red mum

I STARTED this post with the Young Wan writing random things about our doggie and then realised before I do that I should actually do it about the Young Wan and finish with the doggie. Although Honey the dog is part of the family, she is not top of the pecking order so it is over to the Young Wan;

• She is an absolute stunner, I know all parents think this, but it is true.
• She listens to music that make my ears want to bleed.
• She has lost countless numbers of my CDs as well as scratching and ruining them.
• Her approach and easy nature with all sorts of people is something to see indeed. She is amazing.
• She makes me lovely cups of tea at the weekend.
• She is very funny.
• There is perfectly round oil stain on our high ceiling from when she threw a dollop of butter up there. I didn’t find that funny at all.
• She also talks a lot of teen rambling nonsense.
• Sometimes her make up is too heavy and then other times I think WOW I can’t let her out of this flat.
• Her room is currently the biggest kip in the world, seriously it really is.
• When she was three she emptied our bean-bag and pushed the polystyrene balls around every corner and nook and cranny of the living room, I kept finding them for months.
• She could say I love you from she was under a year old.
• She has always been an affectionate and loving child.
• She is silently stubborn.
• She thinks I am a pain in the arse.
• She is a great reader except for the fact she often reads Harry Potter over and over and over again.
• At the age of 7 to 8 she had a reading capacity which matched 12 year olds according to school tests.
• She is very quick minded and smart.
• She is a wanna-be goth.
• She hates me saying that, which makes me say it all the more.
• She is a lot of fun.
• She is a great travelling companion.
• She has travelled much more than I have.
• She has two boyfriends on the go at the moment.
• She speaks Irish, I don’t.
• She loves YouTube.
• She is growing up too fast.

• When we are having dinner she does this mad roll around the floor bending about the place move while making all sorts of doggie noises, she stops and then looks at you as if to say ‘aren’t I really cute?
• When she wants to get up on a Saturday morning as you are trying to have a lie-in, she will sit right up at/on your head touching your nose with her nose.
• Sometimes she has a complete small dog syndrome and barks like crazy at big dogs walking past.
• She has regular wars with our cushions and pillows, I think she wins.
• She knows a couple of tricks including roll-over, walking on two legs, burling, give me five and we are working on more.
• When she thinks she is going to get a lovely treat and you say ‘sit’ she gets all excited and does all her tricks at once in record speed, it is so funny.
• She will sit and let kids pat her too hard, pull her tail, slobber over her because she loves being loved by wee people.
• She loses all rhyme and reason around footballs. When she sees people playing with one she will howl, pull away hard, go mental to play too.
• She has burst every ball belonging to my pal’s kids and I should say a couple of pal’s kids. Once again sorry!

• She can’t swim but she kinda likes the sea.
• When I am not home she apparently runs to the window with every bus that passes.
• She recognises suitcases being packed and does not like it.
• She isn’t too fond of her travel backpack but associates it with going to a beach sometimes.
• She loves the beach.
• She can get travel sick.
• We get the best welcome home in the world ever, every night.
• She loves apples and will play with it like a football, take a bite and play some more.
• She would play all night and all day if you let her.
• She loves chasing pigeons.
• When she is allowed to sleep with me she will force me somehow away from my side of the bed while I am sleeping.
• Sometimes I wake up in the morning and she is lying with her head on the pillow beside me.
• Her hair/fur is everywhere, everywhere.

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs daughter doggie

JUST before Christmas I wrote here that all I wanted for Christmas was the Mosquito.

This is a device which emits a sound that young people under a certain age find very uncomfortable to hear and is being used to deter groups of young people from congregating outside shops and places like that.

Apparently the Mosquito’s effects were so strong in a Spar shop in Wales where it was being tested that teenagers would come in with their fingers in their ears pleading for the machine to be turned off.

At the time I stood up for young people and called the brains behind the venture as a killjoy. Because while I can understand how teenagers can appear threatening it does not follow that they are, far from it.

What else is there to do in many areas except hang about when you are a teenager? I did it myself and the worst thing we did was pool out money together so we could collectively buy the whole gang a Mars Bar.

How and ever that was then and this is now.

Looking through the Sunday papers I spotted that some bright spark has decided to take this idea, turn it on it’s head and develop it as a ring tone for young people that only they can hear.

The ‘Mozzy Tone’ or ‘Teen Buzz’ as the ringtones are called have since been reclaimed by the original inventor who have come up with their own version called the ‘Mosquitotone’.

The tone works because of something called ‘presbycusis’ or aging ear and it operates by emitting ultra high-pitched sounds that most people over 20 cannot hear.

The practical uses for this for the anxty teen are limitless I suppose but I can only think of being able to get text messages in school while being taught by an older teacher.

If you are interested in whether or not you have an old ear you can listen to it on the internet.

I tried as an experiment with the Young Wan only she didn’t hear it. The dog did and I felt/heard something however the Young Wan was oblivious.

I went to the page on the internet (which I discovered via Gary Shewan’s blog who was also writing about it) and I turned down the telly to get it’s full effect.

Then I asked the Young Wan ‘did you hear that’ and she looked at me with that expression akin to cows looking over a hedge saying ‘erhm hear what?’.

I personally heard an uncomfortable high-pitched noise that hurt my ears, the dog didn’t like it either. So where does that leave the ringtone. It would certainly appear to be useless for some people and particularly for those with dogs because they will alert older people to the sound.

And why didn’t the Young Wan hear it, or maybe she is older in her ears than she is in her years.

(You can listen to the tone here .)

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs Redmum column The Echo June 29

[Another cogged together column which some may have seen her already.]

BEHIND my cooker is one of those moveable butchers block (well in fairness that is a VERY big description for something so very small) but anyway behind the moveable storage yoke are things like my massive soup pot and other kitchen implements because I have nowhere in the corner that is my kitchen to store them.

And this unit is packed nearly flat against the back of the cooker and wedged at the corner of my bay window.

So there isn’t much room in there.

I had occasion to pull the unit out recently because I dropped something behind the cooker and while retrieving it I had to pull everything out, move the table, chairs, and plant on stand. Which was probably a good thing because corners like that in our home tend to be magnetic and pull stuff from everywhere into their abyss.

Or so it would have appeared until tonight. I realise someone has been helping this magnetism with their own brand of recycling. I discovered empty yoghurt cartons, discarded by the Young Wan who somehow has an aversion to bins.

Seriously what is the deal with that? I just do not understand.

Why go to the trouble of throwing them down the back of the cooker knowing they WILL be found never mind the fact that the bin is actually closer and less hassle to throw away properly.

So I retrieved my dropped item, poured a glass of wine, sat down and informed the Young Wan the corner would be cleared of all that rubbish NOW.

I went on to add that ‘if we ever get rice or mats I know who is responsible’.

Shish wish I could speak proper but at least I know that in our house I am not the only one.

The Young Wan has come up with a couple of very quotable sayings recently.

The first one is “the tears hurt my eyes” – in true wanna-be Goth style! What can you say to this except to attempt to sing it in a kinda-dark and menacing way ala Marilyn Manson

Later on I asked her: “Am I allowing you to use the phone or am I being a pain in the arse?

This was a rhetorical statement to back up the fact that she could phone her friend but she was told to rinse out the dishes first which was met with the stroppiest manner ever.

So to my question she said ‘Yes’.

I replied ‘pardon’ and she went (louder) ‘YES’.

Then she realised she was actually agreeing that I was allowing her to use the phone and I was/am a pain in the arse and laughed heartily to herself.

And why is it that at home sometimes when I ask her something she mutters, mumbles and I have to keep asking her to repeat herself louder and louder.

Yet when we are on a bus, she happily tells stories very loudly that she has to be asked ‘are you telling the whole bus or just me?’.

She also recently found the microphone of her long-abandoned karaoke machine and has been singing along to Brian Adams because *ahem* it is (allegedly) the only tape she can find.

Thankfully she has stopped serenading the street and appears instead to be making some kind of farting noise that is travelling out her bedroom window and through the air into the living room window where I am trying to chill out.

She just came in and asked me if she can sing. And she always could, though you cannot hear it from this evening’s performance.

I remember during one holiday Karaoke event where she sang Leann Rimes (or however it is spelt) ‘How can I live without you’ where she hit perfectly and held that mad high note in ‘how can I ever, ever surrRRRVIIIVVEEE’.

However her singing along with Bryan Adams has been a different matter.

She asked me can she sing and I said ‘well you used to be able to, I don’t know what is happening in there now’. It appears she wasn’t happy with her accompaniment to ‘Summer of 69′.

“I thought I could sing, but well just then…”

Then she said ‘wouldn’t that be a good Redmum column? The Young Wan discovers she can’t sing!

Already on it darling, already on it.

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs Redmum column The Echo June 22

[Apologies in that this column is way out of date but it was published on June 18 and I am only get around to posting it here.]

AS some 115,000 young people sit their Junior and Leaving Cert and the sun is shining (well it is at the time of writing) exam fever is well and truly in the air.

Thankfully the Young Wan’s big and first State exams are a year away. While I do not wish to lessen the importance of class tests there is no doubt the full stress of exams has not hit the Young Wan who remains completely un-phased by it all.

Well maybe that’s just on the surface and underneath she is a bag of nerves, but I don’t really think so.

I think before her Junior Certificate next year I might audition for Big Brother to try and get away for the guts of it.

Ah but seriously I have had a job trying to get her to study and we had moments, well I say moments, it was more like Mum turning into the Incredible Hulk going bananas.

I spent the weekend telling her to get to her books and there was one stall tactic after another, and it has been this way for weeks and weeks and weeks.

At one stage over the weekend I went into her rooom and she was lying flat on her back, on the floor, book covering her face, head resting on her bed-sofa out for the count. Completely out. I was way too stressed out to even think of taking a picture but it would have been a good one.

So I roared ‘Young Wan’ (well I didn’t I of course used her name but I did roar – I’m a mummy hear me roar) and she woke up comically only I was not in the mood for it.

As she sprung up, her legs flew up, so did the book and she shouted dazed ‘what’ before looking around her like she was seeing heavenly visions. Unfortunately for herself the reality was me and I was far from heavenly-looking.

I do not know which was worse the fact that no studying was being done or the fact that for the rest of the day she looked at me liked I had asked her to kill her granny.

So we have had words, did I say we? I mean I had words. Most of which concerned the fact that I was actually just asking her to try to prepare for her exams, that is my job, get over it.

So now plans are being hatched for next year and how I am going to get her into a studying routine where she will not feel under pressure so much so that she actually does nothing. Yes some people handle pressure that way, by running away.

And I am dreading next year and that’s only the Junior Cert. But the Leaving Cert is a worry for two years time, not now; I have enough on my plate as it is.

It is hard enough to do all these State exams for yourself first time around as a youngster without the worry of being a Mum and wishing you could them for your child, particularly when they are as inclined to study as I am to date Kevin Myers.

What can you do? Nothing except encourage them to study, make sure they eat and sleep well and try to make life as easy for them during these periods as possible.

But as a Mummy, here’s my last word on exams AAAAaaaaarRRRrrrrrrrrrgGGGgggghHHhhh. And of course the best of luck to all of you who are sitting exams.

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs Redmum column The Echo June 15

Those of you who swing by will be more than aware of the Messy Bedroom and I have I am sure bored any readers of my Echo column with tales as well and here is another.

Another bedroom post

The Young Wan’s bedroom has been the subject of more than one column and judging by the amount of people who come to my website looking for untidy bedrooms, I’m far from the only parent to suffer from unitiditis.

Then Nanny said she was coming to visit and she was ordered in to sort it out as Nanny stays in her room.

Twelve hours past of the Young Wan tidying which was more lifting stuff from one part of the room to another part of the room, shoving things into nooks and crannies, and storing huge amounts of stuff on her bed.

Having been popping in and out all day I didn’t really see the extent of how much energy was being wasted by not doing it properly. Until I inspected it properly at one stage and I went ballistic.

So there was only one thing for it, a real and proper clear out and if it took all night, so be it.

I cleared out all the hidey-holes, cleared the shelves of the shoved in clothes, cups and whatever else was shoved there and she ended up facing a pile which was nearly as big as she was.

And in fairness to her she ploughed on until bedtime and then got up again the next morning and continued.

The end result looked great, sadly it didn’t last. But that’s one thing about teenagers and their bedroom; you have to sometimes, a lot of the time, just shut the door and keep walking.

Teenager’s bedrooms are their refuge and even though it may kill and it may, as parents we have to respect their privacy but up to a point.

When there are no glasses left in your cupboard because they are now living under your teenager’s bed, then it is fair enough to go in hammers blazing.

There is also nothing like rearranging a bedroom to clear out a decidedly messy and unorganized bedroom.

I have also found the best results came when I told her to clear the shelves, then they were done she would get instructions to do something else. It is almost as if it is less overwhelming when the work is carried out in stages.

It’s funny how different parents cope with teenagers bedroom, some gather up all the junk into black bags and put them away somewhere like the garage, others declare that part of the house a parent-free zone and others just try to ignore it.

I am trying a mix of all of the above, it doesn’t appear to be working, but I doubt that any one action is a solution. I think the only solution is growing up and possibly not living with you anymore. Then the room will be spotless and the house will lose some of its life. Mmmmh maybe it’s not so bad living with the messiest person in Ireland.

Technorati tags: redmum irishblogs Redmum column The Echo June 1