Langer Loksh

Dropped the Ball

Had phone appt. this p.m. with gym teacher to discuss nutty no-sneaker punishment slash sudden confusing change of rules due to uneven sides in game. Forgot to call! Was frantically cleaning house and then speeding to grocery store at time of appt. Will try again another day.

We Moved 15 Months Ago. My Brain Just Caught Up.

I'm cleaning out the linen closet (at midnight,  natch). I have removed all the towels and sheets. I am Pledging the shelves when I notice a secret door in the back wall that I have never seen before. I feel a shivery thrill.

Maybe this house was a stop on the Underground Railroad!

Er... this house was built in 1962.

Day Four: I Could Tell You, But I'd Have to Kill You. With Strep.

By this time I'm pretty sure I have strep throat. Betty got me an appointment with the village doc, a Dr. O'Connell. I stuck out my tongue and said "ah." He gave me a prescription for five days of amoxicillin. EXCELLENT! Just enough to make the little buggers resistant! I wondered why he didn't even swab me. Is it because he knew I was paying out of pocket, and probably it was strep since Charlie had it, so why bother? Or is it because that's just how chill they are in Ireland? I paid him 40 euro, which is like 60 dollars, and went on my merry.

First we went to the nursing home to see Padraig. I stayed in the car because I wanted to wait until I was not contagious. It wouldn't be very nice to bring a disease from America to all the immunosuppressed nursing home folkios. Jeff took the three kids in and started the process of reminding Padraig, now 93 years old, of who we all are. A few of the oldsters in the TV room asked Charlie what happened to his ear. "I can't tell you right now," he said. "It's a secret."

Then we hit all the local hot spots: Aughnanure Castle, where Oscar made a friend.

 
 
Brigid's Garden, with its wish trees.

 

 
 

 

Good luck to you, buddy. Then we hit Glengowla Mines just before closing time. 

There's a level of detail missing this time around. I can't remember how we did it in 2007. Did we write down where we ate dinner every night? I mean, don't you really want to know whether Summer had chicken "goujons," fish "goujons," hamburger or pasta? (The concept of the kids menu has, unfortunately, made its way to Ireland.)

This time, I was sure I would take fewer photos because the weather was bad and my arms were full of squirmy Oscar, but in fact I took more photos. Go figure.

The Knife What Cuts

Speech therapy is entirely different this year. The therapist tells me how great Charlie is doing--how "mature" he is. Last year she complained every week that he wasn't mature. Shocker. He was THREE YEARS OLD. Anyway, I've got a different attitude too. I think it's good that we're  making him say "look" instead of "wook" and "thief" instead of "feef." I think that because Charlie has hearing loss, we have to make sure that when he gets to kindergarten his speech is as clear as possible, that he's accustomed to enunciating everything and to hanging onto his teacher's every lip movement. We're sorry to see "breakshist" and "gollilla" go, but it's probably for the best. (I can't quite bring myself to correct him when he says things like "the toy what I need" or "the tool what we would use" yet though. He's just so darn cute.)

In other Charlie news: surgery. Coming up soon. For the extra ear canal. Pre-op appointment at such an ungodly hour--7:00 a.m. in Boston on a weekday--that I will need, like, a three-person tag team to care for the other children. Whenever I think about Charlie going under the knife I have to sit down. So I'm kind of blocking it out. La la la la la!

Passive-Aggressive AND Hypocritical!

Last week I forgot to send Summer to school in sneakers on gym day. She came downstairs in a sweater dress with white tights and black Mary Janes. I packed her onto the bus with her snack money. She came home with no tights on and a huge band-aid on her knee. The following letter, painstakingly printed, was in her folder:

10/8/09
Dear Mom I need help remebering to bring or wear my sneakers for p.e. class. I forgot my sneakers today, and I am not participating in today's physical activities. Could yo please help me remember to wear mu sneakers for Thrsday.

The letter is not signed because in the middle of administering this draconian little task, so obviously designed to make the parent feel like shit, Summer's gym teacher realized that the sides were not even for whatever game they were playing. So she called Summer off the bench and had her participate in the physical activities after all. Which resulted in Summer wiping out on the blacktop, tearing her tights, and mauling her knee.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle this. Cheery email? Handwritten note on non-threatening floral paper? Casual conversation next time I see her in the school hallway? BRICK THROUGH WINDOW?

Splish Splash, Quack Quack

Oscar has graduated from the plastic tub inside the sink to the bl0w-up duckie tub inside the big tub.

Pickle Puss

Here's Oscar in his first pickle puss picture at Rein's Deli.

Day 3: Seriously Old Stuff

We left Dublin behind, which was just fine with Summer, who craved the countryside. We headed for Newgrange, a fascinating megalithic tomb from 3,200 B.C.

A tour guide led us down a narrow, low-ceilinged passageway to a chamber with carvings and altars. The corbeled roof of this chamber has remained watertight for 5,000 years.

Each year on the winter solstice, the dawn's first rays penetrate a gap in the stones and shine a shaft of light into the chamber for 17 minutes. Scientists estimate it would have taken a workforce of 300 people 20 years to build this thing. You can enter a lottery to be in there on the solstice day.

Here is a picture of a famous tri-spiral carving at Newgrange. It's kind of a symbol of Ireland.

So very cool.

Then we struck out for the west, towards our village home of Oughterard outside of Galway. Just outside of Newgrange we stopped to snap this pic, which our friends outside the computer might especially appreciate.

We stopped at Clonmacnois, a sixth-century monastic ruin on a pretty spot by a river, where there are some high crosses. Here, Summer was our tour guide.

As you can see, Clonmacnois is popular with the tourists.

 
We drove on to Galway, where I loaded up a grocery cart with Jaffa Cakes, tea, milk, sugar, and Jaffa Cakes. We stopped in Moycullen for dinner at The Forge and then finally turned in at our rented house in Oughterard, which now, on our fourth trip there in 13 years, feels like home away from home. Cousins Kevin and Betty had procured a pack-n-play for Oscar and there was even a new TV.

Massachusettswood

This summer Jeff was working in Lowell down the street from Tsongas Arena where Marky Mark was filming that boxing movie. This week Jeff was working in Boston in Copley Square where Ben Affleck was filming that bank robbery movie. One of his laborers even jumped in line at the craft service table. I think I should start meeting Jeff at work for lunch.

Susie Homemaker Alert

We just made five jars of grape jelly with grapes we picked from our neighbor's vines. The neighbor went away on vacation and said we were welcome to pick the grapes otherwise the birds would eat them. She left us her juicer. Charlie and I bought a box of pectin at the stoqz    Hello Oscar atq 1th `    wq`    keyboard

Sorry about that. Anyhoo, we seem to have successfully made jelly without Auntie Alissa or G.G. present. Can't wait to eat it in 24 hours.