Busy D'Oubs

 Too busy to blog! And even now, there's no time! So, in pictures, what the D'Oubs been doing!

With the Poetry Divas I (and family) went to the wonderfully pagan Festival of the Fires three weeks ago. I (but not family) had fun reading some of me pomes to the assembled throng. Well, semi-throng.

A carved bloke and my mostly happy kids.

 A Diva senior and a Diva junior. Only one of them is happy with the boa.

 

 Robbing the Heritage Tent sign. Delinquent.

The eponymous Fire.

Cool carvedy bloke.

So, what else did we get up to? Well, we had a visit with the Speech Therapist. It was a great week for talking for the D'Oubs. Two out of the four kids were forcibly ejected from the care of the community speech Therapists. A.k.a - they're fixed! Yay! I did my happy dance. Fourth child is too young to talk, so they can't kick her off their list just yet... we have to wait and see if she learns to talk all wrong before that. and bless her, she says 'boob' very well right now. And in these days of austerity cut backs, I'm sure she'll be discharged on the strenght of it.

Sadly eldest child is still on their books. He doesn't say his 'R' properly. The way he pronounces it make him sound English. So, basically, having an English accent is regarded as a speech impediment. Lol! Oh, we had a right giggle over that.

So, below three pictures were taken by my darling spawn as I tried to talk seriously to the poor speech therapist. I had to interrupt her and stop the photo session when sister D'Oub got up on the chair, waggled her arse and told her brother to take a picture. God, help us.

Stroike a loight, guv'nor!

I am the very model of a modern Major-General...

Getting ready to get up on chair to waggle arse.

Then we had a visit to the grounds of the Italian embassy. The embassy is located in the village, behind giant gates, which you never see beyond. Very kindly, the ambassador threw open the gates (well, one of his flunkies did...) and for a tenner - in aid of the Lucan Festival - we got a guided tour around the grounds. And boys oh boys, they were beautiful. But it made me cross! Afterwards it felt like the Ambassador was like the Selfish Giant of Oscar Wilde's story - keeping such a beautiful garden all to himself! Oh how I wished eternal winter on him after our visit. I'm a very bitter person.

Then we went to the Zoo! I shan't bore you with a long description of our trip around the zoo, expect to say, it was the most fun trip I ever had. See below D'Oub child two - feeding giraffes! Lucky fecker. 

And finally, the last few days have been wonderful, the weather glorious. We are getting value for money from our new garden.  We all have new freckles. The new grass is looking a little ropey. All good :) Long may it last!



















Talk to you soon... once I get my breath back!

Sweet and Sour Christening

April 10th!!! I last posted April 10th!!! Christ! It just gets worse.

I am still alive!

I am not a number.

Etc.

Everyone, check your blog comments, cause I finally got to look at them and have a read. And yes, I am blogging at ten to one in the morning. I was falling asleep at 7pm, but obviously someone mixed up the caff with the decaff again, so here I am!

I just wrote half a poem about breastfeeding, but it seems rather graphic and inappropriate, so I won't post that.

Lets see, what else? Hmm..

Well, I won a competition today. Sure there were only two of us in the hat and it required no skill on my part at all, but hey, a wins a win!

Any other news?


Oh yes, we finally got around to christening Baby Oub on Sunday. It was all fun in the church - but then we got back to the house and I suddenly turned into the personal servant of my thirty closet family members. I cooked, from scratch I might add, a meal of fried rice and sweet and sour chicken (I made the sauce even!) hotdogs for the kids (ok, I didn't make them from scratch. urgh, the very thought.) provided drinks, tea, five different desserts, fun, laughter, joy! Bah. I'm fecking shattered! And they didn't even have the decency not to finish everything, so I had no leftovers to feed the D'Oub babes for the rest of the week. Feckers.

But it was a special day. Unfortunately Baby Oub got her Christening mixed up with her Confirmation - ie confirmation making you an adult in the eyes of the church -so she'd been refusing to go to bed until after 10pm the last two nights. Or maybe the devil was exhausting her, and now he's gone she's a lot less tired...

Speaking of tired, I'm going to go off to sleep now.

Hopefully.

Gardens and poetry

I've posted four times this year. How useless is that? Every time I have posted, I've enjoyed myself so much I've promised that this time, really, this time I will post again in a few days. But life is just nuts around here. And maybe the sooner I accept that, the sooner I'll get to more regular posting. Maybe the realisation that my life is chaos, will stay chaotic, the sooner I will just seize the day and guerrilla post - blogging suddenly and without warning...

So, here is a smorgasbord of what's been going on Chez D'Oub - 

The garden got done! The stress nearly killed me. Here's a cool time lapse video of it -

What else?

Well, I haven't been doing much writing despite the attempt at a new novel, but I have with the help of that soft furnishing blogger, been doing  a little poetry prompt weekly. The cushiony one gave us a prompt last week to invent an imaginary non-English poem and to 'translate' it. I had so much fun with this. Here is the result :)

(The 'history' surrounding the 'poet' and his 'poem') -

This poem "Grey" (originally "Laith"), is from the early 20th century poet James Skeffington, a poet inspired by the Gaelic Revival, but whose work was less idealistic than that movement, and  more cynical - an influence derived most likely from his close friendship with social nationalist, James Connolly. This poem from Skeffington, a tragic take on the Irish Famine, for him not ancient history, but a tragedy that would have affected those but a generation or so before him, is one of his earlier works, when he wrote solely in Irish....


Grey

Only grey seed stones half buried
in barren soil
lie sowed
not to grow
instead to sleep
and stagnate
to cause the mothers
to weep and children
to cry and pull and drag
to whimper
and men to silently hang
shadow dwellers
more useless than the
limestone crop
limp impotent bystanders
providers hobbled
the brave belly fired few
who could cobble together
some worth
escape, sail to a new world grave
and leave behind the walking dead
those to be buried beneath
those limestone memorials
no inscriptions
the striations,
lichens, calcite reflections
their only consecrations.

And lastly a picture of the baby to finish. 

Ice Cream and Karma

How we all doing?

It's the usual craziness round the D'Oubby way.

But lots of good stuff!

I've started to write a new book! A crime thriller! (I felt that the two spare minutes I have left a day were just temptation for the Devil. )

What else... let me see. Oh, yes, we are getting our garden redesigned! Yes! No longer will we be able to rent out our back garden to film crews who want a waste land location. The children will be able to play outside without the worry of wolf attack. Sure the last remaining example of the Dublin lowland Tiger will be made extinct when we destroyed it's natural habitat, but what price my desire to bar-b-que???

They were are underwhlemed as we were

We had a pleasant St Patrick's Day. The boys were in the local parade. Which was pretty lame, truth be told. The parade, not the boys. Though, I must say, they weren't exactly giving it their all as they lumped by in their Cub Scout uniforms and green hats. Couldn't they have been tying some knots as they went? Lighting a mobile campfire? Even a bit of a dib dib dib chant would have been good. But we were just meant to be stunned by the majesty of their existence.

Next year we're going to into the town parade.

Lily was deeply bitter that this was her first St Patricks Day parade experience. It was rubbish.

But the very, very best news of all is that we have acquired an ice cream man! This is super news.

And useful.

Let me tell you a story....

(A bit of background first...) So, a number of years ago I heard of a mammy who came up with the rule of tirds for her kids communion money. One third to be saved. One third to be spent. And one third to charity. I thought this was a great idea. So, when son number one made his communion three years ago, he was informed that this was how things were going to happen. And last year, when son number two went through it all, he got the same lecture.

But, the D'Oubs being the D'oubs, the money got put in a savings account and we never quite got round to sorting it out. But Mr D'oub last week got a fit of organisation upon him and consolidated a few of the kids accounts credit union/bank etc... this seemed like a good time to talk to the chaps about giving some of their loot away. They looked a little pained. I worried that my amazing mothering had been ever so slightly too much for them, that they hadn't 'got it' and were in fact greedy selfish little heathens. But after a pause,  sweet and thoughtful son number one said 'Ok, I'll give (insert large amount of money here) to charity.' Son number two said 'Me two!'

And then it happened.

Jingle, jingle, jingle.

From outside, the sound more beautiful than a baby's laugh, came from our road. AN ICE CREAM VAN!!!!

You must understand. Ice cream vans don't come our way. We are surrounded by retirees where we live. Lovely OAP's each and everyone of them, but there is a reason ice cream vans don't have 'Mind That Pensioner' on the back.

I looked at each child.

I screamed 'ICE CREAM VAN!'

They screamed 'ICE CREAM VAN!'

We all screamed 'ICE CREAM VAN!'

I grabbed my purse, thrust five euros in their little hands and said 'Run! Run! Catch the ice cream man before he leaves and never comes back!'

And yay, they doth run and gather to them some 99s. And they were good.

And what did I get to do?

I got to say to them - look kiddies, you agree to give money to charity, and look, ice cream appears.

Now, if I can only find out what time he plans on coming every day, I could fleece those rich kids.

Mwwaaaaahahahahahhaahahahahhhahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!

Feeling a Little Proud

It's a big day in the Oub household.

A child of ours is participating in a sporting final!!!

Ok, it's actually Bowling - a sport only marginally more strenuous than darts. But we are thrilled all the same. No Oub family member has ever before shown an aptitude for anything that involved hand/eye coordination.

So, we are very excited for second eldest son. For it is he who is in this final as part of his Cub Scout troop.

Representing Lucan!

Goooooooooooooo Lucan!

We need to bring some pride back to Loverly Lucan. It's not that we don't love those most famous sons of Lucan - Jedward. But you can love something without being particularly proud of the fact. Like me and french toast and bacon drizzled with maple syrup, mmmhhmmmmmm. I'm not proud of my self there. Or me and the celeb gossip pages on the dailymail online. REALLY not proud of myself there. In fact, deeply, deeply ashamed. And I probably shouldn't go into the contents of my iPod... (for every White Stripes track there are at least two from Step etc) But enough of the self flagellation. It isn't even Sunday.

Just took a phone call from Mr Oub. The bowling is underway! Exciting!

Before they headed off I oscillated between informing son that it was the taking part that counted, and telling him to kick woggled arse. I'm a pretty inconsistent mother as it is, so a little more on the mixed message front isn't going to make much difference. The savings account is already open for the intensive therapy they are all going to need. So I may as well get my moneys worth and really feck them up.

I'll let you know how it all goes later :)

9 out of 10 D'Oubs didn't complete suck at bowling.

And then tomorrow second son is in action again. This time it's piano grade exam time. Poor fecker. But he has nerves of steel so isn't that bothered. Me? I'd be more nervous than a bomb disposal guy with sudden onset Parkinson's.

We're terribly proud of him again here as he seems to have inherited Grandad Oubs musical abilities. Which are considerable. But what makes second son so special is he is this odd freak of nature - I must have been sent home with the wrong baby - he actually works hard too. Once he has finished his homework, he puts his bag away and immediately sits down at the piano to practice. His brother (whom I do love too, I promise) has to be injected with 10ccs of Cattleprodadrine to get him to do his practice (Also very talented, just a little motivationally deficient. Definitely the correct baby sent home with me there.)

Second son is a great child. I was informed at his recent Parent/Teacher meeting that he had placed on the 100 percentile for his English and Maths aptitude scores. Teacher said it was quite rare for a child to score top for both disciplines. He has a great bunch of friends. Lovely kids. Teacher said he is well able to stand up for himself, but he also looks out for others. That he is kind. He writes wonderful stories and is one of the top in his class in Irish.

At home he gets his sister her breakfast in the morning and packs all the lunches while I look after baby oub. He is a great conversationalist and I enjoy his company.

Could I gush more? Probably!

But you see, second son had a tough old start in life. He was plagued for years as a toddler with health issues - nothing serious, but just enough to involve regular pokings and proddings from doctors of all sorts. And hospital stays and all that unpleasantness. He has execma. And hayfever. And multiple allergies. He currently needs eye drops and eye cream twice a day for his Atopic Eye Disease, which hurt. And he will need these for a few years yet. And most difficult of all is for years he had Speech and Language Disorder. You couldn't understand a thing the child said. Can you imagine, a child as smart as he is, unable to be understood by anyone. It was awful. He was miserable. Rarely smiled. It took years and so much hard work to get him to a point now, where at 9 years old, people wouldn't know there was ever a problem.

And through all this he never complained. He put up with everything with a stoicism a person thirty years older wouldn't have had. And still today, morning and evening when he flinches as we put the drops in his eyes, never a word. He looks a little mournful when reminded that we have to do this for a few years, but no tantrums. No giving out. Just sucks it up.

GUSH!

And I Ain't Counting Sheep...

As the great poet Cliff Richards once intoned - it's so funny, how we don't talk anymore.

It's true, I have been giving you the silent treatment. I've been quiet, uncommunicative. Sullen even.

But believe me, it's me. Not you.

But today is February 29th. The day women are traditionally allowed to propose.

So, I am going to propose something.

I am going to be a better blogger. I will talk to you when I am feeling cross, I won't bottle it all up and make you think it's you whose done something wrong. I won't shut myself off and make you guess what's up. We can get counselling if you want. If it makes you feel better. We gotta do this for the kids.

Mammy, blogosphere, don't you love us anymore?? Boo Hoooo.

(But in the meantime until I have something worth blogging about - check this site out - 9 Foreign Words The English Language Desperately Needs . Mr Oub says I am a Kaelling but I reckon he is most definitely a Pilkunnussija)

Definitely This Year

2012

D'Oub plans for 2012.

1) Write more. So far, have written either a flash fiction piece, or the first paragraph of a new short story. Haven't decided which it yet. Have also written a few lines of a blog post. Result.

2) Give up coffee. This one is a toughie. I love my lattes. I reckon the impact on the economy by the end of January could be drastic. But sometimes one has to think of oneself and not ones fellow man. I've been trying to save this stoopid country single-handedly by spending, spending, spending - a high proportion of that on lattes and cake - but so far we seem to be still requiring bail outs faster than the Titanic.So, I must think of my waistline and my wallet.

Iloveyou!Iloveyou!Iloveyou!Iloveyou!Iloveyou!Iloveyou!

3) Go to bed before 2am. I spend much of my days in a sorta zombie haze. I pity my poor children, being raised by a zombie mother. It's surprising that Baby Oubs first word wasn't 'Brainzzz.' But I am such a night owl. I could be crawling through the day, my energy so low from tiredness that I'd sell the children for a half pack of hobnobs, if I could take a daytime nap. But, hit 10pm and suddenly I could run a half marathon. What's that you say Mr Oub? Watch a movie even though its five minutes to midnight and the movie is three hours long? Capital idea!

4) No more over-committing myself. Life had gotten a tad crazy round the D'Oub house by the end of the year. We had the most busy insane six months of our lives. It wasn't anyone thing, just a celestial convergence of events that meant we only had about two weekends free from one commitment or another from August to the end of December. Combine that with me going out roughly four out of five week nights (writers group! pottery class! scrapbooking workshops! Other stuff!) Then combine that with the sleep deprivation and the coffee addiction. How I am still standing I don't know. (It could be the medicinal Christmas Cake that saved me.) So, 2012, I'm saying no. No to doing everything and yes to trying to be a bit more selective. It'll be hard, but suspect it's a good idea.

5) On my bike! Due to the aforementioned schedule craziness, the D'Oub family who had all possessed new bikes for months, hadn't been able to go out on them :( This made us very sad. But, new year, new opportunities. We've been out three times since the new year, Baby Oub has her little bike seat, so everyone is go, go go.

It is amazing that with the giant heads we posses that we were able to find cycle helmets to fit us all. Giant I tells ya.

So, what do you think? Achievable. Should be.

We'll see if Christmas 2012 sees me lithe, literary, alert and latte-free.

Just don't surprised if it's more corpulent, critical, catatonic, and caffeinated.