Children

I was reading an interview by Kelly Brook’s and Denise Van Outen. They were talking about how people  feel entitled to ask you when you are going to start having kids or when are you are going to give your existing child a sibling. Kelly unfortunately has suffered miscarriages. She had one her fans were aware of,  with her ex Thom Evans ,after she announced that she was expecting. It’s very sad , the same thing happened to a friend of mine. She eventually went on to have a healthy child and is due again soon so fingers crossed. Where as my situation is more like Denise’s . She already has a daughter with her ex husband Lee Mead and is frequently asked if she will have one with her now boyfriend Eddie Boxshall. It’s something I see play out everyday. I would never ask someone about this unless they brought it up themselves. But I think that is due to my own family circumstances and I have felt that way since I was quite young.

Pressure

Two bathrooms being renovated , The organic Farmer is stressed. Its another thing underway on the list and wouldn't be done except for The Visitors. I fed him and the the builders 3 times today then abandoned him for football training(for my 13 year old not me)  . Sometimes he says whats the point of me if I'm always gone? Tis an exaggeration but yeah am out a few nights running her here and there. I did call to his Mother though and bring him rum so that improved the mood. It'll be fab when the bathrooms are done-it'll have a knock on effect. Usually everything looks worse first , rubble, dust 'Why did I even start???. But it's like that with everything , if you knew what was ahead of you, you'd never start. Same goes for relationships. I have the Airbnb house and he has his shed.

Now the rum has run dry, high blood pressure has kicked in and I have to mind him a bit. I fed them what I was asked, sausages, rashers etc. I did a tray bake in the evening as I had to use up things and The Plumber ate that mostly. But everything had plenty of salt so now I have to use other spices and flavours, less sugar and fat. Actually frightening when you start reading labels. There's still salt in some of the things I'm using up from the freezer but I'm not adding it or butter tot the sides and carbs.Some things have been a success, not s much others. He is surviving anyway

Seeing the wood for the trees

I can never drive past a Cóilte forest anymore with thinking about how many times the trees have been handled. From planting in beds and cells, to tending ,to picking ,packing and delivering. and then they get planted in a field to harden before being planted in to create a forest. The planting is piece work and women are currently the fastest planters. Like on How it's made in a Grapefruit factory. The peeling was done by hand and only women did this section as they were timed the fastest. Men worked in other parts of the production line.
The man who lives in the shed across from the Glashouse(well in his camper in the shed) thought it looked like a war zone after the good trees were picked leaving the dead scattered in cells,the occasional avalanache from haphzard stacking.

Winter is coming

'Winter is coming' .My daughter keeps saying this even though she has never seen Game of Thrones. Back to school Wednesday and the thought of it is too much. Everytime I mention trying on school pants etc , She can't even listen to me. She reckons they fit but I think she's wedged into them since last year as they are an odd fit with small waists and long legs. There more designed for somone of Super Model proportions , which some teens may be , but not the average ones. I will get a back up pair in case her arse does come out though them. If they could rip at home better again. She has everything since last year and no notions of buying new. In primary school new school bags , pencil cases etc were frequently bought as they were smaller, cheaper and wore out faster. They liked showing off new stuff, teens don't care about that.
I'm thinking more about her growing up and my own mortality.She's 13 now so I would like to be around for her for another while anyway. My significant other had a bit of a scare with his heart,turned out to be fine, but not so much his blood pressure. So I have to step up  a bit as he generally minds me. He thinks noboby can do anything but himself so now he will have to rethink this. I wish you could buy such a thing as a Farm Relief voucher, that stressed out farmers could cash to get extra help when needed . And that it could become such a 'thing' that it would be perfectly acceptable to say you were given one a nd used it when the work load was too much(or you just wanted a holiday). Alas I don't think it will cath on but maybe I should suggest it to Fam Relief providers for the Christmas market?Well if you can buy cows for a famr in Africa, why not?I probably should get a check up myself , high cholestrol runs in my family and a trip to thee dentist wouldn't go amiss. Especially as bacteria in your teeth can cause problems  heart problems. Or maybe we're all just fucked and should give up. Those that minded themselves died too

Results

The leaving cert results are out and people are seeing if they got what they were expecting. I was working with a woman who was expecting when her results came out. She said she had a big bolg(stomach ) on herwhen she went in for the results and had her daughter in January when the official cert came out. She got married before her seventeenth birthday and is still married to the same man forty years later. She thought the world was her oyster and  still does. Her daughter is a teacher now ironically teaching leaving cert maths. I didn't know what I wanted to do and ended up doing Language and Cultural Studies as advised by a Guidance Counsellor. I ended up on Erasmus in Germany in an Irish Pub. The first night I worked I said 'Who are you, I don't know you?' to the man who turned out to be the father of my child. She's thirteen now , he isn't in the the picture and I never went back to UL.She got to spend time with my Dad since she was two up until he died this year.

I was talking to a man who said he and his brothers had being trying to go into a dance. It was late so they reckoned they shouldn't have to pay full price. They woman taking the money was their side , the bouncers were not. A fight broke out, banging into cars etc . The Guards were called and the boys went home. The following monday one of the brothers was heading off for his first proper job on building site.He asked for the foreman, as he approached he said to himself 'I recognise this man' . It was one of the bouncers from the weekend. They both carried on as if nothing had happened. Today he and one of his brothers own a successfull New York construction company. I.m not sure did either of them do the leaving cert.

I don't know where I'm going with this, I'm not attacking those who did well. I'm just saying there's life outside of points . Just because you didn't take the conventional path and don't end up in something thats considered a prestigious 'career' doesn't mean you shoudl be written off. Results are measured in many other ways . Happiness( the majority of the time anyway) is the result we should be aiming for.

Farm Life

Love is when your boyfriend tells you he's sending you photos of heifers to put up on Dondeal and the first thing you see is pics of you dressed up for a wedding . And you don't get mad

The Mushroom Field

The Builder brought us beautiful wild field mushrooms today. I steamed them with butter ( well Dairygold thats all I had) , salt and pepper. They were delicious. I never used to like mushrooms, my Mother always likened them to slugs when sliced and fried which probably didn''t help . The lady who used to mind me though made the most fabulous soup. It's funny now but her husband is a guard and used to come out to my boyfriends farm( his father's then) to pick them . They stopped growing there after the field was turned and manured for years but seem to be starting back again. One day I was brought mushroom picking, they could see from the road there were none in The Mushroom Field. I told them I knew a field near where I lived which was covered in them . As we were driving out I started to feel anxious what if I was wrong or couldn't remeber the field or if they had all already been gleaned? But I had been right , thee field across from The Chocolate Factory was carpeted in them. We picked everything and took them back to their house where they were prepped fro freezing and big batches of mushroom soup.It was better than the raw oninions they made us eat in side salads. One of his sons is a chef now.

Behind the scenes

I was reading Penelope Trunks post about the meat industry funding the Amercian Heart Association and The American Diabetic Association. The Susan G. Komen fundraises for a breast cancer but is funded by the dairy industry


Interesting re the bodies that the meat and dairy industry funds. I used to wonder if they funded the Disney Channel. When my daughter watched it there always seem to be something negative said about vegetarians or vegans or their characters were weird. There were fairs with huge cheese wheel rolling, chicken wing eating contests and food fights. Everyone seemed to get jobs in frozen yogurt shops or ice cream parlours where the machine overflows and spend a lot of time talking about brisket, turkey legs, hot dogs and salmon while eschewing vegetables/ salad. I grew up on a small suckler farm and you’re right about when animals are being shipped or moved into an unfamiliar place. There is a certain amount of training to come to feed and getting used to electric fences to guide them but in the finish they will usually use sticks to get them to go where they want.Most of us are very removed from the food chain. We may grow a little of our food but generally don't slaughter our own meat. Mostly we buy it in the supermarket pre wrapped. A girl I knew used to be sent back town to thee butchers to pick up 2 T bone steaks. She hadted the smell of the butchers so much she used to call her order in from the door and he used to be laughing at her but still brought it out Local butchers regularly sponsor local football club jerseys and give vouchers as raffle prizes. I've never heard of a vegetarian or vegan refusing to wear the jersy. I think they would probably be asked to consciencly object eleswhere.Any sponsors will be taken. There must be thousands of other ways industries are encouraging official bodies to give them good PR.

Blogger Envy 2

I forgot to add The Airing Cupboard as another of  my blog favourites. I had read pieces before from it but somehow forgot about it. She is has a piece about St Patricks Day and not feeling overly Irish as her parents are English . She has spent most of her life here and got an Irish passport as it was easier to obtain when her UK ran out. I think she has a point though or else she would have called her blog The Hotpress. She's funny and opinionated in the sense of having opinions on what she likes to do, not neccessarily on what anybody else does. She decorates her house and stages it beautifully but also shows her kitchen in a heap before she's sorted it. I appreciate the humanity. I like too that she discusses staying home and unschooling her kids, not quite as militantly as Penelope Trunk . She speaks of spending her husbands money-in the sense that she isn't earning so much from design now but is saving them the cost of childcare and how people do tend to dismiss the career of  housewife. I am satrting to read the other bloggers who comment regulary on her posts. I like her descriptions of the everyday interspersced with more happenings that could could be regarded as 'eventfull'