Nobody Knows What I Do Until I Don't Do It

     I stood in my kitchen going through the day’s post. There was only one letter for me; a brown envelope with the Dept. of Education logo over the stamp.  Intrigued I ripped it open to find the transcript of my Leaving Cert results.   I had recently started a new job and during the interview I admitted that I couldn’t remember my exact results.  My new employer told me to write away for the transcript.   

     I smiled as I thought back to 1982 and my final days at school.  My 18 year old son walked into the kitchen.  I didn’t hear him come in.  Curious to see what had me so engrossed he peeked quietly over my shoulder.  He laughed in disbelief.

“I’m not impressed,” he said

“Don’t worry, nobody else is either,” I said smiling at him and quickly folded the letter back into its envelope.

“Can I see?” he asked.  I handed over the envelope and set about getting the dinner ready.

After scrutinising the letter for some minutes, he said, “So how many points did you get?”

“None.”

“But that’s impossible.  You can’t pass AND get no points.”

“I managed.  Anyway, it was a different system back then.”

“That’s no excuse.”

Just then my other two sons, aged 15 and 12 walked into the kitchen. 

“Mum got no points in her Leaving Cert,” said son aged 18, “can you believe that?”

Son aged 12 said, “What are points?”  I explained the points system to him.  When I finished, there was a short pause after which son aged 15 smiled and said, “Well that certainly takes the pressure off us then.”

A few minutes later, Son aged 12 asked, “So, how did you get Dad then?” 

“What do you mean ‘get’ him?”

“Dad went to college, you didn’t. Dad has a proper job, you don’t.”

“First of all, I didn’t ‘get’ him.  I didn’t set out to trap him like a butterfly in a net.”

“It’s really hard to catch butterflies.”

“You know what I mean.  I didn’t get him, I didn’t set out to get him.  It is a relationship.  You meet someone, you find you like each other and it grows from there.” 

“Yeah, well you got lucky.”

     I was disturbed by my sons’ attitude.   I told my husband but he didn’t see what all the fuss was about.  “Why don’t you tell them that it bothers you and tell them the contribution you do make,” he said.  But I didn’t see the point: either you value something or you don’t. 

     A few weeks later on a beautiful Sunday evening, I set out for Dingle to spend a week with my sister in her mobile home. 

I left the fridge empty.

Biddies on Whiddy - West Cork Literary Festival 2016

I am the last to arrive at the pier. The first thing I see is Horace soaking wet. He has just emerged from the sea and the saturated jeans clinging to his legs make look like a seal. My heart swells with pride; our tutor is a free spirit and having a few minutes to spare before the ferry leaves for Whiddy Island he spontaneously jumped into the sea to experience the ice-cold, soul cleansing, brain freezing waters of Bantry Bay.
I climb into the ferry. Paolo, the ferry driver switches on the engine. Horace is still on the pier talking to a large, bearded man. 

“Wait, Paulo,” I said, “we’re missing our tutor.” 

“That’s not all you’re missing,” said Paulo and he revved up the engine.
To my relief, Horace climbs on board, and so does the fat man. I look at him with curiosity. Gillian, who had done the travel writing workshop last year, told me one of their assignments then was to study Paulo and to write a story about him. Was this man to be our 'Paolo'?

In the marquee which serves as our classroom for the week, Horace introduces us to Max. He has a surname but even though he spelt it out three times for us, we couldn’t spell it or pronounce it. Max’s physique and manner reminded me of Peter Ustinov as he used to be interviewed on television shows in the early ‘80s.
“You’re all women,” said Max looking around at the eight women seated in a circle around him. He seemed surprised.
“Now, Max, these women have all paid through the nose to be here so I expect you to be on your best behaviour,” warned Horace. “Why don’t you introduce yourself?”
Max did so and Horace suggested we introduce ourselves “briefly” in return. We did as we were told but the mood was too sombre for me. When it came to my turn I said, “Hi, I’m Geraldine, I’m an alcoholic.” I said.

That broke the ice. Max took the floor. “I was arrested by one of your gardai, you know,” he said looking around at us wide-eyed at the injustice of his story, “for something I didn’t do but it went all the way to court and I got done for it. Then the Daily Mail wrote about it because the garda knew someone in there and they printed an article about me that’s entirely untrue.” “Is your name Ian Bailey by any chance,” asked Gillian. We laughed. Horace and Max looked puzzled.


“Do you want to hear a joke?” said Max. I was the only one to answer, “Yeah, go on,” I said. I was fascinated by this man with his naked, bulging belly overhanging his still wet pants, his bare feet, and his black jacket tied with one button and could barely contain him.

Max rolled up his sleeves. “A man goes for a sex change. After the operation, he meets a friend. The man said to his friend, “Do you know what is the most painful part of becoming a woman?”

“Is it when they gave you breasts?” asked the friend.


“No.” “Is it when they cut off your reproductive parts?”


“No.” “No, what could be more painful than having your penis cut off?”


“It’s when they stuck a straw in my ear and sucked my brain out.” I sniggered. My classmates did not react.

Horace took back control, “Is everybody ready to read their homework?”


No-one spoke up so I offered to go first. After I finished reading Max looked around and said, “Is this a writing group?” Horace clapped his hands together, “It’s almost time for coffee so I’ll give you your next writing assignment now.” Horace went on to explain how a sense of place is very important in travel writing. “For instance in describing my childhood growing up on a sheep farm in South Wales, I could write about a clump of nettles growing out of the bottom of the barn door and that would sum up my childhood perfectly. My mother, on the other hand, was a complete stranger to Wales and knew nothing about sheep farming when she married my dad. She called her sheepdog ‘Toss’ because a neighbour told her it was the Welsh word for sheep and she named two of her sheep ‘Prolapse’ and ‘Uterus.’

We all laugh except Max. “Sorry, Horace, what’s a prolapse?”


“You’ll know when you have your sex change,” said Ellen. “Ssssh,” hissed Gillian, “Don’t encourage him.”


Horace looked at Max in surprise, “Are you serious, you don’t know? A prolapse is when a woman’s womb collapses.” Max closed his eyes and shuddered.


Horace continues, “I want you to imagine an empty space of someone you know very well. Describe that space and from your description, we should be able to visualise the owner of that space. For instance, I could describe my mother’s armchair in such a way that you’ll know instantly that she was elderly, faded in places and a woman,” and peering out the opening of the Marquee, “since it’s still such a lovely morning, you can write it outside. Go!” Max stood, "Could I possibly borrow a pen?' he asked. I grabbed up my pencil case and zipping it open said, "Would you like a fat one?" He took the pen and then said, "Now I need some paper." Elaine ripped a sheet from her notebook and handed it over.

We scuttle out of the marque and emerge into the brilliant sunshine. I sat at one of the picnic tables with my back to the sun and facing the door of the ‘Bank’ which is actually a pub/café. After 20 minutes, Horace announces ‘time up’. I duck into the pub for a pint of water. I spot Max with a pint of cider chatting to a blonde lady.

“I think we’ve seen the last of Max,” I whisper to Ellen as we headed back to the marquee.


“Thank God,” she said. Max did not return. We read our pieces. The morning ran late but since the ferry was assigned especially to our group, it would not leave without us. However, Gillian had a business appointment at 2.30 pm and was anxious to get home.


It was 1.30pm. Everybody in the the class was on board, Gillian asked the Paolo, “Can’t we just leave?” “No,” said Paulo, “I am scheduled to leave at 1.45 pm. I am not allowed to leave sooner.”

Gillian was fidgeted and twisted in her seat.


“Text them that you’ll be late,” said Ellen. “I’m old, I don’t do technology,” said Gillian sighing and glanced again at Paolo.

“Ring your husband.”

“He’s in Cork this morning.”


Finally, at 1.45 pm. Paolo starts the engine but just then three ladies appeared at the top of the gangway. One of the ladies was elderly and so Paolo waited as she painfully inched her way down to the boat. Finally, the women were on board. Then Max appeared on the horizon. He seems surprised to see the ferry still there and starts to amble down the gangway. Paolo waited. Gillian tutted loudly and squirming in her seat she twisted the watch on her wrist. With Max safely on aboard, we headed back to Bantry harbour.

 

The Epiphany

The Epiphany

Monday, 7^th March 2011. 9 o’clock. It’s our weekly staff meeting and Colin, Head of Credit Control is in a bad mood.   “Deirdre, I want all the Cork suppliers invoiced this week.  Do you think you could have them done by Friday?”

“No problem, Colin."

Thursday, 10^th March 2011. It’s some-time after 4 o’clock.  Mary, my boss approaches my desk, “Geraldine could you give Deirdre a hand, I’m worried she won’t have the invoices finished by tomorrow?” 

“No problem but can check with her first if she's ok it?”

Mary agrees to that and walked away looking for Deirdre.  In less than a minute she was back, “Deirdre is ok with it.”

“Grand, I’ll finish up here and start on them in the morning.”

Deirdre and I are not just work colleagues, we are friends and writing buddies.  We’re in the same writer’s group and we attended the Listowel Writers Festival in 2010 together.  We had such a good time there; we booked the same B&B for the festival for 2011.  I was more than happy to help my friend. 

8 o’clock the next morning, I arrived into work, checked my emails, listened to my voicemail and cleared my desk of all but the absolutely essential items: clear desk, clear mind.  I took down the ring binder from the shelf above Deirdre's desk marked 'Cork Suppliers’ and took out the index with the list of suppliers - 60 in total – and made a photocopy of it.  When Deirdre arrived into work at 9 o’clock, I slapped my hands together with relish and said, “We’re going to do this, Deirdre, how many have you done so far?”

“Six.”

“Ok,” I said, thinking aloud, “Six from sixty leaves fifty four, cut them in half and that gives us each twenty seven each.”  With a ruler I drew a line under West Cork Meat Supplies and turning back to Deirdre, said, “It’s do-able.  If you continue to work from the top down, I’ll work from the bottom up, we’ll have them done by the end of the day.”

“Grand.” 

 I had covered Deirdre’s sick leave when she was out for three months last year and so I was familiar with her particular invoicing process.  I settled down to hammer through my list of twenty seven.  I worked through my coffee break.  Deirdre took hers.  At 11 o’clock, I asked her how she was doing.  

“Grand,” she said.

 “We’ll beat this deadline yet, Deirdre.” I said.  Deirdre smiled.

I worked through my lunch break.  Deirdre took hers.  When she got back, I was twelve invoices short of my target.  At 3 o’clock, I called out to her, “Only six more, Deirdre how’re you doing?” 

“Grand,” she said. 

By 4 o'clock I had a splitting headache but was on course to be finished by 5 o’clock.  Pride flooded through my veins as I galloped onwards and upwards.  Knight Geraldine on her white stallion rides in and saves the day.  I did not even stop to make a cup of tea.  We were going to make it: I could feel it in my bones.    I called out, “How many have you got now, Deirdre?”

“Six,” she replied.  

At 5 o'clock on the dot, Deirdre stood up, snapped off her computer, picked up her hand bag and with a breezy, “Enjoy the rugby” to all she walked out. 

I heard her but when I tried to stand up I fell back again into my seat.  Stiff from sitting in the same position for eight hours, I was barely able to support my own weight.

“Where’s she going?” I said

“Let it go,” said Maria who worked alongside me.   

“Let what go? Where is she?”

“It’s not your problem.”

“I know it’s not my problem. It’s her problem so where the fuck is she?”

At that moment, Mary came out of her office and hurried towards us, “What’s the matter?”

“Deirdre has still six invoices to do and she’s gone.”

Mary nodded sympathetically, “That’s Deirdre for you, she’ll let you down every-time.”

“But that’s not good enough,” I cried.   

 I didn't understand.  Deirdre was my friend. I was helping her but she walked out on me.  We were working on her deadline not mine and yet she was gone.  My mind reeled with confusion.  

“Did you get all your invoices done?” asked Mary timidly.

“Yes,” I said, “I just need to post them out.”

“Let me check them first,” said Maria “in case there are any errors.” 

I wanted to stab her.  She wants to check me for errors.  Why didn't she stop Deirdre, the butterfly, the person responsible for these invoices, from flitting?  I handed over the invoices in sullen obedience.  I was in a daze.  It all felt so utterly wrong. 

That evening I collected my husband from work, “You wouldn’t believe what happened to me today,” I said. 

He waved me away, “I’ve had a shit week; I don’t want to hear it.”

I had to work this one out on my own.  I didn't sleep that night.  I meditated. I went for a run.  I poured it all out on paper.  None of the usual methods worked: self-righteousness burned through my body.   By Sunday evening I was exhausted.  I asked myself over and over again, ‘what would a wise man or woman do?’ and finally I got an answer.  First of all, the wise man or woman would calm down.  I calmed down.  I let all the rage and hurt drain out of me.  It was then I had an epiphany; what Deirdre did was not personal.  She didn’t do anything to me. Deirdre’s behaviour on Friday was simply how she operates in the world and this is why she gets sick.  I decided to forgive her.  I had learned - the hard way - that holding a grudge is hard work: first of all you have to remember that you have the grudge and then you have to constantly stoke it to keep it alive and relevant.  I just didn’t have the energy anymore.   On a practical level, I will probably be sharing an office with Deirdre for at least the next five years and choosing to resent her would me my working life toxic

Monday, 14^th March 2011. 9 o’clock. Colin was on a day's leave; Mary chaired the staff meeting. 

“Deirdre, how are the invoices going?” asked Mary.

“Grand,” said Deirdre, “With Geraldine’s help they’re nearly all done.”

“How many have you done, Deirdre?”

“Twenty-one.”

“And how many have you done, Geraldine?” said Mary turning to me. 

“Twenty seven.” I said quietly.

Mary turned back to Deirdre, “So Deirdre, between Monday and Friday you did twenty one invoices and Geraldine does twenty seven in one day.  Do you think you could finish the rest today?”

Deirdre nodded. She didn’t say anything. 

After the meeting, Deirdre stood up quickly and walked over to me.  She stooped down to whisper in my ear, “Some friend you are, you really showed me up today.” 

I was stunned and outraged all over again.  Deirdre ignored me all that day.  After work I collected my boys from their child-minder, Bridget who is also a very good friend to me.  I told Bridget everything.  “And now SHE’s sulking with me AND she’s been blanking me all day, what do I do?” I said.

“Blank her back,” said Bridget.

I slept badly that night but the next morning I decided to follow Bridget’s advice.  All day Tuesday, I ignored Deirdre.  It was pathetic behaviour on both our parts but I found it peaceful.

The following morning, Wednesday, I arrived into the office just after 8 o’clock; Deirdre was already there.  She was waiting for me.

“Could I have a hug?” she asked. 

Caught completely off guard I whimpered,  “OK.”

We hugged.

Deirdre then stood back and tilting her head gently to one side said, “Could we forget about Friday?”

I struggled to understand what was happening but again I just said, “Ok.”

Talking to Bridget again that evening, we tried to fathom Deirdre's behaviour.  “Who knows how her mind works,” said Bridget “but you did the right thing.  By not getting angry with her you gave her the space to step forward and make amends.”

Five years later, I appreciate now that the entire incident with Deirdre in March 2011 was a tidy little nutshell in which I experienced pride, betrayal, disappointment and hurt but I also got to practice compassion, forgiveness and detachment.  I ought to thank Deirdre for this lesson but she has since moved office but also, because of the nature of her illness, I don’t think she would see it the way I do. 

 

Barter in Bantry - West Cork Literary Festival 2016

“Today’s exercise is bartering,” said Horatio. “You can barter whatever you like but you must bring back an object, the name of the person you interacted with and a story.    Meet you all back here under Wolfe Tone in 40 minutes.

We scatter like sheep across Bantry Square.  It’s Friday, Market day in Bantry.  I walk past a jewellery stand and stop to admire a pair of drop earrings made of green glass.     “Bartering in Ireland, he must be mad; we’re not in China,” I muttered to myself. “I’ll buy something: he’ll never know.” I was completely out of cash and needed to use the AIB ATM across the street.

I shimmy my way through the traffic moving at snail pace circling the one way system around the square. I paused on the traffic island and waited for the lights to change. I meet Paul who was staying at the same B&B. I tell him my mission.

“Did you know that bartering is officially illegal in Ireland?” he said.

“That can’t be right,” I said, “If I give you something and you give me something of equal value back that’s fair exchange.”

“I don’t know, I think it’s something to do with the items being a gift and that’s taxable. But if you throw in a euro, that might make it alright,” he said with a wink.

I queue up the ATM and armed with cash I dash back to the market; I had only 20 minutes left. I dodge tourists dawdling at the jewellery stall, stride past nylon Indian rugs, plastic guns, and girl’s bracelets for a Euro each. The bracelets are nice actually, brilliant greens and reds strung on elastic thread. I try them on. They are a little tight and I chat to the owner while I try on one then three. Three look good. The owner’s name is Chung, he is from North West China and he has been in Ireland eight years. All the while that I’m talking, I sizing him up: he might be open to bartering but what can I give back. I leave the bracelets and walk on.

I am nearly at the end of the square when I came across a stall selling plants. On an upturned Coca-Cola crate I see a tray of seedlings marked ‘Tobacco’. Sitting next to the tray in the open door of her van is the owner. Long, blonde hair cut Joni Mitchell style under a scarecrow hat and skin-tight denim jeans. I recognise her immediately.

“I met you at the Mallow Garden Festival, you sold me a gorgeous tree peony,” I said. She nodded and smiled at me.   “Are they actually tobacco?” I said pointing at the seedlings.

“Yes, they have a lovely flower. In a few weeks the leaves will grow to about five times that size. You cut the leaves right back to the base. Hang them up to dry. When they are fully brown you crumble them up into small pieces and you smoke them.”

“You actually smoke them?”

“Yes.”

I sighed and told her that I was on a writing course and our assignment was to barter.

“I barter all the time,” she said.

“You do?”

 “Yes, these tobacco plants I exchanged for some raspberry canes and those pansies over there, I gave fuchsias cuttings which I rooted myself.”

I couldn’t believe my luck, “Will you barter with me?”

“I will. What do you have?”

I held open my bag and listed the contents; “I have a lap top, a packet of tissues never used,” and pointing to my head, “how about these sunglasses?”

She looked me into my eyes and said gently, “You know you can barter for services too. If you get me a cup of coffee, I’ll give you any plant you want.” My eyes looked around greedily, she had some lovely plants.

“Done, where do I go?”

“There’s a red van over on the far side of the square, he sells coffee out of the back.”

“How do you like it?”

“Black, no sugar, no milk.”

I was about to shoot off when I stopped, “what’s your name?’

“Kathy.”

“Hi Kathy, I’m Geraldine, I’ll be right back with your coffee.”

I took off across the square.  I scan the row of vans are selling waffles, pizza, burgers: this must be the food section. The coffee van is the last one before a stall selling cheeses. A bearded man is playing a ukulele and singing ‘When I’m 64.’ I stand next to an elderly lady. It turns out I am on the wrong side of her. When the coffee man asks, “‘who’s next” he can’t tell if it is her or me. “Are we going to have a fight about it?” he laughed. The lady ordered an espresso, poured in a pinch of milk, knocked it back and moved onto the cheese. I order a large black.  Carefully sealing the lid on the cup as if my life depended it I thread my way slowly back across the square.

The coffee was hot and I had to keep switching it from hand to hand. I passed an old lady leaning on a ‘Supervalu’ trolley for support while her grandson carried a large cardboard box filled with primroses. The boy accidentally dropped the box and the soil spilled under the wheels of a parked car. Any other day I would have stopped to help but I kept going.

Kathy gratefully relieved me of the coffee.    “Now,” she said, “how it works is that I pay you for the coffee and you, for your services of bringing me the coffee, get to pick a plant.”

“Oh no,” I said, “Don’t do that, let’s do the coffee for a plant.”

“Ok, which plant would you like?”

I looked around. She had racks of bigger, healthy, colourful plants in full bloom but I dragged my eyes back to the tray of seedlings on the crate.

“I think for the sake of purity, it ought to be the tobacco,” I said.

Kathy picked up the tray and handed it to me. There were at least 8 plants in it.

“Oh no,” I said, “I don’t need all of them, just one will do.”

 “You can have them.”

“They’ll be dead by the time I get back to Cork. Really, I only need one.”

Kathy inserted her forefinger and thumb into the first pot hole and gently pinched out the baby plant. It emerged from its home, snug and root-bound, perfectly intact: not a crumb of soil spilled. She looked around, what to put it into. She climbed into the van to look for a spare pot. I spot a used coffee cup just inside the door. I pick it up, “How about this?” I said. Kathy plopped the plant into the cup.

Perfect.

Morning Pages

In March 2002, I signed up for a 12 week writing course called 'Just Write' with Jane Camens. As part of the creative process we were instructed to do an exercise called The Morning Pages.  The Morning Pages had to be done in the morning and done every morning  The purpose of the exercise is to get your writing juices flowing and like practising the piano, you need to get the cruddy stuff out of the way before the good stuff starts to flow.  (A couple of years ago on a weekend break in Amsterdam I stumbled upon The American Book Centre. I spent the entire afternoon browsing this gorgeous shop with its floor to ceiling shelves of books on every conceivable subject when looking over the shoulder of my husband as we reluctantly started to leave I spotted the The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Morning Pages came from her.  In her book, Julia writes that doing your Morning Pages every morning is like meditation (pg. 13): through the process of writing you cross over to other side of negativity.)

Back to Hong Kong, after reading the hand-out explaining the concept behind Morning Pages, I realised I do it already except I did it in the afternoon after spending the morning wallowing in self pity and working myself up into a rage and spewing my poison all over the keyboard and emailing it off to a friend on the other side of the world who I might never see again.  I timidly asked, "Why does it have to be done in the morning, what's so special about that time?" I can't remember what Jane replied but Betty sitting next to me explained, "In the morning you have your worst thoughts and by writing first thing in the morning, you get all that poison out before you have time to gloss over them." That got my attention.  Every morning I wake up hung over with self pity.  Overnight, it seems my mind fills up with the toxic sludge of 'poor me, I'm so hard done by' and in the morning I wake up pissed off with the world and just riddled with bitterness and resentment.  It doesn't matter how good the day before went, in fact it doesn't matter what happened the day before, I always wake up with this hangover without necessarily having the pleasure of drink to bring it on.

About five years ago I took up the practice of meditation.  I signed up with The Practical School of Philosophy on Anglesea Street.  I loved the course with the discussions on 'What is happiness?' and the value of being still.  At the beginning of every class we would do 10 minutes of meditation during which time I nearly always found myself dozing off.  My sister, Catherine regularly goes on retreats, meditation workshops and awareness boot camps in West Cork and Clare. She sold it to me when she said, "I find the day always goes well when I meditate".  On the days I wake up feeling neutral I meditate but on the days I wake paralysed with worry/frustration/resentment I do my Morning Pages,  If I have time I do both.

I am currently doing research on mental health for an essay I have to write for my course.  There is a history of Depression in my family which I only fully appreciated when my father passed away a few years ago.  My cousin identified it after she had her first baby and promptly nipped it in the bud.  I plan to do the same.  In my research, I came across an article on the internet in the magazine section of the New York Times called Depression's Upside by Jonah Lehrer, 25th Feb. 2010.  It linked writing with depression and creativity.  It talked about rumination; the endless 'chewing over' of thoughts in our head.  Women are particularly prone to this. Lehrer writes 'Rumination is a useless kind of pessimism, a perfect waste of mental energy. Rumination reinforces depression' and further on he writes, 'Writing is a form of thinking which enhances our natural problem solving abilities'.    For me this sums up the value of doing the Morning Pages.  The ritual doesn't just get your writing juices going, It gets your living juices going.

It is a fact that no matter how wretched I feel when I first wake up I find that after an hour of writing my mood improves.  It's not exactly carnival standard but enough to say, "Ok, no more wallowing" and I get out of bed. 

How to do it? Set the alarm for half an hour before you normally get up.  Set it for an hour if think you need more time - I give myself an hour.     Write down whatever is in your head no matter how trivial, boring, shallow or even pathetic it seems.  Even if it's 'I hate Mondays' oh God, it's raining again, I hate Christmas, my life is boring, I'm boring............' No one is ever going to see this stuff so don't  hold back.  Write for half an hour or enough to fill three A4 pages.

In The Artist's Way, Julia writes you can't keep complaining 'about a situation morning after morning without being moved to constructive action'.  In my experience, it seems writing is a process that has an innate system of progress in it; that you are propelled to move along and in doing so you arrive at the next step in the thought process and then the next and then the next....

When you are endlessly chewing over the same thoughts again and again or lying awake listening to the hamsters spinning one the wheel inside your head, or you feel you are in a rut caught in the same groove of a scratched record, write it out.  Get a notebook, any old copybook will do, pick up a pen and write it out.  Take that little crud of dirt from your mind and put it on the page.

The next morning do it again.    Write, write, write it out.  You will find yourself moving along.  The thought that was bothering will start to lessen in importance as your mind gets bored with it and moves onto other thoughts.  The original thought that was on your mind might still be there but it will trouble you less.  It will become less all-consuming and less overwhelming.  It will start to become manageable.  You will start to gain perspective and come up with ways yourself to resolve it. 

The way I see it: my mind is like a blocked drain.  The act of putting it down on paper removes a particle of dirt from my mind which then causes other dirt to shift downwards.  This in turn creates more room for other dirt to move.  This dirt eventually gives way to allow the water to flow through and with it solutions to problems, higher quality thoughts, creativity, and light. This cleansing of your mind allows it to work efficiently free of negativity.    The point is to scratch the dirt until it moves and keep scratching until it is gone.  If you suffer from insomnia as I sometimes do, don't like in bed helplessly willing yourself back to sleep.  Get up and write.  Sometimes, after half an hour of writing I get sleepy and go back to sleep.  Other times, I get up and start the day.  Either way it's an improvement on lying in the dark with your brain galloping at 90 miles an hour.

It's like constipation.  Why keep in the poison when with a little patience and pen and paper you can ease it out.  You will be lighter and brighter for the day.

Set your alarm.  Wake up.  And just write.

Rediscovering My Garden

     After seven years of curling up like a cat in the afternoon sun on a kitchen chair in the west facing window of my kitchen we finally bit the bullet and turned our tiny, windy but sunny patio into a sun room.  The patio got all the sun but it was either too windy to sit out and when it was sunny it had no shade.  Just before Christmas 2013, out of the blue, my husband of 25 years said, "Have your sun room" and we weren't even talking about sun room, houses or anything remotely to do with bricks or sun.  I was stunned. Then I got scared. How does someone get to the 'mature' age of 50 and never participated in a building project. 

     This was the first house we ever owned after having lived in an apartment for the last 20 years.  It was a palace compared to the lunch box we lived in for the first eight years of our marriage with two babies in nappies.  Building on an extra room which we didn't really need seemed wrong. 

     I googled the cost of building sun rooms in Ireland and was staggered to find the minimum cost is 20k and can go up to 40k; we're only talking about building one extra room.  We got quotes from six different builders and settled for the middle road.  Work started in the middle of February and barring one dodgy velux window it was all finished by the end of April. 

     The finished sun room is such a fantastic use of an awkward, under utilized space that we were left are reeling as to why we had not done this before.  Originally it was intended to be 9 feet wide and 16 feet long as we did not want to encroach into the garden and take up valuable space for football. However, since Hubbie insisted the builder re cycle the old patio door it forced the builder to go out an extra five feet and so it is 21 feet long and what a difference!!  That extra 5 feet actually makes the room.  It is like sitting in the garden without that pesky wind but you also get the benefit of looking at the garden with the heat of the sun and the sound of the rain.  It my favourite place in the whole world to be no matter what the weather.  To be fair we have so far only experienced it in summertime, winter might bring a whole other range of 'challenges' or delights.  Hubble and the boys have gone from 'Mum has gone mad' to 'what a great room'.  So far I have only furnished it with a two seater couch borrowed from the bat cave and the dresser because there is simply no where else to put it but it fits in fine.  The builder gave the room a pitched roof and it has the glorious effect of making the room bright, airy and almost like a little chapel.  All I need is stained glass and a crucifix.

     I did not have fixed ideas of how I wanted the room to look other than it had to have as many windows as possible, we had access to the garden and that it would be as bright as possible.  Our budget was tight and immovable but as it happens that was a God send.  My neighbour who very kindly allowed me to view her sun room which she had built four years ago had the entire gable end in glass.  The builder said glass is more expensive than brick so we have a low window ledge instead of glass and I prefer that.  It makes the room more like a room than a glass house and with our long, wet winters it will make the room cosier and less bleak.  As a result we got a room at slightly more than half the cost but exactly suits our needs. 

     My mantra since I started working with college students and their mammies is 'Open heart, Open mind' and I find that gets me through every encounter with difficult people and situations.  Our builder is a Sweetie but they say that the top most stressful events in life is moving house.  The Chinese have a curse, 'May you build' and I put that in the same category.  Everyone has their horror story. Once I told people I was building and even though they were usually pleased with the finished product, they all cursed builders.    My builder came highly recommended by people I trust and once we discussed what I wanted from this room, I told him he was free to do what he thought was fit with the budget we agreed.  I stood back.  Luckily I work and so I was out of the house all day.  The boys were at school and Hubbie was at work.  Once they broke through the connecting wall from the kitchen to the potion, I would come home every day at 6 pm and find a layer of dust over everything.  This lasted for about two weeks.  You clean up, cover up as much as possible and stay patient.  The garden lay under bags of cement and slabs of concrete bricks.  Before the building started the garden was just a scrubby little football pitch prone to flooding so how it looked meant nothing to me.  I just drew the blinds and was thankful it was February.

     I had planted a Pyracanthus outside my north facing kitchen window; the one I look out of when I am washing the dishes.  I wanted something evergreen and fast growing and that tolerated shade.  It is a brave little shrub.  I've since discovered that the side passage of our house is a wind tunnel and the gales that go howling through there in January are terrifying.  If it's not tied down or locked in the shed it gets blown away.  Our two huge wheelie bins have been over turned and ended out in the front garden many times.  My Adirondack chairs make of solid oak have been tossed like tumble weeds across the back garden.  I had the Pyracanthus tied to a pathetic trellis and during the building the winds brought the whole thing down.  The poor Pyracanthus swayed out from the wall at a 45 degree angle bullied by the relentless winds.  I saw it in the morning before I went to work but I neither had the time nor the wherewithal to fix it.   When I got home that evening it was dark and so it was not until the following Saturday morning that I discovered that one of the builder's men had used huge masonry nails and wired the trellis and the Pyracanthus upright again.  When I tested its firmness, it was solid and immovable. Crude it was but I was gratified by the simplicity and no nonsense cure.  When I mentioned it to builder he was surprised.  I am grateful by the kindness of one of his workers simply fixing something because it was broke.

     This started out as a description of how I got back into gardening after a six year gap of apathy and turning my back on an asset.  Once the sun room was finished and we hauled the two seater from the bat cave and situated facing the sun and the garden, I fully appreciated how bare the garden is and how little privacy we have.  We are over looked on three sides.  The neighbours on either side can see in as much as I can see into theirs which isn't a lot but you still prefer if they couldn't.  The house at the end of the garden is side on and have two windows fully over looking.  Somehow all these years that never bothered me but then I never sat out in my garden.  I now want to sit in my sun room and planned to do so for the rest of my days.  Young boys live there and they could care less.  The adults have a life but the point is that they can and I wanted to prevent that.

     Putting up trellis is expensive requiring drills and nails that my husband is not capable of doing.  I don't trust my sons.  I have a a lot of enthusiasm to start with but always run out of interest before the job is completely done.  Example the sun room.  I painted it and the kitchen at the same time.  The newly dried plastered inhaled paint and it took eight tins and it could still have done with another coat but I got no help from my family, my neck hurt, I was worn out and I was bored.  I settled for the mottled look and a promise to do it all again next spring with the same colour paint if it was available. Jasmine White from Dulux.  Remember that.

     I put up two weedy little trellis in 2006 in a burst of enthusiasm and attempted to grow jasmine and clematis on a north facing wall.  They struggled; I lost interest and forgot I had them until the builder put them at the end of the garden.  Our battery operated drill is useless: it wouldn't scratch paint.  John is our postman at work but even more interesting he is also a farmer; he knows everything.  I asked to borrow his drill.  He hesitated and suggested I use picture hooks - you know the white plastic ones with the four tiny nails on top.  I told him that was insane.  He replied, "Your walls at home are made of concrete, why wouldn't they work outside as well?"  I couldn't argue with that so on the way home I bought a pack of 25 of their largest picture hooks.  I had mixed success.  The blocks are not pure concrete. Sometimes the cement like substance crumbled where it couldn't take the hammering and in other spots I hit gold and the hook held.  I ran gardening wire up and down the wall from hook to hook.  I had 100% success with my Clematis Armani outside my kitchen window.  I didn't take a picture before clematis but here is a picture after with clematis rampant.  Here is another picture of hooks where I planted roses but the roses never took off which is why the hooks and wires are still visible.  Now this works fine for light weight vines it was not so successful with the trellis.  While also at the hardware shop I found masonry nails and over heard two men who I guessed to be in their 20's discussing the merits of each nail and asked them was it possible to put a nail into concrete without a drill and they said you can simply hammer them in.  Music to my ears.  I bought a pack of 50.  The trick with hammering in nails is to find just a glimmer of a gap in the concrete.  Hubbie had painted the wall but I could still detect holes where the paint did not fill.  I tapped gently and once I felt the nail take then I would steadily increase the blows until a few good whacks sent the nail in until only a half inch protruded.  I hung the trellis off a series of nails like this and then secured the trellis with wire stretched from one nail to another or a picture hook.  It looks awful.  Something a five year old would attempt but from the kitchen window you can't tell the difference.  Up close is a picture.  I reckoned once things start actually growing and using this thing then it will cover up the flaws and if the trellis loses firmness I'll whack another nail in.  By then I may have lost interest and moved on to something else.  The only thing about the nails and hammer 'technique' the vibrations going up the nail hurt my hands and I had to wrap tissue around the nail to absorb the tremors.  If you have a husband with a drill and knows how to how to use it, you are lucky.  If you have a drill and are willing to use it, you have my fullest respect.

Renewed interest in the garden.

     My friend Carmel suggested planting willow trees.  They sounded boring so I ignored that suggestion.  The following Saturday the Examiner had a full page article raving about the benefits of the willow tree.  I rang Carmel  and asked did she still have the willows.  She did.  That was the 18th February.  Her husband Mike (raised on a farm - I'm telling you, they know everything) had coppiced the willow the previous weekend and he had a stack of 8 foot long canes.  He chopped them up into foot long stumps and threw in a few fuchsia stumps which had rooted.  He said you simply drive the willow stumps into the ground at least 8 inches apart.  Each stump will root and you will have a tree with shoots about 8 feet high by the end of the summer.  I didn't believe him but I planted them anyway as instructed.  Today is the 20th July.  Every single one of them rooted and they have shoots at eye level with me.  I am five foot tall so they have another two months to reach their potential.  Even the stumps I did not planted rooted in the bucket and so feeling bad for them I planted them on the side of the house facing north and overlooked and so getting no sun whatsoever are completely in the shade and guess what? They are growing.  Nowhere near as fast as steady as the ones in the sun but growing all the same.  Privacy is an issue for me.  Thank God for Google.  I researched the things you can do with willow trees and I came across coppicing and excaplier.  The latter is for fruit trees but I liked the principle of long stem and all the activity on top.  This frees the ground level for prettier more interesting plants while occupying the upper area for screening.  The three best thriving willows are being groomed for their canes and I have at least six good specimens.  Next February maybe the 18th for good luck, I will prune those canes.  Dig up the original willow stumps, work over the soil to be free of weeds and grass and then plant the canes the way I did with the original stumps.  The idea is the shoots will come from the top of the cane which will act as my screen blocking out the two windows.  Having trees right in the front of the windows will be clumsy and obvious so I plan to plant 8 for symmetry four on either side of my super Rosa.  I will have to clear out my Montbrecia which is gorgeous at the moment and luckily seems to survive anything.  The fuchsias I will take out and put back once the willows are established.  I feel like Dr Evil plotting the overtaking of the world but it is only the bottom of my garden which is about 25 feet wide.  I really should get a life.

     I was on the hunt for vigorous evergreen climbers, vigorous climbers would do too.  When I worked in Kentish Town in London in the 90's the head office was in a prefab.  The handyman John planted a Russian Mile a Minute outside the kitchen window.  That thing grew a foot a day and Kitty the tea lady cursed the fact it crept in the window no matter how much John hacked it back.  I was fascinated by a plant that grew so pushy.  When I read the description that it was aggressive and unfussy and thrived in poor soil, that was my kind of plant. I bought one a few years ago and planted in the shady corner where the sun simply never reaches.  It grew steadily enough.  But then we went on holidays and when we returned two weeks later it had grown into a monster.  It ransacked the fence and the wall I was delighted.  I love pruning.  I can't help it but when I see a thing grow I have the urge to cut it back. It might be to do with the fact that I was defender on my GAA football team.  I had no interest in scoring I just wanted to stop anyone else doing it.   I snip at it every day when all else is quiet and it always gives me something to do.  It's very difficult to get rid off or so the BBC gardening website promises but my middle son succeeded.  He only ever cuts the grass when he wants money which means it could be cut three times a week or three times a month depending on his needs.  He shows no discrimination and mows everything.  He destroyed a thriving azalea, a newly planted rhubarb corm and my magnificent Mile a Minute.  Like the Wicked Witch of the East, it shrivelled and died.  The stump is still there but no life. 

     This spring with my renewed interest and zero patience for results and progress - they say gardening teaches you patience but the garden does what it pleases and you realise how little patience you actually have - I decided to buy another Mile a Minute.  I tried five different garden centres around Cork, good respectable ones but none of them had it.  One Centre went through the farce of ordering it for me but it wasn't 'included in the delivery'.  After weeks of doing the rounds finally one Centre Manager confessed that they will never stock it the since they are so aggressive.  I asked her to order it anyway and I would buy the entire order and she still refused.  She then suggested that if I saw it growing in a friend's garden to ask to take a cutting.  I never thought of that but then I never saw this plant in a friend's garden.  There is a magnificent specimen growing over the The Star pub on Capwell and another one overhanging the link on the bridge.  I work in UCC and I asked the gardener.  He said it wasn't on the grounds but I could have a cutting of the evergreen jasmine in July.  Leaving work one evening by the Gaol Cross gate I saw a vine poke through the railing.  It looked like a young Mile a Minute.  I photographed it with my phone and compared it to Google images, they matched.  The next day I brought in rooting gel, plastic bag and secatures.  I took in all 9 cuttings and two of them took.  I am now the very delighted owner of two growing vines.  I found the gentler sister in Hanley and it is growing well up a swingball pole I recycled but it is no where as fast as the Russian.  It is plants like these that make gardening satisfying.  You can keep your petunias and summer annuals I want rocket plants.  If you walk along the corridor in UCC by the Aula Max you can see Ivy growing through the windows and it's enchanting.  The Virginal creeper is allowed to grow over and around the diamond paned windows gradually blocking out the sunlight and it is very pretty.  Some ivy founds its way through the gaps in the panes and is hanging down on the inside.  Now that is my kind of plant.  

Frugal Fatigue

Every January I go into post Christmas melt down.  Pay day comes two weeks early in December to 'accommodate' Christmas but then it is followed by the longest, bleakest month of the year made even worse by the fact that there is now 6.5 weeks between your last pay day and the next. No wonder the last Monday before January's pay day is regarded as the most depressing day of the year.

Late December five years ago while wallowing in the post Christmas excess blues, I spent several days googling frugal websites and came across the book, The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dacyczyn.  It had been mentioned by several of the blogs and so I ordered it on Amazon.  Of course, if I had been paying attention to the blogs, I would have borrowed the book from the library or bought it second hand but with me it's all or nothing, I have to have it now. I went on to learn that being impatient is one of the reasons why I urgently needed frugality in my life.  The book is wonderful.  It was compiled between 1990 - 1996 based on newsletters she wrote to her subscribers and so some parts are out dated and since she lives in Massachusetts many of the tips are unique to America.  However, the philosophy is sound and the advice to simply not spend money is timeless. I keep her book next to my bed and reach for it whenever I am in a trough and need to feel inspired. 

My favourite blog is Mr Money www.mrmoneymustache.com.  This guy has been doing frugality for years and so his threads are excellent.  When I hit  frugality fatigue at the end of February I found a thread on his blog about this subject and it helped to put things in perspective.  You need to ask yourself how urgent is your debt and how urgently do you need to deal with it and he has a 5 point scale to evaluate this.  At the extreme end of the scale, if your debt is so bad/income so low and your priority is to get food on the table then you are in 'Your hair is on fire' mode and cannot afford to have frugal fatigue. If however, you are further up the scale then maybe you have cut back too much and have the wriggle room to ease up in one area of your budget.  

Amy from the Tightwad Gazette suggests starting out gently; finding those areas you can cut back and do so gently little by little until you are just comfortable and then a cut back little bit more.  I cut back on everything. I refused to turn on the heating; hot water bottles for everyone. Every night I unplugged all the vampire energy eaters in the house i.e. those appliances on standby  until my husband protested, "Enough!"   Unplugging Sky cable meant all the back episodes to The Sopranos he had set to record were not happening.  He reasoned, "How much electricity are you saving? 32 Euros a year? I'll give you that if you will leave the TV alone." Of course that defeated the purpose.   

On a day that wasn't raining and I didn't have to drive the boys to school/college I took the bus into work.  The fare is  2.40 Euros each way.  To fill up a full tank of petrol costs me approximately45 Euros and that lasts me three weeks even though I average four trips per day.  It was cheaper to drive to work rather than take the bus. 

The demoralising aspect of reading these money saving tips is that I was doing most of them already i.e. taking a packed lunch to work, eating out less, don't smoke, don't drink alcohol (hardly), keeping up with the Jones.  So there was nothing I could do that would drastically save money NOW.   Also the more I read on how not to waste money it dawned on me that most people do this stuff already i.e. re use zips lock bags, bring a packed lunch for long journeys, stay in other people's homes when visiting rather than a hotel. I was just late to the party.

This January however, I had to be particularly ruthless as I have one son in college in Boston for the year and while we knew it was coming and had planned for it, getting through each month was harder than ever.  Christmas day I locked the credit card in a drawer. Back at work, I finally bought into the 'Latte factor' and brought in my own coffee.  

New year's resolution for 2015 - no new clothes for a year.  This won't be hard as I am a hoarder.     The son in Boston came home for the Christmas break.  I de-cluttered his bedroom and filled six large plastic bags.  He's a hoarder too.  In a fit of generosity I then did my middle son's bedroom although I swore I wouldn't.  He's not a hoarder just plain messy but he is doing state exams this year and a stressed minds need lots of space.  I filled nine bags from his room. 

I then tackled my own room.  To my cringing embarrassment after I pulled out everything from the wardrobe including those shelves I can't reach, I found shirts still in their cellophane wrapping that I bought in Hong Kong when I still lived there in 2005. Ten years ago!  They were shoved into the back to make room for the new shirts I was buying "because I needed them."  Thank God I was alone when I made this discovery.  I then realised two things 1) I have more than I need and 2) I have everything I need.  This had the happy effect of overcoming the feelings of deprivation I get periodically which drive me to spend in order to feel better.  

Another thing I have learned and I suspect every person over 18 knows this too: know what is in your cupboards.  Every week I go food shopping which I detest so I never plan it or do a list. I grab my stash of recyclable shopping bags and head to the supermarket in a bad mood.  I walk up and down every aisle and pick out what looks familiar and nice.  Husband is in charge of unpacking the bags when I got home.  As he put away the tinned tuna, he laughed and turned to me, "How much tuna do you think we have?" I shrugged and said, "A couple of tins."  He opened the cupboard door wider to reveal 14 tins of tuna.  Nobody was eating the stuff but I was assumed every single time I went shopping and reached the tinned tuna section, "Oh yeah, tuna is always useful".  I have since cleared out the cupboards, binned the out of date stuff: one tin of drinking chocolate had an expiry date October 1996. On the 1st of the month, I head to Aldi and stock up on a month's supply of  non perishables i.e. pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, toilet rolls, etc and my weekly grocery envelope is for butter, milk, eggs and bread.    We rarely run out of something now but if we do, it is not a crisis.  It does not have to be replaced NOW, there are alternatives and you can do without for a day or two...  I love that World War II saying 'Make it do, make it last, use it up or do without'.

In a bizarre twist, when the son in Boston came home for Christmas I couldn't wait to ask him how did he managed his money.  There were originally four tenants sharing the house but after a month one of the boys got homesick and came home leaving the other three having to come up with the monthly rent themselves. To his credit, my son did not ask us to increase his allowance.  When I asked him how he managed.  He told me he allowed himself so many dollars per week to eat and if he ran out of money he simply ate Cheerios until his next pay day.  When I asked if he minded that he shrugged, and said, "That's how it is." I couldn't leave it alone and probed further, "But do you not feel deprived?" He looked surprised and said no.  Suddenly he sat up and looking at me straight in the eye said, "You're very wasteful, you know?  All those products you have upstairs in your bathroom, you don't need half of that crap.  I bought one bottle of shampoo in September for a dollar; it's my shampoo and shower gel and soap all in one and I made that last the whole semester." I was stunned and humbled but kind of proud. I have a frugal son!  Where did he come from? Are frugal people born with a special gene or do they only arise when money is tight.  I know for a fact if I won a lottery of 10 million it would be gone by the end of the year.  I only do it out of necessity and while I do get a sense of achievement of making it to the end of the month if I didn't have to do it I wouldn't.   

Frugality is a mind set.  There's a whole philosophy behind it which helps keep me motivated for now. Those who have that mind set and live by that philosophy even when it is not needed anymore will have the last laugh.

At the end of January my credit card bill only had one page instead of the usual four or five.  I thought there was a mistake until I remembered, "Of course, I haven't used it." That was such a great feeling.

Another system I used to get through January was the envelope system.  Several frugal blogs talk about Dave Ramsey's Envelope System. 

The hardest part about being monthly paid is that when the money runs out there is loads of month left.  When I first left school I was weekly paid and it was much easier to manage your money.  You got paid on the Thursday and even though it would all be gone by Monday, it didn't matter as you only had to hang on until Thursday.  The envelope system is like giving yourself weekly pay.  On the 1st January, after allocating for the big bills paid by direct debit I withdrew enough cash to cover groceries, petrol, bus money for the kids and other emergency / miscellaneous expenses.  It works.  It is empowering to know that whatever gets thrown up in the course of the month you have the critical things covered i.e. food on the table and getting to work/school. It makes you feel you are the one in control over YOUR money; you have enough as opposed to being paralysed by the thought that you have no money.  

I now get a buzz out of going to the supermarket with my 20 Euros 'allowance' and a list.  Having only 20 Euros cash really concentrates the mind.  You treat it like it is all you have left and your mission is to feed your family on it. You really do look for the best value for money, you are forced to decide what is 'essential' and what you can live without for now. It taps into your creative genes. There is a fantastic blog about this written by a A Girl Called Jack who simply had to live on 10 pounds (sterling UK) per week and she did it.  It certainly put things into perspective for me and it is inspiring knowing that these things can be done.    I read on some blogs how budgeting can be fun.  I thought that was stretching it.  But I did get a kick trying to get all that was on my list - it wasn't a long list but still - within my 20 Euros allowance.  I probably did look a bit batty scrutinising the price per kilo notices, getting down on my haunches to check out the same product, different packaging on the lower shelves and re tracing my steps in order to put something back or change it for something cheaper.  I don't know that I will continue to have the energy to do this long term but when your 'hair is on fire' it becomes urgent and I like urgent.   

I gave myself a petrol allowance of 40 Euros a week only to find that 40 Euros lasts me two weeks and when pushed even further 45 Euros now lasts me three weeks.  My middle son decided he didn't need grinds anymore and that was a welcome saving.  His mocks are on at the moment and so that may change when his results come out later in March.  The envelope system gives me peace of mind.  We are not out of the woods yet nor is there light at the end of the tunnel but one step at a time.

This post set out to be about frugal fatigue but I am now reminded of all the good things about being frugal and so I will persevere.  My mother's birthday was at the end of February and my extended family got together to have lunch at Hayfield Manor.  I nearly choked at the potential cost until my husband pointed that I was losing perspective as well as my sense of humour.   Frugality is not just about managing your money carefully it is also about knowing what is really important in your life and cutting out the clutter that gets in the way of enjoying what is valuable to you.  As long as you are lean and careful in the ordinary everyday stuff you can afford to spend on the special occasions with the people that matter.

Another good point made on the thread 'Frugal Fatigue' on Mr Money Moustache was made by a man who said that he was at a particular expensive period in his live i.e. he had teenage children going to college.  That put it into perspective for me. Right now half of our net income is going into the education costs of our children.  Some day - not anytime soon - they will be off our hands and independent.  This is an expensive time for us and this too will pass.  And when it does, I will probably want these days back again.