Hicky Burpy Valentine's Day #50 Club Bubbles!!

My thoughts for this Valentines Day 2012....

The day that I finally  become a pentagenurian and the day before I retire from my good Government job.... forever.


Delight and relief at reaching these momentous milestones.

Total belief that 50 IS the new 40 and that I'm now old enough to know a lot .... and young enough to still do it. ALL of it!!

A cake, chocolate of course,  with 50 candles on it has to be a very big one.

Happy knowing that the State may believe they got the best of me over the years..... and secure in the knowledge that the best is yet to come!

Very aware of this wonderful opportunity to look back over my interesting life's journey so far and to acknowledge any achievements along the way...

Oh, SOD that.....

I have two great reasons to PARTAAAYY!

Even if I don't like big parties I adore lots of small ones ;-)

Total enjoyment in attending Dirty Dancing last week with my soon-to-be-pentagenurian friend ...

The hilarity, if a tad juvenile, of a meal out with lovely friends last Friday... who knew putting on ones seat belts could be so hilarious??!!

50 IS just a number and is absolutely NO reason that you shouldn't dance your ass off in your local, almost empty pub..... with a fellow #50Club member!!!

Valentines Day is a wonderful time to have a special birthday..

It's been a day of  opening lovely cards, reading lovely tweets and LOTS of facebook messages and has been very heartwarming indeed :-) Thank you all SO much!

I can't lie though.... it's also been a day of opening some fabulous presents and that has been really FUN!!

This momentous 'coming-of-age(ing)' is a time to attempt to be fabulous at 50 and to brave donning that little red dress!!

As fun as sharing this with you has been, it is now time for some pre-pub Hicky Burpy Valentines day #50Club bubbles so....

Cheers.

There may be some more dancing in the local later.... for which I offer NO apologies whatsover!

Hic....

Let the celebrations continue....

 xx

#Silent Sunday

xx

Wordless Wednesday.. Refrigerator Mom: The Evidence

xx

Home Alone

It's with a certain element of shock that I realize that I've been an SAHM for almost 8 years now. The decision to be an SAHM was not a 'lifestyle choice', I liked my job and honestly believed that with job sharing, I had the best of both worlds.

No, that decision was made for me, precipitated by our son's ASD diagnosis all those years ago.

It turned out to be the best decision I ever made and the results of my new 'job' were evident for all to see today as I packed my boy off to sit his Assessment Tests with all the other boys who will be attending his mainstream secondary school in September.

I can now reflect on how pivotal me being at home has been for my son and for our family. And over the last few years I've also had pause to reflect on how we collectively view the role of the stay-at-home-parent.

Sometimes we make the lifestyle choice to stay at home for our children. Sometimes the decision is made for us by the special care needs of our families, or by financial neccessities. And sometimes it's economic events that force the decision upon  us.

Being at home to raise your children is a tough task, albeit with some amusing and exciting benefits! It can seem thankless and under-estimated at times. Yet it's only when something happens the 'homemaker' that their true worth is realised, it seems.

I've often joked to myself saying that anything could happen when I'm home alone! Axe-wielding murderers posing as innocent strangers calling to door or falling over the dog/cat for example. Talking to oneself can be an SAHM occupational hazard you see! As can doing silly things like almost electrocuting yourself on a broken extension lead, nearly falling down the stairs having tripped over the Hoover or even breaking your little toe!

I had one incident at the beginning of my 8 year hiatus when I was so unwell that Mr Jazzy had to take a last minute day off work to mind WiiBoy. Last December  I again became suddenly unwell one day with what turned out to be a stress induced panic attack and he had to drop everything to come home to take over.  It's at times like this that the job of the stay at home parent is prioritised with the utmost urgency.

It's  not all hard work though and over the years I have come to the conclusion that it is utterly important for the SAHM (or dad) to have interests outside the home, to preserve our sanity and mental acuity, don't you know! You will find that a lot of us will become more involved in the community and in the school our child attends. Some may do class reader, PTA, fund raising etc. Some of us choreograph pantomimes, become a Faith Friend for Confirmation and doss online become very involved in Social Media! Either way some valuable contributions to our communities are made by this group in our society that should never be dismissed or under estimated.

I have also given a lot of thought about how our successive Governments view the role of stay-at-home-parent in our society and it doesn't paint a pretty picture. There now follows a little history lesson from the addled brain of this stay-at-home-mum...

• In my mothers and grand-mother's generation the dad brought home the bacon, so to speak. If mothers worked at all it was usually as cleaners or dress-makers. Any woman working in the Civil Service had to give up their job upon marriage. That was so up until the late 70's/early 80's until it was changed.
• In 1980 The Murphys fought a constitutional Tax case (mentioned here) and successfully changed how married people were treated for Income Tax purposes. This case resulted in rate bands being doubled for married people with transferability of unused portions allowed between spouses. It also, I felt, put a value on the status of the SAHM....although the benefits were in the husband's pay packet. I pondered at that time how the fact that staying home to mind our children was now a viable option, that there may be more jobs to go around for those unemployed? Naive perhaps?
• However, aggregation was then itself thought to be unfair as it prioritised marriage as a family form and ignored co-habiting couples. It was also felt that women were incentivised to' seek economic independance' and a report was furnished  which, it seems to me, couldn't fully come to a conclusion. Mr Charlie Mc Creevey went ahead anyway and introduced Individualisation in Dec 1999 for the Budget 2000.
• I have always had a problem with Individualisation and felt that it penalised one-income families with children. It seems I'm not the only one, see here...I wonder what Joan Burton would say now? We were coming into boom time then, jobs were plentiful and there was an  economic influx to fill them. How  better to force a section of society (mostly women) back into the work force than to introduce Individualisation? There was a pathetic attempt to placate the home makers by immediately introducing (wasn't supposed to be introduced until later) the Home Carer's Tax Credit. This put a net €770 in the pockets of us Home Carers. We were worth a lousy €14.80 per week. 
• Despite salary increases and Income Tax decreases over the next 10 years this tax credit remained the only one untouched for many years. It increased slightly only once in that time.

 Now we find ourselves one more in a huge economic abyss. We have high unemployment again so some parents have been forced into being stay at home parents. How does our Government respond? They pander to the Troika and look at Social Welfare payments and see who they can cut back, is what they do. They've recently set their sights on Lone Parents, planning to stop payments once the child reaches 7 years of age. Obviously a child of that age is considered fully reared so the parent can go back to work.

Personally I don't think this is an attack on Lone Parents. I believe if married mums received a social welfare payment we would be similarly targeted. No, this is an attack on women and children. And now they are considering linking (i.e reducing) Carer's Allowance, Disability Allowance and lone Parents in with job-seekers allowance. As the fact that there are no jobs for them to be forced into completely bypasses this Government,  we have therefore no hope of showing them that being a Carer IS a job. So is minding our children ourselves, if we so choose.

I feel that governmental decisions are not made with families best interests at heart. History shows that any decisions are made for economic reasons only and how they impinge on families and their choices for child rearing are of no relevance. Reading the two reports I link to in this piece does nothing to convince me otherwise. Everything is considered insofar as it gets women into the workforce and costs the state less...just look at the figures they have for disbanding the double rate bands and how they viewed it in terms of revenue gain! That must have been what Charlie Mc Creevey saw back in 1999 too.

This may now be a good time for us to consider how we view and value all of our contributions to our society. Let's not value one over the other and let's use this present economic decline to bolster our involvement in Community and to put some value on that too.

xx



Note: Image credit: clipartof.com

Wordless Wednesday (Almost): The Cat, The Budgie and the Fish.

                                                                                        
                                                         What?......

                                                        I'm thirsty.......

                                                              
                                               And now I'm HUNGRY....

                        
                                          But...it's so warm and cosy here......

                                              Aww....Do I HAVE to go out?..... (YES, you do!)

                                                Can I play too?

                                            Um.... I don't think you're doing that right....

                                                   Here... let me show you......

                                                     I taut I taw a puddy tat.....
                                                      I DID....I DID...                                                    

                                          Don't worry Sunny...... The cat's in the bag ;-)


xx

The Clear-Out

I nearly had a panic attack the other day.

I was sifting through my inbox and  dumping all my non-important emails to' trash'. As you do. Unknownst to myself, I somehow managed to hit the 'check all items' button which, of course, did exactly what it said on the tin. I then immediately hit the 'delete' button and all my emails went to 'trash'. All of them, every last single one. Disaster!

See, I have a lot of stuff in my inbox. I have some emails I haven't even opened yet because I know roughly what's in them and like, they're important. Or they might be important. Some day.

Then I have lots of emails that I keep' just in case'. I mean you never know when I may need that information, or need to contact that person again.

Lord forbid I'd move them to 'personal' or create a folder for them.

And now for the confession, just so you realise quite how bad I am..... some of my emails in my inbox.....are you ready for this? Really? Okay, some of the emails in my inbox go back as far as 2010. There may even have been a couple from 2009!

I panicked at the thought of all my potentially important and might-some-day-in-the-far-away-future-be- important stuff  being trashed. So to speak.

Plus the fact that the reason I was going through my emails in the first place was to find one that I got from someone last year because now that information was important and I needed to contact her again. See.... it does happen!

I also panicked because I knew I'd now  have to check my 'trash' folder.

And I couldn't remember the last time I'd 'emptied trash' .

See, even though I may send emails to 'trash' I wait a while before I empty it. 'Cos I just might still need them. Ya get me?

So, in I went to 'trash' to see if I could find the desired email amongst the sea of abandoned twitter and facebook notifications.

There were a lot of abandoned emails in there. In fact it wasn't a sea, it was more of an ocean.

I eventually skimmed through to see exactly how many there were.

I had 1732 emails in my ocean of  'trash'. 1732, people!

And I wonder why my laptop is slow sometimes??

I eventually found my proverbial needle in a haystack. Thankfully I had a brainwave and searched a relatively smaller haystack instead. My 'sent' folder!

Once I overcame the initial panic I found I quite liked the new clean look of my almost empty inbox.

I kept opening it, just to admire it.

And I've kept it that way. I've only 12 in it now. Although, admittedly I still haven't emptied 'trash'. There must be 2000 in there now.


It was kind of easy in the end really.

Clearing out stuff, even if it is only an  accidental clear-out, is quite therapeutic. It can also be applied to other areas of my life, I reckon.

 I have kept all sorts of stuff in my house  'just in case' , that also needs a clear-out.. accidental or otherwise,

 My head is also a disorganised mess of memorabilia.

We won't go there though, that's best left to another day.
.
Sigh....

xx



Note: Image credit to bit.therapy.com

The Reluctant Shopping Mission

We woke up this crisp, sunny but windy Sunday morning and I sleepily wondered what we'd do today. After a very full and extremely hectic week this was Sunday, a day of rest per our Good Lord, yet I somehow got it into my head that today was the day we'd go shopping for my pre-teen's Confirmation clothes. Oh, Good Lord....

My boy DETESTS clothes shopping and believe me, I'm also a very reluctant shopper. I find it very interesting at this point to note that the auto-checker chose the word 'sniper' instead of 'shopper' in my last sentence. Remember that.

So, I played the usual battle of wits in order to extricate him from his current infatuation interest that is Minecraft and to brush his teeth so we could  take the first step in today's  ordeal  journey..... and simply leave the house!

Getting to town on the Dart was, thankfully, uneventful and we then executed the next part of my rushed carefully thought out plan. We hit my highly considered one-stop-shop, which would hopefully contain everything we needed, and went into Arnotts. The shop we went to for his Communion clothes. It worked 3 and a half years ago so it should work now. Right?

Well, 3 and a half years ago he was only 8 and now my pre-teener is all of 12 years old. Have you recently gone shopping for pre-teen and teenage boys?? The limited choices are shocking. Seriously, if I had any kind of an entrepreneurial  brain in my head I would exploit this niche in the market. And I'd expand it to include toiletry products for this totally ignored socio-economic group.

Anyway we, stupidly as it turned out, headed for the children's department to search through their limited stock for his age group. And this is where the Reluctant Shopper in me showed it's true self. Oh good God, all those rails of clothes to organize and plan a search through. Disorganized Jazzy here cannot cope with that at all. So I approached an unsuspecting salesgirl and imperceptibly turned her into my personal shopper. Good thinking, eh?

We managed to find a shirt but not trousers. Note: the ultimate aim of this foray into the sensorally challenging environment that is town was to find appropriate, yet not too casual attire, that felt 'comfty' to my very perceptive son. The Levis shirt in soft brushed cotton fit the bill and was at a very good January Sale price;-) As was another Timberland top. We bought both,  just in case like.

As we didn't find trousers we failed in the other aim of our mission, that to try on any choices as quickly as possible in order to get the hell out of there in double quick time.

That meant a further search which I limited to the same shop and we headed downstairs to the Men's Department, in the vain hope we'd find something suitable. In double-quick time. Tick Tock....

Oh God. Downstairs was a nightmare menage of multiple Men's Concession shops spread far and wide. What to do? Neither of us could cope with that at all. Tick Tock.... Suddenly I remembered one trendy shop in the many my personal shopper mentioned and we headed further downstairs, to Top Shop. And there I found me another Personal Shopper! I'm getting good at this, I thought to myself! My boy played a blinder and tried on everything whilst amusing me with some posing in front of the mirror. I don't know where he got that from, honestly!!

I am very pleased to announce that we completely finished the job in this shop and accomplished all the aims of our Reluctant Shopping Mission. In double quick time.

Until stressed out teen decided he needed to go to the bathroom. In the multi-storied Arnotts.

Dear Arnotts:Why did you  put your bathrooms in the furthest, upper-most corners of your store? And what were you thinking when you put the Men's and Women's bathrooms on different floors??? Good Lord. That was almost the straw that broke the camel's back for us two Reluctant Shoppers. Shopping is very stressful for parents and children with ASD you know. We were very close to a serious meltdown of epic proportions and you should know that I  would have held you personally responsible for the outcome. I mean, How on earth do you expect a 12 year old to survive the trauma of seeing his mother rolling on the floor screaming her head off like in that supermarket ad??? Where's that 'sniper' when you need one, eh???

Ahem.... moving swiftly on....

On to treat shopping in his favoured Game Stop shop to disappointingly find nothing of interest. Feeling very sorry for himself we headed off for yummy pizza to end our stressful, yet successful shopping trip. On the way we came across a very interesting shop that we'd never heard of before.... Games Workshop. Wow, it looked like a lot of fun, so in  we went and were given a trial run! This is live soldier/fantasy type games we're talking about here. With tiny characters you buy and paint yourself. Yeah, a real game played in real life and not on a screen. Yay! They have workshops every Sunday and this is the only store in Ireland. It is an expensive hobby though as the starter kit for the Warhammer 40,000 costs €79. My boy has found a new infatuation interest it seems.....sigh.

Eventually we made it to the restaurant and we had a lovely meal and chat. It ended with true WiiBoy humour at desert ordering time, when he read the list of non-alcoholic drinks which was listed after the desert options.  It went something like this...

WiiBoy: Look at that mum he said, giggling.

Me: What?

WiiBoy: 'Safe Sex on the Beach'....teeheehee.... I know what that means... teeheehee


Me: Really? .......(really'???....did I HAVE to say that??!)


WiiBoy: (Boy voice) I have the condom..... (Girl Voice) I have the pill...


Me: Silence....apart from splurting my wine.... everywhere!!!

Time to vacate the premises.

Oh, thank God this day is over!!

xx