I was talking to my mother-in-law about the school play. She said that afterwards as she was waiting outside she saw some of the other parents and she thought to herself “I’d be quite scared of you, if I hadn’t seen you inside.” It’s probably the tattoos that are unnerving her.
Belated weekend round-up
Herself went for a sleepover with her saintly aunt. It was a bit traumatic for both of them. The Princess burnt her lip by applying a scalding sausage roll to it and crushed her fingers in a heavy fire door. She still has a scab on her lip but, at least she can write again. My poor sister is exhausted from it all, her niece, however, is undaunted and keen for a rematch with the door.
Perhaps in part due to her various injuries and the fact that she had stayed up until 1 the previous night on her sleepover, the Princess was an unmerciful pain when we went to the Leinster House open day. I was mildly keen to be guided round our legislature by one of the ushers who won the lottery (a syndicate won the lottery, though I understand from one of the ushers in question, it worked at 18,200 each and his share has already gone on internal plastering work at home) but the royal mood was such that we felt that it would be unwise.
I was a bit disappointed overall, I thought that there would be more in the way of family fun and less in the way of re-enactments of the debates on the Treaty. Also, I was a little surprised to see lots of vans selling random wares on Leinster Lawn (or the car park as it now is). I suppose I hadn’t really psychologically prepared myself to beat off requests for popcorn and ice cream and I am not sure about whether the marriage of politics and commerce sends out quite the right signal. We were met on arrival by a man on stilts who assured the children that there was free candy floss. Though I assured them he was joking, it was not until we had carried out an extensive search and double checked with the apologetic stilt walker that we were able to abandon the candy floss hunt. We got the children’s faces painted and called it a day.
To my intense chagrin, the event was reported in detail on the radio as I drove to do the shopping later that day (one hour in the car, the hunt for a decent supermarket nearby that is not Tesco continues unabated and entirely unsuccessfully) and everyone other than us seems to have had a spiffing time. I like other people to share my misery.
Transitional object: Doggy October 2003 – June 2009
Still no sign of doggy. Either of them. Mr. Waffle consulted the cleaner and he manfully confessed, upon being shown a picture of the missing doggy, that he had found something under the couch which was very old and very dirty and he had thrown it out. He has offered to buy a new one but we all know that is no good. I think he’s afraid to confess that he chucked two of them. On the plus side, herself pulled down the curtain rail in our room and we got home to find that the cleaner had fixed it; obviously, the guilt is getting us an impressive service.
The Princess got doggy before she turned one and he was her faithful companion every night he could be found. He and his friends gave us great concern over the years. He was practically a member of the family. Unlike travel doggy (who enjoyed trips abroad and has, whisper it, been replaced from time to time), home doggy, the original beloved doggy, never left the house. I had imagined doggy enjoying a privileged retirement on a high shelf in her room to be shown later to children and grandchildren, not thrown out like the remains of yesterday’s dinner (though, in fact due to the complex waste collection system now in operation in Dublin, he should not, under any circumstances go with organic waste; sometimes I worry that the cleaner has not got the finer distinctions of that system).
Since buying travel doggy mark II from Messrs. Zooscape, I have been inundated with junkmail from them. A small price to pay when I was going to get home doggy mark II, or so I thought. When I went to Zooscape today, this is what I found:
Discontinued. How could they? Mr. Waffle says that it is all for the best, but he’s wrong. I think she finds it hard to sleep without him and, in consequence, is roaming the house at midnight. I still have his shamrock that I hadn’t got round to sewing back on. It’s sitting in the drawer in the hall, the last remnant of doggy. I should put it somewhere safe, I suppose.
Mr. Waffle and I sat around the other night exchanging doggy stories: the very high attrition rate; the response of Aer Lingus to our loss; occasional travel soiling; how in surveys she consistently rated him as her favourite family member; the time he was lost in the Netherlands; and, of course, the time I fused the stuffing in his leg by trying to speed dry him in the oven.
I am heartbroken. Of course, I always knew that I would cry when we finally lost him. I guess that she wasn’t the only one with a transitional object. I’m not quite ready to let go, I have just accidentally bought three Ians.
A year at school
The Princess finished up in senior infants (or high babies as we used to call it, or naionan shoisear as it is known as Gaeilge – spelling may not be 100% correct there) today.
We got her report card and it confirmed what we knew already: our child is a genius (I am keen to benchmark her against her class mates though, I feel that it’s just possible they may all be geniuses) but kind of lazy. She mostly got 6* out of a possible 6 except in handwriting (3 and lucky to see it) and in one area where she got 1 and an exclamation mark. Punctuality. She had 44 late days; I am appalled. How is this possible? Who knew that they were counting? Mr. Waffle is surprised it isn’t more. Next year we will turn over a new leaf. Especially now that I know that there are consequences.
I take my hat off to the Irish education system. They got a child who couldn’t read, write or speak Irish and one academic year later here she is speaking fluent Irish, reading everything and writing, well, writing dammit. We’ll see how they do with the boys next year.
OUP
Our friend, the Professor of Hard Law has just had her second volume on hard law published by Oxford University Press. This is exactly the kind of publication that I associate with OUP. On its website it says: “Oxford University Press is perhaps the most diverse publisher of its type. It publishes in many countries in a variety of different languages, for all levels, and across virtually the whole range of academic disciplines. The main criteria in evaluating a new title are its quality and the contribution it makes to the furtherance of scholarship and education.”
This is why I am always mildly surprised to see that “Winnie the Witch” is one of their bestsellers. Aside from the fact that all of the titles of the books on Winnie’s shelves are in Greek characters (academic joke for men who studied Greek in school – my experience is that this option is even more unlikely to be offered in girls’ schools), these are definitely aimed at the under sixes and I’m not quite sure how they contribute to the furtherance of scholarship and education. Nevertheless, Winnie is a big favourite in the Waffle household and we are familiar with Winnie in French, under which guise we first met her as “Pélagie la sorcière” and in Irish as “Cità Cailleach“. As far as I am aware, the sales and translation rates for the OUP’s more traditional output can in no way match Winnie’s success. Odd but heartening for OUP, I am sure.
Lightheaded
I felt very peculiar at work on Friday. I continued to feel somewhat peculiar at home on Saturday. Not sick but odd. Lightheaded perhaps a little faint. As though I had drunk slightly too much champagne but without the reassuring feeling that this was rather pleasant.
At first I thought it was exhaustion (I stay up late of my volition and am dragged out of bed early by the demands of life) but I never felt at all like this when the children were babies and I was definitely a great deal tireder then. I live in fear that diabetes will strike. I had gestational diabetes when I was pregnant with the boys and the doctor explained to me in far too much detail (using graphs and spending a good hour with me) why I was in danger of developing type II. I am, however, not thirsty, so this is a good sign. Also I never felt like this when I had diabetes. I have always had slightly low blood pressure and I do see stars when I get up too quickly but, again, I have never experienced anything like this before. Could it be my blood pressure getting lower? I then wondered whether I was developing some bizarre inner ear disorder. I searched the internet and, actually, of all possible afflictions, lightheadness seems to be the one that the internet regards as safest. Unless it’s internal hemorrhaging and I think we can rule that out now several days later as I am not dead.
Now it is over. But it was very odd and deeply unsettling. Has anyone else ever had anything similar?
