Jesus . . . will you relax???

Billy:  Standing to attention.  Tail rigid.  Starting to growl.

Himself:  Will you relax fffs, it's a  plane.  You're not going to catch a fucking plane!

I concur, he was never going to catch the plane.

Have you missed me?

It was the Easter school midterm . . . do you really think I had the willpower to type or do anything above merely functioning?  Jesus, two weeks!!  Plus, it snowed for one of those weeks!!!!  Arse anyway.

Lots of stuff to catch up on.  Harry turned 12, Arthur has been pooping his brain out and Oscar just turned 9, today in fact.  Before I get to all of that though, thought you might enjoy the photo I took last night whilst playing with the er, sleeping dog.

It's called Billy-Roo.  Buckaroo with a dog, basically.  However, I think you could have great fun playing this  with your ma or da, brothers, sisters or, best still,drunk people (who have fallen asleep in your house that is.  It would be wrong to go and hunt down drunk people so you can play this). You see how many things you can pile on said animal/person before they get fed up and piss off.  I managed to get another pillow and two boots on him before he legged it.  Harrumph, legged it!  Bugger is meant to have a sore leg.  Only sore when it suits him from what I can see.  Chancer.

Flea-ing

One of my favourite Flea people couldn't come and play today.  So I met up with another one of my favourites and brought my sister along for the ride.  Oooh, bumped into Ms. Mandy there too.  Gorgeous day for flea-ing, even if the heavens did explode for twenty minutes or so.

Fiona, the sister, was after a hat/coat stand and found one.  AND a gorgeous armchair, a bargain at €35 for the pair.  

I, heheheheh, got a desk for no. 1's room and a gorgeous chair and a suitcase that has now been converted to Billy's bed.  

Love the Flea.  One thing though, Flea sellers, just because you paid €100 for a dress and only wore it once it doesn't mean it's now worth €75.  Just sayin'!

Yesterday

I was having a bad day.  Hence the 'I love my rotten ungrateful children' remark.  But they were doing my bloody head in.  I'd woken up bright and early and raring to go (after a night out with the school mammies and several glasses of wine) and Himself was good to go so we said 'Right, let's go somewhere lovely because it's er, lovely out'.  

Half nine I got up at.  HALF NINE!!!  The bastards (all four of them) didn't come down til 11, ELEVEN, a.m.  By which time I am positively fuming and screeching about how I'm trying to do something nice with them and WHY WON'T YOU ALL (in my head: FUCKING) MOVE??? So, we set off to have a lovely day with two of us in tears.  Me and no. 1.  

I'd received a call from the hospital on Friday saying 'we'd like to you see you in a week' which is a whole month earlier than they were meant to be seeing me.  So I immediatley went into 'oh jesus, I'm actually dying' mode.  So, instead of being all 'Terms of Endearment' and loving to my family I screeched at them that they were a hopeless fecking bunch of feckers.  Feckers who were ungrateful to boot.  

Feck.

Anyway, I'm sure I'm perfectly perfect and fine but I would like to know for definite.  May ring hospital tomorrow to ask if they had a cancellation or whether I'm er, in trouble.  Even though I'm sure I'm not.  

Feck.

Right, so we went to Howth.  Not the zoo as planned as we had Billy with us and you can't take dogs into the zoo because they might panic the monkeys.  Personally I'd like to see Billy panicked by one of the big tigers.  That would put the yappy little shit into his place.  But I digress.  Again.  

We went to Howth and took one of the high paths to walk on as we were afraid the Head would be so mushy and slippery after the rain we might fall into the sea.  Plus, the cliff walk is over 10km and the last time we did it no. 3 cried for 7 of those 10km.  It was lovely, as planned, and wetter than we'd thought it would be.  

Billy has a fear of his reflection.  Seriously!!  The dog goes bloody mental if he sees another dog staring up at him from a puddle.  I always wonder if it's ever crossed his mind why/how the dog in the puddle, who is also going ape shit mental, is doing it so quietly??

Somehow we ended up nearly back in the village and had to head back up the summit on the road.  God but there are some beautiful houses there.  Houses I want to own.  Like, REALLY, want to own.

One day.

Having crawled back up to the top of Howth Head we abandoned Himself to go the last 500m, we sat on someone's garden wall,  and collect the car so we could drive back down to the village to get chips.  

Poor no. 3.  All he wanted was a battered sausage from Beshoffs. Nothing more, nothing less.  Just one battered sausage.  He sat down on the wall to eat it and . .  it rolled out of the box and into the grass.  We recited the three second rule* and no. 1 whipped it up and gave back it no. 3.  

But then the fecking thing fell off the wall again!  Only this time it went onto the path, er, slightly longer  than 3 seconds but, again, it was whipped up and put into the box whereupon no. 3 picked up the box and made to hurl it at Himself's head in temper.  Himself, jaysus, picked off the bits of gravel and said ". . . 5 second rule????  Go on no. 3, it's alright".  

He stopped crying and wiped his eyes and nose and started eating it only to have Billy lep (like 'leap' only er, like Dubs say it)up and grab the sausage from the other end and gobble it down.  Jesus, no. 3 nearly lost his reason (I took photos of course) and myself and Himself nearly peed ourselves laughing.  No. 1 took him back to Beshoffs where they bought one more sausage.  In hindsight I'm relieved Billy ate the sausage as while no. 3 was getting a new one several dogs pissed on that exact spot where he'd dropped it the second time.  No 5 second rule (1 second rule even) is going to negate that germ-y mess.  

  

Are there any songs about the perfect Autumn day?

'Cos there should be as me and nos. 2 and 3 (and Billy the Dog) had a lovely day in the Phoenix Park today.  Lovely until no. 3 got soaked that is.  They were rowing in the pond, to get to America, when disaster struck.  The disaster answers to the name of Billy and he hates his reflection and got a bit rowdy and knocked no.3 over.  Over and in. 

We found big sticks knocking conkers out of trees and even BIGGER sticks when the big sticks didn't work.  There is a reason they didn't work, it's too early for conkers.  The trees are hanging onto them for dear life.  

Wandered across a jazz quintet in the grounds of Farmleigh House and just sat and mellowed and picked up a cd to mellow along to on the way home.  There was no point ruining that feel good buzz by putting the radio on and hearing the news.

We had fresh apple juice, prawns and hotdogs for lunch.  Made friends with a nice lady and all refused to sit next to Billy in the car on the way home because, this time, he rolled in fox shit.

Fecking dog.  Still, the weather was perfect, the music and food lovely and the company?  Well, the company was absolutely perfect.  

.

Run. Faster. BARK!!!!

I'm trying to lose weight.  I'm trying to get fit.  Kids are getting bigger and faster and I want to be able to keep up.  I also want to be able to see my toes!  Actually, that last bit is bullshit.  I can see my toes just fine if I lift my leg out in front of me.

So I'm back doing my 'couch to 5k' thing.  Last year I managed to get it to the stage where I could run for approx 30 minutes without feeling like I was going to die.  Then I went on a big slide and tore all the ligaments in my right foot, which the doctors then put into a cast because they said it was broken . . three HUGELY stressful and itchy days later they removed the cast because it wasn't broken and sent me on my way.  With only one shoe.  Seriously?!

I find myself, 9 months later, starting all over again.  I'm gutted to report that being able to run last year has no bearing on my running ability right now.  I'm slow.  Very slow.

But, like the tortoise I eventually get there.

I have an app (doesn't everybody?) where this lovely English lady tells me that I'm going to warm up for five minutes before running for 'x' amount of minutes and so on.  She tells me I'm great every now and then and warns me when I've only got ten seconds left before starting a run and taunts me with 'only a minute and a half to go' when I rang out of oxygen a minute and a half back.

She's great though.  She's polite and nice and, best yet, you can pause her if you feel you are on the verge of coughing up a lung.

Billy, on the other hand, is an absolute Bastard.

If he sees me slowing down or stopping he'll start yapping at me.  Then I start shouting 'no, you fucker' I'm not running now' at him, then people stare and the dog is mortified.  Although not nearly as mortified as the ball of fluff that appears to be wearing another dead dog as a coat.

I have a nice lady telling me I'm great and a dog barking the equivalent of 'Run Fat Bitch, Run'.

The perfect pet, according to no.3

Today I drove home with the youngest two in the back of the car and the eldest in the front with me.  The younger two were in flying form due to 'flubber'.  I didn't ask.

No. 3 started chatting about how a dinosaur would make the perfect pet, but 'not the one with the small arms' (see above).  

Apparently a dinosaur, with longer arms, would be a great pet because "if you had something for dinner you didn't like, well, you could give it to the dinosaur!"  They then went on about what types of food the dino would like best.  His name, for some insplicable reason, is Tom.  Tom The Dinosaur.

Tom would love meat, lots of meat but not human meat because 'uuuugh, disgustingggggggg'.

Tom would also be great for throwing a ball for, but only if he had normal size arms (again, see above) as if he  had short arms he wouldn't be able to pick it up.  

Yup, Tom would eat all dispicable dinners and fetch balls.  

Kind've like Billy does.  Billy.  The.  Dog!!!!  Not nearly as exciting though, even I'll admit that.