I just can't do it. Vanessa was dancing across the studio and I was supposed to follow her routine but my head was on another plane. The charity revue was only two weeks away and I couldn't even skip across the stage in tune. I was going to make an awful fool of myself and everyone else. I could see them all rolling their eyes, wondering who cast the baby elephant. It's alright for them, they have balance and a sense of self. Me, I have no co ordination on a good day. This was all Fionn's idea. A team building exercise he had said. Next day after work I was trying to peel my body into a leotard when it suddenly occurred to me I hadn't had me period in some time. Back to the studio and I now know I am pregnant, which makes me four and a half months and I am used to the idea but I have to make plans. The one decision that is causing me to be even more clumsy than usual is whether to let Tadgh know, we split up a few weeks ago, no acrimony, just not working out. I am really in a bind, should I tell him or leave well enough alone. This silly routine has me beat. "Sorry Vanessa, this really isn't for me, I'm out, good luck though!"

Another non routine day

I have the most amazingly routine life. I even eat the same thing for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but since signing up to do the July blog on routine I have been inundated with non routine days.
Today I go to chapel and the pianist isn't there. Thank goodness we were in fine song - ish. I have my little son staying with me this week so already we have cycled and walked, eaten food I don't normally eat and the worst - he is using my computer so really hard to get to blog!!!

My Unrest Saturday

Not quite like Clovis in The Unrest Cure by Saki but a tale of non-routine nevertheless:
My Saturday routine was totally disrupted today, but in a good way. Usually I wake up and after a lot of coaxing haul my body out of the pit and drag it down the hallway, throw on the kettle, go outside and say hello to the cats and dog and off to let the hens out. Then back inside to make a pot of tea and sit at the table with the week’s papers for about two hours until the dregs of the tea are consumed. Then if it is mild outside to weed and read until the kids complain of hunger and I make lunch. After lunch I watch sport, whatever is available – today would have been Wimbledon female final, well-done Serena!
How my Saturday started today? To start with as soon as I arrived into the den four frolicking kittens and six chirping chickens confronted me. Because I don’t live here during the week I had forgotten about the new arrivals and guilt swathed over me. How could I forget my beautiful Black Minorcan hen had been sitting on fourteen eggs for the last three weeks or so. She has the sleekest feathers, the Rhode Island Reds are very productive but Morrigan is the Madonna of hens. I spent the next half hour cooing and stroking the six surviving chicks; two yellow, happy to appear in Easter cards anywhere, three brown/ orange, already the chunkier of the hicks and one that I think will take after the mother. In a sideward there are two angelic chicks already breathing their last day’s air, Séan had spent three days trying to get them to feed, he put little splints on their buckled legs to try to get them to take their first steps but after consulting Ms Extreme Wise Caroline he decided to let them pass way naturally, Mr Farmer Knows Best James told him to throw them in the cess pit to encourage breakdown bacteria but he didn’t have the stomach and I love him for it. They were named Hilary and Shawshank by the children and will be buried tomorrow after chapel.
The naming ceremony of all the animals in our care takes place on a Saturday when everyone is available. Ross is in Anchorage at the Hope Centre so he couldn’t take part. I thought about ringing him but he cut me off last week because it was too early and I thought he might have had a late one because of the 4th July celebrations. Although he is 22, it was to be the first naming without him. Two of the kids have difficulties with speech so it is vital to make the names different enough to distinguish them.
Back to my morning, he kittens distressed that all the time was being taken up with the chicks started a raucous mewing that the older cats outside could here. Three curious faces appeared at the window; Tarzan King of All He Surveys, Tasslehips and Tippitoes the Terrible were darting their eyes to me questioningly and then to the kittens in the playpen. I could just imagine them chatting to each others questions and comments flying back and forth:
What are they?
Kittens, obviously.
From where?
Did your mother teach you nothing?
Yeah but, who’s are they?
Ours.
Well I didn’t have them
Me neither.
Nor me.
How come they’re inside?
We don’t get to go inside
Not even in winter.
Well I do, mum takes me in for cuddles
Oh Tassie you’re the baby and a girl
Not any more
Does that mean I’m not allowed, oh no
Will we have to share our food?
I am king of the turf shed – they can go in with you
I wonder what they’re called
All in good time little one- look Mum is getting The Book
That’s where all the names go
Oh
Come on it’s breakfast time..

They were right of course I was getting the book down, but I needed a strong cup of coffee to start going through it. Séan and Aaron joined me at the table as we recounted tales of all the animals and children that had lived or almost lived in our family since it’s inception starting with Ghost, the blind cavefish, Ross Daniel first born child, and Pollianski Pie Cake, her children Sukey and Baldrick. Then there is quite a long gap of living beings because we travelled around the UK and Ireland until the day Ross asked to attend the same schook for more than one year. We settled then and haven’t moved since, well Ross has moved to Tralee and I live in Cork part time. Pootle was the first baby that didn’t make it to breathing Bozo was the second. Séan Michael James came next along with a hole of host birds, hamsters, fish and gerbils with associating names like, Rosie and Jim, Zig and Zag, Zeberdee, Hermione, names after the late great Christie Hennessy’s daughter and my fragile short lived albino zebra finch, Snowy. Séan arrived and reminded me of the time Hermione escaped into the skirting boards and didn’t come out for three weeks. When eventually she arrived out, covered in dust she scared Ross half to death, he thought it was her ghost.
Eventually we got to the current page and started to toss around names:
Tigger Wriggle
Toucan U Can
Trouble T Mill
Typhoon Mary
Tramp
Lady Tramp
As always cats names began with a T. We finally decided on Sir Tramps alot for the mostly black, Tequila Sunrise Tahiche and Twinkle Twinkle Likes a Tinkle for the twins and Thunderbolt the Cat Supermodel/ hero for the totally tabby. With the names in places for the cats we turned our attention to the hens, this was much harder because our hens are loosely named after Celtic and Norse Warriors and Gods, but we finally decided on Freya, Fulla, Hariassa, Sif ad Fulla for the two fluffy yellows, Freya and Hariassa for the fat browns and Baldr for the possibly black one.
Our task over we celebrated in Ballyvourney and then onto Future Forests the best garden centre in our opinion in Munster. Finally a stop on the Beara Peninsula for a paddle off the rocks and then home, which took quite a while, the Ring of Kerry cycle was on and with 3000 competitors there was quite a delay.
After my unrest Saturday I loo forward to the routine of chapel then Cork tomorrow.

The Grind

Following the same pattern, as every other day I wove through the streets of Codlington, ducking down St. Haig Terrace and then criss crossing across Ellingham estate.
It was the same route I had taken every day for three years, and every day I cursed my employer, Zylmor inc for sending me to this dull boring lifeless soulless grey northern town. I had been with Zylmor for eleven years since leaving university and had risen through the ranks till I will next in line for an executive manager position. Up to that point everything I touched was shimmering and shiny, my clients were awestruck by the presentations I showed them, my team worked away with the lowest absenteeism record ever, zero, minimum sick leave, poor Mary, my p.a. had to have part of her bowel removed due to cancer but was back at work in two months, scheduling doctors appointments on her days off. They were a dedicated staff and I as their head glowed with the accolades bestowed upon us. Then come the day that I made a mistake, in hindsight a gargantuan error of traumatic proportion but at that time it didn’t even register on my list of thins never to do at work. I smiled back at a nice man across a busy room during a case conference with our newest and most lucrative client, I didn’t know the man and he had been keeping a low profile during the meeting. How was I to know the man was the clients husband. The room stopped buzzing as the client let forth a shrill banshee scream and leapt for me. I was caught in the moment and her arms flew at me so I floored her with my southpaw. Within days I was transferred to the northern wasteland. The staff come in late and go early, there is some serious pilferage going on but I can’t locate the source, possibly the entire office. My title, Assistant locum manager actually means I do everything including brew the coffee. The clients are dingy and grey with backwards looking ideas and no motivation in the world can lift the damp spirit that pervades every molecule of the dire situation. Three seconds changed my life and finally at the age of thirty-two I understand what my dad called the daily routine grind of life and I smile never passes my lips.

Routine - D2

The very last thing I do every night during the week is check my gmail account. This is to allow all the American based emails to come in on the same day that I read them. I routinely delete the spam and email newsletters I have forgotten to unsubscribe from. I sometimes dream of changing my email addresses and not give the email out to anyone. Just to stop spam. Eventually, because I am hungry I remember I actually like spam. Not everyday, not even once a month. But just every now and then I like a dish, whose origins lie in WWII, called picnic pie.
Imagine a limited diet of flour, butter, milk, small amounts of meat, cheese etc. During the war in England whilst rationing was on bananas were unheard of, oranges rarely seen. The only fruit and veg routinely available - what you could grow yourself.
picnic pie comes from that time. Layers of spam, tomatoes and hard boiled eggs in shortcrust pastry. The whole is definately more than the sum of it's parts. Soon, very soon I am going to resurrect picnic pie and share my story with the kids.

Day One Routine

It was a routine operation, so they said and then followed it by lots of legalise but the bottom line is, the peaks in my life are gone. The things I considered routine all disappeared with the cut of the surgeon's knife. Waking up with the musky aroma of my husband next to me, taking up too much space, snoring quietly. I would then nudge him gently and he would wake too. We would talk about our day ahead, argue about who was going to dip their toes into the cold air first, who's turn it was for breakfast. I usually won and I would sink back into the pillows listening to him pad down the hallway to the kitchen. The tinny sounds of spoons on cups would be replaced by clatters as bowls and plates were brought forth, all our crockery had chips in from Séan's hamfistedness. I loved him for it. Each time I went to find a pair of tweezers that were buckled out of shape, forks and knives used as screwdrivers, screwdrivers used as hammers. For the twenty five years we have been married I have mended or replaced all the tools over and over again. I bought some pink secateurs so he wouldn't use them but eventually I found them with gouges out of the blades - they had been used for cutting wire. And the wire cutters, well they had been used to hold the aerial in place at the back of the television and are probably still there. Séan would sometimes come down and drag me out of bed, if I had a vital meeting but usually he would bring breakfast down to the bedroom and we would perch on the bed eating our porridge and chat some more, shall we paint the hallway, bottom the front room, when was the nurseryman coming with the trees, did the dog take his worming tablet. The usual, the routine, the monotonous. But I wouldn't have had it any other way, after those minutes together first thing, on our own the world invaded kids jumping all over us, jobs to go to, luches to prepare, meetings to pitch, soccer training, friends to visit, neighbours to check on, families to ring. That reminds me I must ring Séan's mother she will be devastated, her first born, her eldest son, gone at only forty seven, what's routine about that. THe doctor has returned and is giving me more information but still reiterating that it was a routine operation. I have a sarcastic retort that for now is being held in but I swear if he says routine one more time. Séan would've stopped me, I would give him my acid retorts, the ones I would say if I had more gumption or less sensitivity. He held me in check. He held me. Oh Séan why did they have to mess up your routine operation. Why are you dead? I need you to help me organise your funeral, I need you to tell your mother. I need your arms around me when I tell the children. I need you. Nothing will ever be mundane again, no comforting cooking together you chopping while I stir. Everyone said we were two halves of the same coin, well I feel half a person, we slotted together so well. I loved our boring, routine wishy washy life and now I am going to have to do it by myself. When we said till death do us part I thought it would be when we both had plastic hips and knees and hearing aids, I thought it would be forty years from now. Did you know how much I loved our humdrum existence, we could chat for hours about nothing, we laughed together, we cried together, you laughed when I cried at movies and I laughed when you cried at reality shows on t.v. The doctor arrives again to explain the procedure for your body and again he starts with the it was a routine operation and I am sorry Séan, I know he is only human but I reply "routine? so all your patients die?" and I walked out to the car and bawled.

Routine

I have signed up to write about routine every day in July. This is a routine in itself, I am attempting to feel the lethargy I had on Zylmor as a pampered prisoner, allowed to paint but only what we were allowed to piant, to speak but only to people on our allowed list. We were fed beautiful foods and drank delightful wines and fruit cordials but the tastes of these spectacular dishes were tainted - we were confined to quarters and unable to discuss the lingering scent of felicia blossom tempura as it danced across the tastebuds whilst Jenkul chillies flirted with the tongue's heat tolerance and sugary sweet fondant fluff encompassed the cheeks and jaws. What is point of eating without sharing it with others, at first i would transmit to my birth parents but the scanners inflicted a shock if even this form of communication was used inappropriately.