visitor.
This, however, can no longer work when your visitor is a worldly-wise 13 year old French kid and his Spanish compadre who are practically as tall as I am and want to put their unfeasibly large trainers up on my couch and are still crashing around in their room at 11pm. Nope, no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t squeeze a ‘feet off the furniture please’ out of my lips, but just sat there staring at the aforementioned gargantuan chaussure getting myself really worked up. I was also shocked at what a total pansy I was with the TV. We were all sitting watching Real Madrid v Barcelona at 9.30 last night. Yep, footie on the TV and Hubby’s not even in the country. I missed half a CSI:Miami all because I was too much of a scaredy dog to ask for my own bloody telly buttons.
Before I get carried away, I must point out that they were very nice young men, who took their plates out, said please and thank you, gamely disguised their boredom at my pathetic attempts at speaking French and answered my polite dinner table conversation about Paris and Barcelona respectively with short but courteous replies. But, knocking on their door to ask them to keep it down at 11pm last night made me feel very uncomfortable. I finally steeled myself and requested some hush only to be rewarded with a polite ‘ok’ and instant silence. There, how easy was that? I think the biggest issue for me is not wanting to seem like a total dragon. That’s all #1 and #2 need, isn’t it, to have everyone in school knowing that their mother is a whingeing hag who demonises her house guests with strangled French verbs and interrogates them at the dinner table. Ah well, I won them over with my cookies (which they dunk in milk – a habit which #1 took to very quickly). I may be a pushover but I’m still Le Grand Fromage in the kitchen.
Trumpet blowing
Slip-sliding along upon the banana skin-strewn ice rink that is motherhood, every so often there’s the odd moment of satisfaction: a metaphorical cushion for your bottom as it were. This week, I’ve been lucky to experience not one but several of these moments although, let’s be honest, my bottom doesn’t need much more padding.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised since their Dad went away how caring they’ve been. I’ve had many a cuddle and ‘are you okay, Mummy?’ from both of them, which is very much appreciated. And then the Mum of the lovely lad from Tipperary where #1 spent a very happy weekend told me that he was ‘a pleasure to have, and a credit to you – what lovely manners’. Well, dear reader, I beamed (and silently congratulated myself for having threatened him with death if he misbehaved). Me Mum always said to us ‘you can do what you like at home (within reason) but you’d better damn well behave when you’re out’. They’ve certainly done their fair share of sodding around at home, but thankfully her pearl of wisdom seemed to sink in.
Then today there was the annual summer concert. Well, what a morning. Firstly I saw #2 and his fellow junior choir members sing (beautifully), then I was lucky enough to see #1 and his friend Olly perform ‘When I come around’ by Green Day (#1 on electric guitar and his friend on bass), then later on #2 performed a really rocking song that he had written himself (must have been the one that got me out of bed at 7am on Sunday – plenty of reverb and the amp turned up nice and high). It was really good though, and he got whoops and cheers from the audience. Last but certainly not least was #1 again in the senior choir and again that fantastic solo in Pie Jesu. So many people came up to me afterwards and said ‘wow, your children are so talented’ and ‘you must be a very musical family’. Honestly, I could have cried. I have to say that the musical standard was incredibly high. Some of the children played really complicated piano pieces and one girl did a haunting version of ‘Summertime’ on her clarinet: perfect.
So finally to my last little bit of trumpet-blowing: #1 didn’t like the thought of two of the boarders having to stay in B&Bs for the long weekend and asked if we could invite them to stay. Too right we could and so we are a proud, and rather multicultural household this weekend: one French lad, one Spanish, the children, who are a Heinz 57 of English and Irish, and li’l old me. My schoolgirl French isn’t bad (I can even swear) but my Spanish is limited to: ‘Dos Cervesas Por Favor’. Ah well, I’m sure being able to say ‘shit’ will come in useful with a household full of small boys, and probably the two beers as well. Happy days.
U.N.S.T.A.B.L.E.
Okay so this blondeness thing has hit a nerve. I don’t mean with blonde people – seeing as I’m an honorary (or should that be counterfeit) one – I’m allowed to insult my own. No, I mean that I’m afraid my blondeness has become contagious. Take J for example: perfectly sensible and organised until she met me, juggling a home, a full time job, motherhood and a highly successful greyhound rescue organisation all while barely breaking into a sweat and now – poof – it’s all vanished in a puff of disorganisation and befuddlement: absent pet passports, dogs missing their connecting transports, lost cheque books…
My Mum’s another one – the most level-headed and organised person I know, she takes a trip over the water to see me and what happens? All her paperwork vanishes mysteriously at the check in desk and she’s left stuttering and apologising to the bored, orange-faced Ryanair girl at the counter (don’t they look in the mirror when they’re doing that fake tan thing? Hello! You’re the colour of a Satsuma!).
So, carelessly whiling away several hundred Euro worth of call credit (as we do on a regular basis until one of us realises they’re talking to thin air), we came up with a plan: Unwavering Non- judgmental Support for Terminally or Acutely Bewildered Lackadaisical Eejits, or UNSTABLE for short (catchy eh?). Figuring that there must be more of us out there, we’re prepared to donate our time (usually spent hunting for things that we’ve lost or apologising for things we haven’t done properly or indeed forgot to do altogether) for free in support of the hopelessly ineffective amongst us.
After all, we figured, we can’t be the only ones that could do with a coping strategy a little better than just wafting through life like a Will-o’-the-wisp leaving in our wake a trail of havoc of epic proportions and pretending not to notice.
Once we’ve worked on UNSTABLE’s mission statement (which we’ll get round to … oh, I don’t know, shortly), we thought we’d start by publishing some supportive coping strategies for our bemused brethren such as:
1. If in doubt, lie
2. If still in doubt, blame somebody else (remember the sage words of the Disreputable one: ‘never apologise, never explain’)
3. Encouraging the use of kinder euphemisms such as ‘oh it appears to have become misplaced’ instead of ‘shit, I’ve lost it’
4. The blaming of technology: ‘I’m afraid my computer crashed and lost all my data’ or ‘no, I’m sure I never received that text’
5. The practical use of vagueness as a distraction, for example: ‘hmmm? Did who ask me to do what by when?’ a valuable tactic to buy one more time to concoct either a lie (see 1. above) or think of someone else to blame (see 2. above).
We’ll let you know the outcome of the first committee meeting…em…that is, when J finds her phone (she gave it to a little old man but that’s another story) and if I don’t run out of diesel, oh and I seem to have lost my handbag and…well, there’s no hurry, surely?.
Blonde (again)
Blonde (again)
Oh I really do astound myself with my utter blondeness sometimes. Take yesterday afternoon for example: seeing as me and the sprogs are heading over to the UK shortly, my darling, lovely, wonderful and much-missed friends C&R have taken it upon themselves to organise a little girly spa bonding time for us at the wondrous Champneys (woohoo!) and even better they were running a ‘buy one, get one free’ offer. So, it all began when R sent a text which said ‘oh bugger, the Friday is fully booked, can you do Monday?’ to which I replied ‘no worries’ thinking that my Mum would be fine with that. By the way, R didn’t really say bugger, she’s not that vulgar, I’m afraid that’s a me-ism. Anyhoo, as an afterthought I sent my Mum a text telling her about the change to the Monday to which she replied ‘uh oh, no I can’t – Wimbledon’. Bum. So, a cunning plan formed in my normally empty cranium and I swiftly sent Disreputable Dad an email asking, nay, begging him to have the children on the Monday so I could go to the spa. ‘Please…’, I simpered, ‘I wouldn’t normally ask, but it’s Champneys…think of my pores…’ yada yada yada, whilst all the time secretly worrying that he’d take them to Spearmint Rhino’s or to a casino or something.
So then (keep up) R sent another text that said that they had available spa days on the Friday, along with prices etc and was that okay, meaning that these were different from the BOGOF offer. ‘Of course!’ I joked, ‘I’m married to a big shot! Prices shmices’ etc, totally focusing on the fact that the price seemed quite reasonable, rather than registering that she was back on the Friday route again.
Finally R sent us both a confirmation email for the Friday, and I suddenly realised what an arse I’d been. Sending another email to the Disreputable One asking him to disregard my shameless begging, I realised that I must calm down and do things properly before setting off these ridiculous chains of events that seem to haunt me (remember the diesel?).
Ah well, it’s all sorted now. And I’ve just realised that was a really long, rambling, Ronnie Corbett* type story without a punchline, so I apologise in advance. Anyway, I cheered right up again when I received another message from C: ‘This is so exciting! Only 17 sleeps to go!’. Woohoo!
*Many thanks to Flirty (see links) for reminding me about Ronnie Corbett-type stories
Small boys: a user’s guide
Okay, so having had the sole pleasure of my youngest son’s company for the whole weekend, I’ve deduced a few facts and have also come up with a few handy hints for you, should you ever find yourself stranded with such a creature in future:
1. However wonderful they are (well, he does have your genes), small boys tell large fibs; don’t believe a word he says, especially if these words pertain to whether or not he has washed/changed his underwear this week/cleaned his teeth/made that mess in the front room.
2. Now you know the truth about their ‘active imagination’, it’s best to supervise said washing/cleaning/mess making so that you can help/force them into it/criticise (delete as appropriate).
3. It’s not a conversation unless they can disagree with you and/or answer you back. Withering looks are a distinct possibility here too.
4. Dogs and nine year olds are a dangerous combination. Any phrases such as ‘I didn’t LET him in to my room and allow him to sleep in my bed all night, he did it himself’ are as believable as a hefty greyhound being able to open a closed door with its nose, snuggle up with its head on the pillow (and begin to snore loudly) without any assistance.
5. A thorough knowledge of ‘The Suite Life of Zach and Cody’, Pokemon, GT3, The Simpsons and ‘That’s So Raven’ are advisable if much of what comes out of the small boy’s mouth is to be even remotely understandable.
6. Small boys love to play the electric guitar (with serious amounts of feedback) loudly at 7am on Saturday mornings. You have been warned.
7. Small boys are often inappropriately affectionate. Be on your guard for a random and aggressive cuddle when you are holding something like a large glass of red wine, or have just painted your nails. In the same vein, kisses are only ever offered when the owner’s mouth is covered in something sticky or unsightly.
8. Small boys can tolerate shopping for precisely the amount of time it takes to trawl HMV for unsuitable, parental advisory CDs and get you to buy him some new combats in Next. After this time, the plaintive call of the small boy: ‘I’m SO boooooorrrrred’, complete with accompanying dramatic sighing can be heard echoing round many a shopping centre.
9. Your small boy can survive on little fuel, but beware the secret scoffing of an entire packet of HobNobs, leading onto a theatrical ‘phew, I’m stuffed’ two mouthfuls into your healthy home-made dinner. Further, beware of large and greedy greyhounds relieving small boys of half their furtive packets of HobNobs and then lovingly burping biscuity breath into your face all evening.
10. And finally (I tried to avoid it, but it’s inescapable) small boys have an inner beacon that makes them use the toilet and then forget to flush seconds before visitors arrive at the house. (Well, why do you think I call him #2?).
So there you have it. I think I covered everything. Unfortunately they’re non-returnable, but with careful handling they end up turning into their father. Oh bugger.
Bonding
It’s been a funny weekend. For a start, it’s been just #2 and me as #1 went to stay with his friend in Tipperary (and we all know it’s a long way to Tipperary). Oh and there’s been Bertie, obviously. So on Saturday we did, well, nothing really. We had a little pootle round the town (guitar shopping doesn’t really float my boat but I tried to look vaguely interested) and purchased a couple of different flavours of Green & Black’s (now chocolate shopping definitely floats my boat).
Sunday rained all day (‘oh, I’m sitting in my Uncle’s garden with a beer in the sunshine’ said Hubby when he rang. Grrrrr). In fact, it rained so hard that even Bertie turned his nose up at a walk and had to be dragged, protesting in his lovely sheepskin-lined coat (hand-me-down from Louis) then stomped soggily along behind me instead of his normal arm-wrenching wuffling and snuffling in the now knee-high wheat. Lunchtime we made a huge spaghetti carbonara (interestingly my spell-checker suggests ‘coronary’ for this word) and then tried out a couple of different G&B flavours. I went for the Maya Gold (my personal favourite – oh, although I like the Cherry one, oh mind you the Butterscotch is nice too) while #2 plumped for the plain 70% stuff, swirling it round in his mouth before declaring sagely that he preferred Cadbury’s really.
Bertie keeps popping in to #1′s room to check if he’s magically appeared and also confirmed one of my suspicions about greyhounds (they’re all obsessed with underwear) when #2 stopped him trotting off down the hallway with a pair of my knickers that he’d furtively stolen out of the laundry basket.
Lastly, seeing as we’re both rockers (me a closet one), in the evening we got comfy in front of Hubby’s unfeasibly large TV and indulged ourselves in a little MTV. First we watched Good Charlotte in concert, then My Chemical Romance (ooh, that lead singer – lovely teeth), then onto a bit of Linkin Park and finally Fall Out Boy. Then #2 treated me to a very loud electric guitar concert, which, I have to say, was incredibly good. All very un-yummy-mummy but good fun all the same. Sometimes it’s tough to find stuff that a 9 year old boy will enjoy as much as you, but this time we cracked it. It’s a bank holiday here today so sadly for him it’s my turn to choose activities and we’re off shopping. Bet he’ll be less enamoured with that.
A bit of sightseeing
So I’ve got to tell you about my action packed trip down to pick up the pet passports for J. You’ll remember that my sense of direction is not fantastic, but I’d printed off a map from the AA website and was feeling quietly confident. I left Bertie with a chewy bone and strict instructions to cross his legs until I came back, and set off. I made it into Dublin no problem (37 minutes in fact), but that’s when the trouble started. I sat in traffic quite a lot, and had a fine time window shopping. There was a particularly nice underwear shop that I was tempted to pull over for, but steeled myself to keep my mind on the job in hand. Then, when I passed the promising underwear shop for a second time, I knew I was in trouble. I sent J a ‘fk I’m lost!’ kind of text, hoping against hope that she’d be able to save me.
Suddenly I recognised the Mater Hospital and, discarding my map and sending Jen a ‘disregard my last’ kind of text (she was probably shaking her head in despair), resolved to just follow the signs that read ‘City Centre’ but then got confused because they also started to read ‘Dublin Port’ as well. Anyhoo, next thing I knew an enormous old-fashioned sailing ship loomed up in the distance and I was in the Docklands (worth a nose about if you’re ever in the area – sadly I didn’t have time to stop). Cheered by my first sight of the Liffey sparkling in the sunshine, I crossed over and found myself once again hopelessly and utterly lost. I passed Grafton Street twice (handy for when I finally get to meet gorgeous S for lunch), but my ‘Dorling Kindersley Guide to Ireland’ wasn’t much help and I’d pulled over, seething, when there was a knock on my window and there stood the Gardai (hope I’m getting these plurals right). Now at this point I normally would have been worried but these, girls, (boys, you can probably disregard the next couple of paragraphs) were the HOTTEST couple of Gardai (Remember, children…One Superfit Fine Thing = GARDA, two Superfit Fine Things = GARDAÃ? © Jenny NiB 2007 ) you’ve ever seen in your life, and all of a sudden I felt delighted to be lost in Dublin. They were also incredibly sweet and friendly (‘humph’, said Hubby later, ‘wouldn’t have happened if you were a bloke’) and after coming to realise that my blank look indicated that their hand signals and directions were possibly not sinking in, they tried a different approach: ‘follow us’, said Hot Garda #1 (dark hair, amazing eyes, huge eyelashes)’ and they jumped back into their car with Hot Garda #2 (fairer hair, blue eyes, taller, fantastic biceps) in the driving seat, blipping their siren to be let back into the stream of traffic, pausing to let me slot in behind them (ahem). Off I sped, then, with my fit police escort, arriving in Kildare Street in no time at all. We all pulled over and stood about chatting for another ten minutes before they drove merrily off, blipping their siren again in farewell (sigh). It’s okay, Hubby knows what a tart I am.
Half an hour later, with the pet passports nestling next to me on the passenger seat, I put the pedal to the metal and sped back up north to relieve Bertie, pausing only to ring J to rub it in a bit about my two gorgeous gards (sorry, Gardai). ‘God’, I told her, ‘I LOVE Ireland’.
